Not Happily Married in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 2 (14 page)

I considered what Anton had said as we drove to the
apartment that matched the key.

“So what are you thinking?” Travis asked.

“Just about Anton and Ruby. Before this I would not have
thought for an instant that there was anyone who would say a nice thing about
Eric. As far as I was concerned he was just a horny jerk out to drain as much
money as he could from Adele.”

“Not everyone is good or bad, most people have shades of
gray in them” Travis said. “Good people do some pretty rotten things sometimes,
and people we see as bad usually have someone who believes they hung the moon.
When I was working as a cop the number of bad guys we had whose mother’s swore
they were really good kids. It would be easier to believe that people are either
good or bad. They’re not, they’re just people. Unfortunately Eric spent his
life playing games with other people’s feelings. That kind of thing is a
surefire way to get yourself into a world of hurt. Most murders, regardless of
who it is, come down to sex, drugs, money or crazy, or a combination of those
four. So far Eric was playing fast and loose with sex and money. That makes him
a prime candidate for a violent end. What we have to do is find out whether
they actually did contribute to his death.”

I nodded, still finding it hard to reconcile the Eric that I
had heard about with the Eric that I knew. Standing in his apartment putting on
the gloves that Travis insisted I should wear, I was forced to reevaluate
again. I had expected a flashy bachelor pad. Instead the apartment was subdued
in earth colored tones, nothing like how I would have pictured Eric’s love
nest. The bed in the center of the apartment was huge and I looked away from
it, feeling I was invading Eric’s privacy, when Travis jumped on top of it and
reached up to the light fitting above the bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked a little concerned at his
behavior.

Travis looked over his shoulder at me as he started to unscrew
the mirrored light fitting.

“Just a hunch” he said.

Putting the fitting on the bed next to him he reached up
again.

“Just like I thought” he said and passed me a tiny little
black box.

Turning it over, I had an awful feeling in my stomach.

“It’s a camera isn’t it?” I said.

“Looks like it, which means that somewhere around here we
should be able to find some home movies.”

I dropped my head. “I should have remembered. I was
beginning to think he might have been an okay guy.”

“Best case scenario the videos were consensual and were just
a turn on for him and the women he was with.”

“Worst case scenario?” I asked.

“Worst case scenario was Eric was screwing women with money
and something to lose. He was then blackmailing them to generate another income
stream.”

“If the women knew about the camera why would it be hidden
in the light fixture?” I asked.

“That’s why I think we are closer to worst case scenario
than best case scenario” Travis said.

“So where would these videos be?” I asked.

“Hopefully somewhere here” said Travis, as he walked towards
the desk in the corner of the apartment where a laptop was sitting. “Everything
is computer based these days. If he was making videos and considering what we
know about Eric I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that he was making a
lot of videos, he would need a pretty big hard drive to hold it all.”

I closed my eyes. “You don’t think he uploaded it to the
cloud?” I asked.

“No” Travis said thoughtfully as he started tapping the
keyboard of the laptop. “I think that Eric was too smart and had too focused a
plan to allow control over these videos to go elsewhere. I would think that he
would have set something up himself. There’s a password on the computer, I
can’t get in.”

“Can’t you hack it or something?” I asked.

“No sweetheart, despite the many skills you seem to think
that I possess, hacking is not one of them.”

“You might want to look at that” I said. “Never too late to
learn a new skill. Who knows one day you may want to move on from catching men
with their pants around their ankles.”

“Not always men sweetheart.”

“I’m sure it isn’t” I murmured, pretty sure that if we found
the information recorded by those cameras it was going to be mostly women we
found.

Looking at the big screen television, I noticed the network
cord going into the wall. Looking around I spotted the walk in closet. Grabbing
a chair I went over to the closet, opened the door and climbed on the chair.

“What are you doing?” asked Travis as he came over.

“Just got a hunch” I said as I reached toward the back of
the top shelf of the closet. Standing on tiptoe I started pulling cords out of
the hard drive and pulled it down.

“One hard drive” I said.

“How did you know?” asked Travis.

