Rita’s face—with an I-can’t-wait-to-ruin-your-night expression—appeared over the shelving unit next to us. Bella and I exchanged a see-you-later eyebrow bob, and I headed for the shoe department.
Something about trying on shoes made women lose their minds—I know because that’s what happens to me—so the department looked as if hordes of looters had swept through on the eve of a zombie apocalypse. Boxes, lids, tissue paper—plus anything that would fit on a foot—were scattered in the aisles. To the untrained observer, this might look as if it created a great deal of work for the poor grunt of a sales clerk saddled with the job of clean up, but for me it meant I had a perfect excuse to ignore customers.
Moving at my usual I-can-stretch-this-out-until-closing pace, I focused my attention on boxing and shelving. Luckily, I didn’t have to think too hard about the task so my brain was free to roam through more entertaining thoughts.
Finding a way to get Darby to make my Domino clutch in time for my cousin’s wedding was big in my head, of course. I was confident I could come up with a way to get her to let me jump the line, then oh-so-casually drop by her boutique and spring it on her. All I had to do was come up with the brilliant idea.
But instead of conjuring up a desperately needed brilliant idea, my thoughts turned to Rayna’s murder. Maybe it was seeing the KGE backpacks in Darby’s shop—I still thought it was ultra crappy of Katrina to use cheap fabric for the bags and then force the models to pay for the repairs—or maybe there was another reason I suddenly focused on the image of the crime scene. I couldn’t be sure. Something about finding Rayna’s body seemed off to me, and I still couldn’t pin down exactly what it was.
My cell phone vibrated in my back pocket. I shoved the boxes of shoes I was carrying onto an empty shelf—they didn’t belong there, but oh well—and ducked into the stockroom.
I was mega-grateful for the interruption, and it hit me how dreadful it must have been for people back in the day when they were at work with nothing to do but actually work. How did they take care of their personal business, keep up with friends, and make plans for when they got off?
Standing among the shelving units filled with boxes of shoes, I pulled out my phone and saw that Marcie had texted me about plans for the weekend. See? Having a cell phone was essential to daily life now. Good thing I wasn’t living back in the ’80s—though I’m sure I could have totally pulled off the chunky jewelry, shoulder pads, and big hair—because no way could I run my life without my phone. And not just my personal life. I’d be lost without my phone at L.A. Affairs. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who had a job that didn’t rely on—
Wait. Hang on a minute.
Rayna’s cell phone. I’d seen it lying next to her body at the foot of the stairs. At the time Clark had speculated that she was on her phone, not paying attention, and had fallen down the stairs. I hadn’t given it another thought until now.
Oh my God, maybe Rayna had actually been talking to someone when she’d confronted her killer at the top of the stairs. Had she, perhaps, told that person who she’d run into? Named a name? Had whoever was on the other end thought their call had simply been dropped, and not realized what had actually happened? Was there someone out there who knew who had killed Rayna?
Then something else hit me.
This had to be the weird something’s-not-right-here thoughts that had been rambling around in my head about finding Rayna, the thing that I hadn’t been able to pinpoint.
Then yet another thing hit me.
Had the homicide detectives thought to check this out and identify the caller? Probably, I decided—detectives were really smart guys—which meant, of course, that it was possible for me to get the info.
I called Detective Shuman.
He didn’t answer—which irritated me that he wasn’t available to act on my oh-so-brilliant revelation—so I left a message asking him to call me.
I tucked my cell phone into my pocket and did a couple of fist pumps, confident that I was onto something. Rayna’s murderer would be revealed in short order, the fashion crawl would therefore come off without a hitch, and I wouldn’t lose my job at L.A. Affairs.
Do I totally rock, or what?
I was amped up by the I-know-this-will-work-out turn of events, which caused me to work faster, and thankfully, made my shift go by quicker. I punched out, grabbed my handbag—a fabulous Coach tote—from my locker, and beat everyone else out the front door into the Holt’s-will-do-anything-to-save-a-buck poorly lit parking lot.
As I approached my car, I noticed another vehicle start up down the row. Headlights came on. It whipped out of the space and screeched to a halt, blocking my car.
The driver leaned across the seat and opened the passenger-side door.
“Get in,” he told me.
I got in.
Chapter 11
It’s like I always say—you never know when something good is going to happen to you and this was, wow, way better than good.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
Jack glanced at me as he drove through the Holt’s parking lot. I couldn’t always tell from his expression exactly what was on his mind—I’m sure he did that on purpose—so my thoughts ran wild thinking he was about to whisk me off on a wild, exotic getaway, or that he had a tough case to solve and couldn’t possibly move forward without my help.
But, instead, Jack surprised me by throwing a half-grin my way and saying, “You worked two jobs today. I figured you could use a beer.”
Not a getaway or a hot case, but I’d take it.
Jack drove to a bar a few miles away on Soledad Canyon Road and we went inside. It wasn’t fancy, upscale, or trendy, which I appreciated since I was dressed in my Holt’s I-look-crappy-to-match-this-crappy-place attire. Jack looked fantastic, of course, in black cargo pants and a navy blue shirt. The lighting was low, a TV over the bar was tuned to the Dodgers in extra innings, and the few people scattered around the place were chatting quietly.
