Chapter 6. Grey, the Detective
Grey, the Detective
PRESENT DAY
Against her better judgment, Grey followed Detective Ellis to a twenty-four-hour diner a few blocks from headquarters.
The place was run-down but the prices were right, so it was a popular hangout for cops.
They sat in a slashed-up booth with the stuffing peeking out, a stack of buttery pancakes in front of Ellis and a mug of bitter coffee next to Grey.
She could already feel a headache coming on.
Likely an allergic reaction to Ellis’s bullshit, but Grey wouldn’t be the detective she was if she didn’t hear the woman out before making her call.
“Lay out your case,” she told Ellis, who was busy scarfing pancakes.
Unburdening herself of her secret seemed to have an amelioratory effect.
Ellis’s entire demeanor had lightened; her shoulders lifted, the wrinkles around her eyes smoothed.
And she’d developed an appetite. “I’m warning you, though: Right now, your theory sounds like one of those stupid Illuminati conspiracies, where people swear Hollywood stars are all part of some demonic cult. ”
In fact, if it hadn’t been for Ellis’s mention of Scout Sage, Grey wouldn’t be sitting in this booth.
The singer wasn’t exactly a star—she hadn’t sold enough records for that—but she was someone with a public profile, which meant Ellis was playing with fire if she wanted to accuse her of murder.
Scout was young and blond and sang about frothy subjects: heartache, crushes, high heels, dancing all night with her friends.
She wore twirly dresses, played a glittery guitar, and though she was tall, she was svelte enough that a strong wind could feasibly topple her.
Grey wouldn’t call herself a fan, but she’d discovered Scout via a Bustle article on underrated musicians while scrolling Instagram one night and just happened to be in the mood for fluff.
She had several of Scout’s singles on her phone at this very moment.
“Scout’s entourage,” said Ellis, around a mouthful of pancake. “You know them?”
She nodded, though personally she felt the word entourage was a bit of a stretch.
Scout Sage’s “girl gang” was probably the most attention-grabbing thing about her.
Everywhere she went, she was accompanied by fellow up-and-comers—models and actresses, playwrights and singers.
Bustle had called it “the rising tide cohort” and Scout “the ultimate girl’s girl,” which was, Grey had to admit, one of the reasons she’d downloaded her music.
“It included Brenda Kellogg. The actress who just died.”
“Okay.” Kellogg had been a wide-eyed beauty who’d played a lot of ingenue roles, and who’d tragically taken her own life weeks ago. The news had been all over the internet. “So what?”
“Did you know Kellogg provided some of the most damning testimony against Reese Griffin during his trial?”
Grey wanted to kick herself for not getting to the trial testimonies sooner.
“According to her, Reese and Elizabeth Drake lured her into his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel after she was only seventeen,” Ellis said, “under the guise of talking about a role, and he assaulted her. She said he tried to shut down her career after she told him she would talk.”
Grey set down her coffee. “How do you know that? We just got the trial transcripts.”
Ellis looked sheepish. “I’ve been doing my own research. During lunches and at night, from home. I figured you wouldn’t like the direction I was taking, so I did it alone.”
So Ellis hadn’t been cutting out on the case, then—just on Grey. She pushed her bitterness aside. “So what, you think Kellogg was so traumatized over what Griffin and Drake did to her that she took her own life, and then someone killed Drake in revenge?”
“Do you know how Brenda Kellogg killed herself?” Ellis asked.
Grey tried to think back to the news coverage. “I remember she was found in her bedroom…”
Ellis studied her. “Shot in the temple, right in front of her vanity. Exact same way as Drake. It’s a statement.”
Goose bumps lifted the hairs on Grey’s arms. Don’t get sucked in, she warned herself, the voice in her head sounding a lot like her father’s. She cleared her throat. “That’s a nice coincidence. But how does Scout Sage come into play?”
Ellis poured more syrup over her pancakes. “Like I told you, Drake’s isn’t the only murder I’ve connected to Scout’s group. Six months ago, there was a film director named Simon Markham. Middling British documentarian. He was more famous for his wife, Kathryn Burgeon, than his work.”
Grey recognized the name. “The Oscar-winning director?”
Ellis nodded. “First woman under thirty to win a directing Oscar. You might already know she died of a drug overdose a year ago, because it was big news. What you probably don’t know is that Simon was also found dead six months ago with the exact same opiate cocktail in his system.”