“The guy has a computer and a pretty sweet looking
entertainment center. The television is hooked up somewhere and so is the
computer, but I can’t see any other equipment. Means he has got a network
system somewhere. The only place really out of sight but also with enough air
circulating for the equipment is his wardrobe. The back of the top shelf is out
of sight but you can see conduit coming from the ceiling. If he was going to
watch these movies on the big screen, and frankly all I know about Eric says
that he’s the kind to do that, he needs the drive to be connected to a network
and here it is.”

“Smart” said Travis.

“Or just lucky” I said. “One of my clients had a setup
similar to this. All the televisions and computers were networked to a single
hard drive, that way he could watch the movies on them from any screen in his
house.”

“Probably got a password on it” said Travis.

“It could” I said, “but I know an IT guy who says that
people may, if you’re lucky, put a password on the network, but they rarely put
one on a removable hard drive like this. They get complacent thinking the
security on the network will protect them. What they don’t realize is that you can
take the hard drive and connect it to another computer and there is no security
at all.”

“Let’s have a look” said Travis grabbing his back pack and
pulling out a laptop.

Sitting at the table in the apartment he hooked up the hard
drive and within seconds was looking at the file structure.

“Looks like we got lucky” he said and opened up a file.

Within seconds the moans of a woman started echoing through
the room. Sure enough there was Eric with a woman that was not either of his
wives.

“Do you want to turn it off?” I said keeping my eyes above
the screen.

Travis grinned. “Not interested?”

“No, we know what it’s about, don’t need to see anymore.
Chances are that woman had no idea she was being taped. It’s wrong to watch
it.”

“You know, I didn’t think women were that uptight anymore.”

“I’m sure the women that you date aren’t.” I said.

Travis turned off the movie. Looking at the file structure I
could see dozens of films on the hard drive.

“So what do we do with this?” I asked.

“We give it to the police” said Travis.

“Aren’t you going to use it to solve the case?” I was a bit
confused.

“Not my job sweetheart. My job was simply to create
reasonable doubt. I’ll follow it and make sure that the police are actually
pursuing other lines of inquiry, but other than that, I have done what I need
to do. It’s up to Griffin now, with me looking over his shoulder of course.”

“Great, that’s going to make him happy.”

“I know, but I’ve got to say that I look at making Griffin’s
life difficult as one of the perks of the job.”

While Travis made the phone call to Griffin I scrolled
through the number of files on the hard drive. Travis finished up his phone
call.

“Griffin will be here soon. We need to stay to answer
questions. The guy is seriously annoyed that we found this place.” All of this
was said with a massive grin on his face.

When I didn’t smile back Travis’s grin dimmed. “What’s the
problem?”

“Look I knew that Eric had the morals of an alley cat, I
knew the guy was gorgeous and charming, I just… all these women trusted him and
look what happened.”

“Sometimes you trust the wrong person” Travis said. “It
happens all the time. When that trust is betrayed you can’t let that damage who
you are or the jerk wins.”

I nodded. “So exactly how angry is Griffin?”

“I could almost see the steam coming through the phone. Got
to say, that made my day. Almost willing to do the job for free for the chance
to one up Griffin on his case.” Travis’s smile was back.

“You are an extremely petty man” I said smiling. “How much
of a difference will this make to Adele’s case really?”

“Even with the gun the case against Adele was always going
to be pretty circumstantial. By finding this hard drive the pool of suspects
has now become huge. Every one of those women has a motive to kill Eric, not to
mention husbands, boyfriends, and fathers. We have just thrown a major lot of
reasonable doubt on the table. I don’t see them going after Adele until they
can clear that from the defense lawyers arsenal, and that is going to take a
long time.”

The knock at the door surprised me.

“That was quick” I said as Travis got the door.

Before he opened it he turned to me. “Just a word of
warning, Griffin is really angry, he might put us in handcuffs.”

“Not the first time” I muttered.

Travis raised an eyebrow and realizing what I had said, I
went bright red. Travis opened the door and Jake Griffin walked in to find
Travis laughing uproariously and my face looking like a tomato.

“Having fun” he drawled looking at me piercingly.

“Best time I’ve had in ages” said Travis giving me a big
wink.

