“We’re going to be driving up into the canyon. I just got my car cleaned. You have a rental with no deductible. Who cares if it gets dirty?”
Even though getting it dirty would probably be an improvement, Sofia still didn’t want to expose it to Aidan’s withering assessment. “I never said there’s no deductible.”
“So is there?” said Aidan.
“That’s not the point. I just didn’t want you assuming that there wasn’t.”
“Did you hit your head the other day when that guy tried to run you off the road?” Aidan asked. “You’re being even weirder than usual.”
“Can we just get going already rather than standing here arguing?”
“Okay, we can take my car,” said Aidan. “Jesus, I’ve never known anyone who worried about looking after a rental.”
They walked over to the canary-yellow Porsche. Aidan opened the doors, and Sofia started to get into the front passenger seat.
Aidan had opened the driver’s door but hadn’t gotten in. He was staring over the roof of his car.
“What’s the problem?” said Sofia.
“Is that it?” Aidan pointed over at the brown Kia.
She’d parked it between two large SUVs to try to hide it, but one of the SUVs had just pulled out and left the brown car in plain sight.
“Is what, what?” she said.
“Is that your rental car?” A grin spread across his face. She wanted to punch it right back off.
“Where?”
He jabbed a finger straight at the Kia. He started to walk over to it.
Sofia opened her door and got back out.
“There. The shit-brown Ford,” he said.
“No,” said Sofia, taking off after him.
Aidan reached the small brown car. He knelt down. “If it’s not yours, why is your jacket in the back seat?”
The drive up through Topanga Canyon passed in silence. Sofia kept waiting for the jibes about her rental car to start, but Aidan didn’t mention it. Instead, he would glance over at her occasionally and smile to himself. She knew better than to ask what he found so hilarious and kept her eyes on the road.
When they arrived at the set, Sofia was directed to park with the rest of the crew vehicles. Aidan got out and walked to where the crew was busy setting up a shot in a patch of woodland. When she turned around, Aidan had disappeared, leaving her to deal with Tucker Trimble on her own. She tried to call Aidan, but reception up here was patchy, and she couldn’t get through.
Meanwhile, Tucker started shouting nearby. “Are we going to do this or what? I’ve been waiting an hour already. I can track, kill, skin, cook, and eat a pig in the time it takes you people to set up a few lights.”
Sofia looked around but she still couldn’t see Aidan. They had already wasted enough time back at the office arguing over which car to take. She knew what Brendan was saying about shaking some trees but she was pretty sure that Tucker Trimble wasn’t going to give them anything new. It was probably best if she just got it over with on her own.
She followed the sound of the Kentucky reality star’s tantrum. She found him stripped to the waist, and leaning on an axe, surrounded by a gaggle of crew and production assistants.
“Mr. Trimble, while you wait for this shot to get set up, could I have a moment of your time?” Sofia asked, pushing in between the sound recorder and the boom operator.
Tucker turned to her. He smiled. His tongue flicked out of his mouth as he slowly licked his lips.
“A moment,” he said, patting his axe. “I’ll give you more than a moment, darlin’. If you don’t mind having to share me with my big chopper.”
It was amazing. She had actually managed to find the only man in the world capable of sounding like a bigger asshole than Aidan Maloney.
“I just have a few questions,” said Sofia. Over the years she’d learned that the only thing you could do with men when they reverted to their twelve-year-old selves was to ignore them. Any response was only read as encouragement.
Tucker Trimble lifted the axe and swung it in a wide arc. The blade embedded itself into a fallen tree trunk. She guessed this was what passed for flirting in the backwoods of Kentucky.
“Take your time, folks,” called Trimble to the crew.
He sidled up next to her. “I kinda had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to stay away.” As he said it, he moved his right arm, wrapping it around her waist. Before she could tell him to move it, she felt his hand sneak down her ass and give it a squeeze.
That was it. She smiled sweetly at him as she grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. The leer on his face was replaced by a grimace as she kept bending. He stepped away, trying to shake her grip. She held the joint lock tight, and kept bending.
