“Goodnight, Gray.”
“Goodnight. Call the police if anything suspicious happens tonight. Then call me.”
She listened as he walked out onto the porch and down the stairs. She got up and locked the door behind him. Then she armed her alarm, just in case. Fred was still out there, standing guard, wings tucked in tight against the stiff ocean breeze. She whispered, “Good night, Fred.”
36
Before walking into the office the next morning, Sofia took three deep breaths and wondered what Aidan had left on her desk. She opened the door and stepped inside. Aidan was in his usual spot behind his monitors. Brendan was standing over him. They were deep in conversation. It stopped as they looked up and saw Sofia. Brendan put his hand on Aidan’s shoulder and whispered something before straightening up and walking back into his office and closing the door.
She walked over to her desk. Her chair didn’t have a package of adult diapers sitting on it. Her work space seemed to be completely adult diaper-free. Aidan must have tired of the joke and moved on. He had enough ammunition after last night for a whole new round of jokes, but she guessed he hadn’t started that just yet. She booted up her computer, sat down, and checked through her emails. Nothing interesting.
She wondered if Aidan had been telling Brendan about the intervention phone call when she’d come in. Brendan had seemed on edge. He’d barely acknowledged her when she’d walked in. It wasn’t like him.
After replying to the most urgent emails, she got up and walked over to the water cooler and filled her bottle. She was dehydrated from the wine she’d drunk the night before with Gray. Aidan got up from his desk and wandered over with his mug. He jammed a coffee capsule in their machine and hit the button to make himself an espresso.
Aidan’s not mentioning anything about the phone call was making Sofia uneasy. He usually grabbed any and every opportunity to tease her with both hands.
“Hey,” she said, “thanks for clearing up that thing with my family last night.”
Aidan shrugged. “No problem.”
Huh. This was definitely not the reaction she’d expected.
“I really appreciate it,” said Sofia.
“Any time.”
“I’m hoping it was a one-off. They worry about me. My mom can be a little overprotective.”
When Aidan didn’t respond, she decided to change the subject. Maybe Aidan meeting a woman he deemed worthy of a second date was changing him. Maybe his newfound maturity when it came to dating was spilling over, in a positive way, into his work life.
“I’m sorry if it spoiled your date with Sofia.” His date having the same name was definitely a little weird. She didn’t see the significance that her mom had, but, yeah, it was kind of odd.
Aidan picked up his coffee cup from the machine and waved Sofia’s apology away. “Forget about it. That’s old news.”
“What?” said Sofia, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Already?”
Aidan took a sip of espresso. “Didn’t work out. What can I tell you?”
“I thought you really liked her.”
“I did, but …” He trailed off.
“But?” Sofia prompted.
She knew she was moving way out of work colleague territory now, but if she didn’t find out the reason for Aidan not wanting to see Other Sofia anymore, it would drive her crazy. She had to know.
“But nothing,” Aidan shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”
Sofia gaped at him. He was holding out on her. Aidan was usually pretty open about sharing the tenuous reasons he had for rejecting any of the dozens of women he’d taken out on a first date only to never see again. He wore his anally-retentive checklist like a badge of honor. Proof that he had high standards and wasn’t prepared to settle for just anyone so that he could be in a relationship. It was perfection, whatever that actually was in Aidan’s fevered brain (Sofia wasn’t convinced that he really knew himself), or nothing.
The water was spilling from her bottle.
“Damn. How come?” She tried to sound casual.
Aidan looked at her. “You’ll think it’s dumb.”
He was right. She probably would. But she still wanted to know. More so now that he’d just said she’d think it was dumb. “Try me.”
He slugged down the rest of his espresso and put the cup back down on top of the table with the coffee machine on it. “Okay, but promise you won’t use it against me later on. I know you think my lists and spreadsheets are stupid.”
“Girl Scout’s Honor,” said Sofia, putting one hand behind her back and crossing her fingers, in clear breach of both the spirit and the letter of the Girl Scout’s Honor system. But she’d never been a Girl Scout, so it didn’t matter.
“Promise?” Aidan asked.
This was going to be good. If even Aidan thought it was dumb, it had to be great. “Sure.”
“Okay, she did this weird thing with her fork,” said Aidan.
Sofia had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing. “Weird, how?”
“I told you it was dumb.”
“What did she do? Stick it up her nose? What?” Sofia figured that even though Aidan was sensitive about stuff like this, it had to be a pretty serious breach of cutlery etiquette to make him dump a woman who had passed all his other weird tests.
“It’s dumb,” said Aidan, clearly regretting that he’d said anything and obviously hoping that she would drop it.
Which just was not going to happen as far as Sofia was concerned. Her interest was so piqued that she’d track the Other Sofia down and ask her what she did with a fork if she had to.
“Just tell me,” Sofia said, opening a drawer and raking around until she found a plastic fork. She turned the fork around and passed it to him, handle first.
He stared up at the ceiling as if hoping for divine intervention. When that didn’t come, Aidan took the fork. He pinched the handle between tips of his right thumb and index finger. He then mimed jabbing at an imaginary plate of food like a swordfighter.
