Scandal Sheet

by Gemma Halliday

  “Thanks,” I shot back as she disappeared behind a pair of heavy oak doors.

  I stood up to find Cal shaking his head at me.

  “What?”

  “You’re good.”

  I grinned. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a compliment. Does the truth ever fall between those lips of yours?”

  I shrugged. “It’s fifty-fifty.”

  He shook his head again.

  A beat later Sandy reappeared with a wide notebook, lines of dates and times written on it.

  “He’s had two visitors.” Sandy stabbed at a line halfway down the page. “Three days ago, his manager, Jerry Leventhal, and yesterday a Tak Davis.”

  I stared at the signatures. Tak was the drummer of the Dirty Dogs. The perfect friend to bring Blain contraband coke in rehab or threaten his enemies in the media. Unfortunately, our mystery call had come in two days before his visit.

  Which left Jerry Leventhal.

  “Does this help?” Sandy asked, her eyebrows raised expectantly.

  I nodded. “It does. Immensely, Sandy. You’ve been an incredible help.”

  Cal and I turned to go.

  “But, does that mean the baby isn’t his?” Sandy hounded.

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t help it. Blain was too easy a target. “Oh, it’s his alright. But, shhhh, don’t tell anyone, ‘kay?”

  Right. I gave it five minutes before she was on the phone to every girlfriend she had. Poor Blain. If he wasn’t such a douche, I might have felt sorry for him.

  “So, I gotta ask,” Cal said as we pushed through the front doors and handed the valet our ticket, “where do you get these names?”

  “What?”

  “The fake names you keep giving people.”

  I grinned. “Sixties sitcom stars. Jeannie, Samantha Stevens from Bewitched, Laura and Rob Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

  Cal threw his head back and laughed. “Aren’t you worried someone will catch on?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Touché.” He gave me a sidelong grin as we climbed back into his tank. “So, this Leventhal character? You know him?”

  I frowned. “Not really. Reps maybe half a dozen acts, but they’re mostly small time. Except for the Dogs.”

  “Know where to find him?”

  “No, but—”

  “Let me guess, you know someone who does?”

  I grinned. “You catch on quick, Cal.”

  I pulled my cell from my purse and immediately started dialing. By the time we hit L.A. again, I’d cleverly bartered premier night tickets to Katie Briggs’s new movie for the unlisted address of Leventhal’s offices on Wilshire.

  I was about to plug it into Cal’s GPS when my cell rang again in my hand.

  “Bender?” I answered.

  “Think maybe you wanna show up for work sometime today?”

  Felix. And he didn’t sound happy.

  “I’m…working in the field today.”

  “Cal with you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then both of you can get back here.”

  “Look, you gave me three days,” I reminded him.

  “I also gave you Pines.”

  “And?”

  I heard the sound of teeth gnashing together on the other end. “Don’t you read the news?”

  “Uh…”

  “Jesus, Bender! That kid who was in Pines’s last movie? Came forward this morning saying that Pines asked him to pose for inappropriate photos while on the set.”

  “Sonofa—” I caught myself just in time, remembering I was fresh out of quarters for the Swear Pig. “—goat.”

  “No kidding. Allie’s been hounding his publicist for a comment all day.”

  I cringed. The blonde was showing me up big time. “I’ll be right there.”

  I flipped my phone shut, shoving it back into my purse. “Change of plans,” I told Cal. “We’re going back to the Informer.”

  He raised an eyebrow my way. “Everything okay?”

  “Peachy.”

  He shot me a look. “I notice you didn’t tell Felix about last night’s break-in.”

  “No. I didn’t. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

  “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”

  “Let’s hope for later. Like after I’ve scooped Barbie.”

  Again with the look. But, thankfully, he didn’t ask, instead, making a U-turn (no small task in a Hummer) on Pico and flipping back toward Hollywood.