“Don’t ever touch me,” she said. “Remember our last talk?”
Around them, the crew looked at each other. No one wanted to intervene to stop Sofia and help Tucker. She could guess why.
Tucker’s face was red. His knees buckled. The more she bent his wrist back, the lower he sank.
“Hey, Sofia, I said talk to the guy. No one said anything about going Gitmo on his ass.” Aidan walked over to them.
Sofia slowly eased the pressure on Tucker’s wrist and let it go. Rubbing his wrist, he got to his feet. A production assistant rushed over with an ice pack. He took it and held it against his injured wrist.
“You’re lucky I didn’t break it. I’m guessing an injury to your right hand would pretty much wipe out your sex life,” said Sofia.
Aidan leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Good going. Now he’s definitely not going to answer any questions.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sofia replied. She ushered Tucker ahead of her. “Can we talk in your trailer?”
Tucker looked from her to Aidan and back again. “Sure thing, sweet cheeks.”
“Don’t go calling my colleague here sweet cheeks,” Sofia said. “His temper’s even worse than mine when you call him names.”
Tucker did his best to swagger to his trailer as he pressed the ice pack against his injured wrist. Aidan and Sofia fell in behind him.
Tucker sunk into a seat at the far end of his trailer. He massaged his injured wrist and re-applied the ice pack. “So what did you want to ask me?”
Sofia let Aidan take the lead. Aidan introduced himself and apologized to Tucker for his colleague’s behavior. Sofia wasn’t about to say sorry. She doubted Tucker expected her to.
“So, Tucker,” Aidan said, deciding to try a bluff. “Here’s the thing. We know you were down at the marina where Nigel kept his boat on the night he was killed.”
Sofia kept her eyes on Tucker, waiting for his reaction. His face gave nothing away. It was as calm as a stagnant swamp on a still day.
“Now,” Aidan continued, “the only people who know about this are us and the person who told us. We haven’t told the cops.”
Tucker stood up, squaring his shoulders. “Go tell ‘em. I ain’t gonna stop you. I got nothing to hide.”
“So you admit you were there?” said Aidan.
“Yeah, I was there.”
“Why?” said Sofia.
Tucker walked to the far end of the trailer, opened a small fridge and took out a Coors Light.
He popped it open with his left hand and took a sip. “You want one?”
“Bit early for me,” said Aidan.
“More of a Miller girl,” said Sofia.
“Funny,” Tucker said, directing himself to Sofia. “I would have had you down as a Corona girl.”
“Why did you go visit Nigel at his boat?” said Sofia, not about to be sidetracked by his suggestion that she’d only drink Mexican beer.
Tucker let out a loud burp. “Why do you think? He was stalling on my new contract.”
“You mean he wasn’t giving you everything you were asking for?” said Aidan.
Tucker took another slug of beer. “We were in negotiations. I was trying to bring them to a conclusion.”
“Someone certain
ly did that,” said Aidan as Tucker sat back down. “You don’t get much more wrapped up than shot and thrown overboard.”
Aidan’s jibe drew a smirk from Tucker. “That’s where you’d be wrong. Nigel getting popped has messed things up for me.”
A couple of things occurred to Sofia. The first was that if Tucker had forced Nigel out on his own boat and killed him, he probably wouldn’t have been nearly as forthcoming as he was being. For a man voluntarily placing himself at a murder scene, he seemed remarkably relaxed. There was something else, too. Almost no one in Hollywood negotiated for themselves. That was what talent agents like Jeffrey were for.
“You don’t have an agent to handle things for you?” Sofia said.
Tucker screwed up his face. “Nope. Why am I gonna give someone ten percent for doing what I can do myself? Then you have a manager. That’s another ten. Lawyer, that’s another five. Then you got Uncle Sam and everyone else wanting their piece. Federal, state, county. Pretty soon you’re working for nothing. Gotta save money where you can.”
