Hollywood Ending

by Kellye Garrett

  “Save it.” I pulled out to head to the police station downtown. “He’s letting us check the phone.”

  Emme smiled and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. “In that case, where is it?”

  I handed it to her. It was in a resealable plastic sandwich bag with illustrated snowmen and candy canes on it. She gave me a look. “Professional.”

  “It was all Mama Ruth had at her house. I charged it on the way here but it’s passcode protected. Don’t you have something that can break it?”

  Emme nodded. “It can take a while, though.”

  Aubrey spoke. “You have four minutes, thirty seconds.” He was seriously keeping track.

  “Hopefully not longer than four minutes and twenty-nine seconds,” I said.

  Emme checked something on her phone, then pressed a few buttons on Lyla’s phone. “Done,” she said. “It was her birthday.”

  Of course it was. I should’ve checked that first. Saved myself the gas. “Let me see!”

  Aubrey literally put his hands in his ears like a child. Hear no evil and all that. We were stuck in traffic, so I turned around as Emme showed me the screen. It consisted of the standard-issue iPhone apps and Gmail. That was it.

  What self-respecting woman in her twenties had an iPhone with no extra apps? It wasn’t like the Stocks app let you filter your selfies to the point where you looked like your very own Madame Tussaud’s wax figure. “Scroll to the next screen,” I said, then tacked on a please at the end like my Mama always told me to. “Please.”

  “Isn’t one.” She swiped as proof. Sure enough, the screen remained the same.

  I felt as confused as I’d been in Calculus senior year before my mom let me drop the class. There had to be a good reason for this. “Maybe Junior deleted them.”

  “He’d have to know the password. And why not just wipe the phone completely?”

  “Three minutes,” Aubrey said. He really wasn’t helping.

  “Let’s just check her Gmail then.” I glanced at the phone again. It listed 5,257 unchecked messages. Great.

  Traffic started moving, so Emme sat back. It took her thirty seconds for her to talk. I counted. Aubrey did too. “Hmmph,” she finally said.

  Someone saying “hmmph” was never a good thing. It was right up there with the word “interesting.” At that point, I just pulled over, Aubrey-the-human-countdown-clock be darned. Emme leaned forward and showed me what had her so perplexed. The inbox was empty. “Where are all the messages?” The Gmail app notification claimed there were thousands.

  “Maybe Lyla had more than one account,” Emme said. She tapped the icon in the upper left corner. The email address was a Viv3000. Emme clicked the down arrow, and the list of available Gmail accounts popped up. There was indeed another one listed.

  AnaniMissBlog@gmail.com

  “Time’s up,” Aubrey said.

  Eleven

  The best way to describe my reaction was shock and aww, as in aww crap, I did not see that coming.

  “Why are we not driving?” Aubrey asked.

  But it was hard to drive when your jaw was dropped so low, it could have hit the gas pedal. “Lyla was Anani?” I said, more to myself than anything.

  “What are you talking about, Ms. Anderson?” Aubrey asked.

  “The email account on the phone is for a well-known yet anonymous gossip blogger.”

  “Oh, I see,” Aubrey said.

  “Oh you see? That’s all you can say. Don’t you get what this means?”

  But of course, he didn’t. He shrugged. “Like I previously said, everyone has secrets, Ms. Anderson. Now that we have uncovered Ms. Davis’s, we can figure out what to do next.”

  I’d spent a significant portion of my waking hours trying to guess the actual person behind Anani Miss. During one four-hour road trip to Vegas, Sienna and I concocted some ridiculous fantasy that Anani was reality star-du-jour Joseline Hunter turned Smith turned Miller turned Jones turned No Last Name Needed. Or so her “momager” claimed. The official reason was that the Joseline “brand” no longer required it. In reality, after four mini-marriages in a two-year span, it was hard even for Joseline to keep up with the latest hyphenated addition—much less the general public.

