by M. Z. Kelly
“I’m almost afraid to ask.” I looked at Natalie. “What kind of fantasy?”
“I’m not at liberty to give you all the details, right now,” Natalie said. “But I’m hoping to make it just for us three girls and a few friends. What do you say?”
I knew better than to commit to anything Natalie was arranging without more details. “We’ll see.”
After another ten minutes listening to why going on the fantasy outing with them would be therapeutic, Mo changed the subject. “I heard that actress, Scarlett Endicott, got whacked. Did you catch her case? Is that why you look like you’re ‘bout to jump outta your birthday suit?”
I knew I was stressed out but took issue with what she’d said. “I’m not at liberty to talk about my cases. I started work in a new unit today and I’m just a little stressed.”
“Section One,” Natalie said.
“What? How did you know…”
Natalie smiled, cut her eyes to Mo. “Mo’s got the low down on everything that goes on in Hollywood—even with the coppers. We heard your new lieutenant’s a real poop chute.”
I looked over at Mo as she agreed with Natalie’s comment, “Conrad’s a first rate ass clown.”
I sighed and saw no reason to deny what they already knew. “Both descriptions would be understatements.”
Mo went on, “Word on the street is that somebody interrupted a cleaner at the murder scene.” She looked at Natalie. “Me and baby sis are gonna poke around, see what we turn up.”
It always amazed me how my friends knew what was going on with my cases, almost before I did. “You two can’t be involved.”
“We’re just gonna look under a few rocks, see what kinda dirty lizard’s hiding there,” Natalie said. “Not to worry. Besides, we’re just working cases part-time now that our acting career is taking off.”
I finished my martini, found a chip and dipped into the guacamole. “Don’t tell me you two got a part?”
“We’re auditioning for an Internet sit-com called, Hollywood Girlz.” She looked at Mo. “We’re supposed to be a couple of screw-up side-kick friends to the main character who’s a small time actress in the city.”
“Imagine that,” I said, suppressing an eye roll. “You two acting like screw ups.”
“Me and baby sis are gonna have to tone it down a notch or two,” Mo said with a serious expression. “We might have to act like we don’t know what we’re doing, just for what in the business is called comedic relief.”
I suppressed a smile, finally feeling the day’s stress melting away. “I sure hope you can pull it off.”
“Not to worry,” Natalie said. “Me and Mo can act like a couple of bozos even when we’re all business.”
I couldn’t help myself and laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Mo demanded.
I controlled my laughter and lied. “It’s nothing. I’m just having trouble seeing you two acting like a couple of cut ups.”
Natalie looked at Mo and said, “Guess Kate doesn’t think we’ve got any acting chops in us. We got something to prove to her.”
“It’s all in the timing,” Mo said. “Baby sis and me are gonna seriously act like a couple of nincompoops, even if it takes all our acting ability.”
***
I got home a little after ten and found my mother half drunk and speaking in the voice of Rose, her altered personality.
“Where have you been?” Mom demanded.
I put my purse on the table in the entryway, greeted Bernie and Bubba. “Out with Natalie and Mo, like I told you earlier.”
She tapped a foot. “I thought you’d be home hours ago.”
I looked at my watch. “I was only gone a couple of hours. Why are you acting like this?”
“I have a date and I’m late.” She grabbed her purse from the sofa. “Don’t wait up for me.”
As far as I knew, my mother hadn’t had a real date in years, the exception being when she dated my father’s killer, thinking he was a well-known writer.
“Who are you going out with?” I asked, thinking maybe she was just meeting a girlfriend.
“Some guy named, “Buzz Raider. He’s a lawyer who represents bikers.”
I followed her to the door, thinking how much I hated lawyers and that my mother had truly lost her mind. “Where did you meet this guy?”
Mom turned back to me. “E-Men. It’s one of those Internet dating sites.” She opened the door. “My taxi’s here. See you tomorrow.”
