Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 02 - Brilliant Actors (19 page)

I got up, steadied myself on the chair backrest, and said, “I appreciate your openness with me, Henry. Just give me a little time to trust you, okay?”
 

Henry looked at me for a long moment and nodded his head.

“There is one thing you could do to help me.” I stepped toward his desk and wrote down the taxi’s license plate number on his notepad. “This is the taxi that Rip used for his getaway. It was a Yellow Fleet car. I would appreciate it if you could find out where it dropped Rip off after he dashed away from me. See you later.”

Henry toyed with the paper, and I felt his eyes on my back and elsewhere when I left his office.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Phil Grab Trap

The ride to Brentwood was quick and painless, the traffic surprisingly moderate. Phil Krueger lived in a large mansion with a wide driveway; it appeared to me that those houses had to come straight out of a standardized Hollywood success compensation package. There had to be a single company monopoly that did all the house setups in order to underline the little man’s view of the movie community.
 

Phil answered the door himself. He was well-tanned, had full hair, and was around forty-five going on thirty—a man who wouldn’t grow up and continued to live on his boyhood charms. One hand held a French spring water bottle, and he wore white tennis clothes with tight shorts. Great body, great hair, great tan, great ego.
 

“Calendar? Great to see you, Nicole told me so much about you. Come in. Anything to drink? Excuse me, but I just finished my tennis lesson. Play tennis? No? You should—good for the legs and arms, keeps you moving constantly, and really burns fat away, not that you have any. Sit down, please do. Here’s your ice tea, sugar and sweetener are over here….” The man spoke in rapid-fire like a machine gun.

“Did Nicole tell you why I wanted to talk to you?” I started, using a millisecond breathing gap to enter the conversation for the first time.

“It is about the missing Swan Collins diamonds, though I can’t imagine why you would want to talk to me.” Phil laughed, showing lots of expensive teeth. “I didn’t steal them.”

“I wanted to talk to you because Nicole and some other sources consider you to be one of Hollywood’s true insiders … and you are supposed to be the best gossiper around.”

This brought out even more teeth and a louder laugh. He sat down on the other side of the designer sofa, easily sipping his expensive water, eyeing me curiously. “Yeah, Nicole got that right! You come to the right address, baby.”
 

“Phil, my problem is this: I need to find the thief in order to get my own head out of the noose. There are two theories: first, a professional burglar did it to earn himself a lot of money.”

Phil laughed even more; I seemed to entertain him very well. “With Swan’s stones in the bag, he may have earned his bonus. That much is for sure!”

I smiled and pulled my shoulders back a little to give him a better view of my breasts. Why not loosen him up a little? “The second theory is: someone from the movie community stole the diamonds. Someone who knew Swan and had access to her house.”

Phil raised his hand in mock despair, “And that is only about half of Hollywood! But why should someone steal from Swan? What would be the motive?”

“That is exactly why I am sitting here, Phil,” I said.
 

“You came to the right … oh, I said that. Silly me.” Booming laugh, he was something of a self-entertainer. “Go on, what can I tell you?”

“What’s your standing toward Swan Collins? I heard that you had an affair with her a while back,” I started.

His eyes closed briefly, like a connoisseur remembering a good wine. “We had! Oh, how we had. Very emotional, very stormy, and very, very good sex.”

Why was everyone in Hollywood bragging about their sex lives? “About when?”

“Five years ago. I was getting over divorce number … eight? And she just had her first ugly box office knock-out. Remember
Joan Who?
Won three raspberries that year, the worst romantic comedy ever.”

“The romantic comedy that was neither,” I remembered the scathing review title in the
LA Times
.
 

“Exactly! She was so devastated and alone, and I helped out.”

“Still in contact with Swan?”

“Of course. I mean, she let me organize her Oscar after-show party, didn’t she? We didn’t meet there?”

“Not surprisingly, a large party.” I smiled. “Could you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”

“Would you accept the script line, ‘She is very popular and doesn’t have any enemies, Officer’?” Phil said, winking at me.

“Just tell me your impression or what you know,” I replied. I was beginning to become testy toward him.
 

“Well, you may have heard that she had some financial investments that went wrong. She invested in some independent movie productions, into some social-web start-ups, and in some real estate. She got out of some in time, but some went belly up.”

“So, she is short on money?”

“Not really, I mean, she gets between fifteen and twenty million bucks per movie. Hard to sink that much that quick. But she had some companions and friends who invested along with her, following her on her request—and, for them, the losses were staggering.”

“So, it could be someone getting back at her. Where has the money gone? Still with Swan! So, let’s get it from her,” I thought aloud.

“Exactly. But don’t ask me about names, I don’t know most of them,” Phil said, getting up and fetching another water bottle. When he came back, he flopped onto the sofa right beside me.

“But you could give an educated guess for some names?” I drilled, moving a little further away from him without looking too desperate.

“Yeah, I know that Jeannie Anthony invested into that fashion dud-com that was a fake from the start, though the girls didn’t know. No one knew until they arrested the CEO with a briefcase full of money on his way out to Brazil. And Nicole Berg was in on one of the marina development deals. That was stopped by the tree-huggers at the last moment, all initial development investments gone down the drain. Did anybody tell you that this small scar behind your ear just hidden by the hairline looks interesting? No girl in Hollywood would dare to keep that.” His hand was moving casually toward my hair to get a better look.

