“To other women on the show?”
“I suppose,” I said. “I’m the newest actress on the set, so he had probably already gone through the others.”
“Gone through?” he asked. “You mean, slept with?”
“No,” I said. “Yes . . . I don’t know. I mean, maybe he’d slept with some of them. . . .”
“Do you know which ones?”
“I’ll have to think about it. If I tell you,” I asked, “will they be suspects?”
“Maybe,” he said, “or maybe their boyfriends or husbands.”
Damn. I hadn’t wanted anyone pointing a finger at me last year when Marcy was killed, so I hated to be the one to point at anyone now.
“Let me think about it,” I said again.
“You do that,” he said. “Take all night. Get back to me tomorrow.”
“I’ll try.”
He pulled up in front of my house and turned off the car. “Dark house,” he said.
“I told you, my mother is away and has Sarah with her.”
“Yeah, I remember you said that.” He turned in his seat to look at me. “Why didn’t you ever call me back, Alex?” he asked.
“C’mon, you know why. . . . I have a boyfriend.” I felt like a teenager in high school.
“How’s that working for you?”
I was tongue-tied.
“Get back to me tomorrow with some names,” he said, turning to face the windshield again. “Nobody will know they came from you. I just need a place to start, and I’d appreciate your help.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good night, Alex,” he said. “Nice seeing you again.”
I didn’t quite know what to say—“Nice to see you, too,” sounded lame—so I just got out of the car, pulling my dirty train out with me, and watched him drive away before I headed for a shower.
Chapter 7
I opened the door and carefully locked it behind me. I was immediately hit with a blast of silence. My mom had taken Sarah back to the Midwest to get to know her cousins and aunts and uncles at an extended Peterson family reunion. She would be there for at least two weeks. This part was all true. But there was another, more important reason behind the trip.
A few weeks ago I had received a phone call from my son-of-a-bitch ex-husband, Randy. The guy who had taken money set aside for my early retirement so I could be a stay-at-home mom. He had fled the country and I had not heard from him in three years. He hadn’t always loved me, but he had always loved our daughter. And now here he was calling to say he was coming back to the States in a couple of weeks to see Sarah. I knew Sarah missed him, even though he had left when she was so young. She still remembered him and had recently started asking a lot of questions about her daddy. I want her to have a father. I’m just not so sure her biological dad is the best candidate for the job.
Anyway, I told him I needed to think about things and to call me back in a couple of days. Would he go to prison? I wondered. I guess that would depend on what his other clients did. I wasn’t the only one he took money from. In any case, it would probably be minimum security for a few months, maybe a year, since it was a white-collar crime. Would he want shared custody? I didn’t think I could stand that. So I promptly changed my number. I needed a few days to think and I had this invitation to the family reunion. Knowing I couldn’t make it, I bought a couple of plane tickets for my mom and Sarah—just in case Randy tried contacting her. I never mentioned it to anyone, not even my mother. The two of them being gone for a while gave me a chance to think.
I looked around and saw Flipsy Dog and his brother, Flipsy Doggy—Sarah’s toys we had gotten from an outdoor vendor at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. I picked up Flipsy Dog and smelled him, hoping to get a little Sarah. No luck. Flipsy needed a bath. He smelled like stale peanut butter. I held onto him tightly and went to the phone to check my voice mail. Hopefully my ex hadn’t gotten my new number. Thank God only Paul had called. He was on location with the TV show he was serving as consultant for, and he had seen the awards on TV.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, honey,” he said. “I’ll try to call again tonight, but we’re doing a night shoot and there’s no signal out there.”
I wasn’t sure where “out there” was. All I knew was that he was in Canada, somewhere near Vancouver, and would be for several more weeks.
“I’ll try to call again when I get back to the hotel,” he said. “Meanwhile, call me there and leave a message. I need to know you’re okay.”
