Your Dark Secrets: A Novel

Squeals nearly burst my eardrums as the open-air tour bus creeps to a pause outside a copse of eucalyptus trees. The two-lane road in Beverly Hills is barely wide enough to accommodate our twenty-person ride, but the driver pauses anyway.

A woman with a purple visor sitting with two teenage daughters, deeply engrossed in their phones, flaps her hands. “Oh! It’s—it’s—”

“Harry Hamlin! I loved him growing up!” another woman, seated across the aisle from me, shouts. The driver tosses a fun-size Snickers to her, then launches into gossip about Lisa Rinna. Visor, the woman who couldn’t get her answer out, begins crying at being this close to the former heartthrob.

I check my Hollywood tour map again. Only two more stops before we reach my destination in Bel-Air. When I told Addison I had signed up for the morning drive, she nearly laughed herself hoarse. She said Devon Lim isn’t going to emerge from his house just to greet a bunch of tourists with smartphones. Why would he?

I countered that she hasn’t been able to get ahold of him—and she said all her colleagues at Ovid Blackwell swear he hasn’t checked in for months—so what’s the harm in trying?

It’s been three days since Addison agreed to help me. I thought finding and following Devon Lim would be a slam dunk after that. I’d be able to track him as he canoodled with his lady friend, then report back to his fiancée’s mother, Genevieve Aspen. Then again—surprise! Nothing is easy for me these days. I should have known.

Buoyed by Gen’s wire of cash to my bank account, I’ve been driving all over town at the mere mention of Devon Lim. I went to his former assistant—and paid for breakfast—to question her about Devon’s recent romances. Using information gleaned over pancakes, I stopped by Devon’s dry cleaners to see if he’s had any women’s clothing laundered over the last few weeks. During the middle of Wednesday night, I tried to peek inside Devon’s garbage bins, which were rolled to the curb for trash pickup the following morning, but all I found was a small bag of dirty paper towels, used tissues, sponges, and a Lean Cuisine microwavable meal. Cleaning supplies and dinner for some housekeeper. The guy isn’t at his main residence in Bel-Air or his vacay home in Santa Barbara. Addison doesn’t think he’s out of the country, but she’s proving less in-the-know than I remembered.

The driver clutches a two-way radio, and the speakers crackle overhead. “Next stop, the Hills!”

The tour bus lurches into drive with a jolt. The women wave goodbye to Harry and Lisa as we creep forward beneath a canopy of trees. Climbing above the flat neighborhood of Beverly Hills, I recall the last time I went to a party down below. It was some talent agent’s house, but he knew everyone who was anyone. And a long time ago, they all knew me.

We turn off Beverly Glen onto a side road and narrowly avoid a Smart car zipping past. Open to the public through the east gate, Bel-Air welcomes our tour bus without even a nod from the security booth.

“Coming up on your right, we have the mansion that belonged to Tony Curtis—”

“Oh my God, really?” Visor says, swiping to her phone’s camera app. “I love Some Like It Hot!”

“Not only Tony,” the driver resumes, “but Marilyn Monroe, Burt Reynolds, and Sonny and Cher. The alabaster courtyard fountain is just there, hiding behind the row of arborvitaes and wisteria. Everybody got a view?” The driver and all passengers on the bus lean to that side, while I face left.

Down a narrow street opposite, the blue hand-painted mailbox of Devon Lim stands at the end of the street, where a tunnel of Italian cypress begins. A mailman drops a handful of letters inside; then he waves to someone. He climbs back into his white truck as a woman emerges from between the hedges. The housekeeper who eats Lean Cuisines retrieves the mail, as she has done each day the last three times I’ve taken this tour at this time. When I tried to approach her directly, while she was cleaning out the lawn fountain, under the guise of just having moved into the neighborhood—integrity be damned—she told me Mr. Lim wasn’t at the house. I then asked if he had gone on an errand and would return shortly, or if he was on vacation. She only glared.

Now the housekeeper flips through envelopes but doesn’t lift her head to catch me watching. She heads indoors, the long hem of a white sweater fluttering. If Devon Lim is inside and cheating on his fiancée with another woman, his employee doesn’t seem to mind.

