Celebrity Sudoku (13 page)

Liza shrugged. “I’d met her already, and she didn’t have much to say about Ritz.” She looked down at the rug. “To tell the truth, when all this nonsense started, I didn’t
want
to talk to Lolly. I figured she would be the one the cops would be all over. After all, she was the one who left the soundstage with Ritz—supposedly on the way to the Boots Bungalow.”

Her eyes met Michael’s. “And when you didn’t suggest going after Lolly, I figured I’d go along, seeing whether the other people involved with Ritz might explain what the hell she was doing.”

His shoulders hunched a little. “But we haven’t gotten any answers.” Michael paused for a second. “What do you think about this amnesia business?”

“You did a bit of research about that for some scripts, didn’t you?” Liza asked.

Michael frowned in thought. “Lolly took a head injury—that could really mess up a person’s memories, not just after, but even before she got hurt.”

“So she honestly might not recall any events that happened around the earthquake.” Now it was Liza’s turn to pause. “The problem is, that sounds like the kind of script you might write.”

“The kind of script that wouldn’t get accepted because it strains the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief,” Michael glumly agreed. “We’ve got to talk with Lolly—although I don’t know how we can make that happen after Quigley warned us off.”

“Well, wait a second,” Liza said. “He warned us against impeding his investigation. He didn’t particularly forbid us to talk with Lolly.”

Michael gave her a long, silent look. “I think you’ve been spending too much time hanging around Alvin Hunzinger, lawyer to the stars,” he finally said. “That’s slicing the baloney mighty fine.”

“Frankly, I was sort of wishing we had Alvin around when Quigley was here. For a while I think he was debating whether he wanted to arrest me, you, or both of us.”

Usually, Michael would laugh at a line like that. This time, though, he merely nodded. “Let’s just hope he didn’t decide to leave us at large in the hopes we can get Lolly to implicate herself.”

 

 

Getting hold of the Popovics turned into a much more difficult job than either Michael or Liza expected. They ran through all the numbers they had collected from Rikki and Lolly at dinner—could it really have been only five evenings before?

Michael put down the phone with a frustrated thump. “The curse of voice mail strikes again,” he announced. “And that was our last number for them.”

“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” Liza said. “We did the same thing after my face appeared on
The Lowdown
.”

“Well, yeah,” Michael admitted. “But I didn’t have to get in touch with you then. Or if I did, I knew you couldn’t be more than ten feet away from the couch.”

He ducked as Liza sent one of the decorative cushions flying at his head.

“Maybe you could give Buck a call and see if he’ll check on them,” Liza suggested. She waited until Michael was bending to get the phone again, and then clobbered him with the couch’s other pillow.

“Let that be a warning to you,” she told him. “I may be part crippled, but I’m still not to be messed with.”

Buck’s report, which Michael put on the speakerphone, was not encouraging. “They’ve apparently left their place in Malibu.” Buck’s usually deep voice sounded even more ominous with the speaker’s rain-barrel effect. “I guess they’re officially in seclusion.”

“And Rikki’s been kicking around Hollywood for a good twenty-five years.” Michael slumped sideways in the armchair. “I’m betting she knows some really secluded places for seclusion.”

He suddenly sat up straight again. “Unless . . . I can think of one place they’ll probably have to be fairly soon. The doctor who took care of her at that hospital in Bel Air will want Lolly back to have her head examined.”

Liza rolled her eyes. “She won’t be the only one if we have to go and stake the place out.”

 

 

Buck managed to make their job easier, finding out when Lolly’s appointment was. So Liza and Michael didn’t have to put hours into staking out the hospital entrance. Even so, they almost missed their quarry.

Liza gazed around in boredom as a woman with her arm in a sling came up to the door. The woman opened it, looked around, and then made a beckoning gesture.

Michael suddenly jerked upright in his seat. “That’s Rikki Popovic.”

It took Liza a moment, but she finally managed to look through the makeup and see the actress underneath. Rikki had done a masterful job of toning down her natural beauty. She’d done something to make her hair more drab, hollowed out her cheeks, and added dark rings around her eyes—and the baggy clothes she wore not only camouflaged her figure, but actually made her look fat and dumpy.