I really didn’t feel like talking to Paul at that moment. I wasn’t sure I could keep the guilt out of my voice—even though I had nothing to feel guilty about. Not technically, anyway. All I’d done was talk to Jakes. Okay, so it was a little more than talking, but not really. A little flirting, maybe. Not even. But I felt sure Paul would hear something in my voice.
I chanced it and was relieved when I had to leave a message on voice mail. I simply told him I was okay and would talk to him soon.
I called my mom next, hoping Sarah would be sleeping because of the time change. I knew Mom would be worried. Naturally, she’d watched the show.
“Alex,” my mother said, “don’t get involved again.”
“Mom, I have no desire to get involved. Only if it’s pretend and I get paid a lot of money for it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Mom, is Sarah okay? Did she see the show?”
“Thank heaven she fell asleep before it started. That would have been too traumatic!”
“You’re right, thank heaven for that.” I felt lonely. And sad. And a little scared. “I really miss you guys. Give her a big kiss for me and make sure she gets lots of veggies tomorrow, okay? Tell her if she doesn’t eat her fruits and veggies, she won’t poop and her tummy will hurt. That always does the trick. I’ll call back in the morning. . . . I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said. “Alex . . . stay out of trouble.”
I peeled off my gown and jumped into a nice hot shower. I watched the water pool and then spiral down the drain. Blood followed. Jackson’s blood. I shivered and found myself welling up. I let the hot water wash my tears away. For the first time since I’d seen his dead body, I let myself feel for him. He was just a kid.
I blearily grabbed for the phone, knocking it off its cradle. It was only five a.m.
“Mommy, I saw a possum. . . . He looked like a giant rat.”
There were a lot of possums in the Midwest, along with squirrels, raccoons, deer and many other animals my daughter had never seen except in a petting zoo. She was all excited and talked until she ran out of breath. Then I told her I loved her and missed her, and I must have air kissed the phone ten thousand times before she said she had to go because there was a squirrel outside the window.
I hung up, made coffee and barely had time to sip it when the phone rang again. It was Paul.
“Are you okay? What the hell happened last night?” he asked.
“No one knows anything yet. I mean, Jackson was obviously murdered, but that’s it so far.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “How are you? How’s the shoot going?”
“Worried about you, Alex. Since when did acting become such a dangerous occupation? Are you really okay?”
“I’m a little shaken up for sure. But I’ll be all right.”
“I think I need to come home and see for myself.”
“No!” I said a little too quickly. “I’m fine, really!”
He took a long pause, and I heard him sigh impatiently. “Don’t you need me, Alex? Just a little bit? Still with the independent bullshit! Trying to do it all on your own, huh?” He sounded annoyed and . . . hurt. “Have it your way. If you decide you want some support, let me know.” And he hung up.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I let this great guy in just a little? I threw my coffee into the sink.
“Fuck it! I need to get wet.” I decided to do a little surfing. When your whole life is falling apart, what else is there to do? Besides, it would give me a chance to think about what Jakes had asked me to do . . . and Randy . . . and
not
Paul . . . and Jakes. . . . Too damn many men.
I grabbed my nine-foot-six board and threw it in my SUV—which I call my kid car, since I drive Sarah around in it—along with a towel and some wax, and I backed out of my garage.
Immediately I heard, “Alex! Alex! Over here!”
“What happened last night? Did you have anything to do with this murder?”
No way. Not the paparazzi. Again. I looked around and saw one old guy with a camera. I guess I wasn’t such a major player in this story. Thank God.
I yelled out my window, “I have no comment. I know nothing!”
And then I felt kind of sorry for him.
“If I find anything I can share with you, I’ll let you know!” Lame. Lame.
I rolled up my window and drove down the street to a soft beach break, making sure the old guy wasn’t following me. I started walking toward the ocean. The sand squeezed through my toes. I love that feeling. It’s cool and moist, and I feel peaceful and excited all at the same time.
I paddled out into the waves and found a good spot. Surfing is my meditation. It gives me a chance to really think without distractions.
