Hollywood Ending

by Kellye Garrett

  The lawns were big. The houses were bigger. Huge two-story numbers with landscapes that resembled parks. Lyla’s house was a classic Tudor and had a “Guest Cottage Available” sign staked in the front yard, right next to trash bags sitting at the bottom of the driveway. Someone didn’t waste any time.

  A woman opened the door before we could even use the doorbell. I’d cast her as the gentle old white lady neighbor who sexually harassed the hot male rom-com lead and cursed like an old-school rapper for cheap laughs. “Hello, are you here about the apartment?”

  “Yes,” I said, because I was.

  Of course, “Honest” Aubrey spoke at the same time. “We are looking for the former residence of Ms. Lyla Davis. Would this be it?”

  The landlord’s smile deflated like my ex’s tire after I may or may not have stabbed it with a knife. Aubrey didn’t notice the reaction he elicited—nothing new there—and introduced us before launching into a barrage of questions. “Did you notice any suspicious visitors lingering outside over the past few weeks? Did Ms. Davis seem frightened or was she acting strangely?”

  “No,” the woman said, and left it at that. All righty then.

  “Do you think we could take a look at her possessions?”

  “Gone,” the woman said. “Her parents asked me to box up all the personal crap and send it back to Ohio. Told me I could donate the rest. They promised to reimburse me for shipping but they haven’t sent a check yet.” She gestured to where the two trash bags sat next to the state-issued garbage bin. “And I got two bags of stuff of hers just sitting out here the past three days. The Salvation Army said they’d pick it up but so far no one’s showed up. I’m not paying someone to haul it off. Especially if her parents aren’t going to reimburse me.”

  Well, that stunk. For her. It was pretty good for us.

  “We can take it for you,” I said. Right after we went through it.

  I’d thought maybe good manners would make her refuse and then we’d play the back and forth game of “I couldn’t bother you.” “It’s no bother.” “Really?” “Really.” “Well I suppose, if you don’t mind.”

  Instead, she just gave us a mumbled thanks and slammed the door before we could even tell her she was welcome. I turned excitedly to Aubrey. “License to snoop!!!”

  And with that, I practically skipped to the street. It was the most exercise I’d gotten all month. Not able to contain myself, I pulled open the first bag, imagining years and years of diaries and printed-out death threats.

  That was not the case. At all. Aubrey joined me and peered down at the bag’s contents. “Ms. Davis was apparently a movie fan,” he said.

  That was putting it lightly. There were assorted personal odds and ends but mostly the bag was stocked full of DVDs. The other one held more of the same.

  Blurg.

  For a split second, I was tempted to just jump in the car and leave them be. But I was already risking bad karma with my “texting” and driving. Aubrey and I hauled both bags to my car.

  “I have an appointment tonight,” Aubrey said once we were back on the road.

  “Want me to drop you off?”

  “I am just letting you know that I will not be able to go through the DVDs with you.”

  Was Aubrey suggesting we ransack Lyla’s DVD collection for our own benefit? I thought it over. I was coming up at the end of my (fourth) free Netflix trial. I would be in need of some entertainment.

  He continued. “You can ask your friends to help you search for the one with the lip-syncing proof on it, correct?”

  Oh. That sounded more like Aubrey. He actually had a point though. If Lyla did indeed have audiovisual proof of Piper’s identity—like she’d claimed in the blind—she had to keep it somewhere. If she was old-school enough to have DVDs, maybe she was old-school enough to keep the proof on a DVD. And maybe she hid it in a movie case.

  I immediately sent out a text. Wanna go to an opening party?!

  I made sure not to do it while driving.

  “You know you are wrong for this, Dayna.”

  When I was young, a dead giveaway my parents were really mad was when they called me Dayna. And if they used my full name—Dayna Olivia Anderson—I was really in for it. Daddy tells the story of how when I was two he wrote my full name out on a chalkboard and when he told me what he was writing, I solemnly told him it was my “bad name.” Not much had changed in the ensuing twenty-ish years. Though I wasn’t expecting Sienna to give me a whooping, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she put me in time-out.

