Box Office Poison (Linnet Ellery) (3 page)

It was very … pink. It had three Mission-style towers that marked the main building and the entrance. Kobe pulled up to the front entrance and hopped out to open my door. A cute, young, redheaded bellman hurried down the red-carpeted steps to gather up my luggage. Kobe also gave him David’s garment bag and told him it should be placed in Mr. Sullivan’s room. I tipped Kobe and thanked him for the tour, then followed the redhead into the lobby.

A sleek, dark-haired bellhop took David’s bag and disappeared out the back door. The redhead led me to the elevators. “My room isn’t near Mr. Sullivan?”

“No, he’s booked into a bungalow. You have a deluxe guest room. They’re still nice, just not
as
nice.”

“Okay.”

“So what brings you here? Audition?” he asked. The smile he gave me had enough teeth to qualify for a toothpaste commercial. As he held the door and allowed me to precede him into the elevator.

“I’m not an actress. I’m a lawyer.”

“No way. You’re way too pretty to be a lawyer.”

I knew it was absolutely insincere, that I looked like something the cat had dragged in, but it felt nice anyway. We went down a hall, and he opened the door for me. The room was very well appointed in tones of gold and cream. I was really glad they hadn’t continued with the pink theme. There was only so much pink I could stand. I tipped the redheaded schmooze king and studiously ignored the giant stack of folders on the desk. Instead I opened my suitcase and arranged my toiletries in the bathroom. I looked at the big tub and contemplated a long soak in hot water. I walked back into the main room and studied the bed. Next I looked at the files. Sleep? Bathe? Eat? Work? My stomach won out. It might be three o’clock in New York, but it was just past noon in LA. I could have lunch.

Grabbing a room service menu, I studied the options and decided on a fruit and yogurt salad. While I waited I unpacked and wondered why on earth I had brought so many clothes?
Because you might be in LA for a number of weeks, if not months,
was the answer. I tucked my English riding boots into the closet and decided I would call around for stables and tack shops tomorrow. I could always rent a slug at a riding stable, but if you have skills and training, there is always a rank horse that somebody will let you ride if you’re willing to be a crash dummy, or a horse who needs exercising because the owner has gotten pregnant or is too busy to ride. I had cadged rides my whole life, I figured it would be no different in California.

My salad arrived. It was good, but the price tag was rather staggering. I sat at the desk and wondered if the home office would get me an apartment? It would be less expensive than a hotel room, and in an apartment I could cook, which would reduce the chance of weight gain. Eating out all the time was hell on a body

I thought about working, but instead I turned on the flat-screen TV for company. As I was clicking through the channels I noticed that many of the broadcast channels had a breaking news bulletin. I finally found a local news channel, which was running multiple screens. On one screen there was a helicopter view of a deep blue Ferrari heading down one of the freeways followed by five police cruisers. Stuck behind the phalanx of cops was all the rest of the freeway traffic. Another screen showed a video from an amateur photographer standing on an overpass. Still another showed the newsroom with a pretty, blond female news anchor, her pretty male counterpart, and a former cop discussing the unfolding chase. It didn’t look like much of a chase, since, according to the commentary, the Ferrari was moving at a very discreet thirty miles an hour. I wondered if this was the source of the traffic jam from earlier in the day. If so the cops were certainly not in any hurry to resolve the situation.

“Do you think they’ll use spikes?” the male anchor asked.

“Those can be risky, and Kerrinan Ta Shena is famous,” the woman said.

And I had my explanation. Kerrinan was an Álfar heart throb. Had starred in a boatload of movies. I’d seen a number of them. He was also the primary spokesman for the Android smartphone.

“Not when you’re moving that slow, and no one is above the law,” said the ex-cop piously.

So what had happened that he was driving on a freeway with a phalanx of cops? I remembered his wife had died—no, been killed: it had been in the news a few weeks ago. But if they were talking road spikes to deflate the tires, it looked like the authorities had begun to suspect the spouse.

“I wonder why they don’t just move in,” the female anchor asked.

“Well, there’s a problem with that, Trina,” the male anchor said in a tone that made it sound like she was retarded. “The Álfar have this ability to move in and out of our reality. Makes it tough to make an arrest.”

