I blinked at her, my vision going fuzzy. It was one thing to witness dead bodies on Law & Order, but the idea of someone I’d just seen alive and well yesterday suddenly needing a toe tag made my itty-bitty latte in my stomach feel like a loop-d-loop coaster at Six Flags.
“Dead?” I repeated. “What do you mean, dead?”
Kylie’s throat bobbed up and down. “They found her this morning. In Mia’s trailer.”
“Mia’s trailer?” My limbs turned to instant Jell-O. I leaned a hand on the side of the building for support, vividly remembering that creeped-out feeling I’d had in her trailer just the day before.
Even though Veronika had looked the picture of health yesterday, I had to ask. “Did she have a heart attack or something?”
But I already knew the answer even as Kylie shook her head, strands of blonde hair whipping her cheeks. Young pretty actresses didn’t just have heart attacks. Especially not in the trailers of women being stalked by obsessive fans.
“No. They’re saying she was”-Kylie lowered her voice to a whisper-“killed. Can you believe it? Stein-man said we should all go home. He’s closing the set today, you know, because of all this…” She trailed off, staring at the hovering gawkers.
I took a deep breath, trying to get that churning latte under control. This was way too much to absorb before 9:00 A.M. I craned to see through the crowd again. Grips mingled with extras, who mingled with hair and makeup, all straining for a glimpse of what would undoubtedly be Access Hollywood’s top story tonight. And mixed in with the curiosity seekers, I spotted someone I knew.
Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
He hovered near the back in a rumpled white button-down, sneakers, and a pair of wrinkled khaki pants. He had to be the only person in the known universe who could wrinkle Dockers that badly. He looked like he’d slept in his car, or worse yet, not slept at all. His neatly clipped, sandy blond hair stuck out ever so slightly in the back, and his jaw bore the tiniest dusting of blond hairs, giving him an overall lived-in look. He was one of the few people not craning his neck to get a better look at the gruesome sight I now knew hovered just beyond my eye line. Instead, he was talking into his hand, where I’d bet anything he held a tiny voice recorder.
“Felix, ” I mumbled, stepping up beside him.
To his credit, when I hissed in his ear he didn’t jump nearly as high as Kylie had.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You’re kidding, right?” he answered with the hint of a British accent in his deep voice. “This is the story of the century, love.”
Felix Dunn worked as a reporter for the L.A. Informer, which, as I may have mentioned, is one of Southern California’s sleaziest tabloids. In addition to regular photos of myself engaged in various…misunderstandings…they delighted in printing photos of celebrity cellulite, Bat Boy’s secret lover, and Big-foot’s love child with the Crocodile Woman. Generally their stories were ten percent truth and ninety percent sensationalism. I had worked with Felix on one of his rare real stories last year, purely out of need on my part, but I hadn’t seen him since. Which was a good thing, as far as I was concerned. Felix had an annoying habit of snapping unflattering photos of me, then pasting my head on Pamela Anderson’s body.
“Isn’t this a bit out of your league?” I asked. “I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that Sasquatch was involved.”
“Ha, ha. Bloody funny. You ever think of dropping the whole shoe career for the comedy stage?”
I stuck my tongue out at him. What can I say? Felix brought out the second-grader in me.
“For your information, ” he continued, “the Informer will pay thousands for a story like this. Not to mention photos.”
I paused. Thousands? For a half second my bank account warred with my sense of morality. “Thousands? Seriously?” I asked.
Felix shrugged. “What can I say? Tabloids sell.”
He lifted his hand, ostensibly to scratch his head, but I noticed his palm was facing toward the trailer. Not only a voice recorder, but he also must have had a camera tucked in there.
I couldn’t help myself. Curiosity got the better of me.
“What do you see?” I asked, standing on tiptoe again.
Felix shrugged. “Not much. They’ve got the trailer sealed off. They haven’t brought her body out yet. A few blokes with black bags have gone in. And there are cops all over.”
