“You can tell her I honestly don’t know myself, but she should remember I’m bad to the bone.”
Mary Lisa leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “And she knows they like to push the envelope with Sunday.”
“And yet she remains sympathetic.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“You feeling all right, Ms. Beverly?”
She said without opening her eyes, “Compared to lying on the sidewalk with a toy poodle named Honey Boy licking my mouth, yeah, I’ll take it.” Mary Lisa roused herself enough to call Lou Lou. When Detective Vasquez pulled up beside the Colony kiosk, she called out, “ Chad, it’s me. I was hit by a car, but I’m okay. This is Detective Vasquez. He’ll probably be coming around again, so please let him in.”
Chad came around to the passenger side of the car, poked his head in, examined her face. “I heard about some asshole hitting you, not two blocks from here. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I promise, only temporary agony.”
Chad frowned over that. “I also heard it was on purpose. Carlo saw it all.”
Mary Lisa said to Detective Vasquez, “Carlo Spinelli is one of my neighbors. He used to own a computer company up in Silicon Valley, sold out ten years ago and moved down here. He’s a great surfer, even gives some lessons. He came right after I was lying on the road.”
“I know Carlo,” Detective Vasquez said.
Chad backed away and waved them in. He called after them, “Cool slick you’re driving, Detective!”
Detective Vasquez grinned and patted the dashboard of the Crown Vic.
The Colony, originally known as the Malibu Motion Picture Colony when it was established back in the 1920s, was now simply known as the Colony. Bing Crosby, Ronald Coleman, Gary Cooper, and Gloria Swanson were only a few of the early arrivals who built cottages on the beautiful, pristine stretch of beach. They came to play in privacy. There were two long rows of houses, all set close together, half of them on the ocean side, the others across a narrow street. The houses ranged from palatial to an occasional small cottage. The Colony extended all the way down to Malibu Lagoon State Beach, separated from the public land by a high rusted fence. Even though it was private, with only residents and their guests allowed in, anyone could duck under that fence and walk in. But no cars could get in, not unless the folk at the kiosk weren’t paying attention, which rarely happened.
She directed Detective Vasquez about two-thirds down Malibu Colony Road to her small ocean-side beach house. “Another twenty houses and we’d be in the Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Always lots of action there, big-time surfing. It’s Carlo’s favorite place. Actually, there’s lots of action all over the beach.”
“Nothing would surprise me in this town.” Detective Vasquez paused a moment. “But you know, Malibu isn’t a real town, which sounds strange, but I’ve always thought that.”
She grinned. “Come on now, we have a mayor, we have a high school, we have chiropractors. But I know what you mean. Truth is I think of it as a special place, my own special place.” She directed him into her driveway.
“Hey, nice house.”
Mary Lisa beamed at him. She was still excited about her two-story cottage, all glass and redwood, built back in the early ’80s, and all hers, her very first home, bought and paid for. “I purchased it from an older actress, a friend of Elizabeth Fargas-she’s also a friend of mine-who gave me a good price. She wanted to move back to Nebraska. Go figure that. I step off my back porch and get sand fleas between my toes in under five minutes. And then I dive in the waves and the fleas drown.”
He laughed. “An example of nature’s balance.” He pulled in behind a bright red Mustang convertible. He opened her unlocked door and walked directly into a large, high-ceilinged living room. He helped her ease down on a bright red-and-white-striped sofa. It was one of three colorful sofas set about the big room with at least half a dozen chairs and love seats interspersed among them. Bright geometric rugs were scattered on the oak floor. Pale light poured in through all the windows. “You’ve got lots of places to sit.”
“I’ve got lots of friendly neighbors who are always dropping by. I started out with one sofa and chair and just kept adding.”
Yes, he thought, she’d have lots of friends. She seemed just plain nice, and funny, at least when she was drugged up. He watched her look thoughtful and open her mouth, but she seemed to forget what she was going to say.
He said, “Nice and bright in here. Makes you smile, I’ll bet. You’re looking a bit peaked, Ms. Beverly. Your friend coming over soon?”