“So why hasn’t he done it? Why hasn’t he left our world? Why spend hours in this glacial chase?”

“You’ll have to ask him that, Trina, once he’s apprehended.”

They were joined by a Hollywood reporter, and the group began to discuss Kerrinan’s films. He specialized in frothy romantic comedies where a human woman wins out over all the Álfar hotties for the heart of an elf lord. It had happened in real life too; Kerrinan had married a human actress, Michelle Balley. They had been Hollywood’s “it couple.” Until she fetched up dead.

There was something riveting about the chase, or maybe that was because I was so tired. I ate, watched the images on the tube, and listened to the never-ending babble. In an effort to fill the slowly passing minutes the reporters and experts in the studio, and their compatriots in the helicopter, in cars, and on bridges, rehashed the events that had led to this chase.

Three weeks ago Kerrinan had called the police to his Bel Air mansion. They found Michelle brutally murdered, and Kerrinan covered in blood and claiming no memory of the events. His defense attorneys claimed he’d gotten the blood on himself from holding his murdered wife, and that grief and shock had affected his memory. But forensics told a different story. DNA evidence proved that Kerrinan had wielded the knife that killed his wife. The police had been going to his house to arrest him when Kerrinan had fled into the garage, jumped in the Ferrari, and hit the highway. There was more speculation from the blow-dried news readers that the actor had been tipped off by a fan in the police department.

“Or maybe he just saw the flashing cherries and realized it wasn’t a parade,” the ex-cop said with a look of pity and contempt for the news anchors.

Forty minutes later I realized nothing had changed or was going to change. I reached for the remote to turn off the TV, when the male model newsreader suddenly shouted, “Whoa!” as the car shimmered, pulsed in and out of view as it phased in and out of our reality, and then vanished.

So, that’s what it looks like from outside,
I thought, and remembered John’s and my mad flight from Virginia to New York City last summer as we were pursued by Securitech and killer werewolves. I also remembered how it ended: in the Álfar equivalent of the Dakota as John’s real mother had forced him to choose between me and my clients—a terrified mother and daughter—and his own freedom. Of course John had done the noble thing.

The male anchor was gabbling, almost hyperventilating. Even though he had corrected his female counterpart in a particularly snotty way, he had clearly never seen the effect and maybe didn’t believe the Álfar could actually do it.

And suddenly the incongruity of the whole thing struck me. As the retired cop had said, if Kerrinan had spotted the cops, why not just step out of his house and into the Fey? Why get into a car and spend hours in a slow-motion chase down the LA freeways when you had the power to be gone in an instant? It didn’t make any sense.

I waited a few more minutes, but the Ferrari didn’t reappear and the chatter became an endless loop. So Kerrinan had fled to the Fey. I wondered how the DA’s office in LA was going to cope with that? There were so many Álfar in Los Angeles, maybe California had some kind of extradition treaty with the Álfar? Maybe it would have application in New York? The federal kidnapping statutes should have applied to John. I’d raised that with the FBI, and then with a Department of Justice lawyer in the Manhattan office, who’d looked at me like I’d been on crack.

I decided I’d talk to the California DA. I turned off the television. Thinking about John and my, so far, ineffectual attempts to free him made me depressed. I realized I hadn’t called John’s parents in Philadelphia with an update in over a month. I had met Big Red, the retired policeman, and his wife Meg shortly after John had been trapped and told them exactly what had happened. I owed them that much. They were lovely people, neither college-educated nor wealthy, but good, solid middle-class Americans who had raised four human kids and one changeling, all of them growing up to serve their communities as a firefighter, a nurse, a fisherman, a Marine, and John, who had followed his father into the police force. I shouldn’t be dodging them just because I hadn’t made any progress on freeing their son.
Who’s trapped because of you
, whispered a nasty voice.

I tried to drown the depression with a hot bath. When that didn’t work I settled for a nap.

*   *   *

A shrilling ring brought me awake. It was dark in the room, and I fumbled for the phone, knocked it onto the floor, cursed, kicked away the covers, and finally ended up kneeling naked on the carpet pressing the receiver to my ear.

“What? Yes? Hello? Hello?”

“Good Lord, what are you doing in there? Wrestling crocodiles?” David’s cool baritone filled my ear.

