“Deal.”
They headed to the café, where Dee purchased lattes for each of them. She joined Marisa at a café table. “I’m guessing you heard about what happened to Michael Adam Baker.”
Marisa responded with an eye roll and a flip of her sleek, shoulder-length bob. “Idiot.”
Dee’s eyes widened. This wasn’t remotely the reaction she expected. “I’m sorry, what?”
Marisa leaned forward, a vindictive gleam in her eyes. “Cone of silence. Totally between us.”
Dee raised one hand and placed the other on the table. “I swear on a story bible.”
“Michael Adam Baker came over to Callan’s for a meeting. They got into a huge argument. And Michael ended up firing Callan.” She said this with utter disbelief. “Can you believe it? Firing, like, the best agent in Hollywood? Callan was so ticked off. He just began screaming, ‘Who do you think you are? Nobody fires Callan Katz, especially a lowlife like you!’ It got ugly.”
“Really.” Dee managed not to show her elation. She knew Michael fired Callan, but his furious reaction tagged him as a suspect in the writer’s murder.
“Uh-huh,” Marisa said with a vigorous nod. “Callan wasn’t exaggerating. People would kill to be represented by him.” Dee winced, but Marisa didn’t notice her poor choice of words. “His clients do amazing. It’s too bad you never signed with him. You’d be living in the Palisades or Brentwood instead of stuck in the boonies out here.”
“Poor me,” Dee said in an acerbic tone Marisa didn’t pick up on.
The assistant’s phone alarm rang. “Time’s up.” Marisa turned off the alarm and rose. “I have to grab Callan’s backup tux and bring it down to him in L.A.”
“Backup tux?” Dee, bemused, shook her head. “I pretty much grew up in the business and I never heard of that before.”
Marisa gave her a patronizing, almost pitying smile. “Probably because it’s an A-list thing.”
Dee managed not to snap a comeback at the assistant and her superiority complex. Marisa started toward the laundromat, her spike heels clicking on the wooden floor. Dee trailed her. “His other tux was almost ruined at a fundraiser a couple of nights ago,” Marisa explained. “Callan tried to break up a fight between a Real Housewife he represents and one of the others, who tried to smash a bottle of red wine over Callan’s client’s head. They all ended up covered with wine.”
“Yikes. Um . . . when exactly did this happen?”
Just as Dee feared, Marisa named the night of Baker’s murder. “It was all over the internet,” Marisa said with relish, bringing to mind the classic adage that there was no such thing as bad publicity.
Marisa retrieved her boss’s backup tux without so much as a thank-you to Elmira and zipped off to L.A. Relieved of folding duty by Elmira, Dee returned to the Golden.
She popped the tab on a can of sparkling water, sat down at her desk, and typed “Fundraiser Callan Katz Real Housewives” into her computer’s search bar. Pages of posts and photos documenting the altercation popped up, providing the agent with an airtight alibi. Not only was Callan at the event, he signed the housewife who instigated the blowup as a client, bragging that he knew a “breakout beeyotch” when he saw one.
Crestfallen, Dee rose from her desk and treated herself to some comfort food: mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. She pondered her next move as she ate a serving. Knowing people in the business, Dee was sure Michael firing Callan was preceded by much complaining about his agent to anyone who would listen. She placed the ice cream back in the freezer and typed “writeorwrong.io” into the search bar. The private site was a refuge for fellow screenwriters and TV writers. Dee belonged, but hadn’t visited it in months, since quitting Duh! happily deprived her of the need to vent about the miserable experience.
Michael Adam Baker, on the other hand, had been very active on the site up until the day he died. And every single comment slammed Callan Katz. There were even two long threads where Baker talked two promising young writers out of accepting offers of representation from the agent.
Dee sat back in her chair. A thought occurred to her. Callan might have an alibi for the time of Michael Adam Baker’s murder, but what about his wife? Dee doubted being a “charcuterie artist” was a high-paying gig. Serena needed her husband’s income to propel her status from dabbler to influencer. And Michael Adam Baker was on a mission to destroy Katz’s reputation, with collateral damage to his salary.
Dee knew Serena disliked Baker. She had access to Callan’s computer, which meant she might have come across emails or messages indicating Baker was starting to have some success chipping away at her husband’s career.
Was Serena’s strange behavior around Dee motivated by feeling guilty for committing murder on motel property?
CHAPTER 11
Dee was trying to come up with a way to manipulate Serena into incriminating herself, when her phone rang with a video call. She answered and Jeff’s face appeared on her screen. “Have you heard anything else from the sheriff or ranger?” he asked.
“No.”
“Neither have I. That’s good. It means we’re not in their crosshairs. Or”—his expression of relief morphed into worry—“it means they’re gathering the evidence they need to arrest us. And that’s bad. Look at this.” He bent forward and his curly red hair filled the screen. “I’m losing more hair. The anti-balding crème isn’t working. It can’t fight back against the stress.”
“Jeff, hon, your hair is fine. It looks exactly like it did the day we bought the Golden. I’m as jealous of it now as I’ve always been.”
He lifted his head. “I can always tell when you’re lying.”
“Which means you can always tell when I’m not.”
“Truth.” Jeff relaxed and the two friends shared a smile. “Since law enforcement isn’t breathing down our neck, I think I’ll stay in the city for another day. Maybe two. You okay with that?”
Dee nodded. “I may have found another suspect.”
“Really?” Jeff brightened. “Who?”
“Serena Finlay-Katz.”
“No way.” He shook his head. “She’s too pretty.”
Dee reacted with outrage. “What?! That’s the most sexist thing you’ve ever said. I’m ashamed of you. How do you know anyway? You’ve never met her.”
“Yes, I have. At the All-in-One when I made a beer run. I gitchy-gitchy-gooed her baby sling and it turned out I was making baby noises to a dog. But before you go all feminist activist on me, I’ll explain. Serena is thin and blond and beautiful. She’s also, what, in her early thirties? From everything you’ve told me about Hollywood, she’s basically the younger version of every middle-aged agent or CEO’s current wife.”
Dee reluctantly acknowledged Jeff was right, so he continued.
“So, if Callan’s career went south, she’d still walk away with a big settlement. And score plenty of interest from anyone in the town’s top tier who’s looking to trade in wife number one for a new model.”
“Especially from his agent competitors,” Dee said.
