Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) (8 page)

“Whoa!” Anne said. “What do you mean by ‘make their lives difficult’?”
 

“All I want is them to leave me alone. Us, I mean. Leave us alone. Beyond that, I don’t give a good goddamn what they do with their bodies or their lives or their time.”

Anne looked at me, shocked at my callousness. “He’s hitting her.”

“And she doesn’t want to be saved from him” My voice got a little loud and beside me, Stevie flinched.

“What the hell, Drusilla. She’s twenty-two? Maybe twenty-three?”

I pointed at my sister. “So’s she. Color me not impressed. Courtney’s old enough to take care of herself.” Given the number of times daily I doubted whether Stevie could take care of herself, perhaps my certainty was misplaced. However, I was well aware of what I’d been capable of at twenty-two, so it was possible. “Right now the person I’m concerned with is me. Us. Let’s approach this problem as though you and I matter, then worry about her. If Courtney wants help to get out of this relationship with Roger Sabo, then fabulous, I’m all for it. But my primary goal right now is to help us.”

Her mouth opened and I was sure that one of Anne’s patented contrarian discussions was on the way. But then all of the air went out of her and she deflated. “Okay. So what do we do?”

“We make their lives difficult, they back off, and then we leave them alone.”

“And nothing else, right?” Anne said.

“What else would there be?”
 

“I’ve seen when you get angry at people,” she said.

“Isn’t that the whole reason you brought me with you to that interview in the first place?”
 

The three of us sat there silently for a moment.
 

I sat up straighter. My back told me it didn’t appreciate the extra strain. “We need this lawsuit gone, Anne.”

“Okay. So where do we start?”

I opened my mouth as though I were about to contribute something fantastic, and then like always I turned to Stevie. “What do you suggest?”

“What do we know about Roger Sabo?”

“He’s a creep, and he leads a charmed life.”

Anne typed on her computer. “What else?”

Stevie raised her hand, as though we were sitting in class and she wanted to add to the conversation. She’d never sat in a classroom, though, so that was behavior she would have learned from television. “This morning I did a few basic web searches on him. There’s almost no information on him. Every mention originated with
Girls Becoming Stars
.”

“Like he only existed for the show,” Anne said.

“Like he came out of nowhere,” I added. “Roger Sabo’s not his real name.”

That happens to be a trick Stevie and I are familiar with.

Anne nodded. “Okay, well, there’s an investigator we sometimes use at the magazine who can look into that.”

“
People
magazine uses investigators?”

She shook her head. “Sometimes, but this guy works for the other one.”

Like I can keep track of who Anne writes for on a weekly basis. Given the differing types of assignments she was getting, it was impossible for me to guess.

“He can look into Roger’s background. Find out why he keeps getting away with murder. He probably has contacts at the LAPD.”

“It’s fairly clear Sabo has contacts at the LAPD.”

Anne shook her head. “No, the investigator. He’s a former cop.”

Stevie raised her hand again. “I did quite a bit of reading about this show, and I have to say I don’t understand the premise.”

Anne shrugged. “What’s to understand?”

“There were these eight young women who came to Los Angeles to find work—”

“See, you’re already showing that you have a different point of view. They came to become megastars. They were the prettiest girls in their hometown, singers, models, whatever, and they wanted to hit the big time. Only they discovered that everyone in Los Angeles was the prettiest, most glamorous person in their hometown, and they’re all waiting tables at the Daily Grill. I watched the second episode last week or something and it’s all about a couple of them being told by casting agents they need to lose twenty pounds if they want to get sent on auditions. They’re already stick thin, and they have to lose twenty more.”
 

“There’s pretty, and then there’s L.A. pretty,” I said.

“Exactly. The show found these eight however they find the guinea pigs for these reality shows and they brought them to L.A. and showed them on the grind for finding work in the entertainment business. And they were on TV for their first job, so that was a huge step above everyone else who’d just arrived in town and had to lose twenty pounds.” Anne clicked something on her computer. “It was clear by the end of season one that most of them had lost the weight.”
 