I sat on my board and looked toward the sand. The sun felt wonderful. I was actually starting to relax when I noticed a man pacing back and forth on the beach. He would stop now and again and then look out toward the water and . . . me. At first I thought it was paparazzo, but he looked like someone I knew. Someone I had once been married to, actually. Was that Randy? He wasn’t supposed to be back for weeks.
After a few minutes he turned around and walked away.
Randy was creepy but not that creepy. I decided I was just being paranoid and started thinking about the gossip that goes around the set of any show. Like who was sleeping with whom, because that stuff is hard to keep quiet. I could easily have given Jakes the names of half a dozen women Jackson had slept with, or who I thought he had, anyway. And that wasn’t just from our show. The question was, did I want to? No, maybe that wasn’t the question at all. He was a policeman running an investigation—but on top of that he was someone I had come to trust and admire, even if I had been avoiding him for six or eight months. If I gave him the names, I knew he wouldn’t go off half cocked, threatening people or locking them up.
A nice, juicy wave appeared on the horizon. I waited for it to take shape and slowly began to paddle in front of it. As soon as I felt it behind and beneath me, I gave one last strong paddle and I was up. I rode it all the way in. One was going to have to do today. I walked over to my towel and picked up my cell phone. Jakes answered after the first ring.
“How about lunch?” I said.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
We met halfway between downtown and Santa Monica at a little café off of Robertson. Not the trendy part by The Ivy and Kitson. A little south of there, where the paparazzi didn’t gather.
“If you don’t mind,” I said, when we were seated, “I have to justify this to myself.”
“Justify away.”
“If I give you some names, I need your word—”
“I promise it’ll never get back to them,” he said, cutting me off. “I won’t say a word about my source.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “I don’t want the names getting into the papers. I don’t want these people’s lives ruined because of my big mouth.”
“I promise,” he said. “I won’t even tell Len where I got them.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “He’s your partner.”
“Maybe not much longer.”
“Why not?”
“I’m up for promotion,” he said. “If I get it, we won’t be partners anymore.”
“Really?” I asked. “Where does that leave him?”
“Promotion? No, not Len.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say he’s not the promotion type,” Jakes said. “Len’s gonna be right where he is now until he retires.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “Where are you going to be?”
“Probably in another squad.”
“Oh? Where?”
“In another part of the city,” he said. “Don’t worry, Alex. You’re not gonna get rid of me that easily.”
“I’m not worried—I didn’t mean—”
“Anyway,” he said, “I guarantee that nothing will happen with those people unless, of course, I find out one of them is the killer.”
“Well,” I said, “they’re all women. I don’t think any of them would be strong enough to pull Jackson up into the rafters.”
“A woman could have had an accomplice,” he said. “Besides, the body wasn’t secured very well up there, which is why it fell when it did.”
“It wasn’t supposed to fall then?”
“Apparently not.”
“How was he killed?”
“He was stabbed,” Jakes said. “Then he was tied sort of haphazardly with the chain—”
“Why a chain?” I asked. “Why not a rope?”
“We don’t know,” Jakes said. “Maybe there was no rope available. Anyway, the body slipped, the chain got wrapped around the neck and . . . well, you know the rest.”
“Only too well.”
We paused as the waitress came with our food. Jakes had ordered cottage cheese and a salad. I just looked at it.
“What? Actresses aren’t the only ones watching their weight. Cops like to avoid heart attacks, too.”
Then we looked at my greasy fish and chips.
“I guess I’m in need of comfort food. Let’s just move on.”
“Okay, Alex,” he said, taking out a notebook. “I’m ready.”
“I can’t prove any of this, okay? I mean, I wasn’t there. And personally I have a hard time believing anything unless I see it with my own eyes. There is so much BS in the rags, and people make up—”
“Alex, I get it, okay? When you think you maybe, sort of, have an idea, could I possibly know?” he interjected.
“Well, word has it on the set that Jackson and this actress on the show may have had something. Their love scenes were just a little too real. And you could see he was slipping her the tongue. Which means he was probably personally invested. And that’s just not done.”