Hollywood Hit (3 page)

Was she safe?

Jeb had a security system, as did everyone in Beverly Hills, but it was unarmed—the door unlocked and ajar. The very openness that now caused fear to slither through Nikki’s belly was how Nikki had gotten into the house. After knocking and waiting and texting
I’m here
, she’d pushed open the ten-foot wooden door and walked through the two-story atrium, the formal dining room, the kitchen, and out the back sliders to the fireplace, past the candles and the wine, and finally to the pool.

She looked over her shoulder toward the dimly lit house. Was she safe? Nikki didn’t know. But then again, she’d never felt safe in any Hollywood home.

Rush Nelson was a shadow in the darkness. His black hair, onyx eyes, and dark-almond skin spoke of a southern-European ancestry, though it was a seed planted so long ago that Rush was an American mongrel. He stood stiff limbed. Well-muscled yet lithe, his body was a high-performance machine that he kept well-tuned to carry out his business. His face was as unmoving as tiger stone, the thoughts behind his eyes unreadable. Once you realized you were in need of Rush Nelson’s services, you were in dire need. Rush was silence. Rush was darkness. Rush could even be death.

Ted Robinoff, Rush’s sole employer for the last three years, paced before him. Ted’s trim gray hair was the color of a storm cloud. Ted shoved his hands into the pockets of his red-striped robe. His chin tilted toward the ground, and his eyes marked off each step he took across the Persian rug in his home office. Distinction hovered about Ted Robinoff like a bee buzzed about a flower.

Rush understood Ted. Ted Robinoff didn’t fuck around. Not when it came to his famous wife. Not when it came to his wife’s safety. Not even when it came to the safety of his wife’s fucked-up family. Ted decided and struck fast. Rush respected this. You didn’t become one of the world’s most powerful men without understanding risk and how to eliminate threats.

“Cici’s niece, Nikki, is a fuckup,” Ted said. He continued to pace, but Ted’s eyes glanced up toward Rush. “A good kid, but a fuckup.”

Rush had helped save Ms. Celeste “Cici” Solange from herself and her debauched Hollywood past once before—sex tapes that predated her and Ted’s relationship. When Nikki Solange, Cici’s niece, had arrived in LA four months before, Rush knew she was a shit-storm waiting to happen. Rush had waited.  Certain that once the wind howled, Ted would turn to him.

“I need you to eliminate the risk.”

“The girl?”

Ted paused—in that split second a dark, hard, cold part of Ted understood that to eliminate all risk to his beloved wife, he needed to eliminate the girl. The warm, loving, human part of Ted—a piece kept alive by Cici—realized that Nikki as a casualty would create more pain than necessary. Ted shook his head no.

Ted stopped in front of Rush. He squared his shoulders. “Jeb Schmaltzer is dead.” A hard look flexed in Ted’s eye, unbreakable with the somber knowledge that with a megastar wife and a naïve niece, Jeb Schmaltzer, dead D-lister, would lie down on Ted’s proverbial front door. “Shot once in the chest in his own backyard.”

Not a muscle in Rush’s face moved, but his chin angled down as an indicator that he heard Ted.

“Nikki was working with Jeb on a project called
Boundless Bound
. What the hell?” Ted pulled one hand out of his pocket and waved his palm upward as though seeking a more-than-obvious answer to a frustrating question. “The kid wants to make movies, she could work at
my
studio. Why muck around in the shit?” He walked to the window behind his desk and peered into the dark night on the other side of the glass.

“This kid.” Ted shook his head. “Nikki thinks it’s so easy. Turns her back on the help we offer.” Ted swiveled his head toward Rush. “Until tonight. Gets her ass in a real mess and then she calls.” Ted stepped away from the glass and toward his desk. His eyes swept the room and landed on the wedding photo of him and Cici, taken on their private island in the Pacific.

“Here’s the thing.” Ted placed his palm on the desk’s mahogany surface. “Nikki has no idea of the human excrement floating around Hollywood. Nor does she understand the inherent value of her last name. That”—Ted tapped the second knuckle of his pointer finger onto the wooden desktop—“is what worries me.”

It worried Rush too. Nikki Solange was a priceless Ming vase sitting atop the trash heap of Hollywood.

“She’s been rolling around in some wannabe rock star’s bed for a month. Some little shit out of Wyoming or South Dakota who can’t keep his dick in his drawers—”

“Adam McWiggin,” Rush said.

