“I’m sure this one will be perfect,” Emily answered. She started toward the elevator.
“Let me guess. The room is as far away from Justin’s as possible,” I said. “I saw the—” Would she be offended if I called it a fight? It was totally a fight. But maybe that would make it sound like I thought she had—
“You saw the enormous shouting match between us?” Emily supplied.
“Yeah. It seemed like he was being a dillweed,” I told her.
And she smiled. Going with the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend strategy usually works. “He so was,” she answered. “Like accusing me of taking stuff from his trailer. As if I would want to touch anything that belongs to him.”
“Want me to kill him for you?” I joked. The elevator pinged, then the doors opened. We both stepped on.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have gotten into it with him at all,” said Emily. “It made me look so bad in front of the director and the whole crew.”
“I’m pretty sure that there were two people in the fight,” I commented.
“Yeah, but it’s not going to hurt Justin. First of all, he charms practically everybody. I don’t know how he does it. He acts like a complete jerk, then he makes a joke or gives that smile of his, and—bam! All’s forgiven and forgotten.”
“And second of all?” I prompted.
“Second of all, he’s Justin Carraway. People are going to go see our movie because he’s in it. He’s the box office draw. I could be replaced by a hundred other actresses. The girl who’s Lola on Heartache? She would kill to have my part.”
Since I figured Lola wouldn’t kill to have Justin’s part, I didn’t add her name to the suspect list. Unless she wanted to do it dressed as a guy, which would probably be good Oscar bait. . . .
The elevator pinged again and the doors opened. The ride was over way too fast. “This is my floor,” Emily said. “Where were you going?” She looked over at the panel of buttons. None were lit, because I hadn’t pressed one.
“Uh, actually, I’m going to a party in Justin’s suite,” I admitted. “Part of the whole welcoming thing.”
“Oh.” Icicles were hanging from that little word.
“Not that I want to. Who wants to hang with a dillweed? But I was kind of elected by my class,” I explained.
“Want to blow it off for a while and hang with me instead?” she asked, the icicles melted. “You said you were supposed to be welcoming me, too.”
“Definitely.”
Emily led the way to her room and swiped her new key card through the lock. “We can raid the minibar. The movie company is paying for everything, so we can even get the macadamia nuts. Even though they cost, like, a dollar a nut at this place.” She shook her head. “I must sound like a dork. Excited about free macadamia nuts. But this is the first time I’ve worked on location. Staying in a hotel and all that.”
“My adrenaline is pumping just thinking about free macadamia nuts,” I told her.
She laughed. “Confession? I’ve never even stayed in a hotel with a minibar before. When my mom and I drove out to L.A. so I could go to auditions last year, it was Motel Eleven all the way.”
“But you have to admit, the free ice at Motel Eleven’s pretty exciting,” I said.
“I bet Justin doesn’t even know what a Motel Eleven is. He’s been rich and famous since before he learned his first word. He’s had everything, always.” A little anger crept into her voice. “I don’t want to keep talking about him. He’s not worthy of conversation.” Emily grabbed a diet soda and some nuts out of the fridge. She tossed the nuts to me.
“You’re letting me get first dibs?” I asked. “That could be dangerous. I could inhale this whole can with no effort.”
“Go ahead. I don’t think I’ll have any right now,” Emily said, her eyes darkening a little. I remembered what Caro said about Emily being on some kind of liquid diet.
“Come on,” I urged. “Your first minibar experience and you’re having a soda?”
“Justin was always—I said I wasn’t talking about him anymore,” she burst out. “You go ahead and inhale. I’m really not hungry right now.”
“He was always what?” I wanted to know.
I got that she didn’t want to talk about her ex. But I needed to hear how she felt about Justin. She’s still a suspect, I reminded myself.
“Nothing,” she said.
I waited. Usually if you wait and don’t say anything, the other person will talk to fill up the silence.
“Justin was always telling me that Rhode Island thin isn’t Hollywood thin, and that I had to be really careful about what I ate,” Emily continued in a rush. “Maybe that’s even why he broke up with me. I’m Rhode Island thin.”
See? It works.
“It sounds like Jus—the dillweed,” I corrected myself. “It sounds like he breaks up with girls all the time. Am I supposed to believe that every one of them didn’t meet some skinniness standard of his?”
“I guess not.” She unscrewed the top of her diet soda. “It’s not like I didn’t know about the other girlfriends. It’s impossible not to know if you’re alive and have a television. But I guess I stupidly believed that what the two of us had was different. Real.”
Emily took a long gulp of soda. “So would you really kill him for me?” she asked, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Because sometimes, it’s honestly the only thing I can think of that would make me feel better.”
Party Crashers
“All in.” I pushed my little pile of toothpicks into the center of the table.
“He’s bluffing,” Andrew said.
Justin studied my face. “I’m an actor, and I know when someone is acting,” he said.
I tensed a little before I could stop myself. I actually was acting. I was acting like I had horrible cards, when my hand was great. I wanted out of the game so I could get some info out of Ryan, who was already in the losers’ lounge.
“So is he acting or not?” Eli, another friend we’d invited, asked.