Mary Lisa nodded. “Her name’s Lou Lou Bollinger, one of the makeup artists for Born to Be Wild. She’s a bit freaked out so I’m hoping she won’t get a speeding ticket getting over here.”
“Interesting name.”
“Wait ’til you meet her. She’s the best, excellent at her job. I’m going to have her fix me up before anyone else sees me.”
“There’s more than one makeup person on the show?”
“There are at least twelve actors shooting any given day, so the four makeup people we have are kept busy, but Lou Lou always does me.”
“Can I get you anything? Tea, water? All right then, you sit back and relax and we can get started if it’s okay with you.” At her nod, he took out his notebook again and sat down on the green patterned love seat facing her. “You told me you ducked into the army salvage store in the Country Mart to avoid Puker Hodges?”
“Yep. I bought this wonderful pea green T-shirt-”
He liked how that green T-shirt looked on her, noticed the dirt, and nodded for her to continue.
She went through it all slowly, he asked questions and she remembered more, then finally, “…I was lying flat on my back on a gurney, a paramedic placing an oxygen mask over my nose, and there was Puker, hovering over me, snapping photos. You know the rest.”
He looked thoughtful. “I don’t recognize the description of the bag lady you gave one of your T-shirts to, but someone will since we don’t have many homeless people in Malibu. I’ll check her out.”
“She loved the T-shirt. I’ll bet she’s still wearing it.”
“We’ll locate her. Now, about Carlo. Well, everyone knows Carlo. Did you go to his birthday party last month? A cookout on the beach thrown by Ben Affleck?”
“I couldn’t make it. A friend on OLTL-One Life to Live-had a baby shower. I heard Carlo gave midnight surfing lessons to fifty drunk naked people.”
“Sounds about right. Carlo just turned seventy, can you believe that?”
Mary Lisa nodded. “He’s taught a couple dozen stars how to surf over the years.”
“Okay, let’s get back to it. Carlo swore to my deputy that this guy ran you down on purpose, no way it was a hit and run.”
“As best as I can remember how it happened, yes, it was on purpose. He wasn’t weaving around like he was drunk. He came right at me.”
“Now, MacKenzie Corman, the wannabe actress with the white poodle. I’ve seen her around. I’ll speak to her as well. You’re sure the dark car that hit you was a Buick LeSabre?”
“Lou Lou owns a powder blue LeSabre, a 2000 model. It was identical to hers as far as I could tell, except for the color. It was black, possibly, or really dark blue.”
“Excellent. It was the front left fender that struck your side?”
Mary Lisa closed her eyes, pictured herself being knocked to the street in that frozen moment, and slowly nodded. “Yeah, it hit me pretty hard. You think maybe I left a dent in the fender?”
“Not likely, but who knows? We’ll get a list of all dark four-door 2000 LeSabres registered in the area, see if you recognize any of the owners’ names. You said you didn’t see who was driving. No feeling if it was a man or a woman?”
She shook her head.
He paused a moment, then said matter-of-factly, “This might have been a hit and run, someone who was drunk, hit you and was afraid to stay. If I didn’t know Carlo, how reliable he i
s, I’d be leaning toward an accidental hit. But the deputy told me Carlo swore the guy hit you on purpose. So until proved otherwise, we’ll treat this as an intentional act. Now, do you know of anyone who might be dangerous, or have a problem with you-like an old boyfriend, a business associate, whatever?”
Lou Lou said from the living room doorway, “The moron who tried to run her down could have been Paulie Thomas. You know how weird he is, Mary Lisa. Half a dozen people at work believe he’s going to poison Sunday Cavendish with a Danish.”
FIVE
Before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar played Kendall, the daughter of Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane on All My Children.
Detective Vasquez’s eyebrows went straight up. “Really? Have you asked to have him fired, Ms. Beverly? Surely you have that kind of clout.”
“Yeah, she does,” Lou Lou said, “she just won’t.”
Mary Lisa slowly shook her head. “I really don’t share Lou Lou’s opinion about him. Besides, I really like the donuts he’s always bringing in. So does everyone else. Oh, I’m sorry. Detective Vasquez, this is Lou Lou Bollinger. Lou Lou, this is Detective Vasquez. He’s going to find out who was driving that car.”
