On her way out of town, Dee stopped at Les Fromages in Beverly Hills to pick up the large quantity of hugely expensive cheese and meats Serena had asked her to pick up. She then took Wilshire Boulevard to the freeway, her stress level decreasing as city driving transitioned to freeway and then the two-lane blacktop toward Foundgold.
The road wound past rolling golden hills dotted with live oaks and outcroppings of craggy granite, along with the occasional pocket of bright green, a remnant of the unusually wet winter. As the elevation increased, the oaks ceded the landscape to white fir, cedar, and ponderosa pines, with periwinkle wildflowers providing a pop of color. A stream meandered alongside the road, then headed off in another direction. Dee rounded a bend to a breathtaking view of a valley surrounded by the grandeur of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She drank in the spectacular sight and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Fates that had brought her to this part of the world.
She continued the drive toward her new home, following the gentle curves of the road. Not far from the Golden, she found herself growing sleepy thanks to waking up too early. Her eyelids fluttered. Fearing she might fall asleep at the wheel, Dee pulled over onto a wide patch of dirt next to a dense patch of forest. “Five minutes,” she murmured as she put the driver’s seat all the way back.
She was about to doze off, when the car began to shake. “Earthquake!” Dee yelled, jolting up to sitting. “Please don’t damage the Golden, please don’t damage the Golden,” she prayed out loud as she quickly raised her seat back to its proper position.
The shaking stopped, replaced by a sort of thumping noise. Confused, Dee looked around and behind her. Her eyes locked with another’s, and she let out a scream. “Bear!”
The large animal stared at her, then resumed his quest to break into the trunk of the car, where Dee had stashed Serena’s charcuterie. Dee started the car engine and, with a shaking hand, flung it into Drive. She peeled out of her spot, leaving a sulking bear in her wake.
Her heart raced as she drove, but she calmed down by the time she parked in Serena’s driveway. Serena had texted to let her know she wouldn’t be home, but Dee could leave the ingredients with Callan’s assistant, Marisa.
Dee texted Marisa that she was there. A moment later, the garage door opened. Callan’s assistant appeared in the doorway leading into the house, a resentful expression on her face.
She marched toward Dee, who got out of the car and popped open the trunk. “We better get all this inside. I finally met Stoney the bear on my way here. He dropped by when I was parked on the side of the road, hoping to help himself to a snack.”
“Whatevs. I don’t care about Serena’s stupid pretend job. I have real work to do.”
Marisa roughly grabbed a shopping bag from the trunk. Dee took hold of the other two bags and followed her into the house and up the stairs to the kitchen, struggling with the weight of the bags. They deposited them on the room’s giant island. Marisa’s bag tipped over and a Brie wheel rolled out. She ignored it. Dee managed to stop the roll before the high-end fromage wound up on the floor. “I think Serena’s boards are wonderful,” she said. Despite her own skepticism about charcuterie artistry as a career, she felt compelled to defend her quasi friend.
Marisa made a face. “Oh, please.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “L.A. has these women who, I swear, were created in labs just to be wives to rich guys. Callan deserves so much better. Like, so, so much better.”
Dee took note of the starry-eyed expression that went along with Marisa mentioning her boss’s name. She hadn’t realized how deep Marisa’s devotion to her boss ran—possibly to dangerous levels. She wondered how far the assistant would go to support and protect him.
“I think Serena genuinely loves and appreciates Callan. Not like Michael Adam Baker.”
It was a stupendously clunky transition, but Marisa didn’t seem to notice. She smirked. “Oh, Baker got his. I made sure of it.”
Dee adopted a gossipy tone. “You did? How?”
Marisa leaned her elbows on the kitchen island and rested her chin on her palms. She beamed with self-satisfaction. “I know everything about Callan’s clients. Everything. All I’ll say is that someone, wink wink, might have told a guy running an underground poker game that Michael wasn’t going to pay off his debt. The guy confronted Michael and scared him so much, he left town. He was desperate for money. Desperate. But someone, wink wink, also spread word that Michael totally lost it as a writer. He was ruined.”
“Wow . . . that’s . . . Wow!” Dee congratulated herself at managing to hide her horror at Marisa’s ruthless machinations.
Marisa’s cell buzzed with an incoming text. She checked and her face lit up. “It’s Callan. He needs me.”
“I have to go anyway. I want to get the meat smell out of my car before it gets dark. This way, Stoney the bear won’t come back looking for treats.”
Dee made a quick exit. She drove off with her question answered.
How far would Marisa go in service of Callan?
Very, wink wink.
CHAPTER 20
Dee made it to the Golden as twilight shed its own golden light on the silhouetted Sierra Nevada mountains. She got out of her car and took a moment to fill her lungs with the deliciously fresh air. After a few intoxicating, deep breaths, Dee removed her carry-on from the trunk and was about to go into her apartment, when a glow from the west corner of the property caught her eye. She took a tentative step forward to see what was casting the glow and let out an exclamation of delight.
The pool’s refurbishment had been completed in Dee’s brief absence. The contractor Jeff hired had worked magic, replacing the old pool paint with a rich, sparkling yellow. Coupled with the reflection of the sun on the newly filled pool’s surface, it gleamed like the gold nugget its design paid homage to.
Dee picked up her carry-on, locked her car, and ran into the motel lobby, where she found Jeff manning the reservations counter. “The pool! It’s gorgeous!” She ran around the counter and hugged him. He winced and groaned, and she released him. “Sorry. What’s wrong?”
“Shawn’s ‘private session.’ But I’ll get to that. You really like the pool? I wanted to surprise you with the finished product.”
“I love it. All we need now is to get the sign fixed and our curb appeal will be leveled up to the max.”
“Yes!” Jeff fist-pumped, which prompted another groan. He massaged his shoulder.
“Okay, I need the story behind all this pain. Let me put my bag away and get the meat smell out of my car and I’ll be right back.”
“Meat smell?” Jeff, confused, said this to Dee’s back as she hurried off.
She deposited her bag in her apartment, where she gathered up cleaning products and a pine-scented car air freshener she’d received as a sample promotional item for a possible complimentary guest gift. Dee wiped down her car trunk and added the air freshener for good measure. Judging by the heft of Stoney, or whatever bear had hungered for the charcuterie ingredients she’d escorted to Serena, Dee wanted to make sure any scents emanating from her car were a turnoff, not a turn-on. Once satisfied with her work, she returned to the motel lobby.
Jeff sat on the lobby couch, his feet up on the whitewashed oak coffee table. He nursed a beer. Another sat on the coffee table across from him, in front of a matching oak lounge chair. Dee plopped down and opened the beer. “Sorry your session with Shawn was a literal pain. Did you pick up any helpful intel?”
“Basically, no. He did reinforce our theory that whatever friendship existed between him and Michael was long gone and replaced by full-on animosity, at least on Radinsky’s part. The one takeaway from the workout is that I think he went extra hard on me to send a message: Back off. Or else.”
Dee took this in. “That’s scary. He’s a strong guy. He could seriously hurt someone.”
Jeff grimaced as he adjusted his position. “Don’t I know it.”
Dee sipped her beer. She mulled over the information Jeff had imparted. “We can’t back off. We can’t afford to.”
“I know. But I think we need to take a more subtle approach. Make it look like we’re not investigating, even though we are. Like, tonight at the hoedown. We should look like we’re just there to have fun.”
It was Dee’s turn to groan. “That’ll take some acting on my part. And, unfortunately, the acting gene missed a generation in my family.”
