Into the Fire

by Adrienne Giordano

  What does this guy want from me? We don’t have the stupid pictures. If we did, I wouldn’t be hassling him.

  Or thinking Phillip stole them.

  He pauses for a second, then continues. “I don’t want you thinking we don’t do a good job. We didn’t give you the negatives and that’s bad enough. I didn’t want you to think we were negligent twice.”

  Ah. Now I get it. It’s not about the prints. He doesn’t want me to take a flamethrower to his online ratings.

  Which I wouldn’t do anyway. My left eye throbs and I lift my hand, pressing my fingers against my eye socket to relieve the pressure. “It’s fine, Drew. Let’s forget it. I’ll be by in a few minutes to pick up the reprints.”

  I disconnect and tap my phone against my thigh. Rose gives me a quick glance, then goes back to the road. “Problem?”

  “The prints are ready.”

  “What happened with the missing ones?”

  What happened indeed. Considering her son, a man with an alliance to George Hopper, picked them up.

  “They don’t know. He said the girl who packed the order remembers putting all thirty-six prints in there.”

  “And what? They’ve simply vanished?”

  “Or someone took them.”

  Rose’s jaw drops and she sneaks a look at me before moving into the right lane for our exit. “You think Phillip stole them?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you’re thinking it.”

  I sure am. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. Maybe they fell out and are on your kitchen floor somewhere. We can look when we get back. For now, the reprints are ready so we can swing by and pick them up.”

  “We most certainly will. I want to see these photos.”

  That makes two of us.

  43

  Rose

  * * *

  I pull into a space directly in front of Harbinger’s and wait while Rae goes inside to pick up the mysterious photos. As much as she denies it, I know she’s thinking Phillip took the original prints.

  I'm thinking it. Why shouldn’t she?

  What I’m failing to comprehend is what use Phillip—of all people—would have for photos taken when he was three years old. My son has always had a congenial relationship with George, but I wouldn't call them confidants. Jeremy, based on his three summers at the hotel, has more of an emotional connection with George and by extension, Myles.

  But Jeremy didn't pick up these photos, Phillip did.

  What are these boys up to? My mind spins with assumptions. Was Phillip contacted by George? Is he part of Simon’s secrets? Is he making sure those secrets remain buried?

  If so, my entire family has made a fool of me. Kept things from me. And that, I cannot tolerate. It’s not so much the anger—although that’s no picnic—it’s the pain. The absolute shattering of my trust that rips another chunk of my heart away.

  Just thinking about it creates a ball of tension behind my eyes and I press the three middle fingers of my right hand into my forehead. I should know better than to let my mind wander this way. Years of practicing yoga has taught me there's little value in mental chaos.

  Deep breath. A few seconds to focus are all I need. I drop my hand and lower my window, allowing fresh air to fill the vehicle. A light wind tickles my cheeks. I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and count to three while my chest expands. Glorious oxygen slows my zipping thoughts to a crawl, and I exhale slowly, repeating the process two more times. There is glory in three. The repetition creates a pattern and seals it into my psyche. This particular pattern? No chaos.

  I open my eyes just as Rae exits the store. She meets my gaze and holds up the red-and-white envelope. She has them. The phantom photos.

  Seconds later, she whips the car door open and drops into her seat. The thing I love about Rae is her seemingly endless energy. Even when still, she seems to be buzzing.

  "Got ’em," she says.

  "I see that.”

  I can’t say I’m relieved. Despite my deep-breathing exercise, my head is still throbbing and that can’t be a good sign.

  Rae slides the prints free and holds them between us. The top photo is another from what looks like the party Simon had attended without me. A profile shot of George speaking with an older man I don't recognize. Behind them, I see the back of a redheaded woman.

  Loretta's head.

  I point. “That’s Loretta.”

  Rae sets the photo on her lap revealing the next one. It's an even wider zoom of George and the older man. Once again Loretta is in the background, but this time the zoom is wide enough to show who she was speaking to.