“She ate like this,” he said, jabbing some more. “I tried to ignore it. I mean it’s not even on my checklist. But by end of the entree it was driving me crazy. Oh, and she’d like jab her fork at me when she was making a point. She could have taken one of my eyes out.”
He explained it with such intensity that Sofia didn’t laugh. That was the problem with Aidan’s crazy rules. He was so definite about them that she could easily be pulled into to thinking they were the product of someone sane.
“Couldn’t you have asked her nicely not to jab her fork at you?” Sofia said.
Aidan threw the plastic fork back down on the table. “I could, but I didn’t want to appear petty.”
Sofia tried to follow the logic, she really did. “You didn’t want to appear petty by saying something, so instead, you dumped her?”
“I haven’t dumped her yet,” said Aidan.
“But you’re going to, right? You are going to actually tell her that you don’t want to see her again, aren’t you?”
Aidan didn’t reply. That meant he was going to do that asshole thing men did of not answering the Other Sofia’s calls or texts until she either got the message or blew up at him.
“Aidan?”
“We had two dates. That’s it.”
Sofia could feel her eyeballs about to roll right out of their sockets and onto the floor. “Yeah, but two dates for you is like moving in together for a regular person.”
“Wow, did you really accuse me of not being regular, Miss ‘Even My Own Family Think I’m So Weird They Staged An Intervention?’”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Sofia scolded him. “If you don’t learn to accept that people have their flaws as well as their good points, then you’re going to end up old and lonely in a nursing home.”
At this Aidan let out a sound that was part laugh, part bark. “Really? The old and lonely in a nursing home meme? That’s all you got?”
“It
’s true.”
“Not according to the data,” Aidan said.
Sofia folded her arms in front of her. “What data?”
“All the data. You want me to break it down for you?” said Aidan.
“Please do. I hope my tiny female brain will be able to keep up with your brilliant data analysis.”
“I’ll be sure to speak slowly,” said Aidan, matching her sarcastic tone. “As you may know, women in the United States have, on average, a life expectancy that’s approximately seven years longer than men born into the same socio-economic group. By the time a man’s reached the age of seventy, which I hope to make easily by careful diet, regular exercise, and regular check-ups, there are approximately one point three women for every man. And that’s not even going into the whole sexual market value issue, which kicks in way earlier than that.”
Aidan stopped. He shot Sofia a smug look.
“What sexual market value issue?” she said, regretting asking the question as soon as it was out of her mouth.
“Women reach their sexual, or if you prefer, their social market value, at the age of twenty-four. Men don’t hit their peak until their mid-thirties, and after that, it’s a long, slow ride down that curve, while chicks, they hit the freaking wall. It’s a goddamn ski slope after twenty-four. By the time I hit the nursing home, I’m going to have my pick. If I go into the home at eighty, I’ll still be able to score me a banging sixty-five-year-old.”
She just stared at him. This was obviously a matter that he had given some thought to. More than she’d imagined. It also explained his geeky adherence to checklists and brooking no compromise.
“So that’s why you’re not going to see this woman again? It’s got nothing to do with what she does with a fork. It’s because you think you’ll always be able to do better. That there’s a nice piece of candy on the next shelf,” said Sofia.
Aidan shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?” Sofia asked.
“Okay, you want to know the naked, unvarnished truth?” said Aidan, his face growing red. “The fork thing bugged me, but it wasn’t a complete deal breaker.”
“So what was?”
Aidan stalked back to his desk. His back was to Sofia. “It was her name. It was freaking me out.”
Sofia stood where she was, not sure what to make of what Aidan had just said. This was territory she wasn’t sure she wanted to get into. It would bring up things she was as eager to avoid talking about as he was.
“Okay,” she said finally.
He sat down at his desk. “Hey, so I picked up something from that bug you planted under Moonbow’s couch.”
“Great,” said Sofia, relieved at the change of subject. Work was definitely firmer ground. She walked over and stood behind him.
“Yeah, you might not think so when you hear it,” Aidan said, handing her a pair of headphones plugged into his computer.
He full-screened an audio player, and used his mouse to drag the play triangle to two hours and forty-odd minutes into the audio recording. He hit a button to turn up the volume and hit play.
At first Sofia couldn’t hear much apart from background noise. Then a cell phone rang and Moonbow answered. His voice was pure Philly rather than the soothing Californian with a hint of surfer voice that he had cultivated as part of his chakra massage healer persona.
“Yeah, that chick who’s working with the PI that Melissa’s attorney is using showed up here,” Moonbow was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line.
The hairs on the back of Sofia’s neck stood up. Moonbow had known who she was and who she was working for. Had he known when she’d booked him for a massage, or had he figured it out later? No matter, he’d obviously realized by the time she turned up at his apartment, or shortly thereafter. The idea that she’d walked into his apartment and he’d already known that she was a PI gave her chills.
She reached over, grabbed the mouse from Aidan, and hit pause. She took the headphones off. “Do you know who he’s talking to?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it. Believe me,” said Aidan. “Anyway, there’s more. Listen.”
