A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1)
Page 1
“A” is for Actress
A Malibu Mystery
Rebecca Cantrell
Sean Black
MMP
Copyright Information
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real person, alive or dead, is completely coincidental.
“A” is for Actress
Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Cantrell and Sean Black
Cover Design by Kit Foster www.kitfosterdesign.com
All rights reserved.
Created with Vellum
For Caitlin and Max
Contents
About The Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
“B” is for Bad Girls
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
More Malibu Mystery Books
Also by Rebecca Cantrell
Also by Sean Black
Malibu Mystery News
About The Book
After a decade spent in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight as the star of kids’ TV show Half Pint Detective, Sofia Salgado has had enough. Desperate to build a life outside showbiz, she quits acting to do something that everyone around her– including her family – thinks is plain nuts. Get a real job.
They think she’s even crazier when she announces that she’s going to become a real detective, instead of playing one on TV. She’s convinced the technical consultant from her TV show, Brendan Maloney, to take her on in his detective agency, but can accident-prone Sofia hack it?
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1
Sofia Salgado’s third grade teacher back in Indiana had been right. Every day really was a school day. There were always new things to learn. In fact, life was pretty much one big educational experience. Today’s lessons for Sofia seemed to be:
No matter how much you loved the peach ice tea at the Marmalade Cafe, it was not a good idea to take the waiter’s offer of a third refill if you planned on spending the entire afternoon sitting in your car on a stakeout.
If there was even the remotest possibility that you might lose control of your bladder while sitting in your car, any meal involving asparagus was not a good lunch choice.
Like so much in life, you never really appreciate toilets until you need one.
Of course Miss Kanouse had also dropped some pretty heavy hints to Sofia’s mom before they left Indiana for Los Angeles, saying things would never work out for the girls’ acting careers in California and they should just stay in Indiana and learn typing, so she wasn’t entirely infallible. But when it came to viewing life as one big learning experience, she’d been dead on. None of which solved Sofia’s immediate problem. She desperately needed to go pee without ruining what, at least up until now, had been her first perfectly executed covert surveillance operation.
Without permission, she couldn’t abandon her post, a quiet side street with a clear view of the main entrance to the somewhat unfortunately named Big Rock Rehab Clinic. Or to give the place its full title: The Big Rock Rehabilitation and Spiritual Renewal Clinic.
She had already spent the best part of the last hour scouting the immediate area for a bush she could duck behind. But the area was sadly devoid of bushes. In fact, the only large cover was provided by a stand of three large saguaro cacti. Looking at their two-inch-long spines made her shiver. The idea of losing her balance and falling naked-ass backward into a six-foot-tall cactus was even more off putting than the prospect of trying to explain why the interior reeked of asparagus-scented urine to the guys who valeted her car in Santa Monica.
That left her the third option, which was potentially more embarrassing than needles in the butt or pee on the upholstery: she’d have to confess her predicament to the other half of her surveillance team. She hated to do it, but it was an emergency.
She scooted down a little farther, reached over, and grabbed the phone lying on the passenger seat. She made the call, but waited a second before speaking. “Aidan?”
There was a long silence before he finally answered. “How many times? You don’t use real names on a stakeout. I’m Nighthawk, and you’re Little Sparrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a Jason Bourne movie.”
They were sitting outside the rehab clinic on behalf of a movie studio that wanted to make sure the star of their latest action movie franchise completed his twenty-eight days without sneaking out to score some Bolivian marching powder, thus driving the insurance premium on the next movie in the series sky high. This was not a life or death situation. Code names weren’t required.
“There’s still a procedure,” he said.
She was starting to wonder if there really was a procedure, or if he’d just invented one to drive her crazy. She squirmed in her seat, trying to find a position that might relieve the pressure on her bladder. “Okay, Nighthawk, here’s the deal. I really need to take a comfort break. Can you cover my position for ten minutes?”
Moving had been a bad idea. She needed to go even worse than she had a moment ago. She tensed, trying to hold on, and already planning her next move. There was a deserted lot about four hundred yards down the hill on Big Rock Drive. She was pretty sure the lot wasn’t overlooked. She could pull in, dive out, use her car to shield her from any passing traffic, go, and be back at her post in no time.
