A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1)

by Rebecca Cantrell

  “Hey, I was watching that,” Aidan protested.

  “Why are you such an ass … ?” Her rhetorical question was interrupted by the inner office door opening and Brendan Maloney’s head appearing.

  “Sofia? My office. Five minutes. We have a couple of things to discuss.”

  The first time she had been introduced to Brendan when she was eleven-years-old, he was the most intimidating person she had ever met. She had literally stood to attention when he shook her hand. With his salt-and-pepper hair, broad Irish features, and intimidating former prize fighter’s physique, he looked exactly like a homicide detective should look. As she had gotten to know him over the years, she discovered that in some ways, he didn’t fit the stereotype. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke (apart, she had recently learned to her complete shock, from an occasional spliff — “Dumbest thing we ever did as a nation was making booze legal and cannabis illegal. Stoners commit way less crime than drunks.”). He hated sports, but had a serious opera addiction. And he did not tolerate swearing because he claimed “it betrayed a poverty of language.” Sofia had not only never heard him curse, but Aidan had told her he had fired people if they swore while they were working. She wondered if Aidan had made that up just to mess with her, but today wasn’t a good day to test that theory.

  If peeing in public hadn’t already gotten her fired from Maloney Investigations, Brendan hearing her use the word “asshole” might have.

  “Sorry, what am I?” said Aidan.

  Sofia stared at Brendan’s now-closed office door. “I said you’re an asshat.”

  From behind his screens, Aidan laughed. “An asshat, huh? At least I’m an asshat with bladder control.”

  She put down her bag on top of her desk, which was strewn with papers and files, and marched over to Aidan. “Why exactly were you watching me pee on a loop?”

  Aidan swiveled round his chair. Minus the gray hair, he did look pretty much like his father, and too cute for his own good. “I wasn’t watching you.”

  On two of his screens was the same footage that had been looping on the TV when she came in. Sofia jabbed a finger at the screens. “What’s that then?”

  Aidan clicked the mouse on his desk. The footage froze. He clicked again and highlighted the upper left hand corner of the still image. He clicked again, and it filled both screens. “Look.”

  Sofia peered at the screen. “What am I looking for?”

  Aidan jabbed a finger at the screen where a black SUV turned into the street. He clicked the mouse again. The footage jumped forward. He clicked one more time, pausing the video.

  “In the back of the SUV,” said Aidan. “That’s our boy in the rear passenger seat.”

  She looked again. He was right. The actor they’d been tasked with performing surveillance on was sitting in the back of the SUV with the window down, staring at Sofia while she went pee. There was no mistaking his high cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. His being driven into the rehab was significant because when he had been admitted three days before, he was ordered not to leave the facility under any circumstances.

  “It gets better.” Aidan pulled the footage back a half-dozen frames.

  In the driver’s seat was a big guy in a leather jacket. He had slicked-back black hair and was wearing giant round shades. But even with shades, Sofia recognized him as a Ronnie Wilson, well-known drug dealer to the stars.

  “Boom!” said Aidan. “Rehab my ass.”

  In contrast to Aidan’s elation, Sofia felt oddly deflated. She’d been hoping that they wouldn’t find any dirt on the young actor. This incident didn’t mean his career was over, but it would make it a lot more difficult for him to book jobs. Movies and big-budget TV shows cost tens of thousands of dollars a day to shoot, and an actor with a drug problem made insuring the production much more costly, if not impossible.

  “You know,” said Aidan, “if you hadn’t been taking a leak, the guy would probably have kept his window closed, and we wouldn’t have been able to see him through the tinted glass.”

  “Terrific,” Sofia said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. Her need to pee had ruined two people’s day.

  “Every cloud, huh?” Aidan grinned.

  Brendan’s door opened. His head appeared. “Come on in, Sofia.”

  The door closed. Sofia took a deep breath. Aidan pulled up another window on his computer. On the left hand side of his Twitter account #sofiasprays was trending worldwide.

