Not Wanted in Hollywood (11 page)

Griffin gave a wry smile. “What am I going to
do with you?” he asked.

“
Not being so
angry about the choices I make might be a start,” I said. “I don’t
do these things to deliberately upset you, but I can’t keep walking
on eggshells around you, thinking you’re going to lose it every
time I get an assignment you don’t like. This is my career. I don’t
make stupid choices.”

Griffin
nodded and looked like he was going to say something, but at that
moment a doctor walked into the room.

“Well young lady, your scans look clear but
it may be a good idea for you to have someone close by to keep you
company for the rest of the day.”

I nodded.

The doctor looked at me critically. “You may
also want to rest at home because your face is going to hurt badly
for a couple of days.”

I was already painfully aware of how much my
face was going to hurt.

“
She’ll stay
at home,” Griffin growled, glaring at me meaningfully.

I don’t know
why he was looking at me like that. I wasn’t going to argue with
him. I very dutifully allowed Griffin to take me home. I didn’t
even argue when he got called away to work and he organized for a
teenage boy to babysit me. That being said, after a few minutes of
uncomfortable silence as Sean and I looked at each other, I was
beginning to realize that maybe I should have argued with
him.

“Does it hurt?” asked Sean.

Not the most
original of questions, but when the silence gets this uncomfortable
you grab onto it with both hands.

“
As bad as it
looks,” I said cautiously.

Silence again
and believe me it was beginning to be excruciating. I kept casting
through my mind looking for something, anything, to talk about. As
usual in these circumstances I was coming up blank.

Sean looked down at a point on the ground at
my feet. I was kind of curious as to what he found so fascinating
down there.

“
I’m sorry I
blamed you for the argument with Griffin,” he mumbled.

It took me a while to understand what he was
telling me.

“
Okay,” I
said. What else was there to say? If there was one thing I had
learned from my time with Sean it was that he did not take
criticism well. After having his mother toss him out of home on the
instigation of her deadbeat boyfriend, Sean had a tendency to see
any criticism as a prelude to a change of address. He hadn’t quite
worked out that the residents of the apartment building were not
going to let him walk out, at least not until he was educated and
we were ready to let our little chick fly. In the case of the
building owner Miss Betsy, I couldn’t see that happening soon,
maybe not ever. Sean had become a surrogate son to her and I knew
the woman packed a big gun and a disturbing attitude when it came
to protecting those people that she cared about.

Thankfully my cell chose that moment to ring
and not for the first time I thanked technology’s ability to
disrupt sometimes awkward moments.

“Where are you?” barked Alistair.

Oops, with all the excitement I forgot that I
should have possibly let my boss know that I had finished work for
the day.

“
I was
attacked at the club and have just got home from the hospital,” I
told him with more patience than he deserved.

There was silence as he accepted that
statement and for a fleeting moment I thought that a small amount
of empathy may emerge, that somewhere in that blustery bag of ego
there was a man of compassion, maybe somewhere deep down.

“
I don’t care
what happened on your time. The club is open and your job requires
you to be here,” Alistair snarled, obviously impatient with his
recalcitrant assistant.

Not for the
first time I wondered what it would be like to work with someone
that actually possessed some small amount of human kindness and
understanding. Of course if I wanted to deal with a client with
some consideration for their fellow man, I should have chosen a
different town to work in. For a moment I contemplated telling
Alistair exactly what he could do with his demand. Monique had a
list of clients who, despite my slightly disturbing ability to
stumble over dead bodies, would be thrilled to have me on the job.
I had no problem at all with leaving Alistair floundering. However,
I was currently faced with an evening being babysat by a teenage
boy, who was having trouble looking me in the eye and carried the
air of someone who wanted to be anywhere but here. I was feeling
fine, not even a headache and I didn’t really think that the extra
care was warranted. The more I thought about it, the more a night
at the strip club looked like a better option.

“
Due to a
blow to the head I am unable to drive,” I told Alistair. “If you
are able to organize a ride for me to the club, I will be able to
attend to assist you.” I gave him the address to my apartment and
then leaving him spluttering at my audacity I turned off my phone,
faced Sean and smiled.

“Good news, looks like you’ve been let off
babysitting duty. I’m going into work.”

Sean looked
perplexed. “Detective Griffin said that I was to stay with you
until he could get back here,” he said slowly.

“
I feel
fine,” I said. “Don’t worry. Griffin won’t have a problem at all
with this.” I smiled brightly, hoping to impart my confidence that
Griffin would be totally on board with this plan.

Sean looked
skeptical. I know that I think of him as young, but the boy was
very perceptive when he wanted to be. That and he knew
Griffin.

I sighed dramatically. “Would it make you
feel better if I called Griffin and got him to discharge you from
your onerous duty for the night?”

Sean rolled his eyes but he nodded.

I had been
hoping that he’d tell me that it wasn’t necessary to contact
Griffin, but I should have known better.

“What’s wrong now Trudie?” Griffin answered
his phone impatiently.

Not for the first time I wished I could find
an app that could somehow replicate the utter disdain of an old
fashioned slammed down telephone. All thoughts of handling this
diplomatically went out the window.

“
I’m
going
to work at the club,” I said
shortly.

There was silence as Griffin obviously
digested that piece of information. “Excuse me.”

“
I’m pretty
sure you heard me,” I said.

“
Okay,” he
said. “We’ll try another tack. Are you nuts? Only this afternoon
you were attacked at the club by an unknown assailant who is still
at large. You possibly have a concussion and you want to walk
straight back into that place, and that isn’t even mentioning that
there is still a murderer on the loose.”