“How old were they when this started?”

“Oh, I know this one,” Stevie said. “According to the press release, they ranged between eighteen and twenty.”

Anne clicked her tongue. “Which means anywhere between seventeen and twenty-four. Everyone lies about their ages around here.”

My sister read the screen of the laptop. “We know why Courtney was on the show. What did Roger do on it?”

“He was an assistant producer,” Anne said. “And now there’s this reunion show being planned. I guess he wants in on it.”

“How is an assistant producer different from a regular producer?” I asked.

“Oh my God,” Anne said. “There are so many kinds of producers. There’s line producers and executive producers and producers who are just the managers of one of the stars of the show. This is going to take a while.”

I waved my hand in the air, telling her to continue.

“You’re certain they didn’t know one another beforehand?” Stevie asked.

Anne nodded while she typed. “That’s a good point. I already have an interview set up with one of the producers...executive producers. That’s what you think of when you hear the word ‘producer.’ His name’s Micah Schlegel. We can find out what we can about what Roger and Courtney were up to when the show was in production.”

“How many producers does one show need?”

“Do you not know about the kinds of producers there are?”

I shook my head. “Not unless that’s important.”

She shook her head.

“You were supposed to do this interview with Courtney. Did you get any contact information for any of the other girls on the show? Maybe one of them kept in contact with her?”
 

Damn, Anne could type like a maniac. She could give Stevie a run for her money. “That is a great idea.”

“When did this show go off the air?” Stevie said.

Anne clicked a few things, her face lighted with the strange pale glow from the screen. “Almost two years ago exactly.”

“What has Courtney been doing since then?”

Anne clicked on something. “I don’t know. She just moved back to L.A. about a week ago.”
 

“Moved back from where?” Stevie asked.

“Broken Arrow, Oklahoma,” I said. “You should hear that girl’s accent, Stevie, honestly, it’s to die for.”

“I gather I’m hearing it
right now
,” my sister said. The furrow was back at the top of her nose.

Oops. Just thinking about all those rich vowels that poured out of Courtney’s mouth, I’d changed my accent. Probably shouldn’t have done that in front of a civilian.

In fact, Anne had noticed my little switch and was staring at me. “Man, you’re really good with accents. You totally sounded like you were from there.”

“Mimicry. Like a parlor trick.” I needed to change the subject and get Anne to stop thinking about me and accents. “Why did she go back to Oklahoma? The show had
just
ended. Wouldn’t that be the time to strike in Hollywood? While the iron was hot and she still had some fame?”

Anne stared off into space, contemplating my question and forgetting her own. “Maybe she was burned out?”

“Two years ago she would have been twenty-one. Or something like that.”

Anne shrugged. “But she’d already been on the show for two years. And reality TV can chew you up and spit you out.” She shook her head. “Television’s gotten crazy. All of my cousins are thinking of getting the hell out and going into investment banking, to get some stability in their lives.”

I pointed to Stevie. “Find out what Courtney was doing back in Oklahoma.” To Anne I said, “You find out what she’s been doing here since she came back.”

“And what are you going to be doing, while we’re doing all of this?” Anne asked.
 

“Yesterday Courtney signs an affidavit saying we assaulted Roger and her. This morning she calls you, says she wants to talk to me. Why would she do that?”

We all looked at one another. Anne shrugged.

“Exactly,” I said. “After you find out some of these things, I’m going to have myself a nice long chat with Courtney.”
 

Stevie shook her head. “That is a terrible idea.”

“You think everything I do is a terrible idea.”

She waited until a few seconds had passed before nodding in agreement.

“You are so mean to me, Stevie. Anne, give me Courtney’s number.”

AS SOON AS I told Courtney who was calling, she burst into tears and cried her way through saying she was sorry,
oh my God
she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do that would help me. She had to side with Roger.

If that were true and she had no choice, she wouldn’t have called me. She either wanted me to tell her everything was all right, or she wanted something from me.

