“Welcome…to Torts on Tape,” the now familiar voice began as Elle buzzed along the freeway on the five hour drive from Palo Alto to L.A. She had heard the story about the amputated leg so many times that she had developed a definite fear of delivery men by the time she pulled into the driveway of her parents’ house.
Elle greeted her parents and then called Serena and Margot. They arrived as she was unpacking the books she had brought home with her. They hugged her, but quickly exchanged glances at the sight of their pale, tired friend.
“We haven’t seen you once since you left for law school,” Margot said. She gave Elle a circumspect look. “And look! You have black rings under your eyes.”
Serena nodded. “Elle, what are you doing to yourself?”
“You try amusing yourself with flash cards for sixteen hours,” Elle said.
“Tell us. You’ve been out partying with some gorgeous Stanford man, I know it. Come on, don’t keep secrets.” Obviously Serena hadn’t seen the Stanford face book.
“I don’t believe you brought books with you,” Serena said, looking at Elle’s bedroom turned library.
“Well, leave them here,” Margot directed. “We’ve got shopping to do.”
Elle agreed and the three girls squeezed into Margot’s tiny Carrera parked outside.
The valet took their keys at the Valentino boutique. “Isn’t a Valentino wedding the best?” Margot poked Elle.
Elle laughed. “Explain to me again how this works with the Zen theme.”
“Okay.” Margot cleared her throat. “It all makes total sense. See, the wedding’s in the Vortex, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, Vortex and Valentino both begin with V! It’s so harmonious! I had this fully positive rush the moment it hit me!”
Serena held the door and Margot hurried inside. “She’s over the edge,” Serena whispered to Elle. “Wait till you see what she dreamed up for the bridesmaids.”
Margot rushed to a hanging rack behind the counter and slid it across the floor. A row of black dresses swung together as Margot pulled the rack to a halt.
“Black?” Elle looked at Margot with confusion.
“It’s Zen, black and white…yin and yang!” Margot exclaimed, mixing her metaphors. “See, I was watching MTV, and I saw the Robert Palmer video ‘Addicted to Love.’ And since I’m addicted to love, and it’s so romantic, you know…I had this idea. You, and Serena, and all of my bridesmaids…you’re going to be the Robert Palmer girls. Skintight black dresses, red lips, and guitars.”
“Guitars?”
Serena mouthed the words “I told you so.”
“Yeah, Snuff knows a zillion bands. We’ll just borrow some guitars. Anyway, it’ll be just like the video, except you guys will be all tan and blonde,” Margot piped over the shutter door where Elle was changing into her dress.
“The rest of us will, anyway.” Serena folded her arms and stared at Elle, who hopped out of the dressing room pulling a sock off her foot.
Margot’s animated expression disappeared instantly. “Morticia!” she shrieked, covering her face with her hands. Elle leaned against the wall, kicking her sock across the floor. She glanced at her reflection in the harsh light. “What? Is this too tight?”
Margot started to cry. “Elle, you just can’t look like that at my wedding. Oh, no, forget it.” She shooed away the seamstress who had begun to pin the hem of Elle’s dress.
“Look like what?” Elle glanced from the mirror and the reflection she had grown used to seeing to the horrified faces of her friends.
“Your skin! Oh my God, she does look like Morticia,” Serena observed sadly.
“If you were a plant you would die!” Margot wiped her eyes. “Elle, your skin has become so…so shallow.”
“Shallow?” Elle didn’t bother to correct Margot.
“Totally shallow,” Serena agreed. “It’s disgusting.”
Serena put an arm around Margot to comfort her. “Don’t worry, we won’t let her go like that. She can fake bake or something.”
Margot was somewhat consoled. “Maybe since you’ll be so busy with law school you could even use tan-in-a-can and look decent for my wedding.”
“I’m sure,” Serena said, directing her words at Elle. “She’ll be studying, or whatever, but she’ll still be tan one way or another.”
They compromised: she would sit in the tanning booth while listening to her school outlines on the MP3. It was unspoken but also decided that Serena would replace Elle as the maiden of honor. Elle’s appearance wouldn’t be so noticed if she were just another guitar-swinging bridesmaid. Hopefully she’d be able to find a Wolff tanning bed within the city limits of Palo Alto.
Margot called her at school frequently to make sure she wasn’t skipping her appointments in the tanning room. In December Margot told Elle she was worried that she might be studying and fading into a paler tone, and came to visit her at Stanford.
Margot approved of Elle’s living arrangement. Still, she frowned to see the books and papers that littered her condo. Elle admitted she had been working hard to catch up in school, and really hadn’t done much else since she last saw her friends in L.A.
“So what’s going on in LA-LA land?” Elle said, joining Margot on the couch. “How’s Malibu? Still the valley of other people’s rumors?”
“Totally,” Margot announced. “Well, you know all about Holly Finch.”
“Who’s Holly Finch?” Elle asked, staring listlessly at the ceiling.
“Who is Holly Finch? Elle, tell me you’re kidding.”
Elle breathed “No” quietly and didn’t make an excuse for herself. Margot was perpetually the victim of her last conversation. Something new, something five minutes ago, must have been rumored over cocktails at one of Snuff’s promotions.