“
The attacker
wasn’t there for me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As
for a concussion, I don’t even have a headache and just in case I
am totally wrong I will be surrounded by people, at least one of
them would call a paramedic. As to the murderer, I have nothing to
do with Hammy. Whoever killed him is not very likely to come after
me. If I really thought that I would be in any danger I would not
be going. I’ll be fine. I need you to trust me,” I
said
, hoping that for a change he was actually
listening to what I had to say.

The silence
on the phone was beginning to become slightly painful, when Griffin
let out the breath he had obviously been holding while I was
putting forward my case.

“
When should
I pick you up?” he asked and I smiled. He was trying and you know
something, that meant a lot.

“
Whenever you
finish work would be great,” I said quietly. “Thank
you.”

He grunted and I took that to mean that we
were going to be okay.

After assuring Sean that I did not require him
to accompany me to work
, I set about
trying to fix or at least minimize the obvious damage to my face.
Seeing Hugh’s expression when I opened the door did not fill me
with confidence that I had managed to hide the bruising.

“Does it really look that bad?” I asked.

Hugh ducked his head and I had to give the
man credit. I could see the cogs in his brain working as he tried
to decide on a diplomatic answer.

I decided to
let him off the hook. “Don’t bother answering, I looked in a mirror
before opening the door.” The bruise itself was no longer so
obvious. It was the heavily caked on makeup that now drew attention
to the area. Short of hiding out in my apartment there didn’t seem
to be much that I could do about it. I had tried to make it look
natural, but there is a point where you need to admit that you are
fighting a losing battle and I had reached that point about ten
minutes earlier.

“Does it hurt?” asked Hugh as we got in his
car.

“
A little,” I
said. “I cannot believe that I walked into that. I didn’t even have
a chance to duck.”

“Do they know what the guy wanted?” asked
Hugh.

I shook my
head. “I must have walked in at the start because Denise said he
hadn’t had a chance to say anything yet.”

“
Why didn’t
you tell Alistair to shove it when he called? If I looked like that
there is no way that I’d be going out in public,” Hugh said as he
maneuvered the car through the LA traffic.

I would have been a lot more offended at that
statement if I wasn’t painfully aware of just how bad I looked at
the moment.

I shrugged my shoulders. I knew my time with
Alistair was limited and knowing there was an expiration date made
it easier to accede to some of his more irrational demands. That
was the beauty of my job. I knew that no matter how lousy an
assignment was, it wasn’t going to last forever.

Considering
the change in management, Hammys was still exactly the same as it
had been for the last several weeks. Same dancers, same acts, same
regular clients and I should have been more surprised but there was
Travis standing in a corner, his eyes sweeping the club. When they
alighted on me a combination of amusement and frustration crossed
over his face. After checking in with Alistair and discovering that
he didn’t have any actual work for me to do, that he just wanted me
there in case he needed me, I went to find Travis.

“
You know,
the amount of time you spend here is seriously staring to disturb
me,” I said as I came up beside him.

His eyes crinkled but I could see his concern
as he focused on the bruise on my cheek.

I sighed. “How did you know?” I asked.

Travis shrugged. “People tell me things.”

“And you came here tonight because?”

Travis grinned. “I know you Trudie, and I
know the nutcase you are working for. There is no way that he was
going to let you have the night off and I don’t think he’s quite
annoyed you enough to tell him where to shove his job.”

“
I think
you’d be surprised,” I murmured.

“Getting to the end of that surprising amount
of patience that you seem to have?” asked Travis.

I nodded. “I don’t even know why we are here.
I get that Alistair thinks this is going to be a gritty expose on a
part of life that most people want to ignore, but the longer we are
here the more exploitative it seems to be. He’s playing with
people’s lives here. Sooner or later someone is going to bite
back.”

“
You think
that is what happened to Hammy?” Travis asked
speculatively.

I had to
laugh at the gleam in his eye. Travis was one of, if not the best
private investigator in LA. He was the go to guy for divorce cases
and he was good at his job. That being said he was a cop through to
the bone. If it hadn’t been for some situation between him and
Griffin, most of which hadn’t been fully explained to me, he would
have still been a cop, puzzling over these sort of
cases.

“
I think that
considering the way that Hammy treated the women here, it is a
miracle that someone didn’t kill him a very long time ago. From
what I understand Hammy has owned this place for decades, more than
enough time for there to be a list of people who wanted to see him
dead,” I said.

“
Sure, but
strangulation with a whip kind of sounds a bit personal to me,”
murmured Travis.

I shrugged.
Hammy had dealt badly with people overall. He exploited and
belittled the women who worked here and he ripped off the
clientele. The fact that he had allowed Alistair to film here at
all gave an indication of how little regard he had for anyone who
walked into this club. The only surprising thing about Hammy’s
death was that it hadn’t happened years before now.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I could see
Travis’s eyes widen as he looked over at one of the booths.

I had to stop myself from dropping my head in
frustration. Dominic Caldwell and one of his colleagues had taken a
seat in a booth which gave a wide view of the entire bar.

“
I don’t
believe it,” I muttered. Everywhere I turned these days that man
seemed to be popping into my life.

Travis turned to me speculatively. “Please
tell me that you don’t know Dominic Caldwell.”

I really wish I could tell him that. Knowing
Dominic Caldwell was one of those things that I could have lived my
whole life without accomplishing and been happy with.

“
I’ve had the
pleasure of meeting him,” I muttered.