At the mention of the word cops, my mind suddenly went to one cop in particular. Ramirez. I wondered if he was here, and if so, how badly his superiors would rip him a new one this time. He’d been assigned to this “babysitting” job, as he put it, to watch the set. And now look. A dead body. Ironically, he was back in the middle of a homicide investigation, but I wasn’t altogether sure his superiors would see this as a good thing. Homicide detectives usually came on the case after the body was dead, not before.
As if he could read my mind, Felix said, “I saw your boyfriend go in a few minutes go. He didn’t look too happy.”
“Yeah, well, most people aren’t happy when some-one’s murdered. Unlike tabloid reporters.”
“What? I’m sorry the poor girl died, ” he responded. He grinned, showing off a row of slightly crooked teeth and dimples in both cheeks. It was, as I was learning, his charming look, à la Hugh Grant. Luckily I knew him well enough not to be deceived by a little thing like charm.
“Uh-huh. That’s why you’re grinning like the Cheshire cat, Tabloid Boy.”
“What can I say? I guess I’m just a happy-go-lucky kind of fellow.” And with that he did a mock stretch and yawn, pointing his palm toward the trailer for a few more clicks.
“So, what happened here?” I asked.
Felix shot me a sidelong glance.
“Come on, I know you’ve got all the dirt.”
He grinned again. “And suddenly Tabloid Boy has his uses.”
I rolled my eyes. “You going to share or not?”
Lucky for me, Tabloid Boy couldn’t sit on a juicy story. “All right, since you asked so nicely. It appears the wardrobe girl-”
“Dusty, ” I supplied.
Felix raised one eyebrow, making a mental note. “You know the bird?”
“Met her yesterday. Go on.”
“Okay, well, it seems Dusty found her this morning around six-fifteen. She was in Mia’s trailer, dead. Strangled with-you’re going to love this part-a pair of panty hose.”
I always knew those things were evil. I grimaced as Felix continued.
“So far, the speculation is that she died sometime between midnight and three A.M. They’re questioning everyone with access to the lot. But what Veronika was doing in Mia’s trailer, no one’s sure of yet.”
“And Mia?” I asked. “Where’s she?”
Felix shrugged. “Probably surrounded by body-guards at this point. I’ll tell you one thing she’s not doing.”
“What’s that?”
“Talking to the press. Don’t suppose you could convince her, eh?”
I shot him a look.
He shrugged. “Oh well, was worth a try, right, love?” Felix stretched and shot a few more frames of the crime scene.
The idea of someone on the set leaving threatening letters in Mia’a trailer was disconcerting. The idea that one of the people milling around the scene at this very moment might be a murderer was downright chilling. I shivered despite the sunshine pelting down on us and wrapped my arms around myself.
I hung around for a few minutes more, but there honestly wasn’t much to see. Instead, I walked back through the lot to my Jeep and dialed Dana’s number on my cell.
“Yello!” she answered in a way-too-perky voice.
I jumped, pulling the receiver back from my ear. “Wow, what are you on this morning?”
“Sorry, ” she shouted. “I’m doing the treadmill thing. It’s noisy.”
Dana lived in a duplex in Studio City with a seemingly never-ending stream of other actors. Her various roommates had included No-neck Guy (with whom she’d had a brief thing until she’d caught him ogling another woman’s “pecs” at the gym), Stick-figure Girl (who’d checked herself into an eating-disorder clinic last summer), and, my all-time favorite, Asian Guy Who Always Smelled Like Peanuts. Yick. Currently Dana was living with Daisy Duke, thus named for her endless supply of short shorts. Daisy had just landed a recurring role in a string of Budweiser commercials, so instead of taking on a third roommate this month, she and Dana had turned the extra bedroom into a home gym. Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, considering that Dana worked at an actual gym, but to each her own. Me, I’d have turned it into one big shoe closet.
“So, what’s up?” Dana asked, breathing heavily.
“Seen the news this morning?”
“You know I never watch that stuff. Too depressing.” She paused. “Why? What happened?”
