E is for Exposed (Malibu Mystery Book 5) Read online

  Sofia stared at the glass.

  “What? I poured it for Marcie and then she didn’t want it.”

  Sofia plucked it from her mom’s hand.

  Janet took it back. “Listen, by the time you get through listening to Marcie you’ll be pouring yourself one,” she said, and had a sip.

  “Come on. I’ll help you look for the Xanax and you can tell me what’s going on.” Sofia wasn’t sure giving a potential client a sedative was something Brendan would approve of. She’d leave that call to her mom and Marcie and make sure she got all the details before anyone started popping pills.

  She followed her mom down the hallway and into the master bedroom. It was a large room with a fireplace, big-screen television, California king-sized bed, and sliding doors that led out to the swimming-pool. It also had a large dressing room/closet and a big en-suite bathroom with a whirlpool bath and a separate shower cabin. It wasn’t much smaller than Sofia’s entire trailer.

  Her mom began rifling through the cabinet next to Tim’s side of the bed. “So Marcie came to see me this morning completely hysterical,” she began.

  “Yeah, I got that part,” said Sofia, coming off as a little more impatient than she actually was. She wondered if she should start taking notes, but decided to leave it for now. As soon as you started scribbling on paper, or tapping into your phone, people tended to be a lot more careful about what they said. Brendan had told her that was why cops tended to use audio and video recording. People quickly forgot they were being recorded and spilled out all kinds of stuff they wouldn’t normally. Plus, Sofia sensed she’d be able to remember the big-penis blackmailer story even without notes.

  “You should have seen the state she was in.”

  “This is kind of supposed to be my day off, so could we get to the meat of it?” said Sofia, not thinking about her choice of words.

  “Oh, you mean the big penis.” Her mother nodded.

  “I was kind of thinking the blackmail part, but whatever. If the big penis is relevant then tell me about that.”

  “The blackmailer is the big penis.”

  “They usually are,” said Sofia. She had already worked on a few blackmail cases with Maloney Investigations, and that limited experience had taught her blackmailers were fairly scummy individuals, even by criminal standards.

  Her mom closed the last of the cabinet drawers. Sofia followed her into the walk-in closet. She felt a little weird about going through Tim’s stuff so she let her mom do it. She did note, though, that almost all of Tim’s clothes were golf-related. If someone outlawed golf, he’d be facing a pretty major identity crisis.

  “So, one of our neighbors dragged Marcie along with her to one of these male strip shows. Marcie doesn’t really drink. She’s kind of a lightweight, so she had a few too many and things got a little inappropriate with one of the dancers. He shot video of it, and now he says that if she doesn’t give him fifty thousand dollars to buy the footage from him he’ll send it to her husband. Oh, here they are!” said her mom, shaking a brown pill bottle.

  It all made sense, but it also made Sofia a little queasy. For a second she contemplated taking one of the Xanax herself. Then she remembered she had to drive back to the ’Bu and spend the day with Jaxon. She wanted to be wide awake for that part.

  “So why doesn’t she want to go to the cops?” Sofia asked.

  “Wade, her husband, is a cop.”

  “Dang. Okay, I can see why she doesn’t want to report it. Tell you what, let me speak with her. Then I’ll call Brendan and see what he thinks we can do.”

  “Great,” her mom said brightly, as she retrieved her glass of wine from where she’d put it down and took a long sip.

  6

  As they walked back to the kitchen, Janet popped off the lid of the pill bottle and tipped one into her palm. Sofia scooped it up before she could hand it to Marcie.

  “I need her to have all her faculties when I speak to her,” Sofia said. Although she was wondering how many faculties Marcie had at this point anyway.

  “Good luck with that. She’s been completely hysterical since she showed up here. She keeps going on about how it was a ‘moment of madness.’ Like you can accidentally grab a hold of some guy’s—”

  “I get the picture.” Sofia said quickly, cutting her off. She was pretty sure they both knew what Marcie had grabbed without her mom spelling it out.

  Sofia stopped, took a breath and composed herself. “Just let me handle this, okay?”

  “That’s pretty much word for word what she told Mr. Big Penis.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Oh, come on, like you weren’t thinking it.”

  Sofia wagged a finger at her. “You asked me over here to help and I’m helping.”

  “And I appreciate it, darling.”

  “Tell you what, let me speak with Marcie on my own.”

  Her mom seemed a little crestfallen that she was being excluded, but shrugged her agreement. At first Janet had thought Sofia was crazy to give up a successful acting career to join the agency as a trainee investigator but recently she’d started to ask her daughter more questions about the work. “I’ll be out by the pool if you need me.”

  Sofia stepped gingerly into the kitchen. Marcie was about her mom’s age. She sat on a stool, hunched over a cup of coffee. She had frizzy hair in a shade of red that never appeared in nature, pale skin, and looked like she hadn’t slept. Her clothes were rumpled, and she had bags under her eyes. Not that she approved of what she’d done, but Sofia couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

  “Marcie, hi. I’m Sofia, Janet’s daughter. You mind if I sit down?”

