Perfect Sax Read online

  Perfect Sax

  Jerrilyn Farmer

  For Rick and Julie Klein who gave Madeline their home and more

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  “Mood Indigo”

  “Nutty”

  “Between Black & White”

  “All or Nothing at All”

  “Party’s Over”

  “Dear Lord (BREAKDOWNS AND ALTERNATE TAKE)”

  “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan”

  “I Want to Talk About You”

  “Darkness”

  “The Chill of Death”

  “Little Things You Used to Do”

  “Living Space”

  “I’m Beginning to See the Light”

  “Hello, Goodbye, Forget It”

  “Who’s Sorry Now?”

  “Big Nick”

  “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive-Ass Slippers”

  “Sing Sing Sing”

  “Something to Remember You By”

  “I Get a Kick Out of You”

  “I Got It Bad (AND THAT AIN’T GOOD)”

  “Money Jungle”

  “Jeeps Blues”

  “Frisky”

  “Look of Love”

  “Blues in the Night”

  “Look Beyond”

  “Sisters”

  “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”

  “Come on-a My House”

  “Secret Love”

  “Consequences”

  “Surprise”

  “You’ll Never Go to Heaven”

  “Lotta Sax Appeal”

  “The Bean Stalks Again”

  “Just One More Chance”

  Acknowledgments

  Praise

  Other Books by Jerrilyn Farmer

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “Mood Indigo”

  I love big balls.”

  Wesley Westcott took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance over at the tall, thin blonde sitting beside him.

  “Oh, stop!” Holly caught his look and laughed. “You know what I mean,” she said, flushing. “Big fund-raising balls. Banquets. Parties.”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned back to the road, steering his new white Jaguar S-Type off the freeway and onto Sunset Boulevard as he doused a smirk.

  Holly pointed at where the smirk had made its momentary appearance and demanded, “Stop it, Wesley.”

  “I am stopping it,” he protested. “Go on, already. Tell me all about your love of balls.”

  She laughed. “Tonight, for instance. The music blew me away. And the dresses. And the caviar. It was all pretty freakin’ faboo.”

  The Jazz Ball had been a stunning success. Six hundred Los Angelenos had gathered to celebrate the Woodburn School of Music and raise funds to support its prestigious Young Artists Program. The Woodburn, a private institute devoted to tutoring the West Coast’s most gifted musical prodigies, liked to suggest it was even more selective than its better-known rival on the other coast, Juilliard.

  Once a year, the fund-raising wing of the Woodburn put on a major social event to lure contributions from its wellheeled patrons. The Jazz Ball was famous for the star power of its guest list and the lavishness of the festivities. And this year, the event-planning firm that had won the plum prize of creating this über-party was none other than Mad Bean Events, Wes and Holly’s own firm.

  “I think Madeline outdid herself tonight,” Holly said, referring to their friend and leader. “The black-and-white newspaper theme was awesome. She has the coolest ideas.”

  “That she does. It was a beautiful night.” Wes turned the car south on Vine Street and said, “I wish she had come back with us to my house to celebrate.”

  “I think she’s exhausted,” Holly said, finger-combing her loose platinum wisps as she ran through the obligatory party postmortem with Wesley. “She doesn’t usually leave a party so early.”

  “I know,” Wes said. “But even Maddie needs a break.”

  Madeline Bean, the head of one of Hollywood’s trendiest young event-producing companies, had managed to rise quickly in the world of spectacular parties. She might only be twenty-nine, but she had become a seasoned veteran of the ever rising and falling Hollywood social tide in a short time. And if the clients alone hadn’t made her seasick, she’d managed to weather quite a few ups and downs of a dicey economy, too. Running a small business could be treacherous; one way she had found to succeed was simply to work harder than anyone else. A case in point had been the Jazz Ball. Madeline had been indefatigable for the past two weeks. The number of details involved in pulling off a grand party this grand was enormous. All the intense attention Maddie had paid to a zillion small concerns—the black linen napkins that arrived were, in actuality, puce; the white peppercorns she had ordered were, at the last minute, unavailable—must, by now, have finally taken its toll.

