Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read online

  "You're moving. You can't live in a place where your furniture gets rearranged by Mother Nature!"

  I didn't reply. At forty-one, my life was semisolid. Where I lived, what I did for a living. Her remark about my moving was a reminder that a relationship for anyone over twenty came with a lot of baggage, like who would give up what in order to be together.

  Be together, my mind quickly edited my own remarks, the woman hasn't even slept with you yet, much less determined we should be together. Besides, what would living with Callie Rivers be like?

  "We're getting up," she said, "I'm not spending my life under a table."

  It would be like that, I thought. It would be total loss of control. It would be turning my every decision over for a second opinion. It would be constant discussions about dog jowls on pillowcases, and the trashing of comfortable clothes, and reminders not to drive recklessly or swear. Living with Callie Rivers would be bringing an earthquake into my life. I just need to enjoy the moment, the sensuality, and the companionship and not go down the forever-after road.

  A second tremor hit and Callie scurried back under the table with me, burying her head in my chest.

  But she feels so damned good, I thought.

  Chapter Nine

  We drove the Jeep over to Van Nuys Auto Repair, where Marty, a weather-beaten guy in his sixties, strolled silently around the bashed-in sides and top and looked up at me with a grin. "Run her in a demolition derby?"

  "Something like that," I replied.

  "Insurance payin'?"

  When I told him that it was, he went off to find me a serviceable rental while I took a call from Mom and Dad, who were wanting to make sure that the three of us were okay. They'd just heard about the earthquake.

  "Earthquakes kill people!" Mother announced as if we hadn't figured that out. "So you three should think about moving back here." I refrained from saying that we were in more danger from human beings than earthquakes, but instead sent her our love.

  I just wanted to sit across from Callie and look into her eyes and forget what was going on around us for an hour, so I suggested lunch in Beverly Hills. On the drive over, I asked her point-blank, "So, you're psychic. How come you didn't know the earthquake was coming?"

  "I knew it was highly probable in this lunar cycle, but I didn't pay attention. I wasn't focused on it. Being psychic plays out in different ways for different people. For me, the 'knowing' is random, unless I focus on the issue or unless someone out there causes me to focus on it."

  "Out there would be...?"

  "Out there." Callie casually extended her arms to take in the entire universe.

  "Got it." I nodded.

  "Now, don't make fun." She grinned at me, but her voice was warning.

  "I'm not. It's just pretty far out..." Seeing her raised eyebrow, I added, "there."

  I parked our rented white Ford Taurus at the curb next to Il Faccio, one of my favorite lunch spots. As we pulled up, there was Barrett Silvers, as combed and curried as a show pony, bidding a studious-looking woman goodbye on the sidewalk.

  "What are you doing here?" Her voice cracked when she saw me.

  "Having lunch and trying to find out why, ever since I last saw you, someone's been hanging dead rats on my door, running me off a road in Texas, ransacking my house, and trying to kill me. And in my spare time, I've been trying to find out who tried to kill you."

  "Writers!" She smirked. "No one tried to kill me. I mixed my medication. I'd taken a muscle relaxant for stress, and I didn't know it would react with the other medication I'd taken. Just a mix-up, but a serious one. I was lucky."

  I had to admit she delivered this explanation in a very convincing manner.

  "Introduce me to the beautiful woman in front of whom we've been airing our dirty laundry," she requested, and I introduced Callie. Barrett virtually undressed Callie with her eyes, lingering on her breasts and occasionally moving up to her hair.

  "Are you a writer?" Barrett asked.

  "A psychic, which means she knows better than to pitch to you." I casually blocked Callie from Barrett's view. "And the Judas kiss?"

  Barrett looked a little too puzzled before she finally answered my question. "Oh, the Latin guy? He was just a messenger returning a stone artifact a friend had borrowed for an art show." Turning to Callie, she said, "You're gorgeous."

  "My messenger service never kisses me when they deliver." I interrupted Barrett's stare, not liking her coming on to Callie. "So where's the stone now?"

