CHAPTER 14
Zoey
A trip to the precinct is just what I need to banish the image of Brandon and Katrina. Right before I caught Bratrina in that lurid sex act, I got a call from Pops, asking me if I had time to come in for some questioning. The timing was perfect.
I haven’t been here in ages. The last time I was here was when I was in high school. When the kids in my civics class found out that my father worked for the LAPD, they all wanted to see what that was like. After learning this, Pops arranged a field trip to the precinct with my teacher. My classmates loved every minute. Especially the part when they got to look through a one-way mirror and watch Pops question a suspected murderer—a wealthy woman whose millionaire husband had mysteriously been poisoned. Pops was so good at squeezing information out of the suspect. My very own Columbo! All of us gasped when the suspect broke down in tears and finally confessed everything. It was just like a scene out of CSI—of course, the husband was having a secret affair, and the vengeful wife wanted him dead to inherit all his money.
The downtown precinct is bustling with a colorful cast of characters, and phones don’t stop ringing. I walk up to the bulletproof front desk window and tell one of the busy clerks on duty that I’m here to see Detective Billings. Her name, Alma Lopez, is on her badge. I give her my name and tell her I have an appointment. She scans her computer and calls my father to let him know I’m here.
“You’re Zoey Hart, Pete’s daughter?” she asks, filling out a visitor’s badge for me.
I smile at her. “Yes.”
Her eyes brighten. “The one who works for Brandon Taylor?”
“Yeah.” There’s little enthusiasm in my voice.
Alma grows animated. “Oh my God! You’re so lucky! I’m so jealous! What’s it like to work for him?”
Taking the badge from her, I paste it on my short-sleeved tee. “Trust me, you’re much better off working here.”
At that moment, Pops bursts through the door, chomping on a fat sandwich. As usual, his shirt is rumpled with the sleeves rolled up, and there’s a mustard stain on it. Jacketless, his holster is crossed over his torso. My adoptive dad may be a loveable schlub, but there’s something so powerful about him carrying a gun. After my mother’s horrific murder, I felt he could protect me. I only wish he’d found her killer. It’s still an unsolved case that haunts us both.
“Pops!” I run up to him and give him a hug.
“Hi, babycakes,” he says with food in his mouth. “Glad you could come by. Come on back.”
Five minutes later, I’m in his office. It’s rare for any LAPD detective to have his own office, but the force felt he deserved one. Pops has been on active duty for almost forty years—the longest serving member of the department. A legend. No one has cracked as many cases as he has or brought so many heinous criminals to justice. He keeps saying he’s going to retire, but both Auntie Jo and I know that’s never going to happen.
The office is small and windowless, lit by unflattering fluorescent lighting. Some of his awards hang on the grungy walls, but they’re mostly covered with a messy array of cases in progress. His simple wooden desk is piled high with thick folders. Next to his computer is a large framed family photo—the four of us, Auntie Jo, Pops, Jeffrey, and me. And there’s also a photo of him and Mama when they were kids. Despite being twins, they look as different as night and day. Mama, frail and pale with a mop of flaming red hair; Pops, big-boned and swarthy with a crown of jet-black locks. He’s told me so many hilarious stories about their New Jersey childhoods. Poor elegant Mama was always trying to turn him into a proper gentleman, but she could never even get him to tuck his shirt in. I wish she were alive to see him now.
After that melancholy thought, I inwardly laugh. Things haven’t changed. Pops is as disheveled as ever. The clutter on the walls and on his desk goes with his personality. Buried on his messy desk is a paper plate with the other half of the pastrami sandwich along with a bottle of root beer. He sinks into his faded pleather desk chair while I take a seat in one of the two worn out upholstered chairs facing him. His office furnishings are rather decrepit, but budget cutbacks have prohibited replacements. And truthfully, knowing Pops, he wouldn’t replace them if he could.
“Late lunch,” he says, taking another chomp of his sandwich. “Want the other half?”
I’m tempted. The juicy Pastrami sandwich looks and smells so good, but I force myself to pass.
“You not feeling good or something? You look like you lost weight.”
My dad, the detective, is very perceptive. “I’m fine. I’m just watching it.” God, I’d love a bite. But I know I won’t be able to stop with just one.
Pops puts down his half-eaten sandwich. “Thanks for coming by. You know I’m investigating the Brandon Taylor hit and run.”
I nod. My stomach twists at the mention of his name. “Jeffrey told me you met with him.”