  Wes stopped at a traffic light and looked over at Holly. “When Maddie and I decided to start the company, I don’t think either of us realized how much real, honest-to-God work we’d be in for.”

  “Ah.” Holly smiled broadly. “Now I finally understand why it was you so quickly hired an assistant.”

  “We were stunned by your talent.” Wes was always a gentleman. And then he added, “You have no idea how hard it is to find a good schlepper.”

  Holly had begun as their assistant six years ago and worked her way up by mastering just about every party job she encountered. Holly filled in wherever she was needed, as an extra bartender, or the person to make the emergency run for more white asparagus, or the one in full-face clown greasepaint twisting a balloon giraffe for six-year-old birthday twins. Six feet tall, scrappy, and much more likely to wear a Day-Glo orange paisley polyester miniskirt than anyone else you might meet—ever—Holly Nichols was made for parties. And even though she was apt to gaze upon certain celebrity guests with more dogged affection than was entirely suitable for a staff member working a private party, she was in all ways a most valuable asset to the team.

  Holly pushed her white-blond bangs off her forehead and six rhinestone-encrusted bangle bracelets clacked as they fell down her wrist.

  Wes shot her another glance. “You sure you’re up for coming to my place?”

  “Absolutely. I’m wide-awake. And I’m starving.”

  “You’re always hungry.”

  “True. And you always cook so divinely for me.”

  “True.” Wes looked happy with the arrangement. He loved to cook and, together with Madeline, devised the menus and supervised the chefs at their events.

  The traffic was thin at this late hour as they got south of Hollywood. Wes brushed his thick brown hair off of his forehead and eased his new car southwest toward his house in Hancock Park. His black leather jacket, he noticed with the habit of one who takes in every visual detail, looked not at all bad against the custom white leather seats of the Jag. It reminded him again of the Black & White Ball. They’d just pulled off another stunning event. He hummed a riff of “In the Mood.”

  “Is that jazz?” Holly asked, perking up. “I’m all about jazz now. The band that played at the ball was flat-out awesome. Who knew that kind of music could sound so groovy?”

  “Jazz? You mean you don’t listen to jazz, Holly?”

  “Well, cha! I am major into Eminem. And Radiohead. And Vendetta Red. And, well, Mars Volta. And Clay Aiken. You know me. I dig rap. And rock. And show tunes.”

  Wes nodded, trying to follow her musical tastes.

  “I always thought jazz was just too hard to understand. I mean, before. So I guess I’m evolving. Ya think?”

  “I do.”

  “Tonight was amazing. The horn section! That trumpet drove me wild!”

&nb
sp; “The instrument?” Wes knew Holly well. “Or the incredibly beautiful young man playing it?”

  Holly had been pulling her light blond hair up on the top of her head and pinned it all there with a sparkly pink clip that she’d rummaged from the bottom of her enormous bag. “Yeah. He was adorable. True.”

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “Have a little respect here, Wes. That guy turned me on to jazz, you moron!”

  “He turned you on, all right.”

  “Look,” Holly said, her dignity clearly in need of defense, “I’m putting on the jazz station. See?” She punched a few of the preset buttons on the radio in Wesley’s new car. The sound system boomed and sputtered as Holly rapidly punched in FM station after station, quickly discarding country music, an all-talk format, a string quartet, and an opera, to run out of steam at one that featured all news.

  “Sweetie,” Wes said, trying to get Holly’s attention. “Try KJAZZ at 88.1 FM.”

  “You always know everything,” she replied in a way that didn’t sound entirely complimentary. But before Holly could change the frequency, the baritone voice of the news announcer had begun a new story.

  “Tonight, organizers at the Woodburn School of Music were unavailable for comment on the apparent theft of a rare and valuable instrument that was the featured auction item at their annual fund-raising ball.”

  “Hey, it’s about us,” Holly said, cranking the volume dial.

