Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1) Read online

  “I was recruited by Monique” I said.

  “How?” asked Griffin.

  “I was working in London as a nanny, short term jobs mostly. I was given a job for a musician who had his three year old daughter with him in a fancy hotel suite. Turned up and the guy was present but not completely accounted for if you know what I mean. The regular nanny who was also the personal assistant had walked out on him, due to having to share the suite with him, the child and several groupies. The place was a mess and the kid was really unhappy. It was just a bad situation. I tried to sort out a small area for the daughter to be safe and then started cleaning. I contacted Monique, whose number I had found, as she was the assistant’s boss. Monique turned up at the same time as the musician’s wife. She was some strung out model, who went crazy when she found him in bed with the groupies. To complete the disaster his manager and the band mates arrived. Chaos was going on around me and I’m in a small play area I made with the little girl having a tea party. I remember singing to her trying desperately to ignore the disaster that was this child’s life. When it was finished, the little girl was packed off to her grandmother and I was making my escape. Monique approached me and offered a job. When I asked her why, she said I provided a place of calm that protected the child. She believed another person would have caved. I started working for Monique with a couple of clients in Europe and then I moved over here to take some jobs. After a couple of months I ended up with Eleanor. I’m not just her PA. I’m also supposed to keep her safe and grounded when everyone else in the world is telling her she isn’t answerable to anyone. Sometimes I’m successful. Other times not so much.”

  “That sounds like more than a full time job” Griffin noted.

  “It is, I’ve worked for Eleanor for four months now and today was supposed to be my first day off.”

  Griffin grinned.

  “It’s the reason I usually take short term jobs. This one has gone a bit longer than it was supposed to.”

  “What is Eleanor Channing like?” Griffin asked.

  “Miss Channing is a woman of her environment” I said. “She makes money for everyone around her so they are not going to do anything that upsets her. Imagine if everyone around you told you that you were wonderful all the time, that you were beautiful all the time and that anyone who said anything against you were just being jealous. You’d get a pretty skewed view of the world wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess so” he replied.

  “Well that’s Eleanor Channing.”

  “You sound like you feel sorry for her” Griffin said.

  “I do, kind of. It’s hard to get past the fact that she's gorgeous and talented and rude and drives me crazy sometimes, but she’s also really alone. If she questioned the motives of all the people around her and why they claim to be friends with her, I think she’d find herself in a really dark place. I guess it’s easier to be outrageous and demanding” I reflected.

  Looking up I saw Griffin's face had softened.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You sound like a nice person” he said only mildly surprised. “Not many people are that forgiving or understanding.”

  “Oh don’t get me wrong” I replied’ “I bitch and moan about her all the time because she does on occasion make my life into a living hell. I am seriously looking forward to the last day I see her and on principle, I will never shell out my hard earned money to watch her on the screen. That being said I don’t hate her or anything.”

  Griffin nodded. “Since you spend so much time with her I would think that you attend events and parties.”

  “All the time” I replied taking a sip of water.

  “Must be fun” Griffin commented.

  “My own little circle of hell” I replied.

  “Really” he remarked, “any reason why?”

  “You need to understand, none of these people are my friends, none of them like me and if you asked the next day none of them would be able to place me. My job is to be unmemorable. I am there to make sure nothing happens that can embarrass Eleanor or more importantly damage the brand. If anyone remembers me then I have done something that takes attention away from her and in my world that is a bad thing. One of my biggest strengths in this business is I am so unmemorable. I do not take attention away from the beautiful people.”

  “You seem pretty memorable to me” Griffin said.

  I looked at him sourly. “I’m already helping, you don’t need to lay it on so thick.”

  “Don’t take a compliment well do you” he commented. “What about Ryan Hendricks, was this hookup something recent?”

  “You really cannot be that clueless” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  It was times like these that I wondered about people who lived normal lives where the minutiae of celebrity lives weren’t as accessible as breathing.

  “I am going to tell you what I know but this is all before I started working for Eleanor so it comes from tabloid magazines and gossip columns. About a year ago Eleanor and Ryan were pretty hot and heavy together. They were the big couple around town, seen at all the parties, premieres, everywhere. Then something happened. Rumor was Ryan cheated on her and they broke up. About six months ago Ryan started seeing Emily Saunders who is the daughter of Henry Saunders.”

  At Griffin's clueless expression I knew I needed to fill him in further. “Henry Saunders is head of one of the big movie production companies. He is very, and I mean very, powerful in this town. Ryan and his daughter were engaged which gives Ryan’s career a boost. Makes Ryan pretty much untouchable.”

  “So if Ryan is engaged, what was he doing with Eleanor Channing?” Griffin asked.

  “I wasn’t there” I said slowly and directly, “but I am assuming that Eleanor got a booty call. I left her at her home around ten last night. She and Ryan must have hooked up at some point after that. He would most likely have picked her up because screwing around on Henry Saunders’ daughter is not something you want to advertise. Limo driver’s talk and Eleanor does not drive herself anywhere. She finds it too stressful and stress ages you.”