“Like I’m telling,” Justin answered. “This is a cutthroat competition we got going here. I win, and I’ll never have to buy toothpicks again.”
Chet raised. I had been counting on that. Chet always went for the I’m-worried-about-my-hand face I was working. “I fold,” I said when the bidding reached me again.
“Got another loser to keep you company, Ryan,” Justin yelled cheerfully.
“Want me to pop in Skull Face Five?” Ryan asked. “Justin always gets copies of movies before they’re released.”
“Cool,” I said. I flopped down on the couch next to him. “Although I don’t think anything is going to creep me out the way that letter you showed me today did.” I looked over my shoulder at the poker players. They were all totally caught up in the game. Well, Rick and Justin were. The rest of the players—the guys and girls Joe and I had invited—were more into the thrill of sitting at a table with a star. “I mean, it really sounded like someone out there wants your brother dead.”
“More than one someone, if you believe the letters he gets. We’ve been getting a ton of the threatening ones lately. Today’s was the first one that was delivered by hand, though. That actually gives me the creeps too.”
Ryan switched the Skull Face DVD from hand to hand. “Usually I think of the threats as just threats, you know. Basically just noise. Trash talk, whatever. But I know the person who wrote the letter I showed you is close. He—or she, I guess—walked right into this hotel. He was probably in the crowd today. Watching Justin. Maybe he’s even back in the hotel tonight.” Ryan tossed the DVD on the coffee table. “I keep wondering if maybe Justin has a real stalker now. Someone who is going to do a lot more than just write a letter.”
He sounded genuinely concerned about his brother. He’s an actor too, I told myself.
That reminded me of something else I wanted to talk to Ryan about. I just had to move the conversation where I needed it to go. “I’m surprised you h
it the losers’ lounge before I did,” I began. “You’re an actor too. You should be a master of the bluff.”
“I haven’t been an actor in a long time,” Ryan answered. “Not since Five Times Five went off the air, and that was when I was eleven.”
“You miss it?” I asked.
Now it was Ryan checking to see if anyone at the poker table was listening in. “Sometimes,” he admitted.
“Why not get back into it then?”
“Justin and I played the same character on the show, because when it started we were so little that we could each work only limited hours a day. Child labor laws. But by the time it ended, we were old enough that each of us could work enough hours to play our own part.”
Ryan picked up the DVD and started switching it from hand to hand again. Was the conversation making him nervous? If it was, I was on the right track.
“Our manager, Slick, he thought it would be too hard for both of us to be out there auditioning. We’d always be competing with each other. It’s hard enough for one person to build up a name. Forget about two when they look exactly alike. We’d basically get parts playing twins and that’s it.”
“I got you,” I said. “But how’d you decide who was going to be the one who kept acting? Flip a coin?”
Ryan hesitated. “What I tell reporters when they ask that, is that I just wanted to be a regular kid. That I didn’t want to act anymore when the show went off the air.”
“But?”
“But really, Slick made the call. He said that Justin and I were both ‘really talented,’ but that Justin had this ‘spark’ that I didn’t.” Ryan glanced over at his brother. “I guess he was right. Justin throws tantrums and acts like a spoiled brat a lot of the time. But people still love him. He makes them love him somehow.”
I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to that? People love you, too, Ryan? I’d just met the guy. I couldn’t tell him that without it sounding completely fake. And truth? People did respond differently to Justin and Ryan. Part of that had to be because Justin was the star at this point. But Justin also had this way of making you feel like you were his bud when you’d barely met him. Ryan . . . didn’t.
“Slick made the right call,” Ryan added. He stood up. “I need to go take my allergy medicine.” He hurried into the bathroom.
I felt kind of bad. I’d made him talk about stuff that he’d probably rather forget. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if ATAC suddenly decided that they could only use Joe or me as an agent, not both. And then they said they thought Joe had something I didn’t that made him better, even though we were both “talented.”
I love my brother. Not like I go around telling him that. And I know he loves me, too. But if ATAC chose Joe over me, it would be hard to deal with. I’d want to be happy for him, but I really don’t know if I’d be able to pull it off.
I know one thing for sure, though—I wouldn’t want to hurt him. I wouldn’t want him dead. But I wasn’t Ryan. Maybe Ryan thought that if he killed Justin, he’d be able to become the star.
A knock on the door jerked me away from my thoughts. “Ryan, will you get that?” Justin called.
“I’ll do it. He’s in the bathroom,” I said. I got up and opened the door. One of the last people I wanted to see stood there. Brian Conrad.
“Now the party can get started!” Brian announced. He swaggered into the suite. His sister, Belinda, followed more slowly. Her eyes went directly to Justin.
“More party people. All right!” Justin stood up. “We’ve got a poker game going. The movie is going to shoot in Atlantic City when we’re done here, and I wanted to get some practice in.”
“I’m in,” Brian said.
“Take my chair. It’s hot,” Justin told him, then headed over to Belinda. “I have this sudden intense need to dance.” He held out his hand. She took it. And I figured it was too late to mention that Brian—and Belinda—had completely crashed the party.
There was another knock on the door. More crashers?
