The Actor's Guide To Murder Read online

  Laurette had finally given in, and was now at Willard’s desk, firing up his Dell notebook computer. Luckily Willard had his password automatically stored for convenience, so she had no trouble hacking her way into his AOL Internet account. She was flying through his e-mail for anything suspicious, but most of the unread mail was just advertising offers of sex and work-at-home business opportunities.

  I poured over a stack of magazines by Willard’s bedside. He was a voracious reader, consuming a host of pop culture weeklies and monthlies, subscribing to everything from People to Rolling Stone to U.S. News and World Report. Most hadn’t even been thumbed through yet. There were also a few local gay-related rags, including Frontiers, which had an entire section in the back devoted to ads for mostly unlicensed body work specialists, which if one were to read between the lines meant hustlers.

  I flipped through the magazine to a page that had been earmarked, and studied the black and white photos of various men, all shapes and sizes, ages and persuasions. One photo in the center had been circled with a black Sharpie pen.

  He was young, probably in his mid-twenties, stripped to the waist, his smooth, toned chest glistening. There was a tattoo of an eagle on his left bicep. And because he was probably an aspiring actor who didn’t want this side work to come back and bite him in the ass some day, his face was blurred. The caption underneath read, “You’ll soar to new heights when my soothing hands work their magic on you. Call Eli today for an experience your body will never forget.” This was followed by a pager number and the best hours to call.

  I tore the page out of the magazine, folded it up and slipped it in my pocket.

  Laurette looked up at me from the computer, her face a ghostly white. “You might want to come look at this.”

  I crossed over and peered over her shoulder. On the screen was one of those animated e-mail special occasion cards you can order on-line. Cute furry bunnies exploding with birthday cheer accompanied by a musical ditty designed to brighten your day. This was a bit different. It was the cartoon image of a man lying prone in a coffin with words dancing above him.

  Happy Birthday . . . I hope it’s your last.

  The coffin then slammed shut and there was a sick cackling laugh that trailed off. The image just kept repeating itself over and over, until I reached over and clicked on the exit bar. Neither of us wanted to see it again. The e-mail address from where the card was sent was just a list of random numbers using a Hotmail account. I jotted it down.

  Laurette closed the notebook computer and stood up. “Okay, I’m ready to leave. How about you?”

  I had to agree. The ominous birthday greeting had shaken us both up.

  As we headed back down the stairs, I heard a noise coming from the kitchen. I grabbed Laurette’s arm, stopping her. Someone else was in the house.

  Laurette slowly began to hyperventilate as I guided her back up to the second floor, and down the hall to Willard’s bedroom. We ducked inside, and gently closed the door, hoping whoever was there wouldn’t come upstairs. We were wrong. There was a thunderous clomping on the staircase. Whoever it was had heard us and was moving fast, heading straight for us. And from the sound of it, there was more than one person. Maybe three or four.

  I grabbed Laurette’s hand and pulled her inside the bedroom closet. We pushed ourselves up against the back wall, hurriedly arranging the hanging clothes in front of us as cover. Outside, we heard the bedroom door bang open, and the scuffling of feet across the floor.

  We both held our breath.

  I couldn’t make out what the muffled voices were saying, but after a brief exchange, there was more banging and clomping before they left the bedroom and headed back down the hall.

  Both Laurette and I let out deep sighs of relief. We hadn’t been discovered.

  But then, out of nowhere, a loud incessant beeping pierced the air, startling both of us. It was relentless and coming from inside the closet. It took us both a second to realize it was Laurette’s cell phone. She frantically fumbled for it as it kept ringing and ringing. I swear she had the volume jacked up to full blast. When she finally got her hands on the phone, she dropped it, allowing another few earsplitting rings to escape.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she managed to pick it up, flip it open, and whisper, “Hello?”

  I pressed my ear against the closet door to try and hear if the clomping feet were coming back our way, but I couldn’t make out anything above Laurette’s urgent, panicked voice.

  “What do you mean he didn’t show up? I spent a whole week of my life getting him that Safeway grand opening!”

  Laurette lowered the phone, and hissed, “Gary Coleman’s being a prima donna again!”

  It was as if she had suddenly forgotten where we were and who might be just outside the door. That was Laurette. Work always came first. But at that moment, my eyes fell to the floor where I saw shadows lurking outside the crack in the bottom of the closet door. The mystery guests had come back, and this time they were certain someone else was in the house with them.

  My mind raced. I searched the closet for some kind of weapon; a shoe, an umbrella, anything. But there was nothing. Laurette dropped her phone, and let out a tiny audible gasp as someone outside jiggled the door handle. Before I could grab it from the inside, someone wrenched it wide open, and pushed the clothes apart to reveal our hiding place.

  A harsh light washed over us.

  Laurette squealed and closed her eyes, expecting the worst.

  And I looked into the angry eyes of four female uniformed cops, guns drawn and aimed straight at me.

  Chapter Six

  Charlie and I love watching Oz, that brutal soap opera set in a maximum-security prison on HBO. It’s guilt-free TV. Because it’s critically acclaimed, we don’t have to feel sleazy watching all the full frontal male nudity.