The mail truck reaches the road on which the tour bus idles, and I turn away from it to peer at the Tony Curtis et al. house and hide my face. Alberto Rodriguez, devoted mailman, father of three, military veteran, and staunch Republican, was flattered when I struck up a conversation with him at his local deli yesterday and told him what a great job he was doing in “my” Bel-Air neighborhood. But when I asked him whether he knew if anyone had moved out recently—“I haven’t seen this guy, Devon Lim, at 26618 Wilbever Court for a while”—I got iced out. Alberto said he kept his job and cushy mail route for two decades because he knows how to keep his mouth closed.

A puff of black exhaust is what’s left as Alberto descends the hill out of sight.

“All right, everyone. We’ve got two minutes for photos in front of the multihyphenate house before security comes barreling around the corner. Who wants their pic?”

The driver descends first, with the entire bus filing out behind him. When I reach the asphalt, instead of lining up along the manicured lawn and a sign that reads TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, I slip around the back. I don’t look behind me until I am nearly hidden by a tall hedge at the bend in the road.

Despite casing this address, questioning neighbors and postal personnel—and, yes, rifling through more trash—I haven’t had a clear read on whether Lim is home. Whether this is the spot where he’s been entertaining a mistress and cheating on Genevieve’s precious daughter. Although I tried confirming information the right way this time, Gen is getting more demanding for progress. Which means I’m out of options.

An ad for a luxury meal service peeks from a mailbox. I grab the stiff cardstock, tuck it under my arm, and continue my casual, totally casual, jaunt down the sidewalk. When I reach Lim’s house, I slide behind the housekeeper’s wagon in the driveway to cut across the lawn. I slip the card under the mat, hit the doorbell, then pivot and make my way along the three-car garage.

The door opens. “Hello?” the housekeeper calls. I stride up the side of the midcentury Colonial like I live here, pulling my hat low. There are security cameras nearby, there must be. Lim had them on his vacation beach house, so why wouldn’t he set them up in his actual home? Doesn’t really matter, not to me. All I need is to confirm whether the guy is here—and if he is, whether he’s alone.

The back entrance, a California glass door the length of the entire wall that retracts and accesses the backyard, is wide open. I pass a bucket with a towel draped along the rim, beside a spray bottle. It must be window day.

Once inside Lim’s cavernous megamansion, I scan the ground floor. Its layout was published on an Architectural Digest website eight years ago during renovations by the previous owner, and Lim seems to have kept things the same: four wide hallways that lead to the foyer where the housekeeper is, the butler pantry and the kitchen, the downstairs primary, and a staircase.

A door shuts. She’s back inside. I choose the hallway leading right, then dip into the first closed room on my left. A den. Jackpot.

Inside, opposite a deep cushy couch buried in laundry facing a mounted flat-screen TV, a cherrywood desk is stacked with paper and filing trays. Devon probably forbids his housekeeper from cleaning in here. A laptop is missing from a dock, and the cable connecting to a widescreen computer monitor stands alone, as if bereft of its life partner. Briefly, I think of Addison and how poetic it might be, if I could rely on her like that.

I sift through the loose pages on top of the first tray. Halfway down the stack of receipts, a prescription for an inhaler brand I know from infomercials, and articles about tech, I find a page with an interesting letterhead. Devon Lim’s.

Devon drew up a proposal—to create an app that monitors weight loss when paired with medication. A specific medication: Shapextrin. Wasn’t that Phinneas Redwood’s upcoming product? The proposal is printed on Devon’s personal stationery and dated three weeks ago.

Phinneas’s name is nowhere on this sheet, but it’s definitely possible he read the proposal. Maybe he even chatted with Devon about it directly. Maybe he told someone about it the night that he died.

Phinneas and Devon could have been working together. And I’m going to rub Addison’s nose in this information so hard, she’ll think she’s back in college doing lines.

Singing carries from the hallway, interrupting my thoughts—the housekeeper, bopping along to a pop tune as she makes her way through the house. The song is getting louder.

I snap a picture of the proposal on my phone, then turn, scattering the top few pages to the floor. A receipt for a luggage reservation lands face up. The date is from two days ago, with Air France. Son of a—

Grumbling to myself, I request an Uber. Set the pickup for the bend in the road at the Curtis house. When I slide into the hallway, the housekeeper’s heavy footsteps stomp overhead on the second floor.

Once securely seated in a Kia Telluride, I scroll through notifications on my phone. Two messages from Genevieve came in while I was sneaking around Bel-Air.