“Fell off a bike when I was twelve,” I lied and tried to get back on track. “Anyone else?”

“Don’t want to explode your list of suspects, but photographer Allan Sturgis was in on the Marina Del Rey disaster, too. He was together with Nicole for a while, did you know?”

“They visited my store together when I met Nicole for the first time. What about Pretty McAllister? Anyone going after her?”
 

“Because someone managed to take off her necklace while she was drunk or drugged in a bathroom? Personally I think it was just a prank to get back at her.”
 

“But who? Is she such a bad girl?”
 

“Name any big Hollywood male lead or good-looking big-wig, and Pretty probably had an affair with him in the last five years.”
 

“Any names there?” I fought off Phil’s hand that was roaming the hair over my right ear, to get a better look at my scar. “Phil, let go. You’re acting like a teenager at a drive-in theater!”

“Very sexy, can I kiss it?”

“No, you definitely cannot!” I got up and tried to change seats, but Phil pulled me down again and pushed his tongue into my ear and onto my scar. His hands were strong, and he simply pinned me into the cushions.

“Phil, let go!” I screamed, but he wouldn’t.

“Baby, you are so sexy in your black outfit, so natural and so cool. And I feel so hot….” Phil was panting. He was probably talking himself into his usual starlet rape rage. Divorce number eight, my ass!

“Last warning, Phil, I warn you!” I shouted, just to state it for the record.

He didn’t stop, of course not. There had been too many male-related violent events in my life that had taught me one priority: never become the victim. My cat burglary skills and physique helped me to get past the worst situations, and if they didn’t help, there was still scratching and biting. Though that was always quite messy. In the supposedly peaceful and crime-free hippie commune where I had grown up, a teacher had tried to molest me when I was thirteen. He had been a nice guy around forty who had always been a good teacher to the small community of school-age kids. One afternoon I had roamed the woods as I sometimes did to be alone with my girlish fantasies, and he had shown up. He’d made conversation that had turned into touching and suddenly he had me cornered. It had become clear to me that this teacher didn’t have my well-being in mind, and my survival instincts had set in. My parents had told me in their typical hippie mannerism that a good
girrrl
didn’t take anything from anyone. The moment I knew that cornering, touching, and molestation would turn into rape, the teacher’s pet-prey turned into a wildcat who did everything to get away from his hands, head, and loins. I managed to get away safely with a badly confused mind, a lot of tears, and a bloody mouth. The teacher slime bag had lost his job and his nose.

I didn’t plan to repeat the nose thing here in Brentwood on a renowned member of Hollywood’s society—though, maybe better than doing a Nicole Simpson. Phil slobbered my earlobes, giving dark, grunting sounds as if he were heavily turned on by me while he pinned down my arms and put most of his weight on to my upper body.
 

I managed to get my feet free from below the coffee table and made my body instantly go slack below Phil’s weight. I slumped a little lower. When the weight was lifted for a second, I made a forceful roll backwards. I got my legs over my head, the rest of my body following and snaking out from Phil’s grip on me.
 

He looked totally surprised when I suddenly wasn’t in his arms anymore but was standing behind the sofa.
 

Phil immediately came after me, but he was not trained in climbing over sofa backs and was an easy target for a light defensive kick into the groin. He tried to protect his boys with his hands but noticed too late that he needed his hands to hold on to the sofa. Physics won over pain, and he fell off the sofa and landed with a loud thud.

For a second, I felt the familiar stone cold hatred rising up in me. I hadn’t felt that strong urge to kill a man for years and years. I briefly closed my eyes. Phil’s whining made a pretty ridiculous soundtrack, and the hatred went back into the far dark corners of my mind.
 

When I felt better, I quickly checked up on Phil. He groaned again and managed to open his eyes, full of fear and pain, but he showed no outer injuries.

I was thinking of a clever line that I could deliver in the name of all the innocent victims that had fallen into his arms and beds but couldn’t think of any.
 

So, I simply let myself out and sat in the car for a few minutes to lower the adrenaline to drivable levels, surprised that no tears would come. I rummaged in the glove compartment for a CD and listened to The Clash’s
Sandinista!
on full volume all the way back home. There, I ate two emergency cartons of ice cream and had to puke after that. Shitty day over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Our First Date

The next day, Saturday, I spent mostly in bed, doing some jogging and time at the gym before I ran errands and called back several customers who were worried that their commissioned jewels had been lost. Two were; one wasn’t. I filled out a lot of stuff for the insurance, anything to keep me busy. It was one of the few days that brought a lot of rain, and a steady, drizzly downpour made it easy to stay at home. It made me notice the darker greener colors the rain brought to the garden.
 

The local Redondo Beach paper carried a large article about the break-in into my shop on the first three pages. Break-ins of that scale were pretty rare in our small community. There were two pictures of me: one standing in front of the shop with Henry Steward, as we were talking, putting our heads together, and another from one of the big wire services from a few years back when I had won the Royal Dutch crown jewel competition. Yours truly was doing a ladylike bow in a very expensive dress that made me look twenty years older while holding the hand of the Dutch Queen. The pic of Henry and me, purely objectively speaking, was a nice one; it expressed a certain intimacy, which wasn’t there, of course, but … oh, anyway, we made a good couple.