  But after spending an afternoon in the LA County Jail, I didn’t care if I ever saw another episode again. The smelly, pot-bellied, dirty-faced lowlifes squeezed into my cell looked nothing like the tanned, buffed, adorable actors who populated prison on TV. Once again, pop culture distorted my view of reality, and as I huddled in a corner, praying to God that nobody talked to me, any dark fantasies I may have once harbored about incarceration evaporated forever.

  The stench of urine permeated the air as a muttering, wild-eyed, scraggly-faced man walked up and down the length of the dank, bare cement cell in front of me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but like everybody else in the cell that day, I’m sure he was protesting his innocence. This was not how I expected things to turn out when I hijacked Laurette and set out to search Willard Ray Hornsby’s Brentwood home.

  Apparently the elderly gardener down the block from Willard’s house wasn’t as focused on his hedge clipping as Laurette and I originally thought. The minute we entered the house, he was on the phone to the police. The four women cops who showed up refused to listen to our harried explanations, and promptly placed us both under arrest for breaking and entering. Laurette, who was convinced she might actually be a lesbian after a string of bad choices in men, realized on this day that she was indeed a full-fledged heterosexual when she was roughly frisked down for weapons by the four butch officers.

  After carting us downtown in the back of a squad car, we were fingerprinted, photographed, and ultimately separated. As two of the officers led Laurette away, she finally broke down and started sobbing. All of this had just been too much for her, and I felt rotten about it. This was totally my fault, and as I sat on the hard bench in this cold, cramped cell, I knew Laurette would find some way to pay me back for the emotionally debilitating trauma I had put her through.

  I closed my eyes, imagining this was just another audition, that the muttering, crazy man in front of me was just another aspiring actor running his lines, and that the corrections officer standing guard outside the cell was the casting director waiting to escort me inside to face more producers.

  “Jarrod Jarvis?”

&n
bsp; See, it was time for me to breeze into the conference room and face the bigwigs. Just like always. I had done this a thousand times. And in my mind I felt this time I was going to nail it.

  Snapping out of my fantasy, I looked up to see the stern-faced guard, his massive, fleshy arms folded in front of him, his eyes judging me.

  With disdain in his voice he said, “I guess you’re free to go.”

  I didn’t know what his problem was. He kept his eye trained on me as he inserted a key into a lock on the cell door. I felt like he wanted to tell me that in his mind two hours in a holding cell wasn’t nearly enough to teach me a hard lesson.

  Who was this guy to judge me? How would he know anything about me in the first place? When the steel bars slid open, and I stepped out into the hall, I suddenly understood. The guard did know the whole story, because there, standing just a few feet behind him, was Charlie.

  He turned to the guard and nodded. “Thanks, Ned.”

  I smiled sweetly and said to Charlie, “Would you believe I’m just researching a role?”

  Charlie never cracked a smile. I knew I was in major trouble.

  The drive home from jail was interminable. Laurette sputtered the endless details of her time served in jail, and how close she came to becoming the bitch of a bank robber who bore a remarkable resemblance to Faye Dunaway, post-Mommie Dearest. Laurette was determined to talk non-stop the entire trip, if only to cover up the thick tension in the car.

  My BMW had been impounded, and I wasn’t going to be able to get it back until the following day, so we all piled into Charlie’s Ford Explorer, and swung onto the Hollywood Freeway North to head back to the house.

  Charlie kept his eyes fixed on the road, never wavering even to glance at Laurette through the rearview mirror as she chattered away. Laurette’s days as a budding Nancy Drew were over. I knew I wouldn’t be able to count on her help anymore. This ordeal had shaken her up, and she was happy to return to the boring day-today business of managing has-beens. And I also knew she would never again fall for a promise of lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.

  I, on the other hand, was only spurred on more by our search of Willard’s house. There were so many more questions now. I wanted to know who Terry Duran was and why Willard was paying him five hundred dollars. I wanted to find out more about the Frontiers ad for the hustler with the eagle tattoo and what his connection to Willard was. And most importantly, I wanted to find out who had sent Willard that grotesque animated birthday greeting on-line.

  Laurette finally ran out of things to say as we roared up Beachwood Drive, the Hollywood sign glistening in the sunlight before us. We drove the rest of the way in uneasy silence.

  Charlie pulled the Explorer inside the garage, and we all silently slid out of the car, averting any eye contact with each other. Snickers, oblivious to the tension at first, scampered eagerly over to greet us as we entered the kitchen.

  “Laurette, why don’t you stay for dinner? I’ll make pasta,” I said hopefully.

  “Can’t. I have my therapist tonight, and obviously after the day I’ve had, it’s going to be a slam-bang, action-packed session. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She whipped out her cell phone and called a cab before I could stop her.

  “Don’t call a cab. I’ll drive you there. I’ll even wait outside until you’re finished, and then I’ll take you home.”

  Laurette knew exactly what I was doing. Avoiding the inevitable. I’ve never been good at facing problems head on. I prefer to step over them, let them grow and fester until they get so big, I don’t have any choice but to deal with them because they’re staring me straight in the face (I never claimed to be emotionally healthy).

