I knew they were there. I just needed to get in to see them. It wasn’t like a studio where once you were in, you were free to roam. With shows, check-in was just the first stop. You needed a badge to get you anywhere, but especially backstage.
Like celebrity itself, awards show badges had different levels. A-list was the All Access pass. It could get you anywhere anytime. B-list was VIP. It still got you into the good spots. C-list was Working Staff. You could get most places backstage but you weren’t rubbing shoulders with talent. D-list was reserved for the red carpet and press. You were lucky if security let you out of sight to go to the bathroom. And Z-list? Those were the seat-fillers, people who volunteered to sit in Todd Arrington’s seat when he needed to run to the bathroom. The last thing a show producer wanted was for his or her audience to look empty during a telecast.
The badges were all color-coded so guards could immediately distinguish the haves from the have-nots with just a quick glance. They also each had a number and your name, in case you were tempted to make a copy for your friends. A big no-no.
Of course, any badge was better than what I had, which was nothing. Not that I let a little thing like that stop me. I reminded myself that if you act like you belong, most people think you do. And I did belong. I’d been personally invited to the show by Gus and Nina. Just not on this day.
I found the security checkpoint. The guard looked like he spent too much time at McDonald’s and not enough time at his barber. He was pudgy, with a mop of curly dirty blond hair rising two inches from his scalp. He’d be immediately cast as the comedic lead against a super-hot chick who wouldn’t give him the time of day in real life. I saw him flick his eyes down to my chest. For once he wasn’t trying to peek at my boobs.
I played dumb. “Is this where I can pick up tickets?” Kitt promised she’d messenger them. Not that he needed to know that.
He smiled. “I don’t believe ticket pickup has opened yet.”
“Oh, I know.” I didn’t. “But I told Kitt I needed to get them early. She’s in the production office. I’d be happy to just run in and pick them up.”
I made a move to walk through the full-body scanner. He stopped me. No surprise there. “You’re more than welcome to wait for someone to bring the tickets out to you.”
“No problem.” I pretended to fire off a text, then stood to the side.
Ten minutes later I was still out there. I’d learned the guards were Barry and Alissa. They were shocked at who’d gotten kicked off Dancing With the Stars that week. They both thought the ’90s-era sitcom star was now a shoo-in to win it. Having watched the show myself, I begged to differ. I just couldn’t, since I was eavesdropping and all.
Barry the Guard glanced over at me for what felt like the kajillionth time. Neither Nina nor Kitt had come to drop off my tickets. Shocker, since I hadn’t contacted them. I pretended to be annoyed. “I have to be in Santa Monica in a half hour. Can’t I just run in? I promise I’ll grab my tickets and come right back out. I won’t go rogue.”
“I’d love to let you do that but I can’t.” He looked at me again. This time a bit more closely. “Did we go to high school together?”
There it was.
“Yes! I was just thinking the same thing. I’m Dayna. Barry, right?”
Thank you, mad eavesdropping skills. And thank you Chubby’s for pimping me in twenty-three commercials in eight months.
“You look exactly the same,” he said.
I bet. “You too.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
“Great.” At least that wasn’t a lie. I’d spoken with her the other day on her way back from Michael’s. The New Year’s planners were finally on sale and so cheap she’d picked up two. She promised to send me one. “She actually asks about you all the time.”
“Really? I love your mom. I’d do anything for that lady.”
“Like let her daughter in to get her ticket?” I made it seem like I was joking. Unless, of course, he let me.
“Yeah … no.”
It was worth a shot. “Gonna head out. It was nice seeing you again.”
Barry nodded. I went back to the car, bypassing Mack’s tour bus on the way. I resisted the urge to kick it. If Barry wasn’t going to let me in, I’d simply wait for them to come out.
I found Z leaning against the driver’s-side door of Omari’s Mercedes. I wasn’t surprised he knew I had the car. I figured I had two options. Talk to him or open the passenger’s side and shimmy my way into the driver’s seat. Neither was appealing.