I gave her the quickie version of the morning’s discovery, amidst her cries of, “No way!” and, “Ohmigod!” When I was finished, she was panting like a Doberman, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was the treadmill.
“Ohmigod, a real, live Hollywood murder! I can’t believe it! The one day I’m not on the set. So unfair.”
“Um, I guess.” Only I had to admit this whole Hollywood-glamour thing had worn off the second the words dead body had entered the picture. It was one thing to gawk at stars going down the red carpet, but when said stars were strangled with support hose, it was a whole different ball game. “Listen, the set’s closed today. You want to meet me for coffee?”
“Sure. I’ve got one more mile to do, and then I’ll be right over, ” Dana said, panting.
“One more mile? Don’t you have, like, a gazillion aerobics classes to teach today?” I asked.
“Yeah, ” she panted back, “but not until noon. I need to keep busy until then. Therapist Max says I have to find positive new outlets for my sexual frustrations. It was either running or macramé. And I’ve already got all the plant hangers I need.”
Twenty minutes later Dana and I were sipping lattes at a corner table at the Starbucks on Ventura and Alcove. I was going over what little I knew about Veronika’s tragic demise one more time, while Dana tried to keep her eyes on me and not the college kid in tight jeans serving biscotti behind the counter.
“Felix said they found her strangled with a pair of panty hose. How cruel is that?”
“Totally sucks.” Dana sipped at her latte (low-fat, decaf, soy milk).
I nodded, taking a big gulp of my mocha (full-fat, double shot, with extra cocoa powder). What can I say? Dead bodies made me seek comfort food.
“So, let me get this straight, ” Dana said, “Veronika looked just like Mia?”
“They could be twins.”
“She usually wore the same clothes as Mia?”
“That’s the whole point of the stand-in.”
“And she’s found in Mia’s trailer.”
I nodded again. “Yep.”
“So, maybe Mia was the target.”
I took another warm sip of my drink, inhaling the coffee aroma. “That’s what I was thinking. I mean, it would be a bit of a coincidence, the letters and now this, right?”
“So, the stalker was going after Mia and got Veronika by mistake?”
“It makes sense. It was late at night, dark. Chances are, the guy probably came at her from behind. I mean, I can’t imagine Mia or Veronika inviting him in for a chat.”
Dana nodded, her gaze straying only minimally to Biscotti Boy, who was leaning over the counter to squeegee off the bakery case. “So we’re back to the letters. Whoever has been writing them is our killer.”
“Right.” I sipped at my coffee again, wondering if Ramirez had made any headway on that front. Not that he’d tell me. Not that he was even speaking to me at this point. A thought depressing enough to tempt me into a second mocha. With whipped cream. And a chocolate-chip muffin.
“Did the guy sign them or anything?” Dana asked.
I shook my head. “No name on the one I saw. Just, ‘your adoring fan.’ ”
“Creepy.”
“No kidding.”
“Well, if there’s nothing terribly distinguishing about the letters themselves, we’ll just have to focus on the person delivering them.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Meaning?”
“Meaning find out who on the set has the biggest grudge against Mia.”
I did a mental shiver at the thought. “Speak for yourself, but I’m not particularly crazy about the idea of interrogating this guy face-to-face.”
In fact, I wasn’t even particularly crazy about the idea of going back to the set. Now that Ramirez’s assignment had been bumped up to homicide, every cop in town would be on the Sunset lot. Honestly, what could Dana and I do that they couldn’t?
“Hey, ” Dana said, cocking her head to the side as she watched Biscotti Boy bend over to pick up a stray napkin off the floor. “You think he’d go for an older woman?”
I shot her a look. “Seriously? I think he started shaving yesterday.”
“Look at those glutes, Maddie. Don’t they make you just want to sink your teeth into-”
“Down, girl. Remember your chip.”
Dana bit her lip and moaned. “I think I need to go for another run.”
