Hollywood Confessions

by Gemma Halliday

Gary looked from me to the closed door. “Oh. Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned that whole other guy, right? Yeah, probably not the best idea. My bad.”

  I could have strangled him. But honestly I didn’t have the energy this morning. Instead, I shuffled into the kitchen and poured us both a cup of coffee.

  The truth was, it wasn’t entirely Gary’s fault that Felix left. In all honesty, last night had been destined to end badly from the moment it started. As nice as it had been (over and over and over again…), there were a million reasons why Felix and I were destined to bump into each other for one-nighters only. If it hadn’t been Gary sending Felix running this morning, it would have been something else. Frankly, I guess I should thank him for getting it over with nice and quickly instead of drawing it out into hours, maybe even days, of awkward expectations fated from the start to turn into disappointments.

  “So, um, what did happen here last night?” Gary asked, sipping from his Boardwalk glass.

  I sat down on my cushionless sofa and filled him in on everything, from freaking about Mr. Fluffykins to Felix finding me unconscious on the floor.(though I left out some of the more personal details of my evening, much to Gary’s disappointment) .

  “Dude, rough night,” he said when I’d finished.

  “No kidding. But at least we know it rules out Alec as a suspect. I mean, he couldn’t very well be trashing my place if he was with me at the same time.”

  Gary nodded. “I suppose. Unless,” he said, holding up his index finger. “Unless he hired someone to trash the place and asked you out as the perfect alibi. I mean, how many people knew you wouldn’t be home last night?”

  I bit my lip, mulling that over. “Actually, anyone could have known. Some paparazzo snapped my photo going into Mangia last night then tweeted about me being there. Anyone could have read it.”

  “You call the police?” Gary asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I convinced Felix not to. The last thing I want is the publicity. If some other reporter gets hold of this story, there goes my angle.”

  He nodded. “So that means any evidence of the intruder is still here.”

  I looked around the room. It was one step way from being a junk yard.

  “Um…what sort of evidence?”

  “I don’t know, epithelial cells, hair with DNA tags, fibers, distinct dirt compounds, fingerprints.”

  I raised an eyebrow his way.

  “What? Don’t you watch CSI?”

  “Okay, so assuming some of that stuff is here. How do we collect it?”

  He shrugged. “Same way they do on TV, I guess.”

  While we were clearly no CSIs, I was fresh out of better ideas. So while I showered and changed, I let Gary collect a makeshift evidence kit. By the time I’d thrown on a pair of jeans, a yellow tank top and a pair of white flip-flops with little yellow daisies on them (Yellow was such a happy color. If I dressed the part, surely things would look up for me, right?). Gary had his kit laid out on the remains of my coffee table. I looked down at a container of loose foundation powder, a large make-up brush, scotch tape, tweezers, index cards and a whole crapload of Ziploc bags.

  “Is that my Mac foundation?”

  “For dusting for fingerprints.”

  “Do you know how much that costs?”

  Gary waved me off, instead taking the top off the container and dipping my makeup brush inside. “Let’s start with the front door.”

  And he did, slowly twirling the brush a couple of inches away from the surface of the front door. Pretty soon my foundation covered every square inch of the doorframe. If there were fingerprints, they were lost in a sea of make-up.

  “Hmm,” Gary said, looking down at his handiwork. “I think maybe I need a darker color. Got anything else?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Maybe we should look for other evidence.”

  Undaunted, Gary went into the bathroom in search of a darker shade and put me to work collecting hair fibers.

  An hour later we had twenty Ziploc bags full of different pieces of lint and hair. I had a bad feeling most were mine.

  “I don’t think we’re very good CSIs,” I told him.

  “Hang on. I think I’ve almost got a fingerprint.” Gary, tongue protruding out the side of his mouth, was still hunched over my front door, which was now wearing “raspberry glaze” blush, “copper sunset” toner and “midnight mist” eyeshadow. He carefully applied a piece of Scotch tape then lifted it, scrutinizing the surface. “Nothing.” Gary blew out a puff of frustration, causing a cloud of foundation to lift into the air. “Surely this guy must have left something behind,” he mumbled.