  “Would cheating on his fiancée be something that Ryan would do only once or would it be more of a permanent character flaw?” Griffin asked.

  “For that man it was something that came as naturally as breathing. In the last four months I have walked in on Ryan Hendricks many times having sex with any number of women, sometimes multiple women.”

  “Any reason that you keep walking in on him or would it just be a stalker issue?”

  “Oh you think you are funny don't you?” I said humorlessly.

  Griffin smiled at me. He had a really nice smile when it wasn’t that horrible smirk thing he did. I mentally slapped myself. No falling for the gorgeous cop who is just using you for inside information.

  “When I started working with Eleanor it was made clear to me that her hooking up with Ryan Hendricks would be very bad for her career. It was also made clear to me that she may not be completely over Ryan and so may be vulnerable to some seduction on his part. Part of my job was to try to prevent this from happening. They party in the same circles and sometimes I have needed to track down one or the other when they have slipped away from the party. That is why I knew where Ryan Hendricks’s bedroom was. He holds a lot of parties there and if I lose track of Eleanor I have accidentally wandered into his bedroom pretending to be lost, to make sure the woman with him hasn’t been Eleanor. I have also wandered into toilets, out in the garden, in closets and pretty much everywhere else in that house. I have seen a lot of actors and actresses in many varied sexual positions. Ryan Hendricks has figured prominently in these situations."

  “So he hasn’t been faithful to Emily Saunders” Griffin confirmed.

  “Ryan Hendricks and faithful aren’t anywhere close to being in the same time zone” I nodded.

  “And yet you are saying that you have never had sex with Ryan Hendricks” Griffin said.

  Okay I was g
etting annoyed. “Seriously, you’re going to start that again. Ryan Hendricks only needed to look in a woman’s direction and she dropped her panties. I saw it again and again and we are talking about beautiful women who are unattainable to most of the male population.”

  “But he never looked in your direction?”

  “No he didn’t.”

  “Did that upset you in any way?"

  “No it didn’t. I never expected Ryan Hendricks’s attention and I never received it. Most of the times I saw him he was in various stages of undress with other women. He treated women like disposable objects and I would hope that my self-esteem was not so low that I would have been one of those women. And thanks to that line of questioning, your time is now up. Please leave my home.”

  Something in my demeanor obviously convinced Detective Griffin that I was serious and he straightened up to leave.

  As we got to the door he turned. “Thank you for talking to me Trudie, I do appreciate it. I have one more question though. Do you think Eleanor Channing could have killed Ryan Hendricks?”

  “I personally don’t think so” I replied, “but I really don't know.”

  With that I closed the door. How did I end up helping the cops anyway? I really needed to learn how to say no.

  Chapter Five

  There was a knock on the door.

  “For goodness sake, I am done helping you” I yelled as I ripped open the door only to find two of my neighbors standing there.

  “Sorry” said Crystal. “We waited for the hot guy to leave and we have pizza.”

  Edwin waved the box under my nose to underscore them inviting themselves.

  “Sorry about that, I thought you were the cops again.”

  Crystal and Edwin made their way into my home and settled themselves in as if they spent all their free time there, which to be perfectly honest they did.

  “What has happened?” asked Crystal. “I saw you on the news feed being put in a cop car.”

  So much for hoping I wouldn’t be recognized.

  “Heard Ryan Hendricks shuffled off the mortal coil” Edwin added. “Let me guess. You finally had sex with him and it was too much for him and he died.”

  I rolled my eyes in exasperation. Crystal and Edwin are my neighbors and pretty much the only friends I have made since coming to LA. Crystal Bronstein works for her father who is one of the biggest casting agents in LA. Her mum was a Las Vegas showgirl who was married to her dad just long enough to give Crystal her name and receive a large alimony payment. Crystal stands barely above five feet but has a personality that enters a room before she does. Crystal loves old Hollywood glamour. Her clothing echoes the silhouette fashions of the thirties and forties and she has the curvy figure which matches those classic looks perfectly. She and I bonded over a love of cookies and nights at home watching old movies.

  Unfortunately her dad’s job means that Crystal has to get out a lot. Being one of the big casting agents in town she is also always being squired to these social events by young, hopeful, gorgeous actors who are looking for that big break. Anyone who says becoming a star is about luck has no idea of the lengths some people go to. People do their research. Crystal has become the queen of accidental hookups. The number of times one of these actors has accidentally bumped into her and started a conversation is ridiculous. I once asked her if it bothered her the number of men she went out with that were just using her to meet her father. She just shrugged at me and said she was using them just as much.

  Edwin Litchfield was the other friend I had made while in LA. Edwin was tall, blond, muscular and with that upper class English accent that makes women melt. He used to work as a model and then decided to be an actor. While waiting for his big break, he took any other job that he could. At the moment he was working as a personal trainer/lifestyle coach. He has the ability to makeover a woman from zero to fabulous in no time flat. Considering his two closest friends were women he also set off every gaydar in a five block radius. This worked well for him as his clientele consisted of the bored housewives of the very rich in LA. Husbands were comfortable leaving their wives with a gay personal trainer. Unfortunately for those husbands, Edwin was one hundred percent straight and was very good at keeping a woman happy. He didn’t advertise that fact but there were many women around LA who had enjoyed his company. Somehow none of them were bitter when he moved on. To this day I have no idea how he does it. Even after a one night stand he manages to meet up with a woman years later and they still think he is wonderful. Neither I nor Crystal have partaken of the irresistible nature that is Edwin. I think that may be why he is so comfortable with us.

