B is for Bad Girls (Malibu Mystery Book 2)
Page 3
“It’s why I chose your agency.” Jenna smiled shakily. “Because I thought you’d understand about being famous and turning to drugs.”
Sofia hadn’t turned to drugs. She’d turned to a parking lot she’d thought was empty. But she pulled herself together and said, “Craig had it worse than me. He was way more famous.”
“He was too famous.” Jenna’s red-rimmed eyes were full of tears. “He couldn’t catch a break. They never let him alone.”
Sofia patted her shoulder again. She looked over at Brendan and raised her eyebrows to ask him what to do.
“We’re very sorry for your loss, Miss Williams,” Brendan offered.
“Jenna,” she said. “Everyone always calls me Jenna. Except Craig. He called me Peanut.”
Brendan hated to use people’s first names. He said that kind of informality made relationships less respectful. Sofia jumped in. “All right, Jenna, how can we help you?”
“You probably know all about Craig’s history,” she said. “It was all over the news and the Internet.”
Sofia had read a lot at the time, but she said, “We don’t know what it was really like for him, or what really happened. I know that what’s on the Internet or in the newspapers isn’t the whole story, or even necessarily the truth.”
“Exactly!” Jenna said.
“Why don’t you tell us what you think we need to know?” Sofia said. “Everything.”
Jenna took a tissue out of the box. “When Craig was a little boy, he loved guitar. I got him his first real instrument. I saved up babysitting money for a year, and kept it in a box hidden in a tree in the backyard so my parents wouldn’t take it.”
That was heart-breaking. Sofia didn’t know what to say, but Jenna didn’t seem to expect a response.
“He kept the guitar at his music teacher’s house, so our parents wouldn’t pawn it. Miss Wilkinson was so nice. She never charged Craig a dime for lessons. She said watching him play was enough of a payment.”
Something crashed to the floor in the outer office, and Sofia glanced at the door. No screaming, so hopefully everything was OK out there. Maybe Aidan was getting his nuts cracked again.
“Craig never loved anything like he loved music.” Jenna sighed. “And he got famous really fast. Miss Wilkinson took some videos of him playing and put them on YouTube and before you know it he got a record contract. It was so fast. Like a bullet. Too fast. I don’t think he ever really got the chance to catch his breath.”
“It’s hard when everything happens at once.” Sofia had been lucky. Fame had crept up on her. She’d been only eleven when she was cast in Half Pint Detective and, apart from the kids who watched the show, nobody in the media seemed to notice her until she was fourteen and grew breasts. The gradual build had taught her that fame was totally random, and didn’t mean very much. Craig hadn’t had the luxury of learning about it the slow way.
Brendan coughed quietly. “Then what happened?”
Jenna sat up straight. “He got super-famous and couldn’t go outside without being mobbed. Photographers everywhere. Groupies throwing themselves at him. A manager and lots of hangers-on who were just after his money. He set up a trust for Mom and Dad, to pay their basic bills. Mom got a little bit every week so that she wouldn’t spend it all at once.”
Sofia was suddenly grateful for her own level-headed and caring mother. Janet was tough and no-nonsense, and she’d always been the responsible grown-up in the family when Sofia and Emily were kids. That was how it was supposed to be.
“It was a lot of pressure performing and keeping up with everything.” Jenna sniffed. “He started to take drugs to handle it. Pot to calm down, then other stuff to keep him going all those hours. Before we knew it he was addicted to heroin.”
Probably not really before you knew it. Sofia lifted the water bottle from Jenna’s lap and opened it for her.
Jenna took a long sip. Brendan was leaning forward with both elbows planted on his desk. Sofia felt as tense and nervous as she did before she went on stage, but he seemed completely calm. As a former homicide detective, he’d probably heard thousands of stories that ended with ‘and then he turned up dead.’
“He kept trying to get clean.” Jenna looked at Sofia meaningfully.
“Mm-hmm,” Sofia said, in what she hoped was an encouraging way.
“He really did.” Jenna took a long drink of water and brushed strands of blond hair away from her face. “He did four or five stints in rehab. He’d get out and be clean for a month or so but then something would happen and he’d slide right back into it.”
None of this added up to anything but accidental overdose, but Sofia held her tongue and waited. Maybe their job wasn’t to find a killer: maybe they were there to listen to Jenna and help her see that the police were probably right. This wasn’t going to pay Brendan’s bills, but it was still a good thing to do.
“The last time he went into rehab, he was really determined. Our father had just died of an overdose—crack—and Craig didn’t want that to happen to him.” Jenna stopped again and stared at the now half-full water bottle.
Sofia waited a while, then said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“My father’s death was no loss.” Jenna’s eyes flashed. “Not to anyone.”
Now wasn’t the time to go down that path. “But it made your brother want to get clean?”
“It did.” Jenna didn’t look angry any more. “He checked himself into Waves. It’s a rehab center on the water. Have you heard of it?”
Sofia was pretty sure Malibu had more rehab centers per square mile than anywhere else on earth, and she didn’t keep track of them. “Not that particular one.”
“It’s kinda small,” said Jenna. “But they’re supposed to be good. Or that’s what Craig’s manager, Buster, said. It’s run by Gus and Polly Coggins.”