“Why?” Aidan said.
“What do you mean ‘why?’”
“I mean, why do you need a break? We’ve only been here a couple hours.”
He must be deliberately playing dumb to drive her crazy. He thought that just because he’d done a few years in the LAPD and his dad ran the detective agency that he was her boss. Fine, she’d tell him the truth.
“I had too much iced tea at Marmalade, and now I have to pee. Okay? Happy?”
She th
rew the phone back down on the passenger seat and hit the button to start the engine. Sweet relief was only a short drive away.
“Request denied,” said Aidan.
“What do you mean ‘request denied?’”
“Hold your position.”
“If I wait any longer, my position is going to be under water.” She took a deep breath, doing her best to stay calm. The more irritated she sounded, the more he’d screw with her. It was pretty much how their relationship had been from the first day they’d met all those years ago on the set of Half Pint Detective when Aidan’s dad, the show’s technical advisor, had brought his then twelve-year-old son onto the set in Burbank to meet Sofia, the eleven-year-old movie star.
He made a weird snorting sound into the phone that she was pretty sure was a laugh.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” She sounded far from calm. “I have to pee. In fact, scratch that, I don’t have to. I’m going to. Any minute now. And I don’t want to do it sitting in my car.”
“Go find a bush.” Aidan was, as usual, completely unsympathetic to her plight.
“There aren’t any bushes.” He knew that. He’d driven by the artistic landscape of rocks and cactus to get to his position in the back of the clinic. There probably were bushes back there. He’d probably gone pee twice already.
“Look,” said Aidan, “if I cover the front for you, that means no one will be covering the back. You’re going to have to wait.”
“I’m not kidding. I can’t wait. Believe me, if waiting was a possibility, I wouldn’t have asked.” Now each passing second was fresh agony. She wondered if the CIA had ever contemplated using denial of peeing rights as part of their enhanced interrogation tactics. She figured they had, but it had probably fallen into the ‘cruel and unusual’ category and been ruled unconstitutional.
“Sorry, but we have to have eyes on at all times. We can’t lose a key data point like five minutes of visual contact on the rear entry.”
“I know just what I’d like to do with your key data point,” she told him. “It involves rear entry where no visual contact can be made, and not in a way that you’d want to retrieve the data.”
“We need that data.” He was laughing so hard she could barely understand him.
“Improvise.” She moved the car into drive.
“Hold up!” said Aidan. “Give it ten more minutes. Surely you can hold it for that long?”
“Ten minutes? Then I can go pee?”
“Promise.”
She really wasn’t sure she could make it for another minute, never mind another ten. And she didn’t exactly trust him to hold to his word. But she didn’t want to show weakness, either. When his dad had agreed to take her on as a trainee investigator, Aidan had been less than happy. If she made him too mad, he might run back to his father and tell him she couldn’t do something as simple as a routine surveillance operation.
“Okay, ten minutes. But not a second more,” she said.
If she sat perfectly still and focused all her energy on the job, she could do it. Sheer willpower would carry her through. She had done things way harder than not pee her pants. Right now she couldn’t think what those things were exactly, but she was sure she had. She started doing a breathing exercise she’d learned from an acting coach. It was supposed to help you focus.
“Little Sparrow?”
This better be good. As in their target had better be vaulting the wall and jumping into a drug dealer’s car with a bunch of hookers.
“Yes,” she said, teeth gritted.
“Do you know what I’m looking forward to most when we finish here?” Aidan asked. “A nice, long shower. All that water cascading down from the showerhead. Just torrents of water, gushing down like a big waterfall.”
She leaned forward carefully to get the phone. She didn’t dare lean too far, though, and the phone had slid to the far side of the seat.
“Speaking of waterfalls,” he continued, “you should check out the pool they have back here. Think it has a waterfall feature. Here, if I hold my phone up you might be able to hear it running…”
She reached the phone and ended the call. She slammed the car back into drive, but it was too late to actually go anywhere. She couldn’t hold on any longer. Instead, she put the car back in park and turned it off.
