F is for Fred

by Rebecca Cantrell

“Life finds a way,” Aidan said.

  She pulled up maps on her phone. This house was about a quarter-mile from her trailer. As the seagull flew. Maybe she could hike it—leave Aidan in the car, get something to drink and use the bathroom at home.

  His phone moaned.

  “Have you thought of changing that text tone? It might get you into trouble.” She resolved to turn off his phone the next time he was around Violet and Van.

  “It reminds me of her.” His eyes glazed over. “And her amazing attention to detail.”

  Not enough peanuts in the world. “I was thinking I could take a break—”

  A gunshot popped. Aidan dropped his phone. It landed next to the peanut on the floor mat.

  “Shots fired!” he yelled.

  A seagull erupted from the house’s backyard, wings pumping hard. For an instant, he was outlined against the clear blue sky. She spotted a purple leg. “Fred!”

  Aidan was already opening the door. “Call nine one one. Stay in the car.”

  6

  Sofia wanted to argue, but someone had to call 911. She reported the gunshot and the address, then looked for Aidan.

  He was by the front door, circling around to the side with his gun drawn. That reminded her: she didn’t have a gun. Brendan and Aidan had both said she wasn’t experienced enough to carry one. On balance, she agreed with them. If she had a gun, she might shoot someone and she didn’t want that on her conscience. Of course, she didn’t want to be defenseless and then dead either.

  Not sure what to do, she stepped out of her car. She didn’t want to sneak up behind Aidan and have him shoot her. But she couldn’t sit in the car like a rookie. She looked up and down the street. Deserted. Either no one was home, or no one was curious about a gunshot at brunch. That was probably the kind of thinking that let most people live long, happy lives.

  Not her.

  Using the cars in the driveway as cover, she ran toward the front door.

  It slammed open, and Dr. Solov sprinted out. The gate slid wide and he was through and out on the driveway where he nearly ran into her, but she darted out of his way just in time. Aidan turned around in surprise.

  Dr. Solov’s Porsche beeped as it unlocked. He opened the door, got inside, did up his seatbelt, and peeled out. The guy must go through tires like other people went through tissues.

  The harsh smell of burnt rubber singed her nose, and black tire tracks marked the immaculate driveway. The house’s owner wasn’t going to be happy. Assuming he or she was still alive.

  A pack of teenage girls in bikinis flowed out of the front door and onto the sidewalk. She did a quick head count. Seven girls. They looked to be fourteen or fifteen and surprisingly calm, considering the gunshot and the disappearing doctor.

  Aidan dropped his gun arm down to his side. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Dr. Solov had to leave,” explained a coltish blonde, with a sunburned nose.

  “We heard a gunshot,” Sofia said.

  She looked over the girls’ heads into the hall. Nothing suspicious.

  “Oh, that,” said a redhead in a green bikini. “Right.”

  Aidan holstered his gun. “Was it a gunshot?”

  The redhead looked at her coltish friend. Neither wanted to answer Aidan’s question.

  A man burst through the bougainvillea hedge between the house and the street. He had a smile like the Joker, and he was carrying a gun. He tore off down the sidewalk where Dr. Solov had gone. He had really good running form—long strides, arms pistoning up and down in straight lines.

  “Stay here, Sofia,” Aidan called over his shoulder. He ran after the guy.

  She could follow him, but she’d never catch him, and she didn’t think he’d catch the other guy, either. Better to stay here and talk to the witnesses, see if she could learn more about Solov before the cops arrived and kicked her out.

  “Help!” screamed a voice from the back of the house. “Help!”

  That settled it. Sofia jogged through the gate and down the driveway, hoping the Joker was the only one with a gun in this particular house. She rushed down a long hall, through a living room furnished in blocky gray, and out into the backyard. Bigger than she’d expected, with the emerald-green lawn that wasn’t allowed during a drought, lots of outdoor furniture, and a kidney-shaped pool.

  A pale girl in a red bikini pointed at the pool and yelled for help again. She had a good set of lungs.

