by Sean Black
Brendan shot Aidan a look that said if he didn’t get out of the car and follow him he might never walk anywhere again.
Trailing after Brendan, like a couple of school kids being escorted to the principal’s office, Aidan and Sofia went inside the UCLA Medical Center and walked toward the elevators. Brendan hit the call button. An elevator arrived. The doors opened. They got in, and stood facing the doors.
“How many times have I told both of you that one of the most important habits to develop in this job is not to draw conclusions until you have enough evidence? Two plus two does not necessarily equal four. Not even close.”
“So, you’re not sick?” said Aidan.
“No,” said Brendan. “I’m not sick.”
Sofia couldn’t stop herself grinning. This was great news. A smile flickered across Aidan’s face, but he smashed that right down. “So what are we doing here?” he asked.
“All will be revealed,” said Brendan, now clearly enjoying their confusion.
Aidan looked around the inside of the elevator, like they were going to be trapped. “Can’t you just tell us now?” he snapped.
What was his problem? Rather than admitting that he was relieved his father wasn’t ill, he just wanted to get back to the office as quickly as possible.
“No, we can’t,” said Brendan, firmly.
The elevator doors opened. They followed Brendan out and down the corridor to the reception desk for the kidney-transplant center where Sofia had spotted him yesterday.
Brendan said hello to the people on Reception. He seemed to be on first-name terms with all of them. He walked past the desk, and kept going to a door, knocked and pushed it open. He gestured them to follow him inside.
Gingerly, Sofia and Aidan stepped into the room behind him. It was bright, freshly painted, with larger windows than Sofia usually associated with a hospital room. There was a bed and a locker, a couple of chairs for visitors, and a TV mounted on the wall. Pretty standard stuff.
Lying on top of the bed in sweatpants and a T-shirt was a boy with bushy black hair and large brown eyes. He had a games controller in his hand and his attention was fixed on the TV screen, where he was busy massacring zombies on the streets of a post-apocalyptic landscape Sofia recognized as downtown Los Angeles.
“Sofia. Aidan. Say hello to Daniel.”
Daniel lifted one hand off the controller long enough to give them a wave. Sofia wasn’t sure if it was greeting or dismissal. He lifted his head just long enough to say, “Sorry, never got to this level before,” and switched his attention back to the screen where the zombie hordes were coming at him from every angle.
“Daniel here needs a kidney transplant, and Maloney Investigations are going to help him find a donor,” said Brendan, slotting in the last piece of the puzzle.
Well, perhaps not the last piece. Just as Brendan had finished introducing Daniel to Sofia and Aidan, an older, attractive blonde woman with high cheekbones walked in, beamed at Brendan and said, “I thought it was you.” Sofia had seen Brendan with her the previous day.
The woman walked straight over to him, looped an arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze. Then she stood on tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick. Finally, she seemed to remember there were other people in the room. She dropped her hand from Brendan’s side and turned toward Sofia and Aidan. “This must be your son. My goodness, Aidan, you’re as handsome as your father.” She glanced back at Brendan with an expression that, had it been on a teenager’s face, would have been described as moony. “Okay, almost as handsome.”
From Aidan’s face, Sofia figured finding out his father was waiting for a kidney transplant might have been less shocking than what they’d just witnessed.
CHAPTER 11
“Daniel, will you put down that game doodad and say hello to our guests!”
“But, Mom! It’s a new level,” Daniel protested. “And it’s a controller, not a doodad. I mean, duh!”
Aidan had inched nearer to Daniel, his eyes glued to the zombie apocalypse on the screen. “Watch your back there, buddy,” he warned the boy, as a cop-zombie ran out from behind a doorway, arms outstretched and teeth bared.
“Daniel!” It was delivered in a mom’s final-warning tone and suggested real punishment if ignored. Though how she could punish a boy who needed a kidney transplant Sofia wasn’t sure. But, she guessed, that was part of being a mom. Rules were still rules.