Sofia had to concede that he had a point. If Tucker’s approach to business in Hollywood caught on, there would be a lot more bodies washing up on the beach, though the wounds would likely be self-inflicted. “So you went to talk with him on your own? How’d that go?”
Tucker’s eyes practically twinkled. “It didn’t.”
“What?” said Aidan and Sofia simultaneously.
“What do you mean? You just told us you were there so you could speak to him about your new contract,” said Aidan.
“I was. But I didn’t get to speak with him.” Tucker smiled. “Want to know why?”
“You going to tell us or not?” said Aidan.
“My, my, ain’t you two tetchy,” said Tucker.
Sofia started to get up.
Tucker held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I didn’t get to speak to him because someone else beat me to it.”
43
“You didn’t tell the cops when they spoke to you?” asked Sofia.
Tucker shook his head. He sat back down, the ice pack pressed against his injured wrist. From time to time, he would take a sip of beer.
“How come?” Aidan said to Tucker.
“Number one, where I come from, folks ain’t big into helping the law. It’s kind of a point of principle,” said Tucker.
“And number two?” Sofia prompted.
“You ever hear the expression ‘snitches get stitches?’ The guys who were there when I arrived didn’t look like they’d take too kindly to my mentioning their presence to the cops. Know what I mean?”
“Guys?” said Aidan.
“Hold up,” said Sofia, cutting Aidan off and reading a glare from him for her trouble. “Why are you telling us all this if you’re so worried about getting hurt?”
Tucker shook the empty beer can. “I would tell you, but my throat’s kind of dry over here.”
Aidan got up, walked across to the fridge, got Tucker a fresh one, opened it for him, and passed it over. He must have known that Sofia sure wasn’t going to fetch Tucker a beer.
Tucker raised the fresh beer in a toast. “Here’s to my wife and girlfriend. May they never meet.”
He took a slug and let out another loud burp. At first Sofia had thought that Tucker’s whole redneck act was a shtick for the cameras. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“So?” said Sofia. “Why the change of heart?”
Tucker raised his beer. “You’re not the law. Not technically. And if someone wants to hurt me, it don’t matter if I have told anyone or not. But the main reason? I guess that Nigel was a good guy. We might have had our disagreements, but shooting him and throwing him into the ocean? He didn’t deserve that. He was a regular guy, a bit fruity, but still regular, not a gangster or a hood. If it hadn’t have been for him, I’d still be back in Kentucky with my thumb up my ass. And even though I never really took to that wife of his the times I met her, I don’t want to see her go down for something she didn’t do either.”
Barring the needless imagery of Tucker with his finger up his ass, Sofia supposed that his explanation showed a rough kind of honor. If it was true.
Tucker was still on a roll. “I ain’t gonna give this to the law. Not unless I have to. But if I tell you, I won’t have to. You can.”
Sofia wasn’t so sure about that. If they took the information that Tucker had given them to the sheriff’s department, they would want to know where it had come from. So would Stark. Not that they needed to tell Tucker that. At least not until he was done talking.
“These guys, you get a good look at them?” Aidan asked, opening up a Notepad app on his cell and also switching on the voice recorder.
Tucker leaned back. “Sure did. They both looked like guineas to me. Y’know, Italians. Both big guys, like two-forty, two-fifty, but short. First one was maybe five four, the other one was like five seven. But wide, y’know. Muscles on muscles. One guy had dark hair, the other blond. Both dressed for Vegas. Suit, tie, shiny black shoes. Oh, and they were both carrying. Big bulges under their suit jackets.”
“No purple robes?” said Sofia.
The question seemed to puzzle Tucker. “Purple? No. My guess? I’d say they were mob guys. At least that’s what they looked like. I met a few of them when I was in the joint. They’re pretty hard to miss. They don’t even try to blend. Guess looking like that with people knowing who and what they are saves them a lot of time.”
Judging by the puzzled expression on Aidan’s face, Sofia figured he was having the same thought she was. The Mafia? No one had even hinted that Nigel had gotten caught up with the mob. But if Nigel had needed money, maybe he’d ended up dealing with exactly the wrong people. Still, she couldn’t imagine how British Nigel could have hooked up with the mob.
