Once Sofia was away from the worried mom and back in her Roadster, she called Brendan and told him that she’d just seen Melissa Fairbroad kissing her massage therapist, Moonbow, in the middle of the street in broad daylight. That seemed like important news.
“You’re sure it was her?” Brendan sounded skeptical.
Sofia didn’t blame him. If she hadn’t seen them together with her own eyes, she would have been skeptical, too. “Yeah. Right out in the middle of Brentwood like she didn’t have a care in the world.”
“I’ll let Stark know,” said Brendan.
“Why?” Sofia was still worried that their client might not like the idea of her own PIs spying on her.
“Because he’s the best guy to tell her to start using some common sense. If she keeps up like this, it won’t matter how good her legal team is,” said Brendan.
Sofia heard him move the phone away from his ear long enough to shout through to Aidan, “Hey, Aidan, we’re gonna need a background check on a massage therapist by the name of Moonbow working out of a place in Brentwood called the Brentwood Organic Spa.”
Brendan came back on the line. “You get any name for him other than Moonbow?”
“Nope,” said Sofia.
“She isn’t doing herself any favors.” Brendan seemed to be thinking aloud. “Locking lips with some dude in public means she’s either innocent or dumb, or both.”
“If she was involved with someone else, maybe he went after Nigel so he could be with her,” said Sofia.
“Now you’re thinking,” said Brendan. “That’s exactly the kind of muddy-the-waters thinking Stark is going to need if he’s going to get his client off the hook.”
Brendan had a point. They hadn’t been hired to solve the murder so much as to offer enough doubt so Stark could do his job with a jury—assuming the cops went after Melissa after all.
“Do you want me to come back to the office now?” Sofia asked.
“No,” said Brendan. “Aidan told me that they’re shooting that TV show of Nigel’s up in Topanga. Why don’t you head up there first? It’s on your way. Just ask around. When did anyone last see Nigel? How did he seem? Had he fallen out with anyone? Was he sleeping with any of the crew or with someone back at the office? Y’know, the usual kind of stuff.”
“You mean gossip?” said Sofia.
“Precisely,” said Brendan.
22
A narrow road with switchbacks and steep drops, the road up into Topanga Canyon demanded all of Sofia’s attention. The set of Swamptrash Survival was actually an old ranch up in Topanga Oaks. Sofia stopped off at the Topanga Creek General Store to pick up dinner, a bottle of water, and lunchmeat for Fred. She asked the cashier for directions to the ranch, paid for her groceries, and headed back out to the parking lot.
Out front, an elderly lady was holding up a sign protesting the Kuwait War. Her placard said something rude about President Bush. The first one. Sofia wondered if the frayed cardboard sign was some kind of environmental homage to recycling. Or a deliberate attempt to highlight the fact that invading foreign countries had become a recurring theme of American foreign policy. Or if the elderly lady had smoked a little too much of Topanga’s finest herb and really thought it was still 1991. After all, unlike the rest of the city, Topanga didn’t seem to change that much. It still looked pretty much the same as when Sofia had seen it when she, her mom, and sister had first moved out to California almost twelve years ago. That was much of its charm.
Sofia turned off Topanga Canyon Boulevard and headed up a steep hill. At the top of the hill, she took a left, following the cashier’s directions. The road narrowed and ended at a gate. Sofia got out. She worried she’d taken the wrong turn until she saw a production company sign tacked to one of the gate posts. She opened the gate, got back into the Roadster, and drove down a bumpy, rutted track with oak trees on either side.
Six hundred yards farther, the track began to slope down. A hundred yards after that, the oak trees thinned to reveal a wide meadow filled with vehicles, including a half dozen or so Winnebago trailers. That was a film set.
She parked the Tesla with the rest of the crew cars and headed for the trailers. If she was going to get anywhere here, she knew from personal experience the people she had to speak to first, and get on her side or at least not piss off, were the production’s Teamsters.
