Hollywood Deception

by Gemma Halliday

  I pulled up a new blank document on my computer and titled it SUSPECTS.

  Right below that I typed Marilyn Baxter. Under that I added the elusive SB. Then I drew a blank

  There had to be more people who wanted Bobby dead. The guy was a jerk. But who?

  Wait—what about the guy Bobby had assaulted?

  I pulled up the notes I'd originally written to take with me to the interview with Bobby and found the fan's name: Ritchie Mullins.

  Bobby had decked him in a very public place. What if Ritchie held a grudge? Or what if he'd wanted revenge? I wish I knew what the two had been arguing about.

  On the list, I wrote down Ritchie Mullins. There. That was looking more like a respectable suspect list now.

  While smart money was still on the wife, the fan was an interesting idea. I did a little searching and found a social media profile for Ritchie. He had an impressive 3,041 friends, had graduated from Encino High, and worked three days a week as a personal trainer at the Oceanside Gym in Santa Monica.

  I grabbed my purse and phone and left the office.

  About half an hour later I found a spot on the street a block away from the gym where Ritchie worked. Today I'd chosen to wear my favorite off-the-shoulder baby pink dolman top with a black pencil skirt and matching pink sling-back high heels. The sun beat down on my bare shoulder and face as I made my way down the sidewalk to the gym.

  One of the entrance doors was propped open. The smell of sweaty men and the sound of grunts and weights clanking together met me as I strolled inside.

  I spotted a reception desk and hurried over. The young man behind the desk gave me a quick once-over and smiled.

  "I'm Alex. Welcome to Oceanside Gym. Can I help you?"

  His black hair glistened in the overhead light, and his chubby cheeks made him look barely old enough to even have a job.

  "I was wondering if Ritchie Mullins is working today?"

  "Sure. Just a minute."

  Alex left the desk, and I watched as he made his way toward the back of the gym. He stopped and said something to a very large man in a red long-sleeved shirt that said Oceanside across the chest. The man looked up at me. Then he nodded at Alex and followed him back to the front desk.

  "I'm Ritchie," the guy said as he wiped his hands on a clean towel before extending it my way. "You looking for a personal trainer?"

  I shook the offered hand, momentarily speechless. This guy was huge. I mean, like Incredible Hulk without the green paint huge. How on earth had Bobby decked this guy and gotten away with it? If this guy put his finger on my head and pressed down, I was sure I'd go through the floor like a thumbtack.

  "Not exactly," I said, trying to gather my wits. "I'm Allie Quick from the L.A. Informer. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the night of your altercation with Bobby Baxter."

  Ritchie narrowed his eyes at me. "That's old news, sweetheart. Bobby's dead."

  I silently wondered if this guy'd had anything to do with that. "Indulge me," I said.

  His eyes went from my face down to my neckline and all the way south to my bare legs. His stare was so intense I could almost feel it. Ick. I tried not to shift uncomfortably under his gaze.

  "I suppose," he finally decided. "What do you want to know that I haven't already told the press?" He directed me to a table and chairs to our left, next to a smoothie bar, and we sat down.

  "I was wondering if you could tell me your side of the story. What happened the night of the assault?"

  Ritchie tried to hide his look of irritation but failed. "I was a fan of Bobby's show. I saw him at Beverly's. I was there with a couple of coworkers for a birthday dinner. I approached him, told him I was a fan. He told me to piss off."

  "Harsh," I said.

  "I thought so, too, so I asked him what his problem was. He got irate and punched me."

  "And you didn't fight back?" I asked, still unable to believe that Bobby'd had the guts to smack around a guy who looked like he could bench press a Buick.

  "Nah. There were people taking pictures all over the place. He was ruined before the security ever grabbed him. What would be the sense in me kicking his ass?"

  "So you're a 'live and let live' kind of guy?" I asked.

  "You could say that."

  "You at work the night before last?" I asked.

  Ritchie frowned. "Why do you ask?"

  "Just curious."

  He narrowed his eyes at me. "Curious if I killed Bobby that night, you mean?"

  I shrugged. "Your words, not mine."

