Edward Schwartz (the business exec) was found in his high-rise corner office, slumped over his desk from a heart attack. Unless we got lucky and someone placed an obituary order, this would be an unpaid job, but I didn’t mind that. I was a sucker for the aftermath of death, whether it came with a paycheck or not.
This man, as I soon discovered, had already been on his way out. “Four tumors,” his secretary told me gravely, her eyes perfectly lined in charcoal liner and clear of tears. “Doctors said he only had a few months left.”
I noted the details, then sat in the parking lot and scrolled through the man’s social media. A car pulled into the spot next to me, and I thought of Edward’s vehicle, which was probably on the executive level in one of the assigned spots. If the photos on his Instagram were any indication, it was a Porsche 911. How long would it suck up an expensive downtown spot before it was moved or sold in an estate auction?
According to his bio stats, the man was single. He was either childless or ignored them in his social media posts. The chances were high that there would be little family, if any, to mention in the write-up.
Single adults were one of my biggest challenges. Anyone could write glowing and loving tributes about soccer moms and hardworking fathers. People like Edward Schwartz needed a creative pitch and someone insightful and diligent enough to figure out whether their lives held anything more than paychecks and peroxide blondes.
Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes you scraped away the top layer of a prick, and underneath was just more of the same. I was only twenty minutes into Edward and I could foresee a seven-layer dip of selfishness and conceit. His secretary of seven years had been practically cheerful at her boss’s demise. Either she was an asshole or he was.
My phone rang while I was scrolling through Edward’s LinkedIn profile. I hit the button on the steering wheel and put the call through the Fiat’s speakers. “Hey.”
“Nora Price died,” Sam said, jumping straight to the point. I winced at my best friend’s news.
“No,” I groaned. “How?”
“Apparently she had cancer. No one knew.”
Shit. Nora was easily the most famous Black comedian in the world and had never failed to make me laugh out loud with her quick wit and sharp humor.
Two years ago, before Griswell Axe supposedly committed suicide—a death and obituary that led to my demotion and police record—I would have already been on the phone with Nora’s publicist. The Times would have had me on a first-class flight to New York to meet with her wife and children, pen in hand, ready to properly chronicle her life.
“Are you there?” Sam’s smooth voice deepened with concern. The man could have been a phone-sex operator. I’d told him that the night I met him, at an open-mic performance at a comedy club. He had paused for a beat, then told me we were going to be best friends. I’d laughed it off, but he’d been right. Sam was always right, either by wisdom or forced design. It was one of his most annoying traits.
“Yeah, I’m here. Just . . . caught off guard. I really loved her.”
“Look, I’m headed to a showing in Calabasas, but wanted to see if you were down to hit happy hour later? Oyster House?”
“Yes,” I said immediately, my gaze darting to the car’s dash clock. “When?”
“Five?”
“I’ll see you there.” I ended the call and pulled up the obituary order for my afternoon appointment. It was for Taylor Fortwood, a middle-aged woman who died in a car accident earlier that week. It was a paid obituary, hence the family interview, which was scheduled for one thirty. I weighed traffic at this hour, then fastened my seat belt.
Nora Price. It was crazy, how quickly someone could be gone. No one would miss Edward Schwartz, but there would be memorial events, foundations, and nationwide mourning over the five-foot-two comedy icon. I pushed her out of my mind and pulled up Twitter, adding a hint for my followers, who had already decided that the maintenance man was definitely a goner.
@themysteryofdeath: Hint: with more money often comes more problems.
That clue was a bit obvious for them, but hey. The stress of perfectionism could be deadly.
CHAPTER 7
LILLIAN
It’s important to examine why you are trying to uncover their cheating. Is it to solve and heal problems in your relationship? Or are you setting them up for justification for your own mistakes? —Chapter 4, How to Catch a Cheating Spouse
In Los Angeles, coffee shops were the dating pools—singles edging around each other in line, sending bedroom eyes across small tables in crowded cafés, and sucking seductively on vapes in the shade of a palm on Hollywood Boulevard. Because of that, I typically walked into a shop on a mission, my shoulders steeled in defense, a permanent hell no stamped across my forehead to ward off men and the occasional panhandler.
“One venti pumpkin spice latte, with almond milk and two Splendas.” Voice crisp yet kind.
Card swiped.
Tip added: 25 percent.
Coffee collected.
Seat captured.
Headphones on.
Laptop out.
Fingers furious against the keys.
I wasn’t a particularly attractive woman. But in Los Angeles, you had to wear armor or you were devoured, and your armor was either that of the huntress or that of the hunted (me). Nice women in between got eaten.
The recently divorced (and deceased) Taylor Fortwood was a huntress, one with six boyfriends (according to her sister) and a two-story living room that could hold my entire house. I had perched on her fabulous red leather couch, sipped a pineapple chai latte served by her butler (yes, a butler), and flipped through a photo album that showed the successful calendar buyer on dream vacations and at celebrity encounters, and lounging with snow leopards alongside two sheiks and a Bentley. Taylor hadn’t been much prettier than me, but she had brimmed with confidence and life, the energy radiating out of every photo and each perfectly chosen piece in her home.
Even her death—a simple blown tire that had led to a fishtail that had careened into oncoming traffic and resulted in a fourteen-car pileup—had been dramatic and impactful. When I died, it’d probably be from an infected toenail, and my obituary writer would struggle to fill the requisite three paragraphs.
As Matchbox Twenty crooned through my headphones—Taylor had toured with them in Germany her sophomore year of college—I reviewed my rough draft of her write-up, which was already pushing six paragraphs, and that was highlighting only the most exciting moments of her life.
Thirty-seven years old. Two years younger than me, yet a million times more interesting. I saved the draft and closed the laptop with a sigh. Slipping the headphones off my head, I took a long sip of my room-temperature coffee.
It was a moment of vulnerability, heightened by a glance around the shop to see what I had missed. And there, sitting just one table over, was David.
If he had been beautiful, I probably wouldn’t have fallen. I would have snapped my gaze back to my table, forced my face into cool disinterest, and worked my headphones over my ears. But David wasn’t beautiful, at least not in the manner that graced magazine covers and cologne ads. He was thin and scruffy, his chin and jaw covered by a wild beard that curled over his lips and matched the tufts of hair that peeked out from the sides of his baseball hat. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and a white T-shirt with board shorts. I stared at the shorts and wondered what grown man wore a bathing suit on a Thursday.