This is Devin Jones Read online

  “Butler,” said she.

  “Lover,” he offered up.

  Devin cringed. “Right. Well, can you tell me anything about Jorge? Can you think of anyone who’d want to harm him?”

  Lowell shook his head ‘no’ as Helen mouthed “Who’s Jorge?” to herself.

  Lowell sighed and a tiny piece of watercress flew out of his mouth. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt him… I mean he was 65 years old… Everyone loved him. Friendly guy. Maybe he was mugged or robbed or some such.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Devin said. “His wallet’s still on him. Can you tell me what time he would have started work this morning? We’re estimating he died around 7:15 a.m.”

  “He starts at 6:30…Never been a minute late or missed a day in 20 years,” Lowell offered. He shook his head again. “What a shame…”

  Helen shifted impatiently, seemingly getting tired of not being the center of attention. She eyed Devin. “I suppose you’ve seen my movies?”

  “What? Oh. Of course, Ms. Raymond… So, Mr. Domville - ”

  Helen wasn’t finished. “The Red Mistress? With John Wayne? Ya see that? Or Lay Me Down Gently? With Omar Sharif?”

  “Um… yes. Sure. All of them… Now, did anyone-”

  “I loved shooting that picture.” Helen said mistily, then chuckled with a memory. “Here’s a little anecdote from that one… we shot that in Egypt, and that was the first time I tried anal.”

  “Oh, dear…”

  “Not with Omar mind you, with an Egyptian extra.”

  Devin pushed on. “Mr. Domville, can you tell me who lives next door? The body was found right at the foot of the hedge dividing the properties. It’s possible the assailant made a getaway across that lawn…I’d like to speak to the neighbors as well…”

  “Oh, that’s Sis Warren’s house next door.”

  “The producer?” Devin knew who she was, Sis Warren was British film legend who took Hollywood by storm back in the early ’80’s, with a few Oscar winning period films. Although recently she was more known for producing small indie titles and some TV shows. Devin knew all this because she knew Hollywood, like Helen’s suspicions, she actually had been an actress - and a model - until she changed careers ten years ago and started a new life.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Lowell was saying. “But you won’t find her in today. Sis is producing the Hollywood Screen Awards. She’d be at the theater by now.”

  Helen made a sad face. Complete with downturned mouth. “Poor Sis… So tragic.”

  Lowell helped fill Devin in on what she already knew. “Yes, her husband killed himself about eight years ago. He was a director. Pretty famous one too.”

  Helen was on a roll. “But he got OLD, like ME! And no one wanted him anymore like ME! And so he offed himself. Like… okay, not like me.” She looked around bored. “Okay, I’m going inside.”

  With that, Helen Raymond - Emmy winner for the 1976 TV movie Black Eyed Susie, One Woman’s Tale Of Abuse and the glamorous star of the 1980’s Nighttime Soap, The Westons - turned around, farted twice and marched her purple tracksuited self wordlessly across the lawn and back inside.

  Devin ignored as much of all that as she could. She slipped her card to Lowell.

  “Please call me if you think of anything else.”

  A few minutes later, as patrol cops milled about and an LAPD crime scene photographer snapped pictures, Devin was leaning over the body of gardener Jorge Nunes.

  She nudged her partner Mike Reyes. “Looks like the killer could have been standing on the other side of the hedge...”

  “Ya think?”

  “Look at that...”

  Devin pointed out a blood splatter on a nearby rock.

  Mike turned and looked. Then as though lining up a pool shot, turned back and followed the trajectory.

  “Yeah, you’re right... Someone sneak up on him?”

  “Maybe...Any sign of the murder weapon?”

  “Not yet.”

  Something tiny glinted in the grass, Devin reached over with her pen and pressed the grass away. “It’s a diamond.” She picked it up with her leather gloves and looked it over. “Got a chip out of it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it was probably in a setting.”

  Mike rubbed his eyebrow. “Someone kill the guy for a diamond ring?”