  Another girl was sinking in the middle. Sofia looked around. No life-rings to throw. No pool skimmer or anything else long enough to hold out for the girl to grab onto.

  Sofia dropped her cell phone on the lawn, dove in and swam over to the thrashing girl. She had experience rescuing drowning victims. After all, that was how she’d met Jaxon.

  “It’s going to be OK.” Sofia tried to make eye contact, but the girl was too panicked.

  She lunged at Sofia, then wrapped both arms around her neck and pulled them both under. Sofia tried to remain calm. She dove deep, and the girl let go.

  Sofia swung around behind her and got her into a headlock, then kicked off from the bottom. In a few strokes she was at the steps. She pulled the girl onto the first, then released her headlock. The girl was half out of the water, half on the step, and perfectly safe.

  The girl gasped and shuddered. She spat into the pool. Water ran off her face, her dark hair and her long, skinny arms.

  “It’s OK,” Sofia said. “Everything’s OK now.”

  The girl trembled so hard her teeth chattered. She’d been through a lot.

  Sofia pointed to a towel, and the girl who’d called for help brought it over. Sofia wrapped it around the shivering girl’s shoulders. “What’s your name?”

  “Y-Yvette.”

  Sofia recognized her. She was Yvette Fantome, a rising child star, like Sofia had once been. She’d been in a short-lived web series, but it was a start. “I’m Sofia.”

  “Half Pint Detective,” the girl said. “I know.”

  “What happened?” She wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders on top of the towel. Yvette leaned against her, still shaking.

  “He shot at that seagull!” Yvette said. “It was just a bird.”

  “The shooter is gone,” Sofia said. “He ran past me and down the street. We’re safe now. And the seagull got away. I saw it.”

  “Good.”

  They sat quietly together. Sofia was pretty sure the gull in the crosshairs had been Fred. She thought she’d spotted a gull with a purple leg and a black thing on its head as it flew away from the house right after the gunshot. That seemed too much of a coincidence. How many purple-legged gulls with cameras were there in Malibu? Surely only one. Unless Fred had started a trend.

  But why was Fred even there? And what crime could he have committed that warranted the death penalty?

  “Did you know the shooter?” Sofia asked.

  “The shooter?” Yvette turned toward her. And Sofia saw a red welt on her cheek that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Did a bee sting you? Are you allergic to bees?”

  Yvette looked confused.

  “A bee.” Sofia gently touched the welt. It was warm to the touch. “Are you allergic?”

  Yvette started to laugh and didn’t seem to be able to stop. At first, Sofia thought it was shock, but looking at Yvette more closely, she thought the girl might be high on top of everything else. She was young for that, but this was the industry. It also explained why the other girls were so calm.

  A woman in a white thigh-high boots marched over. She looked a little like a Star Wars Storm Trooper. She was very thin, even by Hollywood standards, and her once-pretty face was a Botox mask. She was tall, well over six feet, and her flaming red hair was spiked in all directions. It actually looked pretty good on her.

  “What’s going on?” The red-haired Storm Trooper sounded angry.

  “She wants to know if I’m allergic to bees!” Yvette stopped laughing and hiccupped.

  �
��That’s my daughter, and I can assure you, she’s not allergic to bees.”

  The girl in the red bikini spoke. “That woman saved Yvette. Yvette was drowning.”

  “In a pool?” Yvette’s mother frowned. “Nonsense.”

  Sofia looked at her in disbelief. She hadn’t expected a giant thank you but . . . “People die in pools all the time.” She wished Aidan was around. He’d probably know the exact statistics.

  “Let’s get you out of there.” Yvette’s mother pulled the girl out of the pool and dragged her toward the house. Yvette staggered forward. She’d started shaking again. Sofia wanted to intervene but felt she had no right.

  The girl in the red bikini wandered off.

  Sofia took a couple of calming breaths. Yvette’s mother wasn’t her problem.

  Once she’d found her happy spot, she climbed out of the pool. Her wet jeans clung to her thighs and made it hard to walk. She picked up her phone from where she’d dropped it and slogged over to the furniture to see if she could find a clue as to what had been going on before the shooter took aim at Fred.

