Undercover in High Heels (4 page)

“Oh sure. Tons of fun. Watching a bunch of pampered actresses while they open their fan mail. My idea of a good time.”

“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

There was that growl again.

“Look, I’m
really
, really sorry. I
so
didn’t mean to get you in trouble. And I’ll
so
make it up to you.”

One eyebrow hitched up. “Make it up to me? I’ve gone from working homicide to spending twenty-four/seven babysitting a bunch of second-rate actors on the
Magnolia Lane
set. How the hell do you think you’re going to make that up to me?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, maybe I could talk to your captain, maybe if I just explained this—Wait. Did you say
Magnolia Lane
?”

He nodded, giving me a “yeah, so?” look.

“Ohmigod.
The Magnolia Lane
?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Ohmigod, are you freaking kidding?Only daily on
Entertainment Tonight
. It’s, like, the hottest show on TV. These are no minor celebs. The star, Mia Carletto, was up for an Emmy last year. Wow, you actually get
to meet Mia Carletto. You should be thanking me!”

His eyes narrowed again. Apparently he didn’t watch as much TV as I did.

“So, what will you be doing? Will you get to hang out with the cast? Go to parties with them? Ohmigod—are you going to the Emmys?”

Ramirez muttered, “Jesus, ” under his breath, then took a step back and rubbed a hand through his hair until it stood up in little tufts. “No, I’m not going to the Emmys. Miss Carletto has been getting threatening letters and her publicist just happens to be my captain’s daughter-in-law. So, lucky me, I’m supposed to keep an eye on the set until we find out where they’re coming from.”

“Ohmigod, I heard about those letters on
Access Hollywood
. That is so cool!”

Ramirez gave me a look.

“Well, I mean, not cool that she’s getting threatening letters, but so cool that you’ll get to meet her. Oh, oh—do you think you could get me on the set? Just to get an autograph?”

“No!” Ramirez yelled loudly enough to make my downstairs neighbor peek through her chintz curtains at us. He rubbed another hand through his hair, then spoke through gritted teeth. “No, I don’t want you anywhere near that set, do you hear me? I don’t want you anywhere near my work. Ever again. Thanks to you, a cranked-up felon is tooling around L.A. in a stolen car and I’m on Hollyweird detail. I want you as far away from me as possible. Got it?”

Ouch. Apparently my boyfriend—wait,
friend
—thought I was a total jinx. A less confident girl might start to take this personally. “I said I was sorry. I mean,
really, really sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I just…I mean, when I heard your message…I kind of…”

“Freaked out?” he supplied.

I nodded. “Major freakout. I’m so, so sorry, ” I said again, honestly meaning it.

Ramirez must have noticed, because his face softened. He reached one hand out and lightly brushed the backs of his knuckles against my cheek. “I have to admit, ” he said, “the jealous thing? Kind of cute.”

I sniffed. “Cute, huh?”

He nodded. “Very. And it’s a damn good thing, too, ’cause you’re a whole lot of trouble.”

“I know. I’m amazingly sorry, ” I said again, hoping that if I said it enough times maybe I could make this whole thing just go away.

“I know, ” he whispered, his eyes starting to do that sexy, glazed-over thing as they roved my face.

His hand trailed around to the nape of my neck, his fingers lightly massaging there until I felt myself break out in goose bumps, sending a tingle straight down my spine. He leaned in close. I could smell the scent of Ivory and Tide as his lips brushed mine. The tingle turned into an all-out quiver as our tongues touched.

Suddenly my insides were gooier than a Snickers bar in the hands of a first-grader.

“So, does this mean I’m forgiven?” I mumbled onto his lips.

He leaned back and raised one dark eyebrow. “
Forgiven
is a strong word.”

“Maybe I can make it up to you?” I said coyly, trailing one finger down the center of his chest.

The other eyebrow shot up. “What did you have in mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” I slid my hand lower, toying with the top button of his jeans.

He gave a small groan.

Then his pager went off.

He gave a
large
groan.

He pulled away, glancing at the readout. “Shit. The captain. I’ve gotta go.”