“Okay, okay,” said Daniel, dropping the games controller onto the bed. Aidan immediately snatched it up and kept playing, whirling Daniel’s character in the game round a hundred and eighty degrees, and taking out the cop-zombie with a single shotgun blast.
“I have you covered,” Aidan told Daniel.
“Thanks,” said Daniel.
“You got it, buddy.”
Well, thought Sofia, at least Daniel had bonded with one of them. That had to help.
“So, Daniel,” said Brendan, “this is my son, Aidan.”
Aidan gave a quick nod, then turned back to slaying zombies.
“And,” Brendan continued, “this is Sofia. They’re going to help me try to find you a donor who matches so you can have your transplant. How does that sound?”
Daniel’s face suggested it wasn’t as exciting as slaying zombies. He stared at Sofia. “Are you the actress?”
“I was,” said Sofia. She was already thinking that maybe her experience of being a child star and having to be around adults most of the time might help her bond with Daniel. Maybe the two situations had similarities: being the center of attention, even when you just wanted to be a regular kid, getting cut off from school life and your peers, having to keep to a crazy schedule . . .
“I thought so,” said Daniel. He leaned toward Sofia and cupped his hand round his mouth so he could whisper in her ear.
Sofia crouched, eager to hear what he had to say, to connect with him.
“I saw some of your pics on Celebrity Skin. Hot stuff,” he smirked.
Sofia’s eyes widened. She straightened up. Were you allowed to slap a kid who was waiting for a kidney transplant?
The internet was a treasure trove of revealing personal photographs, either snapped by the paparazzi, frame grabs from movies, or more personal stuff, shared by ex-boyfriends or, in the most extreme cases, hackers. And if the websites that posted this stuff couldn’t find anything, they pasted your head onto some porn star’s body. There was no way around it. Like almost every female celebrity in Hollywood, Sofia had pictures up there.
“I can see you two are really going to get along.” Daniel’s mom beamed. She and Brendan had obviously missed what her son had said. At least, Sofia hoped her boss had.
“Yeah, we will!” Thirteen-year-old Daniel winked at Sofia.
No one seemed to pick up on that either. Daniel’s mom was too fixated on Brendan. Aidan was wrapped up in the video game, and Brendan appeared to be doing his best to keep as much personal space between himself and the mom as possible.
“Sorry,” Brendan said eventually. “As you both probably guessed, this is Daniel’s mom, Candice.”
“You can call me Candy,” she said cheerfully. “Everyone does.”
I bet they do, Sofia thought, then wondered if she was being unfair. Just because Candice had draped herself over Brendan, and her son was some kind of tweeny sex pest, she shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Maybe Candice was just touchy-feely, and overly familiar. And perhaps Daniel was acting out because he was scared.
“Nice to meet you, Candy,” said Sofia, shaking her hand, which jangled with expensive jewelry. Candice wasn’t rocking an engagement or wedding band, but she did have two pretty large diamond rings. Sofia had been lent so much expensive jewelry for movie premieres and parties that she knew the real stuff from the fake. She could tell a lot about quality from the way a stone reflected light.
“Aidan!” Brendan barked.
Aidan had become totally absorbed in the video game he’d taken over from Dani
el. His fingers flew over the buttons and toggles of the games controller even faster than he left-swiped on Tinder. “Good to meet you. We’ll do everything we can to help,” he said, without glancing up from the screen.
“Aidan, can you put that thing down?” said Brendan.
“But he’s almost finished the level,” Daniel piped up.
“Yeah, I’m almost finished,” said Aidan.
Brendan shot him the Maloney Senior death stare.
“Here,” said Aidan, palming the controller back to Daniel. He shook Candice’s hand.
Sofia noticed that Candice kept hold of it longer than she had Sofia’s and she made some fairly strong eye contact too. On the screen, Daniel was overwhelmed by zombies. He threw the controller down in disgust.
A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Daniel, it’s almost time to start your dialysis.”