  Ten minutes later we were riding the elevator to the second floor. The doors slid open, and immediately I could feel the energy of a hot story crackling in the air. Cam was laying photos out on the conference room table, Cece running back and forth from cubicles to the boss’s office with all the latest developments, Felix shouting orders in rapid succession, threatening jobs if someone didn’t get him an exclusive. And everywhere phones rang one after the other as reporters tried to get hold of the boy’s publicist, his other co-stars, the parents, the tutor, the former nanny, anyone who could be quoted as an “intimate source.” It was a race to find the winning angle that would land you above the fold.

  Immediately I plopped myself in front of my computer and went to work, booting up my address book and sending emails like a mad woman to my network of informants. Even as I hit send on the third one, replies started to trickle in. As one after another popped into my inbox, it became clear the news was buzzing all over Hollywood. And I felt like a total lout for being the last to know the latest developing break on my own story. Felix was right—what kind of reporter was I?

  “Hey, Bender,” Max said, poking his head up over the top of his partition.

  “Yeah?” I asked, though I didn’t take my eyes from the screen as two more emails popped in.

  “You know that guy in the movie with Pines and the kid? Jake Mullins? The one who played the kid’s dad?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied.

  “Turns out he died last month.”

  I paused, giving the old man my full attention. “No shit?”

  “Just found the obit in my archives.”

  “How’d he go?”

  “OD’ed. Prescription sleeping meds.”

  “Wow.”

  “You gotta be careful how many of those things you take.”

  “You ever taken them?” I asked.

  He shook his head, jowls wiggling with aftershocks. “Not me. Bourbon does the trick.”

  I’ll bet. “Anyone look into this death?” I asked. “Was there an investigation?”

  Max shrugged. “Don’t know. ME called it an accident at the time, but I doubt any official ruling has been made yet.”

  “Bender!”

  My head snapped around at the sound of Felix hailing me from the conference room.

  “Thanks for the tip, Max,” I called over my shoulder as I jumped to the boss’s call.

  The surface of the conference room table was covered with photos of Pines (publicity shots, poses at last year’s Oscars, his mug shot) and pics of the boy who’d starred in his last movie, a short kid with light hair and freckles across his nose. A regular Dennis the Menace. In the center was a candid photo taken on the set of the film last spring. Pines had a big smile pasted on his face, his arm around the boy as they posed next to a camera. Yesterday, it would have been a completely innocent photo of a boy and his mentor. Today, it took on a sickly sinister quality.

  “We’re leading with this,” Felix said, pointing to the photo. “Cam’s going to try to get a couple more of the kid today. She’s staking out his school later.”

  Cameron nodded in agreement, her eyes solemn as she stared down at the boy’s face.

  “We need a piece to run beside it. Allie’s been working the co-stars angle, trying to get info on how much time Pines spent alone with the little guy.”

  “Great, I’ll take over,” I said.

  Felix gave me a hard look. “Allie’s already working this st
ory.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “But it’s my story.”

  “You were sharing it. And today you were nowhere to be found, leaving the new girl to pick up all the slack. Allie’s working it.”

  “You are not giving my front-page story away to a pair of tits you just hired!” I yelled.

  Felix clenched his jaw, his eyes going hard beneath his brows.

  Oops. Maybe too far? “Look, Felix—”

  But he’d heard enough from me, cutting me off midsentence. “She’s a good reporter. You, on the other hand, made a major blunder today. You didn’t even know what was going on with your story.”

  “Well, excuse me. I guess getting my condo broken into kept me a little goddamned busy!”

  Two heads whipped my way.

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Someone broke into your condo?” Felix growled, a little vein in his forehead starting to pulse.

  “Uh…well, broke is a strong word. Maybe they kinda just…”

  “Did you know about this?” he asked.

  I turned around to find Cal standing in the doorway behind me.

  He looked from me to Felix. Then slowly nodded.

  “Christ,” Felix swore, running a hand through his unruly mop of hair. “No one tells me anything anymore.”

  “There’s really nothing to tell,” I protested. “I mean, they hardly even touched anything.”

  “That true?” Felix asked over my shoulder.

