Hollywood Games: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller Read online

  HOLLYWOOD GAMES

  MZ Kelly

  Note from the author

  This book, like all the Hollywood Alphabet Series novels, contains an interesting Hollywood fact or quote from a famous movie star. As you read, look for the fact or quote, and then look for details about how to win valuable prizes at the end of this book. Contests may be related to information in this book or Hollywood in general. All contests are updated regularly, it’s easy to enter, and the prizes are great.

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  Also in the Hollywood Alphabet Series:

  Hollywood Assassin

  Hollywood Blood

  Hollywood Crazy

  Hollywood Dirty

  Hollywood Enemy

  Hollywood Forbidden

  Hollywood Homicide (Coming Soon)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Thanks for Reading

  Contests…Giveaways…Free Stuff

  More by this Author

  Hollywood Homicide

  CHAPTER ONE

  The nights on Catalina Island were often cool and foggy, the damp air drifting in like a thick blanket of smoke covering the hills and valleys. But not tonight. The weather had changed. An offshore breeze had pushed the fog away and turned the night clear and warm. The sky was a dome of endless starlight that drifted overhead, made even brighter by the lack of artificial light. I stopped in the field letting the smell of salt and sage fill up my senses. And then I moved on, stumbling past the house, farther into the meadow, tears spilling from my eyes.

  “She’s my niece.”

  The voice had come out of the darkness from somewhere behind me.

  I stopped and turned, seeing that Buck McCade had followed me, his arms splayed in a gesture of explanation.

  His voice came softer now, pleading for me to understand. “She and her husband are having problems. I offered to let her stay with me for a few days, sort through some things.”

  “Oh.” I sighed, my head slumping down as I tried to catch my breath. Maybe there was a hole somewhere in this field of flowers and grass where I could hide; a place meant for the world’s biggest idiot.

  He took a step forward, touched my chin, and lifted my head up until I was looking into those endless blue eyes; eyes that crinkled up at the corners; eyes that made me think of those blue holes I’d seen somewhere in the Caribbean; eyes bottomless and endlessly seductive.

  My breath caught in my throat as he moved closer, drawing me against him. The kiss was perfect and I felt like we were always meant to be in this place full of starlight and moonlight and fields of clover.

  My hands came up, finding his muscled arms and thick shoulders, before moving higher where my fingers combed through his short brown hair, at the same time knocking the Stetson off his head.

  We kissed again, this time longer and more urgently before he pulled back. When we finally parted he picked up his hat and said, “Can I show you something?”

  I smiled as he asked the question, a suggestive grin playing on my lips. “Sure. Anything you’d like.”

  He grinned and pulled me by the arm, moving me across the field. I recovered enough to see that Bernie was beside me, my canine partner having followed me from the car. I should probably explain how I ended up with Bernie and a man named Buck in an empty field on an island off the coast of Southern California.

  My name is Kate Sexton. I’m a LAPD cop assigned to the Robbery Homicide Division, or RHD, in Hollywood. My canine partner, whose genetic heritage had produced something reminiscent of a sexually aggressive four-legged Wookiee, was also assigned to RHD.

  Bernie and I had spent the last three months on Catalina where I’d taken a leave of absence to recover from the last case I’d worked and some personal losses. As my vacation was about to end I’d assisted Buck McCade, a Catalina detective who’d made his way to the island via Laredo, Texas, on a case that involved the kidnapping of my friend’s niece.

  Tonight, my last night on the island, I’d given Buck a ride home and found a woman standing on his front porch. While Buck and I weren’t in a relationship, we’d grown close and I have to admit that I’d had some explicit fantasizes about him.

  I’d left in a huff when I’d seen a woman standing on Buck’s porch but then thought better of it and returned to his ranch. That’s when I’d knocked on his door, looked through the window, and found him holding the woman in his arms. I’d left again, not realizing it was his niece, this time running through the field with my emotions on overload.

  “It’s an old fort,” Buck said. He stopped, removed his hat, and motioned to the structure that looked to be a good twenty feet off the ground. We were probably a couple hundred yards from his house and barn. “My guess is that some kids’ parents built it a few years ago.” He moved closer to the play structure but saw that I wasn’t following. He waved to me. “Come on. There’s a ladder.”

  “What about Bernie?” My big dog was at my side doing the Wookiee tail wag.

  “He can stay here. Just have him settle, stand guard.”

  I gave Bernie a hand signal and he circled a couple of times before lying down. Buck then helped me, placing his hand on the small of my back, as I led the way up the ladder.

  After we were both on the upper platform I took a moment, surveying the view. “This is amazing. You can see the entire island.”

