by Lois Winston
“Maybe I overreacted.”
She was not hearing this.
“Why?”
“Well, when I told Dave and Trina about it, they said a lot of big actors have over-zealous fans and not to worry. That it’s actually a good thing.”
“There’s a difference between a stalker and an over-zealous fan. Tell me exactly why you called me.”
“Because you’re the smartest person I know.”
“That’s not what I meant. What happened that prompted you to call me yesterday?”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes. That.”
“A car was following me.”
“What kind of car?”
“A black car.”
She was going to shoot herself. Or Adam. Why had she left her gun in her suitcase? She called upon every ounce of patience at her disposal. “Do you know what kind of black car?”
He shrugged. “A car-car. Just a normal car. Not a Porsche or anything.”
Great. A black car that wasn’t a Porsche.
“Why do you think it was following you?”
“I left a new club Wednesday; it had just opened up. In Santa Monica—right on the beach. You should meet me there some time, it would be fun. Total beach theme, sick music, fabulous.”
“Adam,” Krista warned, trying to get him to focus.
“Oh, yeah, well, it was late, but I was wired, you know? And this car was right on my tail. The whole time.”
“The whole time ... which was?”
“From when I left the club until I went to a party off Mulholland. Chase Peterson’s house. Totally cool I was at Chase Peterson’s house, you know? We’re buds.”
Chase Peterson was the star of the movie Adam had landed.
“And then this black car was there when I left, but I didn’t really notice it at first but…” He bit his lip as if thinking about whether he needed to lie.
It was the same look he’d had when she’d caught him having an affair weeks after they’d gotten married. Affair. It wasn’t an affair. It had been Adam hooking up with a girl because she wanted to have sex and Adam couldn’t say no.
“If you lie to me, even one small, tiny little lie, I will leave and never come back even if you find a boiled rabbit in your kitchen.”
He almost smiled. “Hey! That’s a reference to Fatal Attraction, isn’t it? That’s good, Kay.”
She tried to count to ten before she hit him. She got to two.
“The car, Adam!”
“Right, right, right. I noticed it, really, but I was with someone, so I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Of course he was with someone. He had a new girl every week. Krista did not want to hear this.
“But still you noticed the car.” She spoke slowly and carefully before she interjected a slew of swear words that would have impressed Scarlet.
“Yeah, of course I noticed it when it almost ran me off the road. But I figured whoever was driving was wasted or something. They should get driven, you know? That’s why I hardly drink; it’s just stupid. Dude, you don’t need to get wasted to have fun.”
For all of Adam’s faults, he wasn’t a heavy drinker. He didn’t use drugs. He was addicted to other things. Like sex. With different women. Lots of sex with lots of women.
“But when I got home and saw the note, that’s why I decided I needed to call the police.”
Her instincts hummed. “Note? You didn’t mention a note.”
“It’s why I called you.” And he looked at her as if she were being dense.
“What did the note say?”
“I know where you live. Well, duh, because the note was slipped into the mail slot of my apartment. But it was in block letters and no return address, and remember when I played the stalker on Guiding Hands, the soap opera? My character did the exact same thing, so it kinda creeped me out. So I called the police but they couldn’t help me even though I’m, you know, like a celebrity.”
“So you called me.”
“Exactly. I called you the second after I found the bottle of champagne on my kitchen counter yesterday morning. It had another note. It said Congratulations! It wasn’t there when I went to bed. Gretchen—no, Bridget. I think? Well, whoever played Moon Girl Number Two in Moon Drop popped it open to make mimosas. I had an interview, so I didn’t drink anything, and Bridget—no, Gracie? She got sick and threw up and I started to wonder how the champagne got into my kitchen since I didn’t buy it and Moon Girl didn’t have it when she came in with me.”
It took Krista ten seconds to process that Gretchen, Bridget, Gracie and ‘Moon Girl Number Two’ were in fact the same person.
“And what did the police say?” she asked.
“About what?”
“The champagne!”
“Oh—I didn’t tell them. Because, like, they didn’t think the note was anything, why would they care about the champagne?”
No one was this stupid. And she’d been married to this stupid for five minutes. Okay, it had been five months, from vows to divorce papers, but she didn’t remember Adam being this dense.
“What did you do with the champagne?”
“Uh—I threw it out. It was bad.”
“And the notes?”
“I don’t remember. They’re probably at my apartment.”
“Did you take the garbage out before you came here?”
“Oh—no, I have a maid for that. She comes every Wednesday at noon.”
The champagne came Wednesday night. Krista couldn’t assume that it wasn’t there when Adam and his hookup came home—but if it wasn’t, that meant someone had walked into his house and left it while Adam and Moon Girl were doing the horizontal cha-cha in his bedroom. That alone was creepy.
She was going to have to call in a favor. A favor she really didn’t want to call in.
“Is it okay with you if I send a colleague over to your apartment to retrieve the notes and the bottle and send them to a lab for fingerprints and testing?”
He smiled. “You’re brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“That’s why you pay me,” she muttered.
Trina finally broke away from Scarlet and came over. “Is everything okay?” she asked, glaring at Krista.
