Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(51)

“You’ve never heard of him?” Odelia grins at Bella. “Well, that’s refreshing. Finally, someone who doesn’t think he’s the hottest thing to hit Hollywood since Rudy Valentino.”

“Rudy Valentino—you call him Rudy? How old are you, anyway?” Luther asks.

“Older than I look. Rudy and I have been in touch lately. He visited the Dale once or twice back in the twenties. Stayed in this very house. The place was supposedly run by bootleggers at the time, if you want to believe Orville.” She rolls her eyes. “After Rudy passed away, Mae West used to come to the Dale to try to make contact with him. She was convinced he was murdered.”

“Was he?”

“No,” she tells Luther decisively. “Anyway, poor Rudy’s still trying to set the record straight.”

“Do you mean about the murder or the bootleg rumor?”

“Neither. He’s unhappy about the ongoing innuendo about his . . . masculinity. And let me tell you, there’s nothing to it. He’s quite the suave, seductive charmer, unlike the high and mighty Orville Holmes, who’s just an ordinary medium just like the rest of us.”

Just an ordinary medium?

Bella manages to keep a straight face as Odelia goes on. “The only difference between Orville and the rest of the registered mediums in the Dale is that he happened to have an available appointment the day Jillian Jessup came to town—you must know who she is, Bella?”

“Of course.” Bella and Sam had seen Wish Come True—the romantic comedy that transformed Jillian Jessup into a huge movie star—on their first date.

They’d made an annual tradition of watching it on their anniversary, joking that the genie-in-a-bottle plot seemed cheesier and sappier every year. On their final viewing last year, they were snuggled together in Sam’s hospital bed. He was too weak to crack a smile, much less a joke, and slept through most of it. She found herself surreptitiously wiping tears on the blanket during what she knew damn well was an overblown melodramatic denouement, envying the fictional couple’s happily ever after and mourning the loss of her own.

“Jillian Jessup had a reading with Orville that day, and he connected her with her father,” Odelia says, “and she was so impressed, she decided to make a film about the Dale and make him a consultant.”

“There was a film about Lily Dale?” Bella asks.

“Pfft. After all that talk, they never even got that project off the ground. But that hasn’t stopped Orville from acting as if he’ll be winning an Oscar any moment now.”

“He did make a big splash with the Hollywood crowd,” Luther says. “You can’t argue with that.”

“Who’s arguing? I’m just answering Bella’s question.”

She’s uncharacteristically peevish. Clearly, neither Orville nor his ex-wife brings out the best in her. As she goes on with her story, Bella wonders whether there’s any more to it than small-town dynamics and overbearing, egotistical neighbors who rub each other the wrong way.

“So the next thing you know, Orville’s left Pandora—which was a long time coming. Now he’s married to some bimbo starlet, and he calls himself the Psychic Guru to the Stars or some such nonsense. He thinks he’s a big deal, and so do a lot of people around here who wouldn’t have given him the time of day before.”

“Does that answer your question, Bella?”

She smiles faintly. “I’m not sure I remember what it was.”

Even Odelia has to grin at that.

Then Luther shifts the conversation back to speculation about how last night’s visitor might have gotten into the house if it wasn’t one of the guests. “Even if Leona had changed the locks, and even if she was careful to get the keys back from her guests, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to have made a duplicate for whatever reason.”

“They say Do Not Duplicate,” Bella points out.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Can Not Duplicate. In all my years as a police detective, I’ve never seen a key that can’t be copied if you find the right locksmith.”

“Right, as in someone who’s willing to look the other way for a little extra cash?” Odelia asks, and he nods.

“What about the keys to the bedroom doors?” Bella asks, again thinking of the missing cat. “You said they’re too old-fashioned to be copied.”

“That’s what Leona told me.”

Luther just shakes his head. “Look, the truth is, if some lowlife wanted to get into this house—or any of the guest rooms—he’d find a way to copy a key, or he’d just break in. Burglars do it all the time.”

“I know, but in this case, it doesn’t seem like anyone broke in,” Bella says, “and I don’t think anything was stolen. The glassware in the dining room alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

“There are valuable antiques all over the house,” Odelia confirms.

“So if someone was here who wasn’t a guest, then we’re looking at someone who wanted to go undetected.”

Bella thinks of Leona and of the page she’d found ripped out of the appointment book, and her blood runs cold.

There’s a long silence.

Luther looks at Odelia. “Do you have some kind of . . . feeling about any of this?”