Now she stood with her back holding open the hospital door, looking toward a cab parked at the curb where another figure emerged.

Lolly Popovic had received a similar makeover job to dial back her natural beauty. She wore an oversized baseball cap to hide the bandages on her head while oversized clothing muffled her figure. As she covered the distance across the sidewalk, her eyes kept moving nervously around.

Lolly was right to be nervous. When Lolly was halfway to the entrance, the passenger door on a parked SUV swung open and a familiar figure piled out, videocam at the ready.

“Hey, Lolly, are you afraid the police are actually going to arrest you?” The reporter from
The Lowdown
flung back his head to shake the long, lank hair out of his eyes. His big blue eyes had a more serious glint than usual, and his high cheekbones had flushed pink—with excitement? Or was that anger?

Could he have been drinking?
Liza wondered as she heaved herself out of Michael’s Honda.

From the machine-gun volley of questions coming out of the guy’s mouth, he had to be high on something.

“You know they think you did it, don’t you, Lolly? Did you do it?
Did
you? Why? Why would you kill Ritz?” His voice cracked on his last demand—not that he got an answer.

Lolly stood frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, pale and trembling, her mouth hanging open in shock.

That’s bad,
Liza thought, hauling herself up on her walker.
It makes her look guilty.

Michael had already barreled out from behind the steering wheel, moving to interpose himself between Lolly and her tormentor.

But Rikki Popovic was even quicker.

Charging like a lioness defending her cub, she rammed into the guy from
The Lowdown
.

Wow, she must have some muscles under all those curves,
Liza thought.

The video paparazzo almost executed a somersault in midair before he crashed down on the curbside, nearly at Liza’s feet.

Before he could get up, Liza positioned her walker over his chest, blocking any possible shot. She rested her full weight on the frame as he rattled against it.

“Get out of my way! Move this thing!” the reporter angrily demanded.

Liza moved it, all right, bringing one of the legs thumping down in a poke where she thought it would do him the most good—or was that harm?

The paparazzo let out a yelp that turned into a yell. “Goddammit, lady, I might want to have kids someday, you know!” He let go of his camera, both hands going to cup himself as he curled up in pain.

Gritting her teeth against the complaints from her injured knee, Liza brought her walker up and over the reporter, smacking one of the legs against his video camera and sending it skittering into a nearby storm drain.

The reporter’s language got downright sulfurous as he struggled upright—well, not exactly upright. He stood hunched over, still clutching his injured parts. When he realized that Lolly and Rikki had escaped—and where his camera had gone—he grew even louder and more inventive.

Liza looked at him. “Young man,” she said in her most rebuking tone, “don’t you realize this is a hospital zone? You’re supposed to keep quiet.”

Michael appeared beside her, helping her back into the Honda. They escaped as the video paparazzo shouted impotently behind them.

“Mission accomplished?” Liza asked from the backseat, rubbing her knee.

It’s never going to get better if I keep jumping around on it,
she thought ruefully.

“I gave Rikki the number for that throwaway cell phone we picked up on the way over here,” Michael reported as he steered them toward the freeway. “Although I had a moment or two of doubt and fear that she was going to tear my head off before she recognized me.”

They stopped for a red light, and he shot her a wry look. “From what I saw you doing to that
Lowdown
guy, you’re having altogether too much fun with that walker.”

Liza shot him a smile. “It’s just like you said in that Sherlock Holmes script you tried to sell—‘Watson, any item can become a deadly weapon.’ ”

“That was ‘infernal device,’ ” Michael corrected her. Then after a second he admitted, “Although ‘deadly weapon’ probably sounds better.”

“I wonder,” Liza said in a distracted voice.

“About what?” Michael asked with a little annoyance. “I just agreed that you had the better line.”

“What?” Liza shook her head. “Sorry; I jumped to something completely different. I was wondering about that video paparazzo.”