  Devin slipped the tiny diamond in an evidence baggie and handed it to Mike. “Could be Helen’s, the way she teeters around these grounds... I can’t imagine she doesn’t go down in a heap occasionally.”

  “I’ll talk to her and see if she’s got any jewelry missing…” Mike made a face. “Jones, did you have to tell me the thing about her and the anal?”

  “I couldn’t be the only one to know.”

  Devin checked her watch. 12:10.

  Mike noticed. “Jones, go.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You’re not even supposed to be here in the first place.”

  “Listen... I’ll have my phone if there’s anything...y’know...”

  “Right. I’ll just give you a call in the middle of the frickin’ Hollywood Screen Awards... Can you please just go and enjoy yourself? Have a life?”

  “Yeah I’m not sure I know how…”

  Mike laughed, his dark eyes squinting and sparkling. “Oh man. You’re hopeless.”

  He stood up and flipped his notebook closed. He and Devin made their way along the grass. “Oh, hey, I heard Everett Cale is getting married. Aren’t you friends or something?”

  Devin’s heart sank. Even though she knew about the upcoming wedding, it still hurt to hear it. She forced a smile. “Yeah. I did some consulting work on that film for a few weeks…”

  “Look at you hobnobbing with the famous movie stars.”

  Devin pushed out a laugh. “I guess…”

  They rounded the house towards the driveway in front.

  “I tell ya though,” Mike said, “Whoever’s marrying her is lucky. She’s gorgeous.”

  Devin didn’t reply, afraid if she said anything, she might say everything. It wasn’t that Mike didn’t know about her love life. He just didn’t know about Everett Cale.

  Besides what could she even tell him? Yes, it was love or no it wasn’t or sometimes it was, but it was too complicated. And sometimes love doesn’t matter when someone has to maintain an image.

  Devin stopped her thoughts in their tracks. Enough. Everett was getting married. She had finally made up her mind. She had finally chosen. And she didn’t choose Devin.

  She was glad for the silence as she and Mike walked from the crime scene around the front of the oversized Colonial house.

  Finally Mike spoke.

  “I’m gonna talk to Helen Raymond some more. See what else she knows.”

  “Good plan.”

  Mike looked at her. “Jones. Have fun tonight, will ya?”

  “I’ll try… What’s ‘fun’?”

  “Yeah, exactly. See ya.”

  Devin gave a little wave as she crunched along the gravel driveway to her car. She squinted into the sunshine of this perfect LA day and took a deep breath, it smelled like fresh cut grass and honeysuckle. Life really was beautiful. She was not going to let Everett Cale ruin this day. She would not. She was going on a blind date. She was going to the Hollywood Screen Awards and life was about to get a whole lot better.

  It had to.

  4

  Richard Blakely looked at himself in the mirror. He adjusted his tie and smoothed down his navy blazer. He admired the crest on the pocket, ‘Leise Security.’

  Leise Security was run by Gunnar Leise, who was a very elusive man; a former green beret who ran the most prestigious and successful private security firm in the world - with branches not only in Los Angeles but London and Geneva as well. This year they were entrusted with Indoor Security at the Hollywood Screen Awards, having been vetted and approved by everyone from the producer to the LAPD. No one had yet met the man in the flesh – they did
n’t have to, the head of Homeland Security personally recommended him.

  Gunnar Leise did a lot of undercover work, testing security for multinational firms and so therefore very few people in the world knew what he actually looked like. A hands on micromanager, no one could handle any aspect of his security firm but him. He also contracted out a different team for every job so as never to have the same guys work together more than once. It kept people from getting too soft or being able to really know or trust who they were working with. His website boasted a who’s who of companies and celebrities he’d worked for in the past – everyone from heads of state to multinational corporations to celebrities and sports stars.

  Gunnar Leise made only one mistake his whole illustrious professional career – two weeks ago, he went in person to set up a job protecting a Saudi oil baron who was staying at the Bel Air Hotel. When he entered the room he was met instead by Richard Blakely holding a gun with a silencer trained right at him. He was shot between the eyes, rolled up in a carpet and carried out the service entrance by two of Richard’s men dressed as Angrove Carpet Cleaners. Then Gunnar Leise, in his not so magic carpet, was placed in a van, driven two and a half hours to the desert and buried so deep in the ground, they might have actually almost hit oil.