And I swear he looked so dejected that I felt myself pack for that guilt trip again. He really didn’t deserve this. As cool as I might think hanging out all day on the
Magnolia Lane
set was, I knew it wasn’t Ramirez’s gig. Ramirez belonged working homicide. He was a cop who enjoyed all that gritty detective stuff, and he was damn good at it, too.

As he got into his SUV and pulled down the street, I vowed that, despite how little faith he might have in my abilities, I
would
make this up to him.

“Well, it seems clear to me, ” Dana said, popping a soy nut into her mouth. “Blow job. A little attention to Mr. Winky and I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”

“Know what? I think maybe you really are a sex addict.” I shook my head, blonde hair whipping my cheeks. “No, that’s not the kind of ‘making it up to him’ I mean. I mean I need to make this right. I need to get him reassigned back to homicide.”

“I give up. How do you do that?”

I shrugged. “Good question.”

We were sitting on my futon, watching last season’s DVD of
Magnolia Lane
for inspiration, trying to come up with some way to get Ramirez not only to forgive me, but somehow to put back the Humpty
Dumpty of his career that I’d shoved off the wall the moment I’d walked into the Cabana Club.

I watched the screen, digging a hand into my own bag of snacks, Keebler fudge cookies. (As far as I was concerned, anything with the word
soy
in its name didn’t qualify as a comfort food. And after my encounter with Ramirez, I needed all the chocolate-covered comfort I could get.)

“Ashley, your husband will be home any minute.”

“Oh, he has no idea about us, the fool. Kiss me, Chad!”

“No, Ashley, it’s not right. What if he sees?”

“He’s blind to our love, Chad.”

“Oh, Ashley, you know I want to. I’ve wanted to since the moment I saw you. It’s just…”

“What, Chad? What’s wrong?”

“Oh come on, just kiss her!” Dana yelled at the TV. Then she crunched down hard on a salted soy nut. “Chad is gorgeous. She’s absolutely insane if she doesn’t kiss him. Who wouldn’t want to kiss him? I’d kiss him. In fact, I’d do more than kiss him…”Dana trailed off, mumbling to herself.

“Chad, I’ve never felt this way before.”

“Me either, Ashley. I swear, I’ve cut every woman’s lawn on Magnolia Lane, but yours—yours is special.”

“Oh, Chad!”

“Oh, Ashley!”

“Oh for the love of God, kiss him already!” Dana threw a soy nut at the TV.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Fine. Great. Why?” She crunched down on another nut.

“Um, no reason, ” I mumbled.

“Kiss me, Chad. Kiss me like you mean it.”

Dana leaned forward in her seat.

“I can’t wait another second to do just that, Ashley. Come here…”

“Wait—what’s that?”

“It sounds like a car door.”

“My husband. He’s home!”

“Argh!” Dana threw the bag of soy nuts down on the carpet as Chad and Ashley broke apart. Ashley stuffed her would-be lover in the closet as her husband came up the stairs and Dana mumbled, “Lousy timing, ” under her breath.

“Um, so did Therapist Max mention anything about the side effects of abstinence?”

Dana paused. “Sorry. I’m a little tense lately.”

“You know, maybe celibacy just isn’t for you.”

Dana shook her head. “No way. Two more days and I get a chip. I can do this. I am experiencing the joy of positive being as a single, non-physically dependent entity.” She picked the bag up and crunched down hard on another nut.

“Oh, yeah. I can feel the joy from here.”

Dana ignored me. “What are you going to do about Ramirez?”

I blew out a long breath. “I don’t know.” I watched Mia Carletto, aka Ashley, try to convince her husband that the gardener’s boxers really belonged to her.
“Maybe I could make it up to him by helping him with his new assignment. He said something about those letters that Mia’s been getting. Threatening fan mail.”

“Oh, I totally read about that in
People
last week. She’s, like, got a stalker or something. Ohmigod—lightbulb moment!” Dana popped up off the futon, jostling the soy nuts onto the floor as she started hopping up and down. “We could find the stalker for Ramirez! He’d totally forgive you then.”