He wore all black again, the purple relegated to his belt. I got within two feet of him before I stopped. I could smell the cinnamon. “Dude, what’s with the purple?”
He reached for his belt. “You don’t like it? Want me to take it off?”
“I’m good.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind, let me know.”
I most certainly would not. “I’m surprised to find you here,” I said, instead.
“And I’m surprised not to find you waiting in the bushes.”
I only used those to pee. “I didn’t see any around and I forgot to bring my own.”
I hit the automatic lock, hoping he’d get the hint. He didn’t. Just stared at me some more. It took a full thirty-eight seconds for him to speak. I counted.
“You should be happy to see me,” he finally said. “I have something you want.”
“And what would that be?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“Money order receipts and something better.”
“A confession?”
“Emails.”
I was more confused than excited. “Why would anyone blackmail someone in writing?”
“‘Criminal mastermind’ is an oxymoron. Most of them are idiots. You want them or not?”
“Of course.”
I stuck out my hand so he’d know I was serious. That’s when I realized he wasn’t holding anything and his pants were way too tight to have anything in his pocket. My eyes narrowed. “You don’t have them.”
“Not on me, but I’ll get them to you … if you leave Mack alone. No more texts. No more calls. Definitely no more direct messages. Agreed?”
“I wouldn’t have done all that if he’d given me this stuff when he promised.”
“That’s not an agreement.”
I sighed. “Agreed.”
I would take them to the cops as soon as he handed them to me. Aubrey would be pleased. The thought of Aubrey reminded me of his situation so I went for the abrupt subject change. “Got a hypothetical for you. Let’s say a law enforcement officer becomes a scapegoat and is forced to resign. It’s been a couple of years. How likely is the chance they’ll be hired by a police or sheriff’s department again?”
Z didn’t even have to think it over. “Not good. They always suggest you resign because it looks better than being fired, but it’s a trick. Your hypothetical friend should have stayed and gotten fired because he could have taken the case to arbitration. Most of the time the outside arbitrator will reinstate them. Any lawyer would tell them that.”
“His didn’t.”
“Then he needs a new lawyer.”
Great. Not only was Aubrey not getting back with the sheriff’s department, he was paying someone to lie to him about it. That wouldn’t do. At all. “Can you recommend one?”
“Hypothetically?” Z asked. I shrugged. “It won’t be cheap.”
In that moment, I realized it was selfish to want Aubrey to remain a private investigator, especially if that wasn’t what he wanted. He’d grown on me, but I could find another PI to apprentice with. He or she wouldn’t have a collection of orange reflector suits or refuse to call me anything but Ms. Anderson or think he or she was a walking GPS, but still. I wanted Aubrey happy. Maybe we could use the reward money to hire a decent lawyer.
; I looked at Z. “We should have some money coming in.” I hoped. Said money was coming from my two main suspects. Hopefully the non-killer would be appreciative enough to still pay us for catching the killer-killer.
Z finally got up from leaning on Omari’s car. “How about I make some calls to some people I know. See if I can help Aubrey out.”
I wasn’t the least bit surprised that he knew exactly who we were talking about. It was his job to. “Okay,” I said.
Ten minutes later, I was at the Tommy’s on Beverly, enjoying a chili cheeseburger while wondering if Z would come through and how I’d explain it to Aubrey if he did. Aubrey wasn’t a rule-breaker, even when it came to helping himself.
Not that I was even sure I could trust Z. Mack either, for that matter. It all felt a bit too convenient. Mack had gone from telling me too much to telling me not enough to telling me nothing to suddenly offering proof by proxy that Gus was indeed blackmailing him. It didn’t make much sense.
My Spidey senses refused to believe these emails even existed. If Gus was some blackmailing mastermind like Mack had claimed, wouldn’t he be too smart to put it in writing? My only thought was that if they did exist, then Gus wrote in some sort of code. If so, I wasn’t sure how much that would help matters. And it was all a moot point if I couldn’t even get my hands on them. I wasn’t sure if it was yet another delay tactic.