What she’d said could only mean one thing: mom was going on a first date with some lawyer-biker she’d met on an Internet dating site and she was planning to spend the night with him.
OMG!
After she left, I turned to Bernie. “My mother thinks she’s someone named Rose, she’s been sleeping with ex-presidents, and is now dating a biker named Buzz. She’s out of her flipp’n mind.”
Bernie whined, which I took to mean. “We’re not safe, Kate. Better call a shrink.”
I fished the therapist’s card that Brie Henner had given me out of my purse and said, “I’m calling someone first thing in the morning.”
EIGHTEEN
After a restless night Bernie and I met Ted in the parking lot the next morning to begin a long day of interviews with subjects who were close to Scarlett, starting with her boyfriend Donny Kessler. I was nursing a headache, maybe from the two martini’s I’d had last night or from my mother dating Buzz the biker.
Ted must have seen my distress as I got in the car after settling Bernie in the backseat. “Got a busy day ahead of us. You okay?”
I buckled my seatbelt, exhaled. “Let’s see. Our new lieutenant is an idiot, along with half the detectives in Section One, my mother’s lost her mind and is dating a biker, and my two best friends are going to start acting even crazier than usual so they can get parts in a sit-com.” I looked over at Ted who was smiling as he pulled out of the parking lot. “What was that Zen meditation you told me about?”
“Zazen.”
“I think I need a big dose of it.”
“It’s really just a conscious meditation where you suspend judgment and let words, ideas, and thoughts drift by without attachment. It’s a process of letting go.”
I regarded him. “Tell me something, how do I deal with my mother who’s gone crazy and our new lieutenant who’s the world’s biggest asshole without judgment?”
He laughed. “It’s all a process. I think you have to start by trying to first let go of the little things whenever you can.”
“I’ll give that a try, right after I call a shrink to help me deal with my mother.”
I took a couple of minutes and made an appointment for Mom and me to see Dr. Beverly Chan. I had no idea if I could pull Mom away from her biker buddy and get her to go with me but decided it was worth a try.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of Donny Kessler’s apartment in West Hollywood. The area was densely populated with lots of apartments and condos. I remembered someone once telling me that when Johnny Depp first came to Hollywood he shared a small apartment with several roommates in the same area.
We found Kessler on the patio of his small first floor apartment typing away on a laptop computer. When he saw us, he opened a gate and we exchanged introductions.
“Just writing a few scenes for Dazed,” he said, closing his laptop.
“I don’t think I’ve heard of it,” I said, after I took a seat next to Ted at the patio table and Bernie settled at my feet. Kessler looked to be in his late twenties, blonde, with blue eyes. He was nice looking in a frat-boy kind of way.
“It’s a pilot, basically a soap opera with flying vampires.”
“You been at the writing game a long time?” Ted asked.
“About five years. I’m still paying my dues, waiting for a break.”
“Unlike Scarlett,” I said.
He shook his head, sighed. “I still can’t believe what happened.” His blue eyes found us. “Any idea who…” H
is voice trailed off.
“Not at this point,” Ted said. “The investigation is just beginning.”
“Scarlett having the lead role in a Zig Steinberg film must have been heady stuff,” I said.
Kessler picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, and then said, “I guess so, I don’t really know. Scarlett and I weren’t together for the past couple of months.”
“You broke up?”
He nodded. “You could say that, although…our relationship wasn’t what you traditionally think of as boyfriend-girlfriend. We lived together for a while but it was really just a friendship thing.”
“Was Scarlett seeing someone else?” Ted asked.
Kessler shook his head. “I doubt it. Scarlett was…I think she was kind of lost, not really connecting with anyone.”
“Why do you think that’s the case?”
He shrugged. “Maybe because of her father. She always regretted not having a closer relationship with him. I guess you know he’s mega-rich?” I nodded. “Not that it was a big thing to Scarlett. I think she just wished he wasn’t so…I guess you would call him emotionally distant.”
