Killer Ambition

10

As Bailey drove us back down the hill, I looked at the address Raynie had given us. “Brittany lives in Hancock Park.” Which was on the way downtown.

“Go ahead and call, see if you can get her. But I’m going to need to get an update from Harrellson pretty quick, so we won’t be able to stay long.”

“What’s Harrellson doing?” Don Harrellson, a great detective and a funny guy, was one of the team Bailey had assembled to help with the investigation.

“He’s checking into Russell’s associates.”

Meaning Russell’s possible enemies. “I guess it has to be done, but what enemy would risk a possible life sentence to get back at him?”

“If we limited our investigation to rational possibilities, our solve rate would be two percent.”

Hard to argue with that one. I fished out my cell phone and squinted at the number Raynie had written on an orange star-shaped Post-it. The late afternoon sun was hanging low enough to shoot a white-hot laser through the windshield, practically blinding me. I had to put on my sunglasses to read the number. I got Brittany’s voice mail. “Hi, it’s Brittany. Leave a message…or don’t. Beeeeep.” I chose the former and gave her my number and Bailey’s and told her to call ASAP.

When we got to the station, Harrellson was at his desk in rolled-up shirtsleeves. “Having fun out there in Tinseltown, girls?”

I don’t usually like being called a girl. But it’s all in the attitude. Harrellson gave the word an ironic twist that made it funny instead of condescending.

“Probably not as much fun as you’re having,” I said.

“Well, not everyone appreciates the joy of banging their head against a brick wall the way I do. Our boy Antonovich has helpers and advisers crawling around his house like it’s an anthill, and they all thought they had to “advise” yours truly about the galactic importance of His Supreme Highness Antonovich and the nefarious ways of jealous Hollywoodites. Man oh man, did they. Between that shark fin of a manager, whatsisname, Ian Powers, with the big swinging dick attitude, and his security adviser, Duncan Donuts-”

“Donuts?” Bailey laughed.

“Nah, Duncan Froehman. They had a lot to say about who I should look into and how I should do it. Got to the point I offered them a ladder-”

“A ladder?” I asked.

“Yeah, so they could climb out of my ass.”

I barked out a laugh but Bailey was all business.

“So what’d you get?” she asked.

“Nada. Just a boatload of genius suggestions from Antonovich’s advisers about pretty much everyone in the film business and half the folks in television. Apparently everyone who labors to fill screens large and small is envious of Mr. Blockbuster.”

“I’m about to check out the cell phone records,” Bailey said. “Maybe they’ll give us something we can work with.”

“Already done, jefe,” Harrellson replied. “I made a copy and highlighted a few calls that might be worth checking out. Antonovich’s record has a million different numbers, but there are some calls after the first text message from our bad guy we should check out. The girl was pretty consistent. Same numbers every day. Only found one stray number that wasn’t a store or a club.”

He handed the pages to Bailey, and I moved next to her so I could see. On Russell’s cell phone bill, Harrellson had highlighted a few calls that were made after the first kidnapping message-but before the ransom e-mail was sent. I held out Russell’s phone records. “Do you recognize any of these highlighted numbers?” I asked.

Harrellson glanced back at the pages. “Not yet. But from what I’ve seen, a lot of these clowns have multiple numbers and they may not all be listed. So it’ll take a minute to run ’em all down.”

We moved on to Hayley’s phone records for the past month.

One highlighted number jumped out at me. Hayley had made a call to Brittany Caren just three weeks ago. Bailey and I exchanged a look.

Bailey pulled out her cell phone. “This time, I make the call.” She punched in the number. And got Brittany’s voice mail. Then she punched in another number.

“Russell, this is Detective Keller. I’ve been trying to get hold of Brittany Caren, but I keep getting her voice mail. Can you put me in touch with her?” Bailey listened for a moment. “I don’t know that she does.” Bailey listened again. “Yes, that’d be great. Thank you.”

Five minutes later we were back in the car and headed to Hancock Park.