Twenty-One

“W hat is it?” Omari sounded understandably alarmed.

I couldn’t speak, instead just pointed at the photos now littering the area around me. He reached down to grab one.

The shoe box held pictures, and they definitely weren’t of shoes. I wished they were. I glanced down at the photo closest to me. Toni stared back at me. To say the photo was explicit would be an understatement. If she weren’t famous already, those photos would’ve been enough to get her and her extended family a reality show on E!. I quickly started picking them up; each was worse than the one before it.

The ones that weren’t of Toni were of Luke Cruz, Toni’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, and, unlike every character he played in those romantic comedies he was in each year, he was a grade-A a-hole, the “A” standing for “A-list.” Toni was naked in all her photos. Luke was clothed. Unfortunately, it was in Toni’s underwear.

Omari stared at the photo he was still holding of Toni. “Quite the close-up,” he finally said.

I snatched it from him. “We cannot tell Emme about this.”

“Tell me what?”

Emme stood at the doorway, her eyes boring down on the shoe box in my hand. Fudge.

“Uhhh … ” I was surprised I even managed to get that out.

I stood frozen as Emme walked toward me and looked into the shoe box. She grabbed a photo. She focused in on it, realized what she was seeing, and then dropped it on the ground like it was on fire. She took out another. And another.

Then she snatched the box from me. Tucking it under her arm, she pulled out her phone and placed a call on speaker. “Speak,” the voice said. I recognized it immediately as belonging to Toni’s manager.

“Ben, did Toni tell you about any photos of her and Luke?” Emme asked.

“No. Where were they?”

“A shoe box. I don’t know how many there are or if any are gone. They’re pretty bad.”

“Hmmph.” There was no surprise in Ben’s voice. No anger. It was as if he’d been doing this so long, he’d surgically removed his ability to be shocked anymore. “Guess that one wasn’t a nut job after all.”

Omari and I exchanged glances. Neither of us had the slightest clue what he was talking about. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. But Ben continued on as if we’d asked him to explain. “About a month or two ago, some chick calls, won’t tell me her name. Just wants me to call her H. This H claims she has compromising photos of Toni. Threatened to go public if we didn’t pay her off. Blah. Blah. Blah.”

He paused. I waited for him to continue, but I guess Ben assumed we already knew the end of that story. “Did you?” I asked, then flicked a look at Emme. She still wore no expression.

“Of course not.” Ben sounded as offended as if I’d called his baby ugly. “You know how many calls like that I get? I told her what I tell everyone else: I was taping the call, and I would have my investigator on her so heavy I’d know her menstrual cycle.”

All righty then. “You tell Toni?” I immediately realized this question was even dumber than my last one.

“I did my job—handled it—so she could do hers. The woman never called back. Then the next fire came up and I had to piss all over that one.”

“What about the photos?” Emme asked. “One of the robbers is still out there. We think we know who—”

“My people will take care of it,” he said and hung up.

I stared at Emme. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “I’m gonna put a GPS on Marina’s phone.”

“That legal?” Omari asked.

“That matter?” Emme asked. Touché.

“How, though?” I asked. Someone—who definitely was not me—once asked Emme to track her boyfriend’s cell phone and was told she didn’t have the technology to do that. That someone was very disappointed.

“Has to be a way,” Emme said. “And if there isn’t, I’ll make one.”

I woke up the next morning thinking about Haley. Just when I thought it could get no worse, she’d managed to shock me even more. A lot of aspiring actresses had secondary jobs. Haley was more ambitious than most. Actress/secondhand-clothing saleswoman/world-class thief/not-so-great blackmailer. The hits kept coming.

When Sienna knocked on my door, I was happy for the interruption. Since it was her door, I told her to come in. Her arms were piled high with clothes. All red, of course. “I need help picking an outfit.”

With all the excitement, I’d forgotten she was scheduled to start shooting her sizzle reel with Montgomery. I glanced at the alarm clock. He was coming in a few minutes. From what Sienna had told me, he hadn’t had time to put together a crew, so he was doing it solo. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her I wouldn’t be in it. I doubted she needed me. She was more than ready.

Her bedroom and the living room were now redecorated. Much like its owner, Sienna’s apartment was rocking red from head to toe, or should I say ceiling to floor. I’d read somewhere that putting people in an all-red room was a Chinese torture method. I was sure it was just a myth, but after just two hours in our redesigned apartment, I was more than ready to share state secrets. If this was what my eggs felt like every month, no wonder they escaped.

