Murder Plays House (11 page)

“Don’t be silly, darling,” Farzad said. “There’s even less of a reason to stay here, now.”

Felix rubbed his eyes with his hand. “I can’t bear the idea of selling this house, of leaving, with everything so unresolved. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” His voice trailed off.

I felt my tenuous grasp on my dream house slipping away.

We sat in silence for a few moments, and then I changed the subject. I asked for the names of some of Alicia’s friends, and after a short pause Felix came up with one.

“Moira Sarsfield. She’s known Alicia for ages. They kind of rose and fell together, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you have her number?”

He shook his head. “No, but she works at Franklin’s, the restaurant in that Best Western, the one right before you get on the 101 in Hollywood. You can probably find her there.”

Before I left, I gave Felix and Farzad a printout that Al’s wife Jeanelle had made for us of our fee schedule and expense reimbursement policy. My embarrassment at taking the job solely to get my paws on that house kept me from asking for a retainer, and I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping that Al wouldn’t kill me when he found out.

Farzad saw me to the door.

“You have a beautiful home,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s right; you were looking at it with a real estate agent. So, had you planned to make an offer? Before all this, of course.”

I gazed at him for a moment, and then I said, “You know, Farzad, I’d still like to make an offer. That is if you still plan on selling the house. It would be perfect for me and my family.”

He waggled his head in something between a nod and
a shrug. “Well, we’ll see how all this pans out. Perhaps you will figure out who murdered poor Alicia, and Felix will be so grateful that he’ll sell you the house!”

My plan exactly! “Perhaps,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

W
HEN
I told Al about Harvey Brodsky’s call, and about the possibility of us receiving a lucrative contract from him, Al expressed a momentary excitement. I felt terrible when I was forced to explain that it all hinged on how we did with the Felix murder.

“It’s most likely a sex crime, Juliet! We aren’t qualified to investigate a murder like that.”

“I know.”

“You solve those crimes forensically!”

“I know.”

“With teams of detectives, crime scene experts, medical examiners!”

“I know.”

“Not two people operating out of a garage!”

“I know.”

He sighed.

I pulled over to the side of Melrose Avenue. This was not
a conversation I could have while driving. “We don’t have to solve the crime,” I said. “Our job is to help Felix and Farzad navigate through the system. You know, be their representatives to the police. That kind of thing.”

He sighed again.

“That’s what Brodsky’s interested in! Not if we solve the murder or not. He can’t possibly expect that.”

“Let’s hope not,” he said.

“Hey, how’d that meeting with the insurance company go?”

“They offered me a job.”

“Great! A paying client!”

“No. They don’t want the agency. They want me to go work for them. To head up their investigation unit.”

“Oh.” My stomach sank. Was it all going to end like this? “Oh. Well, then this whole Brodsky thing isn’t really important, is it?”

“I turned them down.”

“You did what?”

“I turned them down. I don’t want to work in some office with some vice president breathing down my neck. I’ve had enough of that.”

“You’d rather work out of your rat-infested garage?”

“Damn right I would. What, do you want me to take the job? Are you trying to weasel out of our partnership?”

“No! No!” I said.

“Good. You’re stuck with me, lady.”

I smiled and merged back into traffic. After Al and I hung up, I called Peter. The first thing he did was fill me in on the state of the neighbor’s construction.

“Jackhammering. All day. I’m losing my mind.”

“I’m so sorry, honey. We’ll move. Soon. I promise.”

“God, I hope so. Anyway, we’re on our way to the Santa Monica pier to ride the carousel.”

I was free to continue my perambulations around the city. I’d been sure that my husband would not approve of my plan to investigate Alicia’s murder, but to my surprise he was remarkably easy going about my efforts. He merely wished me luck, and reminded me that my first priority was to find us a new house. I don’t think he thought much of my chances of parlaying an investigation into a house purchase. But he hadn’t been out in the real estate trenches like I had. He didn’t know just how little there was out there.

I took surface streets over to Franklin’s, hoping that I’d find Moira at work. I debated calling the restaurant first, but decided that the benefit of a surprise appearance outweighed any inconvenience of schlepping all the way to Hollywood. I was more likely to catch Alicia’s friend in a gregarious mood if I caught her unawares.