Nope. My brother. He surveyed the scene, then slapped me on the shoulder. “Guess you don’t have to worry about Belinda crushing on you anymore. I know how much you hated that.”
I didn’t hate it. Not exactly. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do about it.
“I guess Brian heard about the party,” I said. “He and Belinda just showed up.”
“And clearly Justin was okay with that. At least the Belinda part,” Joe pointed out. “I wonder if they even realize that they’re dancing slow to a fast song?”
“Ryan’s on it.” He was over by the sound system, flipping through CDs. “And at least Justin’s easy to keep an eye on right now,” I commented. “He’s safe.”
“I don’t know,” Joe joked. “Belinda looks like she wouldn’t mind kidnapping him right about now.”
Before I could answer, there was yet another knock on the door. I decided to keep playing doorman. Since Joe and I were supposed to be protecting Justin, it seemed like a good idea to be the first one to see anyone coming into the room.
I opened the door. Room service.
I’d heard Ryan put in a big order, so I opened the door wider. The room service guy rolled a table inside.
I realized several things almost at once. The guy was wearing a wig. He had on sneakers—not part of the hotel uniform. And I’d seen him before.
He didn’t work at the hotel! The guy leaned down and reached for something under the table. Something metallic.
A gun!
Whoa
“Joe!” Frank yelled at me. “To your left.”
I whipped around and saw the room service guy pulling something shiny out from under the rolling table.
Gun!
I started toward him, shoulder low, aiming for the spot behind his knees. I could tackle him then—
Wait. That wasn’t a gun in his hand. It was a camera.
He aimed it at Justin and Belinda. Flash, flash, flash.
And then I got it. It was Elijah Gorman, the photographer whose camera Justin had smashed today. He’d gotten in disguised as the room service dude.
Justin let out a howl of fury. And then he did what I’d been planning to do. He threw himself at Elijah and knocked him to the ground.
“I told you to stay away from me!” Justin shouted. He reached behind him and grabbed a lamp off one of the end tables. He raised it over his head, looking ready to bring it down on Elijah’s face.
“Justin, don’t!” Ryan yelled. I grabbed the cord coming out of the base of the lamp and gave it a hard yank. The motion pulled Justin back a few steps.
“What are you doing?” Justin shouted at me, giving Elijah the opportunity to scramble to his feet. He started for the door, camera hugged to his chest.
Justin snatched a crystal bowl off the coffee table and hurled it at Elijah. He missed. The bowl slammed against the door and shattered. Kayla McHugh, another friend we’d invited, screamed.
Elijah darted out of the door, and about three seconds later, Sydney rushed in. “What just happened?” she demanded. “I heard room-destroying sounds. You’re supposed to be having a little party. That’s all!”
“Elijah just snuck in and started taking pictures!” Justin yelled. “I told you I don’t want that leech within a hundred feet of me.”
“Did he get a picture of you doing that?” Sydney pointed at the crystal shards on the floor.
“No, he was too busy running,” answered Justin, sounding proud of himself.
“Justin was really brave,” Belinda said.
“No, Justin was really stupid,” Sydney snapped.
“I can fire you, you know,” Justin told her. “You work for me.”
“And I’m sure there are publicists lining up in front of the hotel to take my place,” Sydney shot back. “Everybody wants to work for the boy who needs his image repaired on a daily basis. I don’t have any life because of you. I wanted to have a few hours to myself. Hang in my room, read a book. But you always need da
mage control.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to go find Elijah and find a way—some way—to make sure your rampage doesn’t go public.”
“But he’s the one who snuck in here!” Justin protested. “Right into my room.”
“Did he throw anything at you?” Sydney countered.
Justin didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought,” said Sydney. She turned on her heel and strode out into the hallway.
“Whoa,” I said softly.
“Yeah,” Frank agreed.
Less than a minute later, Sydney was back—with a big smile on her face. “Taken care of,” she said cheerfully. “He’ll sell a couple of nice party pics and keep his mouth shut about everything else.”
Justin came over and gave her a hug. “Everybody should have a Sydney,” he announced to the group. “She’s fierce. She’s smart. She’s dedicated. And look how cute she is.”
“Excuse us for having that little tiff in front of you,” Sydney said. “Justin and I—and Ryan, too—we’re like family. We yell at each other sometimes, but we love each other. Justin actually made me a Mother’s Day card, back when he was on Five Times Five. It had a duckling made out of yellow yarn on the front. Isn’t that adorable?”
“So adorable,” said Belinda.
“Ryan, you have a box of Get Desmond DVDs that Justin autographed in your room, right?” Sydney asked.
Ryan nodded.
“Run get it. Everyone at the party should have one. And you should all feel special. It won’t drop in stores for another two weeks,” Sydney said.
“Cool!” Chet exclaimed.
Ryan returned to the living room of the suite with a stack of DVDs in his hands. He quickly passed them out.
“Now stop standing around. Have fun. Dance! Eat!” Sydney began pulling covers off the dishes on the table. “Did you notice that you had no problem getting your chicken-liver-and-apple dip? I called ahead to make sure the hotel chef knew it was your favorite.”
“And you got replacements for the stuff stolen out of my trailer?” asked Justin.
Double Trouble Page 5