Jenna spat out the name Polly, and Sofia recoiled, in spite of her best efforts to stay cool and detached. Clearly, Jenna didn’t like Polly.
“Go on,” Sofia said.
“You’ve probably heard of her. Everybody has. She used to be a nurse until her son, Oliver, overdosed on heroin, and she opened up this center to save other people’s kids,” Jenna said. “They made a documentary about it. Waves of Sorrow, Waves of Joy.”
Brendan shrugged. He liked foreign films, but wasn’t much of a documentary man. Aidan preferred action movies, so he probably hadn’t watched it either. Sofia vaguely remembered seeing a trailer. “I’ve heard of it.”
“At first Craig thought Polly was wonderful. He said she cared, like a real mother. Sometimes he even called her Mom.” Jenna sounded more shocked when she said that than she had about her brother’s addiction to heroin. “We already have a mom, you know, and she’s still alive.”
That didn’t sound right. Weren’t therapists supposed to keep a professional distance from their patients? Sofia had never been in therapy, but she’d listened to a lot of descriptions of it, and nobody she knew called their therapist Mom or Dad.
“I see,” said Brendan. Sofia wondered what he saw.
“Anyway, Craig said that Polly was spending extra time on him, that she said he reminded her of her son. He was a musician, too, but nowhere near as famous as Craig. Oliver wasn’t very good. His stuff sounded more like two cats fighting in a bag than real music. He never made a living as a musician. He was a realtor.”
“Can you tell us more about Polly?” Sofia didn’t think Polly’s long-dead son was relevant to this conversation.
“Polly.” Jenna looked as though she hated even saying the name. “Craig told me that in rehab she was with him all the time, that she slept on a mat outside his room, which I think is creepy and not like any rehab I’ve ever heard of.”
Not like any Sofia had heard of either, and she’d heard more than her fair share of rehab stories. In the film business it was just part of the territory.
Jenna continued, “Polly said she wanted to make sure that he didn’t relapse. And Craig sai
d that the two of them had these long talks. She would talk to him all night, even when he was falling asleep. She was always talking and talking to him.”
“That sounds odd,” Sofia said uncertainly. It still didn’t make his overdose a surprise.
“After he got out, I barely saw him. Before that, we were always really close. From the time we were little we only had each other. And we used to talk on the phone every day, except when he was in rehab. He would call me even when he was on tour. No matter where he was in the world, I got a call. Do you see?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” Sofia said.
“We were close, is what I’m saying. He’d even call me at the salon.”
“What do you do?” Brendan asked.
“I’m a dog-groomer,” Jenna said. “I own a salon in Malibu, on the PCH. Jenna’s.”
“You’re that Jenna!” Sofia had driven by her salon on the Pacific Coast Highway a million times. “You have a picture of a dog with a Mohawk on your sign?”
Jenna smiled a little, which somehow made her face even sadder. “Exactly. That’s a long-haired Chihuahua named Flint. I make his fur into a Mohawk for parties, and that time I dyed it purple with grape Kool-Aid. It’s non-toxic.”
“So your brother stopped calling you.” Brendan clearly wanted to get the conversation back on track. “Then what happened?”
“When I called him, he almost never picked up. The one time he did he said that I was an enabler, even though I never did any drugs, and I always tried to help him. I drove him to every meeting ever. I stayed with him when he was going through withdrawal, if it was allowed, which it wasn’t at Polly’s. I wanted him to be clean and happy. Just that. Always.”
Sofia had watched enough friends go through rehab to recognize this cycle. “Sometimes, for treatment, it’s recommended that the patient stay away from their old friends so they can build up a new network.”
“But that wasn’t what he did. He moved in with Polly Coggins. They were together all the time, even after he left rehab. He’d take her to work and back, and during the day he stayed locked up in her house by himself.”
“What about Mr. Coggins? Was he living there, too?” Brendan asked.
“I think they’re separated. I’m not sure, but they don’t live together. Craig always said it was just the two of them, him and Polly.”
That was weird. Then again it was Malibu.
“Craig said he was practicing the guitar all day, that he was going to make a comeback, but that wasn’t how he played.”
“What do you mean? How did he play?” Sofia glanced at the door. It was quiet in the lobby. Too quiet. She hadn’t heard a sound in a long time, and that couldn’t be good.
“Craig liked to practice in front of an audience. He’d dress up so no one would recognize him and play at the bus station. He needed to see people react to his music. He said it was the only way that he could know it was real, the only way he could love it.” Jenna studied the pile of shredded tissue in her lap. “He’d never write new music shut up in a house alone. Never ever.”
“That doesn’t seem criminal,” said Brendan.
“My twenty-five-year-old brother living with an old lady in her forties and not talking to his friends or family? Not leaving the house? He even cut ties with his manager, and Buster had been with him from the beginning. You have to admit it’s weird, right?”
Sofia did think it was weird, but it didn’t explain an overdose. She couldn’t think of a nice way to say it, and looked at Brendan for help.
“So, he was with this woman all the time,” Brendan said. “And then he was found dead.”
That was to the point all right.