“Elle! She’s topic numero uno in L.A., baby. The virtual vixen. She’s caused a total cyber-uproar.”
“Are you into computers now?” Elle asked skeptically. She needed an AP wire to keep up with Margot’s fads.
“Well, no. Not me, but a lot of industry people are online. It’s all the rage. It’s not like they’re Trekkie types or something. They’re keyed into a whole virtual world. Multimedia.”
Margot was speaking a language she had obviously overheard in some Viacom hospitality suite.
“So what’s the ‘cyber-uproar’?” Elle asked, a touch sarcastically.
“Well, Holly Finch’s dad owns this big multimedia firm and a record distributorship. He had a database of major industry connections and Holly got a hold of it. She set up this totally shady, all anonymous electronic bulletin board so people could sign on with false names. It was totally L.A. exclusive. You could only join if someone died or quit…or if your net worth added up to the right numbers.”
“So why is the, uh, virtual vixen in trouble?”
“Well, it seems she used her network to zap around more than just information.” Margot paused for a moment to let her hint sink in. “Everyone was on-line in fantasy mode, you know, talking about how they like it.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial hush. “Elle, from what I hear, they had some major perversions. A totally mangy scene.”
“So what?” Elle yawned.
“No,” Margot insisted, “that’s not all. See, the on-line routine was just, like, an opener to get hooked up to the real thing. S-E-X, whatever kinky way they wrote about in their network profiles. Drugs, too. It was like mail order from fantasyland! Key your dream girl into the computer, and tomorrow she’s ribbon-tied on your doorstep.”
“But I thought everyone used pseudonyms.” Elle hesitated, confused.
“Totally. They used everything. Heroin, acid, X.”
“What?” Elle interrupted. “What are you talking about?”
Margot paused, reconsidering. “Well, not so much X. That’s passé. But I’m sure you’re right. They must have had a lot of orders for the one you just said.”
“No, Marg,” Elle laughed. “Pseudonyms…uh, false names.”
“Oh.” Margot quieted. She paused for a second to absorb the new word. “Pseudonyms.” Then she continued. “The thing is, Holly kept a master list. For every fake name, she has the real identity, plus a practical directory of their sick turn-ons. Highly placed industry people, and she’s threatening to publish the list if she goes to trial.”
“What’s she charged with?”
Margot laughed shrilly. “Holly Finch won’t see the light of day for years when the feds get through with her. She’s up on distribution charges for every drug under the sun, and even something about sex with panda bears!”
“Panda bears?”
“Yeah, pandering, I think it’s called. I’m telling you, Elle, these people are sick cookies.”
Elle walked to the kitchen, offering to get Margot an iced tea rather than chance laughing out loud at her friend.
“And then, even I still can’t believe the most major crime happened right near my condo. It wasn’t random, or anything, it was a total hit. Chutney Vandermark’s father is dead and her stepmonster did it. If you were already a Malibu lawyer, you’d be really busy!”
Elle had long since ceased reading the newspaper or even People, but the name did strike her as familiar. “Who?”
Margot kicked a pile of Elle’s casebooks aside, ignoring her question and looking for the remote control. She approached the TV set and poked a few buttons in vain. “How do you do this without the remote?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” Elle admitted. “Wait, here it is.”
Margot grabbed the device out of her hand and flipped the channels until she found Hard Copy. “God, Elle, it’s all over the major media.”
The voice-over told a grim tale as a dramatic reenactment of the crime scene appeared on the screen. “Heyworth Vandermark, seventy-four-year-old tycoon. His life taken not by his heart condition, but by a cold-blooded assassin.” An actress portraying the dead man’s daughter wailed to police investigators, “I found his body, right here—” she pointed to a chalk outline—“and his wife was bent over the body, trying to move it!”
The narrator continued. “Twenty-three-year-old Brooke Vandermark, sixth wife of the slain multimillionaire, stands accused of the chilling…Murder in Malibu. An exclusive eyewitness interview with Heyworth Vandermark’s only daughter, Chutney Vandermark, on this week’s Hard Copy.”
“Oh, Margot, turn that trash off,” Elle complained. “I can’t fill my head with this stuff before exams.”
“Well, while your head is full of that Tarts on Tape, the rest of Southern California is filling up with the Vandermark murder,” Margot snapped. “It even made Vogue.” Margot muted the TV show. “Chutney went to USC, Elle.”
“Wait, I remember a Chutney from rush. Wasn’t she a Theta?”
“Delta Gamma,” Margot said. “But get this, her stepmother, the murderer…she was a Theta. Typical.”
Elle giggled. “That’s a little strong, don’t you think, Marg?”
“I don’t know. The whole scene is so gnarly. Did you know that the stepmonster, Brooke, is a year younger than Chutney? Twenty-three. Shot the old geezer point-blank.”
“That’s so awful,” Elle gasped.
“I know. I would just die if my father married somebody younger than I am.”
Elle shook her head. “No, I mean, it’s awful about her father being killed.”
Margot looked puzzled. “Oh, that. If you think that’s bad, I hear he left all his money to his wife.”