“Dana, Ramirez is a cop. What makes you think we could find a stalker any easier than he could?”

“Uh, hello?” Dana rolled her eyes. “Ramirez doesn’t even watch
Magnolia Lane
. We know Mia way better than he does. I mean, come on, you watch
Access Hollywood
daily.”

She had a point there. I’ll admit it: I was a celebrity gossip junkie. I religiously watched every single Barbara Walters interview, I never left the house on the night of the Emmys, Oscars, or SAG Awards, and I bought copies of
Star
and
People
on the sly every week. I was even known—on very rare occasions—to use words like
Bennifer
,
Brangelina
, and
TomKat
. I know. It’s a disease.

Still, I wasn’t convinced our knowledge of Mia’s latest boy-toy fling could really outweigh a badge and a gun.

“How much could we possibly do without even being on the set of the show?” I reasoned.

Dana waved me off, switching from the hops to a little footwork-in-place thing. “So, we get on the set. How hard can that be? Look, I’ll call my agent in the morning and see if he can get me on as an extra or something. And maybe you could see if they need a
costume designer or a wardrobe assistant? I’m sure you’ve got some connections, right?”

I bit my lip. “Well, my college roommate did do wardrobe for that cop drama on FX.”

“Perfect! I bet she totally knows someone. Ohmigod, this is going to be so fun. We’ll, like, totally be undercover again!”

Dana was referring, of course, to last year, when, against my better judgment, I’d let her dress me as a hooker in order to suss out a murder. Unfortunately, that evening had ended in a dead body. Not an experience I was eager to repeat.

“I don’t know…” I trailed off, picturing Ramirez’s face that afternoon. I had a feeling that if I showed up within ten feet of his assignment he’d likely pop a blood vessel. The words
as far away from me as possible
echoed in my head.

Dana started jogging in place, bobbing her knees up and down like little pistons. “Come on, Maddie! We could so do this. You’ve got a good track record, girl!”

I hesitated to mention that both times I’d ferreted out a killer in the past it was more by accident than sheer brilliance.

On the other hand, this whole “reassignment” thing was all my fault. And sitting on my futon watching
Magnolia Lane
reruns wasn’t doing anything to improve my rapidly crumbling love life. If I were going to make it up to Ramirez, I had to do
something
. “All right, I’ll call my college roomie.”

Dana let out a high-pitched squeal and clapped her hands.

“I said I’d call. No guarantees, ” I hedged, grabbing my address book. I wasn’t sure if I’d put her number under
L
for Lana,
P
for Paulson, or
R
for roommate.

“I think we should start by talking to her costars, ” Dana said, ticking items off on her fingers. “See if anyone has seen a suspicious character around. Second, maybe we should question Mia herself. Maybe the stalker is someone from her past, and he’s coming back to seek revenge. Oooh—or maybe she had a secret love child who’s coming back to haunt her now.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Suspicious characters? Revenge? Secret love child? What was this,
Montel
?

Fortunately, before I could change my mind, I found Lana’s number (under
C
for college) and dialed. She picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Lana. It’s Maddie, ” I said, with a backward glance at Dana. She was still ticking off possible stalker suspects. I think I heard her mumble something about a political plot to rig the Emmys. I scrunched my eyes shut, hoping I wouldn’t live to regret this.

“Say, I was wondering if you know anyone at Sunset Studios?”

“This is where we keep Kylie’s clothes, ” Dusty said, gesturing toward a long wardrobe rack of designer suits and blouses.

Dusty was a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old, just out of design school, with short purple hair and pierced studs in her nose, eyebrow, and lip. Last season when the head wardrobe consultant for
Magnolia Lane
quit over a SAG Award snub, Dusty landed the job because her best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s mother played canasta with the producer’s aunt. Hollywood was the original who-you-know town. Thanks to the call to my college roomie, four short days later and I now knew Dusty.

