“Now?” I asked, glancing at my alarm clock again. 7:32. Still way too early for human contact.
“Please, Maddie. I’m going insane here. I need moral support. I need backup. If I find him naked in her trailer, there’s no telling what I might do.”
She had a good point. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“I love you. I’ll be there in ten,” Dana promised, then hung up.
I resisted the urge to fall back into my pillows again, instead dragging my tired self into the shower and through the rituals of hair, make-up, tooth brushing. I then crammed myself into a pair of yoga pants (that were only a little tight in the butt), a forgivingly empire waisted baby-doll sundress (that was long enough to cover said butt), and a pair of woven wedges. I was just shoving Baby-So-Lifelike into my bag (this time wrapped in a plastic diaper from one of the many boxes stored in our spare room) when Dana showed up, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me out to her car.
To say the ride to Sunset Studios was tense was a gross understatement. Dana treated yellow lights like challenges, stop signs like suggestions, and her gas pedal as if it were an icky spider that needed stomped to death, the harder the better. By the time we finally parked in the lot next to the line of golf carts, my knuckles were whiter than a Moonlight cast member and were permanently embedded in her dash.
“That’s it, next time, I’m driving,” I warned her as she grabbed me by the arm and steered me to a golf cart.
Five minutes later we were pulling into the Brooklyn street where the Moonlight set was camped out again today. Dana narrowly missed hitting a wardrobe rack as she pulled up next to Ricky’s trailer and catapulted herself to his front door, banging on it with both fists.
A moment later, Ricky’s head popped out of the door. “Dude, what’s going on?” He looked down and saw Dana. “Babe? What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What am I doing here?! What are you doing here?!”
He blinked. “Filming?”
But she pushed past him, storming into the trailer. “Where is she? Where is that pale-faced slut?”
“What is she talking about?” Ricky asked me as I entered a step behind her.
Only I didn’t get to answer as Dana turned on him.
“You didn’t come home last night,” she said, pointing a finger in his face.
Ricky took a step back. “We ran late with filming.”
“And you didn’t call me?” Dana asked,
Ricky shrugged. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“And your phone is off.”
“Like I said, we were filming. I didn’t want it to go off in the middle of a scene.”
“You’re not filming now.”
Ricky’s eyebrows furrowed down. “Babe, what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal? The big deal is,” Dana said, puffing up her chest like a blowfish trying to scare off a shark, “that I was not able to get hold of my boyfriend who didn’t come home last night!”
Ricky blinked at her. “I never come home at night. I’ve been doing night shoots for the last three weeks.”
“But you didn’t come home at six either!”
Ricky looked from Dana to me. “Is this for real?” he asked.
Dana threw her hands up. “Ugh, men!”
Ricky opened his mouth to say more, but a PA stuck his head in the door to the trailer. “Ricky?” he asked. “You’re needed in make-up.”
“Be right there,” he promised. Then he turned to Dana. “Look, we’ll talk later, ‘k? I gotta go.” Then he wisely didn’t wait for an answer before hightailing it out of the trailer.
Dana sat down on the sofa with a huff that ruffled her blonde bangs. “I swear if he signs that contract, it just might drive me insane.”
As much as I would be sad to see the Moonlight saga’s big screen run end, I had to agree. She was a woman on the edge.
“I’m sure they’re close to wrapping, right?” I asked.
Dana nodded. “Yep. Just the sex scene and two more biting scenes and they’re done. Thank God!”
I bit my lip, remembering the last biting scene, the one I’d watched with Dana on my sofa. “You know, there’s one thing that’s been bothering me about Alexa’s death: why didn’t she struggle?”
Dana frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if it were a blow to the head or a gunshot I’d get how someone could sneak up on her. But dragging her into a bathroom stall, biting her neck and waiting for the blood to drain? That would take some time. Why didn’t Alexa fight back?”
“Good point. Maybe she was drugged first?” Dana said.
I nodded. “It’s possible. But then, how would Becca get her into the restroom? Alexa was skinny, but so was Becca. I doubt she would have been able to drag her in without attracting attention.”
“So, she would have needed help. Someone bigger and stronger,” Dana said, following my train of thought.
“Right. But who?” I asked.
But before Dana could answer, a voice piped up from the trailer door. “What about the boyfriend?”
Both of our heads snapped up to find Ava standing in the doorway, wearing a slinky red dress and popping a wad of bubble gum (watermelon if I wasn’t mistaken) between ruby red lips that said she’d already done her stint in make-up that morning.
Dana narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?” she asked.
Ava shrugged her shoulders, all wide-eyed innocence. “Nothing. I was just walking by and heard you guys talking about the murder. Ricky told me all about it.”
“I’ll bet he did,” Dana said under her breath.
“Anyway, I was just saying, if you’re looking for who killed her, what about the boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she was seeing anyone.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ava argued. “She totally was.”
I paused. “Wait – you knew Alexa?”
Ava nodded. “Sure. We did a toothpaste commercial together a couple years ago. I mean, that was back when I was just starting out, so we’re not like, close-close anymore or anything, but we’re Facebook friends.”
Mental forehead smack.
“And she told you she had a boyfriend?”
Ava shrugged. “Well her status has been ‘in a relationship’ for the past six months.”
I suddenly felt like an amateur. Every CSI junkie knew that the boyfriend was the first place to look for your killer. But with all the vampire stuff, I’d been so distracted that I’d never even thought to find out if she’d been seeing someone. “Do you happen to know the boyfriend’s name?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers.
Ava scrunched up her nose, her eyes going to the ceiling as if looking for the answer there. “Um, Devin or Darin or something. Not sure. But I know he works at this new club on Sunset.”
And I knew him, too, I realized. Darwin. The bartender at Crush the night Alexa died.
Chapter Fifteen
“Wait,” Dana said holding up a hand. “Are you telling me that Alexa’s boyfriend was at the club the night that she died?”
Ava gave her a blank look. “I dunno. All I know is the boyfriend is always the first suspect, right?”
Sadly, the ditz had a point. They were. And considering that “opportunity” had just cropped up for the bartender, we definitely needed to investigate both means and motive.
Half an hour later (which would have been only twenty minutes if I hadn’t had to stop to pee at a gas station on La Brea along the way) we were back at Crush. Once inside, we made a bee-line for the bar, where Darwin was busy slicing limes. He glanced up as we entered, and I could have sworn I saw irritation flit cross his features before his “boss’s girlfriend” face slipped on.
“What can I do for you ladies today?” he asked, a fake smile showing off a set of unnaturally white teeth.