Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (11 page)

"We
should have read the signs. Elmo has been nervous and pacing," Callie
said.

I
reached above my head for the small portable radio resting on the table and
punched the On button. An announcer interrupted programming.
"If you're
listening in the Valley, we have reports coming in of an earthquake in that
area. Magnitude not official yet, but we 're hearing from listeners that they
believe it to be in the range of a 5.9 to 6.2."

Callie
tried to crawl out of our hiding place, but I pulled her back. "Let's hang
out here a minute. There could be aftershocks, or worst case, this could be the
foreshock to a bigger one." I could feel her tense up, and I pulled her
body toward mine. "I can now say that when we even begin to make love, the
earth moves," I grinned.

"You're
moving. You can't live in a place where your furniture gets rearranged by Mother
Nature!"

I
didn't reply. At forty-one, my life was semisolid. Where I lived, what I did
for a living. Her remark about my moving was a reminder that a relationship for
anyone over twenty came with a lot of baggage, like who would give up what in
order to be together.

Be
together,
my mind quickly edited my
own remarks,
the woman hasn't even slept with you yet, much less determined
we should be together. Besides, what would living with Callie Rivers be like?

"We're
getting up," she said, "I'm not spending my life under a table."

It
would be like
that, I thought.
It
would be total loss of control. It would be turning my every decision over for
a second opinion. It would be constant discussions about dog jowls on
pillowcases, and the trashing of comfortable clothes, and reminders not to
drive recklessly or swear. Living with Callie Rivers would be bringing an
earthquake into my life. I just need to enjoy the moment, the sensuality, and
the companionship and not go down the forever-after road.

A
second tremor hit and Callie scurried back under the table with me, burying her
head in my chest.

But
she feels so damned good,
I thought.

We
drove the Jeep over to Van Nuys Auto Repair, where Marty, a weather-beaten guy
in his sixties, strolled silently around the bashed-in sides and top and looked
up at me with a grin. "Run her in a demolition derby?"

"Something
like that," I replied.

"Insurance
payin'?"

When
I told him that it was, he went off to find me a serviceable rental while I
took a call from Mom and Dad, who were wanting to make sure that the three of
us were okay. They'd just heard about the earthquake.

"Earthquakes
kill people!" Mother announced as if we hadn't figured that out. "So
you three should think about moving back here." I refrained from saying
that we were in more danger from human beings than earthquakes, but instead
sent her our love.

I
just wanted to sit across from Callie and look into her eyes and forget what
was going on around us for an hour, so I suggested lunch in Beverly Hills. On
the drive over, I asked her point-blank, "So, you're psychic. How come you
didn't know the earthquake was coming?"

"I
knew it was highly probable in this lunar cycle, but I didn't pay attention. I
wasn't focused on it. Being psychic plays out in different ways for different
people. For me, the 'knowing' is random, unless I focus on the issue or unless
someone out there causes me to focus on it."

"Out
there would be...?"

"Out
there." Callie casually extended her arms to take in the entire universe.

"Got
it." I nodded.

"Now,
don't make fun." She grinned at me, but her voice was warning.

"I'm
not. It's just pretty far out..." Seeing her raised eyebrow, I added,
"there."

I
parked our rented white Ford Taurus at the curb next to Il Faccio, one of my
favorite lunch spots. As we pulled up, there was Barrett Silvers, as combed and
curried as a show pony, bidding a studious-looking woman goodbye on the
sidewalk.

"What
are you doing here?" Her voice cracked when she saw me.

"Having
lunch and trying to find out why, ever since I last saw you, someone's been
hanging dead rats on my door, running me off a road in Texas, ransacking my
house, and trying to kill me. And in my spare time, I've been trying to find
out who tried to kill you."

"Writers!"
She smirked. "No one tried to kill me. I mixed my medication. I'd taken a
muscle relaxant for stress, and I didn't know it would react with the other
medication I'd taken. Just a mix-up, but a serious one. I was lucky."

I
had to admit she delivered this explanation in a very convincing manner.

"Introduce
me to the beautiful woman in front of whom we've been airing our dirty
laundry," she requested, and I introduced Callie. Barrett virtually
undressed Callie with her eyes, lingering on her breasts and occasionally
moving up to her hair.

"Are
you a writer?" Barrett asked.

"A
psychic, which means she knows better than to pitch to you." I casually
blocked Callie from Barrett's view. "And the Judas kiss?"

Barrett
looked a little too puzzled before she finally answered my question. "Oh,
the Latin guy? He was just a messenger returning a stone artifact a friend had
borrowed for an art show." Turning to Callie, she said, "You're
gorgeous."

"My
messenger service never kisses me when they deliver." I interrupted
Barrett's stare, not liking her coming on to Callie. "So where's the stone
now?"

"That's
what my insurance adjuster wants to know. Apparently I had it in my hand when I
had the attack, and somewhere between Orca's and the ER, it disappeared. Personally
I think a waiter or med tech took it. It's not outrageously expensive, but
worth some cash."

"Bzzzzz!"
I made a game-show buzzer sound and simultaneously yanked her car keys out of
her hand, dangling them in the air as if to say we'd both be receiving our mail
here unless she told me what was going on.

She
sagged against the car, resigned to satisfying my demand. "Okay. Talbot
wanted us to sign Eddie Smith. Nobody signs Eddie for under a squillion
dollars, so it ends up we have to settle for Benny Kaye. Only Benny knows we've
already approached Eddie first, so there's an ego thing." Barrett lowered
her voice, "Isaacs scouts around to find out what Benny's into, so we can
send him a little ice breaker before Talbot has to call to talk a deal. Turns
out, Benny's into snuff films."

"That's
a bit more disconcerting than delivering hookers, isn't it?" I said.

