Someone knocked on her front door, and she was glad to have an excuse to close her laptop and go see who it was.
Gus stood on her porch in khakis and a blue Waves rehab shirt. One beefy hand held the handle of her suitcase. She’d practically forgotten the stuff she’d left at the center. Gus shaded his eyes with his free hand and knocked again.
She thought about going back to her bedroom for the baseball bat.
“I brought your items from the center,” he called. “And I have a form I’d like for you to sign, saying that you left the program of your own free will.”
She joined him on the porch, arming her alarm with her right hand as she left. Now all she had to do was open the door or break the window again, and the police would come. Plus, she could grab the table leg if Gus got out of hand.
“I’m not trying to cause you any distress, Miss Salgado. Can you say the same thing to me?” He set her suitcase down and pulled a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket.
“Why would I want to distress you?” Unless you’re working with a killer.
“Your arrival at the center and your actions since then have been … erratic.” He held out the paper for her to take.
“I’m an impulsive person.” She skimmed through the paper. It looked straightforward. “I’m not signing that.”
Gus’s eyes narrowed. He was a man who wasn’t used to being told no, and she shifted a little closer to the table leg. “Why not?”
Because Drug Addict Sofia would never sign it. Drug Addict Sofia didn’t trust Gus, and neither did Regular Sofia. Fred swooped down and landed on the railing. He wanted a snack.
“We’ve been very patient with your shenanigans,” Gus said. “But we don’t have to be.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Somehow she’d stopped being Drug Addict Sofia and turned into Mary Poppins. She had to get back in character.
“You got a lot of free publicity from your departure last night.”
And who didn’t want to be splashed all over the Internet with her butt hanging out?
“I didn’t feel safe staying inside, and I could get publicity from what happened there, too.” If he wanted to threaten her, she could threaten back.
Fred squawked impatiently. He wanted food, not posturing.
“I think you’ll find that, if you take us on, you’ll come out the worse for it.” Gus tilted his head first to one side and then the other, as if stretching out before a run. His neck cracked.
“Is that a threat?” She picked up the detached table leg and held it next to her leg. She’d been afraid of him last night, but now he was on her turf, and she wasn’t going to run away again.
Fred flapped his wings and took off. He obviously didn’t want to be part of this. She didn’t blame him.
“Sign the paper. We go away happy. You go away happy.” Gus didn’t look happy.
“Who says I want to be happy?” She knew she ought to de-escalate the situation instead of making him angrier, but he had scared her last night, and she was still mad.
As if he had read her thoughts, Fred dove straight for Gus’s nearly bald head. Gus slapped at him, but Fred dodged the blows easily. He looked like he’d had a lot of practice.
“Don’t touch the bird,” she said. “That’s an animal-cruelty charge, and California takes those seriously.”
Gus ducked to the side away from Fred, and stopped swatting. Fred took to the skies again, screeching and flying in a tight circle. Fred the seagull, alarm system.
“It’s all on my surveillance cameras. The feed goes to Oregon somewhere, I think.” She was making that up. The feed went to her security company and some underpaid guy probably deleted it daily.
“The document.” Gus pointed to the paper in her hand.
“I’ll be referring it to my lawyer.” She didn’t actually have a lawyer, but she supposed Jeffrey could find her one if need be. She wasn’t going to sign it anyway.
Gus sidestepped away from Fred and collided with Sofia’s wobbly table. He lost his balance and fell. The table gave up on its three-legged stance, and collapsed on him. The marble top bounced off his muscular chest. That was going to leave a mark.
Gus stood up, yanked the paper out of Sofia’s hand, and stalked off.
“You’ll regret this,” he yelled over his shoulder. He may have sounded like a movie villain, but the effect was unnerving.
CHAPTER 23
T he next morning Sofia was stuck behind a rolling roadblock—two RVs driving side by side at exactly 55 miles per hour clearly on cruise control. They were keeping the PCH law-abiding for everyone, and the cars were stacking up behind them.
She’d planned to take the 1 South all the way to Santa Monica so she could stay close to the ocean and drink in the view. But if she had to do that at 55 m.p.h., the stress at poking along and the fumes from all the cars stuck around her would outweigh the serenity.
Telling herself she was doing it because it was faster and not because she was a speed demon, she cut onto the 1. There was nary an RV in sight. A little over an hour later she’d put the top down and was whipping along Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills, feeling good about her decision.
Before she’d left she’d shot off an email to Aidan, describing Gus’s visit, asking him to look into Buster Taylor, and telling him where she was going next. He hadn’t responded, so she’d sent him a text, and he hadn’t responded to that either. Phoning now would seem clingy, so she’d gotten into her car and started driving.
Her phone GPS started talking to her sternly, telling her when and where to turn. The GPS was a stern task-mistress, but she did know where she was going. Sofia slowed. She kinda knew how to get there. Everyone who’d ever watched Monaco’s reality-TV show did. Expensive homes, set back from the street and guarded by iron gates, lined both sides of a broad street.
She pulled into a driveway wider than the two-lane street. The gates towered over her car. The family who lived here was richer than a visitor would ever be, and they wanted to make sure they knew it. Houses like this were one reason she’d bought her trailer. She’d wanted to opt out of that world.
