Page 25 of The Perfect People

“What’s your real name?” Jessie asked, deciding to short-circuit the confrontation she could feel coming on. She was still skeptical that Jelly had anything useful to offer and wanted to find out one way or another as soon as possible.

“Jelina Hernandez,” she said defiantly, “but I haven’t gone by that in years. I’m only telling you now because I know who you are from the TV and I respect what you do, Jessie Hunt.”

“I appreciate that, Jelly,” Jessie said, deciding to ride the wave of goodwill. “Actually my husband’s last name is Hernandez too, so I think we’re getting off to a good start here. Detective Valentine and I don’t want to waste your valuable time so we’re going to cut to the chase here. Did you see Shasta at all last night?”

“Sure I saw her,” Jelly said. “She was all over the place, running around, making sure everything was just so. I even talked to her for a bit. She was asking if Chanti was gonna make it. I had to tell her it wasn’t looking good, but that she sent her best.”

“When was the last time you saw Shasta?” Susannah pressed.

“Time’s not really my thing, Officer,” Jelly said. “And especially last night, I was under the influence of a few chemicals, if you know what I’m saying. So I couldn’t really tell you.”

“Detective,” Susannah said.

“What?”

“I’m a detective, not an officer.”

“Oh yeah, right, sorry. Sometimes I get my lady cop terms confused,” Jelly replied, not winning herself any brownie points. “What Icansay is that it was exactly eight-oh-nine when I got woken up from a deep sleep on the guest room bed by the sound of Paisley ‘nails on a chalkboard’ Sorrento coming up the stairs, jabbering away on her cell phone. I came out to tell her to keep her damn voice down but decided to cut her some slack when I saw how frazzled she looked. So I tried to buck her up, telling her what a great party it was, cuz I knew she helped organize it and all, but she just blew me off and went into Shasta’s room. Real sweetie, she is.”

“So what happened next?” Susannah pressed, trying to keep the woman focused.

“What happened next was—I heard Paisley screaming bloody murder. So I went charging into the main bedroom and saw Shasta all messed up like that. That’s how I knew to reach out to Chanti, which is how you fine people got involved. She wasn’t gonna let this thing be handled by some Podunk beach police when her best girl was violated, you know?”

Jessie looked over at Susannah. Though the detective still looked steamed at the “lady cop” crack, it was clear that they’d come to the same conclusion: Jelly was not going to be their holy grail witness. It appeared that she’d only been around for the before and the after. Unless her background check showed something suspicious, she was a dead end.

“All right, thanks for your time, Jelly,” Jessie said. “You’re free to go.”

“Seriously? That’s all you need from me? You don’t want my theories and such?”

“There is one thing we’d like,” Jessie said as she opened the office door. “We hear you’ve been posting a lot about the case with your theories and speculation. It would be helpful if you could limit that for the duration of the case. It might actually be doing more harm than good, and I know that you would never want to do anything that might jeopardize our ability to catch Shasta’s killer.”

“Damn,” Jelly said as the three of them started down the stairs, “you really think I’ve got that kind of power?”

“You never know,” Jessie said, “but why take the chance? How awful would you feel if you knew that something you posted compromised the case, right?”

Jelly was pondering that possibility when a loud, cascading series of wild, raucous screams pierced the relative quiet of the house. They all looked downstairs, trying to determine the source of the disturbance.

“What the hell is going on?” Susannah demanded, calling down to Sergeant Breem, who was on his radio.

“Come on,Detective,” Jelly, said, punctuating the title with emphasis. “That kind of noise can only mean one thing: Chantilly Mace has arrived.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As if on cue, the door burst open.

At first, Jessie couldn’t see anyone resembling a pop star. Instead, the living room was suddenly filled with four giant men in jeans and short-sleeved, black T-shirts, along with two MBPD officers. Jessie assumed that the three other well-dressed people trailing the group were part of the entourage.

Once the door closed behind them all, the large men separated like a flower unfurling at time-lapse speed to reveal a tiny woman in cream-colored leisure wear. Her hair was hidden under a baseball cap, and she wore sunglasses, but there was no question who it was.

Chantilly Mace was one of the biggest names in music. Since she exploded onto the scene a decade ago, while still in her late teens, she’d sold millions of albums and later, broken records for music downloads. Jessie didn’t know how many Grammys she’d won, but it was a lot. Her tours, which filled stadiums, were among the hottest tickets around.

She was also a brand unto herself. She had her own makeup line, her own athleisure line (which Jessie was pretty sure she was wearing right now), her own fragrance, her own jewelry line, and her own line of organic snacks. She had been married twice and every new beau since was fodder for the tabloids. She’d also gotten into a couple of altercations in nightclubs. One of them, four years ago, led to an arrest and a trial that ultimately ended in a hung jury.

Despite her international fame and outsized reputation, the woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she had the coiled, springy body of a gymnast. Her cocoa skin glowed, even in the dimmed light of Shasta’s living room. She took off her cap and sunglasses, handing them to a frazzled-looking blonde woman hovering by her shoulder.

Once they were gone, she ran her hand through jet-black hair, styled in a pixie cut. Her piercing, light brown eyes searched the house until they fell on a familiar face.

“Jelly Belly!” she bellowed in a voice far too out-sized for the person it was attached to.

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