“We should get going,” said Brendan.
Candice was still holding Aidan’s hand. She let go, suddenly aware that everyone was looking at her. “It was great to meet you all. And I know that if anyone can help us it’s you.”
“Tell you what, Candy, I’ll get these two properly up to speed. If you can drop by the office later, we’ll get all the details we need from you,” said Brendan.
“That sounds great, Brendan. Three o’clock work?” said Candy, leaning in to give him another kiss on the cheek.
“Sure,” said Brendan, a little bashfully.
Bashful? Brendan?
As Sofia headed out into the corridor, Daniel called after her, “Nice to meet you, Sofia.” She turned back to him and he blew her a kiss. No one else seemed to catch it.
CHAPTER 12
T hey rode down in the elevator. “Mystery solved?” Brendan asked. He still seemed more than a little annoyed with them.
“Yeah. Sorry, Brendan,” said Sofia.
“Sorry, Dad,” Aidan added. He didn’t sound it, but Brendan let that slide.
Instead he said, “Next time, just ask me. Okay?”
They nodded.
“Good. And you’re still going on that surveillance refresher course.”
Brendan walked with them over to their rental car. Aidan had dug a bottle of sanitizer from his pocket and was busy rubbing copious quantities across his hands. He caught Sofia staring at him. “What? It was a hospital. They’re giant petri dishes for disease.”
“Aidan doesn’t like hospitals,” said Brendan.
“So what’s the story with Daniel?” Sofia asked, shifting the conversation to firmer territory.
Brendan leaned against the door of the rental car. “There’s no story as such. He’s a very sick young man. If he gets a kidney transplant, he’ll be able to live a perfectly normal life. If he doesn’t, he’ll have to spend a lot of time in the hospital receiving dialysis. Best-case scenario.”
“Mom’s not a match, then?” Sofia asked. She knew the most likely match for a transplant was a close family member.
“No,” said Brendan. “Which is where we come in.”
Rather than the specifics, Aidan seemed more interested in taking another angle. “How did we land this case?” he asked.
Brendan took a breath. He seemed to be steeling himself for their reaction to what he was about to say. “Candice is an old friend. She heard I set up the agency after I retired from the force and thought I might be able to help.”
“An old friend?” Aidan queried.
“Yes,” said Brendan. “A friend. You have a problem with that?”
Aidan feigned innocence. “No. Not at all. Always happy for us to help out an old friend.”
“Good,” said Brendan, closing down the conversation as he pushed off the rental car, and started across the parking lot toward the Crown Vic. “I’ll see you both back at the office.”
* * *
AS SOFIA and Aidan pulled out of the UCLA Medical Center parking lot, Aidan kept his eyes firmly on the road. “Don’t say it. Okay?”
“Say what?” Sofia asked.
“You know what.”
“How could I possibly know if you won’t let me say it?” Sofia had a fair idea that he was referring to Candice and her relationship with Brendan, whatever that was. For a serial-dater, Aidan was remarkably prudish when it came to his father’s love life. Not that anyone was particularly comfortable with the idea of a parent’s love life, but Aidan was especially touchy about it.
“Then don’t say anything and there won’t be a problem,” said Aidan.
“What if it’s related to work?”
Aidan side-eyed her suspiciously. “If it’s work-related, then I guess . . .”
“You’re sure?” Sofia asked him.
“As long as it’s really about work.”
That was the green light, as far as Sofia was concerned. “Okay. Do you think Brendan is sleeping with our new client?”
Aidan slammed on the brakes, and the BMW driving behind them on Wilshire almost rear-ended them. Car horns blared. The BMW whipped round them, and the driver lowered his window to flip them the bird, with an accompanying “Jackass!” He caught a glimpse of Aidan glaring back at him, evidently thought better of issuing any further abuse, and sped off.
In the passenger seat, Sofia shrugged. “What? You said work-related.”
“You’re on thin ice, lady!”