  Marcie shook her head. Words were clearly a struggle, which didn’t bode well because Sofia would need as much detail as possible if she was to help. Half the problem with clients was their inability to open up. Sofia, Aidan and Brendan couldn’t help if they didn’t have the information, but a lot of time people were too worried or embarrassed, especially in cases like this, to be completely honest.

  Sofia hopped up on the stool next to Marcie. “Can I get you some more—” she sniffed the cup“―coffee?”

  “Thank you.”

  She took Marcie’s mug, hopped off the stool, grabbed the coffee pot, refilled the mug and slid it over the counter to the woman. “Why don’t you tell me in your own words what happened? It’ll stay completely between us. I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone without your permission.”

  “I didn’t even want to go to this stupid show. Except Wade was going to be out of town, and Sandy had some tickets but she didn’t want to go on her own.”

  “Sandy’s another of the neighbors?”

  “Yeah, she’s a divorcee. And now it looks like I’m going to be one too.”

  Sofia patted Marcie’s hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So, you went to this show, and you’d had a drink, and things went a little too far?”

  “That’s pretty much it. They do this thing where they get women from the audience to go up on stage with the dancers. You sit on this chair, and everyone is screaming and cheering. Sometimes they have one of these spray cans of whipped cream, and he sprays it on himself and then you lick it off him. I mean it’s just his chest, and stuff. He still has his thong on. So, anyway, I’m licking the cream off . . .”

  “Okay, I get the picture.” Sofia was starting to wonder just how much Marcie had drunk. Sofia wasn’t exactly a stranger to embarrassing herself in public, but licking whipped cream off some strange dude on a stage in front of a bunch of screaming women was at least something she’d never done. She could see why Marcie wanted to keep it quiet. “And someone was filming it?”

  “Not that part. That was later.”

  “Did you know they were filming?”

  “Not until this guy sent me the footage.”

  From what Sofia had learned while she was working as an actor, the fact that Marcie had no idea she was being recorded could work in her favor. Usually people be
ing filmed had to either be made aware, or sign some sort of a release form. Otherwise a lawyer could argue it was an invasion of their privacy if it ever went to court. Then again, this whole scam rested on Marcie not wanting to go to the cops, never mind court. But Sofia was fairly sure the threat of legal repercussions could be used against a blackmailer.

  “And how did he know who you were or where to send it?”

  Marcie flushed. Sofia had a feeling there was more to this story.

  “I kind of got talking to him after the show.”

  “Did he give you his name?” Sofia decided to ask before she forgot.

  “Only his stage name.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Python.”

  “Right,” said Sofia. Of course it was.

  “He was called Python because he had a really . . .” Marcie held her hands an unrealistic distance apart.

  Sofia put up a hand. “I got it. Python.” She would circle back to the other stuff but for now she wanted to nail down the nature of the blackmail attempt. “And he contacted you about this footage when exactly?”

  “Last night. I was in shock. I couldn’t let on to Wade that something was wrong. But when he left for work this morning I came over to tell Janet. I didn’t know who else to talk to. I’m really scared. I don’t have fifty thousand dollars, but I don’t want Wade to find out. He’d leave me.”

  “I’m sure it’s not going to come to that.” Sofia didn’t know who she was trying to reassure, Marcie or herself. It sounded like a pretty ugly spot to get out of. First things first, though.

  “And have you seen this footage or did he just tell you he had it?” There was always a chance Python was bluffing. Maybe there wasn’t any footage or it was tamer than Marcie had remembered. People could get paranoid after a drunken night and imagine they’d behaved far more inappropriately than they actually had.

  Marcie fumbled in her purse. She pulled out her cell phone. “He sent it to me. Here.”

  She had pulled up the clip. Thankfully she hadn’t hit play.

  Sofia took the phone and put it down. “I don’t need to look at it right now. I’m assuming that it’s you, you can be identified and that it’s incriminating.”

  Her face flushing even redder told Sofia it was all of those things.

  “And how did he demand the money?” Sofia was hoping he’d been stupid enough to text Marcie. That would make for a slam-dunk case of blackmail.

  “He called me,” said Marcie.

  Damn. Python obviously wasn’t a complete idiot.

  “And he said he wanted fifty thousand dollars or he’d send it to your husband?”

  Marcie shook her head. “No, he didn’t mention anything about sending it to anyone. He didn’t have to. I knew what he meant. He said he wondered if I wanted to buy it.”

  “For fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes. Like I could get hold of that kind of money.”

  The chances were that this was Python’s opening gambit and he’d negotiate down pretty fast. The fifty thousand figure was to get Marcie’s attention. That would make a much lower amount seem like a bargain, a price worth paying.

  “You didn’t happen to record his call, did you?” It was a long shot but worth asking.

  “I didn’t even know you could do that.”

  “You can. It’s not that difficult. I can set up an app that does it on your phone. In case he calls back.”

  “Okay. And you can help me?”

  “I’m going to talk to my boss, Brendan Maloney. He’s a former LAPD detective.”

  Marcie sprang off the stool like she’d been electrocuted. “No, no cops. If it gets back to Wade . . .”

