A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1)

by Rebecca Cantrell

  They started for the office. The car rental lady threw a glance back over her shoulder at the brown monstrosity. “It may grow on you.”

  Yeah, like hemorrhoids.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sofia was back out on PCH in the brown Ford Kia. In one way it was a similar experience to driving her Tesla Roadster. Both cars drew looks. The difference was that the looks the Tesla drew were admiring. People’s reactions to the brown Kia were more along the lines of revulsion. Other drivers would change lanes and speed past. Probably wanted to make sure that none of the Kia’s ugliness rubbed off on their vehicles. She didn’t blame them.

  After it had happened a couple times, she started to regard the car a little more sympathetically. It was an ugly duckling that, barring a complete respray, had no chance of becoming a beautiful swan. It was doomed. And it wasn’t the poor little car’s fault someone had slapped this godawful color on it.

  There was at least one upside to having traded her Roadster for the brown Kia. No one in their right mind would want to steal or carjack her for it, which might come in handy given that she was headed for someplace that may have only been thirty-three miles from Malibu, but that might as well have been a different world.

  39

  Melissa Fairbroad was being held at Lynwood Jail, the main detention center for women in Los Angeles. It housed around two thousand women waiting for release or arraignment, and a few women who had been ordered to serve a jail sentence there. Lynwood was in South Central Los Angeles, a part of the city immortalized in rap songs and movies. Once a predominantly African-American community, its residents were now mostly Latino. With gang activity and violent crime, it was not a place that someone who lived in Malibu would visit without a good reason.

  Stark had told Sofia to meet him at the jail’s public parking facility on Alameda Street. She parked near an elevator and called him without getting out of her car.

  “I’ll be there in five,” he told her.

  She waited in the ugly brown Kia until Stark pulled into a space a few slots down in his Benz. She got out and walked across to meet him. They shook hands.

  “Glad you could make it,” Stark said.

  “I’m still not sure exactly why you wanted me here,” said Sofia.

  “Let’s walk while we talk. I have a busy day. Not enough hours.” Stark motioned for her to follow him to the elevator. Sofia fell into step.

  “Melissa likes you. I need her to start talking to me about Bobby Rogers,” said Stark.

  Sofia didn’t know if she was more surprised that Melissa Fairbroad had said that she liked her or that she was holding back information from her lawyer that might help her avoid a sentence of life in prison without parole. Probably the former. “She hasn’t said anything about him?”

  Stark took out a pocket square and used it to cover his hand as he pressed the button to call the elevator. “This place isn’t the cleanest.”

  At least she wouldn’t get any jail cooties on the Roadster. The brown Kia was seeming more practical every second.

  “Melissa is in love with the man,” he said. “That’s the only reason I can think of why she won’t give him up. Or at least give me something to work with.”

  That also took Sofia aback. She hadn’t put Melissa down as a gooey-hearted, head-over-heels, stand-by-your-man type of gal. Obviously, Moonbow had more than magic hands. Or maybe magic hands were enough.

  “Really?” Sofia asked.

  Stark shrugged as the elevator doors opened. “Go figure.”

  Sofia followed him into the elevator and the doors closed. “Does she know that Rogers is a convicted fraudster?”

  “Yup. I ran though his record with her. Soup to the nuts. Didn’t seem to change her mind. Of course that was yesterday. A night here can bring someone to their senses pretty rapidly, and you being here might help, too. They allow one visitor a day and they only get a half hour. Attorney visits are unrestricted, so if anyone asks, you’re my legal assistant.”

  “Is that legal?” Sofia asked.

  “Jesus, you are new to this, aren’t you? My office already filled in the paperwork for you, so we’re good to go. Just don’t go telling them that you’re not a legal assistant. This joint doesn’t exactly attract the best and the brightest in terms of personnel, know what I mean?”

  They walked down a split pea soup-green corridor to a reception area. The officer on duty sat behind a Plexiglas barrier. Stark got out his ID. Sofia followed suit.