On the flip side, if the emails did exist, then Mack wouldn’t be the only one with copies. I needed to take the middle man out of the equation and find them myself. I knew exactly where: Gus’ office.
If this was a heist movie, the Silver Sphere offices would be secured three floors underground in an airless chamber guarded by a feral unicorn with a Rambo-approved knife as a horn. The only way I’d be able to get in would be using an air vent, some dental floss, and an entire can of unicorn repellent I’d bought off eBay. But it wasn’t.
I didn’t even have to use the Batphone to beg someone to let me in. A group of interns happened to leave as I got there. They didn’t question my presence. One even held the door for me and I breezed right in.
As Kitt had warned, the place was practically deserted. The interns were gone and the few employees not at rehearsals were taking full advantage of the deserted office to play Candy Crush and surf the web. No one paid me any mind. Maybe they were used to seeing me. I’d sure been there enough.
It turned out the hardest part of my not-so-covert mission was finding Gus’s office. During my vast array of visits, I’d never had occasion to see it, so I did two laps of the entire floor before I found it lurking behind a closed door in a random corner. I pretended to knock, then breezed in and shut the door behind me, ignoring the phone ringing from the room’s depths.
It was exactly what I imagined—an ode to Gus. The same life-size photos that littered the outside hallways were also in here. The only difference was that these photos all featured Gus. Some with past winners and nominees. Some with just Gus himself. Even one of him casually caressing a six-foot-tall award replica like they were friends with benefits.
The room looked more like a lounge than office, the desk even shoved into a corner as if an afterthought. Gus clearly spent more time on the large leather couch smack-dab in the middle of the room. I didn’t blame him. It looked way more comfortable. But I didn’t check to see if it was, instead opting to head to the computer on the desk. Before I turned it on, I said a quick prayer to the password gods to show me mercy on this kind day. I would have given an offering, but the only thing I had on me was a half-used EOS lip balm and I had a feeling the gods didn’t have to worry about chapped lips.
I turned the computer on. It loaded and went straight to his desktop. Thank. You.
I took a glance at his desktop screen. Not a file in site. He even had managed to remove the recycle bin. How do you recycle a recycle bin? The desktop was cleaner than my mouth. And this was coming from a girl who didn’t curse. Much.
I clicked on the mail icon on the taskbar. Outlook loaded within seconds. I expected an inbox littered with thousands of messages. I got that and then some. It wasn’t just littered. There was enough email in there to fill a landfill. It looked like Gus hadn’t deleted a message since 2006. And most if it was unread, at that.
The latest one was from something called the Cisco Unity Connection Messaging System and it came with an attachment. Apparently Silver Sphere used a phone system that sent an email when someone left you a message. Fancy.
I searched the inbox, typing Mack Christie. His name popped up in a lot of emails, just none discussing videos or blackmail or any of that. Blurg.
For kicks, I checked Gus’s sent items folder. Empty. I felt like Goldilocks. One was too full. One was too empty. Except there wasn’t one just right. It definitely wasn’t in his trash, because that was empty too. It didn’t make sense. At all.
Exactly what was going on here? It wasn’t like I could ask Gus and find out. Only thing I could think was maybe it wasn’t the regular email account he used after all. Was he actually doing business from a Hotmail account he’d had since the dawn of civilization? Deciding to find out, I opened his web browser and checked his history. That too came up blank.
Great. I’d broken in for nothing. This never happened to Tom Cruise.
Never a fan of wasting anyone’s time, especially my own, I forced myself to think. What were the chances Gus and Mack just communicated over email? There had to be text messages, in-person meetings, phone calls. And if there weren’t phone calls, there were probably voicemails.