  After getting my text, she’d assumed the opening was to celebrate a new store or art show. Oops. She was decked out in a red sequin dress so short that the sequins and dress were practically the same size. Of course, she looked amazing, even while standing in the middle of the hundreds of DVDs I’d unceremoniously dumped on our living room floor. I’d already gone through the other stuff in the bags and determined they weren’t helpful to the investigation.

  “In my defense, this is a party,” I said. “And we will be opening movies.”

  “What’s your defense for telling me ‘movie night’ at your place?” Omari asked from behind me. He was clearly Team Sienna in this argument.

  “My defense is that if there is a movie in here that catches your fancy, we can definitely watch it.” I lifted up the bowl I’d placed on the side table. “I made popcorn!”

  They exchanged a look, but neither made a move toward the snacks or the DVDs. I resorted to begging. “Look, help me out this one time. Please. We just need to look for any DVD that doesn’t match the cover. Sienna, don’t you want to be the first person to see proof of Piper lip-syncing?”

  She didn’t respond, but she did grab a handful of DVD cases and move to the couch. Omari, however, stayed in place. I looked at him. “And do you ever want to have me spend the night again?”

  He sighed but picked up a handful and moved to the area of the couch that Sienna wasn’t occupying. I was glad they were both finally on board, but I still sat on the floor close to the door just in case either tried to make a run for it.

  We all got to work. It wasn’t the worst party I’d been to—that distinction was in eighth grade when I accidentally got pushed into a pool mere hours after Mama plopped down $75 to get my hair pressed. But it was close.

  I was pretty sure I’d dozed off with my eyes open when I heard the magic words. “Bingo!”

  Omari held up a case for the tenth anniversary edition of Reality Bites. Young versions of Ben Stiller, Winona Ryder, and Ethan Hawke were plastered on the front.

  He dramatically opened the case. The DVD inside indeed had no writing. It could have been bootleg, but bootleggers normally made a semi-respectful effort to trick you into thinking it was the actual DVD. They at least pasted the movie name on in a fancy font. Or so I’d heard.

  I stood up as if possessed and practically floated toward him. My thoughts hopped, skipped, and jumped to watching contentedly as Geppetto did a perp walk while an unseen news anchor intoned how they’d hired Junior to kill Lyla Davis and thought they’d gotten away with it. And how the proof all came down to a DVD that ASAP Investigations—I paused and mentally rewound my fantasy—the newly licensed ASAP Investigations had uncovered when they realized they’d been used as pawns in the killer’s deadly game of chess.

  I composed my official statement while we popped that sucker into the DVD player. By the time we hit play, I could hardly breathe. The screen was pitch black. Then, as suddenly as a car crash, we heard a female voice humming. It didn’t sound like J. Chris, but then, if she was lip-syncing, it wouldn’t have.

  I leaned in closer just as the image came in focus.

  Our jaws all dropped in unison.

  Fourteen

  It wasn’t J. Chris. It was reality star Joseline. And she was humming all right. Just not on a mic. There was also an organ she playe
d with. I’ll leave it at that. The home movie featured a very naked Joseline and husband number two or three. The marriages were so close together it was always hard for me to remember which one had come first.

  The camera went black, only to come back moments later in what had to be a bathroom. Joseline stood on the side of a tub as confidently as if it were a stage. Though she’d switched from humming to moaning, she still wasn’t wearing much clothes. Her hands were wrapped around a shower rod. His hands were wrapped around body parts.

  I had one thought and one thought only: Joseline probably killed it doing pullups during high school gym. Her upper arm strength was amazing—especially considering what else was going on.

  Although it was all very interesting, it wasn’t very helpful. At least not to my investigation. Joseline was not the type to kill over leaked sex tapes. If anything, she’d leak it herself.

  I shut the TV off and snatched the DVD out of the player. We’d only watched thirty seconds but it would be thirty seconds that was burned permanently in my brain. I glanced over at Sienna and Omari, only to see them staring at the now-black screen with looks of wonder.