  Overhead, the blanket of starlight seemed even brighter now, a blazing disk of supernatural light scattered from the center of the Milky Way, spilling out across the heavens. Maybe it was being here with Buck, but a line from a poem or a book I’d read somewhere came to mind, something about the stars being love songs written by God. There was also a half-moon, golden and luminous enough to light up the field of flowers and tall grass that gently waved in the warm breeze. Beyond that the ocean was a languid dark river, the foam from the breaking waves catching just enough moonlight to celebrate its glory.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I said, turning back to him.

  “Not as beautiful as you.” We kissed again, me holding his gorgeous body against mine like it was always meant to be this way. When we finally parted I saw the blankets for the first time. They were in the middle of the platform.

  “I come up here and sleep now and then,” he said with a grin
. “There’s something about the starlight and wide open space that reminds me of the prairie in Texas where I grew up.”

  There wasn’t a lot of talk after that, not that Buck McCade was big on talk. He was more a man of words that when spoken stood for something, announcing his intentions in an honorable way. But in this moment no words were needed to understand what he intended.

  Buck pulled me over to the blankets where he gently brushed my lips with his before his tender offering came again, this time with more fervor as we lowered ourselves onto the blankets. He then worked on my blouse, slowly twisting each button between his thumb and finger, then pulling it off me. When my bra came off he used his lips and tongue, working his way across my breasts and then lower, much lower. I felt myself glowing from within as though a liquid fire had been ignited and was slowly spreading outward filling me up.

  After that we were gone, drunk with starlight and moonlight, passion and sensation. We kissed some more, our hands and lips probing everywhere, both giving and receiving. When his jeans came off we moved more urgently, our lovemaking creating a lightness that gave me the sensation we were defying gravity. We became one body, one being, and any questions I’d had about moving past the losses I’d suffered were gone. The world burned with starlight until the glorious light itself exploded with ecstasy.

  A long time later when we rested, we looked up at the stars, each of us still trying to catch our breath. Buck turned to me. His words were soft, just above a whisper. “This was my first time.”

  I chuckled and my forehead knitted. “What?”

  “Since…since my marriage ended.” He turned his head, looking back at the stars. “I think in some ways I was waiting for you.”

  I nestled closer to him, my chin finding a concave place against his neck and shoulder. “I’m glad you saved yourself for me. I’m also glad you didn’t forget how to do it.”

  We were both laughing when my phone rang. I ignored it but it rang again. Whoever was calling didn’t want to leave a message and I felt obligated to answer.

  “It’s me, Natalie,” I heard my best friend say in her British accent. Her tone was urgent, maybe a little on the breathless side.

  I sat up. “What’s going on?”

  “Me and Mo decided to take an early ferry boat home from the island. We got back to Hollywood a couple of hours ago so we could look at some rentals.”

  Natalie and Mo were my roommates. We’d all been vacationing on Catalina together when we learned that our landlord was renting her house out and we all had to move on short notice. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”

  “We need your help, Kate. Somethin’ bad has happened here.”

  “What?” I sat up straighter. “Where are you?”

  “We’re in one of those mansions up in the hills overlookin’ the city. That hunky realtor I met was supposed to meet his best friend, Jiggy, up here, and then help us look for a place.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We found the bloke floatin’ face down in his hot tub. He’s deader than a lobster in a pot of hot water.”

  After getting a few more details, sensationalized by Natalie’s use of British colloquialisms, I ended the call. I then called Lieutenant Edna, my boss at Hollywood Station, and filled him in on what I knew. He said that he’d assign my new partner to begin processing the crime scene and, since my leave was over, he wanted me on site as soon as I could get there. After the call ended I explained everything to Buck.

  “I know the island ferry schedules,” he said checking his watch. “The next boat leaves for the mainland in about a half hour.” His grin told me everything. “It’s too bad. I was just getting started.”

  I dropped my cell phone into my purse, leaned over to him, and said, “I think I’m going to miss that boat and catch the next one. Let’s see what your second time is like.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the way to the ferry terminal at Avalon Harbor, Bernie and I stopped by Stardust Acres, a retirement home for aging Hollywood stars where we’d been staying with my friend, Mo’s sister. We picked up Bernie’s love puppy, Bubba, and got my belongings. The little dog, sired by Bernie after a romp with a black lab, was only a few months old, a furry ball of energy and mischief.

  We then left the island and took a shuttle service from the ferry terminal in Long Beach before stopping at Hollywood Station to pick up a car. We stopped at my mother’s house where she’d agreed to take care of Bubba.

  It was after one in the morning by the time Bernie and I got to the murder scene in the Hollywood Hills. A couple of patrol cars were in the street and crime scene tape was set up at the gate to the sprawling residence.

  “The lieutenant’s inside,” one of the uniformed cops said. “I heard the vic is some kind of TV personality. Name’s Jiggy Biggs.”