  "That's what my insurance adjuster wants to know. Apparently I had it in my hand when I had the attack, and somewhere between Orca's and the ER, it disappeared. Personally I think a waiter or med tech took it. It's not outrageously expensive, but worth some cash."

  "Bzzzzz!" I made a game-show buzzer sound and simultaneously yanked her car keys out of her hand, dangling them in the air as if to say we'd both be receiving our mail here unless she told me what was going on.

  She sagged against the car, resigned to satisfying my demand. "Okay. Talbot wanted us to sign Eddie Smith. Nobody signs Eddie for under a squillion dollars, so it ends up we have to settle for Benny Kaye. Only Benny knows we've already approached Eddie first, so there's an ego thing." Barrett lowered her voice, "Isaacs scouts around to find out what Benny's into, so we can send him a little ice breaker before Talbot has to call to talk a deal. Turns out, Benny's into snuff films."

  "That's a bit more disconcerting than delivering hookers, isn't it?" I said.

  Callie interrupted to ask what a snuff film was, and when I told her it was a film where people agree to be killed while having sex, her face went ashen.

  "Anyway, Isaacs insisted I get these films off the black market. I just freaked and said I couldn't do it. When I talked to you at Orca's, I didn't know Isaacs had called it off, so I was still crazed. That's all."

  "You see? Confession is good for the soul." I kissed her on the cheek and she snapped her head back reflexively. Barrett knew that Spider Eye's kiss had something to do with her collapse at Orca's. She was just too terrified and in too deep to admit it to me or the cops.

  "We'll do lunch!" She waved to us as she hurried off to her car. "And bring your friend." She winked at Callie.

  "She's lying," Callie said as Barrett drove away. "She's lying to cover for Isaacs."

  We got back in the car, not really in the mood for lunch anymore. "Why did you kiss her?" Callie asked.

  "Who?"

  "Barrett. You kissed her goodbye."

  "It was a Hollywood kiss. Did you see the way she was looking at you? If I hadn't been trying to get information from her, I would have broken her kneecaps."

  "Don't be so violent," Callie said, and I could see she was still troubled by my kissing Barrett.

  "Look, I have no feelings for Barrett, and I don't sleep around. In fact, in my entire life I've slept with very few people. Although I'm unclear why you're interested since we're never going to sleep together."

  "I didn't ask you who you'd slept with."

  "Sorry, sharing violation," I mocked.

  "I just thought the kissing was unnecessary. That's all. From a hygienic perspective. There's a lot of disease out there."

  Her clinical approach made me grin. "That wasn't kissing. This is kissing." I leaned across the front seat and kissed her on her bare shoulder, then on her neck and up around her ear, and finally on her mouth. She snuggled into me, enjoying it, before realizing we were still parked in front of Il Faccio's.

  She pulled back, slightly undone. "There are people watching us."

  I glanced up to see a couple, frozen in mid-bite, staring at us through the restaurant windows.

  "Let's go," Callie said.

  "They're just jealous that we're having a better lunch hour than they are."

  That afternoon, I sat in my office and mentally rewound Barrett's story about Hollywood's second-hottest comedian Benny Kaye as Callie studied astrology charts on her laptop. I wondered what had happened with Hollywood
's number-one comic, Eddie Smith. If Marathon needed Benny Kaye right away, they must have screwed up their deal with Eddie. What did Eddie want that the studio couldn't deliver? Someone on the studio lot has to know.

  I dialed the studio and asked for the public relations office, telling the young woman who answered that I was from the LA Times and we were getting a list of all of the upcoming studio events for a possible series in the business section. Could she tell me what was in the offing? She rattled off a list of events that included a soundstage groundbreaking, a premiere for the new motion picture Action World, and a stockholders' meeting. I asked where and when the stockholders' meeting was taking place. She said this Friday on the main lot. All shareholders were invited.

  I hung up and called my broker, saying I needed to buy a few shares of Marathon and I needed him to fax me proof of the transaction. Callie brightened, saying this was going to be an exciting Friday. I told her I hoped so in light of the fact that this lunch had cost me five hundred dollars.

  "We'll eat on Friday, sell the stock on Monday, and it'll be a free lunch," she said.