They weren’t hard to spot. She spotted a likely candidate standing by the main production trailer, smoking a cigarette. He had a biker’s beard and a huge barrel chest and looked like a Teamster. It helped that he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters IBT Local 399, which was the local Teamster’s union that covered members working in the motion picture and television industry in the greater Los Angeles area.
“Hey,” said Sofia, always ready with a witty opener.
The teamster took a long drag on his smoke. “What’s up?”
“Not too much. I’m trying to find out what happened to Nigel Fairbroad. Maybe you can answer some questions?”
“You a reporter?”
“Private investigator, though I used to be in the business. You know Jimmy Artane?”
Jimmy Artane had been the Teamster captain on Half Pint Detective until he’d had a massive heart attack on set one day and had taken early retirement. A huge bear of a man, he’d come from a family of Teamsters that went back several generations. Despite the Teamsters’ sometimes militant reputation, he’d been well respected by everyone. He looked after his union members but would bend the rules where he had to in order to help the production company. If you were fair with Jimmy, he was fair with you. If you crossed him, then you’d better look out.
“Sure,” said the teamster. “How’s he doing?”
The question pulled Sofia up short. It had been a couple of years since she last spoke to him. She made a mental note to go see him and his family as soon as this case was finished.
“I haven’t talked to him in a while,” she said. “Last I heard though he was making steady progress. Think he had a couple of stents put in.”
The Teamster pushed his sunglasses back up onto his forehead. “This stays between us?”
“Absolutely.” Sofia was suddenly optimistic. People tended not to ask for confidentiality unless they actually had something significant to tell you.
“Now looky here. What do we have here? I’m guessing fresh meat. Finger lickin’ good, too.”
The southern drawl came from behind her. Sofia turned to see Tucker Trimble standing there, staring unashamedly at her ass. He was barefoot and bare-chested. The only clothes he had on were a pair of army green camouflage cargo pants and a battered John Deere baseball cap. Greasy brown hair ran down to his shoulders, and he was sporting thick, dark stubble. A long hunting knife dangled from a strap around his waist. He looked just like he did on the show, although the TV didn’t capture his smell.
Tucker put his hand out to Sofia. “Tucker Trimble, but you can call me TT. That stands for Tucker Trimble. TT, see? Not titties, though I do like me some nice titties.” Tucker moved his laser-like gaze from Sofia’s face to her chest. His small, pink tongue darted across his lips for emphasis. Clearly, Tucker was either still in character or not the fizziest drink in the refrigerator.
He sidled up next to her and dropped his hand right onto her breast and started kneading it like it was bread dough. The Teamster leaned forward as if he was about to do something, but Sofia had always found the best way to deal with an unreconstructed sexist, or any man who regarded women as pieces of meat, was for a woman to establish firm boundaries on her own. She brought her right knee up as hard as she could into Tucker’s groin.
Tucker let out a decidedly unmanly shriek of pain and doubled over. Sofia took a step back as Tucker fell to his knees. She resisted the urge to follow up with a swift rabbit punch to the back of his head. She’d made her point.
“Touch me again, and I’ll take that hunting knife from you and make sure you’re singing falsetto in the church choir,” she
told him.
Tucker moaned. He raised one hand, palm out, in a gesture of surrender.
Sofia glanced over at the Teamster. “Please tell me he’s an actor in character.”
A lot of the cast of reality TV shows were people who deliberately hammed it up for the cameras, often with the producer’s encouragement. Regular people behaving normally didn’t usually make for great Nielsen ratings.
The Teamster shook his head. “Nope. Tucker here is the real deal. Straight outta Kentucky.”
Tucker rocked back and forth on his knees. He swept the hair from in front of his face and managed a grimace she thought was probably supposed to be a smile. “Oooh, I like ’em feisty. Yes, sir.”
Sofia saw that Tucker was not a man who recognized boundaries easily. “I’m not joking about cutting them off.”
“Okay, okay,” said Tucker. “I’ll be a good boy.”
“Promise?” Sofia said.
“Redneck’s honor,” he replied, spitting on the palm of his hand and reaching out to shake.