  I gave them both a tight smile. “So that’s a wrap for movie night.”

  I shoved the remaining DVDs back into the trash bags and Omari and I headed to his place, where we opened them over Thai food, beer, and Lyla’s copy of Do The Right Thing playing in the background. The rest of the DVDs all were in the correct cases. I should’ve been disappointed. I wasn’t. After stumbling across Joseline’s sexcapades, I was happy more than anything else.

  Neither of us mentioned Joseline’s sex tape, though I did force myself to watch it again, fast forwarding to make sure there was nothing on there related to the Piper blind. There wasn’t, but I’d give the tape to the police just in case.

  That decided, I made a good go of pushing it out of my mind—until I had to use the bathroom. I found myself glancing at the shower rod more and more with each subsequent visit. By my final trip before bed, I couldn’t hold out any longer.

  I stepped up on the tub to get a closer look. Thanks to Joseline’s home movie, it had gone from innocent apparatus used to prevent water from splashing on your floor to something of infinite possibilities.

  I listened for my boyfriend. Realizing the coast was clear, I reached up. Tentatively at first, then more confidently. The rod felt cool—and flimsy. I gently pulled, making sure not to yank too hard. The last thing I needed was for the entire thing to come crashing down. No way to explain that one. I had to hand it to Joseline. There was no way I could do it. I suddenly felt bad for all the times I’d underestimated her.

  I washed my hands again—as if that could also scrub any impure thoughts—and headed into the bedroom. Omari was in bed, talking to another woman. Nina’s voice tinged through the iPhone speaker: “We have to be there exactly at three on Thursday. I’m helping out at Silver Sphere until they can find a permanent replacement for Lyla, so I’ll be coming from the office.”

  As much as I hated Nina’s constant intrusions, the mention of the Silver Sphere office gave me an idea. I slipped out of the bedroom and grabbed my phone from the coffee table in Omari’s front room. Despite the late hour, Aubrey picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello, Ms. Anderson. Did you find anything with the DVDs?”

  There are two people on this planet I would never, ever, ever talk to about anything remotely related to sex. One was in Athens, Georgia, where she was still insisting I was basically a virgin birth. The other waited for me to answer his question.

  “Nope. Nothing at all.” I quickly continued talking in case he could hear me blushing through the phone. “I still think the audiovisual proof is somewhere. Maybe she thought it was more secure at work. I figure I’ll go over to the SSO tomorrow and ask about the reward money so I can check. That makes sense, right?”

  I waited for him to validate my idea. When he didn’t say anything right away, I panicked. “Right. I mean, I could also do something else. Try to get hired as a temp assistant.”

  Aubrey interrupted me. Thank God. “That will not be necessary. Your first thought to check the office is spot-on.”

  Like Angela Bassett, I exhaled. But I still didn’t feel like I had my groove back. Not quite yet. “You sure?”

  “Yes. Please let me know how it goes.”

  We hung up. By the time I walked back into the bedroom, Omari was off the phone. I slid in next to him. “Think I’m gonna stop by the Silver Sphere office tomorrow after I get Emme’s birthday present.”

  “Great. Tell her it’s from the both of us.” There was a pause and the next time he spoke, he didn’t look at me. “You check the shower rod?”

  I paused oh so briefly. Had he heard? “Nope!”

  “Me neither.”

  And then he smiled.

  I consider myself a smart woman. One who knew I’d never be able to show my face at Emme’s place or, more likely, on her iPhone screen, if I didn’t get her Focals sunglasses in time for her birthday.

  It helped I knew exactly where to go, thanks to the list of stores she’d thoughtfully printed out. Samy’s Camera was closest so I drove over to Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City to pick it up. The store occupied the corner of a shopping center. When I walked in, I saw cameras. I did not see Samy, or at least anyone who looked like one. I did see everyone else and their mama.

  The place was packed. I stopped a sales associate as she tried to fly by undetected. “Excuse me, where are your Focals?”