  I glanced around. “All right, let’s reconstruct the crime.” I went to the front door. “First,” I said, “he picks the lock, opens the door.” I surveyed my apartment from the front door, trying to see the place as if I were a vandal bent on scaring me off the story. “First thing he does is go for the kitchen,” I decided. “Maximum impact there, tons to break.” I walked into the kitchen, imagining the killer tossing my cupboards. I tried to swallow down emotion at the thought of him destroying my meager but well-loved belongings, instead channeling the stoic Langston and Willows. “Then he’d move into the living room.” I did, surveying the damage there, my eyes moving methodically to every spot the vandal must have touched. I paused when I got to the carpet. On it were the remains of several vases, picture frames and porcelain knick-knacks. All smashed. Only, the vandal must have smashed them with something, because my brown renter’s shag, while matted down with years of use, was hardly solid enough to break items against.

  I quickly scanned the room. It wasn’t like I had baseball bats or tire irons sitting around. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything that could be used as a weapon, every item of my décor carefully selected for maximum pink and fluffiness. Pillows, throws, the overflow from my closet stacked up in the shelving beside the fireplace. My eyes rested on my shoe tree, toppled over on its side.

  “That’s it!”

  Gary jumped, dusting his hand with foundation.

  “The shoe tree. He must have used it to smash the vases and photo frames and stuff. It’s the only thing heavy enough.”

  “Which means his prints would be on it,” Gary said, shifting to the item in question, makeup brush drawn. “I’m on it!”

  He sprang into action, dipping the brush into the last of my midnight mist and carefully sprinkling the powder onto the trunk of the shoe tree. His forehead wrinkled in concentration, the tip of his tongue making an appearance again while he twirled the brush ever so slowly over the smooth surface. Had it been real wood we might have been out of luck. As it was, my limited budget meant I’d had to go with “wood-like” veneered MDF. Smooth, slick and perfect for capturing prints.

  “I think I got something,” he finally said.

  I peered over his shoulder.

  Sure enough, on the trunk, there was what looked like a fingerprint highlighted by eyeshadow. Or at last half of a fingerprint.

  “Hand me the tape,” Gary instructed, not taking his eyes off the print as if it might disappear any second.

  I did. Then, careful not to disturb the eye shadow, he applied it to the tree. He pushed it down hard, picking up the impression then quickly laid the tape down on an index card.

  He stepped back to survey his handiwork. I had to admit, the print had lifted almost as clear as the CSI ones did.

  The only problem was, we had nothing to compare it to.

  “So, what do we do with it now?” I asked.

  “We need someone to run it for us.” He turned to me. “You got access to any fingerprint databases?”

  I bit my lip. Me? No. Felix could access just about any database he chose, but I had a feeling that where I was concerned, he would choose not to. “Not really,” I hedged. “Possibly, I could ask Felix, but let’s call that Plan Z. What about you?” I asked instead. “You know anyone in law enforcement?”

  He bit the inside of his cheek. “One of
the contestants on Little Love worked as a legal aid to this defense lawyer in The Valley. Tandy. I guess she might have access to some sort of database like that, right?”

  I shrugged. It was worth a try.

  Gary slipped the index card into a Ziploc baggie then shoved it, along with our millions of fibers, into a paper bag. Then Gary gave me a ride back to my Bug, and we headed toward North Hollywood.

  * * *

  While Hollywood is usually associated with terms like glamour and celebrity, North Hollywood is Hollywood’s dirty little secret. North Hollywood’s claim to fame was that it housed more porn studios per square mile than any other place on earth. We drove past squat concrete houses with chain link fences, dollar stores with bars on the windows and a guy selling knock off Fendi’s from his trunk in an alley beside a used car lot full of Impalas and Camaros.

  The address Gary got from his little love was situated just off Vanowen between a liquor store and a warehouse with the words “Big Jugs Productions” emblazoned on the side.