  But Anani wasn’t a disgruntled A-list reality star with a mother who thought it was a good idea to Facebook Live her breast augmentation. She wasn’t even an A-list publicist. Lyla had been an assistant up until a few months ago. Nina’s assistant, at that. It had been a lot more fun when I thought Anani was a celebutante—and still alive. Because overexposed celebrity or not, Lyla Davis was dead.

  “Where should we start, Ms. Anderson?” Aubrey asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. Anani had tons of enemies. Enough for her. Us. The entire mainland population of China.”

  “You mentioned wanting to kill her yourself just last month,” Emme said.

  Indeed, I had. Not that it was relevant.

  “We need to uncover who hired Javon Reid,” Aubrey said. “I will continue to look into Mr. Reid and see if we can uncover the person on that end.”

  We didn’t have a name, so I’d secretly dubbed the person Geppetto, since they were pulling my strings like I was Pinocchio’s black cousin with equally wooden dance moves and a nose that also didn’t always cooperate with the rest of my face.

  “You should pursue the anonymous blogger angle since that is more your field of expertise.”

  Fine by me.

  Sienna stared at Emme’s computer monitor like it was a visitor from outer space. One who came in peace straight from Krypton and had the glasses and cape to prove it. “No,” she said.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Sienna shook her head. “Maybe Lyla was a superfan like us and hacked her password.”

  “The password that happens to also be the same as Lyla’s lock code?” I asked.

  “Which is?” Sienna asked.

  Lyla’s birthday, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that. “Nice try,” I said. Giving her untethered access to the Anani account would have led to the world’s first gossip overdose. How would I have explained that to Sienna’s family?

  “Figured it was worth a shot. I just wish you could have kept the phone.”

  We’d dropped it—and Aubrey—off at the police station before text­ing Sienna to come to Emme’s place. We’d thought it best that Aubrey dealt with the cops by himself.

  “Emme checked it out while Aubrey was busy critiquing my driving,” I explained. “There was nothing on there. No texts, phone log, or even web browser history. Looks like she only used the cell to check her email.”

  “At least we know why she was never outed all these years,” Sienna said.

  She was right there. Anani had kept things sparse. Besides the blog, her presence on social media was slim to none. No official Facebook page. No Instagram. No Snapchat. And definitely no LinkedIn. She did occasionally tweet but not often enough. I spoke. “The lack of apps on her phone had to be on purpose, not because she’d forgotten her Apple ID.”

  “Like you?” Sienna said.

  She was right. Thank God for small favors and the fingerprint option.

  “And we do have access to her emails.” I decided to go with a glass half full approach. “There’s definitely a clue there. We just have to find it. It’ll be easy.”

  Sienna stared at the open inbox on Emme’s screen in complete and utter reverence. “Can you imagine what secrets are in there?”

  I only cared about one.

  “We might be SOL,” Emme said from next to me. “There’s gotta be 10,000 messages in here. At least.”

  As proof, she kept scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling. We watched in horror. I finally took mercy on our collective souls and physically stopped her from scrolling any f
urther.

  Blurg. I hoped the glass was half full of vodka. It was becoming very, very difficult to stay positive. “Hypothetically, how long would it take to go through all these messages to find any threats?”

  Sienna raised her hand. “Me! I volunteer, as a tribute! Even if it takes me days and days and days. I will read each and every message because I am that dedicated to solving this case.”

  Emme and I looked at her, then looked at each other. I spoke first. “So how long … ”

  “IDK,” Emme said. “I could do a search for kill or dead.”

  Sounded good to me. If someone threatened Anani, chances were they would use either of those words. And use it they did. Emme’s searched yielded over 1,000. It’d take time to go through each one. We needed an easier way to narrow them down.

  I combed my brain for another key word we could search for in the Anani inbox and found the crime scene photos in a crevice. Lyla and Junior crossing paths hadn’t been a bad twist of fate like we’d originally thought. Someone had wanted them at the same place at the same time. Someone who’d want to know exactly where Lyla would be at the exact moment before she died. Someone who’d have to make sure she was there. Of course, Junior could have just followed her from the party, but Omari would have seen him. He hadn’t.