  She decided to take pictures of the scene, although she didn’t see what they’d be good for. Shooting a gun to scare away a bird might not even be illegal, and even if it was, it wasn’t going to be treated as a police emergency.

  But that bird had been Fred.

  She was sure of it when she photographed the table. One end was pretty normal—kale chips, hummus and tiny vegetables—but at the other end sat a bowl full of a familiar black substance. She zoomed in close for another picture. Caviar. A greasy black bird footprint stained the white tablecloth next to the bowl. Next to that a large bottle of vodka sweated in a silver ice bucket. She took a shot of that, too.

  Fred must have spotted the caviar, flown down to eat it and the guy shot at him, probably to scare him off. Maybe it was that simple. Weird, but simple.

  She scanned the area. Pretty much what you’d expect—food, towels, sunglasses, a couple of abandoned cell phones. And a small piece of white paper. She went over and took a picture without touching it. Blank, except for Dr. Solov’s name and practice.

  A sheet from his prescription pad.

  What had he been doing in the house? Partying with girls young enough to be his daughters? Or prescribing drugs? Neither sounded good.

  It was enough to get him into trouble, but not the kind of trouble his wife wanted.

  7

  “What are you doing?” Yvette’s mother had crept up behind Sofia and she jumped.

  Sofia palmed her phone. “Nothing.”

  “Are you paparazzi?” the mother asked. “Trying to sell pictures of these girls in swimsuits?”

  Sofia drew herself up and put on her haughtiest voice, which she’d also learned from watching Donna Lodge movies. “I hardly think so.”

  Yvette stumbled across the lawn toward them.

  “You come dashing in here and jump into the pool with my child. Are you some kind of sex predator?”

  “If I hadn’t jumped in, your daughter would have died a few feet away from you, begging for help.” Sofia’s haughty voice was slipping into her majorly pissed-off one. “You should thank me politely, and then you should take Yvette to the doctor to make sure she’s really OK. This is about her life, not about your crap.”

  “It’s OK, Half Pint Detective,” slurred Yvette. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “You’re—you’re Sofia Salgado?” Yvette’s mother stared at her in open-mouthed horror.

  “Of course I am.” She turned the haughty up to eleven.

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I would never talk to you that way. I—I—I. . .” She sputtered into silence.

  “Yvette needs a doctor. Do you understand?” She wasn’t above pressing her advantage if it got the kid help.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll check back.” Sofia had no idea how she could do that. Maybe get Jeffery to find out who Yvette’s agent was and talk to them. That was a start.

  Over the woman’s shoulder, Sofia saw two cops walking into the backyard with Aidan. He was limping. The shooter was conspicuously absent.

  “I’m Officer Chinn, this is Officer Whelks.” Officer Chinn was tall, but shorter than Mrs. Fantome, and built like a football player. Officer Whelks was a blonde who looked like she ate nails for breakfast. “What happened here?” Officer Chinn frowned at Sofia, like she ought to know.

  She glanced at Aidan, who nodded. “We were in the neighborhood.”

  That sounded innocuous enough. She summarized the events since her arrival, making sure to stress how Yvette had almost drowned and needed medical care. She didn’t mention that she’d taken photographs, or that she thought Fred had been there for the caviar. In fact, she didn’t mention Fred at all. Talking about a seagull addicted to caviar, with a camera and a YouTube channel, would only make her seem crazy.

  Yvette’s mother looked like she wanted to disagree with Sofia’s account, but she was too afraid to. Any stage mom of a child star would be. A lot of them thought a former child star like Sofia could make or break their kid’s career. Utter horseshit, of course.

  Officer Chinn looked up from his notebook. Officer Whelks glared at the assembled teenagers. They were still strangely quiet.

  “What happened before you rescued the girl from the pool? Was there a gunshot?” Officer Chinn looked at Yvette’s mother. “And what’s your name?”

  “I’m Beverly Fantome, the mother of Yvette Fantome!” She boomed the words, like she expected the cops to be impressed.

  But these were LA cops.

