by Lee Hollis
When she returned with the water, she couldn’t help but notice Sam’s hand shaking as he gratefully took the glass from her and popped the pill into his mouth before chasing it down with the water. She could tell he was still in a fragile state, and his recovery was going to take longer than Sam was willing to admit, especially since he had already been chattering on at dinner about going hunting with some buddies back up in Big Bear next week. Poppy chose not to argue with him except to say quietly, “We shall see. . . .”
Sam smirked at the comment.
Poppy glanced around the room. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Almost,” he said playfully, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“There will be plenty of time for that once you have fully recovered,” Poppy said, extricating herself from his grip. “Which is what you need to focus on right now.”
“Is that why I’m banished to the guest room?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. We’re just asking for trouble if you sleep in the main suite with me,” Poppy laughed.
Sam yawned.
The pill was starting to take effect.
Sam looked at the turned-down bed. “Where’s the mint on my pillow?”
To his surprise, Poppy was ready for him. She carefully placed a chocolate mint wrapped in green foil on his white pillowcase.
He shook his head, smiling, then gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. “I appreciate all you’re doing, Poppy. I know I’m a big imposition. . . .”
“Nonsense. I love having you here. Now get some sleep and I will see you in the morning,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, chuckling, plopping down on the edge of the bed as Poppy walked out and closed the door behind her.
The dishwasher was running in the kitchen and she turned on the TV in the living room to watch the local news and Stephen Colbert, making sure to keep the volume low so she would not keep Sam awake, although his sleeping pill was apparently quite potent. Sam had told her a 7.2 earthquake would probably not even rouse him.
Poppy sat down on the couch, half listening to the news as she scrolled through her e-mail on her iPad. Her eyes got heavy and she yawned a few times so she set the tablet down on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch, falling asleep to Colbert’s opening monologue.
She had no idea how long she had been out when a crash jolted her awake. She sprung up from the couch. The sound had come from the patio. She reached for the remote and muted the volume on the TV and then stood still, listening.
All was quiet.
She made her way down the hall and pressed her ear to Sam’s door. She could hear him lightly snoring. Then she headed for the kitchen where the dishwasher had long finished its cycle. She flipped on the lights outside on the patio and peered through the window to see one of her potted plants on the cement floor, smashed to bits. She knew the neighbors’ black cat, Oswald, had been making a habit of hanging out on her patio ever since Poppy had moved in. She craned her neck to see if she could spot him sprinting across the street toward home, but saw nothing.
Poppy crossed to the side door and stepped out onto the patio. There was no strong wind whipping about that might have knocked the plant off the sill, or any sign of a coyote sniffing around for an unsuspecting cat to snatch and escape with back into the desert night. She had been warned that coyotes often turned up in the neighborhood, hungry and on the hunt. She was about to go get her broom and dustpan to sweep up the dirt on the patio, but then decided it was late, and she was tired. It could wait until morning.
She turned toward the door and stopped suddenly in her tracks. A man stood in the shadows just out of the light, watching her from only a few feet away.
“Who are you?”
He hesitated, not wanting to reveal himself just yet.
“I said, who are you? What are you doing here?”
Finally, he took a tentative step into the light.
It was Byron Savage.
Danika Delgado’s persistent and dangerous stalker.
Poppy gasped, stumbling back, and opened her mouth to scream for help.
Byron rushed forward, grabbing her around the waist and clamping a hand tightly over her mouth to silence her. He then backed her up against the wall, pressing himself against her and holding her in place. Poppy struggled mightily, but knew she was no match for this much younger, much stronger man.
“Please,” he hissed. “Please don’t scream.”
Poppy, panicked, wriggling and twisting, trying to bite his hand, but he held her firmly in place until she began to realize he had complete control over her, at least for now.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”
She didn’t trust him.
She knew what he was capable of, what his brother was capable of, and it frightened her that he had tracked her down at her home, no surprise since anyone with access to the local Palm Springs real estate news would know where she lived, and with no security system in place yet.
“I promise I am not going to hurt you, Ms. Harmon. If I let you go, will you at least hear me out?”
Poppy, resigned, nodded.
He waited a few seconds, just to make sure she wasn’t going to try to run, then slowly removed his hand and took a small step back.
“You have some nerve showing up here after what your brother and his pals did to me and my associate,” Poppy spit out.
“I know, in his own way, he was just trying to protect me . . .”
“By attempting to kill us?”
“Axel has a short fuse. He doesn’t think things through like he should.”
“And you do? You stalked a young actress, an actress who is now dead, by the way.”
“That’s why I’m here. I want to help you. I can’t go to the police with what I know because they’ll arrest me, and I can’t go to jail, I would never survive it.”
Poppy managed to calm down and listen to what the young man had to say, but remaining alert in case he suddenly changed his mind and attacked her.
“After you came to my house, thinking I was the one who killed Danika, I’ve been wanting to tell someone, anyone, what I heard because I loved Danika, I wouldn’t have harmed her in any way, not in a million years. But I may know who did.”