  “Brendan’s retired, and I promise you, he’s the most discreet person I’ve ever met. He’s not going to tell anyone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.” And she was. You could take Brendan’s integrity to the bank.

  “Then what? How are you going to stop this guy?”

  “Like I said, I’ll speak with Brendan. He’s dealt with a lot of these situations over the years. They’re way more common than you might think. Anyway, I’m sure we’ll be able to help you.”

  Marcie sighed. “Can I get that Xanax now?”

  7

  Sofia winced as she looked down at the frozen image on the cell-phone screen. She knew she was going to have to watch the footage at some point but summoning the courage to press play was proving difficult.

  To be honest, she didn’t even like watching sex scenes in movies, and this would probably be way more explicit. And at least in most movies the people you were watching were usually drop-dead gorgeous, with great make-up and really well lit. They weren’t one of her mom’s neighbors and some skanky male stripper by the name of Python gyrating on a stage in a rundown part of Hollywood. Plus whipped cream? Yuck. She had a feeling it would be a long time before she’d be ordering a banana split.

  Her cell phone chirped. It was Brendan.

  Praise the Lord and hold the whipped cream.

  “Hey, Sofia, got your text. What’s the emergency?”

  “I have a case for us. Blackmail.”

  “It couldn’t wait until Monday?” Brendan tried, when he could, to keep weekends free, which wasn’t often. Being a PI wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday type of gig.

  “Not really. It’s a friend of my mom and she’s really upset. I just wanted to run it by you, see if we can help, and ask you what advice I can give her.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  She gave him a summary as best she could about the strip show, how Marcie was drunk and things had gotten crazy, how this guy had filmed it and was using the footage to blackmail her. Brendan listened patiently, as he always did. He was a great listener. That was one of the main reasons, Sofia guessed, why he had been such a great detective, first with the LAPD, and now with his own agency.

  When she had finished, he said, “Yeah, we’ve been seeing lot more of these cases, and I don’t think there’s going to be any let-up. But I am kind of surprised this guy is taking a risk like this. Blackmail’s a major felony. Judges tend to take a dim view of it. You get convicted and you’re going to prison for a long time, especially if there’s a revenge-porn element.”

  “That’s the thing. Marcie’s husband is a cop, so she’s terrified of anyone in law enforcement being involved.”

  “Which is where we come in, I guess.”

  “Exactly. We can handle it privately.” As soon as she’d said it, Sofia was second-guessing herself. Would they be able to handle it themselves? Or wouldn’t they have to involve the police at some point? She asked Brendan.

  He was quiet for a moment. “We can certainly get the ball rolling. Find out what and who we’re dealing with. I’d lay good odds this isn’t the first time this Python character has tried something like it. If we can find another victim, there may not be any reason for Marcie to be involved at all. Then we can hand it over to the cops and her name would never have to come up.”

  That was why she liked running things past Brendan. She was a pretty decent trainee private investigator, but Brendan thought two or three moves ahead.

  “That’d be great,” she told Brendan. “She’s really scared of her husband finding out.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “So what else should I be doing?”

  “Talk to the neighbor who took her to the show. It’s unlikely but maybe she’s in on it.”

  “I can definitely do that. She’s just down the street. Anything else?”

  “Have you looked at the footage he sent her? It might not be quite as bad as she thinks. Or maybe it’s dark and no one would be able to say for certain that it’s her.”

  Sofia gulped. “You want me to watch it all the way through?”

  “That’s usually how it goes with evidence. There’s not a problem, is there?”

  “Nope.”

  At the other end of the line Brendan
must have sensed her unease. “Hey, part of being an investigator is dealing with stuff you’d usually go out of your way to avoid. You should see what the guys and gals in Vice had to look at when I was on the force. Really sick stuff. It would make any normal person nauseous. Believe me, this’ll be a piece of cake by comparison.”

  With whipped cream, thought Sofia, as her stomach did a flip. But Brendan was correct. It was evidence, and she had to watch it. For the sake of the investigation. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. After all, it was just two human beings doing what billions of human beings did every day.

  8

  “Oh, my God! I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Hunched over the sink in the bathroom, Sofia splashed cold water over her face. She had just watched the footage of Marcie and Python. She might never have sex again. Or eat whipped cream. She’d probably have to avoid the dairy aisle entirely. She could just pretend she had a dairy allergy. Lots of people had dairy allergies.

  Someone knocked at the door. Please don’t let it be Marcie.

  “Sofia? Are you okay?”

  It was her mom.

  “Yeah, fine, Mom. I’ll be out in a second.” She grabbed a hand towel from a stack next to the washbasin and dried off. She ran through a breathing exercise she’d used when she was still acting and needed to gain control of her emotions. Her movie career had actually proven way more useful in her role as a private investigator than most people probably imagined.

  Sofia opened the bathroom door.

  “Did you watch it?”

  She nodded, hoping her expression didn’t give too much away.

  “And?”

  “And what?” She wasn’t sure what her mom was asking.

  “Python?”

  “What about him?”

  “Does he have that nickname because, y’know . . . I mean, what size? Like a garter snake? Or an actual python?”

  “Can we please not talk about this? Not now. Or ever.”