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  the Hollywood Headlines Mysteries:

  "Gemma Halliday's witty, entertaining writing style shines through in her new book! I look forward to seeing lots more of Tina as this series continues. A fun read!"

  - Fresh Fiction

  "(HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS) is a great start to a new series that I will definitely be following as Halliday writes the kind of books that just make you smile and put you in a great mood. They’re just so enjoyable and I would without a doubt recommend this book to romance and mystery readers alike."

  - Enchanted By Books

  "(HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS) is very well written with smart and funny dialogue. It is a well-paced story that is thoroughly enjoyable with a mystery, a little romance, and a lot of laughs. Readers are sure to enjoy this delightful tale which is highly recommended."

  • Romance Reviews Today

  “The latest in the Hollywood Headlines series is 320 pages of pure fun. Halliday has created yet another laugh-out-loud whodunit. She breathes life into her mystery with a rich cast of vivid, pulp-fiction type characters and a heroine worth rooting for. 4 1/2 stars!”

  - Romantic Times

  * * * * *

  HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS

  by

  GEMMA HALLIDAY

  * * * * *

  ebook Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Gemma Halliday

  http://www.gemmahalliday.com

  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gemma-Halliday/285144192552

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  * * * * *

  HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  “Well, we are all very impressed with your body of work, Miss Quick.”

  Was he talking about my tits?

  I wasn’t sure, but I nodded at the man sitting across from me anyway. Balding, paunchy, nondescript gray suit. Your typical managing editor.

  “Thank you, Mr. Callahan,” I said, keeping my voice as even as possible, despite the anxiety that had been building throughout our interview. He and I both knew my portfolio contained a very small body of work. So small that I almost hadn’t even bothered submitting it when I’d heard the L.A. Times was looking to fill a desk. I’d only been a working reporter for just under a year, not long compared to most veteran newshounds. Then again, it was the L.A. Times. I’d have to be a moron not to at least apply for the job. And, moron was one thing I was not.

  “I’ve shown your clippings to my colleagues, and they all agreed that your assets would be a wonderful addition to the paper.” He glanced down at my chest.

  Yeah, he was totally talking about my tits.

  I shifted in my seat, adjusting my neckline. I knew I should have gone for a higher-cut blouse, but this one matched the pink pinstripes in my skirt so perfectly.

  “Wonderful,” I said, giving him a big offer-me-a-salary smile.

  “After consulting with my assistant editor, we’ve decided we’d like to offer you a freelance opportunity here at the L.A. Times.”

  “Really?” I did a mental fist pump, and even though I was trying my best to play it cool, I heard my voice rise an octave, sounding instead of a professional business woman more like a kid who’d just been told she could have ice-cream for dinner. “Ohmigod, that would be…wow. Really?”

  He nodded, a grin spreading across his paunchy cheeks. “Really. Now, I know you were hoping for a staff position, but if this opportunity goes well there’s a chance to transition from freelance into something more permanent.”

  Freelance, staff, one-shot deal, I didn’t care. It was the L.A. Times! The holy grail of any reporter’s career. And they wanted me! I had died and gone to heaven.

  “That sounds great! Amazing. Wow, thanks.”

  “Wonderful! We think you’ll be perfect to write a weekly women’s interest column.”

  I felt my face freeze mid goofy grin. “Women’s interest…you mean, like, relationship stuff?”

  “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing so limiting.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Not just relationships. We’d love for you to write about anything important to women. Lipstick, shoes, cleaning product reviews.”

  I felt that ice-cream dinner melting into a soft, mushy puddle. “Cleaning product reviews?”

  He nodded, his jowls wobbling with aftershocks. “And lipstick and shoes. You know, women’s subjects.”

  I felt my eyes narrowing. “Mr. Callahan, I graduated at the top of my class from UCLA. Didn’t you read my resume? I’m an investigative journalist. I write stories, hard-hitting news stories. Did you see the one I wrote about the misappropriation of campaign funds last fall?”

  “I did.”

  “And the Catholic Church scandal?”

  “Sure.”

  “And the way I busted that story about middle-school drug dealers in the heights wide open?”

  He nodded again. “Yes, they were all very good,” he said.

  “But?”

  “Miss Quick, we are a serious paper here.”

  “And I’m a serious journalist!”

  He looked down at my skirt, the tiny frown between his bushy eyebrows clearly not convinced that serious reporters wore pink.

  “Mr. Callahan,” I tried again, the desperation in my voice clear even to my ears, “I know I may not have the experience that many of your reporters do, but I’m a hard worker. I love long hours, overtime, and I will do anything to get the story.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Quick. But my assistant and I have reviewed your file, and we both agree that someone with your…” he paused, “…assets would best serve us writing a women’s column.” His eyes flickered to my chest again then looked away so fast I could tell his mandatory corporate sensitivity training had been a success.

