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excerpted from Snooping in Stilettos by Kate Carlisle
The last time I saw Deanna Ray Coburn, her face was cherry red. Not like “dying of embarrassment” cherry red, this was more like “dying of carbon monoxide poisoning in the front seat of her new BMW” cherry red. The police called it suicide but that was impossible. I knew Deanna. She never would’ve committed suicide—just like she never wore green after getting kicked out of Girl Scouts, never got over the asthma she had as a kid, never touched ice cream unless it was Baskin-Robbins’ Jamoca almond fudge. She was a designer label freak and wore a size-five shoe and of my five best friends, she was my favorite. I don’t know what I’ll do without her. So like I said, I knew Deanna Ray Coburn. And I knew the police were wrong. Deanna was notoriously late—a fault she wore like a badge of honor—so it was my job to get her to Judge Stanley Rose’s courtroom on Monday morning at eight-thirty in order for him to sign her divorce papers and free her from the nightmare that was her nine-years-and-ten-months-long marriage to Wyatt Coburn, real estate mogul and scum-sucking bastard of the known universe. I liked to say that Wyatt wasn’t just a snake, he was the dirt snakes shit in. But that’s just me being a potty-mouth. My name is Berry McKenna and I’m a Family Law attorney, which is a polite way of saying I handle divorces, custody battles, paternity suits, surrogates-run-amuck, that sort of thing. Deanna was my client as well as my best friend. The coast was socked in by the usual June gloom marine layer as I zigzagged my way northeast from my place in Venice Beach to Deanna’s in the hills above Brentwood. Even though it was out of my way, I was willing to play driver because, well, I had the will to live. Deanna didn’t like to drive and had totaled three cars just to prove the point. I guess that makes her sound high maintenance, but she wasn’t. She just had a little problem with depth perception. A mile above Sunset Boulevard, I reached her overpriced hilltop property and parked my SUV behind the Mediterranean villa Deanna called home. Climbing out of the car, I caught a whiff of gas fumes. As I crossed the wide driveway, I could hear a car engine idling inside one of the four garage stalls. It was coming from the third stall over. I grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door swung up over my head with a loud bang. I had to back away from the punch of carbon monoxide. Deanna’s brand new, metallic blue BMW idled in the enclosed space. I gulped in some fresh air, then turned back and saw white towels jammed in an open crack in the rear driver’s side window. A green garden hose was stuffed through the towels. The hose snaked down around the back of the car. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. I raced over and grabbed the driver’s door handle. It was locked. Deanna’s face was pressed against the window. Her eyes were closed. Her face was bright red in contrast to the white Juicy Couture cropped jacket she wore. Her short, black hair was plastered to her forehead and her jaw was slack. Her left hand was pressed against the window as though she’d been trying to claw her way out. I could see she was still wearing her wristwatch, the diamond-studded Audemars Piguet her husband had given her for her last birthday. Her seat belt was securely fastened but it hadn’t saved her. She was dead.
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