Hollywood Blood: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller (20 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

An hour after I got off the phone with Charlie, I was in a new pair of jammies that I’d boug
ht on the way to my Mom’s house since everything I owned was lost in the fire. I was covered with cheesy Fug-dust and half-way through a glass of pity party wine when inspiration struck.

I felt
lonely and picked up my iPhone. “Siri, I need some help,” I said to my phone’s electronic personal assistant.

“How may I help you, Hot Stuff?” Siri asked.

Okay, so I had Siri take liberties with my name and the truth—who doesn’t? I also had to admit that I liked Siri’s voice. There’s something calm and soothing about her. It wasn’t the first time that I’d talked to her out of loneliness.

“I need a man,” I said.

“There are 3,792,621 people in the Los Angeles city limits, Hot Stuff. About fifty-two percent of those people are men.”

“Okay, let’s narrow this down a little. I need a hot guy.”

“At any one time, 3.7 percent of the population is running a fever,” Siri said. “That means that there are approximately 72,970 hot men in Los Angeles.”

This wasn’t working. “Siri, I mean that I need a man who is sexually attractive.”

I’d apparently given her a tall order. She took a moment before saying, “There are 397 escort services in Los Angeles. Would you like their phone numbers sorted by locations closest to you?”

I gave up and told Siri that Hot Stuff would talk to her later. I sipped my wine and popped another Fug into my mouth. My phone rang and for some reason, maybe it was the wine, I thought I was still talking to Siri.

“Hot Stuff doesn’t need an escort service,” I said.

“Well that’s probably a good thing,” I heard a man say.

I was confused. “Who is this?”

“It’s the guy you call, Mack, Hot Stuff.”

I was mortified. Now I was sure that I was the world’s biggest idiot. I thought about hanging up and crawling into bed, but then I thought better of it. Maybe Siri had somehow given me my wish? I tried to think of something clever to say about escort services as a comeback line but drew a blank.

“If you’re looking for an appliance, I’m out of business,”
I finally said, confirming my idiocy.

“I saw what happened to your apartment on TV. I’m just checking to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m not bad for a homeless person who’s out of a job.” I went on for a moment, telling him about my reassignment and explaining that I wasn’t really out of a job, at least not yet, but it felt like it.

“I’m at my office working late,” Mack said, after commiserating with me. “Would you have a few minutes to stop by? I’ve come up with something on the case that I think you’ll find interesting.”

I looked at my cheesy hands, my glass of wine, and thought about how pathetic I’d been, talking to a computerized personal assistant and feeling sorry for myself. There was that but also the thought about being with Mack again—a hot guy.

“I can be
there in an hour,” I said.

Thank you, Siri!

***

I knocked on the window outside Mack’s office and waited as he came down the hall. I’d tapped what little I had in savings earlier for my new jammies, along with a lapel jacket, cashmere sweater, and a pair of black tuxedo pants. My hair, for once, seemed to be cooperating.

I admired my new outfit in the glass, then saw the black labs trailing behind the private investigator inside the office.

I looked at Bernie. “You’re not getting any younger. Pace yourself.” He licked and wagged
, then ran off with the girls when Mack opened the door.

“Glad you cou
ld make it,” Mack said. He had on an open collar blue shirt and tan pants. He looked relaxed and smelled like a combination of sandalwood and something more exotic and inviting that I couldn’t place.

“No problem,” I said. “I was just having an intimate dinner for one with some Fugs and wine when you called.”

He looked at me and smiled. “Fugs?”

“It’s probably better that you don’t know.”

We settled into his office. He turned on his computer and told me why he’d called. “I’ve been doing some thinking about these murders, how they all seem to revolve around Karma.”

I took a moment and brought him up to speed on everything, including what we’d learned about Azazel, his computer games, and the players in the deadly game.

“The Predators apparently get to decide on the murders and Azazel uses Myra as his proxy to kill. The FBI thinks she’s been brainwashed.”

“I think that’s likely,” he
agreed. “But I also think there’s more to the story.”