“Kylie plays Tina Rey on the show, ” Dusty continued. “Blake, Ricky, and Deveroux have their stuff over there.” She gestured to the far end of the room, where menswear hung on two rows of clothing racks. “And Mia’s are here.” She ended by pointing to a row of clothes stuck on dry-cleaning hangers and swathed in
plastic. “Mia has her own wardrobe person, so you’ll mostly just be making sure the others have the right outfits for their scenes and doing a little damage control. You know how to hand-sew, right?”

I nodded.

“Great!” Dusty said, tucking a purple lock behind her ear. “Any questions?”

Only about a million. The second Dana and I had walked onto the Sunset Studios lot that morning it had been like entering some alternate reality, and I was still trying to get my bearings.

We’d parked my Jeep off-site in the designated parking garage behind the lot, then hoofed it—along with the other cast and crew not quite somebody enough to have their own on-set parking places—to the studio’s gated rear entrance. We’d stood in line with women toting wardrobe bags, and a seemingly endless supply of guys with tool belts and little walkie-talkie headsets while the two-hundred-year-old security guard (give or take a year) in Coke-bottle glasses checked our names against his list. Wonder of wonders, when I got to the front of the line mine was actually there. The guard even gave me a “Good day, Miss Springer” before passing me through the gates onto the sacred grounds of the Sunset Studios.

The best way I could describe the studio lot was to compare it to a life-size dollhouse—every corner dressed within an inch of its life but none of it real. Just beyond the rear entrance lay the Sunset Studios “city, ” which was basically a maze of city streets with hollow buildings made to look like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and, of course, a generic middle-American suburb.

Beyond the “city” were rows of squat warehouses with the names of hit shows painted on the outside. All buzzing with activity. I spied a group of extras and guys in headsets milling around outside stage 3F, where the sign said they shot that new cop drama. Outside stage 4B was a catering truck handing out breakfast burritos, and the guy who’d played Screech digging into a box of morning Krispy Kremes.

I would have loved to do a slow celebrity-gawking tour around the rest of the lot, but since I’d hit the snooze about a dozen times that morning (If God wanted people to be awake at 6:00 a.m., he wouldn’t have invented late-night TV.), we were already running ten minutes behind, so instead we’d hightailed it to stage 6G.

The assistant director (or AD) quickly ushered Dana to a holding room with the other extras. She’d given me a conspiratorial wink as she headed off, which I’d tried not to roll my eyes at. (Okay, fine. I hadn’t tried very hard.) And only thirteen minutes late (but who was counting?), I’d made my way into the wardrobe department, where Dusty was currently filling me in on suburbanite fashion, Hollywood style.

“So, basically the outfits will be hung up here for you ahead of time.” She pointed to a rack along the wall where clothes were clumped together and tagged. “All you have to do is make sure the right person is wearing the right thing for the right scene.”

“That’s it?” And people were going to pay me for this?

Dusty laughed. “It’s harder than it sounds. Getting actors through wardrobe is like herding cats. Especially if they aren’t happy with what we’ve picked out for them. Speaking of which, watch out for Margo.
She’s notorious for adding her own accessories.” She did a mock shudder. “Costume stuff and cheap as hell.”

“Margo?”

“She plays Nurse Nan on the show. You know, Ash-ley’s evil twin sister who just escaped the mental institution and is secretly living in Ashley’s attic?”

“Oh, riiiight. Nurse Nan.”

Dusty chuckled again. “You’ll get used to calling them by their real names, don’t worry. In the meantime, how about we go get some coffee and I’ll introduce you around.”

Grateful for a moment to absorb it all, I followed Dusty out of the wardrobe room and down a series of hallways littered with makeup bags, discarded scripts, and lengths of cable. As I picked my way around the land mines, I made a mental note to wear wedges tomorrow. I could just see myself snagging a stiletto on a cable and doing a face-plant in front of Mia Carletto.

Finally the hallways opened up to a larger common area just behind the actual soundstage. In the center of the room sat Craft service—a large folding table laden with chips, cookies, crackers, soda, water, candy, and about a million other fattening, sugar-filled treats that made my mouth water, not the least of which was a large metal carafe of coffee with the Starbucks emblem emblazoned on the side. That was it. I was never leaving.

