Not Wanted in Hollywood (10 page)

Edwin glanced
up at me as I entered the office. “Heard you’ve been working in a
strip club,” he said with a huge smile on his face.

“
Yes I have,”
I said. “If you want to have a laugh about it, do it now so we
never have to revisit this moment again.”

“
Oh no,” said
Edwin. “This information is gold. The fact that I’ve also heard
that you’ve been learning pole dancing is something that I am going
to cherish forever, to be brought out at the most inappropriate
moments, maybe when your mother is visiting.”

I looked at him sourly. “You know, I used to
like you. Once upon a time you were nice. Marriage has made you
hard and bitter. It changed you, and not for the better.”

“
But it’s
fun,” said Edwin with that insane smile of happiness on his face. I
was joking of course. Edwin and Crystal belonged together and
despite the slight bumps in the road they were both deliriously
happy. It was good to see.

“Any chance of me seeing Monique for a
moment?” I asked.

“
I could
organize it for a private demonstration of you pole dancing for
just Crystal and me,” Edwin said.

“Do you realize how inappropriate that
request sounded?” I asked. “Just think on it a moment.”

Edwin cocked his head. “I know, but
seriously, I’ve seen you dance and if you bring that lack of
coordination to a stripper pole, it would be the funniest
entertainment that we would ever see.”

“
Not going to
happen,” I said. “Just let Monique know I’m here before I’m forced
to go to your wife about your secret fantasy involving me and a
stripper pole.”

“
Spoilsport,”
said Edwin mildly as he buzzed me through.

Monique was
just finishing a phone call when I walked into her office. She
waved me into a chair and went back to tapping on the desk with her
elegant, manicured fingernails. I always said that Monique was the
person I wanted to be when I grew up. She was beautiful,
intelligent and had the sharpest business mind of anyone I knew.
Most importantly for me at the moment, she also knew everything
about everybody who was anybody in LA. I was hoping that meant that
she knew about Angela and what she could possibly want with her
son.

“So what can I do for you ma petite?” she
asked with that understanding smile that she always used to good
effect.

“Do you know of an Angela Copeland?” I
asked.

“
Copeland,”
Monique repeated as she tapped her finger against her chin. “The
name sounds familiar but I would need to look through some of my
records. Any reason you want to know about her?”

“
She’s
Griffin’s mother,” I said.

“The one who left when he was a baby?”
Monique questioned.

I nodded. “For some reason she has turned up
out of the blue and wants to connect with her son.”

“
Maybe that’s
all it is,” said Monique.

I shook my head. “I just sat through the
torturous lunch from hell where all she talked about was her life,
not one question to Griffin about what has happened in the thirty
years since she walked out on him and his father. It was strange. I
just got the feeling that she had to connect with him but she
didn’t care about him. Maybe I’m being a bit cynical but there is
something going on here and I don’t want to be caught out when it
all starts falling apart.”

Monique looked at me thoughtfully. “So things
are better with you and your young man?” she queried.

“
We haven’t
quite worked things out,” I said. “The situation with the mom kind
of takes precedence over everything else.”

Monique smile. “It usually does.” Suddenly
she was all business again. “How is the situation with Alistair
going?”

I grimaced.
“Same as usual I guess. He’s managing to alienate everybody around
him. Honestly if I had to place money on somebody being killed on
this job, it would have been him. I do know that he is taking
advantage of at least one of the girls.”

“Advantage, how?” Monique asked.

“The same advantage those kinds of men always
take. He’s holding the possibility of a dream just out of sight
until he gets what he wants and then he tosses her aside when he
has no need for her anymore.”

Monique frowned. When she came to Hollywood
she had been a stunningly beautiful, innocent young girl and she
knew well how someone that naive could be chewed up and spat out by
the system.

“
Keep an eye
on him,” she said. “If someone is out there killing lousy human
beings he probably features at the top of the list.” She suddenly
changed subject. “The bar owner’s death, is there any reason to
believe that you could be in any danger?”

I scoffed at
the thought. There was a world of difference between Hammy and me.
“The only way that I am in any danger is if I walk in on someone
else being murdered,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve annoyed anyone
enough to get caught in the firing line.”

You know there are times when you make sweeping
statements and the universe decides that you really need to be
shown that you are, in no way, in charge of your fate. I really
should have known better than to assure Monique that I was
perfectly safe working at a strip club where somebody had already
been murdered, especially with my special talent of walking into
the wrong place at precisely the wrong time. That thought
fleetingly went through my mind when only an
hour later I walked into the club to find Denise being held up by a
masked gunman. As I walked into the room I was so stunned that I
didn’t notice the gun being raised. I did however notice the pain
as the side of the gun connected with my face. The only thing I saw
was the shock in the gunman’s eyes. I felt pain ballooning across
my cheek and then all I saw as blackness.

I heard my name being called and I willed my
eyelids to open, blinking against the harsh light.

“Take it easy, you took quite a knock to the
head.”

I blinked again and groaned. “Why are you the
one I always see when I’ve been knocked out?”

Dominic gave me that confident grin of his.
“Most women are quite happy to wake up and find me watching over
them.”

I’m sure they did. Dominic was that
intriguing mix of rich, powerful, handsome and dangerous. Some
women flocked to it. I bolted in the opposite direction. My mother
raised me with a very healthy sense of self preservation.

“
I’m not
most
women
,” I said as I tried to push
myself up.”

“
That’s what
I find so fascinating about you,” Dominic said.

Just what I needed. I sat up and waited for
the room to stop spinning.

“What happened?” I lifted my hand to my head
to find the massive lump that I was sure had to be there.

