“I will,” I told him confidently.
Just as I prepared for him to hang up without a goodbye so I could do the same, he spoke again.
“And Walker?”
“Yeah?”
“You wake me up this early with anything less than a national headline, I’ll run you over with my car.”
That time I was met with dead air.
And I met the sunrise with a triumphant smile.
Although there was a slight curling in my stomach that I couldn’t properly put my finger on. Like that sunrise had all these possibilities for changing my life and my career, but echoes of Keltan’s kiss and words lingered between the rays, promising maybe another change that I didn’t know if I would survive.
Two Days Later
“Sorry, you said you were from Current?” a surprisingly dry-eyed, well-put-together woman asked me. She had agreed, rather begrudgingly—I could be persuasive—to meet me for a quick coffee and chat about her former boss. The one who was murdered two days before. Hence my surprise at her immaculately pressed and expensive white pantsuit, enviable Prada heels, a sleek bun and eyeliner sharp enough to cut someone’s throat.
Too soon?
Yeah. Maybe.
I sipped my coffee, my hand shaking slightly as I did so. Maybe five cups before 9 a.m. was pushing it. Or maybe I needed to push through. This weekend hadn’t exactly been filled with any form of sleep, considering I was trying to do as much research as I could on the story and think of Keltan and the kiss, and everything else, as little as possible.
So, because he was the last thing I wanted to think of, it had been all I’d been thinking of.
Thankfully it was a Monday, and Criss Cross seemed to still be open for business, despite Cross—the designer—being dead.
Handy for me. And my story.
“Yes,” I replied, holding the door to the coffee shop open for her as we emerged into the sunny morning in Venice. Hip boutiques littered the street, still dark since their equally hip employees likely wouldn’t roll out of bed for another couple of hours or so. “I was actually meant to interview her on Friday, but….”
Monica’s gait stuttered slightly when her wide eyes met mine.
“You were the one who found her?” she asked brightly.
Yes, very strange for someone who just found herself talking to the woman who discovered the dead and bloody body of her boss. Normal social conduct called for a little more… despair.
I nodded, ignoring her strange reaction for the time being. “Yes. And it was shocking, to say the least. All of us at Current were deeply saddened by the loss of such a pivotal part of the industry, and we wanted to a big spread on her. You know, her life.”
Monica made a sound that was remarkably similar to a snort as she lifted her cup. “Yeah, her life. She was a special lady indeed.”
I reached into the pocket of my Saint Laurent slacks and pressed the recording button on my phone. “You don’t sound like you got on well with Lucinda,” I said, not structuring my statement as a question and sounding as casual as I could. “Heck, I know about trying bosses. I could write a book and a sexual harassment claim on mine. I could write a book of sexual harassment claims alone,” I added with a wink.
She gave me a slightly wary look, but I was good at acting—we were in Hollywood, after all—so her face relaxed slightly. She looked very pretty without that forced pinched look on her face. She showed her youth, despite the slathering of makeup on her tanned face.
“Yes. I could write a book too. A book of fucking crazy,” she muttered.
“Lucinda was known to be eccentric. Artists and all that.”
She waved her hand. “Oh, eccentric is the best euphemism you could use. I’d say certifiable.” She paused. “This is off the record, right?”
I gave her a smile. “Of course,” I reassured her.
Technically it was. I wasn’t actually going to use any of this in a story. Even if Lucinda was a stark-raving-mad bitch, I wasn’t there to expose her character. Merely her murderer and why they did it.
It was looking promising. Crazy people did seem to make a lot of enemies.
Because of the lack of fear.
Fear made the world go round. And kept us breathing in it. My healthy dose of fear was what sent me into that closet. And what had me running from Keltan and everything he represented.
“I mean, she was brilliant, talented, whatever. Put that in the story. I’m sure you will. You can’t exactly say bad things about the dead, can you?” she asked, gearing up for what I knew was a long rant. I had friends named Gwen, Amy, Mia, and Rosie who did the exact same thing. I knew the signs.
I ignored the pang that came with thoughts of Rosie and my worries about her absence.
“Or you can’t print bad things about the dead,” Monica continued. “Well, you can if it’s Hitler or something—and I will agree there are some similarities.” Her tanned face paled underneath the makeup and she stopped walking so abruptly it took me a few paces to realize to do the same. I looked back to her. “Okay, really, really don’t print that I compared her to Hitler,” she pleaded, starting to walk again.
“I didn’t hear a thing about Hitler,” I reassured her.
She nodded in relief. “Anyway, yeah, she was a handful, to say the least. But I’ve had some shitty bosses in the past, and I know what this position will get me. Where it will get me. I’ve got goals, you know? Dreams. I’m going to be famous.”
I did an internal eye roll. Because she was the first person to stand on the streets in Hollywood and say that.
“Of course,” I said instead of anything I was thinking. The girl had her dreams, and as cliché as that may be, I would never cut a fellow woman down for having goals. There were too many other women in this town who would do that.
“But it wasn’t that that made the job hard.” She did a sideways glance as if she was expecting the NSA to jump out from behind a trendy boutique and arrest her for maybe being a little too honest with a stranger in a town where lying was practically a necessity for living, like rent or power.