A mousy-looking girl in an oversize T-shirt and jeans stood behind the table, refilling bowls of Chex Mix. Around the table two guys in tool belts full of tape, wires, pens, and huge walkie-talkies stood munching on handfuls of cookies, while two waif-thin women with sprayed-in-place hair sipped from water bottles.

Dusty pulled me aside confidentially. “That’s Margo there on the left.” She pointed to the older of the two women, a tall brunette in a tailored suit with skin pulled so tightly back from her face that her lips were bulging. Obviously a fresh face-lift, and an aggressive one at that.

“And her?” I asked, gesturing to the other woman. She was slim, with long blonde hair, and there was something vaguely familiar about her.

“That’s Veronika, Mia’s stand-in.”

“Stand-in?” I asked.

“The stand-in runs through the scene for the technical crew, so they can get the lighting right, block out the camera angles, that sort of thing. She’s pretty much the same height, size, and coloring as Mia, and she generally wears the same clothes Mia will be while she’s running through the scenes. In fact, that, ” she said, gesturing to Veronika, “is the identical Armani suit that Mia will be wearing in the scene we’re shooting today.”

No wonder she’d looked familiar. As I took in the light cream-colored pencil skirt and blazer paired with alligator pumps, I was struck by just how much she did look like Mia. They honestly could have been twins.

“So, how long have you been working in production design?” Dusty asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Oh, well, uh…” Okay, so here’s the thing. I might have exaggerated my résumé just a teeny, tiny bit when I’d spoken with Dusty on the phone last night. In fact, if you wanted to get technical about it, I might have even lied. A little. But it was for a very good cause. There was no way I’d be able to help
Ramirez get his old job back just sitting at home watching the daily entertainment report. He needed a man on the inside, so to speak. And I was that man.

Even if it meant fudging the truth a little.

“Well, I’ve been interested in design my whole life, ” I said noncommittally as I grabbed a paper cup.

“Yep.” Dusty nodded. “Me too. I was always the artistic type. When I was fifteen, I got my first piercing.” She gestured to the silver barbell cutting through her heavily lined eyebrow. “My mom just about freaked. She didn’t get my need to express myself, you know?”

“I totally hear you.” Okay, so my need to express myself had come through the use of my mother’s Visa to buy two-hundred-dollar pumps when I was fifteen, but same concept.

“Oh, are you pierced?”

“Me?” I asked, dumping cream into my cup and taking a sip. Heaven. “No. Well, my ears, but that’s it. My vice is shoes. I’m a total pain chicken. I’m really impressed that you have three.”

“Seven.”

I coughed, choking on a mouthful of coffee. “Seven?”

“Yep.” She nodded. “I started with the eyebrow, then nose, lip, belly button, both nipples, and my hood.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Hood?”

“Yeah. You know…down there.” Dusty pointed at the crotch of her jeans.

I think I went about fifteen different shades of red. I sipped at my coffee to cover my embarrassment, cringing at the thought of needles going…down there.

Luckily, though, I didn’t have to come up with a clever reply.

“Uh-oh, ” Dusty said, glancing to the left.

“Uh-oh?”

She gestured to a doorway. “You’re about to meet Hurricane Mia. And it looks like she’s a category four today.”

I turned just as a tall, slim woman strode through the room making double time. Her long blonde curls hung loose at her sides, bouncing up and down furiously as she stomped on two-inch strappy heels across the cement floor. She had on the same cream-colored pencil skirt as Veronika, paired with a white button-down blouse…open far enough that a lacy push-up bra showed beneath, maximizing her D cups. I’d recognize her anywhere. It was Ashley!

I tried not to go all fan-clubby on her, instead containing my excitement to something between open admiration and just plain staring. I had to admit, Ashley (or Mia, as I supposed I would have to get used to calling her) was much prettier in person. Her eyes were a bright emerald green, her alabaster skin perfect even without the effects of airbrushing, and the body stuffed into that pencil skirt wasn’t an inch over size two. She looked like she either existed on Tic Tacs or had a personal trainer on twenty-four-hour standby. Or maybe both. The only thing marring her perfection was the scowl etched on her face.