  “Could you look up the word bank?” I asked.

  Emme tapped the screen a few times. “Only thing I see is something about Kandy Wrapper having sex in a Wells Fargo vestibule.”

  Sienna literally gasped. “Blind item #4. March 13th, two years ago. I knew it was her.”

  She went to grab her cell, probably to message Fab. We were all silent for a bit. Sienna text-gossiping. Emme tapping buttons. Me lurking behind her like she was a message board. Finally, I thought of something else. “There were two email accounts, right?”

  Emme nodded. “Second one was empty.”

  “Did you check the trash or sent messages?”

  “Not yet.” She was already logging into the account. The password was, wait for it, Lyla’s birthday. A kajillion thoughts flashed through my brain in the .0761 seconds it took for the inbox to load. As with the casts of The Bachelor, they were all variations of the same thing: Please let us find something. A clue buried in the confines of a sent folder. A key bit of info hiding in junk mail. A lead playing hide-and-go-seek in the archives.

  Instead we got nothing. Nada. Rien (thank you one year of high school French). Not even an invitation for a penile enlargement. “Who doesn’t even get spam?” I asked. It was an inalienable right, along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  “No spam means it’s probably a new account,” Emme said. “Would also explain why there’s not much here. Just a draft from a couple weeks ago.”

  She pulled it up. It was written the same day as Lyla’s murder. The problem was that it wasn’t addressed to anyone. Not even a subject line, a la Why do you want to kill me {Insert First Name of Killer} {Insert Middle Initial} {Insert Last Name of Killer}?

  In fact, it only said one thing.

  Hello …

  It was clearly something she’d started but never gotten around to finishing. “Remind me of the name of the second email account again?”

  “Viv3000.”

  It was random. In fact, Viv wasn’t even a word. At least not one that could stand on its own. It could have been short for vivid. It could have been initials. It could have been a nickname. It should have been a lot easier to figure out. I’d done enough posthumous online stalking of Lyla to know her middle name wasn’t Vivian or Viva or anything that even started with a letter at the end of the alphabet. It also wasn’t the name of any family members. And nothing about the word vivid or the initials V. I.V. related to Anani. The same with the numbers on the end.

  I glanced over at Sienna, who wasn’t paying us one iota of attention. Her eyes were glued to her phone, probably texting Fab how unfair we were being.

  I began pacing, chasing a lead that didn’t seem to exist. “So basically we have an email account with too many messages and an email account with no messages. Let’s figure out a plan to go through the inbox and sent message folder of the main Anani account. I’m going to—”

  “Now can I get the Anani password?” Sienna practically shoved her cell in my face. Her Twitter app was open to an Anani tweet that was just a couple of weeks old. I read it out loud.

  “Pretty funny when your big blind has people so pressed you’re getting death threats. #Yawn #RevealDayisComing #SorryNotSorry”

  Twelve

  Well, hello my pretties. It’s that time again. Anani has to say bye-bye for a bit, but you know she always leaves you with a parting gift. This is the best one yet. By far.

  Picture it. LA. Last month. Sunset. A pretty big-time producer in town for one thing only: to meet someone Anani will call Piper. Piper’s a super well-known, super pretty, super busy A-lister who’s been any and everywhere these past few years. Your TV. Your radio. Your favorite website (wink wink). Talk about pipes. Even Anani has to admit she was singing along each and every time a Piper song was playing. She may have even downloaded one or two. All legally, of course.

  Mr. Producer knows what working with Piper would mean for his career and his bank account. Arrangements are made for a quick meet-and-greet at a place they both should feel at home: a studio. Things go pretty dang well. They talk. They vibe. They bond. Mr. Producer’s excited. So excited, in fact, he wants to get started right then and there. He asks Piper to step inside the recording booth.

  Only one problem: Piper can’t sing.

  And Anani doesn’t mean Piper can’t sing that night. Piper can’t sing. At all.

  You read that right. That voice you sang along to on the TV? The radio? Those annoying awards shows? Turns out Piper was singing along too.