  She let that breath out in a sigh and went into Brendan’s office.

  6

  Brendan settled himself down into his leather office chair and motioned for Sofia to sit opposite. She had already decided she wasn’t going to make any excuses for what had happened. She hated people who messed up and then didn’t accept responsibility for their own actions.

  “Brendan, I just want to say that if you don’t think I’m cut out for this, I would totally understand. I screwed up. You gave me a chance, and I blew it.”

  Brendan put down the papers he’d been looking at. He eased back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head. “Holy smokes, Sofia, I hope you’re never arrested for anything. You’d be every copper’s dream come true. I haven’t even said anything, and you’re already singing like a canary.”

  Brendan got up and walked to the window. “I ever tell you about the time me and Charlie were on this stakeout in Shootin’ Newton?”

  Sofia shook her head. Charlie had been Brendan’s partner when he started out in uniform years before. As described in Brendan’s many stories as a chain-smoking, hard drinking, old school cop, Sofia had been surprised to be introduced to a petite blond lady with a mouth like a sailor suffering from Tourette’s syndrome.

  “So we’d been outside this apartment for like six hours solid. Guy we were looking for was an OG Crip we had in the frame for a double homicide. Long story short, Charlie had the same problem you had yesterday. She sneaks out of the car, drops her drawers, and answers the call of nature. Halfway through this guy appears, and he was carrying. He makes me straight away, pulls his piece. I’m still trying to get my gun out of the holster and get my door open when BLAM, Charlie drops him. Two shots in his chest. Dead center. She finishes up, pulls her drawers back up, and we call it in. Didn’t miss a beat.”

  All Sofia could do was stare at Brendan. She was searching for a parallel between the two incidents. But apart from a woman peeing in public, she couldn’t see one. Brendan seemed to sense her confusion.

  “The point is this, Sofia. Charlie had to put it in the report to explain why she was outside our unit and with a perfect angle to shoot this perp. You can imagine the kind of stuff she had to put up with from the other cops. It was pretty embarrassing, but she toughed it out.” Brendan let his hands fall back onto his lap. “Things happen in this kind of business. Hell, in any business. You have setbacks. That’s life. You pull up your pants, and you get back to work.”

  “Umm…ok.” She was relieved that she wasn’t being fired.

  Brendan reached down and grabbed a manila folder from a pile on his desk. He tossed it over the desk at Sofia. “Here.”

  She opened it slowly. Despite Brendan’s pep talk, there was a part of her expecting to see a piece of paper that read ‘Termination of Employment.’ Instead, she was confronted by a not altogether unattractive man in his late-forties with graying hair in a well-tailored suit. She thought she recognized him from some TV show but couldn’t be sure— half of the population of West LA looked like they could be on TV and about five percent of them probably had been, or were actively auditioning.

  “That’s Nigel Fairbroad. He’s an English reality TV producer. He allegedly has an eye for the ladies. Mrs. Fairbroad is looking for a divorce, and her attorney thinks she’d get a better deal if she had all her ducks in a row before she pulls the trigger and files.”

  “Okay.” Sofia wasn’t entirely sure what to do with this information.

  “You’re one of the ducks,” said Brendan. “Or rather you will b
e. Go home, get dolled up, and be at Frank’s Grotto in Malibu at seven o’clock tonight. According to Melissa Fairbroad, her husband is usually there most weeknights around that time. If he’s not there, that will provide us with another line of enquiry.”

  “Is this my punishment for messing up on the stakeout? I have to sleep with a reality TV producer?”

  Brendan laughed. “I’m not that cruel. No, it’s a straight-up honey-trap. You proposition him and see if he bites. In fact, I would advise against sleeping with the guy. It would kind of complicate matters if you were subpoenaed.”

  Sofia had heard of honey-traps. They were a mainstay of a lot of private detective businesses. Some PIs pretty much did only honey-trap and related surveillance investigations. It was fairly easy, and the money was good, kind of like actual prostitution but without the icky part.