“Go on,” Poppy said quietly.
Byron took a deep breath, then continued. “That day when I crashed the set, trying to find Danika so I could tell her in person how much she meant to me, I saw the producer, that fat guy, the one who has won all the Oscars . . .”
“Hal Greenwood.”
“Yeah, him. I saw him threatening Danika. He had her cornered near her trailer, and he was practically on top of her, and she looked so scared as he was yelling at her.”
“What was he yelling at her about?”
“I couldn’t hear everything, but I did pick up a few things. Like how her career would be over if she claimed he had been inappropriate with her, stuff like that.”
That seemed to line up with everything Poppy knew about Greenwood at this point so she tended to believe Byron’s story.
“It made me so mad hearing him talk to Danika that way, I was ready to explode. I was just about to storm over there and rescue her, thinking maybe she would see me as some kind of hero, when a couple of crew members walked by and Hal backed off immediately so they wouldn’t see him intimidating her. Danika took that opportunity to slip away from him and run off. That’s when I decided to follow her to the gym, to make sure she was safe.”
That was a crock. It was obvious Byron was far more interested in getting Danika alone to profess his undying love than to check and make sure she was safe from Hal Greenwood. But that didn’t take away from what he saw.
The problem was Greenwood had an alibi on the day she was murdered.
However, she was not about to share this key piece of information with Byron. She was not going to risk setting him off.
“I know you are investigating Danika’s murder
so I thought you’d want to know.”
“You should go now.”
“Please, just give me a ten-minute head start before you call the police. . . .”
“Get out of here, Byron.”
Byron nodded, then dashed away, across the street and into the darkness. Only then did Poppy breathe again. She had never been so scared in her life.
She contemplated calling the police, or waking Sam, but ultimately decided to do neither. She was reasonably certain Byron had not been the one to suffocate Danika, he seemed sincere. Hal, on the other hand, continued to haunt her. She knew intellectually that he could not have been Danika’s killer, but instinctively she suspected he was a lot more involved than he was letting on. He could have easily hired someone to do his dirty work for him.
No, Poppy was hardly done with Hal Greenwood.
Chapter 43
“You have some nerve showing up here!” Iris spit out, enraged.
“Iris, please, let the man speak,” Poppy implored.
Violet just sat on the couch, mouth agape, staring at Phil McKellan, who stood near the door to the garage office, eyes full of shame. Matt was on the couch beside Violet, his arm slung protectively around her. Wyatt sat at his desk, his head toggling back and forth between Phil and Iris, who appeared as if she was about to lunge at him like a cougar defending her cubs against a marauding grizzly bear.
“I have absolutely no interest in hearing what this man has to say,” Iris snorted, pointing an accusing finger at Phil. “Not after the disgraceful way he treated poor Violet!”
“You’re right,” Phil muttered. “I acted terribly.”
“Violet is a remarkable, beautiful woman who deserves better than to have some lying, unscrupulous, two-faced scoundrel stomping all over her emotions,” Iris bellowed.
Phil nodded his head sorrowfully. “I know, I know. . . .”
Everyone in the room, especially Violet, was surprised at the voraciousness of Iris’s defense of her friend, but they should not have been. Although Iris had a tendency to be outspoken and blunt, sometimes to the point of hurting someone’s feelings, she was a fiercely loyal friend and would never tolerate anyone else mistreating one of her own, especially someone she considered vulnerable and too trusting such as Violet.
“So turn around and walk out that door, and do not ever come back here again!” Iris insisted.
Phil held a brown string-tied folder in one hand as he nervously tapped it with his index finger. “I just need for you to see this.” He tossed the folder down on the coffee table in front of Violet and Matt.
“What is that?” Violet asked quietly.
“A dossier.”
“On what?” Matt asked.
“Hal Greenwood.”
“I don’t understand,” Poppy said.
Phil addressed Poppy but kept his eyes laser-focused on Violet. “First of all, I feel terrible about what went down with Violet. I admit, I went to that square dance at the senior center for the express purpose of meeting her and getting close to her so we could keep tabs on your agency and what you were up to. I saw it as just part of the job, my latest assignment . . .” His voice trailed off.
Violet stared down at the floor, unwilling to make eye contact with him. Matt slid in closer to her while still glaring at Phil, silently warning him to keep his distance.
“Mission accomplished,” Iris sneered. “Do you expect us to applaud you for a job well done?”
“What I didn’t expect was how much I would like her and enjoy spending time with her. I was conflicted. I couldn’t tell her who I was, and what I was doing, or I would have been fired, but I also didn’t want to mislead her so when the truth finally did come out she would think my feelings for her were not genuine.”
“Well, it is a little too late for that. The damage has been done,” Iris said, folding her arms. “Right, Violet?”
Violet ignored her. “What are you trying to say, Phil?”