Adam smiled broadly. “I knew Krista would solve everything.”
“Nothing’s solved yet,” Krista said.
“Let’s go to the room—there’s a hot tub and—”
“No hot tubs. Scarlet and I need to get to work. Just tell us where we’re staying.”
Scarlet gave her a look and Krista mouthed, later, and they followed Adam, Dave and Trina up to the third floor. The elevator opened with a special key into a large foyer. Straight ahead double doors opened into a spacious living room. Suite B. A door to the left was marked Suite A and the door to the right was marked Suite C.
“Do you have this entire floor?” Krista said, peering through the open doors. Three of Krista’s houses could fit inside this place.
“Just A and B,” Adam said. “I wanted C so I could bring up some of my buds from the film, but the bride and groom have it for their wedding night, so they wouldn’t rent it out.”
A woman in a bikini was sitting on the couch eating ice cream and watching soap operas on a large-screen television. “Adam!” she squealed and jumped up. She paused the television. She had the biggest boobs Krista had seen outside of a porn movie. “You’re just in time to watch my scene.”
Adam rushed over and said, “Great!”
Jumping up and down, the girl pressed play. Krista edged over to see what the excitement was about. A few seconds later Ms. Boobs came onto the screen in a tight shirt and miniskirt, carrying a tray. “Can I get you anything else, Mr. Carter?” she said.
Mr. Carter looked her up and down and smiled. “Not right now, Cindy.” Then his wife or girlfriend hit him in the arm and said, “That’s why I don’t trust you!”
Boobs squealed and hugged Adam while she jumped again. “I finally got a line
! You know what this means?”
Scarlet muttered, “I need a beer. No, a shot of tequila. Two shots of tequila and a beer chaser.”
Krista could use a shot of tequila right now. “Adam,” she said in her firmest voice.
He turned to her. “Oh, Krista, hey, this is Tammy.”
“Tiffany,” the blonde said.
“Tiffany. She’s one of the bridesmaids in the wedding and we ran into each other last night of all things! We had a scene together last year in that crime show you used to like.”
Tiffany Boobs beamed. “Adam recognized me right off. And I didn’t even have a line! I was Jane Doe Number One, a corpse! They said I took direction very well.”
“Oh my God, where’s my gun,” Scarlet muttered. “I need it. Now, Krista.”
“Adam, room,” Krista ordered.
He tilted his head at her. “You need to see my room?”
“Mine. My room. Scarlet’s room.”
“Right through there,” he said. “I told you this place was big. You have to share a bathroom—is that okay? You guys have Suite A. So you have a private entrance and all—so, it’s like better than a regular room, right?”
Krista would share a bed with Scarlet if that meant she could get away from her ex for five minutes.
But Adam looked very concerned that she’d be unhappy with the room. He wanted to impress her. Why?
“I gotta go,” Tiffany said and kissed Adam with a loud smack.
She waved her fingers at Dave and Trina and walked out. In a bikini. In the middle of December when it was forty-five degrees outside and would hit twenty-five as soon as the sun went down.
Krista grabbed Scarlet’s hand and pulled her in the direction Adam pointed. She yanked Scarlet through the door at the end of the hallway into a bedroom and shut the door behind them.
“I will never tease you about Adam again,” Scarlet said. She shrugged off her backpack and dropped it on the bed. “You were not lying. In fact, understatement of the decade.”
“I was twenty-one. It was Spring Break. I was an idiot.”
“He’s cute. In a Golden Retriever kind of way. But I think Golden Retrievers are smarter.”
“There were some benefits ... but I was blinded by lust.”
“Is there a case or not?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe? He thought he was being followed then a bottle of champagne showed up in his kitchen. His girlfriend for the night made mimosas in the morning and puked. There was a suspicious note that said, I know where you live.”
“Did he call the police?”
“He says he did after the first note. He probably did. But he said the police can’t do anything and he’s probably right about that. His apartment is in Redondo Beach. Do you think your brother could get a copy of the report? I hate to ask—”
“Consider it done. He can check on the evidence, see if there were prints.”
“Adam threw the bottle away. And he doesn’t know what he did with the two notes.”
Scarlet frowned. “I guess I can head back to the city and grab them. He’s paying extra for gas.”
“It’s a three hour drive. Longer, because of Friday traffic. No, I’ll call Mac.” Mac was their part-time assistant. He was a student at CSU Fullerton and would probably leave them as soon as he graduated because they couldn’t pay him what he was worth. But he was smart, a whiz at computers, and liked the flexible hours.
Scarlet shook her head. “What if someone is really after Adam? Mac isn’t prepared to defend himself. I guess I could ask John. Adam will give us permission to go inside, right?”
“Yes,” Krista said. “I hate to ask your brother, but the alternative is worse.”
“What alter—oh, I agree.”
R.J. Flynn, the investigator who worked for a scumbag defense lawyer, was one of the few people they could call to assist, and Krista did not want to ask for a favor. Ever. Krista couldn’t honestly say that she didn’t like R.J. Not anymore. She did. A lot. She just didn’t want to. He had this tall, dark and dangerous thing going that Krista forced herself to ignore every time she was in the same room with him.
