Aidan stared at her. She remembered what he’d said about Second Date Sofia jabbing her fork in his face and laid down her chopsticks on the side of her plate.
“Just a theory,” she added.
Aidan still hadn’t said anything.
Aidan waved over the waitress. “Hey, could we get the rest of our order to go?”
As the waitress headed for the kitchen, he got up and pushed back his chair, grabbing a spring roll as he started for the door. He glanced over his shoulder at Sofia. “Don’t just sit there. To the shit-mobile, Batgirl!”
45
“Okay, well thanks, buddy.” Aidan killed the call and tossed his cell phone down onto his desk. With a sigh, he pushed his chair back and stood up.
Sofia was still on the phone with a hospital administrator who was freaking out that the Sofia Salgado speaking to her was the Sofia Salgado who’d played in Half Pint Detective.
“You’re kidding me, right?” the administrator said.
“Nope,” said Sofia. “One and the same. Now did you have anyone admitted after a motor vehicle accident on the 210 yesterday? We’re working on behalf of a family member who’s trying to trace him to make sure he’s okay.”
“Is this one of these radio prank calls?” the administrator asked.
“No, ma’am,” said Sofia. “It’s not a prank.”
“You’re sure?” the administrator said.
“I give you my word.”
“Because I can’t release that kind of information to just anyone,” the lady on the other end of the line told her.
Sofia was hoping that her former star status would elevate her from “just anyone” status to someone the administrator would be prepared to confide in. “I absolutely understand that, but it would be a big help if you took a look for me.”
“Well, Sofia . . . you don’t mind me calling you Sofia, do you?” the lady said.
This was good. Chatty and familiar always worked when it came to prying information from people. Sofia guessed that this was the upside of her previous career. People automatically assumed they knew her. Most of the time this made life awkward and uncomfortable, but maybe this was one of the exceptions.
“Not in the slightest,” said Sofia.
“Thanks, Sofia,” said the administrator. “Can I ask you something else, too?”
“Sure. Go right ahead.”
“Did you and Frankie Davis, y’know?” asked the administrator.
Frankie had been another cast member. He’d played the part of the Half Pint detective’s annoying younger brother. Kind of a fictional Aidan Maloney. Even though he was a year younger than she was and had become more and more obnoxious as his Hollywood career had progressed, as soon as Sofia hit sixteen, there had been tabloid speculation that they were an item. Because Frankie was a bit of a teen heartthrob, the network had done nothing to quash the rumor, much to Sofia’s chagrin.
Even now Sofia would still get asked about it by people who’d watched the show. Still, it beat being asked about why she’d given up acting, or being photographed peeing outside a rehab clinic.
“No, we never did whatever it is you’re thinking. Ever,” said Sofia. “Now, do you have any record of someone from that accident being admitted?”
“You’re sure?” said the lady.
“I think I would have remembered,” said Sofia.
“Huh,” said the lady, obviously deflated. “I’m looking at my system and I don’t see anyone admitted after a crash on the 2.”
“Okay, well, thanks for your time.” Sofia hung up before the lady could trawl for any more celebrity gossip. Picking up a pen, she struck through the sixth hospital on her list. She’d already covered all the emergency rooms within a ten-mile radius of the Flintridge La Canada area.
She threw her pen down onto the desk. Aidan walked over and stood next to her. “No luck?”
Picking up her call sheet, she held it up for Aidan to take a look. “A big fat zero. You?”
“Worse than zero,” said Aidan. “Just spoke to a buddy of mine at CHP. The driver of the SUV somehow managed to flee the scene. They think he might have been picked up by someone else.”
CHP was the California Highway Patrol. “Did they get a name from the vehicle?”
Aidan smiled. “Rental under a false name. He picked it up in Santa Monica about three days ago. CHP already checked it out. The name on his ID belongs to a guy who died in Philly about twenty years ago. To be fair to the guy, he did take out the full insurance package.”