Sofia eye-rolled him. “Oh, no. Not thin ice. And don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing the whole time she was draping herself over him.”
“Can we change the subject?”
“To something work- or non-work-related?”
“Any subject but this.”
“I kind of expected you to be more relieved,” Sofia told him. “I mean, a few hours ago we both thought Brendan was sick.”
“I am relieved.”
“You sure didn’t look it back there.”
“I don’t like hospitals,” Aidan reminded her.
Yeah, what was up with that? As soon as Brendan had asked them to follow him inside it was like someone had shoved a stick up Aidan’s butt. At first Sofia had thought it was because Brendan was about to confirm their worst suspicions, but even after they’d found out that his health was fine, Aidan had been on edge. He’d gripped that games controller like his life depended on it. And what was up with all the hand sanitizer?
“How come?” Sofia asked.
“I just don’t like ’em. That’s all.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Too bad. It’s the best answer you’re going to get,” said Aidan, breezing through a red light and almost getting them side-swiped by a truck.
“Do you want me to drive?” Sofia said.
“No. Why?”
“Never mind. You don’t like hospitals because . . .?” Sofia was determined.
Aidan glared at her. “Right, that’s it,” he said, spinning the wheel and pulling over to the side of Wilshire Boulevard. “Get out of the car.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sofia, taken aback by Aidan’s reaction. He could get mad when she teased him about stuff, but not like this.
Aidan leaned across her and opened the passenger door. “I mean it. I don’t want to have to sit next to you the whole way back to the office.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Get a bus. Look,” he said, pointing down the street. “There’s a stop right there.”
Sofia grabbed the door handle and pulled the passenger door closed again. “I am not getting the bus.”
“Fine,” said Aidan, reaching down and putting the car into ‘park’. “I’ll sit here until you get out.”
“What are you? Twelve years old?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew why he was overreacting, not just at having to go inside the hospital but to her asking him about it. She should have realized. Now she felt bad. Aidan probably didn’t like hospitals because he had watched his mom die in one. He would have been around the same age as Daniel when it had happened.
> “Aidan, I’m sorry. I won’t mention it again unless you bring it up.”
He was still glaring, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. Directly behind them, someone sounded their horn. They looked at the same time to see the Crown Vic pulling up and Brendan getting out.
“Great!” said Aidan. “Now see what you did!”
“Me?” Sofia protested. “You’re the one who stopped.”
For the second time that morning, Brendan had appeared out of nowhere. He tapped on the window. Aidan hit the button to lower it.
“What the hell is going on?” he said to his son.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been behind you the whole time and you’ve almost caused two accidents driving ten blocks.”
Aidan gave Sofia a dirty look. “I was distracted.”
“So why are you parked?” said Brendan.
Sofia wasn’t about to tell Brendan why. She wasn’t a snitch. And she had been goading Aidan. Deliberately. She pointed at a nearby drug store. “I asked Aidan to stop so I could get some feminine hygiene products.”
She knew of no better way of shutting down a conversation with a man than by mentioning, or even hinting at, buying tampons.
“Oh, right,” said Brendan. “That’s okay, then. Watch your driving. A PI needs his license.”
“Sure. I’ll be more careful,” said Aidan.
They watched Brendan walk back to his car.
“Thanks,” said Aidan.
“No problem. You still want me to catch the bus?”
“No more hospital talk?”
“Girl Scout’s honor,” said Sofia.
That seemed good enough for Aidan. They waited for Brendan to pull around them before they drove away. The rest of the trip back to Malibu passed peacefully.
CHAPTER 13
Brendan took them to lunch at Marmalade Café. For great food, and lots of it, Marmalade was hard to beat. It attracted a mixed crowd of locals and tourists, and it being Malibu, it was hard to tell which group was which. Everyone dressed casually. A tanned guy in board shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt could just as easily be an attorney or movie producer as someone on vacation. Usually the only way of telling was by the depth of their tan.