After dropping Dana off at the gym for her noon Spinning to the Oldies class, I pointed my Jeep in the direction of my studio. Like a good girl, I was going home and staying the heck out of Ramirez’s way. (I made a mental note to remind him of this the next time he accused me of butting in.)
I took the 405 south until it merged into the 10 west to Santa Monica. I pulled my little red Jeep into my space just as Mrs. Alvarez from downstairs was letting her cat out. I gave her a friendly wave.
“Morning, Mrs. Alvarez.”
She nodded in my direction. “Someone left a package for you, ” she said, gesturing to the top of the stairs. I glanced up. Sure enough there was a brown box sitting on my doorstep. My heart lifted. The suede Michael Kors boots I’d ordered from Zappos.com? Maybe this wasn’t such a bad day after all.
“Thanks, Mrs. Alvarez, ” I called, taking the steps two at a time.
She nodded again before shutting the door and returning to The View.
I picked up the package, not even waiting until I got in my apartment before tearing off the tape and peeking inside.
“Ewwwwww!”
I did a big girlie squeal and dropped the box at my feet, doing a jogging-in-place-waving-my-hands-in-the-air dance to shake off the cooties. It was so not my suede boots. Instead, lying inside the box was a squirrel. Or, more accurately, most of a squirrel. The poor little thing looked like he’d suffered a run-in with a Ford Bronco on the 101.
I shut my eyes against the mangled image, now burned into my brain, and kicked the box down the steps with the toe of my Gucci pumps, willing myself not to vomit in Mrs. Alvarez’s azalea bush.
I did a sweep of the street, searching for teenagers giggling behind trash cans at their prank. Nothing. The only sign of life was Mrs. Alvarez’s cat licking its privates on the hood of my neighbor’s Chevy. Doing one more icky squirm, I unlocked the door and quickly slipped inside my apartment.
Instinctively, I dialed Ramirez’s number. Then, remembering how our last conversation had gone, I hung up after the first ring. The way we’d left things had been a little tense. Okay, fine: tense was sugarcoating it. But suffice to say I wasn’t altogether sure Ramirez would be happy to hear from me. Especially now.
If his superiors were angry before, I could just imagine how they felt after this morning. Forget Hollyweird duty. Ramirez would be lucky to get a job ticketing illegally parked cars on the Promenade.
And it was all because of me. Okay, so I hadn’t actually killed Veronika, but thanks to his girl-whom-I-refuse-to-actually-call-my-girlfriend, Ramirez was in the really wrong place at the really wrong time. I wasn’t sure if forgiveness would even be on the table after this.
And calling him about a dead squirrel wasn’t likely to improve his mood.
Instead, I made a mental note to buy him one of those singing Hallmark cards (did they make one that said, I’m sorry I ruined your career and a starlet showed up dead on your beat?) and grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer. I polished off the entire thing standing in my kitchen.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I asked, half expecting it to be PETA, interrogating me about my curbside roadkill.
“Oh my God, Maddie, don’t tell me it’s happening again, ” Mom screeched.
“What’s happening, Mom?”
“Maddie, I just heard about the young woman on that show you’re working on. Is it true? Is she really dead?”
I debated the merits of lying, but remembering the way Felix was snapping pictures, I thought it unlikely that I could keep this one from her. “Yeah, it’s true.”
“First the shootout-”
“Misunderstanding.”
“-and now this?”
“It’s that Mercury in retrograde. It can be a bitch, ” shouted Mrs. Rosenblatt in the background.
“Maddie, please tell me you’re carrying your pepper spray, ” Mom said.
I sighed. “Mom, I’m fine. I don’t need pepper spray.”
“I could always look for one of Ollie’s guns, ” Mrs. R offered.
“No!” I closed my eyes and did a silent mini meditation. “Okay, fine. I promise I’ll carry pepper spray to work tomorrow. Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when your life stops making headlines.”
Join the club.
“Just be careful, Maddie, ” Mom said. “And I’ll see you on Sunday.”
“Sunday?” I asked before I could stop myself.