“You mean, will he be able to have children after that poke you gave him?” Michael asked with a grin. “In spite of all his yelling, I think the answer is ‘yes.’ ”

Liza didn’t laugh at that, though. “Did you get a look at the guy’s face while he was interviewing Lolly?”

“If you could call that an interview,” Michael said. “It wasn’t just an ambush. That was more like an attack.”

“The questions got a little much, even for
The Lowdown
.” Liza frowned. “In fact, when he talked about Ritz, it sounded more personal than professional.”

She started scrabbling around for her cell phone. “I’m going to call Buck. Maybe we have another person with a connection to Ritz.”

Before she even began punching in the number, Liza heard the bleating of a cell phone. “That’s not mine,” she said.

“Not mine, either,” Michael told her. “I didn’t choose that ringtone.”

“It’s the throwaway!”

Liza rummaged around on the backseat to find the bag from the cell phone store. She managed to find their undercover phone and hit the appropriate button before the ringing stopped.

“Michael?” The reception was so rough, static made Rikki Popovic’s voice sound gravelly.

Note to self,
Liza thought.
If we ever have to do this again, spring for the expensive coverage plan.

“This is Liza,” she said into the phone. “Are you and Lolly okay?”

“Yes, after we got away from that maniac,” Rikki said. “Michael said you wanted to meet with us. Can you do it now?”

“Sure,” Liza replied. “The only question is, where?”

They quickly decided on a meeting place.

Michael continued driving down Beverly Glen to Santa Monica Boulevard, heading southwest toward the Pacific Ocean. A few blocks short of the beach, he made a quick left, then a right, and he rolled to a stop in the parking area for the Santa Monica Pier.

Liza got out her walker and set off along with Michael through the arched entranceway, past the amusement park, and onto the pier.

“Funny how we’d go all the way down to Balboa when we had an amusement pier so close to home,” Michael said, looking at the carousel, the roller coaster, and the Ferris wheel. “They even put up a new Ferris wheel—solar power.”

“Great if you’re determined to go green.” Liza halted over her walker. “Our Ferris wheel is different.” She gave him a lopsided grin. “It’s powered with golden memories.”

He smiled back. “Of course, there is that.”

Liza peered through the railing edging the pier. “Let’s go farther,” she said. “The tide is out. Kind of ridiculous to stand on a pier if all you have under you is beach.”

With Michael at her side, she humped along a bit farther until the surf was sloshing against the pier pilings below. Liza stopped next to the railing to look down.

When she looked up, she saw Rikki and Lolly Popovic coming to join them.

Liza glanced around, but nobody on the pier seemed to be paying any attention to the pair of dumpy tourists meeting up with their gimpy friend.

Lolly grabbed Liza’s hand. “Thank you for holding that man down. After he started yelling those crazy things at me, I couldn’t even move.”

“I didn’t do all that much.” Liza tried to downplay the whole thing.

“You hit him where it counted and got rid of his camera,” Rikki cut in. “Thank God for that. This has been enough of a nightmare without people streaming crazy footage like that on the net.”

“Yeah, we had a visit from Detective Quigley,” Michael said. “He didn’t strike me as much like a fun guy.”

“That one!” Rikki’s voice dripped venom. “From the moment he talked with my daughter, it was clear he wasn’t after information. He wanted a suspect, the more famous, the better.”

“And I couldn’t tell him anything.” Lolly leaned against the pier’s steel railing as if it were the only thing holding her up.

“Do you remember hitting your head?” Michael asked, nodding toward the bandages hidden under Lolly’s baseball cap.

She shook her head. “I recall taping the first game, and Ritz picking me. That was a surprise. Then they called a break, and we were going . . . somewhere.” Her eyes looked lost and afraid. “Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. They’d just stitched up my scalp.”

Her hand tentatively went to the side of her head. “A nurse at the hospital said that studio guards found me at the New York standing set.”

Liza nodded. Certain areas of the studio grounds had been built up as different locations—the Wild West, or small-town America, a few blocks of Paris, and a section that could double as downtown New York, or Chicago, or any other big-city locale.