  Charlie was biding his time, waiting to get me alone, so he could lay into me, and I wanted nothing more than to escape his wrath. This was much bigger than Lucy trying to pull the wool over Ricky’s eyes. I had embarrassed him at work, put him in an awkward position with the force.

  Charlie already had a tough enough time of it because he was openly gay. He had been ridiculed, passed over for promotion, frozen out by some of the more homophobic officers. Everything he achieved took double the effort because a lot of officers were rooting against him. But Charlie was nothing if not determined, and through sheer bravado and hard work, he had earned the respect of even the most hateful cops in his division. Still, it was an uphill battle, and he didn’t need the news of his boyfriend getting arrested to spread through out the department.

  To make matters worse, there were the crime reporters who pored over every arrest report. There would definitely be a red flag when they came across my name, given my notoriety as a former child star. By next week at this time, my mug shot would probably be splashed across the front page of every tabloid from the Enquirer to the Globe. I might even find myself in Leno’s monologue or in Dave’s Top Ten List. I would be yet another sad statistic of what happens to child stars when the work dries up and nobody wants us anymore. I would be one more cautionary tale about the dark, seamy underbelly of show business. People would shake their heads in a mix of disgust and pity.

  I was convinced that all of this was racing through Charlie’s mind as well. Laurette was nervously nursing a Pepsi One, and heaved a huge sigh of relief when she saw the green-checkered cab pull up out front. She gave us both a quick peck on the cheek, patted Snickers on the head, and made her escape.

  And I was left alone with Charlie.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say.

  “You promised, Jarrod.”

  “I know, but when we were over at Willard’s house, I found a few things that might . . .”

  He cut me off. “I don’t care! I already went through the house! I found nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest foul play! Willard’s death was an accident! When are you going to accept that?”

  His ego was bruised. He had combed Willard’s house the night we found his body, and turned up nothing. He couldn’t get his mind around me doubting his skills as a detective. But what was I going to tell him and his police cronies? I know this is a murder because my psychic medium says so? Probably not the best way to go.

  “Why are you doing this, huh? Laurette can’t get you any auditions, so now you want to be a detective?” he said, his face flushed with anger. “You hoping to crack come big case wide open, get a few headlines so some producer gets the bright idea to cast you as the new Columbo?”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Then why? What is it?”

  “Willard was my friend.”

  Charlie took a deep breath. He knew he had his opening, and he took it. “There’s something else going on here, Jarrod. And I think we both know what it is.”

  I swallowed hard. My face was flushed, my hands trembling. I knew what he was trying to get at, and it infuriated me, mostly because he was right on target. I had spent an entire afternoon in a jail cell working it through my mind, but that didn’t mean I was ready to talk about it. We were both fully aware that the can of worms we were about to open was enough to supply a three-month fishing expedition in the North Atlantic.

  Charlie stood his ground, staring at me, waiting to discuss the real reason behind my latest obsession.

  But I couldn’t. I just wasn’t ready. I was too confused, too focused on the tiny clues I had uncovered that day.

  The thought of tearing open the heart of our relationship and examining it into the wee hours of the morning was just too excruciating. I wished I could be as open, forthright, and fair minded as Charlie. He deserved that. And sometimes I was. But right now, he was getting the moody Jarrod who refused to deal with the real issues. The former child star Jarrod who could be bratty and shallow and terrified to face the raw emotions that would surely bubble to the surface.

  No, I had to get out of there. Now.

  “You can think what you want,” I seethed. “But I’m not playing this game with you tonight.”

  I whipped around and started for the garage before
I realized my car was still impounded. So I turned around again, marched past Charlie and a confused Snickers, and headed straight out the front door. I walked down our narrow street hoping there weren’t any skunks or snakes out tonight. Skunks I could handle. Snakes scared me to death.

  Our street spilled out onto Beachwood Drive, and I hiked down the road towards downtown Hollywood where I would eventually join the lost starry-eyed teenage runaways, the strung-out drug pushers and the camera-laden tourists snapping pictures of Lassie’s star on the Walk of Fame.

  I had no idea where I was going. I just knew that escaping the confrontation back home was what mattered now.

  The past would come back to haunt me soon enough.

  Chapter Seven

  I don’t know how long I walked along the grimy, littered streets of Hollywood Boulevard towards the restored glitz and glitter of the newly built Hollywood & Highland Center, new home to the Academy Awards and the recently refurbished Mann Chinese Theatre. But when my feet finally started to throb in pain, I caught a cab home.

  I had cooled down considerably at this point, but my resolve to press on with this wild obsession had not diminished. I knew Charlie had a right to be angry. Maybe if I was fixated on someone else’s death, he might have been more tolerant. But this was Willard Ray Hornsby. And Willard Ray Hornsby was the other child star I shared the front pages of the tabloids with all those years ago when we were caught kissing at the gay rodeo.

  When we were teenagers, Willard and I had spent a lot of time together signing autographs at malls and making guest appearances on Super Password. We shared a common bond. We were both struggling to find ourselves amidst the hoopla and fanfare of TV fame and fortune. We were also both hiding our true selves from the world, and when we both realized that, we became closer than ever.