“I was besotted from the moment I met you, and I am so deeply sorry for the pain I caused. In my own inept thinking, I believed that once my job was done, I could continue seeing you, and you would never have to know the truth about why we met.”
“If that’s true, why did you ghost her?” Matt asked.
“I had to, at least for a little while, I was being watched at the company, I couldn’t afford any missteps, but I was always going to come back and try to pick up where we left things off.”
“I do not believe a word you are saying!” Iris snapped.
“You’re entitled to believe whatever you want,” Phil said, before turning toward Violet. “What matters to me is what Violet thinks.”
“I don’t know . . .” Violet whispered.
“And your peace offering is a dossier on Hal Greenwood?” Poppy asked, confused.
“Look, I know you’ve been investigating Greenwood,” Phil said.
“Of course you know! You have been spying on us!” Iris exclaimed.
“True, but I also know Greenwood’s got an airtight alibi for the Danika Delgado murder.”
Matt shrugged. “So what? He could have hired someone to do his dirty work, a thug from Cobra perhaps, someone like you to shut her up before word got out that he was harassing her.”
“Okay, I deserved that, but you’re wrong. I would never do something so vile, and that’s not the kind of company I work for either. Once we compiled this file on Greenwood, we dropped him as a client.”
“Why? What’s in there?” Poppy asked, pointing to the dossier on the coffee table.
“There is a lot of truth to the rumors out there about him. He’s scum and not worth our time,” Phil said. “There is stuff in there that dates all the way back to his childhood. It’s a complete picture of the man, and it’s not pretty. And having worked for the guy, I’m now convinced even if he didn’t commit the murder, he’s somehow connected to it.”
There was a long silence.
He was echoing Poppy’s own suspicions.
Phil was done, but he made no move to leave.
Poppy finally decided to take charge of getting him out. “Thank you, Phil. We’ll look it over.”
Phil took a step toward Violet and said quickly, “I texted you my new number, Violet. Feel free to use it . . . But I understand if you decide to leave things where they are.”
Violet’s lip quivered. She didn’t know what to make of him, if he was being sincere, not sure she could ever trust him again. She simply managed to croak out, “Okay.”
That was all he was going to get at this point.
“Thanks for your time,” he mumbled, and then headed out the door.
Poppy walked over and picked up the dossier and began untying the string to open it. Phil McKellan had a gut feeling about Hal Greenwood, and so did Poppy, and for what it was worth, so did Byron Savage. Hopefully whatever was in this envelope would finally provide some answers.
Chapter 44
When it became clear that Poppy and her Desert Flowers team would be working late poring over the information in the dossier Phil McKellan had left behind, Poppy put in a call to Sam to check up on him and make sure he was taken care of until she was able to get home.
“There is some cold chicken in the fridge, and enough veggies in the crisper to make yourself a salad, and there might be some cookies in the pantry, hopefully not too stale.”
“I’ll wait up for you,” Sam said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There is no telling how long I’m going to be stuck here.”
“Any wine left?”
“You should not be drinking.”
“They say red wine is good for the heart.”
“I’m never sure if it’s the doctors saying that or the wine industry,” Poppy said. “If you must, just one glass.”
“That’s no fun.”
“And don’t forget to take your sleeping pill.”
“Yes, dear,” Sam cracked.
“What was that?” Poppy snorted.
�
��What?”
“Dear? You’ve been at my house one day and already we’re acting like an old married couple.”
“I know, it’s kind of fun, isn’t it?” Sam joked.
“And don’t overexert yourself. You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
“I’ll try not to get too excited lying on your couch watching Anderson Cooper tell me what’s going on in the world.”
“Good-bye, sweetheart,” Poppy said, grinning.
“Later, pumpkin.”
Poppy laughed as she ended the call.
In order to give the team an energy boost, Iris had offered to make a Starbucks run before they closed for the day.
“How thoughtful, thank you, Iris,” Violet cooed.
“I am a thoughtful person, Violet,” Iris said before scooting out the door.
Poppy knew Iris was more interested in getting out of the claustrophobic office and into some fresh air than doing a selfless act and treating everyone to shots of espresso to keep them awake. That left Poppy, Violet, Matt, and Wyatt to sift through the pages in the dossier.
The first batch of pages mostly contained information about Hal Greenwood that they already knew, past lawsuits and depositions both as plaintiff and defendant. Greenwood had a litigious nature and enough money to drag things out in a court for years until he usually won or got a settlement. There were a lot of disgruntled screenwriters who sued when he stole their ideas, and directors he fired who were supposed to get final cut on their films according to their contracts, and then there were the flood of NDAs, non-disclosure agreements signed by hundreds of actresses, assistants, masseuses, and cocktail waitresses over his long thirty-five-year career, almost too many to count.
Poppy rifled through stacks of pages, choosing to focus on Greenwood’s earlier years, before he hit it big, to see if there might be something about him they had missed, a key event that could provide a clue to how he evolved into the monster he ultimately became. That’s when she spotted a name that stood out to her.