Hollywood Headlines 02 - The Perfect Shot

by Gemma Halliday

  I Photoshopped, cropped, and bundled a few choice photos of the late Mr. Carlyle, then emailed the entire thing off to Mrs. Rosenblatt.

  Just as Felix came by my cube.

  “Hey, did you see the article in ED about Jamie Lee?”

  God, could no one let this go?

  I nodded. “I saw it.”

  “Did you read it?”

  I bit my lip. “Most of it.”

  “Most?” Felix swore under his breath. “Jesus, does no one actually read anymore? No wonder our paper is going down the tubes.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  He waved it off. “Well read it, then tell me why, after my photographer has been on two full months of Wedding Watch, I have to read about Jamie Lee’s real name in someone else’s paper.”

  I paused. “Her real name?”

  “Yeah. Apparently ED scared up some picture of her driver’s license pre-stardom with an incredibly unflattering photo and her real name.”

  He leaned over me and typed the url for ED’s website into my browser. The happy couple’s smiling faces grinned at me front and center again. I shoved down that hollow feeling again. They belonged together. They were the perfect couple. Even I had to admit they looked perfect starring up at me in all their airbrushed glory from my screen.

  Felix scrolled down past the honeymoon plans to the second part of the article. A photo of the driver’s license photos came up on the second page.

  “There,” he said. Then shook his head. “Though in the girl’s defense, if I were stuck with that name, I’d change it, too.”

  I leaned forward, squinting at the fine print on my screen.

  Then froze.

  Suddenly I felt everything becoming clear, like a fog being slowly lifted off the ocean to reveal the water in sparkling lucidity as I read the name.

  Jamie Lee Boogenheim.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “No way,” I whispered.

  Even though I knew with sudden certainty that it was the only way things made sense. I thought back to the awards show where the whole mess had started. I’d watched on TV as Jamie Lee had arrived…almost twenty minutes before Trace. Just long enough for her limo to double back to Burbank and pick up Trace and his agent.

  I quickly pulled up a search engine. While I’d limited my previous searches to Buckner Boogenheim, I now broadened it to anyone with that distinctive surname. Three minutes later I hit pay dirt with a Clive Boogenheim in a criminal database. He’d done three years for assault in New York. I looked at his mug shot pictures. I’d be dammed if it wasn’t Ferret.

  I grabbed my keys, dashing for the elevator.

  “Cam?” Tina called as I dashed past her cubicle.

  But I barely heard her. My brain on hyper speed, too may unanswered questions burning in it.

  But there was one thing I knew for certain.

  I was getting the straight story out of one whining, overpaid and overhyped actress if it was the last thing I did.

  As I well knew from the ED article, Jamie Lee was in the final stages of moving out of her Hollywood Hills home and into Trace’s place in Malibu. I made for the hills, hoping she was still packing today. Or, more likely, supervising the packing. Either way, I mentally crossed my fingers as I sped down the freeway.

  I made the twenty-minute drive in ten (I was still wanted for unpaid parking tickets, what was a small speeding warrant on top of that?), pulling up to a screeching halt outside Jamie Lee’s cliff-side retreat. A moving van was parked to the right of her drive, guys in jeans and muscle shirts hauling expensive furniture into the back. I grabbed my trusty ball cap from my backseat and shoved it on my head, tucking my hair underneath. I jumped out of the Jeep, quickly blending in with the workers and slipped in the side door of Jamie Lee’s place.

  White marble tiles greeted me in the entryway, bubblegum colored walls and crystal chandeliers screaming of a decorating style just this side of Barbie’s Dream House. Poor Trace. I followed the sounds of voices through the entry to a large room across the hall.

  “God, how may times do I have to tell you? Lift carefully. These are not flea-market items. They cost more than your house, comprende?” Jamie Lee yelled at one of the movers.

  The Hispanic guy nodded at her, then rolled his eyes as soon as he turned his back to her, hauling a vanity table out of the room.

  Which left Jamie Lee alone in the room. If I was going to corner her, I’d never have a better opportunity than this.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Jamie Lee?” I asked, taking a step into the room.

  She spun around, one hand on the pink Prada bag at her side, her long locks flying over one shoulder in an artful move.

  “What?”

  “Uh, could I have a word with you?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I told you people which items go and which stay. Can’t you remember a damned thing?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not with the movers.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Okay. So what the hell are you doing in my house then?”

  “I’m Cam. Cameron Dakota. From the Informer?”

  She still drew a blank look.

  “From the warehouse? I saved your life?”

  “Oh.” She threw her hair over her shoulder again. “Right. Sure.”

  Such gratitude.

  Then again, it was obvious to me now that whole damsel in distress thing had been a sham. Apparently, I hadn’t given her acting skills enough credit.

  “What do you want, Shannon?”

  “Cameron,” I corrected. “And I wanted to ask you a few questions…” I paused. “… about Buckner Boogenheim.”

  Her perfect smile faltered for just a second before quickly reapplying itself to her face. “Who?”

  “Your…” I took a guess, calculating her age. “Father?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The game’s up, Jamie Lee. Entertainment Daily printed your real name this morning.”