  “Attorney visit. John Stark and Sofia Salgado to see Melissa Fairbroad. Please and thank you.”

  The officer behind the screen sighed, put down the doughnut he’d been nibbling, and lifted the phone sitting next to him. “Take a seat.”

  They sat on a row of plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Always the sign of a classy joint. For a man wearing a three-piece Hugo Boss suit and five hundred dollar Salvatore Ferragamo wingtips, Stark seemed remarkably relaxed in their new surroundings. He seemed perfectly at ease sitting among the great unwashed who were waiting to see a loved one. He leaned over to Sofia. “Brendan told me about your freeway scare. We might want to mention that to Melissa. If this place hasn’t scared her to her senses, maybe that will.”

  “It might scare her enough that she wants to stay,” said Sofia.

  Stark’s name was called. He got to his feet, and Sofia followed him to a blue metal door that had been opened by a guard.

  “Believe me,” said Stark. “No one’s ever been that scared. Plus, if they’re ballsy enough to try to run you off the road, then they’re plenty ballsy to pay someone to make a hit inside jail. Knowing some of the people who’ve ended up here, they’d probably get change from two hundred bucks.”

  40

  They were shown into a small, private side room that smelled of stale sweat and three-day-old cabbage. Melissa was already there, behind a table. She brightened as Stark and Sofia walked in, but she looked like a different woman from the take-no-shit, glamorous Brentwood housewife Sofia had seen at their last meeting.

  Appearance-wise she hadn’t changed all that much. Her hair didn’t have the same sheen, but that could have been down to the lighting. Her make-up didn’t seem as fresh. Again, that could have been the lack of natural light and a good night’s sleep. What Sofia really noticed were her eyes. The feisty spark was gone, replaced by something altogether sadder, an almost melancholy acceptance of what had happened.

  Melissa pushed back her chair and stood up. She walked round to them. Stark gave her a hug. “How you holding up?”

  “Okay, I guess. It’s … different.” She tried to force a smile, but it didn’t stick.

  Sofia shook her hand. “Mrs. Fairbroad, I’m Sofia Salgado from—”

  Melissa stood up, leaning over the table and clutching Sofia’s hand with both of hers. “I remember. It’s good to see you. Thank you for making the time to come see me. I don’t think I was very polite to you the last time we met. I’m sorry.”

  Sofia was floored by her reaction. Where had the uber bitch who hated her gone? The one who told her she didn’t have any tits, and could barely be bothered to answer Sofia’s questions?

  Pleasantries exchanged, everyone sat down. Stark put his Italian leather bag on the table and took out some papers. He made a show of shuffling through them. “I’ve put money into your account here. Two hundred dollars. That should be plenty.”

  “Thank you.” Melissa managed to say the words while looking simultaneously horrified. “That seems rather a lot if I’m only going to be in here for a short time.”

  Stark’s jaw tightened. Sofia could tell he had bad news.

  “Bail hearing should be later today, but you should know I’m not optimistic. It might be a good idea if you tempered your expectations, Melissa.” He flipped over some of his papers.

  “But I’ve never had anything more than a parking ticket,” Melissa protested. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

  Stark looked up from his papers. “I’m going to do my bes
t. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Believe me, it’s way worse if you think you’ll be granted bail and then you’re not. I’ve seen clients go into a complete tail spin when that happens. I want to avoid that if I can.”

  “If they’re worried about me being a flight risk, I could surrender my passport. Agree to stay at the house and not leave until this is sorted out. Put on an ankle bracelet like Martha Stewart did.” Melissa reached back over the table to grasp Stark’s hand. “You can’t imagine what it’s like in here. The way some of the women guards look at me. It’s like I’m fresh meat.”

  She pretty much was fresh meat. Prime Brentwood grass-fed, twenty-one-day-aged filet mignon. Sofia actually felt a little sorry for her.

  “We can certainly offer passport surrender to mitigate the flight risk,” said Stark. “But I can’t guarantee that will be enough.”