“Didn’t you mention the dress with the sparkles? I asked.

“I did, but then I was thinking pants. Let me try on a few things and you film me.”

I threw a quick glance at my phone, wondering if Emme had figured out how to put a GPS on Marina’s cell. I was hoping I was quick enough Sienna wouldn’t notice. She did. “Look, if you’re too busy, I can have Fab help me. He should be here in a few minutes.”

Fab? Here? Few minutes? Of course, wherever there’s a camera, Fab would be close behind. “He must have smelled fame in the air and called you,” I said.

“I called him. I need a sidekick, after all.”

WTF? I was her sidekick, not Fab. Why ask him and not me?

She read my mind. “Montgomery suggested I ask you, but I told him how you were done with the whole Hollywood thing.”

She was right, but still. At least ask. I was upset. To make matters worse, I was upset that I was upset. I was done with Hollywood. Yet here I was angry about not being asked to be on camera. I needed out of the apartment, so I said the first excuse I could think of. “I’m gonna go exercise.”

Sienna was too distracted to remember I hadn’t worked out in six months, so my escape was easy. I did manage to exercise, walking for an hour straight. Proud of myself, I stopped at a frozen yogurt store on the way back and requested samples until they figured out I wasn’t going to buy anything and suggested I leave.

I snaked my way back to our street. The only reason I headed home was because, of course, I had to pee. I came around the bend in the road only to find Fab parking his Lexus SUV across from the condo.

He spotted me before I had the chance to “casually” turn my head to the side and pretend not to see him. “Hey, girl.” Well, wasn’t he in a good mood? Probably because he was a best friend thief. “Can you believe who Omari’s dating? He hit the big time, no?”

Hold up. The blind item had been true? Fab started to cross the street. My anger suddenly dissipated and I rushed to catch up. I would have followed him anywhere. He could’ve walked off the side of a cliff. I’d have been right next to him screaming about Omari the entire way down.

“I saw him yesterday. He acted like he was single,” I said.

Fab stopped abruptly, while I kept going. “Single as in not married. He’s been seen at her house.”

I stopped a few feet into the street and turned around. He was still close to his car. “Having sex doesn’t mean they’re dating,” I said.

“Girl, they’re definitely dating. Been all over town. Even in the daytime.”

I gasped. Being at someone’s house at night was not considered a big deal. It was considered a booty call. Daytime, however, was serious. Just as serious as being seen in public without the sole purpose of getting your photo taken together. “Who is it?”

“Girl, please. Everyone knows Omari’s dating—”

Fab never finished his sentence. He was interrupted by a car honking, followed closely by a car taking the curve on our street. Fast. Really, really fast. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. Normally, I would be standing on the sidewalk, not in the street. The car would have hit me except Fab yanked me out the way.

My brain froze like a computer screen with too many programs open. My heart more than made up for it; it wasn’t just beating a mile a minute. At this pace, it would win a NASCAR race.

I zoned out. When my brain finally rebooted, I somehow was by myself in the bathroom. I felt like an idiot. I’d lived here long enough to know people in LA transformed into demons as soon as they got into the driver’s seat and assumed the horn was a good substitute for the brake.

And there I’d been, standing right in the street. Thank God Fab was there. I gathered myself and came out the bathroom to find Sienna and Fab crowded outside the door. “We need to call the police,” she said. “Report that someone tried to hit you.”

“Someone tried to hit me?”

I wasn’t saying it to be an a-hole. I was truly confused. Someone tried to hit me? Wait, someone tried to hit me? Me? Uh-uh, I thought, then tried it out loud. “Uh-uh.”

Sienna pressed the back of her hand on my forehead. “I think you have a concussion.”

“It was an accident.” I sounded downright insistent. “It wasn’t like they ran me over on the sidewalk. They couldn’t see me around the bend.”

“We need to call the police.”

I didn’t respond. Since I was still having trouble grasping that someone had almost killed me accidentally, I found it nearly impossible to believe he or she might have done it on purpose. The doorbell rang, signaling Montgomery’s arrival.

Fab went to let him in while Sienna followed me to the bloset. She grabbed her landline and called Emme. I sat there still in shock while Sienna filled Emme in. Luckily, Emme was Team Accident. “IDK,” she said. “Killers don’t honk.”

Sienna rolled her eyes before speaking. “So they weren’t trying to kill her. They were trying to scare her. That make you feel better? She needs to stop with this investigation.”