  "Jackson Harlan," Rae says.

  "Yes. This has to be the same party from the other photos."

  "I think so, too."

  She sets the photo in her lap on top of the first one. The third one shows the older man flanked by two young blondes, possibly mid- to late twenties. The man has his arms hooked around the waists of the young women as they drape themselves against his sides.

  Good Lord, I'd love to know when this party was and who the man is. Simon obviously knew him, as he found it necessary to memorialize the moment. I don't like it. What woman, no matter how much trust she has in her husband, wouldn't find his attending parties alone suspicious?

  "Whoa.” Rae taps the photo. "Behind them."

  To the right of the blonde in the red halter dress, there’s a large curved sofa. A lush burgundy one I remember from Myles’s suite.

  "Is that Loretta?" Rae asks.

  The red hair is the giveaway and that ball of tension in my head fires again, the pain rocketing straight down and sending my stomach spinning.

  In front of me, months after the fundraiser where she'd spent $60,000 for a fifteen-minute one-on-one meeting with candidate Harlan, Loretta Lonnie is sitting on the man's lap.

  I nod. “Yes."

  "And is that…"

  "Jackson Harlan? It sure is."

  44

  Rae

  * * *

  Something is happening.

  What it is, I'm not sure, but I’m down to my last eighty bucks and doing my best not to make assumptions as I run out of time to figure this mess out. This could be a bunch of celebrities getting wasted and goofing around. No harm. No foul.

  Rose already told me Loretta was an insatiable flirt. The future president of the United States? The one who happened to be rich and movie-star handsome? To a woman like Loretta, heck, to a woman unlike Loretta, Jackson Harlan would be total catnip.

  However, Loretta could've been playing the role that had made her a worldwide sex symbol.

  I keep my gaze glued to the photo, focusing on the tiny details. The way she molds her body with his, her arm casually thrown over his shoulder. His hand resting on the upper part of her butt.

  That hand. It’s bugging me. In my mind, it takes this from an innocent flirtation to…familiarity.

  Intimacy.

  I tear my gaze from the image and look at Rose. She’s still fixed on the photo and I take in her profile. The long delicate nose, the light wrinkles that give her character without screaming her age. Her right cheekbone has enough blush to give her a rosy glow and I’m just now noticing it's the exact color of her perfectly relaxed lips.

  If this photo shocks or upsets Rose Trudeau, I don't see it.

  Good. Maybe it is an innocent flirtation. "You knew them both—Loretta and Jackson." I point to them in the photo. "Is this weird? Her sitting on his lap like that?"

  "It depends."

  I roll my eyes. Seriously? “All due respect, Rose, that answer sucks."

  “Says you. Loretta was a superstar. She understood her allure. She understood part of her success came from men fantasizing about her. She wasn't above using that appeal in social settings."

  "Okay. I can buy that." I point at the photo again. "This man was running for—and within months would be elected—president. Of the pictures we've seen, it's been mostly men and a few young women at t
his party. And Loretta.”

  Rose opens her mouth, but I jerk my hand up. “Hang on. I’m not saying Simon was doing anything wrong, but clearly he was there. And you don’t remember attending. So, we have this secret party with the future president of the United States with his hand on Loretta Lonnie's ass. I mean, is that normal? Even for these people?"

  Rose flicks her gaze to the photo again and my pulse kicks up. I’ve stumped the great Rose Trudeau.

  Good for me.

  Except my patience is fraying at the speed of a category five hurricane. "Rose, what are you thinking?"

  Her head comes up and she peers out the windshield, eyes narrowed. "I'm thinking," she says, "I should call Phillip and ask him why he stole my photos."

  45

  Rose

  * * *

  Phillip strides into the kitchen, moving fast enough that his unbuttoned suit jacket swings open with each step. This doesn’t shock me. I’ve summoned him here and generally, when I do that, there’s good reason.