Griffin stiffened perceptively. I rolled my eyes at Travis,
knowing that he had made the comment just to annoy Griffin.

“So what exactly is it that you think is so important to my
case that I am racing down here?” Griffin stiffened his shoulders and directed
his question towards Travis. I felt a little annoyed as he turned away from me.

“This is Eric Wesson’s apartment, which was used for some of
his extramarital activities” Travis said leaning back against the wall.

“Interesting” said Griffin, “and why exactly am I finding
the two of you here?”

I decided that I really wasn’t happy with being faced with
Griffin’s back.

“We spoke to a friend of Eric who told us about this place
and gave us a key” I said.

Finally Griffin turned towards me and going by the look on
his face I was beginning to think that I should have kept my mouth shut.

“So you both thought that breaking and entering was a good
idea.”

“We were given a key by someone who had free access to the
place” Travis interrupted.

“Kind of shaky ground there” Griffin said.

I held my breath waiting to see where this went next.

“So what did you have to tell me?” asked Griffin. “I’m
assuming, considering it looks like the two of you are working together, that
you have something that is supposed to blow my case against Adele out of the
water.”

“Just trying to help local law enforcement” said Travis.

“Of course you are” said Griffin putting his full attention
back on Travis, “and exactly why did you feel the need to pull Trudie into your
investigation? It wouldn’t have anything to do with your desperate need to
annoy me would it?”

“Hey,” I said, sure that somewhere in there I had been
insulted. “I’m helping him. Adele is my employer. I do have something to
contribute to this case. You were the first one to recognize that. If I wasn’t
so useful you wouldn’t have used me to make your case.”

Griffin looked as though he was about to answer my arguments
when Travis interrupted.

“Much as I would enjoy this reality show playing itself out,
I think Griffin might be a bit more interested in what we found.”

I shrugged. Considering how Griffin seemed to prioritize
everything below his work, Travis was probably correct. Moving over to the
computer Travis opened up one of the files and the next thing we heard was a
woman’s voice giving Eric some very explicit instructions. Much as I tried to
be cool about it and portray an air of sophistication, I could feel the heat
rising up my neck and knew that I was fighting a losing battle. Glancing up I
saw Griffin looking at me speculatively and I could feel the blush deepen.
Thankfully Travis turned off the file and the voices stopped.

Travis cleared his throat. “The hard drive we found has lots
of files on them like that. I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you’d be able
to find quite a few people who wanted Eric dead.”

“It doesn’t matter” said Griffin, still looking intently at
me. “We found the gun in Adele’s safe, she had gun residue on her hands and she
was with the victim when he died. Her motive is still the strongest available.”

“Still got reasonable doubt here and you know it. Do you
really want to mess up your golden boy status by screwing up a high profile
case like this?” Travis asked.

That statement got Griffin’s attention. “You think I only
care about a win, regardless of who did the actual killing?”

“I think that you have a tendency to get so focused on one
person that you fail to see what else is going on around you” Travis said
smiling tightly.

Watching the two of them, I wondered how they had ever
worked together.

At that moment Ramos walked in, took in the scene in front
of her and with a muttered “oh hell” stepped between the two males who looked
for all the world as if they were going to lock horns.

Catching the eye of her partner she asked quietly, “do we
have a problem here?”

Griffin sighed. “We could have. We need to seize all the
electronic equipment here and do a search.”

“I’ll organize the paperwork” she said in her same quiet
voice.

Travis tapped her on the shoulder and Ramos stiffened.

“You might want to include this” he said holding up the
small camera.

“Do I want to know where you found that?” Ramos asked.

“Light fitting above the bed” he said proudly.

“You’re a pain in my neck, you know that don’t you?” said
Ramos.

“Of course I do darling”.

Ramos smiled tightly. “Call me darling again and I’ll shoot
you. Considering the way certain cops feel about you, I’d get away with it
too.”

Smiling again Travis walked towards the door.

“Coming sweetheart,” he said throwing a glance in my
direction.

Muttering beneath my breath I followed him through the door,
aware that Griffin was watching my every move. Once out of sight of the two
cops I punched Travis in the arm.

“What was that?” I
asked
, my
annoyance clear in my voice.

