Free Hollywood Secrets by Gemma Halliday

delivery entrance. Not that security wouldn’t still be present there, but at least I had a shot.
    I circled around the back and parked across the street from the house, under two shady palms that I hoped didn’t shed on my Jeep.
    I grabbed an Angels baseball cap from my backseat and shoved it onto my head, trying to decide my strategy. A wrought-iron fence spanned the property. Easy enough to jump, but I had a feeling cameras would be watching my every move, some guy in a little room with monitors waiting to “release the hounds” a la Mr. Burns the second my feet dropped onto private property. Beyond the fence lay the house itself, just barely visible some thirty yards away. To my right was the service entrance – a large gate giving way to a winding drive that meandered through the property up to the main house. A big black camera was pointed at the gate, a large talk box attached to the side of the iron fence.
    Considering the type of security I was up against, there was no point in trying to be sneaky. Instead, I got out of my Jeep and rummaged through my trunk, looking for anything I could use as a convincing prop. Bike chain, down vest, spare sneakers, water bottle, and an emergency roadside kit. I looked at the roadside kit. It was a red metal box filled with things like a flashlight and screwdriver. I grabbed it and marched right up to the talk box, hitting the intercom button. A few seconds later a static-filled voice responded.
    “ May I help you?” some guy asked. He had an East Coast accent and kind of sounded like Sylvester Stallone’s long lost brother.
    I cleared my throat. “Yes. I’m here to fix the Koi pond,” I said, holding my red box up for the security cameras to see. I hoped that through the grainy footage it looked like the sort of toolkit a Koi pond fixer would use.
    I held my breath as the guy in the other end paused.
    “ I don’t have you on the list,” he finally responded.
    I bit my lip. “It is Tuesday, right?” I asked, pulling my phone from my pocket and pretending to read the tiny screen. “This place is definitely on my schedule. You do have a Koi pond, right?”
    I knew he did. I’d seen it enough times through my Nikon. And, since Koi ponds generally spent ninety percent of their lives in some state of disrepair, this wasn’t a total shot in the dark.
    Again the guy on the other end paused.
    “ Yeah,” he finally said. “Lemme check with maintenance first, though.”
    “ No problem!” I lied, my voice going just a little too chipper.
    I stood at the gate for what seemed like an eternity, sweat gathering beneath my cap as I prayed maintenance didn’t force me to think up a plan B.
    Finally, five minutes later, the talk box crackled to life again. “Okay, Julio says go ahead and come on up. Someone must have mixed up the schedules, but maintenance is the second building on the left.”
    I said a silent thank you to the gods of disorganized household staff as the heavy gates swung open. I quickly walked through before anyone could change their minds, then hightailed it up the winding drive.
    In hindsight it would have been a lot easier on the legs to have driven into the estate, but for some reason I felt a quick getaway was much more feasible with my car on the outside. So I made the long hike up the hill on foot, past a couple of outbuildings (including the second on the left) and toward the main house. I figured I had at least fifteen minutes before Julio started to wonder where I was. Maybe twenty before he actually checked the Koi pond and realized I was missing.
    I planned to make the most of it.
    I jogged up to the main house, my makeshift tool kit jangling at my side, and peered in the windows of what appeared to be Trace’s dining room. A sparkling chandelier topped a long cherry table big enough to fit the entire cast of Desperate Housewives and then some. Large modern art pieces hung on the bright white walls, and the floor gleamed as perfectly waxed white