by M. Z. Kelly
“Okay, but I’m not wearing green. I look like a fat toad in green.”
As we turned to leave, I said to Mom, “See you Saturday night.” Something else occurred to me by the time I reached the door. “I hope you’re not having any more presidential dreams.”
Miss Daisy’s lips turned up. “No. But I do miss those nights at Camp David. There was one evening when we were nude in front of the fireplace and Dick…”
I ran to my car, holding my ears.
As Olive chugged through the streets of Hollywood toward the cemetery, Natalie broke the news that she was moving out of my apartment.
“I need to get me own place. Clyde and me are still on the outs and I can’t stay on your couch forever. I also got me eye on a little shop near La Brea.”
I wondered if she was planning to move Laundry ‘n Lace. “Are you thinking of opening some kind of store?”
“Sorta. I’ve given things a lotta thought and decided that I’ve got a lot more snoop in me than actin’ ability. I’m gonna try me hand as a private dick.”
“What? A private detective?”
“Gonna call it, Sistah Snoop.” Natalie smiled. “Wanna know who my snoop sistah is?”
“I’m not sure that I do.”
“Mo.”
My mouth fell open. Natalie was planning to go into business with Cassie Reynolds’s former pimp. I didn’t know what to say.
Natalie went on, “Mo thinks it’s time she got her heels off the streets anyway.”
“You two should make quite the pair,” I said as we turned into the cemetery.
“We might even do a little business with you from time to time,” Natalie said. “Just when we need some official help like gun permits, batterin’ rams, night goggles… that sorta thing.”
“Battering rams?”
I was still recovering from the news as we met up with Pearl and Charlie who were assembled with the forensics team near the mausoleum.
Charlie and I were partners again. Jessica Barlow had been assigned back to her regular duties, but not before she lodged a litany of complaints about Charlie being overweight, overbearing, and over the hill.
Charlie, in turn, had told Jankowitz, “It will be a cold day in hell before I work with that tight-assed bitch again.” He was almost as glad we were together again as he was to have his daughter, Irma, back home after promising she would stay away from B-Boy.
“Hear the news?” Charlie asked.
I saw the team was using a small drill on the wall of the tomb. “Don’t tell me you already found Carmichael’s body.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Deputy Chief Carl Brasher resigned this morning. He’s facing a grand jury indictment. They found Kane’s cell phone. He was calling Brasher on a regular basis after he was released on parole.”
“Better late than never,” I said.
Somewhere in the distance I heard helicopters hovering. I realized that they were circling high above us in the hills overlooking the city.
“Wolf Donovan’s services are today,” Pearl said. “He apparently had been building a huge burial site on his estate for some time.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I said. I noticed Pearl was holding a painting in his hands. “You finally finished it?”
He nodded and handed over the canvas. The scene was of three children playing together on the seashore with clouds floating above them. The faces that had once been only a faint outline were now clear. The children in the painting were Pearl, Natalie, and me, but Pearl’s version of what he thought we all might have looked like at about age five.
“You got me spot on,” Natalie said. “Used to smile like that when me dad chased me around and tried to spank me for one sorta rumpus or another.”
“It’s amazing,” I said, smiling up at Pearl.
He motioned to the painting. “It’s yours. I realized when I finished it there was something about our investigation that made me feel young again.” He hugged me and then Natalie.
I glanced at the painting again, my eyes brimming. I thought about Cassie Reynolds.
The one question I hadn’t asked Cassie’s mother is if Cassie ever suspected that Wolf Donovan was her father. I didn’t ask the question because I desperately hoped she hadn’t known. I said a silent prayer and made myself a promise to find out where Cassie was buried and bring her flowers.
My vision was still blurred as we heard the forensic team calling to us. We assembled at the wall of the mausoleum. The team had constructed a pattern of lines and used a saw to cut through the cement in the area that was consistent with the scene of the tomb in Donovan’s movie.
One of the technicians removed a heavy block of cement. Even before the announcement was made, I saw the bones. The body of John Carmichael had been covered with a blanket and pushed into the crypt.
One of the forensics specialists turned to us. “We’re going to take photographs in situ and then remove as much of the skeletal structure as we can in one piece. It’s going to take us awhile.”
I looked at the others, nodded, then turned and walked away letting Bernie sniff the ground.
I wondered what John Carmichael might have accomplished if he’d lived. So many lives had been changed or lost by the murder of one man thirty years ago.
It made me think about my own father, how my family had been forever changed by his murder. I made a silent vow to never give up trying to find his killer.
I heard a car turn into the cemetery and looked over at the same time Natalie did.
“Looks like one of Donovan’s cars,” Natalie said, coming over to me. “Black Mercedes, tinted windows. Hope it’s not some hired killer.”
My adrenaline spiked as the car approached. It stopped on the driveway a few yards away. My hand tensed on the gun in my purse as the door swung open.
I relaxed when a chauffeur emerged. The man bowed, removed his cap, and opened the rear door of the vehicle.