“Yeah, he couldn’t have been nicer.”
Ha! He must have met the wrong person.
“He even autographed the box of DVDs I brought along for your mother. She’s in seventh heaven.”
Jeez. How embarrassing! I suddenly feel bad I never got her a signed set. She begged me for one so many times. I just never felt comfortable asking. Leave it to my outspoken, fearless father. A total charmer.
Pops takes a long swig of his soda and then sets the bottle down. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t very helpful. The poor bloke’s got post traumatic stress and can’t remember a thing. Lucky he didn’t get killed in that accident.”
“Jeffrey told me you’re treating it as a possible homicide.”
“I have no choice. He’s a major celebrity. Something in my gut tells me someone wanted him dead.”
A shiver creeps up my spine. As many times as I’ve wanted to kill him for driving me crazy, including today, the thought of Brandon Taylor dead rattles me. Pops’s gut feelings are always spot on. A troubling thought crosses my mind. My stomach knots up and my pulse accelerates.
“Pops, am I a suspect?”
Pops laughs his hearty laugh. “Of course not, babycakes. You’re the one who found him. If you hadn’t, he would have bled to death. Plus, if you recall, you were running errands at the purported time of the accident. All the shop owners have confirmed that as well as Brandon’s gardener, who, by the way we questioned, and is not a suspect either.
Though I’ve tried to block it out, I flashback to that fateful day. Driving home from my final stop, the drycleaner, I was halfway up the private road to Brandon’s house when I spotted his lifeless body sprawled on the ground. Blood was pouring from his head. Wearing his running clothes, he was already swimming in a crimson pool. My car came to a screeching halt and so did my heart. In a panic, I leapt out of my car and rushed over to him. At the time, I had no idea what had happened—I thought perhaps he’d taken a terrible tumble—but I knew he needed help. Fast! With trembling fingers, I called 911. I cradled him in my arms as I awaited the paramedics. Tears filled my eyes. Fear filled my mind. Grief filled my heart. I talked to him. Told him to hang in there. Told him it wasn’t his time. And then I spilled my heart out. My tears trickled onto his soft face and I…
My father’s husky, Jersey-accented voice catapults me back to the moment. “You okay, babycakes?”
I nod though I feel shaken. “Yeah, I was just thinking about that day.”
“It must have been hard on you.”
“Yeah, it was.” He has no idea.
“Do you remember anything unusual about it?”
I shake my head. “It was just like any day. Brandon went for a jog. I was doing errands.”
Pops takes a deep breath. “Can you think of anyone who would want Brandon Taylor dead?”
I rack my brain and shake my head again.
“A crazy fan? An ex-assistant? An employee? Someone who works on the show?”
“No, Pops. To the best of my knowledge, everyone worships him and he’s never been stalked.”
“What’s his manager Scott Turner like?”
“A total slime bucket.”
“A murderer?”
“No, Pops, he’s slimy in that icky slick Hollywood kind of way, but that’s about it. He’s been with Brandon since the beginning of his career. He’s the last person who would want Brandon dead. He’s all about Brandon. And Brandon, in return, treats him well.”
“How much do you think he makes?”
“Not sure, but probably a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Plus, he gets hefty bonuses. Last Christmas, he bought himself a brand new Corvette thanks to Brandon.”
“What about Brandon’s fiancée, Katrina Moore?”
The mention of her name makes my stomach churn, and once more the repulsive image of her sucking him off flashes in my mind.
“She’s a piece of work, but again no murderer. I mean, she’s marrying a superstar. The sexiest man in the world. Something every woman in the world dreams of. If that was me, I sure wouldn’t want him dead.”
If that was me. I inwardly sigh. I don’t hold a candle to Katrina. She’s Hollywood royalty. Supermodel beautiful. America’s It Girl. She may be a bitch to me, but she’s the perfect woman for Brandon. Second thoughts bombard me—maybe, I should implicate the bitch. Get rid of her!
My father bites into the other half of his sandwich. “Sure you don’t want some?”
It looks so damn delicious. I’m mentally drooling, but I pass once again. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
My father swallows, but not before getting another mustard stain on his light blue shirt. Smiling with amusement, I hand him a paper napkin.
“Thanks, babycakes.” He swipes at the yellow blotch. “Your mother’s gonna kill me.”
I laugh while he asks me another question.
“Do you know Katrina well?”
