B is for Bad Girls (Malibu Mystery Book 2)

by Rebecca Cantrell

  “How’s filming?” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She wanted to lie down on the beach and listen to the ocean until she fell asleep.

  “No major disasters, so it’s a good day.” He spoke in the manly baritone he used in public, instead of his higher-pitched regular voice.

  “Are you on set?” The kids were unrolling a long strand of kelp across the sand.

  “In my trailer,” he said. “They’re setting up for the next shot.”

  Nobody outside the industry knew how boring filming actually was. Most of an actor’s time was spent waiting—for scene changes, for makeup changes, for new lighting—so you could shoot the same thing over and over again from different angles. As a kid, all the standing around had driven Sofia nuts, and she didn’t miss that part at all. “So, I wanted to ask you—”

  “About Craig Williams,” Gray said. “I got that. I really liked the guy, but the media wasn’t lying—he was a serious druggie. You know how some people are dabblers? Or how it takes some people a while to build up a serious habit?”

  Heroin dabblers. Those were words she didn’t usually hear next to each other. “Yeah.”

  “Not Craig. He jumped into the deep end. That guy put more heroin into his veins than Keith Richards. I was there once when he OD’d, and his heart stopped. If one of his entourage hadn’t been an EMT, Craig would probably have died right there. He checked into rehab after that, but it never seemed to take. He was always using again right after he got out.”

  “Do you think his death was caused by an overdose?”

  “I dunno. That’s what the papers said. Craig was a really sweet guy in a lot of ways, and I wanted him to pull through, but you never know with addicts.” Gray covered the phone and said, his voice muffled, “Just a little on the nose. I think it looks shiny.” Then he came back. “But he seemed really sincere about wanting to get clean that last time. His father had just died, and Craig said he wasn’t going down that road. Anyway, I heard he passed all his pee tests, and they let him out. I didn’t hear from him again after that, but I hoped he’d come out the other side. I guess he didn’t.”

  That wasn’t helping Jenna’s case any. “Did you hear what happened with his estate?”

  “Just a minute,” Gray called to someone at his end, and then he was back. “I bet he left it to his sister. They were really close. We used to call them the Wonder Twins. And maybe he set up a trust fund for Snow Cone. He loved that dog more than anything in the world. I can see why. She’s a cute little thing.”

  “He cut his sister and the dog out of the will entirely. He left everything to a woman named Polly Coggins.”

  “Why would he do that?” Gray was so surprised he’d slipped into his natural voice. It must have been big news to make him break character.

  “She’s the one who ran the last rehab center. It’s called Waves.”

  “I know who she is. Her son, Oliver, was big in the club scene.” Gray knew everyone.

  “What was Oliver like?”

  “Outrageous. Terrible singer, but good stage presence. Sank like a stone on heroin. Ended up turning tricks for drugs out here before he went back east to where his parents lived. I didn’t hear about it when he died, just later when his parents were in that documentary.”

  “Did you ever meet his parents?”

  “Nope. But I know he hated them, especially his mom. She and his dad were pretty militant, all about tough love and casting him out. Or that’s what he said.”

  She steered the conversation back to Craig. “Why would Craig leave Polly Coggins all his money?”

  “That sounds so wrong,” Gray said. “There’s no way he would do that to Jenna. No way ever. At all.”

  That sounded like what Jenna thought. Maybe Jenna was right, and they did have a case. Sofia heard voices at the other end of the line.

  “I gotta run in just a minute, sweetie,” Gray said. “But if this is work-related, I’d say you should look into it because it’s really weird. If it’s not work-related, when did you turn into such a gossip?”

  She couldn’t tell him anything, of course, because Brendan had drilled his confidentiality rules into her head. “Just curious, Gray. You know the rules.”

  “Is that Gray Cole?” Violet whooped. “Let me talk to him.”

  “You have a little fan here,” Sofia said. “Do you have a second?”

  “If it’s Violet, you know I do.”