An oily feeling slid into Rush’s gut with the mention of Nikki’s fuck buddy’s name. Rush’s jaw locked tighter. Adam McWiggin was a solid musician but a complete douchebag where women were concerned. Not a guy that Nikki should be involved with. “Security started a file.”

“I need you to find the risks, assess the risks, and eliminate the risks.” Ted’s voice traveled through the shadows in the room, soft and low. “Cici and Nikki aren’t to get hurt.”

“Understood,” Rush said.

“Nikki doesn’t want security. She’s a pain in my ass, like her aunt. Stubborn. Impossible.” A huff of breath came from Ted. He gazed past Rush and a memory played through Ted’s mind. The left side of his mouth curled into a smile. “But I love Cici.” His eyes reconnected with Rush, “And dammit, that means I love her family too.” Those words were all the reason Ted needed to let Cici Solange and her niece drive him to the hard edge of insanity.

“Follow Nikki, protect her, find out what the hell is going on without her knowing.”

Rush had been assigned tougher jobs than watching Nikki Solange. Before his discharge, one job had involved sitting on an ice-capped mountain with a rock piercing his thigh for thirty-eight hours, looking through a scope and trying to find a piece of Afghani scalp. Working for Ted was a luxury, as was following Nikki Solange, getting close, protecting her—an easy gig that included a fast car, swank expense account, and some serious threads.

“My intention is to play this close,” Rush said. “Without her awareness.”

Ted nodded. He eyed Rush from top to toe. “Do it.”

Rush turned on his heel. He was on the hunt for one very young, very pretty, very stupid girl.

“For fuck sake, isn’t anyone going to take him out of the water?” Cici’s voice cut through the heavy silence of the night.

Nikki’s insides crumpled. Her aunt’s voice pierced her like an arrow. Nikki sat on the chaise lounge and pressed her fingernails into her palms. The pain in the soft flesh of her hand centered her and drew her attention away from Jeb’s body which floated in the pool behind her. A burst of evening breeze flickered the flame of the candle on the table in front of her. She should have stayed at Adam’s place. She should have stayed home. Maybe she should have stayed in Tennessee. Nikki closed her eyes. She should have never moved to LA.

“Cici, please.” Howard Abromowitz, round and doughy with wire-rim glasses too small for his pallid face, placed his arm around Cici’s shoulder. “The officers must take every precaution to secure evidence.” Twin chicken legs, fish-belly white, stuck out from Howard’s running shorts, and a faded USC Law sweatshirt covered his watermelon-shaped belly.

Nikki pulled her gaze from the flickering candle flame. Detective Weitz sat opposite her. His hair was short and reddish with waves across the top. His face was full of pudge, but his body was lean. He wore khaki pants, a blue button-down shirt, and a windbreaker. A black notepad was open and lay on his knee. The other detective crouched beside the pool. Nikki glanced over her shoulder as he pulled himself upward from the pool deck. His hair was black, his eyes liquid blue, and he had a sharp-angled jaw beneath full lips. He was thicker, muscled, and he moved like there was strength beneath his clothes. He walked from the pool toward Nikki. His eyes roamed up from her high heels, over her legs and skirt, to her face where their gaze met. His gaze bounced from Nikki to Aunt Cici. Everyone looked at Nikki’s Aunt Cici. The weight of her aunt’s arm dropped onto her shoulder. Tears rolled down Nikki’s face, and she pressed her fingertips into her eyes.

“We have to get her out of here.” Cici’s tone was that of a woman used to being obeyed. She looked from one detective to the other.

“We don’t want the press to realize—”

“The press is already here,” the dark-haired detective said.

Not many people interrupted Cici.

“This is Detective Dragatsis,” Detective Weitz said and nodded his head toward the detective with the ice-blue eyes, the detective who didn’t smile or nod but had the courage to interrupt one of the world’s biggest stars.

“Dragatsis, Dragatsis,” Cici mumbled under her breath and crinkled her brows. “Do you have a brother? An agent at CTA?”

A muscle twitched in Detective Dragatsis’s jaw. “I do.”

The sharpness in Aunt Cici’s eyes grew softer. Nikki had witnessed this same phenomena when introduced to actors and directors and writers and producers and studio executives—anyone in entertainment. Having a family member in the Business gave you a pass. Aunt Cici relaxed, hopeful that Detective Dragatsis was versed in the rules of the Hollywood Club.