  His gaze shoots to Rae, then back to me. “What's going on? Is everything all right?"

  Everything is not all right. At least by my way of thinking. However, even I know this is not necessarily on the Phillip-scale of catastrophe. He’s worried about the tangible things. Am I sick, has someone died, did a pipe burst, or some such event that needed his immediate attention.

  In other words, life-changing.

  I could argue this is life-changing. At least emotionally speaking. "It's not what you're thinking," I tell him. "I need to ask you something."

  My son, the one whose poker face makes him an excellent lawyer, gawks at me. “You hauled me here to ask a question? I thought there was an emergency."

  "Well, dear, I did say it wasn't an emergency."

  "Well, dear, you also said you needed me here ASAP. What was I supposed to think?"

  I wave him off, gesturing to the empty chair beside me at the table. I point at the envelope sitting in front of Rae. “The photos you picked up.”

  “What about them?”

  I could spend time explaining the missing negatives and Rae’s multiple trips to the store, but why bother? “After some back and forth with the store manager, we realized there were three photos missing.”

  He rolls his bottom lip, then gives his head a hard shake. “Forgive me, but I don’t see how the photo store not giving you all the prints warrants calling me out of my office in the middle of the day.”

  Ignoring my urge to check him on his condescending tone, I lift the envelope. “You paid for the full thirty-six and they didn't have any other wayward prints anywhere."

  “And? What?” He glances at Rae, whose gaze is pinned to him, then returns his attention to me. “You think I took them?"

  "I didn't say that."

  He laughs, but it's one of those snorting, sarcastic ones that contain little humor. "You didn't have to, Mom. I'm the one who picked them up. It’s not rocket science. But I didn't touch them. I didn't even look in the envelope. I brought them over here and left them on the table. This is just the type of thing I've been warning you about."

  I’ve spent more than half my life living with a lawyer. If my son doesn’t think I know how to combat a good spin, he hasn’t been paying attention. “Stop right there. This isn’t about people coming in and out of my house. You've already put enough security in place that I'm afraid to go to the bathroom without you watching."

  “I opted against bathroom cameras,” he deadpans.

  I give him my best don't-sass-me glare and he holds his hands in mock surrender. "Sorry. Again, it wasn't me who took those prints. Was your housekeeper here? Refrigerator repair man?"

  "No one had access to the house, but you and Jeremy."

  Rae snaps her head to me, but her mouth remains firmly closed. She doesn’t need to speak. Her laser-sharp stare says it all and my stomach does a vicious flip.

  “Jeremy,” I say, “stopped here for my car on the way to the airport.”

  “Mom, now you think Jeremy stole the photos? Maybe they just plain got lost at the store.”

  “Not according to Harbinger’s. And Jeremy had to come into the kitchen for the spare set of car keys.”

  The room falls silent, each of us clearly considering the idea of my son walking through my house and rifling through photos.

  Phillip taps two fingers against the table. "Before we make accusations, why would he even want them?"

  I open the envelope, thumb through the photos and hand over the three in question. "See for yourself. This is apparently a party in Myles's suite. Before you ask, I was not there. At least I don't remember being there and considering it was the weekend of the fire, you can bet I'd remember that."

  He takes the photos, sets them side by side on the table, and peruses them. "Dad took these?"

  "As far as I know."

  He taps the photo with the older man. "Who's this?"

  "I have no idea. He’s not the issue.” I pick up the one with Loretta and Jackson in the background. "Look behind the older man. That's Loretta."

  “Oh-kay.”

  He gives me a look that screams of brutally controlled frustration and I jab the photo at him. "The man whose lap she’s sitting on? That’s soon-to-be-elected-president Jackson Harlan.”

  My son's jaw drops and I’ll admit it, I’m feeling smug. He’s been treating me like a half-wit since he walked in.