Mia strode up to Dusty, bearing down with purpose.

“Dusty!” she barked.

“Yes?” Dusty replied coolly. Though I could tell by the way her hand had tightened around her coffee cup that she was steeling herself for the worst.

“What did I say yesterday about teal?” Mia narrowed her eyes.

Dusty bit at the inside of her cheek, looking like she hadn’t been ready for a pop quiz so early in the morning. “I give up.”

“It makes me look pale!” Mia slammed a hand down on the snack table, making a plate of chocolate-chip cookies jump. “I told you I want to wear peach in the Neighborhood Watch scene. I’m a Spring. Springs wear peach.”

Dusty sucked in a slow breath, obviously keeping her composure with much difficulty. “Margo is wearing peach in that scene. You can’t both wear peach.”

“Screw Margo!” Mia screeched.

I saw Margo’s spine straighten, but she didn’t say anything.

“I am the star of this show, ” Mia went on. “People tune in to see me. Let Margo wear the teal and look like a corpse. I will be shot in peach. Got it?”

Dusty opened her mouth to respond, but Mia cut her off, sticking one manicured finger in Dusty’s face.

“Or it will be your job. You know how easily I could get you sacked? I’m Mia Carletto. And you? You’re expendable.” With that Mia slammed her hand down on the table again so hard the cookies hit the floor. Then she turned and stalked out of the room.

Dusty clenched her jaw, her eyes shooting daggers at Mia’s back. I joined her. Those looked like they’d been really good cookies.

“And that, ” Dusty said, still clenching her jaw, “was Mia.”

“So I gathered. Is she always that friendly?”

“Oh, this was a good day. You should have seen her during sweeps week.”

“Yikes. Remind me to stay on her good side.”

“Impossible. Mia doesn’t have a good side.” Dusty tossed the remains of her cup in the trash can. “Well, apparently I’ve got to go switch out Mia’s outfit for something ‘Springy peach, ’ ” she said, doing air quotes with her fingers. “Think you can start rounding up the others and get them dressed for the first scene?”

“No problem, ” I responded.

Famous last words.

The trouble with actors, I was soon to learn, was that they lived by the “hurry up and wait” credo. Depending on the complexity of a scene, the director might spend an hour setting up the shot for fifteen seconds of dialogue. This left the actors with way too much time on their hands and nothing to fill it. Which, as any kindergarten teacher will tell you, just spells trouble.

The
Magnolia Lane
cast had me running from one end of the Sunset Studios lot to the other all day long. First it was fetching Blake, aka Ashley Culver’s comatose husband, who was, by the way, not in his trailer but across the lot at the basketball court playing one-on-one with a doc from
E.R.

Then I had to find Kylie, who played Tina Rey Holmes, the perky newlywed turned high-class call girl who’d moved in next door to Ashley and had the hots for the single electrician across the street who was being framed by the DA for murdering his ex-girlfriend. If last season’s cliff-hanger was any indication, I suspected Tina Rey would be having an affair with Ashley’s husband when he woke up from that coma. (That is, if Nurse Nan didn’t off him first. God, I loved this show!) Kylie, of course, was nowhere near her trailer either. Instead I finally tracked her down
smoking a cigarette near the fake Golden Gate Park in the San Francisco section of the Sunset “city.”

Ricky, who played the show’s hunky gardener and everybody’s favorite boy toy, Chad, was, predictably, not in his trailer either. (See a trend here?) Instead, I tracked him down outside stage 3E, chatting up two of the briefcase girls from
Deal or No Deal
.

And last, but certainly not least, was Deveroux Strong, the Nordic-looking blond who played the hot electrician-slash-framed murderer, and who, incidentally, all the tabloids suspected was about to come out of the closet any day now. After checking the studio cafeteria, the Craft service table, the basketball courts, and the producer’s office, I finally found Deveroux, wonder of wonders, in his trailer.

I changed my mind about the wedges. I was wearing running shoes to work tomorrow.