Almost every time.
They’d been rivals ever since Moreno & Hart opened its doors, often competing for the same jobs. R.J. usually won because, well, he was really good at what he did. He was really good at a lot of things, actually, and on the few dates Krista had been crazy enough to go on with him, she’d gotten the distinct impression that his talents extended way beyond his work. From what Krista could tell, R.J. was good at everything.
Problem was he knew it, too, and he had no trouble walking around with that arrogant can’t-touch-this swagger.
Scarlet had originally hated R.J., but he was starting to grow on her after he’d dug around for information that helped exonerate a friend accused of murder.
And that was the other problem. R.J. had done a lot of things lately for both her and Scarlet with no strings attached—including passing a few paying jobs over to Krista. Well, there were some strings. He’d wanted a date. And then he’d wanted a kiss...
“No R.J.,” Scarlet said emphatically. “I’ll call John. Mac can then take the notes and the bottle to a private lab.”
“That’ll cost a fortune.”
“He paid us upfront, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“So he should be good for additional expenses.”
Scarlet was right. Krista had insisted on payment upfront. She didn’t think Adam would do it. But he’d wired the money into their bank account yesterday afternoon, including a thousand dollars a day for expenses—three days in advance.
“I’ll get Dave and Trina’s full names and have Mac run a background on them as well,” Krista said.
“They didn’t talk to me. I stood in front of them for ten minutes while you were interrogating your ex and they talked like I wasn’t in the room. And worse, they talked about food. Now I’m hungry.”
Krista pulled an energy bar out of her purse and tossed it to Scarlet. “Adam hates being alone. I’m worried that they’re using him, especially now that he has a good gig with the Moon Drop franchise. If that movie does even half as well as people think it will, his cache will skyrocket.”
“The faster we know what’s going on, the faster we can get out of here.”
“I thought you wanted to ski.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Not this bad.” Then she looked around the huge room, taking in the king-sized bed with six pillows, the sofa, the giant television, plus a floor-to-ceiling window with a mountain view. “This room is bigger than my entire apartment.”
“My bedroom is bigger than your entire apartment,” Krista said. Scarlet was staring out the window and looked surprisingly sad. “Hey, what’s really been eating you these last couple of weeks?” She thought back. “Thanksgiving—it started around Thanksgiving. Did something happen with your dad?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Scarlet.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe this thing with Alex and me has run its course.”
Krista hoped Scarlet was wrong. Detective Alex Bishop was the only thing that had stopped Scarlet from going psycho-stalker on the Vartarians. Problem—there was no proof that they were behind the ambush that nearly killed the two of them.
At first, Krista had thought Alex was the next in a long line of cop-lovers that Scarlet had gone through over the last three years. Scarlet never stuck with any of them for long. Within a month, she’d dump them or do something purposely to screw up the relationship. It happened so regularly that after she and Alex had been dating a month, Krista kept waiting for Scarlet to come over with a bottle of tequila and celebrate another failed relationship. (Scarlet celebrated break-ups—her partner had a warped sense of humor.)
Scarlet and Alex had been going pretty hot and heavy for three and a half months. Krista liked Alex—he was good for her best friend. After everything that happ
ened three years ago in the ambush and the subsequent fallout, Scarlet deserved a good guy who cared about her. And it was clear to Krista—even though Scarlet and Alex hadn’t said anything—that they were both serious.
“Run its course?” Krista shook her head. “Not on Alex’s end.”
“Why do you say that?” Scarlet glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, and Krista saw a side of Scarlet that she’d never seen before. Scarlet was insecure about her relationship. She’d never been insecure, especially with men.
Krista was going to press Scarlet to find out what really happened around Thanksgiving, but a terrified scream echoed through the suite.
TWO
Scarlet was two steps behind Krista only because she’d taken five seconds to pull her gun from her backpack. They rushed into the living room, both searching for the threat.
Krista’s ex stood in the middle of the room with Trina, the acting coach. He was holding her in an odd way—one hand under her breasts and one hand on her back.
“Did you feel it?” Trina asked.
“Wow,” Adam said.
“What the hell?” Krista shouted.
Adam and Trina jumped. Scarlet circled the room to make sure they hadn’t missed something, but she had the distinct feeling that she’d gone down the rabbit hole and landed in an alternate universe.
“You have a gun,” Adam said, his eyes tracking Scarlet. “Why do you have a gun?”
“When someone screams like they’re being attacked by a knife-wielding psychopath, I prefer to have a lethal weapon,” Scarlet snapped. She ascertained that there was no danger in the room and holstered her gun. She was no longer a cop, but she still wore a holster threaded through her belt in the small of her back. She’d carried a firearm for twelve years as a cop and still felt naked without it.
Adam stared at her as if she’d spoken Greek.
“Translate for him,” Scarlet said to Krista.
“Adam, what are you doing? We heard Trina scream.”
Adam was still wary of Scarlet and stepped closer to Krista. “You don’t have a gun, do you?”
