“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Fine. Great. Why?” She crunched down on another nut.
“Um, no reason, ” I mumbled.
“Kiss me, Chad. Kiss me like you mean it.”
Dana leaned forward in her seat.
“I can’t wait another second to do just that, Ashley. Come here…”
“Wait—what’s that?”
“It sounds like a car door.”
“My husband. He’s home!”
“Argh!” Dana threw the bag of soy nuts down on the carpet as Chad and Ashley broke apart. Ashley stuffed her would-be lover in the closet as her husband came up the stairs and Dana mumbled, “Lousy timing, ” under her breath.
“Um, so did Therapist Max mention anything about the side effects of abstinence?”
Dana paused. “Sorry. I’m a little tense lately.”
“You know, maybe celibacy just isn’t for you.”
Dana shook her head. “No way. Two more days and I get a chip. I can do this. I am experiencing the joy of positive being as a single, non-physically dependent entity.” She picked the bag up and crunched down hard on another nut.
“Oh, yeah. I can feel the joy from here.”
Dana ignored me. “What are you going to do about Ramirez?”
I blew out a long breath. “I don’t know.” I watched Mia Carletto, aka Ashley, try to convince her husband that the gardener’s boxers really belonged to her. “Maybe I could make it up to him by helping him with his new assignment. He said something about those letters that Mia’s been getting. Threatening fan mail.”
“Oh, I totally read about that in People last week. She’s, like, got a stalker or something. Ohmigod—lightbulb moment!” Dana popped up off the futon, jostling the soy nuts onto the floor as she started hopping up and down. “We could find the stalker for Ramirez! He’d totally forgive you then.”
“Dana, Ramirez is a cop. What makes you think we could find a stalker any easier than he could?”
“Uh, hello?” Dana rolled her eyes. “Ramirez doesn’t even watch Magnolia Lane. We know Mia way better than he does. I mean, come on, you watch Access Hollywood daily.”
She had a point there. I’ll admit it: I was a celebrity gossip junkie. I religiously watched every single Barbara Walters interview, I never left the house on the night of the Emmys, Oscars, or SAG Awards, and I bought copies of Star and People on the sly every week. I was even known—on very rare occasions—to use words like Bennifer, Brangelina, and TomKat. I know. It’s a disease.
Still, I wasn’t convinced our knowledge of Mia’s latest boy-toy fling could really outweigh a badge and a gun.
“How much could we possibly do without even being on the set of the show?” I reasoned.
Dana waved me off, switching from the hops to a little footwork-in-place thing. “So, we get on the set. How hard can that be? Look, I’ll call my agent in the morning and see if he can get me on as an extra or something. And maybe you could see if they need a costume designer or a wardrobe assistant? I’m sure you’ve got some connections, right?”
I bit my lip. “Well, my college roommate did do wardrobe for that cop drama on FX.”
“Perfect! I bet she totally knows someone. Ohmigod, this is going to be so fun. We’ll, like, totally be undercover again!”
Dana was referring, of course, to last year, when, against my better judgment, I’d let her dress me as a hooker in order to suss out a murder. Unfortunately, that evening had ended in a dead body. Not an experience I was eager to repeat.
“I don’t know…” I trailed off, picturing Ramirez’s face that afternoon. I had a feeling that if I showed up within ten feet of his assignment he’d likely pop a blood vessel. The words as far away from me as possible echoed in my head.
Dana started jogging in place, bobbing her knees up and down like little pistons. “Come on, Maddie! We could so do this. You’ve got a good track record, girl!”
I hesitated to mention that both times I’d ferreted out a killer in the past it was more by accident than sheer brilliance.
On the other hand, this whole “reassignment” thing was all my fault. And sitting on my futon watching Magnolia Lane reruns wasn’t doing anything to improve my rapidly crumbling love life. If I were going to make it up to Ramirez, I had to do something. “All right, I’ll call my college roomie.”
Dana let out a high-pitched squeal and clapped her hands.
“I said I’d call. No guarantees, ” I hedged, grabbing my address book. I wasn’t sure if I’d put her number under L for Lana, P for Paulson, or R for roommate.