“Let me guess,” said Grey, catching on. “There were rumors he had something to do with his wife’s death, and you think someone punished him for it?”
“Yep. You can check that gossip site I pulled up, Hollywood Anonymous. Rumors have been circulating ever since Kathryn died that Simon killed her and made it look like an overdose because he was jealous her career was taking off while his was stalling. And a week after Simon died, guess who showed up in pictures with Scout, going out for a girls’ night? ”
Grey shrugged.
“Poppy Dalton, Kathryn Burgeon’s former best friend.
See, it’s their pattern: They get their revenge, then flaunt it in public.
It’s a power move, like they’re daring us to come after them, or warning others not to cross them.
I have half a dozen examples of smaller revenges I can connect to them, too, things that fall short of murder.
Every time, it’s the same: Someone in the industry goes down—usually a man, but not always—and then the woman who would benefit the most pops up in Scout’s circle, looking like the cat that ate the canary.
I don’t know how yet, but Scout’s pulling the strings. ”
Ellis sat back in the booth, clasped her hands, and waited for Grey’s reaction.
“That’s your proof?” Grey didn’t mince words. “A bunch of coincidences and a celebrity gossip addiction? What, do you moonlight as a Reddit conspiracy theorist?”
Ellis’s hopeful expression vanished. “You don’t believe me.”
“Of course not.” Shaking her head, Grey pulled a ten out of her wallet, threw it on the table, and rose from the booth. “The captain was right. This is nuts.”
She squared her shoulders and cursed herself for wasting so much time on Ellis’s bullshit when she could’ve been doing actual case work.
“What happened to women sticking together?” Ellis called to her back.
Slowly, Grey turned to glare. “Don’t you dare say that to me.”
“Scout leaves coded messages in her songs,” Ellis insisted. “See for yourself. And there’s something they do with their hands, a signal—she does it in all her videos, I don’t know why yet—”
Ellis was still babbling when Grey walked out.
Hours later, Grey stared at her popcorn ceiling, unable to sleep. With a groan, she leaned over her bed, picked up her laptop, and settled it on her legs. To her great annoyance, every time she closed her eyes, she heard Ellis’s plaintive voice, pleading, “What happened to women sticking together?”
The laptop was getting old, and it scalded her through her pajamas as it whirred to life and coughed up an internet browser. As Grey entered Scout Sage in the search engine, she sincerely hoped she was chasing facts instead of being hoodwinked by a seductive story she half wanted to believe.
The LAPD had claimed that her dad, despite his near-religious respect for logic, had fallen prey to a conspiracy theory after Grey’s older sister went missing, and the consequences had ended his career.
Grey knew she’d be cut from the force with lightning speed if anyone thought she’d inherited her dad’s weakness, her stellar clearance rate be damned.
Still, like a moth to flame, she clicked on a playlist of music videos.
Grey had to hand it to Scout: The singer was luminous in front of a camera.
Grey had seen snippets of Scout’s music videos before but had never given them much thought.
Now, scrutinizing Scout as a suspect, it was interesting what a rare sweet spot she hit.
She was conventionally beautiful, and here she was on Grey’s laptop screen, enjoying the kind of spotlight few people ever received, and yet she still seemed approachable, an everywoman.
Her music wouldn’t win awards for inventiveness—she was no Bjork—but that seemed to be her appeal.
Her lyrics were self-deprecating, honest, funny.
It was a winning formula, building celebrity out of relatability, making a beautiful musician seem down-to-earth, like the kind of girl you could run into at Target.
Genius, actually, wrapping a striver in such a humble cloak.
Scout was the kind of woman juries were loath to convict.
Takes one to know one, maybe; Grey knew a thing or two about the usefulness of being underestimated.
She opened Scout’s Wikipedia page. The singer was twenty-nine, born in New Jersey—Grey never would’ve guessed, she seemed so California.
Apparently, years ago, Scout had a short-lived role on a teen show called The Weird World of Wenda Word, playing a mean cheerleader.
Funny, since it seemed like she’d become the poster girl for nice girls ever since—Wiki said she’d even cameoed in an anti-bullying campaign called “Nice Girls Finish First.” Somewhere along the way, she’d turned around her image.