“It was more than that,” Jenna said. “He started to sound like her. He parroted phrases that sounded like they came from a book. Buster and I called it The Book of Polly.”
“So, he and Mrs. Coggins had become very close,” Sofia paraphrased. “And you were concerned about that?”
“Not as much as I should have been. I wanted him to be happy. So I thought that if this lady was making him happy, who was I to intervene? Our mom is kind of terrible, so why should I judge if he went out and got a better one? Craig hadn’t gotten a lot of happiness in his life, even when he was really famous. He was usually only happy when he was playing music...” Jenna trailed off and stared down at her hands. “I didn’t want to take any happiness away from him.”
Sofia got it. She didn’t miss the entertainment industry, but she did miss acting. She’d loved the thrill of becoming someone else, living a whole different life on stage or in front of a camera. Those moments, she missed.
“And?” she prompted.
“After he fired Buster, Craig started managing his own catalogue and selling songs like crazy. He had a really big catalogue for a guy his age, because he always worked so hard. It’s worth a lot. Buster once told me Craig had enough money in it to live off for a long time, even if he never wrote anything new, so long as his behavior didn’t keep devaluing it.”
“What does that mean?” Brendan asked.
“That his work was going to be worth more if he died than if he kept on like he had.” Jenna sniffed. “Buster basically said Craig was worth more dead than alive.”
That revelation sure made Buster a suspect. Sofia glanced at Brendan, who gave a little nod. He was thinking the same thing she was.
“Go on, Jenna,” Brendan prompted.
“Anyway, Craig called me on the night he died and said he was sorry about how he’d treated me. He said he’d been wrong about Polly. He wanted to get together for lunch the next day at Musso & Frank. We always ate there. He even made a reservation at our usual table. I went and waited and waited, but he never showed up. I sat there at one of those red booths for an hour, and I got mad at him for standing me up. But, of course, he couldn’t come…” Again, Jenna was crying, without making a sound. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she wiped at them as if she barely noticed they were there. “After ... we found out that he’d left all of his music and money to a trust.”
Sofia’s acting money was in a trust, too. “That’s pretty common. Tax reasons.”
“Is it?” Jenna looked surprised. “Maybe not this one. Do you know who the manager of that trust was? The one who got every penny he had? Every penny his music will ever make? Polly Coggins. He didn’t even leave anything for our mom.”
That was suspicious, Sofia had to admit. Craig Williams had been worth millions.
“It wouldn’t be against the law for him to do that,” Brendan said gently. “If he was …infatuated with Mrs. Coggins, maybe that was how he expressed it.”
“He only knew her for a few months,” Jenna said. “I think he was about to split from her, and he turned up dead hours after he told me.”
She had straightened her shoulders and looked fierce. Sofia respected her determination.
“It’s suspicious, anyone can see that,” Jenna said.
Brendan raised an eyebrow, as if to say that, in fact, not anyone could see that.
Jenna pulled a folder out of her oversized bag and placed it on his desk. “That’s the autopsy report. I ordered it. I don’t know what any of it means. But there has to be something in there. If you guys can’t find it, then before you know it she’ll get away with killing my brother for his money.”
“What do the police say?” Brendan asked.
“They basically said he was just another junkie, and that junkies die all the time. They said it in a slightly nicer way, but that’s what they meant.” Jenna wiped her eyes again. “He wasn’t just another junkie. He was my brother.”
Her voice rose on the last two words.
Brendan picked up the folder.
“Will you at least look into it?” Jenna asked. “I have some money saved up from the salon. It’s doing really well, and I’m sure I can pay you for your time.”
“You might be throwing away your money,” Brendan said. “We might end up agreeing with the police.”
She sure looked like someone who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time. Sofia glanced at Brendan. He was softening. Not enough that Jenna could see it, but Sofia had worked with him long enough to know. He was taking this case.
“We’ll give it a try, Miss Williams,” he said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
CHAPTER 5
A fter they’d walked Jenna out, Sofia scanned the front office. The chairs were pushed in neatly, and someone had tidied the papers on Aidan’s desk. Probably Van. He liked things to be orderly. She should have sat him at her desk, gotten her own papers straightened up.
“What do you think?” Brendan asked, walking back in from the parking lot.
“I think he must have taken the kids out, but I don’t know where.” She looked around the room for a clue.
“I meant about Jenna Williams.” Brendan turned Sofia’s monitor around to reveal a yellow sticky note in Aidan’s handwriting right in the middle.
“I think she’s grieving, and I think she hates Polly Coggins,” Sofia said. “From what I remember, her brother was a heavy user, so an overdose isn’t exactly a surprise.”
She peeled off the sticky note. The four words on it ratcheted up her heart rate. Gone for ice cream.
“So you don’t think we should have taken the case?” Brendan sounded genuinely curious, but it felt like a test. One she had to pass quickly so she could keep Aidan from sugaring up the kids.
“I hate to take her money. She’s so sad, and who knows how much a dog-grooming salon makes, even in Malibu?” Jenna would have to wash a lot of dogs to pay Brendan’s fees.
“That’s a pretty emotional response,” Brendan said. “You gotta remember that we’re a business here. And also, where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.”