Hollywood Murder by M. Z. Kelly

her door and pushed his way inside when Maria answered. He’d held Maria by her hair and confronted her and the children. He took her phone away before ushering them into an upstairs bedroom. When she’d tried to resist he’d hit her hard and she had fallen back against the dresser, hitting her head. She and the children had all been locked in the bedroom before he’d taken Maria downstairs. That’s when the screaming had begun. She was sure of one thing: After all the screaming she’d heard, Maria had to be dead.
    The children. Where were the children?
    Allison sat up and the pounding in her head intensified. She now saw that Bobby and Jenna were asleep in a corner of the room. She took a couple of breaths, crawled over, and held them. They were unresponsive, but breathing. Had they been drugged? Then she had another thought. Vince. Where was her husband?
    Allison lay with the children for several minutes, an awareness that they were in a large shipping container slowly dawning on her. She again listened for the voices she thought she’d heard earlier. There was only silence now.
    She considered her circumstances and knew she had to remain calm. If she had anything going for her Allison knew that, just like her father, she could be tough and determined. When the children woke up they would be scared. She had no idea exactly where they were being held, or when someone would be coming for them. All she did know was that she had to be strong and wait until the picture became clearer to her.
    After making her way over to what she thought might be a metal door, she began calling out. “Is anybody there? We need help. Please.”
    There was no response. She raised her voice, pleading for help again, at the same time pounding on the metal door. This time she heard a sound from outside. Maybe it was footsteps, someone who had heard her cries. “Hello. Is anybody there?”
    There was a creaking noise, then the louder sound of metal scraping together. She realized the door must have one of those bars that locked it from the outside. In a moment, the door was pulled open a couple of inches and an eye stared at her.
    “Please. My children and I were taken…”
    She heard a woman’s voice. “Step back and shut up.”
    She did as instructed and the door swung open wider. The woman fixed her eyes on her and the children, smiling.
    “Why are you doing this?” Allison demanded, at the same time she took in the area behind the woman, wondering if the man who had taken them was nearby. She didn’t see anyone.
    The woman held up one of those yellow guns that she’d seen the police carry. Allison took a step back at the same time the woman fired the weapon at her. An instant later her body convulsed as a burst of electricity shot through her.
    Allison stumbled back and fell to the ground, the voltage coursing through her body. The last sound she heard was Bobby’s voice calling out to her from the corner of the room. And then the world went away.

TEN
     
    Leo drove Bernie and me to Beverly Hills, with Darby and Mel following. We’d left immediately after our meeting with Oz, the lieutenant emphasizing the urgency of dealing with what was happening in view of the press coverage.
    “What do you know about Henry Montreal?” Leo asked me as he drove.
    I glanced at the paperwork Molly had given me as a breeze swirled up from the backseat where Bernie was lapping up air. “Age fifty-nine, grew up in Chicago. Wife’s name is Georgette, involved in lots of charities. Henry’s the head of the Montreal Investment Group, supposedly worth close to a billion dollars.” I brushed the hair out of my eyes. “Sounds like your average guy.”
    “What do you think of Darby’s theory about this being a kidnap for ransom?”
    “It’s definitely a possibility. The severed head was meant to get a message across. The question is, who was sending the message?”
    “Maybe Vince, playing the role of the victim, but, at the same time, working