  Again Cal’s eyes bopped between Felix and me. Only this time he shook his head in the negative.

  Great. Thanks a lot.

  “Alright, I want all the details.” Felix crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened, Bender?”

  So, I told him. Which wasn’t much. The door had been forced. Nothing taken, that I could tell, everything trashed.

  “It was just a warning,” I said, repeating what Cal had said the night before. “I’m fine.”

  Felix didn’t answer, just stared, that vein pulsing double-time.

  “But you can see how I’ve been a little preoccupied this morning.”

  “Which is exactly why you should hand this whole thing over to the cops and do your job.”

  I bit my lip. “I have two more days.”

  “Right. Two days, in which Allie will be running with the Pines headline.”

  “But—”

  “Unless you’ve got another lead…?”

  I bit my lip, watching my career flash before my eyes in one blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Barbie blur. “Murder!” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  This time three heads whipped my direction, all with matching eyebrows-to-the-ceiling expressions.

  “Murder?” Cam asked.

  I nodded vigorously. “Max said one of the kid’s costars on the film died last month. Jake Mullins.”

  “Jake Mullins.” Felix mulled over the name. “I thought he died of an overdose.”

  “Sleeping pills,” I conceded. “But what if it wasn’t an accident? What if it was murder? What if it has to do with Pines and the kid? Maybe Mullins saw something inappropriate, and Pines silenced him?” Talk about reaching. Even I was aware that was a whole lot of “if”s. But at the moment, I was ready to invent any story to save my front-page slot.

  Felix gave me a long, hard look. Then finally, “Run with it.”

  I felt a grin break out across my face.

  “On it, chief!” I said with a mock salute. I turned to go.

  “And, Bender,” Felix called.

  I turned around.

  “Swear Pig. That was at least fifty cents.”

  As soon as I got back to my desk, I divested my purse of the quarters and popped them in the ceramic pig. Then put in a call to a source at the morgue. Just because the official word was “accident,” that didn’t mean foul play couldn’t have been involved. If there was even the slightest chance Mullins had been killed on purpose, I needed to know. I left a message with my favorite former reality show contestant turned morgue technician, then pulled open a search engine, ready to track down my next lead.

  “He’s right, you know.”

  I turned to find Cal hovering just over my shoulder.

  “Right about what?”

  “The police.”

  I sighed. Et tu, Cal?

  “Look, I’m fine. I have you, remember?” I said, gesturing to his gym-honed biceps.

  “Tina, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  I bit my lip, telling myself that was not real emotion backing up behind his eyes. I was a client to him. A job. If I got hurt, it meant his reputation went down the toilet, that’s all.

  “So, do your job,” I said, purposefully turning away and focusing on my computer screen. “And let me do mine. In case you didn’t notice back there, my butt is on the line.”

  I tensed for another argument but, instead, looked up to find Cal walking away. He tucked himself behind a desk a few feet away, an unreadable expression masking his face.

  Good.

  Great.

  This whole shadow gig he had going was cramping my style anyway.

  I turned back to my screen, trying to ignore how foolish I felt for wearing this hot pink bra, and brought up the main site of the L.A. Times.

  While the Informer was L.A.’s premier tabloid (And, yes, I’m not above stating the obvious. We’re not an entertainment magazine, or a media outlet, or a women’s periodical. We report on celebrity scandals. Hollywood rumors. Which movie star’s beach bod has the most cellulite. We’re a total tabloid.), when it came to getting just the facts, ma’am, the Times was your best bet.

  I pulled up their archives page.

  “Hey, Max,” I called over the partition.

  Max’s head popped up again. “Yeah?”

  “What was the date on that Mullins obit?”

  “Lemme check,” he said and disappeared behind the carpeted wall. Two beats later he popped back up. “August. The twenty-sixth.”

  “Thanks,” I called, turning back to my screen and typing the date in. After scanning through several unrelated articles, I finally hit pay dirt with a piece buried in the Arts and Entertainment section.