  "No such thing as a free lunch," we said in unison and laughed.

  For a brief moment, I was beyond the mere sexual wanting of her, basking in the comfort of her company, of her quick mind, and of our shared sense of humor. A gnawing little piece of me dreaded that moment when she might say she had to go back home. For me, she was starting to feel like home.

  Friday at eleven a.m., we were at the Marathon gates, an imposing stone archway with Olympic runners passing the torch overhead. The security guard located our name on the shareholders' list and cleared us to drive on. The lot was crowded, and we were forced to park a football field away from the soundstage where the stockholders' meeting would take place. My next-to-the-little toe was getting that weird cramp that makes me limp and curse the Ferragamo family who, for hundreds of dollars a pair, still couldn't see their way clear to put padding in my shoes!

  We entered the soundstage, which had been converted into a giant press release, with twenty-foot movie posters hanging from wires all around the room, touting successes past and present, alongside equally large slabs of dangling cardboard that chronicled each movie's title, year, stars, awards, and box office gross. A sea of circular tables dotted the soundstage that boasted a seating capacity of two thousand. People milled along the buffet line picking up coffee and danish and staring at the gigantic ice sculpting of a man frozen in mid-run, ice droplets collected on his huge brow. The perfect symbol for the harried, frightened studio executive.

  Around the room, corporate executives mingled with Brentwood yuppies and the occasional elderly couple from Des Moines who made the trip to check on the health of their ten shares. Studio shareholders' meetings were notoriously a time for hype and hoopla, and the Marathon meeting was no exception. Big gold-foil-wrapped M-shaped chocolates acted as paperweights, securing the Marathon annual report to the tables in front of each chair.

  I picked up an annual report and thumbed through it, noting page after page of glossy 8x10 photos of CEO Talbot cutting ribbons, attending premieres, and shaking hands with stars. I flipped to the financial data. The bottom line message was clearly, "We've gone from red to black," and the adjusted gross of 784.6 million dollars verified that. Talbot, or Isaacs, or somebody was a miracle worker.

  Isaacs banged his gavel on the tabletop podium, and in a tone just this side of saccharine, asked everyone to find a seat. The show was about to begin. Callie seemed fixated on Isaacs as he launched into a tribute to Talbot, calling him a Hollywood giant and a man of character, strength, and virtue. After fifteen minutes, he turned the microphone over to Talbot, who thanked Isaacs profusely, crediting him for much of the year's success.

  The mutual back-patting went on far too long, if one could judge from the sound of crinkling foil. People were tearing into the gold foil wrappers, flopping the big chocolate Ms around and gnawing on the six-inch legs like bored terriers. Even Talbot recognized he was losing them as he elevated his voice to the tenor of a Baptist preacher and boomed, "Well, let's get on with the big news! Marathon Studios has once again crossed the finish line ahead of the pack. We have just signed"—he gave a long dramatic pause—"Eddie Smith for a three-picture deal!"

  Talbot held out his arm pointing stage right, and Eddie Smith came bounding out right on cue.

  "I'm all yours, baby!" He bellowed his trademark laugh line at Talbot.

  "And I'm delighted!" Talbot roared in reply.

  Giving Talbot a big bear hug, Eddie turned to the audience with perfect comedic timing and growled, "Whatsa mattuh? This the first time you ever seen two gay guys express their affection for each other?" The audience roared with laughter and applauded wildly. It was definitely something to tell the folks back home in Sioux City.

  Callie and I exchanged looks. Benny Kaye was apparently out, because they had landed the prize of prizes, Eddie Smith.

  "Eddie Smith's been offered a gazillion dollars to make a movie anywhere in town, and he's refused for five years," I said.

  "Must mean someone got him what he wanted," Callie replied.

  An hour later the show had been turned over to several corporate VPs armed with charts and graphs, who took us through the financial ups and downs of Marathon with rationales for every decision Marathon had made all year. The questions from the audience were respectful and good-humored, as opposed to last year, where it was reported a stockholder threw a chair at the stage. Having Eddie Smith warm up the crowd had done its job. I slid out of my chair and inched my way to the back of the room for more coffee, towing Callie in my wake. At the ever-present danish tray, I bumped into Marsha Brown wearing a large Marathon name tag. I'd met Marsha right after she'd left MGM to work for a small independent film company. I'd once pitched her a theatrical at the precise moment L.A. was struck by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake.