Connor, my dear. Tell me you have something juicy to report.

Rather, tell me I haven’t been footing the bill for you the last three weeks with nothing to show for it.

I bite back a sigh. Nothing to show for it? That’s a little strong, considering I’ve sent her updates and we’ve spoken on the phone each week—way more than I provided in reports to her in the past.

“Hey. Don’t I know you?” My driver glares at me through the rearview. A man with brown eyes, pink skin, and a red Cardinals cap pulled low over his forehead.

I stiffen. I can’t get a read on this guy’s face from where I sit—trapped in his back seat. “No. I’m Terry. You must be confusing me with someone else.”

The man pushes his cap up for a better look at me. “No, it’s you, all right. Connor, the private eye. You told my boss that I was stealing from the company. You got me fired.”

Sweat dots my forehead. I remember this guy. Ryan Fogerty, whose boss, Vijay, suspected him of siphoning off product—luxury handbags—when they arrived from the supplier, then passing them to a ring of buyers specializing in selling in-demand items online at a major price gouge. It’s always online these days.

“Not only that,” Ryan continues, “you got me fired, then got my wife fired, too.”

Is the heater on? I glance to the front dashboard, but the A/C is pumping through the vents.

I shake my head. “I only told Vijay that you probably had a teammate in your scheme, and he reported your wife to her job on Rodeo—”

My driver brakes hard. He pulls over, knocking into the curb of the sidewalk, still a mile away from where I’m headed. “You thought that she was posing as a customer so I could pass her the extra bags—while you pretended to be searching for your lost child. When she came out of our store, holding a bag of my gym clothes, you were crying and a mess—remember that? She felt so bad for you that she asked you to watch her stuff while she went to go look for your ‘kid.’”

Air quotes. And a snarl. “She wasn’t any part of the game! Just dropped by to give me my heart medicine that day and pick up my laundry. Now I’m driving for Uber and ferrying my neighbors’ teenagers at all hours, just to pay my mortgage.”

Realization cuffs me on the jaw. This guy had such a good scheme going, he was living in Bel-Air. A fact I completely forgot about until now. “I—I’m sorry, I had no—”

“Disgusting—abusing her compassion. Manipulating a kind woman. Get out of my car before I throw you out.”

Burned rubber rips into the air as the guy peels back into traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, nearly colliding with a thrill-seeking bicyclist.

The walk to the Hollywood Tours Buzz depot is hot, sticky, and long. Plenty of time to recall what a jerk I was. It’s true, Ryan Fogerty was stealing from his boss, and I was paid a pretty penny to sniff out his crimes. But I didn’t need to loop in his wife as collateral damage. And posing as a bereft parent is some next-level scumbaggery.

I finally reach my Land Rover rental, feeling as gross on the inside as I do on the outside. My plan was to head back to my Airbnb to regroup, but being alone in Silver Lake sounds pretty awful right now. Although I made progress this morning—gained new info without hurting anyone this time—a sour taste coats my mouth. I followed Devon Lim’s trail in two cities and learned a lot—see, Genevieve?—but never his actual location.

Tourists crowd the lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, an old haunt of mine. I head straight toward the restaurant and bar, upbeat music blaring throughout the first floor. Front and center at the pool, my former favorite table is open, and I slide into the seat. Way back when, I used to come here to conduct meetings or to gather my thoughts. Work on theories. Plan out next steps to hunt down targets.

Being here is grounding. I try to refocus, to push the syndicated reruns of my mistakes out of my head.

My newsfeed crawls with reports of the usual: violence, scandal, and a few social media influencers deliberately leaking nudes. Three articles further down question whether there is a conspiracy related to Phinneas Redwood’s death. Redwood was a mainstay of the popular consciousness for his size as a little person, his larger-than-life personality, and being a CEO of a diet pill company. It’s not surprising that Addison’s name keeps popping up in relation to his. A publicist as feared and hated as she is doesn’t usually allow herself to get that close to homicide, let alone be at the scene of the crime.

Over a Shirley Temple and a cheeseburger—my favorite meal—I continue scrolling.

Thumbnails of headlines offer more of the same, but I know what I’m after: anything that mentions a tech mogul or Devon Lim, or Devon Lim and Phinneas Redwood. What would Lim be doing in France—if the luggage reservation I found can be believed? Why leave the country right now when he’s probably mid-grovel to his fiancée? Why would he not tell her his plans? If they broke up, Genevieve would have updated me.