  The newsreader continued, “One of the school’s instructors who was present at the gala event, famed jazzman Joe Bernadello, described the instrument as a one-of-a-kind silver tenor saxophone made in the 1950s by the Selmer Company, a top Parisian maker. Bernadello went on to say he was ‘shocked and saddened’ that the saxophone was stolen from the downtown Tager Auditorium, where the black-tie event was held earlier this evening. Police are looking for anyone who might have information to call the LAPD hot line.” The station then began playing a commercial that was mildly persuasive if one had a deep need to buy the cheapest mattress in Los Angeles County.

  “Bad news travels fast, huh?” Holly shook her head, her dangling earrings tinkling at the activity. “I was hoping that old sax would just turn up somewhere, misplaced or something.” They had heard about the screwup with the missing sax before they left the Woodburn ball. Of course, the auction wasn’t something Mad Bean Events was responsible for, so it hadn’t been their nightmare.

  Wesley frowned. “This is sad. After all our efforts, what will everyone in town be talking about tomorrow? That sax.”

  “That’s the way life is. You plan and you plan. You work and you work. Then something always happens you weren’t prepared for. That’s Madeline’s philosophy.”

  “She’s right,” Wes said.

  “Something is always going to happen we can’t predict and we can’t control,” Holly said. “But it’s not usually something that makes the cops come running.”

  “Or makes the news,” Wes agreed.

  “How did they get this story so fast, Wes?” Holly looked at her wrist and shook several of the bangle bracelets until her tiny rhinestone watch was revealed. “It’s only two A.M.” They had begun breaking down the kitchen before midnight and then spent almost an hour standing around out in the parking structure with their crew overseeing the loading of their equipment and kidding around with the waiters and chefs as they left.

  Wes eased the car into his Hancock Park driveway but just sat there, staring at the car radio, turning the sound level down as the commercials rolled on, while Holly pulled a tiny cell phone out of her giant bag and began to dial.

  “You calling Maddie?” Wes asked. “Wait a sec, there, Hol.”

  “Shouldn’t we let her know something is going on?”

  “Not yet,” Wes said, thinking it over. “What can any of us do about the missing sax? Look, Maddie left early. Chances are she doesn’t even know about it. Let her sleep.”

  The newscaster’s voice returned to the news after the commercial break and began another story. “With a disturbing report, we hear now from Ken Hernandez, who is out in the Hollywood Hills at the site of a criminal investigation. What is going on out there, Ken?”

  “It looks like L.A. has been hit by another shocking crime, Jim. I’m standing in the quiet neighborhood of Whitley Heights, where police have just informed us there has been an apparent home invasion robbery that turned violent.”

  Sitting in the dark car, Wesley and Holly were once more riveted to the news. Whitley Heights was the tiny section of the Hollywood Hills where Mad Bean Events had its offices and professional kitchen. The company worked out of the lower floor of Madeline’s home. Wesley’s hand jabbed for the radio knob and turned up the sound.

  “We have yet to get the whole story here, Jim, but the police tell us the body of a young woman, age approximately midtwenties, has been found in the house, which is the residence of one of the city’s most successful party planners…”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Holly’s pale skin turned paler.

  The original news anchor spoke up. “We understand it’s the home of Madeline Bean. Are the police aware that Bean’s catering company was responsible for producing the Jazz Ball at the Woodburn School earlier this evening—the scene, we have just learned, of yet another serious crime? Is there a connection here?”

  “I don’t know about that, Jim. I’ll try to have more information for you in my next report.”

  Holly stared at Wes. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh—”

  “Holly.” Wes put his hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him, her face going blank with fear, the words dying on her lips.

  Wesley Westcott had spent the past several years being the calmest man you’d ever want by your side in a kitchen crisis. His voice never rose. His cool never faltered. Whether it was because of shock, or habit, or sheer emotional fortitude, his calm voice betrayed almost no strain as he asked his assistant quietly, “Did the idiot on the radio just imply that Maddie’s…body has just been discovered?”