“You woke me up.” I scraped the hair off my face.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” Outside the wind set the fronds on the palm trees to rattling like castanets, whistled around the railing of the balcony, and rain exploded against the sliding glass doors. “What time is it?”

“Ten past seven.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yes, we’re meeting Montolbano at seven thirty.”

“Why didn’t you get me up?” I said, scrambling to my feet.

“I just did,” came the snotty reply.

“In time to get dressed and put on my makeup!”

“You’ll look fine.”

“I guess being dead has made you forget everything you ever knew about women,” I said. I forced myself to unclench my teeth, lunged at the closet, and started tossing outfits on the bed.

“Look, we were going to meet in the bar. I’ll have him come to my bungalow instead. That should buy you a few more minutes.”

“Great! Thanks.”

Jeffery Montolbano. Holy shit.
I raced into the bathroom, pulled out my makeup, washed and then made up my face. I went with the more dramatic yellow and brown eye shadow rather than the paler daywear. Eyeliner, lip liner, lipstick. Hair dryer to fluff my bed-head hair. Ready.

Back into the bedroom to pick an outfit.
Jeffery Montolbano.
I sat on the bed and pulled on my panty hose.
Movie star.

Client.
The sensible part of myself was standing off to the side waving her hand for attention as I got my bra hooked.

I selected a pale gold watered-silk sleeveless dress, the skirt of which came to rest a couple of inches above my knee. It had a square neck that worked well, given my height. I added a multistrand necklace of gray pearls and a gold bracelet. I threw on the matching thigh-length jacket and slid on a pair of very high-heeled black pumps. I paused to dither over the rolling briefcase but decided to leave it behind. This was dinner, not a formal meeting, and the case was dorky—practical but dorky.

The cute redheaded bellhop was in the lobby, and he pulled out a large golf umbrella to escort me down the pathways to David’s bungalow. Flowering bushes shivered and shed water as we passed, and I felt the cold spray against my legs. The bungalow was tucked discreetly away behind bushes and trees. A winding walkway led to the front door. We reached the door, but before I could knock the bellhop thrust a thick card into my hand.

“My friend Nu says he drove Jeffery Montolbano out here in the golf cart. Montolbano’s starting to produce now. May even start directing. I’m so going to drive the cart when you guys leave, even if I have to wrestle Nu.” Then in an abrupt change of topic he added, “Maybe you could give this to him?” It was a business card, but one of the new kind that was a flash card and could be read on a computer. It showed the smiling face of the redhead and the words “Toby Wilson, Actor.”

“Who? Nu?” I asked, confused.

Impatient. “No, Montolbano. Thanks.”

“I don’t know if I—”

But he knocked and David answered before I could finish my demurrers.

“Just call when your party is ready to leave, and we’ll send the golf cart so you can stay dry,” Toby said brightly. David gave him five dollars and I used the cover of the tip to stuff the card in my pocket as I stepped over the threshold.

Being a partner clearly rated. There was a sitting room with a gas fireplace. The blue-tinged flames flickered cozily. Sofas, armchairs, and a coffee table surrounded the fireplace, and I saw a cheese platter and a tray with a wine glass and an open bottle of merlot. There was a small garden patio off the sitting room, the plants and potted flowers drooping from the rain, and a separate bedroom. A brief glance through the door showed a four-poster bed adorned with floating draperies.

A man was seated on the sofa, one arm outstretched along the back and a glass of wine in his other hand. I noticed how the light reflected off his perfectly manicured nails. He had glossy black hair flecked lightly with gray. It was long enough to brush the top of his cashmere and silk turtleneck sweater. He stood and turned to face me. It was Jeffery Montolbano. He was gorgeous … and short. I’m no giant, but he was only a few inches taller than me. He came around the sofa, giving me plenty of time to appreciate his chiseled cheekbones, square jaw, lush lower lip, and trim, narrow-hipped body. He held out a hand.

His brown eyes, warm and humorous, were locked on mine, and I found myself unable to look away. His handshake was firm and lasted longer than was strictly necessary. “How do you do? I’m Jeff. You must be Linnet.” He had a basic midwestern American accent that was totally devoid of his famous, faintly European on-screen cadence.