We got a table in the corner. Jack sat with his back to the wall, like a gunslinger in an Old West saloon expecting trouble to walk through the bat-wing doors—which was way hot, of course. The waitress came over right away, greeted Jack by name—jeez, this guy knows everybody—and took our order, beer all round.
Despite Jack’s effort to make his sudden appearance seem casual, I knew he wouldn’t have shown up in the Holt’s parking lot unless he had something significant to share with me—although I did appreciate the beer and could definitely use one—which made me slightly antsy, thinking there was a problem with the fashion crawl.
I was about to ask Jack what the heck had happened when he asked, “Did you pick out a handbag?”
I remembered then that I’d run into Jack on the street outside Darby’s boutique. While I really needed to know what was up with the crawl, talking about the Domino clutch was way cooler.
“Yes. Oh my God, look at this bag.” I got out my cell phone and showed him the photo I’d taken. “It’s the Domino. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
Jack took his time studying the pic, then asked, “Are you taking it some place special?”
I groaned—but not in a good way. “My cousin’s wedding.”
Jack reeled back slightly and, really, I couldn’t blame him. Family weddings had that effect on most everyone.
“I want to take it,” I explained. “But the bag won’t be ready in time. Darby sews each of them by hand so there’s a waiting list. I don’t know what I’m going to take to the wedding now. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, I don’t have a plus-one either.”
Jack flinched and, again, I couldn’t blame him. Single, unattached people were considered fair game by friends saddled with invitations to do-I-really-have-to-go-to-this-thing occasions, and constantly lived in fear of being dragged along under the guise of friendship—sort of like any guy who owned a pickup truck had to always be on guard against somebody asking for help moving.
No way would I ask Jack to suffer through
my cousin’s wedding—nobody wanted to deal with their own family, let alone somebody else’s—so I decided this was a good time to change the subject.
“So what’s up?” I asked.
Jack pulled a folded slip of paper from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table to me.
“The woman you were looking for,” he told me.
I glanced at the note and saw contact information for Melody Case, the agent who’d left KGE.
“Thanks,” I said. “Beer’s on me.”
“Forget it.”
“Come on,” I said. “I have to do something for you.”
“You will.”
A toe-curling, stomach-fluttering expression came over Jack’s face.
“When I decide what I want, you’ll know it,” he told me.
Thank God he hadn’t used his Barry White voice. I’m totally helpless against his Barry White voice. Still, every intelligent thought flew right out of my head—how could it not?
Luckily, the waitress showed up with our beer. I grabbed my mug, took three big swings, and tried desperately to think of something to say.
Nothing came to mind.
“I didn’t find anything on that lawsuit you asked me to check into,” Jack said.
What the heck was he talking about? Should I really be expected to think at a time like this?
I took another gulp of my beer and forced my brain to work. I realized he was talking about the upcoming trial involving one of the fashion designers that Rayna was supposed to testify for, one of my maybe-this-will-reveal-some-actual-evidence motives for her murder.
“It got dismissed?” I asked. “I guess it would, since a key witness had gotten murdered.”
“It never existed,” Jack told me.
Okay, that was weird.
I almost asked Jack if he was sure his information was reliable, but that would have been insulting and no way would I offend Jack. Besides, he knew a lot of people and had access to a lot of information, so I had no reason to doubt him. Still, I was surprised and a little weirded-out about the whole thing.
“Who told you about the lawsuit?” he asked.
“Somebody who works for KGE,” I said. “For Katrina, actually. Her personal assistant, Libby. She said it was a hush-hush matter. Nobody was supposed to know about it.”
“She must have misunderstood what was happening,” Jack said.
Okay, that made sense. Libby hadn’t struck me as being on top of everything—how could she when Katrina had her running in circles most of the time—so perhaps she wasn’t clear on what Rayna had told her or she’d remembered it incorrectly. It could have happened.
Still, I felt kind of bad that I’d asked Jack to waste his time—and probably burn a favor—investigating a possible motive that had never actually existed. Then it hit me that I’d mentioned it to Detective Shuman, too. Great. Now I looked like an idiot in front of both of them.
And, of course, that also meant that one of the avenues of investigation I’d counted on to find Rayna’s killer no longer existed. Except for remembering the cell phone lying next to her body, I hadn’t come up with anything new.
“We’re still contending with the homeless who are living in some of the buildings you’re using for the fashion crawl,” Jack said.
Dealing with this displaced portion of the population was troubling and disturbing. My heart went out to all of those people whose lives had taken such a bad turn that they’d found themselves in this situation. It was a tough problem that a lot of government agencies and volunteers had been trying to fix for a long time, with no easy answers or permanent solutions.
“They won’t leave?” I asked. “I know their circumstances are bad but, technically, isn’t that trespassing?”
“They leave, but they come back,” Jack said. “We’d need twenty-four hour security, and from what I’m hearing, a lot of the building owners won’t go for it.”
“It would be expensive,” I agreed.