She looked around. Apart from a couple of parked cars and a van that had been here when they’d arrived, the parking lot was empty. There wasn’t a person in sight, and the only house that had a direct view of her was the rehab facility itself, and that was mostly obscured by a long wall. She could shield herself a little with the car door, and nobody would see her. She just had to act fast and hope for the best.
She pushed the car door open, got out, pulled down her jeans and underwear, and squatted next to the side of the Tesla. As soon as the fresh air hit her, she peed. She reached her hand up against the car to steady herself.
Within seconds, a raging torrent ran to the edge of the sidewalk and into the gutter. It ran down the street in a stream. She smelled the asparagus, but she didn’t care. The relief was almost orgasmic.
A scruffy-looking young guy sporting a goatee, an over-sized Lakers shirt, and a backward-turned baseball cap appeared from nowhere. He was pointing a handheld video camera right at her. The light was blinking red.
So much for hoping for the best.
2
“Sofia Salgado,” said the videographer triumphantly. “Man, I knew it was you. Recognized the car. Not that many red Tesla Roadsters around. Not even in the ’Bu.”
Sofia desperately tried to cut off the torrent. It was no use. She couldn’t stop the flood. The dam had well and truly burst, and no amount of willpower or clenching would halt the flow. She was just going to have to tough this out.
The videographer’s face contorted. “Oh, man, did you have asparagus for lunch? Jeez, dude, that reeks.”
Great, that was on film, too. As if the whole situation wasn’t embarrassing enough.
Her phone in the car, she couldn’t even summon help. All she could do was finish what she doing, pull her pants back up, and deal with the inevitable fallout. She dropped her head and let her hair fall across her face. It wasn’t nearly enough, but she didn’t have any better ideas right this second.
Still holding the camera so he didn’t miss a second of her humiliation, the videographer half turned toward the van parked a hundred yards away. Another man had climbed out of the back with a camera sporting a huge zoom lens. He was busy taking pictures as he advanced on them. Video and still photos. It just kept getting worse.
“Hey, Raul,” the videographer shouted to his paparazzi companion, who was still busy snapping pictures. “That’s five bucks you owe me. Told you it was her.”
Raul nodded without missing a shot.
“You checking in here or what?” The videographer tapped a finger to the side of his head. “Smart move. Rehab’s a no-brainer if you want to relaunch an acting career. This town loves a good comeback.”
Her panties were caught in bunch at the top of her jeans. She yanked them free, pushing her left hand out to block the video camera lens as she straightened up. Finally, she yanked her jeans up and zipped them closed.
“I’m not here for rehab! I’m here on a…” She couldn’t go public with her new job. It would attract way too much attention. Attention that might get her fired. Brendan had already taken a risk by hiring her. She couldn’t do that to him.
Raul the photographer joined the cameraman. They kept taking pictures and shooting video, but at least she had her pants on.
“No, I’m not going into rehab.” She tried to sound calm and casual, the exact opposite of how she felt. “I was visiting a friend, but they were out. I had too much ice tea, and I couldn’t find a bathroom.”
Judging by their expressions, both men didn’t believe a word she was saying. She didn’t blame them. Being caught, quite literally with your pants around your ankles on a public street in the middle of
the day, was hard to talk your way out of.
The photographer nodded back in the direction of his van. “Feel your pain. I installed a chemical potty in the back of my van. If you’d asked me, I would have let you use it.”
“Thanks.” Sofia was cursing her stupidity. She hadn’t even thought that someone else might have been conducting surveillance outside the rehab center. But she knew that Malibu’s many rehabs were a magnet for the paparazzi. There was almost always some kind of a celebrity (it was a pretty elastic term these days) in any of the bigger rehabs. Of course, there had been someone else there.
“Do you think you could do me a favor and give me that footage?” she asked in her nicest voice.
Both men laughed.
Goatee man kept the camera running. “Do you have any idea what this is worth? It’ll pay for my kid’s braces. He has teeth like a beaver.”
At least her suffering would help out a buck-toothed kid somewhere, even if it would give her mom a heart attack.