“
From what we
can tell, it looks like you walked in on a robbery,” said
Dominic.

“What could they possibly be trying to
steal?” I asked. “It’s a strip club, not a bank. Unless you’re
looking for a lifetime supply of glitter there isn’t much of a
marketable commodity here.”

Dominic shrugged. “I have my people looking
into it. Don’t worry, considering all the cameras in this building
I am sure that the perpetrator will be captured forthwith.”

“What are your people going to do with
whoever did this?” I asked suspiciously.

Dominic looked hurt by my tone and the
accusatory note behind it. I don’t know why. I had never professed
to having the greatest faith in him.

Denise
almost shoved Dominic out of the way.

“Are you hurt badly? Should I get an
ambulance? Do you need ice?” she fluttered.

I smiled
weakly. “Ice would be good,” I said.

Once the two
of them had me situated in a chair with a bag of ice against my
face, I turned to Denise.

“What happened?” I asked. “I walked in and
found some guy holding a gun on you.”

Tears shone
in Denise’s eyes. “I was going through some papers in the office
when that person came in waving a gun around. He wouldn’t tell me
what he wanted. He was becoming very agitated. When you walked in
he hit you with the gun. I don’t know what he was going to do next.
We were so lucky that Mr Caldwell came to see me. He probably saved
our lives.”

Dominic smiled beatifically at me.

Yeah, I was just lucky.

“
I’ve called
the police,” said Denise. “They should be here soon.”

As if on cue,
Griffin and Ramos walked in. Griffin took in the scene with me
having an icepack on my face and Dominic acting solicitously
towards me. Yet again I could see his jaw tightening. I did not
seem to be able to catch a break. I had hoped that with the lunch
with his mother, we would be able to get past our issues. Once
again Dominic Caldwell was ruining my life, and from the looks of
the smile on his face, he knew it.

Despite his
obvious annoyance, Griffin came over to me, glared at Dominic and
then when Dominic grudgingly moved he squatted down beside me and
looked up at my face.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently.

I nodded
hoping that I didn’t pick that moment to start crying. Griffin
obviously picked up on my distress, because he put an arm around me
and gave me a kiss on my non-bruised cheek.

“What am I going to do with you?” he
asked.

I shook my head. Apparently speaking was
beyond me at the moment. I was blaming it on shock.

At that point Dominic cleared his voice after
checking his cell. “Unfortunately it seems that my colleague has
been unable to track down the perpetrator.”

I could feel my eyes narrowing and the waves
of disbelief emanating from Griffin and Ramos were almost palpable.
Griffin let go of me and straightened up.

“
You’re
trying to get
us to believe that your man
lost him.”

Dominic gave us a regretful look.
“Unfortunately my colleague was unable to keep up with him. We will
be discussing this failure.”

I could tell that conversation was not going
to be pleasant. Another reason, if I actually needed one, never to
work for Dominic Caldwell.

Griffin looked down at me, and I could tell
that he was torn as to what he should do next.

“
I’m not
going to hospital,” I said.

Griffin
sighed in that way he had, that made me feel like he was perfectly
well aware that my goal in life was to make his life
difficult.

“
She was
unconscious for a little while,” Dominic interjected
unhelpfully.

I glared at him balefully and he just smiled
innocently back at me.

“
You’re going
to hospital,” said Griffin, grabbing my elbow and pulling me
up.

Sitting on a hospital bed I watched Griffin
pacing around the room.

“
Sit down and
try to be patient. You wanted to bring me here. I was quite happy
to stay at work and make do with the ice pack,” I said, perhaps a
little unwisely.

“
Yes, as
usual that would have been a brilliant plan, and if you have
concussion, which of the other staff members have the appropriate
first aid qualifications to keep you safe until the paramedics
showed up?”

Ah, we had
reached the sarcasm point of the proceedings. A smart woman would
at this point know to keep her mouth shut. Once again I chose the
not so smart move.

“
You’d be
surprised at the background of some of those women. This economy
has been brutal. Sometimes you do what you have to do to support
yourself,” I said.

Griffin
froze. “Is that why you took this job, because of the money? Do you
need money?”

I dropped my
head. I really had trouble understanding the leaps a man’s mind
made at times. “Of course I took the job because of the money. Most
people do work for the money. There are not many people who are
lucky enough to have a job which they love every minute of every
day. I’m sure your job has some moments when you wonder what you
are doing there and why you have to deal with such difficult
people.” I took a breath and hoped I didn’t feature too often in
those moments. “I enjoy the challenge of what I do. I get paid well
for what I do. And no, I am not going to take up stripping to
supplement my income.”

Griffin
dropped into a chair. “I really don’t like your job,” he said
heavily.

“
Why?” I
asked, honestly perplexed.

Griffin looked at me as if he couldn’t
believe what he was hearing.

“
How many
times have I ended up sitting in a hospital while you are getting
checked out?” he asked. “I’m a cop and I don’t get in nearly the
same messes that you seem to find yourself in.”

“
In my
defense,” I said, “you’re a homicide cop. Generally the action has
already happened by the time you turn up on the scene.”

Griffin’s features tightened. When I realized
what I’d said I wanted to bang my head against a wall. Once again,
open mouth, insert foot.

“
I didn’t
mean that the way it sounded,” I said. “I’m just having a bad run
at the moment. It’s not like it happens all the time. I have
clients where everyone around them stays disgustingly healthy
throughout the entire assignment. I mean seriously if I could wish
harm on someone it would have been that pop star brat Kai Roth that
I worked with six months ago. If anyone was skating on the edge it
was him.”