  I prayed the studio was sound proof as I parked the car, beeped the alarm and followed Gary up a flight of wooden stairs to the second floor of the mustard-yellow building housing “Goldman and Goldstein: we get you off!”

  We pushed through the glass front door, entering a generic reception room that carried out the mustard-yellow color scheme with a vengeance. A couple of upholstered chairs and a garage-sale quality coffee table holding a selection of magazines sat up against one wall, a large, oak reception desk taking up the opposite one.

  A woman with frizzy brown hair and glasses sat behind the desk, a phone (old-school style, with a cord attached and everything!) glued to one ear. She wore a white button-down blouse, opened low enough that I could tell she had a thing for leopard print undergarments.

  Next to her a rotating fan was set to high, blasting lukewarm air throughout the office and rustling a stack of papers on her desk beneath an L.A. Dodgers bobble being used as a paperweight.

  “Look, Lenny, we’ve already gotten your bail posted three times this month… Well, we’re running out of bondsmen who don’t know your name… I know you got child support payments to make, but if you’d just stop gettin’ yourself arrested… All right, all right, I’ll see what I can do. Sit tight,” she said. Then hung up and mumbled, “Like he’s goin’ anywhere.”

  Gary cleared his throat, signaling our presence.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked, glancing up with a bored expression.

  “Hey, gorgeous!” Gary said.

  She gave him a blank look.

  “It’s me. Gary! From Little Love!”

  She squinted at him behind her glasses. “Ohmigod, Gary!” She jumped out from behind the desk, and I noticed that she, like Gary, was a little person. She was about a head taller than he was, enveloping him in a hello hug that was all boob. “How are you, doll?” she asked.

  “Hmph,” came his muffled reply.

  “What was that?” She stepped back.

  “Doing great now,” he told her cleavage.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, stepping past Gary. “I’m Allie Quick. I’m with the L.A. Informer.” I offered the woman my hand.

  “The tabloid, right?”

  I nodded. “Unfortunately,” I mumbled.

  “Cool. I loved your article on Pippi Mississippi’s new hair color the other day. Made me think of maybe going a shade more strawberry myself, ya know? I hear redheads are the new blondes.”

  “Right,” I mumbled, glad I was doing the world a service. “So, um, Tandy—”

  “Sarah,” she corrected me. “My real name is Sarah Hansen.”

  “So Tandy was a fake name too?”

  She nodded. “The producer of the show said it sounded more fun than Sarah.” She shrugged. “Whatevs.”

  “Listen, we were wondering if maybe we could ask a favor of you?”

  “Shoot.” Sarah, a.k.a. Tandy, gestured to the pair of upholstered chairs.

  I sat down, watching Gary do the same. The fan turned toward us and blew my hair back like a wind tunnel.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Our AC is on the fritz. It’s hell on my hair, ya’ know?” she said, patting her frizz.

  “No prob.” I pulled my own hair back into a knot at the nape of my neck. Which promptly fell out again as soon as the fan rotated. “Anyway,” I said, pushing strands out of my face. “We were wondering if you have access to fingerprinting information?”

  She pursed her lips. “What kind of information?”

  “We have a print, and we need to know who it belongs to. Do you have access to any of those sort of databases?”

  She nodded. “Well, not here. But I got a friend at the precinct downtown who runs stuff for us sometimes.”

  “Any chance your friend could run this one for us?”

  She grinned. “For Romeo here? Anything.” She gave Gary a wink.

  He winked back.

  I had a feeling they were both mentally reliving the hot tub date on the third episode of Little Love.

  I cleared my throat. “Great. Thanks so much.” I pulled our index card out of my bag and handed it across the desk to Sarah.

  She turned it over in her hands a couple times. “What’s this dust here? Is this eyeshadow?”

  I nodded. “Midnight Mist.”

  She nodded. “Nice shade.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll get this to our guy today. Can’t promise he’ll be able to get a hit off it. It doesn’t look like a full print, but I’ll see what I can do for ya’.”

