Free Not A Girl Detective by Susan Kandel Page B

go all the way through to the party.
    I’ve seen them setting up. Green lights everywhere!
    The Munchkins are an erotic belly-dancing troupe
    from Des Moines!”
    “Cece, don’t we have that thing we have to get to?
    Isn’t it starting right now? That thing?”
    “Give me one more minute, Lael,” I said. “Please.”
    I knew I was pushing it, but I had a couple of ques-
    tions that needed answering.
    “What, are you worried I can’t handle the both of
    you?” I heard Sebastien saying as I stepped into the hall.
    Nancy Olsen was standing out there, puffing on a
    cigarette.
    “That’s against the law,” I said. “And it’ll kill you.”
    She took a long drag. “I’ve already got a mother.”
    “I’m well aware of that.”
    “She makes her presence felt, doesn’t she?”
    “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on between you
    two. That’s for you to work out. But I don’t appreciate being made a fool of.”
    Nancy dropped her cigarette into a cup of cranberry
    juice someone had left behind. “Sorry.”
    “That’s it? Sorry?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Well, that’s not good enough.”
    “You were in the way.”
    “Of what?”
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    S U S A N
    K A N D E L
    “My fucking life,” she said, shoving her chopped-off
    red hair out of her eyes. “Do you think it’s easy having Clarissa for a mother?”
    “Do you think it’s easy having you for a daughter?”
    She looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. “I sup-
    pose not.”
    Well, shoot. I hadn’t meant to make her cry. The girl was decked out in full punk regalia but still had her baby fat.
    “My mother had all sorts of plans for me, too,” I said, leaning against the wall. “I was supposed to become
    Miss New Jersey, maybe even Miss America. But then I
    sort of rushed into marriage. I blew it for her.”
    “Were you pregnant?”
    I nodded. “I had a daughter, Annie. She’s a little
    older than you are now.”
    “Where does she live?”
    “In L.A.”
    “Do you see her much?”
    “I do.”
    “Did you name her after a fictional character?”
    I laughed. “No, though I will admit to being obsessed with Annie Oakley. But I never mentioned it to her father. He would’ve been horrified. He wanted to name
    her after one of the Brontë sisters.”
    “Emily was an anorexic.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Charlotte was a masochist.”
    “Good thing we stuck with Annie.”
    “There was an Anne Brontë.”
    “Bet nobody called her Annie.”
    “Probably not.” She smiled and I saw her tongue
    N O T
    A
    G I R L
    D E T E C T I V E
    77
    piercing glisten. She stuffed her cigarettes into a tiny fringed purse.
    “I’ve got to go help my mother. She’ll go ballistic if everything’s not perfect. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “See you tomorrow.”
    I went back inside, too, to rescue Lael and find Bridget. Clarissa was furiously scooping up conference
    programs from the chairs she’d laid them on earlier.
    She beckoned me over with a long red fingernail. I
    thought of her daughter’s green ones, bitten to the
    quick.
    “Cece, I have news I forgot to mention. We’re
    switching things around a bit. The scavenger hunt will now begin at eleven, and we’re going to start your
    speech a little later than planned because we have a surprise guest coming.”
    Oh, great. I’d been preempted. “Who is it?”
    “Edgar Edwards, the collector from L.A.”
    “Edgar Edwards?”
    “I talked to him this morning. I wouldn’t have let him horn in on our event, but he says he’s got something to show us that’ll knock our socks off. Sounds pretty
    thrilling. Anyway, I’m thrilled,” she said, tucking the now-defunct programs under her arm. “I’ll have to redo these tonight, of course.”
    I knew the man couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
    So much for Mitchell Honey’s hysterics. But what was
    Edgar’s big surprise?
    Oh, no.
    The painting of naked Nancy Drew. What else could
    it be? And it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have looked so