  "Look, honey, Bobby was an a-hole, but I didn't even know the guy. If I killed everyone who tried to take a swing at me, I'd be on death row many times over."

  That was hardly convincing me of his character.

  "And, yes, for the record, I was working that night. Now, if you don't mind…" He scooted his chair back. "I have a client to get back to." He stood and without another word walked away.

  I sat there a little longer and watched Ritchie rejoin his client at the free weights.

  Something about his story just didn't add up. Sure, I could see Bobby being rude to a fan. But Bobby wasn't dumb by anyone's account. And while he'd been good-looking in a TV sort of way, he'd hardly looked like he spent time in a gym. I just didn't see David taking a swing at Goliath for no reason.

  Which begged the question—why was Ritchie lying?

  As I was walking out of the gym and down the sidewalk to my car, I spotted a coffee shop and couldn't resist. I crossed the street and went inside. The cool air from the stainless steel ceiling fans blew down on me, and I almost sighed aloud.

  The barista, a woman probably in her late twenties, brushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and smiled a greeting at me. A tiny little diamond stud on her nose glinted in the overhead light.

  I gave her my order of an iced vanilla latte and orange crème scone and took a seat at a table while I waited.

  From my vantage point, I could see into the glass storefront of the Oceanside Gym. I wondered why Ritchie would lie about what had caused Bobby to hit him. Maybe they'd known each other—had some sort of past grudge? Maybe Ritchie owed him money, and with Bobby gone, he now thought he could skip out on the debt? Maybe Ritchie had just been a bigger creep than he'd admitted to, and Bobby had snapped?

  The coffee shop wasn't busy, and instead of calling out my name, the barista brought my order to me. "If you need anything else, just let me know." She smiled, set down my coffee and scone, and then walked away.

  I took a sip of my latte. If only I'd been there to see the assault happen.

  Then it hit me.

  Hadn't Ritchie said lots of people were filming the incident? Maybe someone had caught footage of the moments just before the assault had taken place. Of course, tracking down every single person who might have had a cell out at Beverly's that night could be daunting. Unless, of course, someone already had.

  I pulled my phone out of my purse and dialed Cam.

  "Cameron Dakota."

  "Cam, it's Allie."

  "Hey, Allie. What's up?"

  I stirred the ice in my coffee with a straw. "I need your help."

  "With what?" she asked.

  "I was wondering…did you guys put out a call for footage on the night Bobby assaulted that guy at Beverly's?"

  "Of course. As soon as word hit, we sent out a Twitter alert."

  Bingo. While Cam was always quick to a scene with her camera when good gossip was going down, in the digital age, I knew our website often relied on cell phone footage from people in the right place at the right time to fill in blanks. Which our devoted followers loved for two reasons: one, we often had video footage of embarrassing moments as they happened, and two, we paid a nice bounty for any cell footage that we did end up using. In fact, there were several freelancers who often pulled in monthly paychecks from us just for being "in the right place" when celebrities did embarrassing things like wearing UGGs with Daisy Dukes to pump their gas.
r />   "I don't suppose you got anything good?" I asked.

  "Nothing usable," Cam replied. Which I already knew, or else it would have been on our website.

  "Do you still have it?"

  "Sure. It's all in raw form though. Meet me at the office in fifteen, and I can show you."

  "I'm on my way," I said as I tossed my napkin in the trash can, grabbed my coffee and purse, and hurried out of the shop and back to my car.

  The trip back took closer to thirty minutes, but once there I rode the elevator up to the second floor. Cam was watching for me and waved me over the moment I stepped off of our death trap of an elevator. I looked around for Tina, but she was nowhere to be found. I hurried over to Cam, pulled an extra chair into her cubicle, and took a seat.

  "I've got it all cued up. We only got a handful of submissions. Most don't really show much action, unfortunately."

  "That's okay. I'll take what I can get," I said.

  "Here's the first one." Cam clicked her mouse, and a slightly slanted picture of the bar area at Beverly's appeared on the screen. Cam pointed to an elbow in a blue shirt. "That's Bobby there."