But Tucker probably did know mobsters when he saw them. Maybe Bobby Rogers figured in here somewhere.
“Oh, and the one guy had wraparound sunglasses. He had ’em on even though it was already dark, like some kind of asshole.”
Blond, muscles on muscles, and wraparound sunglasses. That sounded just like the guy who tried to drive Sofia off the road.
44
They drove back down through Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Neither of them spoke until Sofia turned the brown Kia back onto PCH.
“You hungry?” Aidan asked.
“I could eat,” said Sofia.
“Cholada?”
“Sure.”
Cholada Thai Beach Cuisine was a beach hut restaurant right on PCH. It didn’t look like much from the outside. It didn’t look like much inside either, but the food was terrific, and by Malibu standards, it was great value for money.
Sofia turned into the parking lot.
“Can you not park near the door?” said Aidan. “In fact, why don’t you pull all the way in back?”
Sofia didn’t need the prod. She didn’t want to be seen in the brown rental any more than Aidan did.
She parked as far back as she could. They got out, walked up the steps and inside. It was quiet. They took a table in the far corner so they could talk without anyone being able to eavesdrop.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” Sofia asked Aidan once the young Thai waitress had taken their order and returned with drinks.
Aidan was looking at the cars whizzing past on PCH and the ocean beyond, Nigel’s all but final resting place. “I’m not sure I buy the sudden change of heart. If he really wanted to, he could have told the cops without anyone knowing. He didn’t have to tell us.”
“He could have killed Nigel and then invented this story.”
“But he’s not in the frame,” said Aidan, pulling out his chopsticks from their paper wrapping. “Melissa is. Telling us that he was there complicates matters for Trimble. If he was involved, then surely he’d be better not telling us anything. But he didn’t.”
“Except we said we have someone who places him at the scene,” said Sofia. “This could be his way
of explaining that away before the questions get really awkward.”
“Too much of a jump. If he was worried, he’d wait for the cops to come calling. Not start coughing his guts up to a couple of PIs. No, something tells me that he’s telling the truth. Only problem is we still don’t who the guys are or why they were there.” Aidan broke off as the waitress came over with their appetizers—an order of kanom jeep, delicious steamed wontons filled with pork and chestnuts, and an order of Thai vegetable spring rolls.
Sofia jabbed at a wonton with the business end of her chopstick and took a bite. She had to juggle it around her mouth to cool it down. Across the table, Aidan seemed to enjoy her discomfort.
“Bit off more than you could chew?” he asked.
“Maybe we both have.” She took a sip of water. “So, what next? We go to the cops?”
Aidan stared out of the window. “It’s flimsy. Plus we’re working for Melissa and her attorney, so the cops are going to be predisposed to dismiss anything we bring them unless we can stand it up. Tucker telling us that he saw some guys with Nigel who may or may not have been mafia because they were wearing shiny suits isn’t much. We should run it past the old man, but I’d say that’s going to be a hard sell.”
Sofia knew he was right. The cops had the murder weapon with Melissa’s prints on it and it had been found on the boat next to pools of Nigel’s blood. It would take a lot to shift the cops and the DA away from Melissa as the killer. What Tucker had told them was a start. But that’s all it was. At least he hadn’t seen Melissa in the marina. He had seen two unidentified men. Men who may or may not have been the ones who tried to run Sofia’s car off the road. They needed something more concrete.
What that concrete thing was suddenly struck Sofia.
“The guy who tried to force me off the freeway. I’m pretty sure his car was totaled. The crash was all over the news. My stepdad knew about it by the time I got to my mom’s. Someone had to have taken his name. The cops, a paramedic, an insurance company. I mean, even if he isn’t one of them men who went out with Nigel that night, we’re fairly sure he’s connected to this somehow. Otherwise, why was he targeting me?” Sofia said, jabbing her chopstick in the air for emphasis.
A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1) Page 19