  Sofia handed the phone to Violet, and she and Gray immediately started talking about fencing. The Masked Man fenced, and Gray had begun training Violet with pool noodles. He’d taught her the basic stance and some strikes. That probably made for a tough year for her teacher.

  Van was bent over a giant kelp bubble dissecting it with a paperclip she must have missed when she’d gone through his pockets. If he ever ended up in prison, that kid would make a fortune smuggling things in.

  “How does this work?” Van poked the kelp.

  “It’s hollow inside.” She had dissected enough kelp in her day. “That makes it light enough so that it floats on top of the water and supports the kelp underneath. Like a rubber raft.”

  “Oh, snap!” Violet yelled. “A wave hit it.”

  She held out Sofia’s cell phone. Sea water dripped off the edge.

  Sofia took it from her. A seagull winged by. Fred had never destroyed her phone. She liked that about Fred.

  “It was a rogue wave,” Violet said. “It snuck up on me and ka-pow. I’m really sorry about your phone.”

  Her lower lip trembled, and Sofia remembered that she was only seven.

  “I can fix it,” Van said. “With distilled water and rice. Maybe.”

  “It’s OK,” Sofia said. “Accidents happen all the time.”

  “Is that Mr. Maloney Junior?” Violet shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up the beach at two figures heading toward them.

  “With Mr. Maloney Senior.” Van sprinted toward them, and Violet followed suit.

  Sofia made sure her phone was off. It was super-hot near the top. Probably the electronics self-destructing. She wiped it on her shirt. She was pretty sure it was beyond saving, despite Van’s theories about distilled water and rice. She’d liked that phone, too, and she hadn’t backed it up as often as she should. She added one more item to her Lessons Learned from Babysitting list:

  1.Back up all electronics before the kids arrive.

  2.Lock up all the tools. Maybe also lock up all the electronics.

  3.Find a place where they can run and run.

  Aidan waved as he jogged across the beach to her. He wore shorts and a white T-shirt with a blue wave on the front. She almost never saw him in anything but work clothes. He looked cute and windswept. His father wore slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. That was as informal as Brendan got.

  “It’s dead, Jim.” Aidan had gotten close enough to see the phone.

  “Yes, it is, Dr. McCoy,” Sofia said. “Accidents happen.”

  “Who’s Dr. McCoy and who’s Jim?” Van asked.

  “From Star Trek. It’s an old timey TV show, very last century.” Sofia couldn’t believe that Emily hadn’t shown it to the kids yet since she and her sister had grown up with Star Trek: Next Generation and all its glorious spin-offs.

  “I found a dead crab!” Violet told Aidan.

  “Was it dead when you found it?” he asked.

  Violet looked offended. “Of course it was. I’m not a killer!”

  “Why don’t you show Aidan the crab?” Brendan said. “I’m going to borrow your aunt for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

  Aidan walked closer to Violet, one hand guarding his crotch. He wasn’t going to be hit by the Nutcracker again so soon.

  Sofia and Brendan went a little further up the beach until they were out of earshot. She wondered what this could be about. Probably nothing good.

  “I hate to break in on your weekend,” Brendan said. “Aidan uncovered some interesting stuff.”

  �
��Me, too.” She filled him in on her conversation with Gray.

  “Good to get an inside track,” he said. “What’s your take on it?”

  “Gray backed up some of what Jenna said—she and her brother were close, and everyone expected him to leave his estate to her, but he didn’t.”

  “It also makes the overdose look like a natural result of how he was living his life.” Brendan ran one hand through his hair, but it was a lost cause. The wind had won the battle. “Aidan found out that Craig Williams appointed Polly Coggins the beneficiary of his trust the same day he got out of rehab, which is mighty suspicious timing. He immediately started selling his most popular songs to fund the trust. At this point, the trust is worth about ten million dollars.”

  She whistled.

  “It’s definitely a motive,” he said. “And Aidan called in a favor from a paralegal who works for the law firm that drew up the trust.”