“Mr. Jack Bautista requests that you join him for lunch in Malibu,” The chauffeur said to me.
We all watched as the handsome detective got out of the car. He had one arm in a sling.
I said, “You do know how to make an entrance, Detective.”
“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.” Jack motioned to the open door. “By the way, love the new do.”
I tossed Natalie Bernie’s leash. “Take care of my dog for a couple of hours. I’m going to the beach.”
I waved at my friends as we drove out of the cemetery. I then turned to Jack and looked into his smoky brown eyes.
At that moment I made a decision. In this place that was full of death, it was time to move on with my life.
It was time to live again.
***
Thanks for reading, Hollywood Assassin…
Please hang around for an excerpt from the next book in the series, Hollywood Blood, but first if you enjoyed this book . . .
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***
Contests . . . Giveaways . . . Free Stuff . . .
The rules are simple. This book, like all the Hollywood Alphabet Series novels, contains an interesting Hollywood fact or quote from a famous movie star. Go to my website: mzkelly.com where you will find a question about Hollywood or a star mentioned in the book. Then, just send me an email with the answer and you will be automatically entered for a chance to win cool stuff, like Amazon gift cards, movie tickets, or other valuable prizes. Entry is easy and your chance to win a great prize is excellent. Note: Contests are updated regularly, so even if you’ve just found this book after it’s been out for a while, there’s probably a contest currently running.
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More by this author:
The Hollywood Alphabet Thriller Series, with Detective Kate Sexton:
Hollywood Blood
Hollywood Crazy
Hollywood Dreams [Coming Soon]
Hollywood Enemy [Coming Soon]
The Cassidy and McCade Mystery Series
Crazy, Sexy, Dead [Coming Soon]
Now an excerpt from
Hollywood Blood
M Z Kelly
Chapter One
I was late and dashed into the spirit room, taking my place across from a psychic, a celebrity, and a dog. Thirty seconds later, I knew that the dog was the smartest one in the room.
“I call upon the spirit guide to come forth and give us a sign,” my mother, also known as Miss Daisy, said, sounding like Bob Marley’s sister. “Lolly Biloxi, we call upon you to help us.”
The psychic reading, my mother’s form of a prenuptial counseling session for a celebrity named Karma, should have been called a pre-nut. Every woman in the room wore green. No, it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day. Karma calls green her power color and insists that everyone in her presence wear a shade of the color.
I cursed the lime green dress I’d bought for the occasion. It was too big for me, bunched up at my hips, and made me feel like something that catches flies with its tongue.
Mom sat at the head of the table using the fake Jamaican accent she conjures up during her readings. The scent of incense hung in the air. The lights were dim and creepy mood music played in the background. It all seemed fitting, with Halloween just a few days away.
The reading was designed to determine if the celebrity singer’s fiancé, a rapper named Love Dawg, was cheating on her.
Yes, Love Dawg.
Karma had apparently never been told that men are dominated by an organ that’s sole purpose is to activate their penises. It’s called a brain. Maybe I should give up being a cop and go into the business of predicting the future.
As the reading began, the dog in the room, my canine police partner, Bernie, displayed the unusual good sense to trot off to a corner and lie down. Bernie, a mixed breed of fur, attitude, and sexual wanderlust, has his own testosterone induced challenges, but was recovering from a gunshot wound and apparently didn’t want any part of ghost-busting his two-legged counterpart.
Karma’s elderly manager, Harriett Nordquist, made a snortle, something between a snort and a chortle, before she leaned over to my best friend, Natalie Bump, and said, “I think Lolly should stay in Biloxi and Miss Daisy is crazy.”
“Best to keep an open mind,” Natalie whispered in her proper English accent. “As the story goes, the last time someone made fun of Miss Daisy, she ended up being cursed and struck dumber than a pair of Winklepickers.” Harriett’s blue eyes widened as Natalie continued. “The old girl was last seen trying to clean bird shit out of a cuckoo clock.”
“STFU,” Karma’s friend, Vee, a plump young woman with lots of makeup, big lips, and even bigger hair, said in a hushed tone from across the table.
Mo, Natalie’s partner in a private detective business they call Sistah Snoop, sat a couple of chairs over from me and must have seen my confusion.
“Shut the fuck up, Kate,” Mo said in her deep, yawning voice.
Mo is black, bad, and big, as in she’s pushing two hundred pounds. Still, I started to take offense at what she’d said.
“STFU—shut the fuck up,” Mo explained, stretching her green spandex at the seams until it threated to unleash two of the largest breasts in the Milky Way.
“Oh, got it,” I said.
After another STFU from Vee, Mom adjusted her red and green headscarf and pleaded with Lolly to give us a sign. The lights dimmed and I heard a whimper that I should have paid more attention to.
Instead, I watched as Miss Daisy’s head began to loll and roll. She lost the Jamaican accent, and, in the persona of her spirit guide, said, “I am Lolly. What do you seek?”
I zoned out at that point, didn’t hear Bernie’s increasingly urgent whimper, and tuned out the spirit guide, who was saying that the Love Dawg was off his leash.