I tell my dad just well enough to know she’s a bitch. Like Pops, I’m a straight shooter. I tell it like it is. Although I can’t say the same when it comes to my feelings about my boss.
He chuckles. “Was she involved with Brandon for a long time before getting engaged to him?”
“To be honest, I met her only once—shortly before Brandon’s accident—and then again at the hospital. Except for having me make restaurant and hotel room reservations for his hook-ups, he’s never shared his social life with me. I’ve usually found out about whom he’s seeing from the tabloids and online celebrity gossip sites.”
“Was Katrina one of his hook-ups?”
I shrug, gazing longingly at the sandwich. “I don’t know. People Magazine said it was love at first sight and a whirlwind romance.”
Pops takes another messy bite of his thick sandwich. “You know, you can’t always believe what you read.”
Pops is right, especially when it comes to the tabloids, which survive on blowing up celebrities’ lives even if it means feeding the gossip-hungry public utter bullshit. People Magazine is different. You can believe what you read in it, and I defend the periodical’s honor to my dad, the penultimate detective.
Pops chuckles again. “Your mom swears by People.”
I smile. That’s Auntie Jo for you. Like my brother Jeffrey, she’s a total celebrity hound. Brandon is number one on her list. She almost fainted when she saw that he was named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”
Pops wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, missing a crumb of bread on his upper lip. I reach across the desk and flick it off with a finger.
“Thanks, babycakes.” He washes the sandwich down with more of the root beer. “Have you ever watched her show?”
Opening my mouth, I point my index finger at it and feign barfing. “Once was enough. Ugh! It almost made me throw up. The only talent she has is being famous for being famous. Her spoiled rich girl antics make Paris Hilton look like Goldilocks.”
Pops picks up a piece of greasy pastrami that’s fallen onto his desk and stuffs it into his mouth. I wish I’d gotten to it first. My stomach rumbles.
“You know she’s not actually rich,” he says matter-of-factly.
My salivating eyes widen. “What do you mean?”
“She’s ten million dollars in debt. Maxed out on all her credit cards.”
“Wow! But aren’t her parents rich?”
“They used to be, but they’ve recently gone through tough times. Her father is serving time in prison for tax evasion and fraud. All his assets were seized by the feds. And his ex-wife Enid recently declared bankruptcy.”
I didn’t know this. “Did you learn anything more about Katrina?”
“Yes. She was sent to a mental institution right after high school.”
I’m surprised and not surprised. She is after all a psycho bitch. “What for?”
The hospital wouldn’t release any information to me. They gave me that damn doctor-patient privilege bullshit.”
“Maybe Chaz can give you some info. He told me Katrina stalked Blake Burns, the television executive, and drugged him.”
My father’s burly brows shoot up. He grabs a pen and writes himself a note on a yellow pad of paper. “I didn’t know that. I’ll definitely talk to him.”
“I’m sorry, Pops. I should have told you this earlier. I just found it out today.”
He scratches his full head of ebony hair. Lucky Pops, with his Irish ancestry, has not a single gray hair among them and he hasn’t lost a single strand. “So maybe she’s crazy enough to murder someone?”
“Honestly, Pops, I kind of hate her, but she’s definitely not a murderer. She’s totally in love with Brandon Taylor.”
“Do they fight?”
“I suppose they fight. All couples fight. And if you read the tabloids, celebrity couples seem to fight more than others.”
“Has she ever assaulted him?”
Other than groping him with her hands or attacking his cock with her mouth? Bile rises to my throat. I swallow it down before I say no.
With a deep breath, I compose myself. I need to end this line of questioning. I don’t want to think or talk about Katrina anymore. She makes me sick.
“Pops, you must know they’re getting married on national TV. On a special edition of her TV show in May. The wedding is going to make her a bigger household name than she already is. Send her ratings through the roof. And probably make her a shitload of money. And even if it doesn’t, why would she want to kill a man who can take care of her financially? Brandon’s loaded. He can wipe out her credit card debts and enable her extravagant lifestyle. I bet she’s already spending gobs of his money. Seriously, Pops, she’s as much a murderer as I am.” (Though truthfully, we’d both love to kill one another.)
Pops polishes off his sandwich and takes another glug of the root beer. “You’re probably right. I’m barking up the wrong tree.”
I smile. “Pops, has it ever crossed your twisted mind it was just someone driving through the neighborhood who accidentally ran Brandon over and then freaked out and took off? There are a lot of crazy drivers in the Hollywood Hills, and that’s not counting the ones who drink and do drugs all day long.”