Once she was satisfied, she turned back to me. “I really shouldn’t say anything,” she said quietly.
I chose that moment to sip my coffee and give her the opportunity I knew she’d take.
“But,” she continued without so much as another breath, “she had these guys who turned up at the studio once. It was weird.” She screwed up her nose. “She said they were potential models for a men’s line she was thinking of doing, but we haven’t even done sketches for any men’s designs and none of the rest of the team knew anything about it.” Her words were coming as fast as the clicks of her heels on the sidewalk as we neared the Venice studio that I knew would have news trucks, or at least a few straggling paparazzi, loitering outside. The story had blown up over the weekend; celebrity death was almost like the Oscars in Hollywood. Much like the funeral would be, which was the next day. Considering you usually needed a lot of time with a body after a murder—I had experience in that—the coroner must’ve been working overtime. No way was even I callous enough to go to the funeral asking questions. Which was why I needed this now. But I also knew not to rush or spook her.
“The only reason I knew was because I stayed late one night. I got carried away going over my headshots on Photoshop. Not changing them,” she defended quickly. “Just, you know, enhancing.”
I nodded with understanding. Good journalism really wasn’t asking a lot of questions. Sometimes it wasn’t even asking any. It was knowing when to be silent and let the story come to you.
Or at least that was what I’d experienced.
I couldn’t exactly call stories about shoes and fire hydrants in small towns “good stories,” but they weren’t exactly bad.
“Anyway—” She waved her hand. “—I don’t think she knew I was there because sometimes she would get hopped up on coffee.” She gave me a meaningful look that implied she didn’t mean what we were holding in our han
ds before she continued. “So, these guys came, and she didn’t know I saw them until I was leaving.” She paused. “That’s when she gave me that explanation about the line, and then a bonus. And I know that bonus was for kind of keeping the news of the men’s line to myself, you know, because she wasn’t sure about it.” She gave me a look. “At least that’s what she told me. And it got me new shoes. And a purse.”
I gave a small smile. My kind of girl.
“But with her gone, she can’t exactly take back the shoes and the purse for telling you, and it doesn’t really matter now,” she continued. She squinted at the glint of traffic and lights up ahead but didn’t seem overly concerned. “Anyway, I highly doubt these guys were male models, because in order to be a model you have to be….”
“Hot?” I finished for her, something brewing in my stomach about this story.
Her eyes bulged. “Yes. Exactly. Two of them were okay. But the third one?” She shook her head. “No.”
I chewed my lip, thinking this was a long shot, but the news trucks were getting close, and I didn’t want a wasted trip out here. “He didn’t by any chance have an unfortunate moustache, bad shoes and smell of Old Spice, did he?” I asked.
Her eyes bulged once more, and she nodded rapidly while taking a large sip of her coffee. “Yes! Well, I don’t know about the Old Spice, but the rest, the moustache, shoes.” She shuddered like only a true shoe lover would at the memory. “They were wrong on so many levels.”
“Well, fuck me,” I muttered under my breath, unable to believe the way this was falling into my lap.
Monica furrowed her brow. “What?”
I evened my expression. “Sorry, nothing. Just remembered something. You don’t have a name, contact details, or mug shot for the moustache man?” I asked hopefully.
“Mug shot?”
“Sorry, I mean head shot. You know, since he’s meant to be a model,” I corrected.
Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, right. Yeah, no. I have nothing on them. She said they weren’t going to work out. Seemed downright scared of them, actually. It was strange.”
“Yeah. Very strange,” I agreed. We were too close to the building. The murmured conversations of other journalists could be heard over the traffic sounds of the morning.
I stopped. Luckily Monica did too.
“I have to go back to work. You know, because my boss is still alive,” I said sadly. “And he’ll kill me if I don’t get him his coffee, and this story. Just one more question.”
Monica glanced back, then nodded. “Sure, make it quick.”
“You don’t have security cameras in your offices, do you?”
She seemed momentarily stunned at the question, as she should have been. I was meant to be doing a fluff piece on her dearly departed Hitler boss; such questions didn’t exactly mesh with that.
Luckily Monica came through by not overthinking the question.
Ah, youth.
“No. Well, wait. We didn’t, until some seriously hot security guys who really could’ve been male models came and installed them. Less than a month ago. Just before the visit, actually.”
Ding ding ding!
“Greenstone Security?” I clarified.
She thought on it a moment. “Yeah, that sounds right. Though I was focusing less on names and more on numbers, if you know what I mean.” She gave me a knowing smile. “There was this one guy, the boss it seemed. He had this accent.” She fanned herself. “And tattoos. And muscles. Yeah, damn near threw myself at him. No go. Must’ve been gay.”
I gritted my teeth and my unreasonable fury at the young girl who had possibly given me a pivotal break in a story I’d only gotten days ago. I couldn’t yank her hair from her bun; she might need to testify as a witness to a story I broke.
So instead of doing so, I nodded. “Must’ve been,” I agreed. “Well, I must go. But thanks for everything, you’ve been great,” I told her with maybe a little ice in my tone.
“Have I?” she asked with a frown.
I nodded.