Franklin’s is one of those dives that for some reason periodically becomes fashionable among Hollywood’s almost-elite. The place certainly has a seedy charm to it, with the cracked vinyl booths and Formica counter. But the food isn’t much to speak of, and the listless snobbery of the wait staff has always made it and other restaurants of its ilk something of a turnoff to me. It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for the Juilliard and Royal Shakespeare Company graduates who are forced to earn their livings pouring ranch dressing onto iceberg lettuce salads and swabbing countertops with foul-smelling rags. I was a waitress myself, back in my pre-lawyer days. I have nothing but sympathy for food servers. It’s just that I’m never really able to understand why their professional despair need express itself in an ill-concealed disdain for my food choices, my clothes, and me as a person.

Moira was working, if you could call it that, and more than happy to pull herself a cup of coffee from the vast metal urn and sit with me while I ate my BLT.

“It’s such a nightmare,” she said, dragging the back of her hand roughly across her eyes. It hadn’t taken much to start her tears flowing. The mere mention of Alicia’s name was enough to jumpstart her grief.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, patting her arm with one hand while the other balanced my leaking sandwich. I swabbed at the dripping mayonnaise with my tongue and put the sandwich down. “Had you seen Alicia recently?”

Moira nodded. “I see her all the time. Like every couple of days. She’s my best friend.” Her tears were flowing thick and fast, now. “God, Aziz, that’s the manager, he’s going to kill me. I’ve been crying pretty much constantly since I found out. The customers aren’t real excited about being waited on by some wailing hag.”

“You’re not a hag,” I said. “But maybe you should take a little time off. It’s got to be really hard trying to work while you’re feeling this way.”

“Yeah, that might be nice. But if I don’t work, I don’t eat and I don’t pay the rent, so it’s not like I’ve got a choice.”

I nodded sympathetically. “It’s not an easy life, acting.”

“You could say that. Although I’m not really sure I can consider myself an actor anymore. I mean, I haven’t gotten a single part in three years. I’m pretty sure that that makes me just a waitress.”

“That’s kind of what was going on with Alicia, wasn’t it?”

She nodded and tucked her stringy blond hair behind her ear. I noticed a fine, white scar extending along her crown and scalp. Had her hair been clean, and not dragged back on her skull, it would have been entirely covered. I’d seen scars like that once before—on Stacy’s mother when she was
recuperating at Stacy’s house after one of her many facelifts. Mrs. Holland’s had been red and fiery, but they’d faded over time. Like Moira, she now looked a bit pressed and pulled, but not too bad. The only difference was that my friend’s mother was in her sixties, and Moira was surely not much older than I.

“It’s just really hard for women in Hollywood,” she said, sighing into her cup of coffee. “A guy is considered young and sexy until he’s, like, seventy. But once a girl hits thirty, things start getting really tough. And my God, don’t even talk to me about forty.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I’ll probably just shoot myself before I get there.”

It didn’t sound like she was kidding, and I patted her on the arm again. There was no comfort I could provide. She smiled wanly. “I’m okay,” she said. “You know the saddest part? Things were starting to turn around for Alicia.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “What do you mean?”

“Well, she had this new boyfriend, Charlie Hoynes. Have you heard of him?”

I shook my head.

“He’s a producer. Film and television. He’s pretty huge. He’s done lots of things, but what he’s most famous for are those vampire movies. The
Blood of Desire
series? They started on cable?”

I’m afraid my familiarity with horror movies borders on the encyclopedic, not a surprise given to whom I’m married. “Those adult ones? Basically soft-core porn?”

“Exactly. He’s done other features, but the vampire movies are his biggest. Now he’s putting together a one-hour adult drama based on those.”

“Based on the porn movies?”

“They aren’t really pornography. Just adult entertainment. I mean, there’s a difference, isn’t there?”

“I guess so.” Horror movies I can catalogue, but pornography is a bit out of my field.

She looked defensive. “I don’t think Alicia would have done porn. I mean, I know she wouldn’t have. It’s the fastest way to oblivion. Once you shoot a porno, there’s just no way to get back to mainstream film and TV. So the series must be tamer than the original cable movies were.”