  “Surely everyone gets granted some kind of bail. It’s not like I’m a serial killer,” pleaded Melissa.

  Stark let go of her hand. “Even if I can persuade them to grant you bail, that may not be the problem.”

  Sofia already knew where this was going. Stark was trying to break reality to his client gently, but she wasn’t sure that was any kinder. It might have been better to treat bad news like this like taking off a Band-Aid. Sometimes it was better to slowly peel it back and prolong the agony. But sometimes it was easier all round to rip it off and get it over with.

  “I don’t follow you,” Melissa said. “They set bail, we lodge the bond, and I can get out of here while Sofia and her colleagues, and you, find out who really killed Nigel.”

  Her voice was starting to break. She seemed to Sofia to be on the verge of a complete collapse. But she was also, for the first time, acting like an innocent woman, someone sure that more investigation would clear her.

  Stark cleared his throat. “It’s not quite that simple.”

  This was horrible. Sofia couldn’t take it anymore. She looked at Melissa Fairbroad. “We’ve been looking into Nigel’s financial affairs. He was broke. Worse than broke. He was in a lot of debt.”

  Melissa blinked. “What are you talking about? He had three hit shows the last few years. The house. The cars.”

  Stark held up a hand, cutting Sofia off. “It’s true, I’m afraid. The cars are on lease. He had a mortgage and two other loans against the house in Brentwood. The vacation house you had in Maui? He sold that last year.”

  “That’s why he blew up when I wanted to go over there and check on it,” Melissa said softly.

  “You had no idea?” said Sofia.

  Melissa shook her head. “I knew he was stressed. He would see my credit card bill and start screaming about it, so I was cutting back.”

  “From what we can gather, he did a pretty good job of hiding his difficulties from pretty much everyone,” Stark said.

  Biting down on her lower lip, Melissa began to cry. “Poor Nigel.”

  Her response seemed genuine to Sofia. She didn’t really care about Sofia’s opinion, and she didn’t have to prove anything to her attorney. He was going to defend her anyway. Assuming there was enough money to cover his fees, or for as long as what money Melissa had left lasted. From the information that Aidan had gathered, Melissa had a few hundred thousand dollars of her own from an inheritance, but with legal fees and what Maloney Investigations would charge, it would be eaten up pretty quickly. Even though the bond would be a percentage of the overall bail amount, it might still be out of reach.

  “I have to stay here?” Melissa sobbed. “Because I can’t afford to leave?”

  Sofia didn’t blame her for being upset. It did look grim. If it had been a Four Seasons hotel, or even a Ramada Inn, it was still jail. You were still being deprived of your liberty, which was no small matter, especially for someone who’d never experienced what that was like.

  Now that the grim reality of what was she facing was staring Melissa straight in the face, Sofia figured this might be the best time to see if Melissa would offer up whatever she knew about Moonbow.

  “We’ve gathered some information that may help your case,” Sofia said. “However, we need your full cooperation. The only way we can help you is if you tell us everything that you know.”

  Sofia reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of paper tissues. She plucked one out of the pack and handed it over the table to Melissa.

  Melissa dabbed at her eyes. Finally, she asked, “What kind of information?”

  “About Moonbow, Bobby Rogers. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you called him when you were together,” said Sofia.

  Next to Sofia, Stark was watching for his client’s reaction to the mention of her lover’s name.

  “I called him Bobby. And before you say anything else, I knew who he was.” Melissa cleared her throat. “I knew he’d been in prison. He told me everything.”

  Maybe not everything, thought Sofia.

  41

  The door opened and a corrections officer escorted Melissa Fairbroad past. Her shoulders were hunched and her gaze was directed at the floor. Stark squeezed her shoulder as she walked past. She looked up long enough for Sofia to shoot her a smile. It was returned, but only just.

  Not only was Melissa still in the same waist-high pile of poo that she’d been in before, she now knew that she’d been taken for a ride. As Sofia and Stark had guessed, Melissa knew a lot about Bobby Rogers, but she didn’t know it all.