  Turns out Jake Mullins was a character actor best known for his portrayal of the “stern father” in a variety of family films. He’d done a few guest shots on Law & Order and CSI, but he hadn’t rated high enough on the Hollywood food chain for his passing to be front page news. Instead, the little six-inch article stated the bare bones of his overdose, the fact that the preliminary ruling was accident, and the highlight of his short-lived career—playing supporting actor in the latest Pines film. At the end of the article, the reporter noted that Mullins was survived by his wife, Alexis, who was best known for being a child star in the seventies TV show, The Fenton Family, about a blended family of musically inclined kids.

  Immediately I typed the name “Alexis Mullins” into my People Finder database and came up with an address in Echo Park near Dodger Stadium. I copied it down on a Post-it and grabbed my Strawberry Shortcake purse.

  “Where are we going?” Instantly, Cal was at my side. For such a big guy, he had that speedy stealth thing down pat.

  “To see Jake Mullins’s widow.”

  “The guy ‘if’ Pines murdered?” he asked, following me to the elevator.

  “Can the sarcasm. Trust me, I know a long shot when I make one up.”

  “The nice thing about long shots is when they pay off, they pay off big.”

  I turned on him, expecting to see a mocking smirk on his features. Instead, that same unreadable expression.

  “Hmm,” I said, making a noncommittal sound in the back of my throat. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  Because there was no way I was letting Barbie win.

  Chapter Nine

  Echo Park is a quiet suburb off the 5 freeway in the hills near Dodgers Stadium. Quaint little fifties bungalows and seventies apartment buildings clung to the hillsides, dotted with fragrant eucalyptus trees and hea
rty daisy clusters, flowering despite their proximity to the state’s most traveled highway. Alexis Mullins lived in an eight-unit complex behind a Ralph’s grocery, just a block up from Sunset. The paint was a dull beige, and the thick shrubbery helped hide the years of smoginduced grime coating the stuccoed walls. A Saturn hybrid and two electric cars sat at the curb. Cal did a U-turn and opted to park his Hummer in the Ralph’s parking lot.

  “You know, I’d pay good money to see you try to parallel park this thing,” I told him.

  He grinned. “I’d take your money, Bender, but I know all you carry around in that lunchbox of yours is quarters.”

  I stuck out my tongue. What could I say? He brought out my mature side.

  “By the way,” I said as I jumped down from the passenger seat, “thanks for having my back there with Felix.”

  He beeped the car locked. “The cat was already out of the bag. What did you want me to do, lie for you?”

  “Yes!”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, Bender, that’s your gig.”

  “Well, then you’d better let me do the talking here.”

  Alexis’s unit was the second on the bottom, wedged under a dark stairwell that had “don’t forget your mace” written all over it. I rapped on the door, inhaling the scents of stale curry and cigarette smoke that seem to pervade every pre-1990 apartment complex in California.

  I saw a shadow cross the peephole. A few seconds later the door opened a crack, the chain still in place.

  “Yeah?” asked a voice, still gravelly with sleep, despite the fact that it was well past noon.

  “Hi,” I said, doing what I hoped looked like a friendly wave. “My name’s…Mary Ann. Mary Ann Summers.”

  “And?” the voice asked. Through the crack I could just make out frizzy blonde hair and a yellow robe.

  “I’m…an author. I’m writing a book about Hollywood stars who have been taken too young in life. I was wondering if I could talk to you about your husband?”

  “Jake?” the woman asked, clearly surprised.

  “Yep. Jake. I absolutely loved his work in that last Pines film. What a loss to the acting community.”

  There was a pause. Then the door shut, and I heard the sound of the chain being slid from the lock before it opened again, this time revealing the occupant behind.

  She was taller than me by at least a head, long and lean, and, like 90 percent of Hollywood, her C cups were obviously not natural to her frame. She had green eyes, rimmed in dark circles as if she hadn’t slept much lately. An oversized Van Halen T-shirt hung on her bony shoulders while a yellow robe was draped around her, the sash loosely tied in front. And her blonde frizz rivaled my bed head any day.