“Other owners are pushing hard to get them out, no matter what the cost.”
“The crawl could lure big companies looking to relocate in North Hollywood,” I said. “It would be a great opportunity for the owners to unload an empty, profit-draining property.”
Jack said, “Some of the building owners are talking about legal action to clear out the homeless.”
“Not good,” I said and cringed, visualizing headlines splashed across newspapers, magazines, and the internet. “Taking legal action could turn the situation into a news story. Evicting the homeless for a fashion crawl? Nobody wants that kind of publicity.”
“The issue will be resolved before the crawl,” Jack said, “as discreetly as possible.”
He made it sound like it was no big deal, but I couldn’t let it go so easily. If the story blew up the internet and Twitter, then made its way to the mainstream media, the negative publicity could crush the crawl, devastate the sponsors, and wipe out all the work that had gone into the event so far—not to mention, of course, that L.A. Affairs would take a hit to their all-important reputation which might result in them blaming me, somehow, and firing me.
Jack must have read the my-life-could-plunge-into-a-death-spiral expression on my face because he said, “Relax. I’m handling it.”
Most anyone else might have figured this was the best they could hope for, and while I did have complete faith in Jack and his hand-picked security team, this was a situation that wasn’t completely under his control. No way was I going to sit around, think good thoughts, cross my fingers, and hope for the best.
That’s not how I roll.
I was going to do everything in my power to make this fashion crawl a success. And since I didn’t have any influence over the homeless, I figured the only thing left for me to do was find Rayna’s murderer.
Luckily, I had a new place to look.
***
It was a Gucci day. Definitely a Gucci day.
Spotting an empty packing space at the curb along Coldwater Canyon Avenue, I whipped into it. Like I always say, you never know when something good is going to happen to you, and finding a vacant parking spot in Studio City without circling the block over and over, cutting someone off, or taking whatever you could find and hoping your car didn’t get towed was definitely a good way to start my day.
My Gucci satchel helped, too, of course. Using my handbag superpower while standing in front of my closet this morning, I’d selected it to go with my navy blue business suit, which I totally rocked.
I’d gone by my office at L.A. Affairs just long enough to make sure the office manager saw that I was there—and to grab coffee and a chocolate doughnut from the breakroom—before I headed out. I had some venues and a couple of vendors to check on for several of the events I was handling, which was good cover for visiting—okay, ambushing—Melody Case at the address Jack had given me last night.
I got out of my Honda and headed down the block to the apartment complex Melody lived in. The building was white stucco with arched doorways and a red tile roof, on a tree-lined, highly sought-after street that was walking distance from busy, upscale Ventura Boulevard.
The info Jack provided didn’t mention whether Melody, after leaving the KGE agency, had gotten another job. I’d done an internet search on her, but hadn’t come up with anything so I figured I would take a chance, and show up on her doorstep—besides, it was a good reason to stay away from the office longer.
I located her apartment on the first floor, and just as I reached for the bell, the door flew open.
I knew the woman standing in front of me was Melody because I’d seen her photo on the KGE website. She was probably early thirties, jet black hair cut in a chic bob, tall and shapely. She was dressed in jogging clothes.
Seeing me standing there she jumped back, startled.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said, and gave her my best I’m-really-a-nice-person grin.
She pulled buds from her ears. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.�
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I introduced myself and presented my L.A. Affairs business card. She read it, and looked up at me.
“I don’t need an event planned,” she said, looking slightly suspicious now and maybe a little concerned because she stepped outside and pulled her door closed behind her.
“I know,” I said. “I want to talk to you about the KGE Model Agency.”
“No way.”
She cut around me and jogged away.
Chapter 12
“Jeez, Melody,” I called. “I’m wearing three inch pumps. You don’t expect me to chase you, do you? Give me a break, will you?”
She ran a couple of more steps, then stopped and turned around. Obviously, she’d worn similar shoes herself, because she walked back to where I waited on the sidewalk.
“What’s this about?” she asked.
I could see she wasn’t happy about my intrusion, so I didn’t bother trying to finesse anything.
“I’m the event planner for the fashion crawl,” I told her. “KGE is a major sponsor. There’s a potential problem, a huge one. Nobody at the agency is giving me the info I need, so I figured you would.”
“I haven’t worked there in nearly a month,” Melody told me. “I don’t know what kind of help I could be.”
“One of their models was murdered.”
Melody gasped. “Oh my God, I hadn’t heard. Who was it?”
“Rayna Fuller.”
Her shoulders slumped a little and she shook her head. “I worked with Rayna, handled her castings and bookings. And she was murdered? What happened?”
I gave her a few seconds to take it in—she seemed genuinely surprised and upset by the news—then explained about Rayna’s fall and that the police were calling it a murder.
“It hasn’t made the news yet, but if word gets out it could completely destroy the fashion crawl—plus, of course, whoever did this should be found and punished,” I said. “The police aren’t making any headway so I wanted to get your take on Rayna. Everybody says she was nice. But nice people don’t usually get murdered. What did you think of her?”
Backpacks and Betrayals (A Haley Randolph Mystery) Page 9