  Gunnar Leise left behind no wife and no children, he lived under the radar and he died under the radar with no one to know he was missing.

  Richard finished admiring himself in the mirror and breezed over to the desk of his beautifully appointed hotel room. Nice of Gunnar Leise to leave his credit cards in his wallet.

  He glanced down at the brand new driver’s license, passport and California Private Detective ID, all now sporting his own picture with Gunnar Leise’s name. It cost him close to fifty grand for all that but it was worth it.

  It felt good to be someone else. Even if it was just a postage stamp sized picture encased in laminate. Hadn’t that been the whole plan a few years ago? Die to who you are no matter what it takes. Richard had been several men since coming back from Iraq a few years earlier. First he tried being what was expected of him – a quiet asshole who just took it. Took the fact that the V.A. couldn’t give a shit how fucked up he’d been since he came back – the sweats, the night terrors, the panic attacks. Then he did everything he could to make it all bearable, but booze and drugs and sex weren’t enough to fill the space. Nothing he looked for to help him worked and the VA instead of giving him help gave him a phone number to call in some office in Encino where no one ever answered the phone. So despite his service to this country, when it counted, to them, he was nothing and no one. So he became a gun for money. A man who would kill for you. And suddenly his newly messed up head had a place to belong. If goodness couldn’t fill him up again, power just might.

  Richard hoisted a case up onto the desk and flipped it open to recheck its contents. There inside were two Glock 9’s and four extra magazine clips. Satisfied, he clicked the case shut.

  Richard smiled. Right now there were a thousand LAPD on Hollywood Boulevard alone, a few hundred FBI and homeland security officers as well, three checkpoints before anyone even got to the entrance of the theater, and two more after that. But Richard Blakely and the 15 men he had hired to comprise the Indoor Security, would walk right through the front door with all the firepower anyone would need to take the place down. When the time was right.

  5

  Hollywood PM host Sally Bixby took a nibble of a piece of lettuce and slipped the rest back in the plastic baggie. I’m full, she told herself. That was enough for today. She might have some lettuce tomorrow. But today’s quota was reached.

  Sally smoothed out her form fitting silver lamé gown and stood up from where she’d been crouching over her purse. Yes, she had lettuce in her purse. And yes she had hidden behind a planter so no one else on this red carpet crowded with reporters had seen her eat. Everyone always asked how she maintained her figure and she always said “Chasing around two kids!” which was partially true. She did chase her two kids around but it was only for the ten minutes a day that she hadn’t fobbed them off on the nanny. So that was technically true, but she had other weight maintenance tricks, like only eating one and a half lettuce leaves every two days.

  She kept her eating habits a secret from her husband, Billy. He was a financial analyst, he didn’t understand the pressures of Hollywood.

  Plus he had freaked out for like no reason at all when he checked her internet history one night and discovered she had googled “How many calories are in a cottonball?”

  Sally had convinced him it was for a story she was working on. But the next day she threw away the cotton balls. So she wouldn’t be tempted anymore. Besides... once she ate one... there went the whole box.

  The pressures on Sally Bixby were immense. After 7 years as an interviewer, she had just taken over as temporary host of Hollywood PM after the previous host, Lisette Shaw, had a heart attack while under anesthesia for a brow lift. Although why Lisette had needed another brow lift was beyond Sally’s reckoning. The woman already perpetually looked like she was confronting a bear.

  But Lisette was old. Nearly 59. And you can’t maintain it forever. People expected their hosts, young and perky. Sally Bixby was 34 and knew she had to maintain. She had to. She fucking had to.

  “Sally, we’re ready for the interview...”

  “Great! Thanks Bobby!’

  Sally could channel The “Sally Bixby-ness” people expected anytime she needed to. Happy, enthusiastic, perky. Besides if there was any time it mattered it was right now. Covering the Hollywood Screen Awards, Lisette’s usual job. This was Sally’s night to prove she had the right stuff and she knew she better well do it.