  “Nutty”

  TWELVE HOURS EARLIER…

  There are very few things as invigorating as trying to coordinate the efforts of a dozen wacked-out, overly sensitive, testosterone-driven gourmet chefs on the afternoon of a large dinner party. At the moment six of my prep chefs were ready to kill the other six. And I suspect those other six were ready to kill me. What would life be like without its little challenges?

  “Philip,” I chided, “the soup is supposed to be black and white, not brown and white.” We were preparing two soups, a white cheddar cream soup and a black bean soup, which would be simultaneously ladled into the same shallow bowl until the two met in the middle, and then garnished with heirloom tomato salsa and sour cream just before it was served. It was to be the perfect start of our evening’s meal, as it fit the black and white and “re(a)d” headline theme of the Jazz Ball.

  “I know that,” Philip Voron said, looking vexed.

  “See what you can do to darken the black bean soup, will you?”

  “I told you it was supposed to be blacker! Idiot!” Philip Voron spat out at his neighbor.

  I moved on.

  Across the room, Wes smiled at me and pointed to his watch. We had to keep moving. We were due at the Tager Auditorium, the site of the evening’s party, in a few hours, but I took half a second to appreciate just where I was. On this party day, the day of our final prep for the Woodburn fund-raiser, our industrial-style kitchen could explode the senses of even the most seasoned caterer. The large white-tiled room, with its commercial-grade stainless appliances and high ceiling, was currently filled with the pounding sounds of chopping blocks punished by a dozen chefs’ aggressive knives, the intoxicating perfume of freshly crushed garlic and just-picked basil, the heat of gas flames firing high under enormous bubbling stockpots. I love these sounds and scents and sights.

  “Mad,” called out Holly from near the sinks. She was helping two women who were rolling out our fresh angelhair pas
ta. We planned to cook it later when we got to the Tager kitchen, quickly so it would remain al dente, right before serving it to our six hundred guests. The thing that made it interesting was adding the black ink we’d removed from the sacs of ten dozen cuttlefish, which we’d had flown in from the Mediterranean that morning. Cuttlefish are a sort of squid. Sautéed, they taste a lot like softshell crab. My partner, Wes, and I often lament the less than adventurous palates of most banquet planners, but this time, at least, we’d be out on the inky culinary edge. Our hostesses, the women of the Woodburn Guild, were taking the black-and-white theme seriously.

  “I’ll be right back,” I called to Holly. I had to run out to my car, where I’d left a phone number for the ice sculptor who was carving jazz instruments out of black-tinted ice.

  I ducked through the butler’s pantry, both sides of which were made up of floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted cabinets. There, in the backlit cases, we displayed the hot-turquoise-and-lemon-yellow vintage pottery collection we often use, the serving platters and bowls we bring to our more informal events. The pantry led from the kitchen to the office that Wes and I share and then out to the front door by way of Holly’s reception-area desk.

  Outside, I started down the flight of stairs that takes you from my hillside home to the curb. It wasn’t until I was halfway down that I noticed something was wrong. The street below, a quiet cul-de-sac where Whitley Avenue dead-ends right up against the retaining wall of the Hollywood Freeway, was covered in trash and papers and the like. What was up with that?

  As I began to process the scene, I became angrier with the mess. Dozens of papers had been dumped in my driveway and beyond, like someone had maliciously emptied a wastepaper basket out their car window as they drove by. I had been out front only ten minutes before with Wesley and Holly, and the street had been quiet and neat and clean. Few people come all the way up this street, anyway, since there is no outlet. So whatever was this paper attack about?

  I opened up the back of my old Jeep Grand Wagoneer and pulled out an empty carton marked louis roederer 1995 Brut, removed the inner cardboard partitions that had cushioned and separated the champagne bottles a few months back when I first bought them for a wedding shower, and then, with distaste, began picking up trash off the asphalt. As I tossed handfuls of paperwork into the carton, I was thankful the stuff wasn’t filthy. In fact, it was an odd assortment of officelike documents.