“She was cast in it?”

Moira nodded. “All but. I mean, she met Charlie at an open call, and she pretty much started dating him right away. I’m sure he was going to give her a part. I mean, he kind of had to, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” I said, no more familiar with the ways of the casting couch than I was with contemporary pornographic cinema.

I wrote down Charlie Hoynes’s name in my little notebook. “Was that the only iron Alicia had in the fire, do you know?”

Moira nodded. “Well, I mean, except our improv group. Do you know about that?”

Suddenly, a dark man with a thick bushy mustache and matching eyebrows appeared at our table. “Moira!” he said. “You are only sitting with customer! You are not working, not at all!”

She glared at him. “Can’t you see I’m on a break? I’m not some Moroccan slave, Aziz. Here in America we have
coffee breaks.”
She raised her mug at him and shook it slightly. Coffee slopped over the side and onto her hand. “Ow!” she squawked. “Now look what you made me do!”

“Oh no, so sorry,” the man said, dabbing at her hand with the damp and dirty dishcloth he held.

She shook him away and he slunk back in the direction of the kitchen.

“Sorry,” she said to me.

“No problem. But if you have to get back to work . . .” my voice trailed off.

“Oh, please. Like I care what Aziz wants me to do.”

I felt a pang of pity for the poor, beleaguered Aziz. I wanted to follow him into the back and reassure him that all Americans weren’t as spoiled and ill-mannered as his employees, but I had work to do, and alienating Moira surely wasn’t the best way to elicit information from her.

“You were telling me about your improv group?”

“Right. You’ve probably heard of us. The Left Coast Players, Spike Steven’s comedy troupe?”

I smiled noncommittally, and she chose to interpret it as a yes.

“We’ve been in the LCP for years, Alicia and I. It’s pretty much a feeder program for
New York Live.
Kind of like Second City in Chicago.”

“Really?” It had been years since I’d watched the midnight comedy show
New York Live
, but in college I’d been a devoted fan.

“Yeah, like half the casts of the first ten years or more of
NYL
were LCP alumnae. There are a couple of folks on the show right now. Jeff Finkelman. And, well, of course, Julia Brennan. No relation.” It was obvious from her tone that
the other Ms. Brennan
wasn’t one of Moira’s favorite people.

“Do you know them?”

“Who? Jeff and Julia? Sure. We’re really good friends. I mean, Julia’s a nightmare, and Alicia and I hate her, but we’ve been friends for years.”

Ah, Hollywood, the only place on earth where the definition of ‘friend’ includes someone you’ve hated for years.

“Why do you guys hate her?”

Moira opened her mouth to speak, and then snapped it shut. “Look, I can’t talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

“Any of it. Julia, the whole thing. Alicia’s dead, and it doesn’t matter any more.
NYL
has auditions all the time, and the last thing I need is Julia Brennan finding out I’ve been trashing her.”

“Moira, your best friend is dead. If we want to find out who did this to her, we’re going to have to ask some really hard questions. Like who might have had a grudge against her. I know you want to protect your chances of getting on the show, but what’s more important; that, or finding Alicia’s murderer?”

Moira stared into her coffee cup, and I had the sinking suspicion that the answer to that question was not as obvious to her as it was to me.

She sighed. “You know Julia Brennan’s
NYL
character, Bingie McPurge?”

“No,” I said, vaguely horrified.

“Well, she does this whole bit. Bulimia jokes. Anorexia jokes. Anyway, that’s the character that got her the slot on the show. And it’s incredibly funny. There’s only one problem.”

“What? The tackiness factor?”

She smiled politely. “Okay, two problems. The big one, though, is that it’s not Julia’s character.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she didn’t make it up. Alicia did. Bingie McPurge was Alicia’s character. I mean, that’s not what she called her. Alicia just called hers Mia, but she developed her in the improv group. She performed her in our workshops and on our open mike nights. She made it up, she wrote the jokes. Everything.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Julia stole the character, and made it on to
NYL
with it. And we just heard she’s got a movie deal with Fox. Alicia’s Mia is going to be
huge
, and she is never going to get any credit for it at all.”