  I thanked him for the information, thinking I’d heard the name somewhere before but couldn’t place it. The house was one of those massive Spanish estates set on a hillside bluff with courtyards, a security fence, lots of palm trees and ferns. It wasn’t too far from a mansion that, if recent media reports could be believed, belonged to Ben Affleck.

  Bernie and I stopped at the front door where I showed my credentials to another uniform and entered a great room with high ceilings that looked out on an infinity pool. I saw there was some temporary lighting set up near the pool and guessed that was where the victim’s body had been found. I walked across the polished oak floors to the dining room where I found Lieutenant Edna with a man wearing what looked like an expensive Italian suit.

  “Bout time you got here,” Edna growled. “We’ve got a shitload of people waiting to be interviewed, including your goofball friends.”

  “Natalie and Mo?” I don’t know why I asked. My friends were partners in a private investigation firm they called Sistah Snoop. I had to admit they epitomized goofiness, along with a few other qualities that I wasn’t sure language had been invented to describe.

  Natalie was tall, blonde, and beautiful with a vocabulary that was contrary to the typical British reserve and full of her own creative brand of expletives. Mo was her opposite; big, black, and bad, as in willing to physically take care of any trouble that came their way and trouble almost always seemed to find them.

  “Your friends are upstairs, along with their realtor buddy,” the man in the expensive suit said. “I’m Harvey Gluck.” He held out a hand that looked like it had a recent manicure, the nails shiny with a coat of clear polish.

  “Meet your new partner,” Edna barked, motioning to Gluck. “And just so you know he’s nothing like Winkler.”

  Charlie Winkler was my former partner who had recently retired. He was about fifty pounds overweight, a food addict, and in poor health.

  My new partner looked to be in his mid-forties, about five seven. His brown hair had artificial highlights and was slicked back from a forehead that was remarkably smooth. His skin was an unnatural brown tone, probably the result of spending time in one of those tanning salons that were popular in Hollywood.

  While I had green eyes, my new partner’s eyes were a translucent jade color, maybe enhanced by contacts. To make matters worse, he smelled like he’d overdosed on an expensive aftershave.

  “Worked Chicago PD for a few years before moving to Cali and working the Wilshire Division,” Gluck explained to me in a voice that seemed artificially deep. I wondered if there was anything real about my new partner. “Worked the streets a lot and did some time with vice. This is my first gig in homicide.”

  I nodded and turned back to Edna as Bernie settled in a corner of the room. “I understand our victim is a TV personality?”

  “Jiggy was on the show Hollywood Gold,” Gluck said, answering for the lieutenant in a voice that had pitched a little higher with excitement.

  “Never heard of him or the show.”

  Edna answered before Gluck could open his mouth again. “Jiggy Biggs is the vic. The show’s one of those idiotic real estate reality progr
ams where the hot shot agents all try to outdo one another by selling the biggest, most expensive places in town. Bunch of fucking bullshit if you ask me.”

  Our lieutenant had the habit of using only one adjective when he talked and it began with the letter F. Edna was old school, not someone who was big on sensitivity.

  “He was also a rapper,” Gluck added. “Topped the hip hop charts with some songs a few years back. His biggest hit was, G-B-O-S-C.”

  “What?”

  “Gonna Bust Out Some Crazy.” My new partner’s jade eyes narrowed on me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard it?”

  I now made the connection, having heard the song a few times. In fact, I thought it might even be on my iPod. I ignored his question and turned back to the lieutenant. “Anything else we should know before we begin processing the scene?”

  “Coroner’s on the way. The press is starting to call. All I need is the fucking paparazzi showing up and causing a scene. Let’s fucking move on this.”

  Bernie came up from his nap and we moved back through the great room to where some hand carved oval doors opened to the backyard and swimming pool. The pool’s infinity edge disappeared against the downtown Hollywood skyline, serving as an iconic backdrop to the estate. It made me think about my own humble living arrangements.

  Natalie, Mo, and I each had been renting rooms in the Mount Olympus neighborhood of Hollywood for the past several months from Nana Hannah our elderly landlord. Mo once described Nana as eighty pounds of crazy, thanks to a sexual rejuvenation drug that had boosted her sex drive. Our other roommate was Prissy, Nana’s transsexual great grandson. He owned a bondage store on Melrose called Voodoo Mama. I’d heard that Prissy didn’t plan on moving with us. He’d told my friends that he was going to stay in his store for a few weeks until he could find other living arrangements.

  I was thinking about a recent promise I’d made to my half-sister Lindsay that she could move in with us when my new partner interrupted my thoughts. “Just so you know, I’m going to need a little time to adjust to my new duties.”