  She waved me off. “I never read the tabloids.”

  One more reason for me to hate her.

  “Well, plenty of people do. In fact, everyone west of the Sierra Nevadas knows you’re really Jamie Lee Boogenheim.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, calculating her next move carefully. “Okay. Fine. So Buckner Boogenheim is my father. So what?”

  “And Clive?”

  She paused again, answering more slowly this time. “My brother.”

  “Which leads me to ask… exactly why would your brother kidnap you and tie you up?”

  This time the smile didn’t so much falter as disappear completely, leaving her face a smooth, Botoxed blank slate. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Nice try.” I took a step closer to her. “You were the one who lost the flash drive,” I said. “You realized Trace must have picked it up and concocted this entire elaborate scheme to get it back from him.”

  This time she said nothing, just stared at me with her big, brown eyes.

  Which I took as a sign I was wearing her down.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t just ask Trace for the drive? Why go through this whole charade?”

  She took a step backward, toward a pair of French doors leading to a perfectly landscaped garden. I moved to the right, blocking it, effectively cutting off any escape route.

  “Maybe,” I said, working my theory out loud as I advanced on her. “Maybe you couldn’t be sure Trace hadn’t seen what was on the drive. Maybe it was so terrible that you couldn’t let him know the drive was yours. Maybe it contained…” I paused, taking a shot in the dark. “… a sex scandal?”

  “Puh-lease!” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “I know better than to tape my own indiscretions.”

  Though, I noticed she didn’t deny having indiscretions. I filed that info away for later.

  “Okay, what was it then? What was on the drive?” I asked.

>   Again she narrowed her eyes at me. But she must have realized she was as metaphorically cornered as she was physically, because she finally answered, “Money.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Money?”

  “Bank account numbers. To accounts in the Cayman Islands.”

  I pursed my eyebrows together. “I don’t get it. What’s the big deal about that?” While it wasn’t exactly kosher with the IRS, I didn’t think she was the first star to put a little cash away offshore.

  “It was from my father’s business.”

  “The storage place?”

  She laughed. “You really are naive. The storage place is just a front. He’s involved in several other activities,” she said, annunciating the word.

  “Illegal activities”?” I asked.

  “Mob.”

  Wow. And here I thought I watched too much TV.

  “So…” I said, the wheels turning. “What a better way to launder the money than through his daughter, right? No one would ever suspect America’s Sweetheart of filtering mob money.”

  “Exactly. Unless they found that drive in my possession. I was supposed to take it with me that night to hand it off to one of my father’s business associates before the show. But as soon as I got there, I realized I didn’t have it. I must have dropped it in the car.”

  “The same car you saw Trace arrive in.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t think anything of it until I realized the drive was gone. I had my assistant call the car company, but they didn’t find it in the car. So I figured Trace must have picked it up.”

  “But you couldn’t ask him, because if Trace knew about these activities, he wouldn’t have kept it quite.”

  “Are you kidding? Mr. Boy Scout?” She scoffed. “Never.”

  “So, you had your brother go after it instead.”

  She nodded. “Clive had a friend from prison. It was simple; they would corner Trace, get the drive, and everyone would be happy. Only Trace couldn’t seem to hold on to it, the stupid ass.”

  I felt my back go up on his account. “If you think he’s such an ass, why are you marrying him?”

  “Are you kidding? You can’t buy publicity like this wedding. It’s the best thing to happen to my career since Die Tough. I figure I enjoy his millions for a couple years, then milk a little more publicity out of a very public divorce where yours truly gives exclusives to every paper in town.” She paused. Then gave me a dirty look. “Well, almost every paper in town.”

  Gee. I was crushed.

  “So… why are your telling me this?” I asked, suddenly getting a bad feeling.

  She grinned. “Because I have a feeling you won’t be telling anyone else anytime soon.”

  “Why is that-”

  But I didn’t get to finish as Jamie Lee answered the question by reaching into her Prada and emerging with a shiny black gun.

  “Oh.”

  I was really beginning to hate guns.

  She grinned. “Yeah. Oh.” She took a step toward me, her heels echoing in the empty room. “Now, let’s take a little walk, shall we?” She gestured toward the French doors.

  Since I wasn’t the one holding the gun, I didn’t think I was in any position to argue. I pulled open the door, leading the way outside as I felt the barrel of the gun poke into my ribs. It was cold, hard, and caused an instant sweat to break out along the back of my neck as she nudged me outside into the sunshine.

  The French doors gave way to a flagstone patio flanked by expertly sculpted hedges, tall grasses, and native flowers. Beside the patio was a sprawling swimming pool, almost a large as Trace’s, though this one was minus the rock waterfall.

  “To the pool, blondie,” Jamie Lee instructed, the gun barrel nudging me forward.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. Not that I really wanted to know. A play-by-play preview of my death wasn’t really all that enticing. But the longer I could keep her talking – and not shooting - the better my chances of one of the movers discovering us back here.

  “I’m not going to do anything. I’m an innocent victim here,” she said. She did her trademark big, doe eyes at me. I’d always hated that look on her. “I simply walked into my backyard to find a member of the paparazzi trespassing on my property. When I confronted her, she pulled a gun on me. We struggled, and the gun went off.”