In the absence of all other data, begin with the expectation that people want something from you. Which was fine. After all, I wanted something from her: to drop her affidavit. As a bonus, if she could help cause trouble for Roger, so much the better.
 

“Let’s calm down, love. I can’t talk to you like this. Take a few deep breaths. Breathe in...hold it...breathe out.”

She actually did it. And she did become remarkably calmer after two breaths.

“Is there a color that makes you feel calmer?”

“Well...blue’s my favorite color.”

“Blue’s
perfect
. Okay. Just feel that color flow through your entire body.”

Within a few seconds she was relaxed and the tears were done.
 

“Wow, that was amazing,” she said.

The next step was to get her to start saying, “Yes.” Saying “Yes” would make it easier for her to agree with me about a lot of things. It’s an old trick, but it works. “Is Roger with you right now?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Are you alone? Now, Courtney, I know you’re far from home and far from your family. You feel alone, don’t you?”

“Well....” She didn’t agree, because maybe that would feel too disloyal to Roger.
 

“No, he ain’t up yet.”
 

“Okay, so it’s just us?” When she murmured, “Yes,” I responded, “Does he sometimes make you feel uneasy?”

“Yes.”
 

“Courtney, you’re between Roger and me on this issue. And it’s hard, because you want to support your friends. My family has a saying, though. ‘Don’t borrow trouble.’ Have you ever heard that?”

“We say that, too!” she said.
 

“If you had your family here, what would they tell you? They would tell you not to get involved in this, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, but—”

“But you don’t want to tell them about what’s happened, because you’re afraid to tell them about Roger?”

She let out the kind of sigh that signified she was letting go. “Yes.”

“Okay. I think you might be happier if you get permission to leave this situation from someone who’s not me and not Roger. Is there anyone in this area who you trust? Someone who makes you feel as secure as you do with your family?”
 

She was quiet so long the only way I knew she was still there was her breathing.
 

“Maybe you have someone you trust to help you figure your way out of this?”

“Well, there is one person.”

Fabulous
, I thought.
 

“Will you come with me?” she asked.
 

“Of course I will.” I high-fived Stevie, who’d sat next to me during the phone call, knitting.
 

And that was how I ended up meeting Courtney in a church parking lot in Tarzana.

*
 
*
 
*

When Courtney told me where to meet her in Tarzana, Stevie looked up the address, and then checked the address of where Courtney had worked when she was on the show. All of the girls on the show had had some kind of “day job” to show how they were supporting themselves while waiting for their big break, and Courtney had worked as a receptionist at a place that did financial counseling for people with credit troubles. On my way to my meet with Courtney, I took a roundabout detour by a small one-story strip mall in Panorama City, north of Van Nuys.
 

Panorama City was melodically named but not quite as easy on the eyes. Every street seemed to be four or six lanes wide, and every business had gigantic signs to catch the eye of the passing driver. More Hispanic, less business park development than other nearby areas of the Valley. I was glad for Stevie’s exact directions on how to get to the strip mall, because there was one on every block of the Valley, it seemed, and there were so many names packed onto the signs by the curb that, even if I could have read them, I couldn’t have read them all in the time it took to drive by them. This one had twenty shops crammed into a large L-formation, including a gyros shop, a beauty salon, and a
lavandería
. The storefront catty-cornered from the gyros shop had a white plastic sign with black plastic letters and a simple, unadorned cross on it. According to Stevie, that sign should read Hitchcock Christian Financial Counseling. I stared at the letters until they rearranged themselves into the word Hitchcock.

 
I got a feeling for the neighborhood, and then I headed to Tarzana.

Most people hear the name “Tarzana” and think the place was named after the character Tarzan. And then there are the people who think the character was named after the place. In fact, both came from the same source: author Edgar Rice Burroughs had a ranch named Tarzana, where he wrote about his famous character. One little-remembered characteristic of the whole suburb was that it was originally designed to be an all-white community, where it would be against the law to sell property to anyone who wasn’t Caucasian.