  A few minutes later, backstage in the theater, an ‘on’ Sally Bixby was perched on an overstuffed chair in the Hollywood PM lounge, an interview area set up for tonight’s winners, pointing the mic at a warm, jowly faced 60ish mamabear type - Sis Warren, the producer of the event.

  “I’m here behind the scenes at the Hollywood Screen Awards with producer Sis Warren! Sis, you must be superexcited for the show this evening!”

  “Yes, Sally. It’s been a long time leading up to tonight and I think we’re going to have a great show.”

  “So this is your fourth year in a row producing. They must like you!”

  Sis laughed. “I guess so. I think you earn a bit of trust over the years.”

  “Mmmmm....” Sally changed gears and tilted her head sideways like a Pekinese, a move to denote a thoughtful question coming next. “Tell me, Sis...You’ve got Ray Kitson hosting – some people thought he was an unusual choice, being more of an action star type.”

  “Who is also an amazing song and dance man. Ray gave us a call a few months ago and expressed interest. And needless to say we were interested right back!”

  “I BET YOU WERE!” Sally said that extra loud because she felt an audible stomach growl coming on.

  Sis Warren’s eyes widened slightly, clearly startled by Sally’s sudden volume surge - it was like someone sat on the remote.

  “ANYWAY!’ Sally foghorned. That lettuce leaf really wasn’t doing the trick. She wondered if she had time to get to Vons for some cotton balls before the show started.

  Sally soldiered on. “Good luck with everything tonight. I’m sure it’s going to be a great show!”

  “Thank you, Sally. I’m sure it will be!”

  Sally turned to the camera. “That’s it from the Hollywood PM lounge for now, but we’ll have more backstage interviews as soon as the show gets underway!”

  Sally smiled and held that face so long, Sis Warren worried she might have had a stroke.

  Then the cameraman called, “Okay... we’re out.”

  Sally’s smile drooped and her face regained its botoxed frozenness. “Jesus, Bobby, can you cut a little sooner next time please? You know I try not to blink so they don’t cut on a blink and I think I strained my eye socket on that one.”

  Sis stood up. She turned
to say thank you or goodbye or something gracious to her interviewer but Sally Bixby seemed to be obsessed with something in a crinkly baggie in her purse.

  Just as well, Sis had something more important to take care of. She glanced down at the cuff of her pale blue blouse peeking out from her sweater and saw a streak of that man’s blood.

  6

  “Oh my LORD! Come on!”

  Devin Jones knew from experience that getting anywhere in L.A. in the middle of the day could be daunting, but there was no traffic like Hollywood Screen Awards traffic. What with parts of the city closed to cars, the freeway entrance inaccessible and everyone all rushing out to buy party supplies and last minute Ruffles and Entemann’s, it was driving chaos.

  She was taking her usual route from the Beverly Hills Police Department to Laurel Canyon where she lived and it was bumper to bumper.

  Devin peered through her windshield at the colorful clog of cars in front of her in the bright sunshine on Santa Monica Blvd.

  “This is just great...”

  Usually, getting home was easy - she breezed along Santa Monica, up La Cienega to Sunset, then Sunset about five minutes to Laurel, left turn, Canyon Country store and home. Easy. Not today. She was still on Santa Monica Blvd, two blocks from the BHPD.

  “Grrrr....”

  She pressed the bluetooth button on her steering wheel.

  “Call Brad.”

  The phone complied. After a couple of rings her best friend Brad Ingram picked up.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “I’m stuck in traffic on Santa Monica. Why? Where are you?”

  “Waiting outside your house. You think you’re going to the Hollywood Screen Awards without me?”

  “Aren’t you funny...”

  “Fine. Barring that, I figured I could help you get ready.”

  “Awesome. See you soon...er or later.”

  “Yeah, hurry up. Laurel Canyon freaks me out. I saw a Lizard and your shut-in hippie neighbor.”