I’ll bet. “Anyone look into this death?” I asked. “Was there an investigation?”
Max shrugged. “Don’t know. ME called it an accident at the time, but I doubt any official ruling has been made yet.”
“Bender!”
My head snapped around at the sound of Felix hailing me from the conference room.
“Thanks for the tip, Max,” I called over my shoulder as I jumped to the boss’s call.
The surface of the conference room table was covered with photos of Pines (publicity shots, poses at last year’s Oscars, his mug shot) and pics of the boy who’d starred in his last movie, a short kid with light hair and freckles across his nose. A regular Dennis the Menace. In the center was a candid photo taken on the set of the film last spring. Pines had a big smile pasted on his face, his arm around the boy as they posed next to a camera. Yesterday, it would have been a completely innocent photo of a boy and his mentor. Today, it took on a sickly sinister quality.
“We’re leading with this,” Felix said, pointing to the photo. “Cam’s going to try to get a couple more of the kid today. She’s staking out his school later.”
Cameron nodded in agreement, her eyes solemn as she stared down at the boy’s face.
“We need a piece to run beside it. Allie’s been working the co-stars angle, trying to get info on how much time Pines spent alone with the little guy.”
“Great, I’ll take over,” I said.
Felix gave me a hard look. “Allie’s already working this story.”
I put my hands on my hips. “But it’s my story.”
“You were sharing it. And today you were nowhere to be found, leaving the new girl to pick up all the slack. Allie’s working it.”
“You are not giving my front-page story away to a pair of tits you just hired!” I yelled.
Felix clenched his jaw, his eyes going hard beneath his brows.
Oops. Maybe too far? “Look, Felix-”
But he’d heard enough from me, cutting me off midsentence. “She’s a good reporter. You, on the other hand, made a major blunder today. You didn’t even know what was going on with your story.”
“Well, excuse me. I guess getting my condo broken into kept me a little goddamned busy!”
Two heads whipped my way.
“Oh, hell.”
“Someone broke into your condo?” Felix growled, a little vein in his forehead starting to pulse.
“Uh…well, broke is a strong word. Maybe they kinda just…”
“Did you know about this?” he asked.
I turned around to find Cal standing in the doorway behind me.
He looked from me to Felix. Then slowly nodded.
“Christ,” Felix swore, running a hand through his unruly mop of hair. “No one tells me anything anymore.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” I protested. “I mean, they hardly even touched anything.”
“That true?” Felix asked over my shoulder.
Again Cal’s eyes bopped between Felix and me. Only this time he shook his head in the negative.
Great. Thanks a lot.
“Alright, I want all the details.” Felix crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened, Bender?”
So, I told him. Which wasn’t much. The door had been forced. Nothing taken, that I could tell, everything trashed.
“It was just a warning,” I said, repeating what Cal had said the night before. “I’m fine.”
Felix didn’t answer, just stared, that vein pulsing double-time.
“But you can see how I’ve been a little preoccupied this morning.”
“Which is exactly why you should hand this whole thing over to the cops and do your job.”
I bit my lip. “I have two more days.”
“Right. Two days, in which Allie will be running with the Pines headline.”
“But-”
“Unless you’ve got another lead…?”
I bit my lip, watching my career flash before my eyes in one blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Barbie blur. “Murder!” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
This time three heads whipped my direction, all with matching eyebrows-to-the-ceiling expressions.
“Murder?” Cam asked.
I nodded vigorously. “Max said one of the kid’s costars on the film died last month. Jake Mullins.”
“Jake Mullins.” Felix mulled over the name. “I thought he died of an overdose.”
“Sleeping pills,” I conceded. “But what if it wasn’t an accident? What if it was murder? What if it has to do with Pines and the kid? Maybe Mullins saw something inappropriate, and Pines silenced him?” Talk about reaching. Even I was aware that was a whole lot of “if”s. But at the moment, I was ready to invent any story to save my front-page slot.
Felix gave me a long, hard look. Then finally, “Run with it.”
I felt a grin break out across my face.
“On it, chief!” I said with a mock salute. I turned to go.
“And, Bender,” Felix called.
I turned around.
“Swear Pig. That was at least fifty cents.”
As soon as I got back to my desk, I divested my purse of the quarters and popped them in the ceramic pig. Then put in a call to a source at the morgue. Just because the official word was “accident,” that didn’t mean foul play couldn’t have been involved. If there was even the slightest chance Mullins had been killed on purpose, I needed to know. I left a message with my favorite former reality show contestant turned morgue technician, then pulled open a search engine, ready to track down my next lead.
“He’s right, you know.”
I turned to find Cal hovering just over my shoulder.
“Right about what?”
“The police.”
I sighed. Et tu, Cal?
“Look, I’m fine. I have you, remember?” I said, gesturing to his gym-honed biceps.
“Tina, I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I bit my lip, telling myself that was not real emotion backing up behind his eyes. I was a client to him. A job. If I got hurt, it meant his reputation went down the toilet, that’s all.
“So, do your job,” I said, purposefully turning away and focusing on my computer screen. “And let me do mine. In case you didn’t notice back there, my butt is on the line.”
I tensed for another argument but, instead, looked up to find Cal walking away. He tucked himself behind a desk a few feet away, an unreadable expression masking his face.
Good.
Great.
This whole shadow gig he had going was cramping my style anyway.
I turned back to my screen, trying to ignore how foolish I felt for wearing this hot pink bra, and brought up the main site of the L.A. Times.
While the Informer was L.A.’s premier tabloid (And, yes, I’m not above stating the obvious. We’re not an entertainment magazine, or a media outlet, or a women’s periodical. We report on celebrity scandals. Hollywood rumors. Which movie star’s beach bod has the most cellulite. We’re a total tabloid.), when it came to getting just the facts, ma’am, the Times was your best bet.
I pulled up their archives page.
“Hey, Max,” I called over the partition.
Max’s head popped up again. “Yeah?”
“What was the date on that Mullins obit?”
“Lemme check,” he said and disappeared behind the carpeted wall. Two beats later he popped back up. “August. The twenty-sixth.”
“Thanks,” I called, turning back to my screen and typing the date in. After scanning through several unrelated articles, I finally hit pay dirt with a piece buried in the Arts and Entertainment section.
Turns out Jake Mullins was a character actor best known for his portrayal of the “stern father” in a variety of family films. He’d done a few guest shots on Law & Order and CSI, but he hadn’t rated high enough on the Hollywood food chain for his passing to be front page news. Instead, the little six-inch article stated the bare bones of his overdose, the fact that the preliminary ruling was accident, and the highlight of his short-lived career-playing supporting actor in the latest Pines film. At the end of the article, the reporter noted that Mullins was survived by his wife, Alexis, who was best known for being a child star in the seventies TV show, The Fenton Family, about a blended family of musically inclined kids.