“Scarlett’s mother told us she thought you and Scarlett were still together.”
“We kept things on the down low because of the paparazzi. Scarlett was very protective of her privacy.”
“What about her friends, co-workers, acquaintances? Anyone you can think of who might have wanted to harm her?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Scarlett didn’t have a lot of friends and her acting jobs were…just that, acting. I don’t think she was really close to anyone on the set of her film.”
“What about Lauren Hayden?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Scarlett’s mother said Lauren was her best friend.”
“If that’s the case, Scarlett never mentioned her.” His gaze wandered off, came back. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
I glanced at Ted, back at Kessler. “What about Zig Steinberg? How did she get along with the famous director?”
“I think they got along okay. He’s a head case like most directors but I don’t think there was any real animosity.”
Donny Kessler seemed credible but in Hollywood almost everyone was an actor or wannabe actor. I knew that writers could especially take liberties with the truth. “Don’t take this the wrong way but we need to know where you were the night before last.”
Kessler laughed, maybe in a nervous way. “I was right here writing. I have several roommates who can vouch for me.”
We were about to leave when Ted remembered that Susan Dorsey had said her daughter was seeing a therapist and mentioned that to Kessler. “The shrink’s name is Richard Hawkins. Did Scarlett ever say anything about seeing him?”
Kessler hesitated, his gaze drifting off. I wasn’t sure if he was searching his memory or being evasive. He looked back at Ted. “Scarlett said something about thinking she wanted to see a counselor a couple of times but I didn’t know she’d followed through. She never mentioned anyone in particular.”
We left Donny Kessler and walked up the block to our car where I let Bernie sniff the flowers between the road and sidewalk.
“What’s your take?” I asked Ted.
“Kid seems pretty clueless. Either he’s your basic nerd or he’s playing dumb. Not sure.”
I tugged on Bernie’s leash. “Maybe you need to meditate on it—without judgment.” He smiled and I added, “Let’s go see a famous movie director.”
NINETEEN
Pearce Landon checked on his sister the next morning and then took a cup of coffee to his home office. He’d spent a sleepless night thinking about Scarlett’s murder. The more he’d sifted through the puzzle pieces, the more he was convinced that her murder had something to do with a relationship that had gone bad.
While he hadn’t seen her in years, Landon knew first hand that as a young girl Scarlett had an easy going, quiet personality. While people can change, he thought it unlikely that she was a completely different person than the girl he and his daughter had known.
He also doubted that Scarlett and Madison had engaged in explicit sex acts with two men unless there was some form of coercion involved, probably involving drugs. It occurred to him that maybe someone, possibly Scarlett’s boyfriend, had found out about her involvement with the men and had killed her out of anger. Whatever had happened, Landon was determined to get answers from his daughter that night, no matter how difficult the conversation would be.
After turning things over in his mind, Landon decided to spend the morning working on what Scarlett had said in her letter about getting together with someone at The Pantry. It was one of the few solid clues he had in a case that seemed lacking in anything substantive. The knife that he’d removed from the murder scene had been analyzed by a trusted friend who owned a private lab. He learned it was clean of any fingerprints or DNA evidence, other than the blood on the blade belonging to Scarlett.
After retrieving the phone number for The Pantry in Scottsdale, Landon got a reservation clerk on the line. The woman tried to upsell him on a variety of expensive offerings at the retreat. He then got to the point.
“Before I book my reservation I need some information about a past guest,” Landon said. “She likely stayed there a few months ago, probably in the past year. Her name is Scarlett Endicott.”
“I’m sorry, sir. That information is strictly off limits. I can’t help you.” The line went dead.
Message delivered. The Pantry meant want it said about confidentiality. Landon dialed the number again, this time asking the operator for housekeeping services. He then requested to speak to a supervisor and waited on the line for a couple of minutes.
“How may I help you?” a woman finally asked.
