And dreaming of getting up at 6:00 a.m. to do it all over again.
Isn’t Hollywood glamorous?
Somehow I pulled my tired body out of bed at the crack of dawn and by 7:37 (only seven minutes late today-I was improving!) I made my way through security and onto the lot. Solo today. We were scheduled to shoot a bedroom scene between Ashley and Chad, so obviously no extras were needed. Though Dana assured me she was booked for the following two days and would be “back on the case.” (Ever get the feeling your life has become a Charlie’s Angels episode?)
After blindly stumbling through New York, Boston, and San Francisco (all the while wishing I’d gone for the venti latte instead of the tall), I came to a screeching halt outside stage 6G.
A crowd was gathering around Mia’s trailer. And not the good kind of crowd, where someone has just been nominated for an Emmy and we’re all celebrating with early-morning champagne instead of lattes. This was a hushed, speaking-in-whispers, pointing, and doing that “can’t look away from the car wreck” kind of crowd. I jockeyed myself into position to get a look at what they were all staring at. Only, since I’m just five-one-and-a-half, my chances of seeing anything were slim to nil.
I spotted Kylie standing a couple of feet away.
“Kylie!” I called her name as I approached.
She jumped as if I’d startled her. “Oh, hi. Wardrobe, right?”
I nodded. “What’s going on?” I asked, gesturing to the crowd, which I could swear was growing by the second.
Kylie grimaced, rolling her lips inward and stuffing her hands into her pockets. “You haven’t heard? It was all over the morning news.”
I shook my head. The only report I’d tuned in to had been traffic between Evanescence songs on Star 98.7.
Kylie frowned again, scrunching up her ski-jump nose. “It’s Veronika, ” she said. “Mia’s stand-in.”
“What about her? Is she okay?” I asked, craning to see again.
Kylie bit her lip, her voice cracking. “No, she’s not. Maddie, she’s dead.”
Chapter 5
I blinked at her, my vision going fuzzy. It was one thing to witness dead bodies on Law & Order, but the idea of someone I’d just seen alive and well yesterday suddenly needing a toe tag made my itty-bitty latte in my stomach feel like a loop-d-loop coaster at Six Flags.
“Dead?” I repeated. “What do you mean, dead?”
Kylie’s throat bobbed up and down. “They found her this morning. In Mia’s trailer.”
“Mia’s trailer?” My limbs turned to instant Jell-O. I leaned a hand on the side of the building for support, vividly remembering that creeped-out feeling I’d had in her trailer just the day before.
Even though Veronika had looked the picture of health yesterday, I had to ask. “Did she have a heart attack or something?”
But I already knew the answer even as Kylie shook her head, strands of blonde hair whipping her cheeks. Young pretty actresses didn’t just have heart attacks. Especially not in the trailers of women being stalked by obsessive fans.
“No. They’re saying she was”-Kylie lowered her voice to a whisper-“killed. Can you believe it? Stein-man said we should all go home. He’s closing the set today, you know, because of all this…” She trailed off, staring at the hovering gawkers.
I took a deep breath, trying to get that churning latte under control. This was way too much to absorb before 9:00 A.M. I craned to see through the crowd again. Grips mingled with extras, who mingled with hair and makeup, all straining for a glimpse of what would undoubtedly be Access Hollywood’s top story tonight. And mixed in with the curiosity seekers, I spotted someone I knew.
Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
He hovered near the back in a rumpled white button-down, sneakers, and a pair of wrinkled khaki pants. He had to be the only person in the known universe who could wrinkle Dockers that badly. He looked like he’d slept in his car, or worse yet, not slept at all. His neatly clipped, sandy blond hair stuck out ever so slightly in the back, and his jaw bore the tiniest dusting of blond hairs, giving him an overall lived-in look. He was one of the few people not craning his neck to get a better look at the gruesome sight I now knew hovered just beyond my eye line. Instead, he was talking into his hand, where I’d bet anything he held a tiny voice recorder.
“Felix, ” I mumbled, stepping up beside him.
To his credit, when I hissed in his ear he didn’t jump nearly as high as Kylie had.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You’re kidding, right?” he answered with the hint of a British accent in his deep voice. “This is the story of the century, love.”
Felix Dunn worked as a reporter for the L.A. Informer, which, as I may have mentioned, is one of Southern California’s sleaziest tabloids. In addition to regular photos of myself engaged in various…misunderstandings…they delighted in printing photos of celebrity cellulite, Bat Boy’s secret lover, and Big-foot’s love child with the Crocodile Woman. Generally their stories were ten percent truth and ninety percent sensationalism. I had worked with Felix on one of his rare real stories last year, purely out of need on my part, but I hadn’t seen him since. Which was a good thing, as far as I was concerned. Felix had an annoying habit of snapping unflattering photos of me, then pasting my head on Pamela Anderson’s body.
“Isn’t this a bit out of your league?” I asked. “I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that Sasquatch was involved.”
“Ha, ha. Bloody funny. You ever think of dropping the whole shoe career for the comedy stage?”
I stuck my tongue out at him. What can I say? Felix brought out the second-grader in me.
“For your information, ” he continued, “the Informer will pay thousands for a story like this. Not to mention photos.”
I paused. Thousands? For a half second my bank account warred with my sense of morality. “Thousands? Seriously?” I asked.
Felix shrugged. “What can I say? Tabloids sell.”
He lifted his hand, ostensibly to scratch his head, but I noticed his palm was facing toward the trailer. Not only a voice recorder, but he also must have had a camera tucked in there.
I couldn’t help myself. Curiosity got the better of me.
“What do you see?” I asked, standing on tiptoe again.
Felix shrugged. “Not much. They’ve got the trailer sealed off. They haven’t brought her body out yet. A few blokes with black bags have gone in. And there are cops all over.”
At the mention of the word cops, my mind suddenly went to one cop in particular. Ramirez. I wondered if he was here, and if so, how badly his superiors would rip him a new one this time. He’d been assigned to this “babysitting” job, as he put it, to watch the set. And now look. A dead body. Ironically, he was back in the middle of a homicide investigation, but I wasn’t altogether sure his superiors would see this as a good thing. Homicide detectives usually came on the case after the body was dead, not before.
As if he could read my mind, Felix said, “I saw your boyfriend go in a few minutes go. He didn’t look too happy.”
“Yeah, well, most people aren’t happy when some-one’s murdered. Unlike tabloid reporters.”
“What? I’m sorry the poor girl died, ” he responded. He grinned, showing off a row of slightly crooked teeth and dimples in both cheeks. It was, as I was learning, his charming look, à la Hugh Grant. Luckily I knew him well enough not to be deceived by a little thing like charm.
“Uh-huh. That’s why you’re grinning like the Cheshire cat, Tabloid Boy.”
“What can I say? I guess I’m just a happy-go-lucky kind of fellow.” And with that he did a mock stretch and yawn, pointing his palm toward the trailer for a few more clicks.