Not Happily Married in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 2 by Leonie Gant Page B

sarcastically.
    Sure enough a squad car came screeching around the corner
and a couple of uniformed officers jumped out screaming at Annie to drop the
baseball bat. She froze in midswing, spun around and fixed Travis with a glare.
    “You called the cops” she accused.
    I was kind of glad that she was placing the blame firmly
where she should have, right up until the point she started advancing towards
us, still swinging that bat above her head. I was beginning to be impressed by
her stamina. The woman had been swinging that thing for a good ten minutes and
she didn’t even seem to be particularly winded. Travis pulled me backwards as
Annie was coming towards us. The police were yelling at her to put down the
bat. We seemed to be in some weird dance where for every step Annie took
forward, Travis and I moved backwards. Luckily one of the cops finally realized
that the woman was not going to give up until she started using Travis, and
unfortunately by default me, as the man would not let go of my arm, as a piñata.
He also decided for whatever reason that she didn’t deserve lethal force and so
unloaded a stun gun into her. Down she went to the ground with a slightly
surprised look on her face as if she never imagined this was going to happen to
her.
    As the police surrounded her and kicked away the baseball
bat I started to relax but almost jumped out of my skin when a quiet voice came
from behind me. “What’s happened to Annie?”
    Behind me I found a young woman peering over the fence from
Annie’s neighbor’s house.
    “Annie took exception to some news we had to tell her” I
said, surprised that I was still able to speak calmly as I watched Travis
inspect the mangled wreckage that until fifteen minutes ago had been his car.
    “Is Eric okay?” the woman asked anxiously as she came
through a gate in the fence.
    “Why do you assume it is about Eric?” I asked curiously.
    “She blames Eric for everything that is wrong with her
life.” The woman shrugged. “According to Annie she was going to conquer the
world right up until the moment that she got pregnant with Eric, which of
course was his fault. Everything bad that has happened since then, was on him.
So what did he do this time to set her off?”
    There it was again, that insane urge to hug the man. The
more I heard about Eric’s life, the more I felt sorry for him.
    “He died” I answered without thinking and immediately wanted
to kick myself when I saw the devastation that one little sentence had caused.
I grabbed her arm as she looked like she was going to faint. “I’m sorry, I
shouldn’t have said it like that” I said as I helped lower her to the curb.
“Here put your head between your knees. Did you know him?”
    “I grew up next door” she mumbled keeping her head down not
looking at me.
    “My name is Trudie” I said. “I work for Eric’s wife. The
funeral is tomorrow if you want to be there.”
    I looked over to see that Annie had started to recover from
being stunned and was now swearing loudly and with great creativity at the poor
young cop who looked like he was regretting his choice regarding the use of non-lethal
force.
    Travis seemed to be chatting away with the older officer,
and from the looks of him he was not perturbed at the events that had occurred.
Meanwhile I was sitting in the street rubbing circles in the back of some woman
I didn’t know.
    “What’s your name?” I asked gently because at this point I
had nothing else to say.
    “Ruby” she said sniffing quietly.
    “I’m really sorry Ruby” I said. The poor woman looked
devastated. For the first time I was actually seeing real grief from someone
with regards to Eric’s death.
    Travis walked over to us.
    “Trudie, the cops need to get your statement.”
    I looked at Ruby feeling torn. She wiped her eyes and gave
me a watery smile.
    “I’m fine, it’s just a bit of a shock. I’ve known Eric all
my life.”
    “Do you know if Eric had any other family other