“Philly?” Sofia said. “Hometown and former stomping ground of Bobby Rogers.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But we still don’t have a name,” said Aidan.
“What about former associates? Guys he was in jail with? That kind of thing.”
“The old man has a couple of calls in,” said Aidan with a nod toward Brendan’s office door. “But we can’t count on anything showing up.”
So there was someone out there who wanted to harm Sofia, and no one knew who he was. Now he was really pissed and had a good reason to finish the job. Not that she could mention her concerns to Aidan or Brendan. They would put on her a flight out of town. If that happened, she might as well go back to playing a detective on TV. If Moonbutt and his buddies from Philly wanted to make it personal, then they’d better realize it was going to be a two-way street. She wasn’t going to sit and wait for them to take another shot at her, or for Melissa to rot away in jail while they got away with murder.
She grabbed her bag from under her desk and started for the door.
“Where you going?” said Aidan.
“I’m gonna go pay Bobby Rogers another visit,” she told him.
46
Aidan caught up as she was getting into the Kia. He opened the passenger side door and got in next to her. Before she could start the car, he reached over and grabbed the keys out of the ignition.
“Hold on there. Before you go racing off to vanquish evil, do you have an actual plan or did you just have too much coffee earlier?” he asked.
“Of course I have a plan.”
“Okay,” said Aidan. “That’s great. What is it?”
“May I have the keys?” she said, reaching out a hand.
Aidan held them up just out of reach like she was five years old. “Soon as you tell me what you’re planning on doing.”
“My keys, please.”
“You don’t have a plan, do you?” said Aidan.
“It’s a work in progress,” Sofia told him.
His fingers closed around the keys. All the anger she’d felt toward the dumb jerk who’d tried to kill her transferred to the dumb jerk sitting next to her in the passenger seat. What was it with men? Aidan wouldn’t have dared pulled crap like this if she’d been a guy. He’d have gotten his lights punched out.
“Now,” said Sofia. “Give me the keys, or I’ll…”
“Or you’ll what?” smirked Aidan.
She reached over, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it until he yelped in pain. The keys fell out of his nerveless fingers and into his lap. She scooped them up, jammed them in the ignition, and turned it on.
“What the hell did you do that for? Have you lost your freakin’ mind?” He massaged his wrist and glared at her.
“Let me see,” she said. “Yes, yes I have. Someone trying to kill me tends to make me grouchy. But of course you’d be totally okay with it if it was you. You’d sit in your office and make some phone calls and see what turned up. That’s what you’d do, right?”
She stopped, running out of steam. Aidan stared at her like she was some kind of alien being. She hadn’t really hurt him, just got her keys back.
“Because guys never act on the spur of the moment, do they? And when a woman does it, she has to be saved from herself by some macho white knight who takes the keys to the piece of shit rental she’s only driving because of a dickwad like Bobby Rogers and his buddies.” Sofia had found a second wind. “So, yes, I don’t have a plan,
but I will have one by the time I find him. Now, if that’s not okay with you, then get the hell out of the shit-mobile and let Batgirl go to work.”
Aidan grinned. “If it’s all the same to you, I kind of want to see this go down.”
47
Fifty-two minutes later, Sofia pulled into a visitor’s spot at Dolphin Bay apartments. She and Aidan got out.
“Sure you still want to do this?” Aidan asked.
She’d calmed down on the drive over, and now she wasn’t so sure. But she wasn’t about to get back in the car and drive all the way back to Malibu with him laughing at her.
She started toward the apartment complex where Bobby Rogers lived. Aidan fell in behind her, a roll of quarters in his pocket weighing down his sports coat so that it didn’t ride up and reveal the shoulder holster with the .357 Magnum he was wearing.
Reaching the building, they took a short flight of steps down into the parking structure. A brand new white 3-series BMW was parked in the spot designated for Bobby’s apartment. Aidan took a quick walk around the car.