  Having lived in Hollywood his entire life, my son is not easy to stun. It's more than likely one of the things that makes him a good attorney. On a personal level, it's not necessarily an asset. He tends to be a cynic, and at times, downright insensitive.

  After a few seconds, he closes his mouth. "Wow. Just wow. "

  "Exactly," I say. "We don't want to jump to conclusions. It's a party and people could've been drinking and maybe the whole thing is innocent."

  "You don't believe that any more than I do."

  "I don't know what I believe. We have missing photos, Harbinger’s is sure they gave us all thirty-six prints, and you didn't take any out of the envelope. Sometime between when you left the photos on this table and Rae and I looked at them, three went missing. We need to find out why."

  Phillip slides his chair back and stands up. “I can’t tell you why, but we can confirm who.”

  46

  Rae

  * * *

  Wait. What?

  I’ve been sitting here, quiet as the proverbial mouse trying really hard not to butt into Rose’s business with her son, but now the journalist in me wants in.

  I shoot out of my chair and follow Phillip out of the room. He’s a big guy with long legs that are leaving me in the dust so I’m doing this weird run-walk combo to keep pace as he heads down the hallway toward the front of the house. Maybe I’m being presumptuous by following, but nobody is stopping me. “You can confirm? How?"

  “The security system my mother likes to complain about has a constant video feed."

  “Constant?” Rose calls from behind, her voice heavy with that Haughty Rose quality she does so well.

  “Yep. I changed the setting and didn’t tell you.”

  Holy, holy cow. At this, I’m wildly impressed. It takes a brave man to admit something like that. Especially to Rose.

  “And,” he says, “before you start yelling about me invading your privacy, I don't. I've never looked. When you started having repairmen and contractors coming in and out of the house, I thought it wise to have video. I was more worried about diamond necklaces going missing then a dollar’s worth of photos but hey, whatever. If someone took those photos, we've got video."

  Gotta say, there is a definite ick factor to that, considering Rose probably walks around her bedroom naked. “Dude,” I say and then my mind goes blank because what does someone say to a guy who has a video feed on his sexagenarian mother.

  He lets out a laugh. “Trust me. I know. But she's living alone and I love her. If she falls or I can't get in touch with her, I can check the v
ideo to see what's going on."

  I take a second to think about that. If my mother lived alone and had this kind of wealth, she’d be a target for any number of predators. When I frame it in that way, I see his point. “You know, I get that. I’d want my mom to have that, too. She's lucky to have you."

  “At this moment," Rose says, still trailing behind, “that’s debatable."

  Phillip lets out another snorting laugh. “You’re a pisser, Mom. We’ll see how you feel in the next five minutes when I tell you who stole your photos."

  We reach Simon's office, the room where Rose and I had our first meeting the day I barged in on her. Phillip strides to the desk, sits down, and digs into one of the drawers, coming up with a laptop.

  Maybe we didn’t get off to the best start, what with him telling me if anything happened to his mom it’d be my fault, but there’s something about him—all direct, no-nonsense efficiency—that I kinda like. He’s definitely a protector. If I had a brother, I’d want him because my guess is nobody messes with this guy.

  Rose and I move to either side of him and she gives him a light tap on the shoulder. "I assume you're able to do this on your phone?"

  He opens the computer and logs in. "Yes. It's an app. But my phone is in the car so I’m looking on the website.”

  "Does Jeremy have the app?"

  Phillip’s fingers tear across the keyboard as he pounds out a website and then his login. “I never told him and outside of showing him how the security system works, we've never discussed particulars. If he has access, I didn’t give it to him.”

  Once logged in, he clicks a couple of times and six frames pop up on the screen. He clicks again and the six frames turn into one. "This is the kitchen camera."

  His fingers are in motion again, this time adding the date we came back from La Paradisio into the search field. Video shows the empty kitchen. Using the mousepad, he clicks the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen and drags the cursor until an image of him walking into the kitchen appears.