There was a pause. Then Mom groaned. “Oh, Maddie, don’t tell me you forgot about Sunday.”
“Of course not, ” I lied, racking my brain. In my defense, a dead actress and a dead rodent all in the same day did funny things to one’s memory.
Mom sighed again. “Connor’s birthday party.”
Oy vey. I had forgotten. Connor was my cousin, Molly’s, youngest spawn, just turning one and already known in our family as the Terror. The last time I’d visited, he’d spilled grape juice on my favorite white espadrilles. The time before that it was a half-eaten lollipop in my Kate Spade. And the time before that, he bit me. Seriously. Right on the ankle, like a little dog. Not something I was looking forward to again.
Especially in light of the fact that when I’d first gotten the invitation, I’d stupidly asked Ramirez to go with me. Now that I was on his shit list, I was going to have to endure Molly’s brood, the Terror, Mom hinting at my own biological clock ticking like a time bomb, and my Irish Catholic grandmother’s stories about how she had already birthed seven kids without anesthesia by the time she was my age. All alone.
Sigh.
“I’m not sure I can make it, Mom. I think I have something else to do that day.” Like wash my hair. Or clean my belly-button lint.
“Maddie!” my mother admonished.
“Okay, fine. I’ll try to be there for the Terror’s birthday.”
“Maddie!”
Oops. “I mean, Connor’s birthday.”
I could feel Mom’s frown through the phone. “You have a gift, right?”
“I have to bring a gift?”
The frown deepened and was accompanied by a low sigh. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow after work to go shopping.”
Great. Dead bodies, roadkill, and Toys “R” Us. Could this get any better?
I decided I’d better hang up before I tempted fate with that particular question.
“Sorry, Mom, I’m going through the canyon.” I made fake whooshing sounds. Yeah, I know, I’m a terrible person for lying to my mother. “I think I’m losing you.”
“I’ll pick you up at five!” she yelled as I hit the off button.
I spent the rest of the afternoon alternately watching the reporters on E! flock like vultures to the story of Veronika’s murder, and trying to concentrate on the Pretty Pretty Princess designs for Tot Trots. Between shots of Mia’s trailer and Magnolia Lane press photos, I added a mini heel and tiny pink bows to the patent-leather Mary Janes. But my heart wasn’t really in it. And by the time I watched them wheel Veroni-ka’s body out in a human Hefty bag, I’d abandoned the kiddie shoes and was glued to the TV.
Granted, I hadn’t even really known Veronika. In fact, I think I’d spoken only a total of three words to her yesterday, when Dusty had asked me to fetch her for a fitting. But she’d been about my age, single. I wondered if she lived alone. If she’d had any plans for the weekend that would now go unfulfilled. Compared to strangulation by panty hose, the Terror suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Poor thing. Talk about the wrong place at the wrong time. I wondered how Mia felt about all this. Did she feel at all responsible that her stalker had offed the wrong person?
Knowing Mia, probably not. Probably she was just pissed that a pair of panty hose were ruined.
I ordered Chinese, eating it in front of the television while watching Entertainment Tonight. So far there wasn’t any new information beyond what Felix had told me that morning, though I did notice a couple of photos of Mia’s trailer that were suspiciously from Fe-lix’s vantage point.
On the ten-o’clock news, the chief of police finally held a press conference, though it was filled with mostly, “We have no information on that, ” and, “We can’t comment at this time.” I scanned the background for any glimpse of Ramirez.
The truth was, I had kind of hoped that Ramirez would call me. Besides the fact that my coworker was found murdered this morning, he had to know I was dying to hear about Veronika. Okay, poor word choice. But it felt weird that he hadn’t at least called to make sure I was okay.
And there was the fact that the last time we had spoken we’d been fighting. I hated fighting. I hated leaving things like this, because a teeny, tiny part of me, the part that freaked at the mention of the Cabana Club, worried that maybe he wouldn’t call. Ever. Maybe this was it. He wasn’t going to forgive me.
Maybe this time I’d actually gone too far.