Free Looks to Die For by Janice Kaplan Page A

with whatever would be on your calendar if none of this had happened.”
    I checked the Treo where I kept my schedule. “A meeting of the benefit ball committee at Dan’s hospital,” I told him. “I’m supposed to be head of the decorations committee.”
    Chauncey cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose with Dan banned from the hospital right now, you’ll have to give that up.”
    Not that anybody would mind. As head of the committee last year, I’d imported thirty-five brightly colored parrots from Peru and had them perch on gilded branches during the dinner dance. A truly original touch — but nobody told me that parrots like sparkles. Or that they’d start dive-bombing for diamonds on the jewel-bedecked necks of L.A.’s wealthiest women. But I’d learned my lesson.
    Dan announced that getting back to normal was just fine with him. With his usual skill at denial, he explained that being away from the hospital gave him some time to write an article on facial reconstruction for the Annals of Plastic Surgery.
    Ashley had a different perspective.
    “That lawyer can go screw himself,” she said angrily on Friday night, when I told her Chauncey’s advice. “I’m not going to school to have everyone insult me because my dad’s a killer.”
    “Your dad is being questioned in connection with an event he knows nothing about,” I said stoically. “That’s all you have to say to anybody who asks.”
    “Nobody’s going to ask. They’re just going to talk behind my back.”
    “Welcome to eighth grade. Talking behind your back is the coin of the realm.”
    She glowered at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “All I’m trying to say is that kids gossip about everything. Real, made up, it doesn’t matter. Don’t make a big deal about this and neither will they.”
    “Oh my God, you’re so fake!” she yelled. “This is a murder, not an acne breakout! You have no idea the crap I’ll get! It’s almost as big a scandal as when Sandy’s father got fired from Fox!”
    Now wasn’t the moment to marvel that a homicide investigation reached the same rung on the mortification meter as a network shake-up. “I’ll drive you to school on Monday and we’ll go to Mr. Morland’s office and talk about how you should handle yourself,” I said calmly.
    “I know how to handle myself!” she yelled. “I don’t need an idiot principal to tell me how to face my friends! And I don’t need your idiotic advice, either!”
    She stormed out and slammed the door.
    Ashley kept herself scarce all weekend, but Monday morning, I peeled her out of bed and announced that she needed to be in my car in thirty minutes, period. Twenty-five minutes later, my clothes-conscious Fred Segal–shopping daughter clomped down to the kitchen and paused in the doorway in baggy black jeans, a three-inch-wide leather belt with metal studs, and a shapeless black DEATH BAND T-shirt probably scrounged from a Goodwill drop-off box. Instead of her usual dainty pink sandals, she’d tied on scuffed Doc Martens over thick woolen socks. Her fingernails looked like they’d been polished with burnt cork and she’d lined her lips with a dark, ghoulish pencil. Some strange gel had turned her hair from blond and fluffy to murky and Goth straight.
    She glared at me, daring me to say something. So I did.
    “Can I get you some toast?”
    “No.”
    “Bagel? Orange juice? A waffle?”
    “Nothing. I’m not eating.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    In the car, she turned on the CD player so Eminem was blaring from the speakers and sat with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. I snuck a few worried sideways glances at her. The coal-black getup was as frightening as she’d intended — much more disturbing to me than the sex-kitten couture she’d been sporting a few weeks ago. If only I’d appreciated how good life had been before it got so bad. Right now, I wouldn’t mind seeing Ashley preening again in pink Pucci, and I could even cope with a bare