And if Mack had left a voicemail, the Cisco Unified Messaging System would have thoughtfully logged it for Gus’s benefit—and mine. I didn’t even need to pull out my phone to find Mack’s number. I’d called it so many times I knew it almost as well as my ABCs.
I did a search. No hits.
I looked up the number for his management company. Still nothing.
I forced myself to think some more. Motive. Means. Opportunity.
I had motive for Gus: Anani threatened to put an end to his cash flow and out him in the process. Opportunity was a bit of a moot point since someone had hired Junior.
That left means.
If I couldn’t connect Gus to Mack, perhaps I could connect him to Junior. A gossip blogger who lives in the lowest of the Hollywood Hills—I’d checked—doesn’t normally come across a guy in the South Bay. Factor in the onslaught of 24/7 LA traffic and it was physically impossible. And it wasn’t like you could find a murderer on Craigslist like it was a free couch or a sublet. Not that I ever looked.
Regina had given me Junior’s number, so I still had it in my contacts. At the time I’d thought she was being bitter. Now I knew better. I typed the number and searched. A message popped up. I clicked on the attached WAV file and let it play.
Junior’s voice was surprisingly high-pitched. “Hey man, it’s Junior. Got your message. Call me back.”
It was left the night he killed himself.
Twenty-Five
I called the tip line as soon as I got out of there. No one picked up so I left a message. I’d hoped they’d bring Gus in for questioning before our scheduled interview but it didn’t happen. I’d learned the hard way that information flowed one way when it came to providing tips to the police. Usually you only found out if it went anywhere from Google News Alerts. Certainly not from the police. I’d given them information more than once only for it to disappear into a file and never be seen again.
I just hoped that wouldn’t be the case with Gus. The cops might know something I didn’t, like whether his conversations with Junior were about the merits of coffee versus tea. But I doubted it, which was why I planned to follow through on my interview the next day.
The plan was to pick up my car from the shop and head over to the Shrine for the interview. It felt like forever since I’d scheduled it with Kitt. In that time, Nina had edged Gus o
ut for first place on my number one suspect board only for Gus to have a last-minute resurgence. They both had motive. Nina had discovered Anani’s true identity and mysteriously wiped out her savings. Gus had promised Mack he’d “take care of it,” and it wasn’t every day one got a phone call from a murderer-for-hire.
I was curious to talk to Gus, especially in the company of an entire film crew. Television might look like two people in a room—or in this case, in a banana-yellow Airstream. In reality, there were tons of people lurking behind the camera. Cameramen. Directors. Lighting guys. Production assistants. Makeup artists. Hair stylists. Producers. Gaffers, which was a fancy word for electrician. It took hundreds of man hours to produce something you watched in thirty minutes and tweeted how much it sucked in 280 characters.
I, for one, would appreciate all their hard work—and constant presence.
If all went well, Gus would end up behind bars, the case would be wrapped up, and I could finally concentrate on actually attending the Silver Sphere Awards instead of investigating the people behind it.
Hearing Sienna in the kitchen, I walked down the hall to meet her. “We all set for tomorrow?”
She’d gone all out, hiring Dante to drive us to the Shrine and a Glam Squad to get us awards-show ready. Normally I’d shrug it off, but of course Omari’s mother was joining us. Though it wasn’t our first meeting, it would be my first meeting with her as Omari’s girlfriend. I wanted it to go well.
“Did Fab have any problem with the dresses … ” I trailed off when I saw the sweet potato pie French toast. It was the second time in a week she’d made it. Not good. I’d never been so scared to see food before in my life. She tried a smile but I wasn’t having it. “Just tell me.”
“Sure you don’t want to eat first?”
I gave her the look all black girls are born with. The ones our moms give us at the grocery store, any time church goes past 1:00 p.m., and when we have the nerve to ask for McDonald’s when we know we don’t have McDonald’s money and that we have perfectly good food at home. The ones that convey a very clear, concise message: Do. Not. Play. With. Me.
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