I scan articles for any mention of the Aspen family while I’m at it. Genevieve prefers a low profile, and I need her to continue footing the bill for this investigation—and give me that bonus—more than I realized. Gianni called me last night in search of the money I owe, despite me already giving him 10 percent of it. He called from a blocked number, then left a brief voice message—“Hurry up, Connor”—while someone screamed in agony in the background. Who, I don’t know. But I don’t need to. The reminder was loud and clear to work harder—faster—if I value my health.

My finger pauses on an article’s thumbnail image of a laptop. The text beneath it reads RISE OF DRUG USE AMONG SOFTWARE RICH. The platform is a two-bit player in mainstream media, and its readership amounts to peanuts. But the fact that it leads with the “software rich” has me intrigued.

Scanning the article doesn’t offer much: only that after the tech boom of the early aughts, then the Great Recession that followed, the software giants that remained continued to amass wealth—the obscene kind. Those who were successful in the industry as software engineers saw some of that money trickle down. Most of them had too much, more than they knew how to manage responsibly. Cue drugs.

“Either drugs, sex, or alcohol,” I comment aloud. The burger is still warm, the cheese not yet stringy. The perfect comfort food. Poolside, two women in bikinis dive into the water, still warm in September in LA. One of them, a brunette, surfaces, then throws me a lusty smile.

I smile back but keep reading. The only woman I can think about lately is Addison Stern, against my better judgment.

I stop chewing. Reread the paragraph I just skimmed. Beneath an image of a famous engineer in Silicon Valley, the article mentions him. Devon Lim.

Months ago, another casualty of tech wealth, software genius Devon Lim was arrested for felony drug possession. The app that first brought him success, Irish Gbye, enables a user to remotely delete text messages from a recipient’s mobile phone up to twenty-four hours after a message was sent, regardless of the recipient’s security settings.

That’s it. No additional context or consequences. The author moves on to discuss the general opioid crisis currently entrenched across America. I scan the article again, top to bottom, for another mention of Lim. Using my phone’s spyglass function, I search the text for the key word Lim, but only the one sentence is found.

As I lean back in my chair, the cold metal shocks the exposed skin of my arms. The women in the swimming pool approach another man wearing a suit, seated on the opposite side. A new song by a singer I once did a keg stand with in Malibu while I was investigating his ties to traffickers at his father-in-law’s request blasts overhead.

How was Devon Lim’s name buried in the middle of an op-ed from last week when he’s one of the richest app inventors of the decade? Why is this the only mention I’ve seen of him being arrested months ago—and for drugs?

I tap my call log, then smash Addison’s name with my index finger. The phone rings. Although I read the spreadsheet file that I stole on my thumb drive, Addison’s notes were hard to make sense of. I only understood Devon Lim’s Santa Barbara address because she included it as a PNG file, copied into a cell.

“You again?” Her voice is velvety, as if she’s in a crowded movie theater and she’s sneaking away to answer.

I pause. Watch as a beach ball is slapped into the chlorinated water. Condensation forms a ring around my glass on the wooden table. “How has Ovid managed to keep the drug arrest quiet all this time? I just read about it online.”

Addison scoffs through the phone. “Not possible. We locked down the media, the police, and his colleagues, keeping them all from uttering a peep. The only way that info would be leaked is if…Shit.”

A tapping noise emanates from the phone. “No one in the United States, definitely not in California, would have published that. What was the platform name?”

She pauses, and I can almost hear the Cheshire Cat grin she wears. “Because. I know where Devon Lim is hiding.”

The image of Devon Lim’s luggage reservation returns to mind, but I see no reason to share more than what’s necessary with this PR edition of ego personified. “Devon recently flew there. Look, more importantly, Phinneas Redwood and Devon knew each other. Devon even wrote up a business proposal directed to Thrive, Inc. for an app to pair with the new pill that’s launching this November.”

I lean back against the chair. I’ve got Addison exactly where I want her. “Well, I think I have my marching orders, then. Au revoir.”

“Nice try, Connor. But if Devon and Phinneas are somehow mired together in this debacle, I’m not letting you handle a visit to Devon alone.” She exhales into the speaker. “Let’s go to France.”