Lou Lou held up her hand, and nodded to him.
“Is Lou Lou your real name, Ms. Bollinger?”
Lou Lou’s chin went up. “You got a problem with my name?”
“No, not at all. It’s simply interesting and unusual.”
Lou Lou was uncertain whether or not to believe him because she’d swear there was this sort of twinkle in his eyes. “Hmmm,” she said as she sat down beside Mary Lisa and cupped her face in her palm, studying her. “You’re doped up and that’s good. I’m seeing just a few scratches I can take care of easily, so don’t worry about the cameras. You swear there’s nothing serious going on here?”
“I swear.”
“Okay. I left a message on Elizabeth ’s phone, told her what happened-and reassured her, so you’d better not be lying to me.” She said to Detective Vasquez, “Mary Lisa sometimes laughs when she should be screaming. Drives us nuts. You look competent, Detective Vasquez. That’s a relief.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Ms. Bollinger. Okay, this Paulie Thomas, what does he do on Born to Be Wild? An actor? Stage crew? What?”
“Paulie’s the nephew of one of the directors, Tom O’Hurley,” Lou Lou said. “He’s one of the prop guys. Locations are selected and the necessary props are all set up during the night before the various scenes are shot the next day. However, Paulie likes to come to the set during the actual shooting. I don’t know when the guy sleeps. Everyone likes his uncle, so no one says anything.”
Mary Lisa said, “Come on, Lou Lou, Paulie does make himself useful. Don’t forget, he isn’t paid for it.” She cut her eyes to Detective Vasquez. “He’s a gofer-he runs errands for everyone, scrounges for missing props, fetches ordered lunches, and brings in the best donuts, you know, the kind filled with cream or jelly, or the ones with sprinkles.”
“Yeah, yeah, everybody loves his donuts, but don’t forget he hates you, Mary Lisa.”
“No,” Mary Lisa said patiently, “it’s Sunday Cavendish he can’t stand.”
Lou Lou said to Detective Vasquez, “Most of the people who see him scowling at her think it’s funny. They think it’s a tribute to how good she is. Fact is”-Lou Lou tapped her head-“Paulie isn’t the sturdiest tree in the forest, lots of branches missing off the top.”
Mary Lisa said, “Okay, so he’s a little slow. What does that matter? The thing is, Detective Vasquez, Paulie’s a fixture, sort of like a mascot.”
Lou Lou interrupted her. “Yes, he feeds people sugar and they’re happy, but he’s got this thing for Margie McCormick-she plays Sunday’s half sister, Susan Cavendish-and he was really angry when the word went around that Sunday might sleep with Susan’s husband, Damian Sterling.”
“What is Damian Sterling’s real name?”
“Jeff Renfrew,” Mary Lisa told him. “He’s a nice guy, a really talented actor, a little goofy sometimes. He wouldn’t be involved in something like this.”
Still, Detective Vasquez wrote down his name. “Everyone’s got two names. Do you ever get them confused?”
“Not really,” said Mary Lisa, “but when you play the same role for such a long time, the characters sort of become your alter egos. You get to know them very well, even care about what happens to them, and you can slip into character on a dime.”
Lou Lou grinned at him. “Like Jekyll and Hyde.”
Detective Vasquez grinned back, and Mary Lisa realized he wasn’t looking at Lou Lou through a cop’s eyes. No, it was pure guy. And she knew what he was seeing. Lou Lou was nearly as tall as she was, a natural blond, although who knew or cared in L.A.? She had light blue eyes, a fit, curvy body, and the brightest smile in the universe.
Detective Vasquez suddenly turned to Mary Lisa, and now he was all business. “What about the rest of the cast? Anyone else I should talk to?”
Mary Lisa said slowly, “Well, there’s Margie McCormick, who plays my half sister, Susan. She’s about as different from Susan in real life as she could possibly be. Margie doesn’t take grief from anybody, tells you exactly what she thinks, never suffers in silence. Her character, Susan, even though she acts weak and helpless, is really sly and manipulative. She’s got both our mother and her husband fooled. But the person Susan hates all the way to her bones is her half sister, Sunday. It’s a vendetta thing. Every chance she gets, she tries to knock Sunday out of the picture. For example, she and Sunday’s mother hired this guy to terrorize Sunday; it went on for a good month before Sunday actually shot him when he came to her house to kill her in her bed.”