  But not so fast that I didn’t catch him.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Thirty-four D.”

  Mr. Callahan blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “The pair of tits you’ve been staring at for the last hour? They’re a thirty-four D.”

  “I…I…” he stammered, his cheeks tingeing red.

  “And if you like that number, I have a few more for you,” I said, gaining steam. “One-thirty-four: my I.Q. Twenty-three-eighty-five: my SAT score. Four-point-O: my grade point average at UCLA. And finally,” I said, standing and hiking my purse onto my shoulder, “Zero: the chance that I will degrade not only myself but my entire gender by writing a column that supposes having ovaries somehow limits our intelligence level to complexities of eyesha
dow and sponge mops.”

  Mr. Callahan stared at me, blinking beneath his bushy brows, his mouth stuck open, jowls slack on his jaw.

  But I didn’t give him a chance to respond. Instead I forced one foot in front of the other as I marched back through the busy newsroom that I would not be a part of, down the hallways of my dream paper, and out into the deceptively optimistic sunshine.

  I made it all the way to my VW Bug before I let my indignation and anger morph into big, fat tears. Goddammit, I was not just a pair of headlights and a short skirt! I had a brain, a pretty damned functional one, if I did say so myself. I was a smart, diligent reporter.

  But all anyone at any of the major newspapers I’d interviewed with since graduation had seen was Allie Quick: 36, 26, 36.

  Seriously, you’d think boobs wouldn’t be such a novelty in L.A.

  I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, slid into my car and slammed my door shut, taking out my aggression on Daisy (Yes, I named my car. But don’t worry, I’d stopped just short of putting big daisy decals on the side doors. I only had one small daisy decal on the trunk. A pink one. To match the pink silk Gerbera daisy stuck in my dash.). I immediately slipped my polyester skirt off and threw it in the backseat. Hey, it was California. It was summer. And my air conditioning had broken three paychecks ago. Don’t worry, I had a pair of bikini bottoms on underneath. Then I pulled out of the parking lot and pointed my car toward the 101 Freeway.

  My life hadn’t always been like this. I’d grown up in a normal, suburban home in Reseda. I’d never known my dad, but Mom did a pretty decent job of keeping me in grilled cheese sandwiches and the latest trends in sneakers while building up her own wedding planning business. In fact, she’d built it so well that by the time I hit college, we were living pretty nicely. Unfortunately, Mom had died unexpectedly my junior year. So unexpectedly, she hadn’t left a will. Everything had gone into probate, and once all her business creditors were paid, along with probate fees and the attorney I’d hired to get her stuff out of probate, there was just enough left for me to finish journalism school. But not much more. Which had been fine. I’d never expected to live off Mom forever, but I also hadn’t expected how hard it would be for the valedictorian of her class to land a job at a newspaper.

  At least, one that didn’t involve cleaning product reviews.

  I exited the freeway, traveling through the Hollywood streets until I pulled up to a squat, stuccoed building on Hollywood Boulevard stuck between two souvenir shops. At one time the building might have been white, but years of smog and rainless winters had turned it a dingy grey. The windows were covered in cheap vertical blinds, and a distinct odor of stale take-out emanated from the place.

  I looked up at the slightly askew sign above the door. The L.A. Informer, my current place of employment. A tabloid. The lowest form of journalism in the known universe. I felt familiar shame curl in my belly at the fact that I actually worked here.

  At last it was a step above sponge mops.

  Maybe.

  A very small one.

  I pulled Daisy into a space near the back of the lot with a sigh, slipping my skirt back over my hips before trudging up the one flight of stairs to the offices.

  The interior was buzzing as usual, dozens of reporters hammering out the latest celebrity gossip on their keyboards to the tune of ringing telephones and beeping IMs. My cube was in the center of the room, just outside the door of my editor’s glass-walled office. Luckily, at the moment his back was turned to me, a hand to his Bluetooth, shouting at someone on the other side just loudly enough that I could hear the occasional muffled expletive.

  I ducked my head down, slipping into my chair before he could notice what a long lunch I’d taken. I quickly pulled up the story I’d been working on before I left that morning: Megan Fox’s boobs—real, or fake.

  Yeah, CNN we were not.

  Swallowing down every dream I’d ever had of following in Diane Sawyer’s footsteps, I hammered out a 2- by 3-inch column on the size, shape and possible plasticity of the actress’s chest. I was just about finished (concluding that, duh, there was no way those puppies were organic), when an IM popped up on my screen. My editor.

  Where have you been?

  I peeked up over the top of my cube. He was still shouting into his earpiece but was now seated at his computer, eyes on the 32-inch flat screen mounted on his desk.

