Not Suspicious in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 5 (3 page)

Sitting on the ground, covered in a blanket
and surrounded by Jorge, sympathetic musicians and staff, I was obscured from
the arriving police. However, I could make out Griffin when he arrived with a
panic stricken look of fear on his face. I scrambled to get up as he raced to the
body.

“I’m over here,” I yelled.

Griffin stopped, turned in my direction and
strode towards me.

“I’m okay, but you need to stop…” I didn’t
get a chance to finish my sentence as I was crushed against his chest.

Griffin held me and for a moment I was terrified
that I wasn’t going to be able to breathe.

“They told me a woman was dead. I thought
it was you. I thought I’d lost you.” He buried his head in my shoulder and I
wrapped my arms around him.

“It isn’t me, it was never close to being
me. You need to calm down,” I soothed.

The problem with a man who faces life as
coldly and calmly as Griffin did is that when they truly care about someone,
they have a tendency to lose it completely when there is a threat to that
person.

“You need to stop Ramos,” I said, pulling
away. “The dead woman is her girlfriend.”

That got through to Griffin the way nothing
else could.

“Watch her,” he growled at Jorge and headed
straight for his partner.

I watched Griffin stop Ramos before she
reached the body. I saw her flick her eyes in my direction and I saw the moment
that Griffin told Ramos that her girlfriend had drowned. She stiffened
perceptibly but in no other way did she betray what she was feeling. I admired
her that self-control and I had expected it. Griffin walked her over to where
the body was now lying and she looked down. In that moment I saw nothing on
Ramos’s face. She was blank as if she was somewhere else. Jorge put an arm
around my shoulder and it was only then that I realized that I had tears
rolling down my face again.

“It’ll be okay,” Jorge said as he pulled me
closer and started rubbing my back.

Pressing my face into his chest I shook my
head. There was no way that things were going to be okay.

When Griffin walked back over to me he
looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I could see he
was torn. He badly wanted to take me as far away from this situation as
possible but he couldn’t leave Ramos. I wrapped the blanket further around my
shoulders.

“You had better stay with her,” I said.

Griffin smiled at me gratefully. “Are you
sure? Because if you need me…”

I nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll make sure she gets home,” interrupted
Vale as he stood closely behind me.

I could see the surprise on Jorge’s face.
It was a measure of how worried Griffin was about Ramos that he didn’t even
notice how far into my personal space Vale was standing.

“They’re going to want to interview you
all. I won’t be involved.”

“I understand,” I said. “Take care of
Ramos, she’s the one who needs help right now.”

Griffin nodded sharply, turned around and
walked away. He passed two men coming towards our group. I remembered Griffin
introducing me to them the day before. The younger of the two was Detective
Desmond Pickett. I had spent some of the barbecue yesterday talking to his
wife. Dana Pickett had been new, just like me and had seemed as overwhelmed as
I had by all the other cop partners who already knew each other. Most of the
time she had talked about her new baby girl that she had left for the first
time with her mother so she could attend the barbecue. Proving her mother was
the best of babysitters for a nervous first time mom, we had been interrupted
with a constant stream of photos and messages coming through on her phone. All
designed to reassure the nervous mother that her baby was fine. I had liked
her.

Her husband had seemed very different. He
had not interacted well with the other cops and he had seemed ill at ease. He
stood in stark contrast to his partner, Marty Fletchall. Detective Fletchall
was an older cop. From what I understood he had just got divorced from his
third marriage. He had that older silver fox vibe and had got drunk at the
party. He had also seemed to act a little overly friendly with some of his
coworker’s partners. Nothing that could be deemed inappropriate but it still
gave me that uncomfortable feeling. Of course that could be because the
industry I worked in was well known for the uncomfortable factor at times.
There was always the possibility that I was hypersensitive to that kind of thing.

Fletchall smiled at me as he and Pickett
came closer.

“Miss Trudie Eyre,” he boomed, a little
louder than I thought appropriate at a crime scene. “Your reputation precedes
you. I wondered when I would be graced with one of your cases.”

I wondered if there was a way to make the
man shut up. The band members of Crispy Spider were currently looking at me as
if I had contracted the plague.

