Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1) (5 page)

I reached for the keys that he was dangling
in his hand. “Thank you very much.”

He pulled the
keys just out of my reach. “Any chance of getting a drink, I’m kind
of warm at the moment. The air conditioning in your car doesn’t
work very well.”

“
The air
conditioning works fine. It isn’t my fault if you weren’t able to
turn it on” I said.

He quirked that eyebrow and had an expectant
look on his face.

“
Fine” I
ground out, years of my mother’s social etiquette indoctrination
unable to be repressed. “Come in and you can have a
drink.”

I led him to
the kitchen, opened the fridge, and tossed him a bottle of water.
He looked at the bottle and then at me.

“
You want
anything else there’
s a grocery store
around the corner” I told him opening my own bottle.

He raised the
drink to his lips,
took a good couple of
swallows and leaned against the kitchen counter. My apartment is a
normal size but Detective Griffin managed to make it seem
small.

“
So Detective
Griffin” I said, “why are you really here? Somehow I don’t think
returning my car, especially this quickly, is a high priority for
the LAPD. Something tells me that there is a little more behind
this visit.”

“
I’
d like you to call me Jake” he
said.

I cocked my
head. “I don’
t think so Detective
Griffin. You have thirty seconds to tell me want you want or I’m
calling Reggie to say you’re harassing me, and believe me that man
would like nothing better than making your life difficult. He likes
my cookies.”

“Really” said Griffin with a smirk on his
face.

“
I mean he
likes the cookies I make, chocolate chip with pecans. They’re
really good and I make them for him. In fact that’s what I should
be doing now, so get out so I can start.”

I
’d lost control. I knew it and
Griffin knew it.

“
Look I’m
sorry” said Griffin. “This isn’t normally my thing but we’re
getting stonewalled by Ryan Hendricks’s people and Eleanor
Channing’s people. The lieutenant’s a fan so he’s not backing us
up. I was hoping that you would have more information, maybe with
your attorney not being around. None of what you say to me at the
moment is admissible in court. We just need to get a handle on
it.”

“What is it you want to know?” I asked.

I was
starting to feel a bit sorry for him. I could understand the
frustration. My uncle is a cop back home in Australia so I kind of
have a soft spot for the police. It’s a thankless job, made more
difficult by lawyers and people who don’t believe the same rules
apply to them that apply to the rest of us. Griffin ran his hand
through his hair, frustration evident in the tense way he was
holding himself.

“
Is there
anything else you can tell us? None of this can be used in court so
rumors, information about the people involved, anything. You’re
involved in that world in a way we can’t be. Surely there are
things you’ve heard or seen that can help.”

“
Okay” I
said. “Ask me what you want and I’ll give you what I
can.”

“
You are
Eleanor Channing’
s personal assistant.
What does that mean and what access does that give you?” he
asked.

“
Technically
I work for Monique Petit. Eleanor Channing’s management have
contracted Monique’s firm to provide a personal assistant. This
gives me more freedom than most personal assistants have because I
do not work for Eleanor. I can make choices on situations without
being pressured by the client. Monique allocates me to clients who
have had staffing issues previously.”

“
I’m guessing
they have staffing issues because they are unpleasant to work for”
Griffin put in.

“Got it in one Detective.” I saluted him with
my water bottle.

“
You would
need to have a certain type of personality to cope with that kind
of job” Griffin said. “I’ve dealt with some of the more difficult
celebrities. I couldn’t do that for longer than a few minutes at a
time before doing some damage. How did you get the job?”

“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
getting 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.”