  “While conveniently pointed at me?” I finished for her. “You really think anyone will believe that?”

  She grinned. “You’ve been essentially stalking me for weeks. What’s not to believe?”

  Shit. She was right.

  “Look, maybe we should just talk about this. What if I offered you a deal? Maybe a little free publicity? I could airbrush a couple great bikini shots for you. Or maybe-“

  “Ohmigod, shut up!” she shouted.

  I shut up.

  She took a step toward me.

  I took a step back, feeling the heels of my feet come up against the side of the pool. Talk about cornered.

  She narrowed her eyes. She clenched her jaw. Gone was America’s Sweetheart, and in her place was a glimpse of the tough New York mafia-connected girl she’d grown up. Personally, at the moment I much preferred the former.

  “Say good-bye, Shannon.”

  “Cameron,” I automatically corrected her.

  “Shut up!” she screamed, punctuating the sentiment by pointing the gun straight at my face.

  I bit my lip, feeling my insides go numb. The sun beat down on me, but my skin was suddenly ice cold, my mind frozen, my eyes seeing only the barrel of the gun. Time seemed to stand still as images flashed in my mind – the paper, Tina, Felix, Ben Carlyle’s Clark Gable face hiding a shriveled old murderer, and Jamie Lee’s perky socialite persona hiding a criminal secret of her own.

  I closed my eyes, chicken that I was. If my brains were about to be splattered all over Jamie Lee’s perfect swimming pool, I didn’t want to see it.

  I felt Jamie Lee take a step forward, and felt myself cringing involuntarily in anticipation of what was next.

  And then I heard it.

  A loud crack shouting through the air, echoing off the hills.

  I waited for the pain to follow. Oddly enough, it didn’t.

  I slowly pried one eye open, searching my person for bullet holes.

  What I found instead was Jamie Lee laying on the ground, clutching her left thigh as bright red blood seeped onto her designer jeans.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod! You shot me, you bitch!”

  I looked down at my hands, confused. “I don’t even have a gun.”

  “Not you, you twit! Her!” Jaime Lee pointed behind me.

  I whipped my head around…

  … to find Tina, standing with her boots planted shoulder width apart, her pigtails flying in the breeze, arms straight out in front of her holding a tiny pink gun with little yellow flames along the side. The barrel still smoking.

  I sagged to the ground in relief. “My hero,” I breathed.

  She grinned. “Don’t mess with the paparazzi.”

  * * *

  Two hours later the police were swarming the place. Jamie Lee was taken into custody, the shot in her leg deemed a flesh wound. The movers were happy to take the rest of the day off, having already been paid a hefty deposit by Jamie Lee. Tina started typing up her exclusive story on her Palm even before the police arrived, grinning from ear to ear at the thought of finally scooping Allie. And I told my story to a uniformed cop, a plainclothes policeman, a special crimes unit detective, and an assistant DA so many times that I almost had it memorized by the time they finally told me I could go home. I was just trudging back to my Jeep, watching the last rays of daylight disappear over the hills when I saw a familiar face through the growing number of newshounds crowding the drive.

  Trace.

  I bit my lip, watching as he spoke to an officer who let him through the yellow crime scene barricade.

  He made quick strides toward me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodd
ed. “Yeah.”

  He glanced down at my arm. “Nice sling.”

  Thanks. I nodded to this bandage. “We match.”

  He grinned. Then fell silent.

  I shuffled my feet nervously, not sure what to say next.

  “I take it you heard about Jamie Lee?” I finally settled on.

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Trace shoved his hands in his pockets. “But…”

  “But?” I asked. Maybe a little too expectantly. I mean, what was I expecting? He was Trace Brody. I was Tabloid Girl. The divide there was so large the Grand Canyon didn’t hold a candle to it. We lived in two completely different worlds, the only overlap between the two coming in the form of a telephoto lens.

  I staunchly reminded myself of this fact as I waited for Trace to finish.

  “Well…” He looked down at the ground. “You should know something. I mean, when you print it I want to make sure you get the story straight.”

  “Oh.” Right. It was about the story. Duh. What did you expect, Tabloid Girl? This was not You’ve Got Email, or Die Tough, or even Held for Ransom. Happy endings did not happen like that in real life.

  And not to members of the paparazzi.

  “So what should I know?” I asked. Not that it mattered. Not that I cared. Not that I was just trying to stall and prolong the short time we might have together before we went back to being reporter and subject.

  “I decided to cancel the wedding.”

  I froze.

  “Cancel?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. This morning. I was actually on my way over here to break things off with her when I heard about the shooting on the radio.”

  Oh, reeeeeeeally. Now this was getting interesting.

  An interesting story I reminded my self. Just a story.

  “That’s… well, I guess that’s good. I mean, if you were breaking it off anyway, I guess it was less of a blow to find out who Jamie Lee really was, right?” I reasoned.

  He nodded. “I guess so. Yeah.”

  He paused. Took step closer to me. “Do you want to know why I was breaking it off wit her?”

  I swallowed hard.

  A story. It’s just about the story.

  “Sure?” I said.