“Okay, well that’s good. I’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, sure. Good luck with the fame thing.”
She smiled widely. “Thanks,” she chirped, obviously not catching the heavy dose of sarcasm I was injecting into that statement.
I watched her strut her twentysomething self into the hoard of photographers for a beat and then faced the building, trying to figure out my next move.
The police cruiser amongst the vans had me amping up my thought process. It wouldn’t take long for my detective friends to chat with Monica, and I was sure she’d be less than a tough nut to crack. And I was sure that they would be interviewing Keltan, if they hadn’t already.
Knowledge of moustache man, the security tapes and the trail of breadcrumbs would soon be trampled on by police issue shoes.
I needed to get my Manolos on that trail before that happened.
I took a deep breath, retrieved my phone and, after a quick search, found the number I was looking for.
While I was listening to the dial tone, I walked back towards my car, thinking over everything that had been said so far.
It wasn’t measuring up to be an overly complicated situation. Plus, I liked to watch a lot of cheesy crime shows in my spare time. Apart from the classic movies that were my therapy, they were the only TV I watched.
Oh, and Vikings, because Travis Fimmel. And Clive Standen.
It seemed like Lucinda had done what a lot of people in Hollywood had—a variety of narcotics, in large quantities and often. It wasn’t a secret she’d been in rehab.
Twice.
Anyone who was anyone had been in rehab.
Substance abuse was chic, apparently.
It didn’t go well with my style, so I stayed away from all of that. I already had an addictive personality; one only had to look at my closet and caffeine consumption to understand that. No way was I adding something as life-ruining as drugs to that.
Love was the worst drug of all, and that had already ruined everything.
My step stuttered. Did I just think the word “love?”
“Good morning, Greenstone Security. You’re speaking with Rita,” a cheerful voice sounded in my ear, chasing away the dreaded L-word.
For now, at least.
It would take a lot more than a cheery voice at the end of the phone to banish it forever.
I worried it would take a man with bad shoes reeking of Old Spice and a scary knife to do that.
Because I would be too.
On that morbid thought, I shrugged off my sense of foreboding and the strange tickle at the back of my neck like someone was watching me and continued to my car. “Hello, I’m just calling to see if Keltan is currently in the office,” I asked.
If he was, I was hanging up quicker than you could say “kiwi with a six pack who should come with a warning sign.” My plans all hinged on him not being in the office. Badass security bosses didn’t sit behind desks, even before nine in the morning. They were out securing things and spreading the badass hotness and shit.
“No, sorry, Mr. Brooke is out for the morning on assignment,” Rita replied, apology in her voice. “Can I take a message? Or can I help at all? Schedule you in for a meeting? Is this a security matter?”
I smiled. I liked Rita. Rita seemed extremely helpful. “No, it’s fine. I was actually hoping to talk to someone this morning. I was recommended….” I tried to remember the name of Mr. Tall, Dark and Mute from the crime scene. I did well with names usually, but dead bodies distracted me. “Heath,” I said. “I know this is a total long shot, but I’m kind of desperate.”
It wasn’t a lie. Just not for security. Rita did not need to know that.
“Let me see Heath’s schedule,” she said, a tapping of keys in the background filling the pause. “Right, well it seems you’re in luck. Heath is in the office for a short time today, but he was a right bear with a sore head to me this morning, and you sound like you’re in need, dear.?
??
I grinned as I approached my car. “You could say that’s exactly what I am.”
“Well, he’s free in about forty minutes for less than fifteen. Not ideal but—”
“I’ll make it work, Rita,” I said warmly. “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”
She gave me the address when I asked, which was conveniently a thirty-minute drive away.
Yeah, the universe may have been screwing with my heart, but it was looking out for my career. Maybe not my life, if you looked at me chasing over a murderer as dangerous, but it was the safer kind of danger than the monotony of what I’d had before.
The offices of Greenstone Security were not in a swanky part of Beverly Hills like one might expect the ‘it’ security company to the stars to be. Then again, they were new, and rent at such locations probably ran a little high.
I liked the brownstone situated on a rather quiet street, on the fringes of Downtown L.A., nestled between a law firm and a coffee shop. Maybe I liked the proximity and ease of procuring coffee number three, but it was working for me. Plus, there was parking close, which meant my shoes that were not strictly made for walking only had to travel a short journey.
I reasoned that if I was going to commit to traipsing around L.A. in order to get this story, I might have to make some footwear sacrifices.
The thought alone upset me. Then again, dying at the hands of someone I may or may not uncover as the murderer before the police did was a little scarier than flats.
By a small margin.
The frosted glass door had simple, masculine script with the name of the company on it, along with Keltan’s and Duke’s names.
Duke rang a bell, from one of Keltan’s e-mails. I may have had them committed to memory. Which was good, considering I did the Internet version of burning all memories of an ex after we’d broken up. Deleted every piece of evidence. Though it was rather depressing thinking that all reminders of what we had were so easily disposed of with one click. The weight of it wasn’t enough to even fill a trash can, figurative on the screen or real. It taunted me with the lack of time and “real” moments we had together, telling me a heart couldn’t be that broken with such a lack of collateral.