I watched as he accessed several computer screens about Karma. “The Internet has a lot of information about our superstar—how she rose to fame with her first hit, her hair styles, her relationship with Trevon Jackson before he died, and her celebrity friends.” He glanced over at me. “What’s missing is her background, how she grew up, her parents, that sort of thing.”

“From what I’ve been told, her parents are dead and she was raised by Harriett Nordquist.”

“That’s true. But what you don’t know is how her parents died.”

He went into his e-mail account again and printed out a message. He handed it to me and explained. “I’ve had one of my investigators do some digging. Karma’s mother died in childbirth, but what happened to her father is another story. Everything you read on the Internet says that her father, James Redford, died in a car accident. That’s not true. The real story about her father has been edited and covered up.

“
According to my investigator, the cover-up was carefully orchestrated so that the real story could be kept out of the press. Apparently, when Karma’s career began to take off she was concerned that if the truth got out, the tabloids would have a field day with everything.”

I read what he’d given me and then loo
ked up into his blue eyes. I got lost for a moment, thinking about being on a tropical island with him. Then I forced myself to focus on what I’d read. “Her father was murdered?”

“Redford’s girlfriend, Elaine Deerfield, was convicted of stabbing
him to death. She’s serving a life sentence in Florida for the crime. We’re going to talk to her tomorrow.”

I pushed the e-mail aside. “It’s interesting but I’m not sure what, if anything, it means.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily mean much by itself.” He turned back to his computer and brought up another screen, printed out some additional e-mail correspondence, and handed it to me. “Redford was involved in a relationship before Karma was born. He had a daughter as a result of that involvement.”

“Karma has a sister?”

“Half-sister. The girl’s mother took off right after she was born and had nothing to do with her. Redford raised her, but had some run-ins with child protective services for abuse and neglect of the girl. He eventually gave up his parental rights and she went into the foster care system.”

He handed me the information
. I read the girl’s name out loud. “Lenore Christine Redford.”

“The story gets interesting from here,” Mack said. “Lenore spent her life in foster care before she e
nded up with a family in Texas. She was abused by her foster father who sold her into sexual slavery. One of the men he sold Lenore to tried to kill her, but she escaped into some woods. The police were called and the men involved were killed during a shootout.

“
Several years later, after Lenore’s foster father was convicted of molestation and sex trafficking, he was released from prison. He was killed a few years later by a hit and run driver. The case has never been solved.”

“And Lenore?” I asked, feeling my pulse quicken. “What happened to her?”

“That’s the million dollar question. She went into another foster home for a brief period of time before running away. She then disappeared, went off the radar.”

I let what he’d
said settle in for a moment. I then said what I knew we were both wondering. “Could Lenore Redford be Myra?”

Mack was about to answer when we heard a noise f
rom the back of the office. We realized it was Bernie and the girls.

“Hope he doesn’t end up in traction,” I said.

“It will be the sitter’s problem if he does.”

“I’m not sure what you mean?”

“I’ve got a great lady who’s a sitter for Thelma and Louise when I’m away. Bernie can stay with her and the girls while we’re gone, if you’d like.”

“Where are we going?”

“When I said we’re going to talk to Elaine Deerfield tomorrow, I meant us, as in you and me. I’ve got a chartered jet ready to leave for Florida in an hour.”

Chapter Forty-Five

The costume is perfect.

Myra wears a dark green dress, a green belt and matching hat with medical crosses, and green and black leggings. She’s a nurse with some attitude, a little sexy but also safe. She’ll blend in at tonight’s party, hardly be noticed, unlike the celebrities who will try to outdo one another with their elaborate outfits.

“Mommy, I like your costume,” Emily says, coming into the master bedroom
where she sees her mother looking in the mirror. “Can I dress up, too?”

Myra
turns to her daughter and smiles. “Let’s see what we can find in the closet.”

While their housekeeper, Gloria, cleans the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, they find one of
Myra’s dresses and a pair of heels that Emily puts on. Playing dress-up is one of her daughter’s favorite activities.

Myra
finds an old purse in the back of the closet, removes the wallet, and hands the handbag to Emily. “You need a purse to go with the dress. It’s the perfect outfit.”