Travis doubled over laughing. “Did you see him?” he asked.
“There was almost steam coming out of his ears. Oh that moment was pure gold.
Do you want a job because I think that would be the icing on the cake that
would give Griffin a brain explosion.”

I shook my head. “You’re not being nice” I said. “There
isn’t a need to cause that kind of a problem.”

“The guy is uptight, always has been, always will be. The
thing is that you shake him up. That little scene in there, that was because of
you, not me. Griffin and I have butted heads too many times before to count. He
has never taken it this personally. You are the difference here.”

“I can’t help that” I said, suddenly realizing that this
conversation was taking an uncomfortable turn.

“I’ve seen Griffin with women before” Travis said as he
leaned against his car. “None of them got under his skin the way you seem to.
I’m not sure why but you seem to have found a chink in his perfect armor. You
are the one who puts the golden boy off his game and I find that very
interesting.”

I mirrored his stance and crossed my arms. “You know, I
think you just insulted me and I’m not sure why.”

“Honey” Travis said as he opened my door for me. “Believe me
when I say that was not an insult. In fact, I am in awe of whatever power you
seem to possess.”

“Great” I said.

After we’d been driving for a while I had to know. “Why do
you dislike Griffin so much?”

Travis gave me a sideways glance and smiled.

“You know we were partners.”

I nodded.

“One night we were chasing a suspect and we got separated.
The suspect came at me suddenly and I wasn’t able to get at my gun. He was
hyped up on drugs and I was barely able to fight him off. He went down, hit his
head on the pavement and died. Unfortunately he was some rich kid whose parents
came after me. There was an investigation. Griffin refused to back my version
of events. According to what I heard he believed that it was possible to talk
this kid down and he felt I could have handled it differently. I got cleared
but thanks to Griffin, there was always going to be a dark cloud over me. I
wasn’t asking him to lie, just to back me up. He wouldn’t even do that. I quit
the force the day I was cleared.”

“Are you using me to get back at him? I understand if you’re
angry with him, but I’m not going to get into the middle of your little war.
I’m really not that interested. In fact I’d be happy not to see either one of
you ever again if that’s the case.”

With that I got out the car and shut the door. As I opened
the door to my apartment I heard him drive off. Closing the door I breathed a
sigh of relief. My phone started ringing and looking down I saw it was Griffin
again. Sighing I answered the phone.

“What” I said.

There was a pause. “Look I know you’re angry with me but
working with Travis is a very bad idea.”

I sighed. “I’m not angry anymore” I said. “I’m just really
not interested in getting in the middle of this thing that the two of you have
going on.”

I could almost hear him grinding his teeth.

“Look, I’ll come over and we can talk about this.”

“No” I said quickly, “I’ve got to go out and get some work
done.”

“Trudie” he said, but it was too late. I hung up the phone.

Some women might enjoy being fought over by two men. Me, I
knew what happened when male pride got involved. The situation became less
about the woman and more about winning. I was not built like a trophy
girlfriend and I was really not interested in becoming someone that was won.
Grabbing my car keys I immediately headed out. I figured Griffin would not
carry out his threat to come and see me, but just in case he did, I didn’t want
to be there. Admittedly once I’d gone through a drive through and sat in a
parking lot eating a burger, the thought that I may be acting a little cowardly
went through my mind.

Jake Griffin confused me. I had never felt this on edge with
anyone before in my life. When he looked at me and his eyes crinkled I just felt
like melting where I stood and when he took me in his arms I felt safe and on
fire all at once. The problem was I had seen women who had fallen for men like
him before. Men who put their work first over everything. In my family it was
often joked that the women would only put up with men who adored them. I wanted
to be adored, I wanted to be put first and if I couldn’t have that then I
didn’t want anyone. As I was wiping the grease from my hands my phone rang
again. Sighing I grabbed it without looking at the caller ID.

“Trudie” Adele’s wavering voice came through. I was
instantly on alert.

“Adele, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Trudie, I need you
to
come
to
my
house.
I found something and I don’t know what to do.”

“What is it Adele?”

“I think I know why Eric was killed. I don’t know who to
turn
to. You’re the only one I trust.”