  I ducked back down. At lunch.

  Pretty long lunch.

  I bit my lip. I was hungry.

  There was a pause. Then: Come into my office in three minutes.

  Great. Busted.

  I glanced at the time on my computer. 1:42. I finished up my article, hit save, and two minutes and forty-three seconds later got up from my chair, smoothed my skirt, puckered to redistribute my lipgloss and pushed through the glass doors of his office to face the music.

  He was still on the phone, nodding at what the guy on the other end said. “Yes. Fine. Great,” came his lilting British accent. He motioned for me to sit in one of the two folding chairs in front of his desk. I did, tugging at my hem again as I watched him pace the office.

  Felix Dunn was somewhere between late thirties and early forties, at least a good ten years my senior. Old enough that fine laugh lines creased the corners of his mouth, but young enough that his sandy blonde hair was cut in the same shaggy style I’d seen high school skateboarders wear. He was tall with the lean lines of a runner, though I’d never actually seen him jog. He was dressed today in his usual uniform of a pair of khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, paired with tan Sketchers. His clothes were wrinkled, looking like he’d slept in them, and his hair stood up just a little on top. I would’ve said he was pulling a casual chic thing, but I knew Felix well enough to know it was more laziness than a practiced look.

  Not that Felix couldn’t afford to look every bit the metro-sexual , but he had his own priorities. He was what you’d call a cheap rich guy. He lived in a multi-million dollar home in the Hollywood Hills, thanks to old family money, but still opted to buy his socks on sale at the drugstore. I’d heard a rumor going around the office that he was actually a British lord, some distant relation to the queen, but he always seemed to have left his wallet at home when the check came at lunch.

  “Listen, I’ve got a meeting now,” Felix said into his earpiece. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow.” He hit the end button on his Bluetooth then turned to me without skipping a beat. “The Megan Fox bit, where are we?”

  “Done. Just need to proof it, and it’ll be on your desk.”

  “Conclusion?”

  “They’re fake.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I gave him a look. “Seriously? I had more faith in your boob connoisseur status.”

  He shook his head as if disappointed. “Can’t trust anything to be authentic these days.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, her ass is real.”

  He grinned. “I’m ecstatic. Listen, I have a new story I want you to work on.”

  Even though I knew it likely involved the man vs. natural-made status of a celebrity’s body parts, I still got a little surge of adrenalin in my belly. I couldn’t help it. I loved the thrill of ferreting out the truth, making sense of a chaotic series of facts. I hadn’t been lying when I told Mr. Callahan at the Times that I lived for the story.

  “Shoot,” I told Felix. “I’m all ears.”

  “It involves—”

  But he didn’t get to finish. The door to his office flew open again and one of the other reporters, burst through. She had violet hair and wore a hot-pink baby-T featuring a picture of Oscar the Grouch and black jeans with little skulls on the back pockets over a pair of shit-kicker black boots. Tina Bender.

  “I got it!” she said triumphantly, holding a photo high above her head.

  Felix raised an eyebrow her way. “And what might ‘it’ be?”

  “The frickin’ story of the century.” She slammed the photo dow
n on Felix’s desk.

  He leaned forward to get a good look. I did the same.

  The photo was of the outside of a gated home. If I had to guess, I’d say a mansion somewhere nearby. Beverly Hills or Malibu, if the palms lining the impressive driveway were any indication.

  “Chester Barker’s estate,” Tina said, confirming my suspicions. “In Beverly Hills.”

  Felix leaned in. “The dead producer?”

  Tina nodded. “Murdered, to be precise. This was taken just before his body was found by the maid.”

  I remembered the story. Chester Barker, a reality TV show producer, was found dead in his Beverly Hills estate two weeks ago, face-down on his bathroom floor and foaming at the mouth. At first the consensus had been accidental drug overdose, but upon further inspection the police had found evidence that Barker had been drugged on purpose. The verdict of murder had sent the media—both tabloid and legit—into a virtual feeding frenzy, the Informer staff included. Personally, I’d been searching high and low for any angle on Barker for days.

  Unfortunately it appeared Tina had found it first.

  “Where did you get this photo?” Felix asked.

  “One of my informants.”

  Tina had informants all over Hollywood, her network farther reaching than Verizon’s. Something I sorely envied. The first thing they’d taught us in journalism class was that a reporter was only as good as her informants. And unfortunately, Tina’s outnumbered mine ten to one.

  “Check out the right corner,” she said, pointing to the picture.

  Felix and I did, both leaning in. In the corner of the picture, near the iron gates, was a figure, his back to the camera, a baseball cap with a squiggly red snake on the brim of it pulled low on his head.