Sofia backed up. “It’s okay. I’ll take your word for it.”
A production coordinator sporting a headset plugged into a walkie talkie wandered over toward them. “We need you on set if we’re going to get the gator wrestling scene in before lunch.”
The production coordinator stopped as she noticed that the show’s star was on his knees in the dirt.
“You okay, Tucker?” she asked, giving Sofia a wary look.
Slowly, Tucker got back up. He rubbed his groin. “The show must go on, right?”
He half smiled at Sofia. “Think I might be safer wrasslin’ a gator.”
Sofia returned his smile. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look.”
She resisted the urge to go and immediately wash the breast he had touched, and instead stood impassively watching him.
The production coordinator took Tucker by the elbow and gently guided him off toward an area where two small alligators were sitting in a large metal pen, presumably ready for their close up.
Sofia wasn’t sure who to feel sorrier for. On one side was an animal with a brain the size of a shriveled walnut completely driven by primal urges that could be traced back to the earliest prehistoric swamp, and on the other the two alligators. In the end, she decided her sympathies lay with the gators. After all, no one had bothered to ask them if they wanted to become reality television stars. They probably didn’t even have an agent.
Now that Tucker was gone, the Teamster was positively beaming at Sofia. “About time someone put Tucker in his place.”
“Not popular on set?” Sofia asked.
“He was fine when he started. But as soon as the show started to do well, his true character started to show.”
“Which is?” said Sofia.
The Teamster rubbed at his beard. “Between us?”
“Strictly,” Sofia said.
“He’s a complete asshole,” the Teamster said. “I’ve worked with some real prima donnas in my time, but this guy is off the charts. Rude, demanding, racist, sexist, terrible personal hygiene. You name an unappealing quality in a human being, and he possesses it.”
“The swamp trash thing isn’t an act then?” Sofia said.
“No, he’s the real deal. Done prison time, too. The PR people for the show have managed to keep that under wraps.”
“Prison? Back in Kentucky?”
“I don’t know all the details, but I think so,” said the Teamster.
Sofia made a mental note to have Aidan look into it, if he hadn’t already. If there was dirt to be found on someone, Aidan would find it. As annoying as he was, and he could be really, really annoying, when it came to investigation, he was good at what he did.
“Did he and Nigel have any run-ins?” said Sofia as one of the alligators reared up and lunged against the bars of its cage while Tucker poked a stick at it from outside.
The teamster looked around, making sure no one else from the crew was close enough to overhear. “A few, yeah. Every time the ratings jumped, Tucker wanted something else. A new trailer. A personal assistant. A bigger fee.”
“Did Nigel give him what he asked for?” Sofia asked.
“Pretty much,” said the Teamster. “He drew the line at the personal assistant when Tucker held an open casting for that position at his hotel.”
Sofia hated to imagine what a Tucker Trimble open casting call involved. “Did Tucker ever threaten Nigel?”
“Lady, Tucker threatens everyone. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the time he can be as nice as pie, but if he’s not getting his way ... Well, you saw what he’s like.”
Over by the gator pen, Tucker was dancing around and generally acting like a clown for the crew. Sofia was sorely tempted to open the pen, push him in and let them fight it out. Pretty much the only thing stopping her was a worry that the alligators might come down with a bad case of food poisoning if they chowed down on Tucker.
“Did he ever threaten Nigel?” Sofia pressed.
“Are you asking me that or are you asking if I think he killed him?” the Teamster said.
“Both, I guess,” said Sofia.
“I didn’t ever hear him threaten Nigel directly. But did he kill him? I don’t know anything that suggests he did. Is he capable of it? I’d say he is. But then a lot of people are capable of a lot of things. Doesn’t mean they do them.”
Back over at the gator pen, Tucker pulled his knife from its sheath and spun it around in his hand. He looked over in Sofia’s direction and winked.