She goosed the Tesla up to the intercom box. Her car might be funky and expensive enough to get her to the gates, but she’d have to rely on her old Hollywood glamor to get inside. Even reality-TV stars were impressed by movie stars.
“Yes?” said a clipped British voice. Monaco’s butler. They’d imported him.
“Sofia Salgado here for Monaco.” Would he recognize her name and let her in? What if he didn’t? What if he did, and there was a film crew in there? She should have called first. Gray probably knew someone who knew Monaco’s cell number.
“Enter, please.” Even though he’d said ‘please,’ it still sounded like a command. Bristol. His name was Bristol. Like Bristol Palin, except completely different.
“Thank you.” She decided not to use his name. It might be easier if he didn’t know she’d seen him on the show. He seemed pretty dignified and above the whole TV thing, and she didn’t want to make him mad.
The gates opened soundlessly, and she followed the curving driveway to the front door. Her tires rumbled over imported Italian cobblestones as she passed under a massive oak. Its branches cast leafy shade across the driveway and the side of the sprawling white mansion. Everything else might have been imported, but the oak was the real deal.
Monaco’s modernist house looked like a pile of blocks and glass assembled by the world’s largest toddler. On one episode, Monaco’s father had toyed with selling it, and had received offers of thirty million dollars. He’d changed his mind when Monaco dissolved into a crying mess on the marble floor at the thought of losing her childhood home. She’d said, “I learned to walk here!” in such a pitiful tone that even Sofia had felt sorry for her. Although, when she thought about it, Sofia had no idea what the house where she’d learned to walk looked like, and that lack of knowledge hadn’t hurt her.
She scanned the driveway for a film crew, bu
t didn’t see any vans. Maybe they were on hiatus. But how could they have missed Monaco’s triumphant return from rehab? That story would probably be milked for weeks.
Just in case there were cameras inside, she flipped down her visor and used the little mirror to apply a bit of makeup and to smooth her hair so it didn’t look like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. It wasn’t the same as having a team of personal makeup artists, but at least she wouldn’t scare any TV viewers.
Bristol walked to her car, back as ramrod straight as Gus’s. “Miss Salgado?” He sounded just like he did on TV.
“That’s me!” she answered, with a friendly smile that he didn’t return. Instead, he opened her door and she hopped out.
“Miss Jane is not currently at home,” he said. Monaco’s last name was Jane, and nobody but Bristol ever used it.
“Oh.” She should have called. She’d wanted to talk to Monaco about Craig Williams and Gus, catch her by surprise before she’d had time to come up with a good lie, but that wasn’t going to happen now. Was Bristol going to stuff her back into her car and tell her to drive off?
“But Mr. Jane would like to speak to you.” Bristol gestured toward the house.
Monaco’s father. That was odd.
“OK.” She sounded way less suave than the butler.
“Please follow me.” He spun in a graceful half-circle and glided toward the house. Did he have dance training, or was that kind of stuff standard in British-butler school?
They sailed through the grand entranceway, down a towering hall, and into an airy living room. One wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, and all of Hollywood was spread out in front of them, obscured by a light brown layer of smog. The view was gorgeous, probably even more spectacular at night when you could see the lights but not the pollution.
“Miss Salgado?” Mr. Jane rose to take her hand. He walked with a slight tilt, and she realized he was probably drunk. “The famous actress?”
“I’m here as a friend of Monaco’s,” she said. “I wanted to check in with her and Amber, congratulate them on coming home clean.”
“You haven’t heard?” He led her into the backyard and gestured toward an aqua lawn chair that looked like something from Mad Men.
“Heard what?” Sofia sat on the edge of the chair, and Mr. Jane dropped heavily into his. Bristol had discreetly disappeared.
“Amber didn’t pass her urine test.” He picked up the sweaty glass sitting next to his chair and took a quick sip, as if to reassure himself that it was still there.
“Amber?”
“I know.” He shook his head. “I always thought Amber was the good influence.”
Brandi had told her Amber was the only one who wasn’t using drugs in the facility. She’d seen Monaco high but never Amber. She hadn’t been the only one faking her test. “Where are Amber and Monaco now?”
“Would you like a drink?” he asked.
Bristol materialized as if out of thin air.
“A club soda, please,” Sofia said.
“I have good Scotch,” Mr. Jane said. “An eighteen-year-old Glenlivet single malt.”
“I’m driving,” she offered, by way of excuse. She wasn’t going to drink Scotch before lunch. Especially not when she had to drive.
Bristol dropped his chin in a quick nod and slid back into the house without making a sound. He must wear noise-cancelling shoes.
“Where did you say Amber was?” Sofia tried again.
“Didn’t say.” He took a long sip. “Don’t know.”
“And Monaco?”
“I thought you might be able to tell me.” His brown eyes were unfocused from the drink, but the intention behind them was sharp.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” If she did, why would she have come here?
“I saw a clip of you on the Internet,” he said.
“Which one?” Hopefully not the peeing one.
“Breaking out of Waves. Last night.”
Ah, the one with her bare naked butt swinging in the breeze. She waited to see where he was going with this.