  She took another look at the picture. He wasn’t her type. But for a man his age, he had a certain something. There was one problem. The location.

  Jose, the barman at Frank's Grotto, was a friend of hers. Well, slightly more than a friend. More of a friends with benefits-type of friend. The main benefits being he was tall, dark, and drop dead gorgeous. He had a twelve-pack stomach, gorgeous brown eyes, spoke little English outside what was required for his job, and would happily head over to the Cove any time she was in need of company. Relationships for Sofia had always been fraught. With her hectic schedule and fishbowl life, she and Jose, the hot Latin lover, kind of worked. She didn’t want to mess that up, but this was her job, without air quotes, and she wanted to do it right.

  “I just have to make a pass at him and see if he says yes?” she said.

  “You’ll have to wear a body cam so we have evidence in case her attorney needs it. That’s the other reason I wanted to take this gig. The attorney recommended us, and he throws a ton of business our way. So, even though it’s not our regular type of gig, we want to stay onside with this guy if we can.”

  Hell, it has to beat sitting outside a rehab clinic all day. If she needed to use the restroom, there would be one right there. She was sure she could explain to Jose what the deal was afterward. In terms of what Brendan was asking her to do, it should be as straightforward as it got. She was an actress—she could do this.

  “Uh, Brendan,” she said.

  He had already gone back to sorting through the papers on his desk. He looked up, almost surprised that she was still sitting in his office. “Yup?”

  “Isn’t there kind of a snag with all of this?” Sofia said.

  “What’s that?” Brendan asked.

  “He works in the industry. He’s bound to recognize me. I mean, even if I put a wig on or color my hair.”

  Brendan shrugged. “I already thought about that. It kind of works in our favor.”

  She didn’t follow. How would someone recognizing her help? “How does it work in our favor?”

  Brendan let out a long sigh, like he didn’t want to have to actually say what he was about to. “Sofia, you were just papped taking a leak on the street outside a rehab clinic in Malibu. Half the town probably thinks you have a drug problem, and the other half is probably thinking you’ve lost your marbles. Chances are our boy Nigel will assume you’re desperate and hooking.”

  The deadening realization that Brendan was right hit her. “He’ll think I’m a prostitute who needs the money for drugs?”

  Brendan looked at her. “It’s the perfect cover, right? We couldn’t have done a better job setting it up if we’d planned the whole thing.”

  “But what if I don’t want people thinking I’m a prostitute?”

  Brendan set down the papers he was reading over. “Sofia, let me give you a little hard-won advice. One of the most powerful abilities a person can have is not to care what other people think about them. As long as you’re doing the right thing, it doesn’t matter a fig what people think.”

  Brendan was right. That was real logic, not Hollywood logic. “Seven o’ clock at Frank's Grotto?”

  “You got it. Aidan will help you out with the surveillance equipment.”

  Sofia walked back out into the main office where Aidan was hunched behind his screens. She walked past him to her desk. There was a package on her seat. She picked it up. A large pack of adult diapers.

  “Very funny,” she said to Aidan.

  Aidan’s head popped up from behind the screens. “Just looking out for you.”

  Sofia moved the diapers under her desk, resisting the temptation to launch them at Aidan’s stupid Irish head.

  7

  Sofia arrived at Frank’s Grotto to discover, much to her relief, that Jose wasn’t working. Once she was done here, she might give him a call to see if he wanted to come over and give her a back rub. Jose’s back rubs were pretty amazing, though he tended to move a little too quickly from her back to other parts of her anatomy. She had never quite understood men who moved so fast when they knew they were going to get lucky. It was probably like dogs who wolfed their food down in seconds. Even though they knew their bowl probably wasn’t about to be taken from then, they must figure, why take the risk?