Detective Dragatsis directed his gaze away from Aunt Cici, away from Howard, and toward Nikki with her arms wrapped tightly around her chest.

“Miss Solange—”

“Nikki,” she whispered. “Please… just call me Nikki. It’s easier—people get confused and absolutely weird when you use the name Solange.”

“Nikki,” Detective Weitz said, “found Mr. Schmaltzer.”

Dragatsis nodded. “Did you know Mr. Schmaltzer well?”

 “I…” Nikki sighed and closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “He asked me to read
Boundless Bound
, the script that he’d written.”

“He probably wanted you to be in it,” Cici said. She raised her eyebrow and passed judgment on her own speculation as if it was a hard truth.

“I don’t act.” Nikki said. “I don’t want to.”

Aunt Cici stiffened.

Nikki glanced up from the candle flame still tossing about in the breeze. She looked into Detective Dragatsis’s eyes. “I think…” Nikki licked her lips. “I think that Jeb wanted me in his film. I told him no, that I wouldn’t be in
Boundless Bound
, but that I would help him get it made.” Her eyes skittered away from the detective and landed again on the flickering flame. “I told him I wanted to produce it.”

She could remember her multitude of conversations and e-mail exchanges with Jeb. The notes on the script that she’d provided and the rewrites he’d completed based on Nikki’s notes. So much work. So much time. Her bottom lip trembled. And now… now… he was dead.

Nikki shook her head and bit down on her bottom lip. She pinched the fleshy pad on her palm beneath her thumb and met Detective Dragatsis’s gaze. “Jeb said he understood that I didn’t want to act, but he wanted me to produce
Boundless Bound
. He asked me to come by tonight to discuss the latest draft of the script. He said he wanted to hear what I thought, what I liked about the new draft, how I thought he could improve the story—”

“Basically he was trying to get her pregnant,” Cici said, her voice flat with hard-won knowledge. “Metaphorically speaking.”

Heat trundled through Nikki’s belly with her aunt’s words. Nikki shook her head. A need took hold, a meat hook in her chest. Nikki needed Aunt Cici to know Jeb didn’t want her because she was Cici Solange’s niece but because she, Nikki Solange, had value.

“That wasn’t it.” Nikki shook her head and stared at the candle flame. “He really wanted to hear what I thought about the story, the writing, the structure.”

“Well of course he did, Nikki.” Cici tossed a careless shrug. “Every director asks the actor they want for a role what they think. That is
exactly
how a director acquires an actor who appears ambivalent about a role. They reel you in. Like a fish on a line. How do you see the character? What do you think about the subplot? How did the story impact you?”

Aunt Cici’s sentences slammed into Nikki, each with the weight of a brick. Nikki shrank farther into the chaise.

“Plus, my God, you’re a
Solange
. Ted
Robinoff
is your uncle. Of course Jeb wanted you to be a part of his film.”

The final sentences pounded hard into Nikki’s heart. Yet again, Aunt Cici was assuredly right. A bait and switch. Nikki’s fingertips pressed against her bottom lip. She closed her eyes and her brows pressed together.

She wanted to believe her notes over the last three months, her analysis of character, story structure, and dialogue had been fundamental in making
Boundless Bound
a better script, which would become a better movie. What if Jeb’s interest in her notes had been a ploy? A ruse to convince Nikki to do the thing she desperately did not want to do—make a film based on her aunt’s success and their shared last name?

“When Jeb asked me to be in the film I told him no, but I did say yes when he asked me to work on the script.”

Nikki followed Detective Dragatsis's gaze as it flicked around the patio: a bottle of wine, two glasses, the fireplace, the candles. Her heart skipped faster with how this night appeared.

“Were you and Mr. Schmaltzer romantically involved?”

“No!” Nikki nearly bounced from the cushion of the chaise.

“Please, Mr. Dragatsis,” Cici said with a firm headshake. “Do you
really
think I would allow my niece to become involved with a man like Jeb Schmaltzer?”

“I don’t know, Ms. Solange.” Detective Dragatsis turned a tight-mouthed, sub-zero stare toward Cici. “I’m guessing your niece is over eighteen years old.”

Cici nailed Detective Dragatsis with the don’t-fuck-with-me-or-my-family look. Nikki’s breath shortened. It took a set of balls to give that look to a detective at a crime scene while a dead guy with a blasted chest floated in the pool, and Nikki was the only known suspect.