  Of course he did, Sofia thought. She bet the paralegal was young and sexy. She looked back over her shoulder. Violet was whipping Aidan across the legs with a giant strand of kelp. He’d probably had that coming for toying with the affections of a paralegal.

  “The paralegal checked the phone logs, and noticed Craig called the day before he died,” Brendan said. “He wanted to talk about changing the terms of the trust, maybe the beneficiary. She didn’t know for sure. We might never know, because he was dead before he was supposed to come in for his appointment.”

  “So, maybe Jenna was right. Polly Coggins hooked a big fish, and when he tried to wiggle off the hook, she killed him.”

  “It’s a lot of supposition.” Brendan pushed his thick gray hair out of his eyes. “Not enough to get a rise out of the sheriff’s department.”

  “How do we get more info?” She wasn’t ready to give up.

  “Well.” Brendan looked down at his shoes. She followed his gaze. His loafers were filling up with sand. Bad beach shoes.

  “Well, what?”

  He looked out over the water, doing everything to avoid looking at her. “I hate to ask you this, because I know how sensitive you are since that incident at Big Rock.”

  Big Rock Rehab was where she had been immortalized peeing in the parking lot on a stakeout. The video had been viewed more than three million times on YouTube.

  Her ex-agent, Jeffrey Weiner, sent an email every time the view counter went up another hundred thousand. He wanted her to use the publicity to go on a reality TV show called Celebrity Second Chances. She’d told him she didn’t use drugs, and he’d told her that wasn’t the point. The point was using the show to earn money and relaunch her career as an actress. She’d told him she wasn’t interested in relaunching. He had reacted as though she’d shot him in the chest. After begging and pleading, he’d actually started crying, before getting angry again and finally giving up. Typical conversation with an agent, really.

  “And?” She hoped Brendan wouldn’t say anything else about Big Rock Rehab.

  “I’m not convinced it’s the best idea, and you can always say no. No harm, no foul.”

  Baseball metaphors. That meant he was really uncomfortable. “What exactly are you talking about, Brendan?”

  “It’s just that Aidan and I talked it over, and you’re the best fit for this job.”

  “For what job?” She was starting to worry. Brendan hadn’t batted an eye about sending her into a bar dressed in a slutty business suit to try to get a husband with a wandering eye to pick her up. So this must be worse, and that couldn’t be good.

  He actually dug his toe into the sand. He reminded her of Van. “Well ...”

  “You might as well spit it out,” she said. “It can’t be worse than what I’m imagining.”

  “We need to get someone close to Polly Coggins. Someone who can see how she operates, get her guard down, maybe uncover evidence at her place of business.”

  Polly’s place of business, of course, was Waves—the clinic where she’d treated Craig Williams. “You want me to go into rehab?”

  That was actually worse than she’d been imagining. Jeffrey would spontaneously combust if she went into rehab without a camera crew. It’d be like torching money, he’d say.

  “I’m sorry I brought it up,” Brendan said quickly. “We’ll find another way.”

  The picture of Craig, Jenna, and Snow Cone happy at the premiere flashed through Sofia’s mind. Jenna had lost her beloved brother, and she would never know why. If Sofia lost Emily, she hoped that someone would help her find even the tiniest amount of peace.

  She didn’t want to go into rehab, but she did want to help people in real life. It was why she’d taken the detective job instead of staying in movies. Jenna needed help. Sofia could see it, feel it, and understand it.

  Apparently rehab was a part of real life that she couldn’t ignore. If she wanted to help people, if she wanted to do this job right, then she was going to have to grit her teeth and power through things that weren’t easy. Otherwise she might as well give up on making a difference and go back to acting, picking and choosing only the roles that suited her.

  She kicked a lump of sand, and grains scattered. “It’s part of the job. I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Sofia knew the best way for her to lie was to invent a character for whom the lie was the truth. She had no problem being different people—her only problems came when she had to lie as herself. That meant she needed to create a character who had to be in rehab: Drug Addict Sofia. The character would have to be enough like her public persona that the rehab people would believe it, but different enough that she could play the role without being self-conscious.