She put the headphones back on as Aidan restarted the audio. Rogers made a few umms and ahs before he said, “That doesn’t matter to me, okay? I just want this taken care of.” There was another pause, presumably while the person on the other end of the line responded, then Rogers said, “Okay, you do that. Send a message. Whatever. But I don’t want any more visits. You feel me? Okay, bye.”
The call ended. Bobby Rogers put the phone down and moved around his apartment. Sofia took off her headphones. The office felt about ten degrees colder than it had been when she’d arrived.
“You okay?” asked Aidan.
Now he looked worried about her.
37
“Why didn’t you call me the first time the guy tried to drive you off Malibu Canyon Road?” Brendan stood behind his desk, glaring at Sofia, knuckles resting on the desk top like he wanted to push it through the floor. Sofia sat opposite him. Aidan paced the room behind her.
“I didn’t think it was necessarily deliberate,” Sofia replied. “I mean, it’s LA. Most people drive like assholes here. Even if you don’t want to do it, you end up doing it so you can get to where you were going.” It was true. LA was one of the few places where a turn signal was seen as a warning to close the gap so someone couldn’t get ahead of you rather than as a common courtesy.
“Look, Sofia, I know this is a male-dominated industry, and you might feel like asking for help will be seen as a weakness, but not calling me or the California Highway Patrol was just plain dumb. You don’t have anything to prove to me or anyone else,” Brendan said.
“I know, I know, and I was going to call you, but then I got my mom’s house, but….” She snuck a glance at Aidan. She was still amazed that he hadn’t said anything about her phone call to his father. “… Well, I got there, and I was okay, and it slipped my mind.”
“Someone tries to turn you into lunch meat and it slips your mind?” Brendan bellowed. She had rarely seen him this mad and never this mad at her.
“I’m sorry. I won’t let it happen again. If anything like this happens in the future, I’ll be sure to let you know immediately.” She waited, hoping a sincere apology would do the trick.
Brendan sunk back down into his chair. “This isn’t a movie, okay?”
That one stung. Brendan had been one of the few people who hadn’t thrown her acting career back in her face or suggested that she didn’t take her work at the agency seriously.
“This is real. That’s all I’m saying,” Brendan continued. “These people aren’t messing around.” He turned his attention to Aidan. “And as for you, when did you hear that audio?”
Aidan held his hands up. “This morning.”
“You didn’t think to give Sofia here a heads up as soon as you heard it?” Brendan asked Aidan.
“This all went down yesterday,” Aidan said.
Brendan started to get back up, thought about it, and sunk back into his seat. “You didn’t know that. For all you knew, they could have had someone waiting to clip her this morning. Someone could have set up in our parking lot. They know she works here.”
Aidan went a shade paler. “You’re right. I should have called Sofia as soon as I knew.”
Clearly, he was hoping that a fast apology would work for him as well as it had for her.
Brendan looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to let Stark and the LA County sheriff know what’s happened. If nothing else, that conversation suggests that Melissa wasn’t in on any of this and Moonbow knows a lot more than he’s been letting on. In the meantime, we’re all going to have to be extra careful. You think someone’s trailing you, you call it in. Don’t take any stupid risks. And, Sofia …”
“Yes?”
“That car of yours is way too easy to spot. I want you to get a rental. It can go on the company cred
it card. Once this case is finished, you can go back to driving the Tesla.” Brendan didn’t ask. He delivered this news as a direct order. It was hard for Sofia to forget that Brendan had not only been a cop but that he’d served his country as a US Marine. She stifled an urge to say “yes, sir!”
What he was saying made sense. But she still didn’t want to give up her Roadster, not even for a few days. She loved that car. It was like a part of her. If that car hadn’t been the powerful and nimble machine it was the Ford would have creamed her. “Are you sure that’s absolutely necessary?”
Brendan’s answer came in the shape of a vein-popping glare aimed at her from behind his desk.
38
“Sorry, this is all we have left.”
Sofia stared at the brown Ford Kia sitting in the car rental lot. She hadn’t seen a brown Kia before. Ever. Certainly not this shade of brown. In fact she had never seen this particular shade of brown on any car before. She suspected that it had been painted this color by mistake and when no one would buy it, it had been unloaded, no doubt at a huge discount, onto the only people who would take it, this car rental company.
“You don’t have anything else?” Sofia pleaded. “Even if you just had a return and you haven’t cleaned it yet, I can take that, take it down to the car wash myself.”
“Sorry, this is it. Everything else is out. First car we have due back is the day after tomorrow.” The car rental lady slapped a hand affectionately down on the trunk. “Runs great. Practically no miles on the clock.”
I wonder why. Sofia couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be seen in public in this car. Especially not somewhere as image conscious as Los Angeles. If only she had time to find something else. She didn’t though. Brendan wanted her and Aidan to go talk to Nigel’s production company partner again this morning.
“Okay, I’ll take it,” Sofia found herself saying.
“Great,” said the car rental lady. “Come on into the office. We’ll finish up the paperwork and you can get going.”
A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1) Page 17