Callie
interrupted to ask what a snuff film was, and when I told her it was a film
where people agree to be killed while having sex, her face went ashen.

"Anyway,
Isaacs insisted I get these films off the black market. I just freaked and said
I couldn't do it. When I talked to you at Orca's, I didn't know Isaacs had
called it off, so I was still crazed. That's all."

"You
see? Confession is good for the soul." I kissed her on the cheek and she
snapped her head back reflexively. Barrett knew that Spider Eye's kiss had
something to do with her collapse at Orca's. She was just too terrified and in
too deep to admit it to me or the cops.

"We'll
do lunch!" She waved to us as she hurried off to her car. "And bring
your friend." She winked at Callie.

"She's
lying," Callie said as Barrett drove away. "She's lying to cover for
Isaacs."

We
got back in the car, not really in the mood for lunch anymore. "Why did
you kiss her?" Callie asked.

"Who?"

"Barrett.
You kissed her goodbye."

"It
was a Hollywood kiss. Did you see the way she was looking at you? If I hadn't
been trying to get information from her, I would have broken her
kneecaps."

"Don't
be so violent," Callie said, and I could see she was still troubled by my
kissing Barrett.

"Look,
I have no feelings for Barrett, and I don't sleep around. In fact, in my entire
life I've slept with very few people. Although I'm unclear why you're
interested since we're never going to sleep together."

"I
didn't ask you who you'd slept with."

"Sorry,
sharing violation," I mocked.

"I
just thought the kissing was unnecessary. That's all. From a hygienic
perspective. There's a lot of disease out there."

Her
clinical approach made me grin. "That wasn't kissing. This is
kissing." I leaned across the front seat and kissed her on her bare shoulder,
then on her neck and up around her ear, and finally on her mouth. She snuggled
into me, enjoying it, before realizing we were still parked in front of Il
Faccio's.

She
pulled back, slightly undone. "There are people watching us."

I
glanced up to see a couple, frozen in mid-bite, staring at us through the
restaurant windows.

"Let's
go," Callie said.

"They're
just jealous that we're having a better lunch hour than they are."

That
afternoon, I sat in my office and mentally rewound Barrett's story about
Hollywood's second-hottest comedian Benny Kaye as Callie studied astrology
charts on her laptop. I wondered what had happened with Hollywood's number-one
comic, Eddie Smith. If Marathon needed Benny Kaye right away, they must have
screwed up their deal with Eddie.
What did Eddie want that the studio
couldn't deliver? Someone on the studio lot has to know.

I
dialed the studio and asked for the public relations office, telling the young
woman who answered that I was from the
LA Times
and we were getting a
list of all of the upcoming studio events for a possible series in the business
section. Could she tell me what was in the offing? She rattled off a list of
events that included a soundstage groundbreaking, a premiere for the new
motion picture
Action World,
and a stockholders' meeting. I asked where
and when the stockholders' meeting was taking place. She said this Friday on
the main lot. All shareholders were invited.

I
hung up and called my broker, saying I needed to buy a few shares of Marathon
and I needed him to fax me proof of the transaction. Callie brightened, saying
this was going to be an exciting Friday. I told her I hoped so in light of the
fact that this lunch had cost me five hundred dollars.

"We'll
eat on Friday, sell the stock on Monday, and it'll be a free lunch," she
said.

"No
such thing as a free lunch," we said in unison and laughed.

For
a brief moment, I was beyond the mere sexual wanting of her, basking in the
comfort of her company, of her quick mind, and of our shared sense of humor. A
gnawing little piece of me dreaded that moment when she might say she had to go
back home. For me, she was starting to feel like home.

Friday
at eleven a.m., we were at the Marathon gates, an imposing stone archway with
Olympic runners passing the torch overhead. The security guard located our name
on the shareholders' list and cleared us to drive on. The lot was crowded, and
we were forced to park a football field away from the soundstage where the
stockholders' meeting would take place. My next-to-the-little toe was getting
that weird cramp that makes me limp and curse the Ferragamo family who, for
hundreds of dollars a pair, still couldn't see their way clear to put padding
in my shoes!

We
entered the soundstage, which had been converted into a giant press release,
with twenty-foot movie posters hanging from wires all around the room, touting
successes past and present, alongside equally large slabs of dangling cardboard
that chronicled each movie's title, year, stars, awards, and box office gross.
A sea of circular tables dotted the soundstage that boasted a seating capacity
of two thousand. People milled along the buffet line picking up coffee and
danish and staring at the gigantic ice sculpting of a man frozen in mid-run,
ice droplets collected on his huge brow. The perfect symbol for the harried, frightened
studio executive.

Around
the room, corporate executives mingled with Brentwood yuppies and the
occasional elderly couple from Des Moines who made the trip to check on the
health of their ten shares. Studio shareholders' meetings were notoriously a
time for hype and hoopla, and the Marathon meeting was no exception. Big
gold-foil-wrapped M-shaped chocolates acted as paperweights, securing the
Marathon annual report to the tables in front of each chair.

I
picked up an annual report and thumbed through it, noting page after page of
glossy 8x10 photos of CEO Talbot cutting ribbons, attending premieres, and
shaking hands with stars. I flipped to the financial data. The bottom line
message was clearly, "We've gone from red to black," and the adjusted
gross of 784.6 million dollars verified that. Talbot, or Isaacs, or somebody
was a miracle worker.

Isaacs
banged his gavel on the tabletop podium, and in a tone just this side of
saccharine, asked everyone to find a seat. The show was about to begin. Callie
seemed fixated on Isaacs as he launched into a tribute to Talbot, calling him a
Hollywood giant and a man of character, strength, and virtue. After fifteen
minutes, he turned the microphone over to Talbot, who thanked Isaacs profusely,
crediting him for much of the year's success.