“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” Landon said. “This is very important. My girlfriend stayed there a few weeks back and she thinks she may have lost her ring. It was given to her by her mother and, while the ring isn’t worth much, it has a great deal of sentimental value. I’m sure you understand about such things.”
“Yes, I’m very sorry to hear about that, but if our staff finds any property they immediately turn it in to guest services. I can connect you with them.”
“That would be wonderful but first let me give you my girlfriend’s name. Maybe it will ring a bell.” Landon paused, his voice becoming more confidential. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Mrs. Braden…Marsha Braden.”
“Thank-you, Marsha. You’re very kind to help me out with this. May I give you her name now?”
There was a pause before the woman said, “Well, I guess it would be okay but…”
“Thank-you, Marsha for understanding. Her name is Scarlett Endicott.”
“Oh dear…I…I heard what happened…I’m so sorry, sir. It’s a terrible shame.”
“Now you understand why the ring is so important. It’s the only link Scarlett’s mother now has to her daughter. Marsha, do you happen to remember when Scarlett stayed there? I wasn’t with her at the time and the date’s slipped my mind. Maybe it will help guest services locate the ring.”
“I do remember now that you mention it. I think it was the weekend of Labor Day.” She hesitated. “I’m sure it was, now that I think about it. Scarlett was very nice and left our staff a big tip.”
“That’s wonderful, a big help. Now there’s just one other thing, Marsha. Do you recall if Scarlett was there with anyone else during that weekend? I remember her telling me that her brother might possibly go with her.”
There was a lengthy pause before the woman came back on the line. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t be of any further assistance. I’m transferring you to guest services now. Please hold.”
He ended the call, thinking that The Pantry’s staff’s phone calls might be monitored. At least he’d confirmed the approximate date that Scarlett had stayed there. Now, it would be a matter of finding out who she’d gone there with a
nd then finding out what he knew, if anything, about her murder.
Landon heard his sister’s aide calling to him. As he walked down the hall to Jilly’s room he knew that the clock was ticking faster now. His sister was running out of time and maybe he was, too.
TWENTY
Ted and I met with Zig Steinberg at ROI Studios, not too far from the more famous Warner Brother’s lot in Hollywood. From what we’d learned, Steinberg owned at interest in the movie studio along with two wealthy producers. I knew that the sound stages at ROI had been responsible for some blockbuster hits over the past few years, including Clone Star, a sci-fi film that I’d heard had brought in close to a billion dollars after its recent release in Europe and Asia.
As we drove through the studio gates I got a call from Selfie. “I’ve tried Richard Hawkins’ number several times. All I got was the shrink’s answering service, telling me they’d get a message to him that you want to meet. When Gollum heard I wasn’t getting anywhere he sent the idiot twins over to Hawkins’ office.”
“Wait…Gol…” I got it. Gollum was our new lieutenant and the idiot twins were Belmont and Hardy. “God damn it.” I glanced at Ted, exhaling. I asked Selfie, “Did they get ahold of Hawkins?”
“Nobody home at the cracker factory. I thought you guys might want to go by there yourselves when you finish up with Moses on Mount Sinai.”
I loved Selfie’s depiction of the famous director and the others in Section One, but at the same time was angry as hell that Conrad had undercut us. When I ended the call I told Ted what had happened.
The big detective scratched his head, his jowly cheeks deflating. “Are you kidding me. We’ve only been on the case for a day.”
“So much for Zazen.”
“There’s a time and a place for that.” He glanced at me, his forehead pinched. “And this ain’t it. Conrad’s going to get a piece of my mind.”
After checking in with the director’s personal assistant, an attractive young woman named Alysha Roberts, and waiting for a half hour Ted, Bernie, and I were finally given an audience with Zig Steinberg. While I’d heard about the famed director’s over-the-top public persona, wild parties, and him being friends with everyone from politicians to artists, I was surprised when he greeted us warmly and apologized for making us wait.