  Marsha was the thin, nail-biting type to begin with, but when her large steel desk bounced three feet nearer the seventeenth-floor windows and the building did a few concrete hulas, I could have been a one-armed troglodyte and Marsha still would have clung to me. After the second shake, we extended our stay under her desk for another ten minutes. It had a bonding effect.

  "So what did they barter Eddie?" I asked.

  Marsha shot me a piercing look. "Bet it's nothing you can bank. Love to have you over tonight." She stepped in very close to me and slid her hand swiftly between my legs, a reminder that we'd once shared an evening together.

  "Can you come?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye, and I jumped reflexively.

  "No, I can't. Sorry," I said, and Callie shot me a look that indicated sorry was most likely not the appropriate word.

  Marsha headed for the buffet table, and Callie put her arm around me in a proprietary way and whispered softly, "Have you slept with everyone in L.A.?"

  "I never had sex with that woman," I said, imitating Bill Clinton. Callie was not amused.

  The financial presentation wrapped up and Eddie popped out from backstage and began working the room, shaking hands with the shareholders as if this were the room he'd waited a lifetime to play. He put his arm around a short, chunky, middle-aged woman with bright orange hair who looked very smart and colorful in a matching orange suit.

  Marsha reappeared with a fresh cup of coffee and informed us that the woman in orange was Rita, Eddie's wife of twenty-seven years. "He's notorious for sleeping with anything in a skirt. She's threatened to leave him over the last one, who happened to be a call girl and gave her the disease of the week by proxy."

  "That guy's got an aura darker than the Black Hole," Callie chimed in.

  "Ever seen how they rear-screen fifty projectors?" I asked, dragging Callie backstage before she could make any other damaging remarks about Marathon's extended family.

  We rounded a row of screens creating a backstage for the equipment. Off to the right at a thirty-degree angle were two more partitions to conceal equipment cases. I showed Callie
the computer into which the fifty projectors were programmed.

  "If anything goes wrong, you're out of sync for the rest of the show, but when it works it's impressive," I said.

  A man's muffled voice spoke gruffly from behind the angled partition. "You've had two fiascoes and I don't want another! And I want the fuckin' list, or the only list you're gonna be on is in the obits. Eddie's deal is contingent. I had to kiss the little snake's butt to get him here today because you didn't deliver!" This voice was vaguely familiar.

  "It's Isaacs," Callie said flatly.

  "Okay, okay, we're doin' her tomorrow," the second voice said.

  Isaacs burst forth from behind the partition, proving Callie right, and headed back out onto the floor.

  "It is Isaacs. I believe you are psychic," I said.

  She ignored me, her eyes following Isaacs. His demeanor changed from irate to jovial the moment he came within view of the stockholders.

  "So who was he talking to?" I whispered.

  "That guy over there." Callie pointed to an older man in green coveralls who, from a distance, looked like a stage hand.

  Suddenly Callie yanked the back of my suit jacket so hard I did an involuntary genuflect.

  "Damn, I'm already so sore I need horse liniment. Do you have to yank me around?" I said irritably.

  "Barrett Silvers."

  I looked where she was pointing, and sure enough, Barrett had been within earshot of Isaacs's conversation. She seemed upset, and after looking around to make sure no one had spotted her, she disappeared.

  "I thought she was an executive vice president. She has to resort to getting information from her boss the same way we do, by listening through walls?" Callie asked.

  "And what do you suppose 'we're doin' her tomorrow' meant?" I asked.

  Callie froze. "That's how they got Eddie. Yes, I'm getting an affirmation..."

  "From whom?"

  "The cosmos. I'm telling you," Callie said to quiet my disbelief. "They're killing a woman to get Eddie Smith. That's the trade they're making."

  "I don't know about that," I said, not wanting to know about that. My nerves were getting the better of me. "And what list are they talking about?"