  Brendan patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You can quit at any time. I don’t want you to do anything that’s dangerous.”

  As if locking herself in a house with a bunch of jonesing addicts and a potential murderer wasn’t dangerous. Waves might be luxurious, most rehab centers in Malibu were, but it was basically a very fancy prison, and the warden might be a killer.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Brendan repeated.

  But she did. What could make more of a difference than putting a killer behind bars before she killed again? Now she’d made the jump from Hollywood, she wasn’t willing to play it safe and confine herself to the life of a spoiled actress. “I can take care of myself.”

  She glanced at Aidan. Van had dug a trench behind him, presumably while Violet distracted him and edged him backward with the kelp whip. The kids looked like hunters trapping a wild tiger.

  “Aidan!” she called “Behind you!”

  He gave her a quizzical glance, half turned, and fell into Van’s trench. The kids cheered.

  “Nobody in that place will be as tough as those kids.” She understood now why Emily looked so tired all the time. “It’ll be a vacation after this weekend.”

  “You’re good with them,” Brendan said. “One of these days, you’ll want some of your own.”

  “I like loaner kids,” Sofia said. “I’m not so sure about having them around all the time.”

  Aidan had regained his footing and slung Violet over his shoulder. He ran toward Sofia’s trailer with Van close behind.

  Sofia trotted after them. She had a lot to do before Emily came that evening:

  1.Get the sand off the kids. Probably toss them into a shower.

  2.Order pizza for dinner because the kitchen was still covered with newspaper.

  3.Watch the UFC Fighting Challenge with Violet while putting together an impossible structure with Van.

  4.Get all the stuff they came with, plus all the stuff she’d bought them, stuffed into their backpacks.

  5.Find out why the window wasn’t fixed.

  6.Pick up a new phone (no time for that).

  7.Get Emily’s car detailed or at least pick the chicken nuggets off the floor (no time for that either).

  A few hours later, she hadn’t made much progress on her list.

  “Which would win in a fight, a crocodile or a s
hark?” Violet asked, full volume.

  “How would they ever meet?” Van said.

  “There are saltwater crocs.” Sofia looked at the Lego piece in her hand. She had no idea where it should go. “So they could meet in the ocean.”

  “Crocodiles have the strongest bite force of any creature in the animal kingdom,” Van said. Clearly their parents let them watch the Nature Channel. He took the piece off her and stuck it on the air-traffic-control tower. It was part of a window.

  “I think the shark would win,” Violet said. “They’re faster. Did you know that the formula for force is mass times velocity squared?”

  Sofia didn’t. “That’s some pretty impressive physics.”

  “I learned it in karate,” Violet said. “It means that if you hit something really fast and hard, you do way more damage than if you just hit something hard. Like why a bullet does more damage than a baseball bat.”

  Sofia thought back to the dents on her front door. Violet must have been swinging the table leg pretty fast.

  “If a crocodile got a good bite of a shark, he could totally take it down,” Van said. “Fast or slow.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “We’re back!” Emily called from outside.

  Violet and Van shrieked and ran to open the door. Sofia followed in their wake.

  “We missed you so much!” Van hurled himself at his mother and nearly knocked her off the porch.

  Violet had wrapped her arms around both of her father’s legs, and he had to grab the railing to stop himself from falling over. “I love you, Daddy!”

  “How was your trip?” Sofia asked, not that she needed to. Ray and Emily were practically glowing. They had a well-rested look about them, too.

  “Wonderful, thanks to you!” Emily said. “I’ll call you and tell you all the details tomorrow, but we’d better get these rug-rats home. It’s a school night.”

  “About tomorrow,” Sofia began.

  “I had four spoons of Gummy Bears on my frozen yogurt!” Van announced.

  “No sugar?” Emily raised one eyebrow and looked at Sofia.

  “Aidan took them to the frozen-yogurt place next to the office,” she said. “Sorry about that.”