  I rolled my eyes. "Wow. An elbow. How incriminating."

  Cam grinned at me. "Sorry. Like I said, most of it is unusable."

  I watched as the elbow lifted a glass off the bar a few times. Then it abruptly moved out of frame. The would-be photographer swiveled his phone just in time for us to see Bobby being pulled off of Ritchie Mullins by security.

  "Nothing we didn't know there," I mused out loud.

  Cam clicked on the next file, and a similar scene played out, but this one had a large potted palm obscuring most of the action. Three more similar videos from other equally terrible vantage points later, and I was starting to think this was another dead end.

  "Last one," Cam told me, clicking on another file.

  This one looked like it had been shot by another patron at the bar, as it showed Bobby in profile.

  "That's him," I said and motioned to the monitor. So far Henry had been telling the truth. Bobby looked like he was drunk and being loud, waving his arms in the air, laughing animatedly.

  "And here comes the fan," Cam said.

  We both leaned forward to get a better look at what was happening. The film was grainy, so reading the men's lips was out of the question, but it was easy to identify Bobby and Ritchie.

  Ritchie walked up to Bobby and tapped him on the shoulder. Bobby turned around, and the jovial smile he'd been sporting disappeared from his face the second he saw Ritchie.

  "He doesn't look happy," Cam said.

  "Definitely," I agreed. "But he does look like he recognizes him."

  I saw Ritchie's mouth move as he said something. Bobby's face contorted with rage, and then he cocked his arm back.

  Unfortunately, that's when our amateur Scorsese dropped his phone, and all we could see were pairs of feet.

  "Damn," I muttered.

  "I know." Cam shook her head. "This could have been primo video."

  By the time the phone was picked up again, we saw Bobby on top of Ritchie, trying to get another hit in as security pulled him off. Finally they succeeded, hauling a kicking and flailing Bobby out of the restaurant.

  Ritchie stood, rubbed his jaw, then smiled in the direction the men had carried Bobby.

  "Wow. I wonder what he said to piss off Baxter?"

  That was the question of the day. But I knew one thing was for sure. Baxter and Ritchie had definitely known each other.

  "Thanks, Cam. I owe you one," I told her, heading back to my own desk.

  I started searching all the databases at our disposal for all I could find on Ritchie Mullins. Bobby had definitely recognized Ritchie and hadn't been happy to see him. Had Ritchie confronted Bobby a second time…maybe this time with a gun in hand? There had to be a connection between the two men, and I was determined to find it.

  An hour of shifting through boring personal stats later, my eyes were starting to water. If there was any connection between Bobby and Ritchie, it was well hidden and off-line. My stomach rumbled, and I looked at the clock. Well past lunchtime. I grabbed my purse and made for the elevator.

  Normally, my lunch consisted of a quick sandwich or salad at one of the takeout delis nearby. But instead of cruising down Hollywood Boulevard, I pointed my car toward downtown L.A., and half an hour later pulled up in front of DeVitto's Italian restaurant. It didn't look overly crowded at this time of day, though the outdoor patio along the side of the building held a decent number of patrons. I was greeted by a friendly hostess who promptly seated me at a table for one on the patio near the door.

  I perused the menu as I waited for my server, noting that the prices were way outside of the usual deli fare. I would be expensing this meal to the Informer account for sure.

  "Hi, my name is Brian, and I'll be your server today," a friendly, young guy said, approaching my table. He had a big, toothy smile and close-cropped brown hair, and he looked vaguely familiar. "Can I start you off with something to drink?"

  While the wine list he handed me was impressive, I answered with, "Just an iced tea, please."

  If he was disappointed at the instant reduction in the bill size, he didn't show it. "Perfect. I'll get that right out to you."

  "Uh, Brian," I stopped him.

  He paused, giving me his megawatt smile. "Yes?"

  "I was wondering…any chance you know if any servers working today were also on two nights ago?"

  He frowned, indicating he was not yet of the Botox age. "What day was that?"

  "The 10th."

  He nodded, the smile coming back. "Sure. I actually picked up a shift that evening." He paused. "Why? Was there something wrong with the service that night?"