The girl
takes the bag and admires herself in the mirror while Myra glances through the wallet. It has her driver’s license from Texas with the name she’d chosen.

Lenore Hastings.

She remembers that she once had a school teacher, Miss Hastings, whom she liked. After she had her last name legally changed, Myra recalls there was a time when she decided that she needed to start a new life without Azazel.

Her
new life began in Houston. She even married for a brief time. But then her husband became abusive and she left him.

After her divorce, Azazel found her again.
He was angry with her at first but soon they had fallen in love all over again. A flood of warmth washes over Myra as she recalls those days with him, the sex, the drugs, and the excitement of killing.

They had planned everything
together, first taking revenge on her foster father by running him down in the street. Then they focused on her biological father, the man who had abandoned her to the violence of the foster system.

Myra
remembers confronting him one night after her transformation. How she’d dyed her hair black, dressed in dark clothing, and hid in his closet. She waited until he came home from work and jumped out at him with a knife.

While
the fat asshole begged for his life, Myra remembers how she told him that she was no longer Lenore. She was now Myra, the one who was resurrected. She took her time, carving the bastard up before leaving another knife with his girlfriend’s fingerprints at the scene.

Everything had gone according to plan, until she found herself
confronting her biological mother one night. She had tracked down the bitch who had abandoned her, confessing her crimes. After the confession, she realized it had been a mistake. Her mother said she was going to the police. She left her with no choice. Her mother had to die to keep everything covered up.

When
she was arrested and the state later found her insane, she was sent to the hospital. Things had been difficult, at first. Azazel was upset that she’d acted on her own in killing her mother. He’d abandoned her for a time. But as the months passed, he began to visit, eventually agreeing to kill Dr. Thurston for raping her.

After that, Azazel came at least once a month, telling her of his plans
if she could convince the authorities to release her. He made it sound like it was all fated, reminding her how he’d chosen her, brought her back to life to take revenge.

He
r beloved had repeated his instructions so many times that it all seemed real, even before it happened. The final act in their revenge was now playing out. The circle will soon be complete.

“First, we kill the bitch that raised your sister,” Azazel had said. “And then her fiancé. But before he dies
you have an affair with Jackson. We make sure Karma knows that he cheated with you. When we finally kill your sister, it will be payback for the life you were denied.”

It was later that Azazel told her about the Predators, how they would pay money to watch the proceedings.

“The Predators want you to have a family,” he’d said one day. “They want you to have sisters—blood sisters.” Myra soon realized that the Predators liked to watch the sex, the games, the parties, and the killings.

“They will think they’re deciding what happens,” Azazel had told her. “But I will be making the decisions, leading them along, as we kill everyone that’s close to your sister, before we
kill Karma. When it’s all over we’ll take the money and begin our new life together.”

“Mommy, can I try on another dress and go to the party with you and Daddy tonight?” Emily asks.

Myra tosses the wallet onto the bed, turns and smiles as her daughter shows off her dress. “You’re staying with Grandma tonight. In fact, she should be picking you up any minute.”

Five minutes later Emily’s grandmother rings the bell.
Myra says her goodbyes and promises to pick her daughter up in the morning. It’s a lie. She has no intention of ever seeing Emily again.

With her daughter gone,
Myra returns to the bedroom. As she walks into the master suite she sees the housekeeper examining the driver’s license she left on the bed.

“What do you think you’re doing, Gloria?”
Myra demands, coming over and snatching the license from the maid’s hand.

“I sorry,” Gloria says, her eyes downcast. “I just try t
o clean up. I don’t mean nothing.”

It
’s too late. Myra feels a burning sensation behind her eyes, a jolt of electricity. She knows what she must do. There’s no way Gloria can live knowing that she once had another identity. The maid would likely see the photos of her on TV, make the connection, and then go to the authorities.

After the elderly maid is butchered
Myra drags the body into the bathroom, dumps it into the bathtub, and covers it with towels. There will be time to dispose of the corpse later. At the moment there are other things on her mind.

Myra
has to murder her husband.