Pops rakes his stubby fingers—the ones that have fired a gun—through his thick shiny hair. “You’re probably right. It’s just gonna be hard to find that person. Right after the accident, a city street sweeper came by and erased all tire tracks and footprints. We couldn’t even find a single hair to connect us to the suspect. We only have one clue.”
“Something captured on a surveillance camera?” Or someone.
Pops shakes his head. “I wish, but there are no surveillance cams on Brandon’s private road until you get to his house.”
“What about in the neighborhood?”
A look of frustration washes over his face. His shoulders slouch. “There was a power outage that morning. Some motherfucker moving van took down a power line, and everyone within three miles lost power.”
That happens frequently in The Hills. The outages can sometimes last for hours…until the DWP fixes the problem. Brandon’s house was probably affected that day as well though I wasn’t aware of it. I rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital and didn’t get back home till late in the night. The sound of the blaring siren resounds in my head, arousing more vivid memories. Unconscious, with his head bandaged, his face drained of all color, and his breathing labored beneath an oxygen mask, Brandon didn’t look like he’d make it. A lapsed Catholic, I prayed for him and hoped God heard my words and witnessed my tears. Losing him was unfathomable.
“Babycakes, I want to show you something.”
Pops’s voice once again jolts me out of the excruciating memory. Just like the day Mama was murdered, it’s unforgettable. I think I’ll relive it forever and ever. Forcing it to the back of my mind, I focus my eyes on my father as he yanks open a creaky desk drawer. He reaches into it and retrieves a small zip lock bag. He slides it open and shakes out what’s inside. I study the heart-shaped green object that’s now sitting in the palm of his wide hand.
“We found this close to the crime scene.”
At the words crime scene, a chill sweeps over me. Pops explains to me that even if Brandon’s accident wasn’t a premeditated murder, his hit and run could be tried as a felony because of the severe nature of his injury—punishable with a big fine and up to five years in prison. Personally, I think that’s too lenient; whoever ran over Brandon should get a much longer term.
“Do you have any clue what this is?” he asks, glancing down at the evidence. “All we know is that it’s a piece of Venetian glass from Italy.”
“It looks like it could be part of an earring or some kind of pendant. Why is it so chipped and scratched?”
“Probably, it was brushed along the street by the sweeper or it got stepped on before anyone noticed. Does it look at all familiar to you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t recognize it.”
“Is it something Katrina would wear?”
I roll my eyes at him. “Pops, I thought we were done with her. But if you really want to know, I don’t think she’d wear anything that didn’t come from Tiffany’s or one of those other fancy shmancy Beverly Hills jewelry stores.”
Chewing on his bottom lip, he rubs his dimpled chin with the thumb of his other hand. He always does this when he’s thinking or onto something. “I have a hunch that whoever ran over Brandon Taylor was wearing this.”
I play devil’s advocate. “A lot of super rich women jog up and down Brandon’s street. The housewives of Beverly Hills. It could have simply fallen off one of them. And with all their money, they may not have noticed or cared.”
“Yup. That’s a definite possibility.” I sense a tinge of frustration in my father’s voice, but know he’s not going to give up. Even though it’s now considered a cold case, he’s never stopped looking for Mama’s murderer.
I play detective. “Were you able to get any fingerprints off it?”
“No luck. The surface is too scratched.”
“That’s too bad.”
Pinching his lips, Pops puts the evidence back into the plastic bag and after sealing it, returns it to the drawer. He glances down at his watch. A wedding gift from Auntie Jo, he never takes it off. They’ve been married thirty years. The frayed brown leather band shows its age.
He pushes himself away from his desk. “Gotta go. Your mother’s made her famous pot roast and I promised I’d be home by six.”
He shrugs on his signature last century trench coat and rounds his desk as I stand up. He gives me a bear hug.
“Put some meat on those bones, babycakes. Come by one night; your mother will fatten you up.”
I laugh. The last thing former size-twelve me needs is fattening up.
“Give my love to Jo.” I pause. “And tell her I’ll work on getting her onto the set so she can personally meet Brandon Taylor.”
Pops’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. “Oh boy, you’re gonna make her night. She’d love that! That woman is totally in love with him.”
Every woman in the world is in love with Brandon Taylor. Except he’s giving his heart to only one. A sharp pang of jealousy stabs me. I hate her.