“Who knew unblocking chakras paid so well?” said Aidan.
“I think he earned that with his lustrous jewel polishing.”
Sofia knocked at the apartment door and stepped off to one side so she was out of view of the peephole. If one or more of Bobby’s buddies were inside, they might not bother opening the door before they took a shot at her.
Aidan stood on the other side of the door. His hand reached into his jacket as he waited for Bobby to answer.
“I have a plan,” she whispered. “Remember the Half Pint Detective where she had to trick that guy to rescue the Saint Bernard puppy?”
Having tagged along with his dad to the set often, Aidan had a fairly good knowledge of the show. He gave her a thumbs-up.
She knocked again and stepped back. “Bobby, it’s Sofia Salgado. I need to speak with you.”
A few moments later, there was the sound of a bolt being thrown back, and the door opened. Bobby Rogers stood in the doorway dressed in jeans, low top Converse sneakers and a purple polo short. As Sofia stepped in front of the door, she saw a couple of suitcases lying in the hallway behind him, but she didn’t see any angry mobsters.
“Going on a trip?” she asked.
“What do you want?” he said.
Aidan stepped out from the other side of the door, gun in hand. He kept it down by his side. “Let’s discuss what we came for inside. Before someone sees you talking to us.”
If Bobby was impressed by the gun, he didn’t show it. He eyed Aidan. “Sorry, buddy, I don’t do men.”
“Me neither,” said Aidan, shouldering his way past Bobby and into the apartment. As Bobby moved to grab Aidan by the shoulder, Sofia walked in and closed the door behind them.
Aidan and Bobby were eye to eye.
“I didn’t invite you in,” Bobby said.
“Sure you did,” Aidan replied. “You heard him, didn’t you?”
“You’d be amazed at the things we can hear,” Sofia said to Bobby with a smile.
Aidan took a step back. “Yeah, you have some interesting friends, Bobby. You’ve made some interesting phone calls to them.”
For the first time since he’d opened the door, Sofia saw a flicker of discomfort cross Bobby Roger’s face.
“That’s kind of why we wanted to talk to you. You mind if we sit down? It’s kind of rude to leave guests standing in the hallway,” Sofia said.
Aidan half-walked, half-muscled Bobby into the living room. Apart from the furniture, all his Austin Powers accessories had been packed away, presumably in the boxes stacked in the middle of the room. Aidan pushed Bobby down onto the couch. “Take a load off.”
Bobby glared at Aidan but didn’t make a move. “Tell me what you want to tell me and get out. I have some place to be.”
“How long this takes is kind of up to you, Bobby,” Aidan said. “You tell us where we can find the people you asked to run Sofia here off the road and we’ll leave.”
Sofia walked around the small apartment, checking every room to make sure that it was empty.
“I ain’t got no idea what you’re talking about,” said Bobby.
Aidan loomed over Bobby. He raised his hand like he was about to hit him. To his credit, Bobby didn’t flinch. Sofia guessed that guys in the pen who flinched didn’t last too long.
“We heard you talking to them, Bobby,” Sofia said.
Aidan reached down and put a hand under the chaise lounge. He came up with the tiny listening device Sofia had planted. He threw it over to Bobby. Bobby caught it one-handed. He turned it over in his hand.
“So what’s to stop me going to the cops and telling them you planted this in my apartment? This shit’s illegal, unless the government’s doing it.” Bobby pronounced government like gub’mint.
Sofia shrugged. “Nothing at all.”
“Go right ahead. You can use my phone,” Aidan added.
Bobby looked at both of them. The look on his face told Sofia that Bobby wasn’t quite following why they were so relaxed.
“You have no idea, do you, Bobby?” Sofia asked.
“Not a clue,” said Aidan.
Sofia dug her cell phone out of her pocket. She hit the green phone icon, pulled up the contacts list and scrolled down the names. “Hey, Aidan, John Agnew’s the lead on the Fairbroad homicide, right?”