  “So” Edwin said jamming a slice of pizza in his mouth. “What happened? So far we’ve seen you and Eleanor Channing through blurry telephoto lens pictures. Eleanor being carted away in an ambulance and you in a police car, after Ryan Hendricks was found dead. Crystal called me and we rushed home to find out what was going on, only to find some hottie waiting at your front door.” He grinned.

  “You know Edwin” I said. “There are reasons people think you are gay. Calling other men ‘hottie’ is one of those reasons.”

  At that point cheese and tomato sauce slid off Edwin’s slice of pizza and landed on his chest. He licked the stain, sucking the excess sauce out of his shirt, shrugged and got back to what he was eating.

  “And that is why we know you are straight” murmured Crystal.

  The two of them looked at me expectantly.

  “Eleanor called me this morning so she didn’t have to do the walk of shame. I got there and found Ryan Hendricks dead.”

  “Oh my God” exclaimed Crystal. “You actually saw the body. That is the coolest thing ever.”

  Edwin and I stopped eating and looked at her.

  Realizing how she must sound she quickly amended. “No, I don’t mean that. Ryan Hendricks being dead is not cool, but you finding him, that is so cool. Trust me you are going to be able to use that story forever” she said brightly.

  “Great” I muttered, “that makes up for the trauma of it all.”

  “Oh, are you traumatized?” Crystal reached over and laid her hand on mine in sympathy. “I know this great therapist who will be able to help.”

  Just what I needed, therapy. I really didn’t feel like I needed to go down that road at all.

  “I’m fine”, I said.

  Actually thinking about it, I was fine. I’d got so caught up in everything that happened that I hadn’t even registered that I had seen an actual dead body. I better put that thought away or I was going to need Crystal’s therapist. Denial, everyone’s best friend. Now Edwin and Crystal were looking at me carefully. The last thing I needed was for them to start worrying about me.

  “Really, I’m fine.” I said. “I was more worried about Eleanor, she was the one who was there.”

  “Did she kill him?” Edwin asked his eyes gleaming.

  “Really” I said, “that would please you that Eleanor Channing killed Ryan Hendricks.”

  “Not pleased exactly” said Edwin only looking slightly shamefaced. “I’m just saying that as far as possible stories go, that would be the best one. Ryan Hendricks dumps Eleanor Channing, gets engaged to Emily Saunders and then during a passionate tryst with Eleanor she kills him with a ... gun?” His voice raised at the end in question.

  “I have no idea. I couldn’t make out any wounds on the body” I said.

  “See the information you have. Do you realize how much money you could make going to the media with this, like right now?” Edwin said. “First on the scene after Eleanor Channing kills Ryan Hendricks after sex. It’s got the whole black widow thing going for it.”

  “I am not going to the media” I said. “The police are dealing with it. My doing an interview is just going to make it harder to find if anyone killed Ryan. Anyway I don’t believe Eleanor did it.”

  “Really” said Crystal. “I seem to recall you telling us the other day that the woman was evil and you wouldn’t be surp
rised if she actually killed somebody one day.”

  “Okay yes, she is pure mean when she wants to be, and yes her track record with men and the way she has tried to get back at them does indicate some sociopath tendencies.”

  I winced thinking of the words she had scratched on one ex-boyfriend’s car after he dumped her. That may have been one of those rumors that Detective Hottie, I mean Griffin, would have wanted to hear about. Eleanor just sometimes came a bit unhinged when it came to boyfriends, and due to her complete lack of musical talent, she was unable to decimate their reputations in song in classic malicious ex-girlfriend tradition. So Eleanor fell back on tried and true methods, stalking, destroying careers and vandalism of property. Maybe I was wrong in believing she hadn’t gone one step further and actually killed one of them. The more I thought about it the more likely that it could happen. I realized I had been thinking too hard when I noted the silence around me.

  “Oh no” said Edwin, “you think she might have done it.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know, I was so sure she hadn’t. She looked so shocked and upset when I found them.”

  Thinking back to this morning I froze.

  “What is it?” asked Crystal.

  “I forgot” I said. “When I got there Eleanor said she thought she’d killed him. I didn’t think about it because she was pretty out of it but what if it was a confession?”

  “Where was the body?” asked Edwin.

  “In the shower. It looked like Eleanor had just come out of the shower too. Her hair was all wet” I said biting my lower lip as I tried to remember anything else.

  “Maybe they were having a shower together and he died then. It just might be one of those things people say” Crystal said.

  “Or she may have done away with him while seducing him in the shower.” Seemed like Edwin was keen to pin the crime on Eleanor.