  "No, nothing like that," I reassured him. "I was actually just wondering if you noticed this man here?" I pulled up a photo of Bobby on my phone and showed it to him.

  Brian squinted down, shielding the screen from the sunlight as he studied the face. Finally recognition dawned, resulting in another big smile. "Yeah, Bobby Baxter. Shame about what happened to him."

  I nodded my agreement. "Did you wait on him?"

  Brian shook his head. "I wish. Man, I'd love to get a spot on his show. This is just my day job. I'm an actor," he explained.

  It dawned on me why he looked so familiar. "You did that soap commercial!"

  I didn't think it was possible for Brian's smile to grow bigger, but somehow he managed to sprout an extra few teeth. "You've seen it?"

  I nodded. "Of course! You get all muddy playing rugby, and the green soap lathers and refreshes away your day," I said, repeating the company slogan. "You were awesome in it."

  "Wow, thanks." Brian blushed.

  "So, um, about Bobby," I said, having appropriately buttered up my witness. "Did you get a look at the person he was dining with that night?"

  Brian tapped his pen to his lips. "Let me see…I'll admit I was more focused on Bobby. We don't get a lot of celebs in here, so it's always kind of fun when we do."

  "Do you remember if it was a man or woman?"

  He nodded. "Man. Kind of an older guy maybe? I remember he had salt-and-pepper hair."

  I frowned. That ruled out Sandra Butler and Sarah Baker. I wondered how old Sanjay Bastil was. Though I wasn't sure what motive a member of Bobby's own research crew could have for murdering him. Admit it girl, this whole thing was a long shot.

  Though, as I thanked Brian and ordered the salmon salad, at least I knew one thing: Bobby hadn't been alone on the night he'd died.

  * * *

  After a delightful lunch that cost way too much and a mostly traffic-free ride back to the office, I was at my desk looking for anyone in Bobby's life who fit the description of his last supper companion. Parents? Both deceased. Uncles? All living in his native Midwestern small town. Agent? Not even close. I supposed it could have been a network executive, but if that was the case, I couldn't think of any reason for them to off their star.

>   Felix stepped up beside my desk. "Hard at work?"

  "Always," I answered. I swiveled in my chair to face him. "What's up?"

  "I just got a look at the ballistics report on Baxter."

  I raised an eyebrow at him. "How did you get that?"

  "I know some people." He smiled mischievously.

  I wished I knew more people. "So, what did it say?" I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper as I glanced around for any sign of Tina.

  "She's not here," Felix told me with a knowing grin.

  I felt a sheepish blush creep into my cheeks. "So what did the report say?"

  "Death from a single GSW to the head."

  "No surprise there," I added.

  "Nine-millimeter caliber weapon…wait for it…registered to him."

  "He was killed with his own gun?"

  "It's a cruel world, kid," Felix said, shaking his head.

  I'll say. It also killed my theory that Ritchie had come back better armed to confront Bobby.

  "Ballistics came back a match to his weapon after they compared it to an old police report involving gunshots at his residence last year," Felix continued. "Bobby claimed the gun went off when he was cleaning it. But the police suspected possible domestic dispute, so they took the bullet then. Striations were an exact match to the one that killed him."

  "Any idea where the gun is now?" I asked.

  Felix shook his head. "Either the police don't know, or they aren't saying."

  I chewed on that info. "Thanks for the tip."

  "Anything for you, love," he said, shooting me a wink before he disappeared back into his office.

  I watched his retreating back, but my mind was on the information he'd just given me. If Bobby was killed with his own gun, that meant either he had brought it to meet his killer, or the killer had had access to it. And I could think of one person who might have easy access…and a possible "domestic dispute" with the deceased.

  I dialed Shane's number as I grabbed my purse and headed for the elevator.

  "Allie?" he answered on the first ring.

  "Yeah, it's me. Has Mrs. Baxter come back to her house since the last time we talked?"

  "Nope. I've been watching. I can see in the house perfectly from my bedroom window. No one's been there except for the housekeeper."