“But she’s making progress.” That I was.

“Which is why she almost just got killed. If they killed their best friend or girlfriend, why wouldn’t they kill her?”

Good point.

“So she quits,” Emme said. “Who’s to say they won’t randomly decide to kill her one day? The only way for her to ever feel safe is to put them behind bars.”

Another good point. They might as well have each climbed on a shoulder. The only problem was I wasn’t sure who was my devil and who was my angel.

Before I could decide, Montgomery barged into the room, Fab right at his heels. “You okay?” Montgomery said.

“She’s still in shock,” Sienna answered. “Emme thinks she needs to keep on with this investigation.”

“After someone just tried to kill her?” Montgomery sounded genuinely shocked.

“It was an accident,” Emme said.

“You need to call the police,” Montgomery said. “Now.”

I was about to tell Sienna to go ahead when my father popped into my head. I thought it over. It didn’t feel like a threat to me. It felt like an accident. And Emme was right. I was close to figuring things out. What if it was an accident? I would have quit for no reason.

I was scared, but would quitting make me less scared? Especially if there was a killer out there who knew where I lived and knew that I knew something important. The best bet seemed to be to solve the murder. Haley’s killer couldn’t run me over if he or she was sitting in a jail cell.

Besides, my family still needed the money. Time was running out to pay the bank.

“I’m not calling the police,” I said. “It was an accident.”

Sienna actually dropped the phone. I picked it up, then practically shoved the three of them out of my bloset. I slammed the door, but I could hear them talking loudly about how crazy I was acting. I spoke to Emme. “Any luck tracking Marina’s phone?”

“Yes, but we have to physically download the GPS tracking software onto it.”

“By we, you mean me?” I said, knowing full well that Emme had filled her leaving-the-house quota dealing with this Toni situation.

“Yep.”

“You really think it was an accident?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Yep.”

I really hoped she was right.

My life would have been easier if Marina could afford a doorbell. Any other day, knocking on a door wouldn’t have been a problem. Any other day, I wasn’t about to meet a potential murderer to secretly load GPS software onto her phone. My hands were shaking so badly they barely made a sound as my knuckles rapped on her door.

It had been surprisingly easy to get Marina to agree to hang out. I harbored no delusions that downloading the software would be quite so simple. I was scared out my mind. I wasn’t willing to risk one of my friends’ lives by having them come with me, but it would have been nice to have backup. Instead, I settled for taking a girl’s other best friend. Not diamonds. Pepper spray.

I told Marina I’d pick her up at 9:00 p.m. so I got to her apartment at 8:30, figuring her cell and I could have alone-time while she finished getting ready. When she answered the door, she was wearing a robe, and only one eye had shadow. “Sorry I’m early,” I said. “I got done late and it didn’t make sense to go home, so … ”

I half expected her to whip out a knife and stab me right there. Instead, she flashed me her braces. “No prob.”

She ushered me inside, sat me down on a futon, and disappeared down the hall. I took in my surroundings. Not that there was much to take in. Besides the aforementioned futon, the only other furniture was a card table with a couple of folding chairs. Forget cable—there wasn’t even a TV. The Rack Pack obviously hadn’t taken home any of the things they stole. I use the term “obviously” because it would have been easy to hide something in plain sight.

What Marina and Haley lacked in furniture, they made up for with stuff. That was the only way to describe it. Papers, magazines, and textbooks were piled high on the table, both folding chairs, and half of the futon. Judging from the stack of magazines teetering dangerously in a pile next to my feet, Marina’s version of “cleaning” for company was moving the pile from the futon to the floor. I briefly wondered if any of it had belonged to Haley, then reminded myself that I didn’t care.

I had a cell phone to find. It felt impossible under these circumstances. I spied Marina’s purse in a pile by the door and tiptoed over.

“Did you see the first movie?” she called from down the hall.

We had plans to see a Man in Danger 2: Man in More Danger, starring wholesome family man/A-list action star Todd Arrington. “Yes, but I fell asleep halfway through.”

I opened the purse. She had three lipsticks, a wad of crumpled tissue, a couple of stray pieces of gum, and some pepper spray of her own. But no phone. “He tends to bore me when he’s fully clothed,” I said.

She laughed. “Good thing they always manage to get him out of his shirt ten minutes in.” I went to the card table. “He and his family just did a sit-down interview for E!. He gave a tour of his place. It was so nice. Serious house goals.”