Lou Lou fanned herself. “Wow, was that ever a scene. It was so scary, Mary Lisa was so believable, I nearly wet myself.”
Mary Lisa grinned. “Yep, but Sunday always rides again. So what happened today is a little like life imitating art, don’t you think, Detective?”
“I can see why you’d say that, Ms. Beverly,” Detective Vasquez said slowly. “Would you say that the actress, Margie McCormick, could be jealous of you and your success?”
“Nah, Margie’s not the type. She doesn’t ever slink around or lie to get her way. She’s right out there. She knows what she wants and goes after it.”
“How long has she been on the show?”
“Five, maybe six years.”
“And you’re telling me she isn’t jealous that you show up and become the runaway star, win three Emmys in three years? An unknown to boot?”
“You want the truth?” Mary Lisa grinned. “I think everyone is deliriously happy because Born to Be Wild has the highest viewership in our time slot and that means the sponsors line up to pay big bucks to advertise, and those bucks mean security, money, and a solid future for everyone. The other actors might want more face time, more plotlines that put them front and center, but I’d say for the most part people on the cast feel very lucky to be a part of it all.”
“Since Mary Lisa showed up, everyone smiles,” Lou Lou said. “You can see it in the Nielsen ratings-when Mary Lisa is center stage, the ratings skyrocket. If she isn’t-which is very rare now-they fall. Actually, BTBW is the most watched of all the soaps. I even saw the producer, Clyde Dillard, whooping and high-fiving everyone in the vicinity the other day when he landed a huge advertising deal, all because of Mary Lisa’s latest big scene-chomping plotline. There’s no one gonna want to knock off Mary Lisa. She’s everybody’s meal ticket. What’s more, she’s nice to everyone.”
“Well, someone doesn’t like me,” Mary Lisa said, wishing it was time to take another happy pill. She peeked at her watch. No, not time yet. She said to Detective Vasquez, “The reason I mentioned Margie McCormick is not that I thought she might have been the one to hit me but because she might be able to give you insights on Paulie Thomas.”
Detective Vasquez thought about this a moment, tapped his pen against his knee, then asked, “Does Pa
ulie Thomas have a personal interest in Margie McCormick?”
Lou Lou said, “As a matter of fact, he asked her for dates a good half dozen times. She actually agreed to meet him off-set once-he is, after all, related to one of the directors and that couldn’t hurt, but mainly, she felt sorry for him. It was maybe four months ago, after a nasty breakup with her boyfriend. She told me she wanted to let him down easy. It didn’t go well, at least that’s what Margie said when I was trying to get her eyebrows on straight the morning after.”
Mary Lisa picked it up. “Margie said Paulie took her to Cartier on Rodeo Drive, wanted to buy her a diamond ring. She nearly freaked.”
Lou Lou said, “The thing is, Detective, it seems to me Paulie might be having trouble judging reality like that when it comes to Mary Lisa too. He’s pleasant enough to her whenever anyone’s around, but he really hates Sunday Cavendish, calls her names under his breath, only it’s not under enough, you know? He mumbles stuff about her whenever the script calls for Sunday to do something outrageous, especially when she fights with Susan, stuff like she should have her cheating heart cut out, that sort of thing.”
“He sounds pretty dramatic himself. Why would the producer let someone like that around to bother their golden goose? Why have you allowed it, Ms. Beverly?”
Mary Lisa sighed. “He usually says stuff when he knows no one else will hear him. Lou Lou didn’t hear him-I told her what he’d said. Paulie’s got problems, but the stuff he says about Sunday? She’s a character, Detective, she isn’t a person. What does it matter? There are lots of fans who say the same thing about Sunday.”
“I’ll be speaking to him, Ms. Beverly. I’m thinking that after what happened today, he might not be with the show much longer.”
Born To Be Wild Page 3