  We thanked her and left, Gary lingering behind a moment to whisper something in her ear that made her giggle and nod before he hopped into my Bug.

  “What was that about?” I asked, as we pulled back onto Vanowen toward the 101.

  “What?”

  “The whispering and giggling.”

  Gary grinned. “I got me a date Saturday night.”

  I raised an eyebrow his way. “I thought you kicked Tandy off on the fourth episode.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I acted too hastily. You get a look at that leopard-print bra? Hot.”

  I rolled my eyes. However, Gary’s impending date reminded me of my date last night with Alec, and the fact that in the face of my apartment being broken into and the colossally stupid decision to sleep with my boss, I still hadn’t had a chance to watch the footage Alec had handed me.

  Once we’d cleared No Ho for the trendier Studio City, I pulled into the nearest Starbucks and booted up my laptop. While Gary ordered us a couple lattes and maple scones I plugged in the stick Alec had given me. A couple minutes later the footage started playing.

  It was raw, unedited, so it mostly contained a lot of boring stuff like the kids brushing their teeth, Nanny McGregor ushering them all down to the practice room to walk back and forth with adorable smiles for the Barbie doll judges. I hit fast forward, watching the Davenport family zip through their day from various angles. Finally the time stamp on the footage indicated we’d hit the crucial zone when Barker had been murdered.

  Gary watched over my shoulder as I let the video play, mentally taking note of who was there and who wasn’t.

  Nanny McGregor sat in the living room, watching a movie. One of the older girls popped up and asked her for a glass of water. Nanny tucked her back into bed then went back to her movie. About fifteen minutes later, the front door opened and Don walked in. He said hello to Nanny then disappeared toward the kitchen. A couple minutes later a camera caught up to him there, recording mind-numbingly boring footage of him making himself a sandwich—bologna and American cheese—and loudly chewing it. He poured a beer into a glass, drank it, stared out the window a bit. Then he shuffled into the den, flipped on the TV and ordered a pay-per-view movie with a lot of skin and very little plot.

  I looked at the timestamp. Twelve-thirty. He’d been home the whole time. No way could he have killed Barker.

  I shut the video down, leaning back in my chair with an aud
ible sigh.

  “Well, I guess Don’s not our man,” Gary said, voicing my thoughts.

  “No. But you know who we didn’t see on that tape?”

  “Who?”

  “Deb.”

  Gary shook his head. “No way. I refuse to believe Deb would do anything to harm Barker.”

  I raised an eyebrow his way. “I take it you’re a fan?”

  “Have you seen her on the show? She’s a frickin’ saint.”

  “Gary, you of all people should know the power of Barker’s editing.”

  “Plus, she’s hot.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She’s a mother of twelve.”

  He blinked at me. “So? She’s a total MILF. You know, Mother I’d like to—”

  “I get the point,” I said, holding up a hand to halt that train of thought before it went into total squickville. “Is there any woman on earth you don’t think is hot?”

  Gary paused, scrunched up his brow, thinking hard about that one.

  “Never mind,” I said, “But despite her hotness, Deb doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “She was on her book tour when Barker was killed,” Gary countered.

  I nodded. “Possibly. But it’s also possible she could have flown in for the night, offed Barker, then flown back to wherever her current book stop was, with no one being the wiser.”

  “Why would she do that?” Gary asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she was tired of being in the spotlight. Maybe she didn’t like where Barker was taking her career. Maybe he threatened to expose the truth about the affair to boost ratings next season?”

  “That’s a lot of maybe’s.”

  “Then I suggest we find out for sure. Let’s talk to Deb.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  According to Deb’s official book launch website, her tour was scheduled to end today with a mega signing at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove. From 2-4 pm. It was almost one, so we pulled into a drive through In-N-Out Burger and grabbed a couple of double doubles before the signing. Or, I should say, I grabbed a double double, and Gary grabbed a couple of double doubles. I shook my head at him as he devoured the first one in almost a single bite.