Pickett looked as if he was used to having
to apologize for his partner. “What Detective Fletchall means, Miss Eyre, is
that we need to speak to you, and everyone here back at the station.”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue today.

I
shivered in the cold interrogation room.
At no point during the proceedings had anyone suggested that I have a shower
and change my clothes. Now I was desperately trying to stay warm, my hair poking
out in every direction and my damp clothes sticking to me in many uncomfortable
ways. At least someone had thought to provide me with a new blanket as my last
one had become soaked.

The door opened and Detective Fletchall
came through. Grabbing a chair, he sat down. I was surprised that Detective
Pickett was not with him.

Fletchall raked me up and down. I fought
the urge to sneeze to really finish off the drowned rat look that I was
obviously now imitating.

He handed me a coffee. “Here,” he said
gruffly. “This might help.”

And just like that he became my new best
friend. I really am a simple creature. I wrapped my hands around the mug and
let the warmth seep into me.

“Sorry we have to do this. We’ll wrap it up
quick and get you home.”

I was taken aback. My interviews with
Griffin and Ramos had never been this pleasant. They were mostly filled with
sarcasm and accusations. I had thought that was normal. At no time had I
imagined there was a gentler, kinder way to do an interrogation. I should tell
Griffin that, because I had to say, at this moment, I was feeling much more
cooperative than I had ever felt before in an interrogation.

“So, are you up to telling me what
happened?”

I kept the mug clutched in my hand. “I was
looking for Buddy.”

“Who is Buddy?” Fletchall interrupted.

“Oh, Buddy is the goat. He belongs to Vale,
the drummer. He got out of his pen and I was hunting him down.”

Fletchall smiled. “Never a dull moment.”

“No. Well, I found Buddy by the lake. I was
trying to get him to come back to the pen with me and I saw fabric in the
water. I swam out to see what it was and I found Jolena. I dragged her back to
the shore and tried to do CPR on her.” I blinked back the tears that were
welling in my eyes again.

“Why did you start CPR? Was there any
indication that she could be saved?”

I shook my head. “It was probably a stupid
waste of time. I just…I didn’t want her to be dead so I just started and hoped
for the best.”

Fletchall nodded sympathetically. “Was
there anyone else around that you could see?”

I shook my head again. “There wasn’t
anyone. I screamed for help and Jorge, the security guy, came running. He was
the one who called 911.”

“You know you did all you could. From what
we’ve been told so far, she had been dead for a while. Nothing you did would
have saved her.”

I appreciated what he was trying to do. “Thank
you for saying that but it doesn’t really make me feel that much better.”

“It usually doesn’t,” said Fletchall. “But
you need to hold onto that or for the next few days you are going to constantly
be wondering what else you could have done. That isn’t going to help you or
anyone else.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Fletchall cleared his throat. “You knew it
was Jolena Aaron when you pulled her ashore?”

“Yes. I didn’t know her surname, but I met
her yesterday at the barbecue,” I said.

“How did you meet her?” Fletchall asked,
his tone becoming a little less sympathetic as if he was trying to strive for a
bit of distance.

“Ramos introduced her to me,” I said.

“How were they acting towards each other?”
Fletchall asked.

“They seemed happy.” I could say that
honestly. If I had never seen Jolena Aaron at the mansion I would have never
guessed they were anything other than a loving couple.

“Was there any reason why she would be at
that property last night?” Fletchall asked, a frown on his face.

I could understand. From an outsider’s
point of view, this whole situation did not add up at all.

“I don’t know why she would have been there
last night,” I said carefully. “I do know she has been at the mansion
previously though.”

Fletchall looked up, not quite showing the
level of interest that I would have assumed that statement merited.

“What was she doing there?”

I grimaced. I had no loyalty to Jolena but
I knew that what I was going to say was going to hurt Ramos. Despite the fact
our relationship could best be described as barely civil, I really did not want
to hurt her this way.

“Jolena had visited the mansion a few
nights ago as a fan.”

“Go on.”

“She was involved in a threesome with one
of the band members which became violent and she was removed from the
property.”