I threw a few three-year-old issues of InStyle on the floor. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway. No cell phone. “Really?” I said, barely listening.

I was about to check under the futon when I spied a USC book bag in the corner. I walked over. The phone was in the front pocket. Bingo.

I slipped it into my jacket pocket and went to sit back down, all ready to resume the innocent act. That’s when I saw the second cell phone peeking out from between two of the piles on the futon.

I didn’t know how I’d missed it. Both were the latest Galaxy phone and both had sparkly cases, except this one was pink and the one in my pocket was purple. Fudge. I bent down to examine it.

“Blurg adak awk jad.”

That wasn’t what Marina said. Just what it sounded like. Her voice was close, like “stab me in my back with a knife for stealing her cell phone” close. I screamed.

“I scared you, I’m sorry,” Marina said.

I’d been so caught up in my search that I hadn’t noticed she’d walked into the room. Thank God my back was to her so she couldn’t see what I was doing. I tried to catch my breath, then gave up. Palming the pink cell and hiding it in my sleeve, I turned around. “It’s okay,” I managed to squeak out between inhaling large gulps of air. “I was just admiring … your lovely collection of magazines. What’d you say?”

“Have you seen my cell phone?”

Yes. “No.” I smiled my way through the lie and prayed she didn’t notice my teeth chattering. “When’d you last have it?”

“I’m not sure.”

I watched Marina check all the places I’d checked a few minutes before, the phone feeling like a hundred-pound weight in my hand. She wore that same look we all got when we couldn’t find something we’d just had. “Maybe I should call it?” she said.

That was a horrible idea. “That’s a great idea. Let me call it for you.”

I grabbed my purse a few feet away. My back to her, I slipped the second phone into my jacket pocket with its twin. I made a show of taking out my cell phone. I found the number and hit to connect. “I’m calling.”

I just wasn’t calling her. Instead, I called Sienna, knowing she wouldn’t pick up since she was filming. As it rang, I made a show of looking around, as if straining to hear her cell. Marina was doing the same thing, except for real. Right before it went to Sienna’s voicemail, I hung up. “Maybe the battery died,” I said, then scooped up my purse and changed the subject. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Still focused on her phantom phone, Marina motioned toward the hallway. As soon as I was in the bathroom, I breathed for the first time since entering her apartment. That had been close. I, of course, had to use the facilities. I did it quickly and then took the cell with the purple cover out of my pocket. I hit the button to remove the screen saver and swiped the touch screen to unlock it. God must’ve taken pity on me because there was no pass code.

The photos confirmed it was Marina’s. Give it up one time for people loving to take selfies in dirty bathroom mirrors. I had more of my own than I cared to admit. I used her phone’s browser to visit a website Emme had created for me and downloaded the GPS software. Luckily, part of the software’s appeal was that it didn’t show up in your icons. I then made sure to remove the site from Marina’s browser history. The whole thing took less than thirty seconds.

I put Marina’s cell back in my pocket then pulled out the second one. It had to have belonged to Haley, the one Victory was so eager to get back. It could be Marina’s old phone, but it was too new. It was also off. I turned it on and waited impatiently during the thirty seconds it took to boot. Like Marina, Haley didn’t have a passcode. Two in a row!

There were lots of pictures of Haley solo and with Marina and Victory—including a few nude shots of him. TMI. I moved to her texts. The last one was to Victory. Of course, the new messages were at the bottom and you had to scroll up. There were about three messages on the current screen.

The top was from Haley. NP TOOK THE CASH.

Sent at midnight the night she died.

I’d been friends with Emme long enough to know what NP stood for. I just wasn’t sure what the “no problem” referred to. Took the cash could be about the Kandy Wrapper robbery. Haley really was a fan of the caps lock. Punctuation, not so much.

Victory was no better. His response: GTFOOH acting like everything ok w/us

Victory was mad, but then, when wasn’t he? What were they arguing about?

Her: GOI TOLD U IT WAS JUST BIZ

Get over it. I told you it was just business. So they were arguing about business, but what business? And why hadn’t she included Victory?

Him: & I told u Id kill u. GOI that u hoe.

Whoa. He was threatening to kill her. Thirty minutes before she died, at that.

I scrolled up, hoping to find out more, when a Kandy Wrapper song started blaring somewhere near my privates. What the heck? I had no clue what it was, but Marina sure did. She banged on the door. “Is that my phone?”

And that’s when I dropped Haley’s phone in the toilet.