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Of course not! It’s total crap!”
    Though I could already see Mike pulling out a notepad and writing said crap down. True or not, it was a great story.
    “ So Trace did not call you and break the engagement off today?”
    “ No! God, no. He’s madly in love with me.” She tossed her shiny hair over one shoulder as if to say, “Who wouldn’t be?”
    “ Besides,” she continued. “I haven’t spoken to Trace all day.”
    Bingo.
    “ Really?” I asked. “When was the last time you talked to him?”
    “ Last night, if you must know. He was calling to invite me to some club. But I couldn’t go because I was busy officiating a charity event,” she said, emphasizing the word, “charity.” I’ll say one thing for her, even under pressure she wasn’t one to let an opportunity for good press pass her by.
    “ Which charity?” Mike asked, his pen hovering over his notebook.
    Jamie Lee bit her lip, leaving a little ridge in her lipstick. “Uh…”
    I swallowed a smirk. One clearly close to her heart.
    “ Red Dress,” she finally managed. “I think. Or Pink Ribbon. Some sort of colorful clothing one.”
    What a humanitarian.
    “ You haven’t seen or spoken to Trace since last night before he went to the club?” I pressed.
    Jamie Lee shook her head, her loose curls bouncing over her shoulder like an Herbal Essences commercial again. “No. Whatever rumor you may have heard is totally false.” She looked pointedly at Mike and Eddie. “Totally false, you got that?”
    The brothers grim grinned. Oh yeah, they got it. But what they actually printed, I couldn’t wait to see.
    Having said her piece, Jamie Lee let one of her linebackers for hire help her into the passenger seat of her Hummer while the other climbed into the driver’s side and roared the engine to life. I popped off one more picture of Jamie Lee’s silhouette through the window as she and her entourage pulled out of the parking garage, leaving the brothers and me in the dust.
    “ Nice work, Cam,” Eddie said, as he and Mike rushed off to their Impala. “Thanks for the scoop!” He waved as he hopped into the rusted excuse for a car.
    I waved back. While the brothers may have gotten a great story out of the encounter, I got something even more.
    Confirmation that Trace Brody was officially missing.
     
    * * *
     
    When I trudged back to my own car it was to find a bright pink slip of paper stuck underneath my windshield wiper. Mental forehead smack. I peeled it off, and, sure enough, I’d racked up another parking ticket. I wondered just how many one had to accumulate before the cops actually showed up with a warrant in hand. Hopefully more than seven. Or was this eight?
    I shoved the ticket into my glove box and, for lack of a better direction, I drove north up the PCH.
    Half an hour later, I hit Trace’s Malibu estate. If there was any clue as to where he’d gone, why he’d gone there, and who had forced him, this was the best place to begin looking.
    Malibu was a good thirty-five miles from Los Angeles, giving stars who could afford it a nice buffer from the city. Depending on traffic, the drive could vary anywhere from half an hour (if you drove like I did) to well over an hour and forty minutes crawling up the PCH in bumper to bumper style. By three in the afternoon, the bumpers were just starting to come out, which meant my travel time today was closer to the latter.
    Trace lived on a long, winding street, filled with lush, mature trees, palms every three feet, and a half dozen other palatial estates all discreetly tucked behind wrought iron gates and hundreds of security cameras.
    I took a long look at the front gate to his place. No sense going that route. As far as I knew, hell hadn’t frozen over, so his security team was not likely to welcome a member of the paparazzi through the front gates with open arms. Instead, I drove around the block, circling Trace’s property to the back, where I was sure there had to be some sort of