Fletchall didn’t look surprised. “We are
aware that there was a previous casual encounter between her and Ash Weston. Is
there anything else you can add?”

I shook my head, a little shocked. I had
not expected Ash to admit to knowing Jolena. I was used to working in an
industry where the first and only reaction was always to lie.

“Is there anything else that you can think
of that may help with the investigation?”

I shook my head again. As far as I was
concerned, that was pretty much it.

“Anything,” Fletchall repeated.

Before I could answer, the door to the
interrogation room opened, and Detective Pickett and another man walked in.

“What are you doing?” growled Fletchall,
throwing an irritated look at his partner.

“This is Miss Eyre’s attorney,” Pickett
said patiently.

He must have seen my look of confusion. The
only attorney I had ever used was Reggie Goodman, Monique’s husband. I had
never seen this man before in my life.

“The record company has organized
representation for yourself as well as the band,” Pickett explained.

I was stunned. Never before in my life of
dealing with celebrities had one of them made the effort to provide me with a
lawyer. It almost made me feel like a valued member of a team. I still wasn’t
sure which team this lawyer was from. But still, I was part of a team which
didn’t make sure the important people were okay and then forgot about me. That
made me feel special.

“Miss Eyre, my name is Harold O’Brien. I
need your consent to act as your attorney.”

I waited a second before nodding. Despite
the fact that as far as interrogations went, this one had been better than any
of my previous ones, I was tired, cold and wet. The sooner I was out of here
the happier I was going to be.

Fletchall’s features tightened.

“I really don’t know anything else,” I
said, hoping to lighten the blow.

I could see I was wasting my breath.
Fortunately for me, it seemed Fletchall was saving his ire for his partner.

“Miss Eyre,” my new lawyer said, indicating
that I should follow him.

I walked past Fletchall and Pickett as they
glared at each other.

“I think there’s trouble in paradise,” said
O’Brien when we were safely out of earshot.

I giggled, releasing some of the pent up
emotion that I had been holding onto through the day. “I think you’re right.”

Following my lawyer, I had another shock.
The band was waiting for me. It seemed that the day was full of surprises. Ash,
of course, looked completely bored with the entire situation. Personally I
thought that was a brave move considering I was sure that he was the one who
had known Jolena the best, even if it had been for only a short time. Vale
smiled at me encouragingly. The other three members of the band had also waited
for me. Dion, Sewell and Tim played guitar, bass and keyboard respectively. I
don’t think I was emphasizing enough how truly touched I was that the guys had
waited for me. I had never had any clients do that for me before and I was at
this point willing to forgive every chauvinistic, stupid statement any of these
guys had made.

“She’s here now, can we go?”

Except for Ash. Obviously the other guys
had used peer pressure, or whatever leverage required, to keep him here. Still,
I was going to look on the positive side and, for me, support from four out of
the five was an amazing result.

I smiled at them. “Thanks for waiting for
me.”

“Didn’t really have a choice.”

Once again, I was going to ignore Ash.

“You okay?” Vale asked quietly.

“She’s fine,” said Ash impatiently as he
pushed himself away from the wall he had been leaning against. “I don’t know
why you need to baby her. She’s more capable than the entire lot of us put
together.” With that he stalked out towards the front of the station, leaving
the rest of us looking on in shock. It wasn’t often that Ash complimented
anyone and regardless of how it was delivered, that was a compliment.

The lawyer, obviously used to dealing with
people in the music industry, was the first to recover and cleared his throat.
“I am sure I don’t need to remind any of you to contact me if there are any
further issues with the police. And can you gentlemen just tone it down for a
bit. I’ve got a full schedule for the next few days and the last thing I need
is you guys getting involved in a media circus. At the moment we have managed
to keep this quiet but you know better than anyone that this is going to blow
up in no time at all. When that happens do not be tempted to leave the grounds
of the mansion without a security detail, or without letting people know where
you are going. Do not comment to anyone and do not do anything stupid.”

The guys gave him their best innocent looks
but, as I had thought, Harold O’Brien had obviously been working in this
industry for a while.

“Just keep your heads down,” he warned.