  They waited until Melissa was out of sight before going back out into the corridor. Stark walked Sofia all the way back to her car.

  “Nice ride,” he said as she hit the clicker to open the Kia’s doors.

  “Boy, you really are an attorney, aren’t you? Always diplomatic,” Sofia said. “I know it’s horrible, but it was all the rental company had.”

  He took a step back and took in the brown paint job in all its glory. “I was going to use the word special, but horrible covers it, too.”

  “So what now?”

  Stark shrugged. “I was hoping you guys were going to tell me. The cops have no alibi for Melissa. They have her prints on the murder weapon. They have a life insurance policy taken out before he died. It won’t pay out now, but it looks like a clear motive. Even if they pull Bobby Rogers in as an accomplice, I can tell you right now he’ll throw Melissa to the wolves to save his own skin.”

  “It’s down to us then,” Sofia said.

  Stark patted her shoulder. “Yup.”

  If her job hadn’t been real before, it sure as hell was now. She’d wanted a job that counted. Well, now she had one. It wasn’t giving her the warm feeling she thought it would. On the contrary, she felt an ulcer starting to form somewhere down in her stomach. A little burning ball of what-the-hell-am-I-doing stress.

  42

  Stark had been right. Throwing Bobby Rogers into the mix without direct, irrefutable proof of the how and why he was involved in Nigel’s murder, or better yet a full confession that exonerated Melissa (which was never going to happen without holding a gun to the guy’s head) wouldn’t help Melissa. Bobby Rogers would throw her to the wolves without blinking. Even if he went down, he’d be damn sure to take Melissa with him.

  More likely he’d try to strike a deal that placed her in deeper trouble than she was now. A man like Bobby would happily perjure himself on the witness stand to save his own skin. All of that meant that if Maloney Investigations didn’t turn up something stronger than one half of a telephone conversation that was inadmissible as evidence, Melissa was likely doomed.

  Sofia sat across from Brendan and Aidan at a table near the back of the Marmalade Cafe in Cross Creek, Malibu. They had spent most of lunch going round in circles. Brendan flagged down the waiter for the check.

  “I want you and Sofia to talk to Tucker Trimble again,” he said to Aidan.

  “He wasn’t very forthcoming the last time we spoke,” Sofia said.

  “So try again,” said Brendan.

  She exchanged a look with Aidan. Brendan must have caugh
t it. “What?”

  “I think that if anyone’s involved, it’s Rogers,” Sofia said.

  “And you may be right,” said Brendan.

  “So why do you want us to go see Trimble?” Aidan asked.

  Brendan took the check from the waiter, and handed over his company credit card. “When you hit a dead end, there’s only one thing left to do.”

  “Talk to someone who probably isn’t involved?” said Aidan.

  Brendan glared at him. “Why do you always have to be such a smart . . .” He hesitated. “Guy.”

  “You were going to say smart ass,” Aidan said.

  Brendan held up his hand. “There you go again. Now, as I was saying, when you hit a dead end, the only thing to do is push on through. In this case, that means go shake some trees. Upset some people. Maybe Trimble isn’t involved, but he might still give us something, which is what we need, because right now we got nothing.”

  Aidan and Sofia stood in the parking lot outside the office. Sofia scanned the lot, still aware that someone had recently tried to run her off the road.

  “Let’s take your car,” she said to Aidan.

  “Don’t you have a rental?” he asked. She always drove.

  “Yes.” She didn’t want to say any more about the brown Kia than she had to. Aidan hadn’t seen it, and if he did it would open up another rich vein of teasing. Plus, brown, adult diapers, he’d make sure it would all hang together, and she’d had to endure enough incontinence gags for one lifetime.

  “So why can’t we take your car?” Aidan said.

  It was like he had a special radar that could pick up any time she felt the slightest bit uncomfortable. “Why can’t we take yours this time?”

  Aidan cocked his head and stared at her.

  “Where is it?” He scanned the parking lot like a vulture looking for a carcass.

  “Let’s just take yours.”