  “Follow the crowd.”

  I should have known these things would be popular since Emme wanted a pair. But still. My mother had dragged me on enough Black Friday Walmart excursions to know what to do. Elbows out. Knees bent. Stay low and focused. Grab and run. And no matter what you do, do not make eye contact. With anyone. It was an obvious sign of weakness.

  I followed the rules to a tee and was in line to pay in the time it took to say, “I would drop kick a nun for that Furbie.” You’d think a store that sold electronics would have the ability to let you pay with your mind—or at least with your iPhone. You’d be wrong. Samy at least provided great, and free, WiFi. I passed the time watching videos of cake being frosted. No judging.

  After one particularly pleasing video involving buttercream and basketweave, I forced myself to be productive and check the Anani email accounts. I had to log in to both. For some reason, I found it impossible to remember to select the button letting my email keep me logged into the account. I could remember Oprah’s entire “All my life I had to fight” monologue from The Color Purple, yet had to fight to remember that.

  The Anani account had “only” 427 new emails. A cursory glance turned up that most was spam mixed with the occasional bit of fan mail. The Viv3000 account was as empty as my wallet. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but a girl can dream, right?

  I exited the browser, paid for Emme’s gift, and made it to Hollywood Boulevard in thirty minutes. Not too shabby.

  Despite what the name may have you believe, Hollywood Boulevard is not, in fact, the epicenter of the entertainment industry. If you want to find a movie set, you have to look north to the Valley, south to Culver City, and east to Los Feliz. Since 2001, the street has been home to Hollywood & Highland, a complex offering tourists three levels of the same chains they can find much cheaper at home and offering actors the opportunity to get dressed real fancy-like and pick up an Oscar or two at the Dolby Theatre.

  Oscar night aside, you could definitely still find stars, both literal (the Hollywood Walk of Fame) and fictitious (two Batmen per one block radius extending from Highland Avenue to points east and west).

  It was also home to the Silver Sphere Organization, which occupied an entire level of fourth floor real estate in an office building a few blocks west of the Dolby. I stepped off the elevator and was greeted with a large-and-in-charge version of the Silver
Sphere Award itself. At least six feet, it was taller than the average Hollywood actor sans shoe lifts.

  The waiting room was big. It was also empty. The reception desk sat unmanned and a glass door—probably locked—protected employees from any random crazies who were pissed that Tom Cruise had been shut out for his heartwarming portrayal of Jack Reacher. The supersized Silver Sphere was left all alone to fend for itself. Guess they figured no one would have the balls—or upper arm strength—to steal a six-foot award replica. I sure didn’t.

  I was tempted to press my head against the glass door and make ridiculous fish faces until someone took pity on me and let me in. Either that or knock. But then I saw the sign and a phone that looked like the Batphone that Commissioner Gordon used to summon Bruce Wayne. It was planted firmly on the empty reception desk and the printed-out instructions next to it suggested I pick said phone up and hit 3.

  The phone didn’t even get out a full ring before someone answered. The voice was female and cheery. “Hello! Welcome to the Silver Sphere Organization! Please state your name”—there was a brief pause and I wondered if she did a back flip—“and who you’re here to see!”

  Not a problem. I’d known my name since I was at least two, and also who I was here to see since I’d come up with my cover story earlier that morning. “Hi, I’m Dayna Anderson of ASAP Investigations. I was told I could stop by and pick up a check.”

  A lie but at least a good one. Nina had indeed told me I could stop by the office to pick up the check. She just didn’t tell me when. For all I knew, the check could actually be ready.

  “Hi Dayna. It’s Kitt!”

  The singsong tone made me think I should remember who Kitt was. Problem was I didn’t. I felt bad so I employed the “fake it till you make it” approach. “Oh hey, Kitt, I didn’t recognize your voice.” Just like I probably wouldn’t recognize you! “Can you buzz me in?”

  “Of course! When you get in, turn left and walk down the hall. I’ll meet you and show you to Nina.”