#3 Hollywood Crazy: A Holllywood Alphabet Series Thriller Read online

  As my friends made light of a bad situation, I’d made out a couple of tweakers near the courtyard, not to mention a girl sitting on a railing who looked like she’d sell her mother and her body for a quarter gram of meth.

  When my roommates came back over to me, I said, ““Are you guys sure you want to spend the night here? I’ve got work to do and you can’t interfere.”

  “We can help you on the case,” Natalie said, clapping her hands in excitement. “I heard you saying something on the phone about Jezzie Rose, that runner. Is the dirty lumpfish that whacked her somewhere around here?”

  “I can’t say. And you can’t help me on the case. This is police business.”

  “Not a problem,” Mo said, giving Natalie a little head shake, maybe to appease me. “We just need a good night’s rest and then we’ll be on our way in the morning.”

  It was against my better judgment but I felt sorry for my friends missing out on their vacation and ending up in Bakersfield. “I’ll go get us rooms. I want you all to stay here.”

  Five minutes later, Bernie and I were standing in the lobby of the Snow White Motel. I looked over the registration desk at a diminutive clerk with a name tag that read, Bruce.

  The clerk eyeballed Bernie. “Cash no credit cards and all I got is a Dopey, a Grumpy, and a Wheezy. It’ll be an extra ten for the dog.”

  Bruce was about five feet tall, with a bushy uni-brow that came to a point above his bulbous nose. His grin exposed a large set of teeth that looked like they were borrowed from George Washington. The smile seemed permanently fixed on his face, like he’d been shot with a Botox stun-gun. There was a political poster on the wall behind the clerk with a headline that read, Badenov for Mayor. I realized I was talking to Bruce Badenov, the mayor of Oildale.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to understand what the mayor had meant about the rooms.

  “They’re dwarf rooms, named after the seven dwarfs. Only got three left.”

  “Oh, I don’t remember a dwarf named, Wheezy.”

  “We’ve got more than seven rooms, so Earl and Gladys ran out of names, had to improvise. We also have a Wimpy, a Limpy, and an Itchy, but they’re already taken.”

  “Earl and…”

  “My aunt and uncle. They built the place in the late seventies before I inherited. Aunt Gladys went a little Disney with the theme and Uncle Earl went along with it. He did all the construction himself.”

  I complimented Earl and Gladys’s nephew on the establishment, realizing that I was looking at a man who was the king of the Snow White empire and the mayor of Oildale, a rare combination. Maybe Bruce would someday be Governor. Stranger things had happened, considering the state had a history of being run by actors and imbeciles.

  I explained about my three roommates needing to share a room. The mayor said they could take the Dopey room which had two beds and he’d bring over a rollaway. I agreed to the arrangement, realizing that finding a Dopey room for my roommates and then a Grumpy room for Charlie must be some kind of once in a lifetime karmic convergence. I took the Wheezy room for me and Bernie, deciding it must have been named for the air we were forced to breathe.

  I’d just paid for the rooms and gotten the keys when I heard a commotion in the parking lot. I ran back to where I’d left my friends, finding only Nana.

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Where are Natalie and Mo?”

  “It’s the killer,” Nana said, her dentures clicking away as she pointed down the street. “Mo and Natalie just ran after him. They recognized him from TV.”

  I took off running with Bernie on his leash in the direction Natalie and Mo had gone. The dark air had turned colder since we’d arrived and the heavy fog now blanketed the area. It was impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. I called out to my friends.

  “Stop, I’ve got a gun,” I heard Natalie scream from somewhere up ahead in the foggy darkness.

  Seconds later I heard two shots ring out, followed by more screaming.

  “Natalie, Mo where are you? I yelled, moving in the direction of the shots with my service weapon drawn, still unable to make out anything.

  “Over here,” I heard Mo say. “We got a problem, Kate.”

  Seconds later, Bernie and I finally made out the figures of Natalie and Mo in the fog shrouded landscape a block from the motel. Natalie was bent over the body of a man. She was holding a gun.

  “What happened?” I said, realizing that Natalie had her ex-husband’s antique pistol in hand. “Did you shoot him?”

  “Wish I had,” Natalie said. “The shooter was Barry Ralston, Jezzie’s killer. The dirty wanker let loose on this bloke and then ran off.”

  I used the small flashlight on my keychain, illuminating the dead body. The victim looked to be in his twenties. He’d been shot twice in the chest.

  “Ralston,” I said to my friends. “Which way did he go?”

  Before I got an answer Bernie apparently decided to take things into his own hands and took off, yanking his leash out of my hands, and sprinting away from me. An instant later, he’d disappeared into the fog.

  “Bernie, bleib!” I screamed, using the German training command for him to stop. It was too late. My dog was gone.

  Mo brought one of her big arms up, motioning down the road where Bernie had gone after the shooter. “Ralston just disappeared into the night, Kate. He was like some crazy-ass Bakersfield zombie.”

  Copyright © 2014 by MZ Kelly

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  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  Table of Contents

  Note from the author

  Also in the Hollywood Alphabet Series:

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Thanks for reading, Hollywood Crazy . . .

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