Maybe it was all the talk about dogs and love, but my ex, an assistant DA, crossed my mind. A year ago, he’d been caught on videotape cheating with his secretary in an interview room. The divorce had left me in credit hell and with the humiliation of knowing that the video, Dougie Does Phyllis, had made the rounds of nearly every division in the department.
After some evil thoughts that ended in an imaginary courtroom where I was found innocent by reason of justifiable castration, I found my mind wandering back to last night. It was my thirty-first birthday, there was a cake, and I’d done a little celebrating.
Detective Jack Bautista and I had recently solved a high-profile murder case in Hollywood. The case had taken on some complications involving Jack being a fugitive for a while, before I almost lost my job while helping him clear his name.
We were both back on the force and, thanks to some intervention by the newly appointed police chief, I had just been reassigned to RHD, LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division, along with my partner, Charlie Winkler. Bernie had also been rewarded for his actions on the case, receiving a Medal of Valor after taking a bullet while bringing down the bad guy.
All that seemed a long time ago when I thought about last night’s birthday celebration. One thing had led to another, and…
***
“Happy birthday,” Jack said, dimming the lights and lighting another candle.
I felt something wet…it wasn’t wax. The candles didn’t make it on the cake because the cake never made it as a cake or to the oven, for that matter. It was all clothes and flour, eggs and sugar, pots and pans, breath and hands. I felt the dripping of batter and then a better feeling…much better.
“Maybe we need some ice cream,” Jack suggested after a while. “I think I could use some more sugar.”
“It’s bad for your health,” I said.
“No one lives forever.”
“Better watch our cholesterol.”
“I’ll watch yours, if you watch mine.”
Things got a little more heated then. Maybe it was the air temperature, or the fact that the candles were burning rapidly, or that the ice cream was something called, Cookies and Dreams.
All I knew after that was that you don’t need an oven to bake a cake.
***
Bernie’s whine, an early warning signal that almost always signifies imminent disaster, ended my reverie and brought me back to Mom’s spirit room. I heard Lolly telling Karma something about Love Dawg’s happy sword.
And then the room exploded.
Chapter Two
“Stay down,” I yelled, the echo of the gunshot blasting through the room still ringing in my ears.
The lights in my mother’s psychic parlor were out, the room only illuminated by the light spilling in from an adjacent room. There was a momentary silence as we tried to understand what had happened. Everyone was on the floor; a writhing mass of arms, legs, fur, and Versace.
And then the screaming and yelling began.
“Get my driver, now,” Karma shrieked.
“The floor is wet, sticky,” Vee said, sliding around in the blood spray like a novice skater on a frozen pond. “I can’t get my footing.”
Mo was under the table, legs and arms in a spandex tourniquet, yelling something about motherfuckers.
Natalie let loose with a string of British obscenities ending with a reference to the queen’s genitalia. She pulled her husband, Clyde’s, antique pistol out of her purse and waved it in the air.
I finally found my own purse, yanked out my cell phone, and called it in.
“This is Detective Kate Sexton with LAPD. We have shots fired. I need tactical units, code three at my location. And send an ambulance.” I gave them Mom’s address and ended the call.
I wasn’t sure about needing the ambulance until I found the light switch. When the spirit room lit up, I realized that I
should have just called for the coroner, and maybe a psychiatrist, considering the personalities in the room.
Harriett Nordquist had done a face plant onto the multi-colored spirit table. Blood was pouring out of a hole in her head.
“Fraid the dew is off the Lilly,” Natalie said, examining the dead body slumped over on the table. Nothing much bothers my British friend. “Maybe she shoulda settled for cleaning cuckoo clocks.”
“Get down, Nat,” I yelled. “And put the gun away.” I turned to my mother, who was also slumped forward across the table, her headscarf covering her face.
“Mom, are you hurt?” I said, trying to stay low as I checked on her. I pulled the scarf up and saw that Miss Daisy had fainted. She was coming to, moaning something about evil spirits and the dead. She appeared to be okay, at least as okay as my mother gets.
I took a moment to compose myself. The room was in a state of chaos, but no one, other than Karma’s agent, appeared harmed. Vee, who I’d learned before the reading was someone Karma called her FFF, First Friend Forever, was now making a fanning motion in front of Karma’s face, and slipping around in the blood while screaming for someone to get water.
“STFU,” I yelled at the FFF, thinking about other things the initials could stand for. I then turned to the other women in the room. “Everyone, stay right where you are. Do not get off the floor until I get back.”
The shot that had killed Nordquist had come through the window. The glass was shattered, covering the floor and mixing with the blood. I gathered up Bernie, tethered him, and crouched low, heading out onto the patio with my gun drawn.
The night was damp and moonless. The only lights in the neighborhood were coming from Mom’s cottage and the amber streetlights that lined the road. In the distance, the city of Hollywood drifted in and out of a fog bank, a shimmering mirage of dreams or nightmares, depending upon your perspective.