“Why would you do that? You could have checked out the next morning.”
“I could have.” She wasn’t sure how much to tell him.
“But you didn’t,” he said. “And I’d like to know why.”
“I didn’t feel ...” she searched for the best word, “... comfortable there.”
“Monaco’s been using for years,” he said. “I know what that looks like.”
He waved his hand. Bristol appeared with a brown bottle, an ice bucket, and Sofia’s club soda, set them down, and vanished again. He ought to do surveillance work, she thought. Maybe he already was. She wished she could ask him for tips about blending into the background.
“She’s all grown-up now.” Mr. Jane stared across the pool at the city below. “Not my problem any more.”
“No?” In the show, he always viewed Monaco as his problem, even though she was twenty-five. She’d been grown-up for a while.
“Tell me about Mrs. Polly Coggins.” He turned his gaze to her, a man who had built a multi-million-dollar fortune, a man who couldn’t easily be fooled. “Why did you choose to abandon her hospitality?”
“Maybe I was missing the outside world.” Again, she wasn’t sure what she could and couldn’t say without violating client confidentiality.
“Straight arrow, you. Not touched by all this crap here.” He waved his glass around. “You didn’t need a fix. You weren’t running toward something. You were running away.”
He was a lot smarter than he seemed on the show.
“Is Monaco OK? Is Amber?” she asked.
“Monaco cut Amber off. She cut me off.” He sat up suddenly, and Scotch slopped onto the flagstones by the pool. “And I want to know why.”
“That must be difficult.” It sounded like Craig Williams all over again.
“Is Monaco in danger?”
She thought about Craig Williams and his mysterious overdose. She needed to tell Monaco’s father the truth, or at least some of it. “I don’t know. But I do know that another client died mysteriously after he left the facility.”
“Craig Williams?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” She kept her face deadpan, although he clearly knew.
“Monaco told me that he OD’d a week after he left. She seemed surprised by it, said he’d kicked the addiction inside. It scared her how quickly he’d slid back.”
That tallied with Jenna’s assessment, too. “Sometimes that happens.”
“Monaco’s entering a very vulnerable period.” Mr. Jane put his glass down on the flagstone with a clink. “She needs real friends around her. Like Amber. Maybe like you.”
“I don’t know your daughter, Mr. Jane. I only met her at Waves.” She wasn’t Monaco’s friend, and she didn’t want to be. “What do you mean by a vulnerable period?”
“After rehab, you know,” he said quickly. “Do you know where she is?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say that she’s with Mrs. Coggins.”
He looked surprised, maybe a little disbelieving.
She kept going. “The other client cut off all his friends and family and moved into Mrs. Coggins’s home immediately after leaving rehab. Maybe Monaco did, too.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Everyone thinks she’s just some rich bitch in a reality-TV show, but she’s my little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl any more.” Oops. She shouldn’t have said that.
“So they say.” He picked up his Scotch again. “She says she’s going to be a singer now. Girl sings like a cat being strangled.”
“She’s not that bad.” He wasn’t far off. She took a sip of water.
“And you say you aren’t her friend.” He smiled for the first time. “Can you help me to find her?”
Was that a conflict of interest? Brendan would know, but he wasn’t there. “Have you checked with her friends?”
“I’m not a fool, despite the evidence to the co
ntrary. I’ve called her friends, ex-boyfriends, and other family. Those who have heard from her say that she told them she’s not speaking to them any more, that they are enablers who are dragging her down.”
That sounded like what Craig had told Jenna. It also made scary sense: step one, isolate the victim.
“Do you have Amber’s cell-phone number?” Amber might know. Even if Monaco had pushed her away, she’d keep track of her old friend.
He held up his phone with Amber’s number, and Sofia put it into hers.
“But you can’t reach her,” he said. “She’s gone up to Canada. Left as soon as she heard that the TV series was cancelled.”
“Cancelled?”
“Monaco’s contract was up, and she didn’t renew. It’ll be in the papers by tomorrow.”
It would be out on the Internet sooner. Would dropping the show make Monaco more or less valuable to Polly?
“Can you find her?” He looked old and drunk and sad, not at all like the hard-edged mogul he portrayed on the show.
She put her glass down on the flagstones and stood. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Keep on being a straight arrow.” He didn’t budge from his chair, but Bristol had magically arrived and gestured back the way she had come.
The butler seemed to be the only one doing his job.
CHAPTER 24
Sofia’s good mood of the morning seemed like a distant memory by the time she got to the office. Amber hadn’t taken her call, and she had started to worry about Monaco. She was a mean airhead, but Sofia should have tried to warn her about Polly.
Aidan’s Porsche was by the door, a shining yellow lemon in the sun. Maybe he’d solved the case while she was driving, Polly had been arrested, and Monaco was safe to go back to her vacuous life. And maybe he had a unicorn for her.
She swiped her key card and went inside. Aidan sat in front of his monitor, eyes glued to the screen. He had on giant headphones that looked as if they could squish his head like a grape. The door to Brendan’s office was closed, which meant he was in there.
B is for Bad Girls (Malibu Mystery Book 2) Page 14