“Yup,” said Aidan.
Sofia tapped her cell phone screen.
“Here it is. Knew I had it,” she said, holding the phone out to Bobby. “This is his direct line. If he’s not there, it’ll probably redirect to his cell or you can leave a message and he’ll call you straight back.”
Bobby looked at Sofia’s cell phone like it was a hand grenade with a loose pin. “What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull?”
“No bullshit,” Aidan said.
Bobby eyed him. “Anything you might have recorded can’t be used against me. It’s not evidence.”
“We know that,” said Sofia.
“So what’s all this?” Bobby asked again.
“It’s really simple, Bobby. Melissa Fairbroad is sitting in jail looking at a murder charge when we both know that she didn’t do it,” Sofia said.
Bobby didn’t say anything.
“It doesn’t bother you that she’s looking at life without parole?” Aidan said.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” said Bobby.
Aidan laughed. “That’s funny, man. You even managed to say that with a straight face. Look, here’s the deal, your buddies who tried to hurt Sofia are the same people who took Nigel out on that boat, shot him, and dumped him over the side. We have a witness who puts your Philly pals on the boat that night. My old man, who knows everyone you need to know in law enforcement in LA, is about to sit down with them right now and play the tape of what we recorded here last night. And give them the name of that witness.”
The color drained from Bobby Roger’s face. An illegally obtained recording was one thing, but an eyewitness who’d talked to a respected retired homicide detective was something else. The cops could do a lot with that.
Aidan continued, “Now, one thing we couldn’t figure out was how Melissa’s prints were on that gun. She doesn’t even have a memory of picking up a gun. So it had to have been someone close to her who helped put them there. Say for instance she’s asleep, and you put it in her hand for a split second and press down. Was that how you did it, Bobby?”
Bobby didn’t flinch. “No one’s going to believe that. She would have woken up.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Aidan.
“Okay,” said Sofia. “Even if the cops can’t prove that, we all know that you asked your old buddies from Philly to get rid of Nigel. With our recording to start them off, they’re sure to link them up to the guys our witness saw. And when they do, your call to them makes it conspiracy, which is as bad as if you’d pulled the trigger yourself.”
“What we’re saying is that you ain’t w
alking away from this,” Aidan said. “That’s just not going to happen. If the cops don’t get you, do you think your buddies are going to take the rap on their own while you fly off into the sunset? These kind of people have a reach as long as their memory.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bobby. This time he sounded less certain, less sure of himself.
“He doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” Sofia said to Aidan.
“Yeah,” said Aidan. “That’s pretty much what I’d say if I were him.”
“You wanna go get some coffee?” Sofia said, both of them acting as if Bobby wasn’t even in the room.
“I could use coffee,” Aidan said. He patted Bobby on the shoulder. “You take care now, Bobby.”
Bobby didn’t move but his head must have been spinning. Sofia and Aidan headed back to the hallway, leaving Bobby in the living room. Sofia glanced across at Aidan as he opened the door. He gave her a thumbs-up.
“You plant it?” Sofia when they were out of earshot in the hall.
Aidan smiled. “Same place as before.”
48
As they reached the elevator, Aidan reached into his jacket, pulled out a pair of earbuds, and plugged them into the headphone socket of his phone. He took one earbud and popped it in his ear. He offered the other one to Sofia. She took it and placed it in her ear.
Via the second listening device that Aidan had planted when he was removing the first one, they could hear everything happening inside the apartment. They pushed through a door into a stairwell and leaned against the wall.
It was just like the episode of Half Pint Detective with the puppy. The exact same scam. Aidan had played his part in the scene perfectly. If he’d wanted to, he could have been an actor.
In the earbud, she heard Bobby pacing up and down, muttering under his breath. A few moments later, he made the call that they’d hoped he would.
A is for Actress (Malibu Mystery Book 1) Page 20