  Sofia handed her key fob off to the valet and walked inside. For tonight’s operation, she had gone for a look which a casting director would describe as Business Slutty—a short black skirt, white shirt unbuttoned a little too far, matching lacy white underwear, and black high heels. She took a seat near the end of the bar and ordered a glass of dry white wine. As the bartender poured her drink, she reached down her blouse, found the tiny button that activated her hidden camera, and clicked it. The camera was linked by Bluetooth to her smartphone. From now on everything in front of her would be recorded, and later, Aidan could download the footage from her phone. She hoped nothing too embarrassing would happen. She trusted him not to leak the footage to TMZ, but she didn’t trust him not to play it over and over again in the office.

  The bartender put her drink down on the bar. She took a pencil from her handbag and started to scribble onto a cocktail napkin a list of all the things that she figured might be required to get the average middle-aged, married American male to make a pass at a woman who was not his wife. Three small sips of wine later, she had come up with:

  Two arms.

  Two legs.

  A winning smile.

  A vagina.

  Breasts.

  A heartbeat.

  She chewed the end of the pencil, thought about it a little more deeply, and put a line through the first three items on her list. At a pinch, and in her experience, a full set of limbs and a come-hither look were optional. A man walked in through the entrance and headed for the bar. He had dark hair, designer stubble, and was wearing penny loafers, dark blue pants, and a white dress shirt. He looked to be about the same height as her intended target.

  It was only when he got closer that she realized the man wasn’t Nigel Fairbroad. It was an Australian movie star named Bruce Brunt. Even by movie star standards, he was a piece of work, best known for making a pass at every woman who crossed his path. She looked back at the list and put a line through number six.

  Her heart sank as Brunt took a seat a couple of bar stools away. She could feel his eyes on her. From the corner of her eye, she saw him linger first on her legs and then on her breasts. She resisted the urge to button up her blouse. He flagged down the bartender.

  “The usual,” he said in his trademark Australian accent.

  “Soda water with a dash of lime usual? Or double Scotch on the rocks with a water back usual?” said the bartender.

  “Funny guy. Make it a treble,” said Brunt.

  “Yes, sir,” said the bartender.

  Brunt swiveled round on his bar stool, arms folded and legs apart. “It’s Sofia, right?”

  Sofia wondered how she should play this. Of all the people who could have set up camp next to her at the bar, this guy was the worst. Ignoring Brunt wasn’t going to work. Nigel could walk in at any minute, and then an already difficult situation would become next
to impossible.

  She had to find a way of letting Brunt know she wanted to be left alone without making a scene. But what if Nigel walked into the bar in the middle of her giving Brunt the cold shoulder? How could she then come on to him without it appearing extra weird? How would Brunt react if she did?

  The male ego was a fragile thing. A regular male actor’s ego was even worse. A male movie star’s ego was off the scale. They weren’t used to hearing the word ‘no,’ not ever. Once they reached a certain level, they were surrounded by agents, managers, and personal assistants who catered to their every whim. Unfortunately, Brunt was at that level.

  She turned round to face him. Yup, it was definitely Brunt. “I’m really sorry, but I’m meeting a friend.”

  Brunt shot her a gleaming smile that no doubt worked on most women. He held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “I don’t mean to intrude. It was just that I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been in the news recently.” He hopped off his stool and climbed up onto the one next to her as the bartender put his treble Scotch down on the bar. “I was going to offer my commiserations as a fellow victim of the media. I’ve had a few embarrassing public moments myself.”

  “Right. I appreciate the support. I really do,” said Sofia.

  Sofia was well aware, along with the rest of the country, of Bruce Brunt’s “embarrassing public moments.” They included numerous bar brawls, DUIs, and on one occasion, telling a female LA County sheriff’s department patrol officer to suck on his “didgeridoo, Sheila” while taking down his pants and waggling little Bruce in her general direction as cars shot past on PCH near Cross Creek. The last incident was caught by the officer’s dash cam and earned him a thirty-day stay in LA County jail.

  “I’d love to chat,” continued Sofia. “But I’m meeting a friend.”

  Brunt raised his glass and reached it over to clink it against Sofia’s wine glass. “Cheers. So is this a girlfriend or a boyfriend you’re meeting?”