23
Brendan threw an 8 x 10 black-and-white photograph down onto his desk. Sofia reached over and picked it up. In her previous career, an 8 x 10 inch photograph usually signified an actor’s headshot and had a resume stapled to the back. What she found herself looking at now was a close-up of a man’s hand. Or, more precisely, what was left of a man’s hand. Three of the fingers were missing, leaving ragged, bloody stumps where his middle, index and pinkie fingers would normally have been. Sofia had already worked out that it had to have been the left hand because part of his wedding ring was still intact, bound round a fragment of bone like a piece of macabre Gothic jewelry.
Sofia handed the photograph off to Aidan, feeling sorry for Nigel again.
Aidan took a look. “Poor guy. Must have put his hand up just before he was shot.”
“Yeah, gun was probably less than two feet from him when it was fired. As clear a defensive wound as you’re likely to see. He didn’t stand a chance.” Brendan cleared his throat. “By the way, we haven’t officially seen this. I had to call in a few favors downtown to get access to this stuff.”
Aidan handed the photograph back to his father, and Brendan placed it back in a folder with the other information he’d been given from Nigel’s autopsy.
“Whoever did this,” Brendan said, “was either a professional, or at least had the stomach of one. Or, and this is equally likely, it was someone really ticked off at Nigel. It takes a lot to pull the trigger on an unarmed man who’s trying to shield his face with his hand.”
“Maybe they thought he was trying to grab the gun,” Sofia said.
“That’s good,” said Brendan. “I like that. I don’t believe it, but it’s a possibility. If they do tie the weapon to Melissa, then Stark will have to try to construct some kind of self-defense case. Them fighting over the gun and it going off … Well, it’s LA, you might find a jury who’d buy that. Hell, if they could acquit OJ in this town, then anything’s possible.”
Sofia knew that the OJ Simpson case was a sore point for Brendan, as it was for most former or current LAPD officers. If they’d been serving at the time, they were all a hundred percent convinced of his guilt. “So Melissa is still the prime suspect?”
“So far,” said Brendan. “If I was a betting man, I’d say they’re waiting to get the green light from the DA before they arrest her, and the fun really begins. I’m not sure they’re convinced she pulled the trigger, but they’re fairly certain she�
�s involved somehow.”
Sofia’s mind immediately flashed on Moonbow getting into Melissa’s Benz outside the spa and their passionate greeting.
“How about you give us a full report of your day, Sofia?” Brendan asked.
“OK. But it may not all be good news for Melissa’s defense.” Sofia took out her notes. She ran through her day, including what the housekeeper had told her about Melissa and Nigel’s arguments about money. She told them about her visit to the spa and her up close and personal encounter with Moonbow. She skated over the chakra massage. She’d tell Brendan later, but Aidan would only use it as a way of getting a week’s worth of double entendres and jokes about how handy a blocked chakra would have been back in the parking lot of the rehab place. Then went on to the kiss she’d witnessed between Melissa and Moonbow.
Aidan looked annoyed. “Hard to believe the guy’s real name is Moonbow.”
Sofia shrugged. “It’s California. I knew a kid in school whose name was Celestial Spring Jakowski.”
“And you complained about your mother and I giving you a good Irish name,” Brendan said to Aidan.
Aidan put his hands up. “I’ll never complain about that again.”
It was rare to hear Brendan mention his late wife. She had died of cancer when Aidan was a teenager, and Sofia had often wondered if Aidan’s search for the unattainable perfect woman was his attempt at avoiding a real relationship and therefore not getting hurt again. Not that she’d ever say that to him. Or at least not until he stopped leaving adult diapers on her desk. It was difficult to have an adult conversation with a grown man who thought incontinence was hilarious.
Brendan brought them back on task. “What else, Sofia?”
She told them about her visit to the set of Swamptrash Survival up in Topanga and brought them up to speed with her Tucker Trimble encounter. “Trimble definitely had his runs in with Nigel from what the Teamster captain on the show told me, and he has a record back in Kentucky.”
“Aidan,” said Brendan.
“Already on it,” said Aidan.
A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1) Page 9