  My little birdie told me Piper couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Pretty sure Mr. Producer wasn’t expecting that. So much for that epic collaboration, but you gotta keep the secret so the money continues to flow in and the sun doesn’t set on the career.

  Mr. Producer should consider himself lucky. Anani’s heard Piper actually sing and boy oh boy, it sure ain’t pretty. Not only will this one be revealed, but Anani has a first: audiovisuals. See you in a month. Until then …

  “Kandy Wrapper! Rosey Hartl. Vanessa Heffernan. Oh, and of course J. Chris.”

  Sienna screamed out names faster than I could write them down. We sat in the bloset after our mad dash home, facing the one wall not covered in shoes. Instead, it held my beloved whiteboard, which was getting quite the workout. I dotted the i in Chris, then stepped back to examine my handiwork. “So that’s at least ten A-list singers we wouldn’t be surprised lip-synced. We need to narrow it down.”

  “I say we start with J. Chris.”

  Sienna sounded adamant. I wasn’t quite on board. Not yet. “Her voice isn’t even that great. Like if I’m going to lip-sync, I’m borrowing an amazing voice. Not a just okay one.”

  “It’s better than yours. And mine.”

  Having spent a lifetime listening to my own shower concerts, I wasn’t going to argue that one. “Let’s say J. Chris is Piper. Then what’s the ‘pretty’ connection? Besides, you know, just looks. I mean, they’re all pretty. They wouldn’t be A-list if they weren’t. But the word itself must be significant. Anani—Lyla—used it five times.”

  Anani loved to plant clues via word choice. Not that I kept track or anything, but during her (extremely inaccurate) Tomari blind, she used fine three times. A reference to Omari’s LAPD 90036 character Jamal Fine. She chose her words carefully. Fun when you were trying to decipher gossip. When trying to decipher murder? Not so much. “Do any of them have something with pretty in it? Song title. Lyric. Favorite color of MAC lipstick. Something,”

  Sienna thought it over and shook her head. “MAC has a shade called Pretty Please. But
it’s pink and we know J. Chris isn’t having any of that.”

  Sure wasn’t. J. Chris even wore red lipstick in her “no makeup selfies.” “Can you read it again?”

  I sat down and closed my eyes, figuring it might help me think better. Maybe I’d have a flash of brilliance. Or maybe I’d fall asleep and wake up to find someone had solved the thing during my naptime.

  Sienna read the entire thing, her voice taking on the exaggerated pronunciation of a newscaster. “Mr. Producer should consider himself lucky. Anani’s heard Piper actually sing and boy oh boy, it sure ain’t pretty. Not only will this one be revealed, but Anani has a first: audiovisuals. See you in a month. Until then.” Sienna stopped reading and returned to her normal voice. “Boy oh boy, this is pretty hard.”

  My eyes flew open. “That’s it. The blind is about two people. We’re assuming pretty is a reference to Piper. What if it’s referring to Mr. Producer?”

  We spoke at the same time. “Pretty Boy!”

  Pretty Boy was a bigtime Jamaican-English record producer. You could always tell his songs by the heavy use of dancehall samples and the annoying screech of some woman yelling “He’s such a pretty boy.” Rumor had it that it was his mama. That was all I needed to know about that relationship. God bless his girlfriends. Past, present and future.

  “But isn’t he based in London?” I asked. “The blind specifically mentions LA.”

  “I saw him at XO a few weeks ago. He definitely was in town. That’s a new spot on—”

  I cut her off. “Sunset, right?”

  She nodded, but I already knew I was right. I’d retired from going out soon after I’d retired from acting. But I’d partied enough in the three years prior to know how the LA club scene worked. The names changed. The locations did not. A handful of places took turns being the “hot spot of the moment.” Their average shelf life was that of a baby carrot. When it expired, the club simply got a fresh coat of paint and a new name and went to the back of the “hot spot” line to patiently wait its turn again.

  I thought about it. Clubs weren’t the only thing I knew off Sunset Boulevard. “She mentioned pretty five times and sunset twice. Has to be another clue.”