  “Fantome with an F?” Officer Chinn asked.

  Mrs. Fantome deflated a little. But, as tall as she was, it didn’t make much difference.

  “Is this your house?” Officer Chinn looked at Mrs. Fantome.

  “It belongs to a friend,” she answered. “We decided to have the party here because Yvette loves the pool.”

  Sofia suspected that Yvette didn’t like that pool much anymore.

  “Before the arrival of these two,” the officer waved at Sofia and Aidan in a not entirely friendly way, “what was going on here?”

  “A birthday party. Just me and the girls.” Mrs. Fantome tossed her head. “The girls were playing in the pool and then a bird landed on the refreshments table. It started gulping down caviar in the most disgusting manner.”

  That sounded like Fred all right.

  “A—a man came out of nowhere and lunged at the bird. Then his gun went off and he ran away,” Mrs. Fantome finished.

  “What about Doc—” Aidan elbowed Sofia in the ribs before she could finish her sentence.

  Officer Chinn looked at her in a calculating way. “Doc?”

  “Cake,” Aidan said. “If it was a birthday party, where’s the cake?”

  “Cake?” Mrs. Fantome stared at him as if he’d pooped in the pool.

  “Birthday parties have cake.” Officer Whelk backed Aidan up. Figured.

  “When you were a teenaged actress, did you ever have cake for your birthday?” Mrs. Fantome looked at Sofia like she expected help.

  “Of course I did,” Sofia said. “Usually chocolate. One time banana, but that was a botched experiment.”

  “We don’t have cake,” Mrs. Fantome said. “But this was still a birthday party.”

  The girls looked at each other. A few nodded.

  “Whose birthday is it?” Officer Whelks asked.

  “Mine.” Yvette raised her hand. She was eerily serene now. Sofia suspected she’d been slipped a Valium or something when she and her mother had gone into the house. She’d also put on a black fishnet cover-up over her swimsuit and she didn’t look cold anymore.

  “Happy birthday,” said Aidan.

  Sofia felt they were getting off track. “What did the man with the gun look like?”

  Officer Chinn was clearly unhappy that she was asking questions. “Officer Whelks, please escort Mr. Maloney and Ms. Salgado back to their car.”

&n
bsp; Aidan shot her a mean look. He was probably right. She’d overplayed her hand.

  She picked up a towel and slowly dried her arms and hair. Everyone watched her, but no one said anything. Evidently no more questioning was going to happen until she was gone. So much for stalling.

  Officer Whelks showed them to the front gate.

  “You can’t be quiet to save your life,” Aidan said. “Not even for a minute.”

  She looked at the side of his pants. A long line of dirt ran from his knees to his waist. “Did your fancy shoes let you down?”

  “What do my shoes have to do with you being a blabbermouth?”

  “Your pants say you slipped and fell, and the shooter got away. You’re not usually super-clumsy, so I’m guessing . . . the shoes.”

  He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, like a fish.

  She got into the car, started it, and turned on the heater. Despite the warm day, she felt cold. Either the water from the pool or being too close to Mrs. Fantome’s icy ambition.

  Aidan got in on his side. He sat for a second, looking at his fancy shoes.

  “I’m going home to change,” Sofia said.

  “Taking a break while on duty?”

  His phone moaned.

  Sofia said, “I’ve earned it.”

  8

  A half-hour later, Sofia was in dry clothes. Her wet hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was hungry. She’d thought about Fred in the shower. From the glimpse she’d seen of him, he was flying strongly and she hadn’t seen any blood in the backyard. So, he hadn’t been shot, but she worried about him.

  Aidan had spent the whole time texting on her couch. She’d heard his phone moaning while she was in the shower. Next time, she was going to take it with her and see if it was waterproof.

  “We should get back to the office,” he said.

  “Before Priscilla turns it into Snow White’s castle?” She grabbed a dry towel from her bathroom, then hurried to the front door.

  “You should never mention a client to the police unless you have to.” He was next to her. It was as if he’d levitated off the couch. He’d started this conversation in the car, chastising her for almost mentioning the doctor’s name to the police.