by Jenna Ryan
“That’s two days ago. Anything since?”
“Nothing except my ankle hurts and my car’s still not working right” Though for what reason she had yet to determine. “If it turns out to be a lemon, Guido, I’m going to strangle Andy when he gets back.”
“He’s not worth the effort,” Guido said with an absent wave. “Strangle his idiot brother and tell Andy to find a vacant actress to wine and dine. You need a man with a mind. Now this Aidan Brodie…”
“Has nothing to do with our conversation,” Sam maintained firmly.
“Humph. What’s that?” He pointed at an old movie magazine she was thumbing through. Sam was seated cross-legged on the couch amid a sea of magazines and newspapers. Guido, perched on the arm, leaned over to examine the article in question. “It’s Margaret, Mary and Anthea in The Three Fates.”
Sam peered closer. “They’re not in makeup,” she said doubtfully. “How can you tell which movie it’s from?”
“I read the caption.”
“Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “I hate pat answers.” She looked back at the photo. “They really were beautiful, weren’t they?”
“Margaret was. Take another look at Mary. There’s a hardness about her that stems from spite.”
“Maybe, but her features are still good. And her hair would be if it weren’t for the stupid styles back then. Chestnut brown with red highlights.”
Guido’s eyes twinkled. “I like brunettes myself.”
Sam smiled, her first genuine smile since she and Aidan had shot off the canyon road. Her palms still went clammy when she recalled the incident. “Margaret’s features are finer,” she agreed. “But their look was similar otherwise. I suppose that’s why Mary felt jilted by the studio. She had it all, right down to the talent, you said. She probably figured she should be getting starring roles.”
“She had the look, all right. And yes, she was talented. But she didn’t possess even a speck of Margaret’s charisma. Take The Three Fates. Fates are witches, you know. At the outset, none of them were what you’d call white witches. It was natural that Mary should be cast as the most evil. Unfortunately, ‘most evil’ did not translate to ‘lead.’ That role required Margaret’s talent, and her ability to bring the audience with her when she finally made the transition to good. It would have been a fascinating movie if it had been released. It’s a shame there’s nothing left.”
“Are you talking about the original film canisters?”
Guido limped over to his cluttered desk. “They were the master copies. They disappeared shortly after Margaret left Hollywood for parts unknown. There are only publicity stills left, and not many of those.” He began hunting through the stacks of papers. “Where did I put that…Ah, here it is.” He waved a recent copy of the L.A. Times at her. “Straight from the enemy camp. Don’t tell Sally. You know how she is about the competition.”
Sam, who knew only too well, laughed.
Uncurling her legs, she stood and dusted off. Her sleeveless purple pantsuit appeared cool, but nothing short of a bikini would have been cool enough to offset the heat wave that had moved in yesterday.
“Does the article involve Mary?” she asked hopefully.
“In a way.” Guido adjusted his bifocals. “This edition is two weeks’ old. The article’s rich for an old news glutton like me. It says that Leo Rockland is about to wed for the ninth time. He’s eighty-three. His bride is…” A broad grin tugged on Guido’s lips.
“Twenty-five?” Sam guessed.
“Wrong by fifty years. She’s seventy-six.”
“You’re kidding.” Delighted, Sam took the paper and read, “ ‘Reception to be held at the home of the former producer.’” She raised her head, her mind already hard at work. “Home,” she repeated. “Beverly Hills?”
Guido gave her a sweet smile. “Would you like the address?”
“You have it?”
He patted his baggy pants’ pockets. “It took some finagling, not as much as you’ll have to do if you’re thinking of doing what I know you’re thinking of doing, but…”
“No press allowed,” Sam interrupted, accepting the slip of paper he passed her. “I wonder who’s catering?”
Chuckling, Guido unloaded a pile of magazines and file folders into her arms. “Go on, get out of here, little Minx. Unlike you high-and-mighty repor—sorry, journalists, I work until five, then go home to my cats, Jeopardy and an earful of grief from Vincenzo Mogli downstairs who thinks that a family curse and not old age is responsible for his failing kidneys.”
“I did waitressing once in college,” Sam went on abstractedly. “I bet I could pull off a role with the caterer.”
Guido shook his shaggy white head and ushered her, laden, through the door. As if galvanized by the click, Sam glanced downward, then headed for the staircase. At seventy years of age, the Karl Kayne Building was equipped with clanking, wheezing elevators that seldom stopped on the floor you wanted. The stairs were faster, safer and far less strenuous in the long run.
In her cubbyhole office that overlooked the famous Hollywood hill sign, Sam dialed the number of a local television station. Connie Grant’s harassed voice came on the line.
“What?”
“You sound mad.”
“As a damned hornet, honey. What’s up?”
“Tons, but I haven’t got time to explain. I need a favor.”
“Anything for my best college roommate’s baby girl.”
Sam pictured Connie’s heavily made-up face, her trademark white-blond hair that made her look like a porcupine and the pre-fad army boots and fatigues she’d worn forever.
“There’s a party list—sorry, a reception list. Leo Rockland. Do you have it?”
Connie emitted an unladylike snort. “That old coot? He’s press-shy as hell these days. Our show hasn’t been able to wangle an interview for donkey’s ages.”
“But you must have information,” Sam persisted.
She heard Connie riffling through papers. As far as Sam could see, everybody she knew had a computer and not one of them used it except in an emergency.
“Okay, I’ve got it. Like I figured, absolutely no press allowed. Big red letters on that one, honey.”
“How can I get in, Connie?”
“Are you serious?”
“Do I know anyone on the list? Do you?”
“Honey, these people are stars from a bygone era. Seventy-five’s the youngest of the ones whose names I recognize.”
Sam watched the heat waves that blurred the Hollywood sign beyond her window. “Who don’t you recognize?”
“You want me to read ‘em out or fax ‘em?”
Sam sensed she was run off her feet. “Fax is fine,” she said.
Connie gave a rusty laugh. “Still painfully polite. You should get out of L.A. before you develop an impenetrable iron crust like me. Okay, sweetie, I’ll send it right out. Good luck.”
Swiveling her chair around, Sam glanced at the wall clock. Five-twenty already. Where had the day gone? “Thanks, Connie,” she said and hung up, annoyed with herself for spending the past eight hours immersed in work that had nothing to do with her column.
With a soft, “Damn!” of frustration, she brought her arm and hand down on the blotter where she’d doodled Margaret Truesdale’s name half a dozen times. More disconcerting were the dozen-plus times she’d scribbled Aidan Brodie’s name. She was trying to stop herself from delving into the underlying reasons when a shadow fell across her desk—a shadow that had absolutely no right to be there.
Instinctively, Sam snatched up her letter opener. Her head shot up; her body tensed. She was. prepared for an aging madwoman. The implacable stare that greeted her was as far from that as it could get.
Aidan Brodie regarded her through assessing green eyes, then said pleasantly, “Who’s Connie?”
Sam swallowed the nasty name that had been hovering on the tip of her tongue. Shoving back her chair, she glowered at him.
“How did you get
in here?” she demanded.
He noticed that she still had a stranglehold on the letter opener. “I knocked,” he told her. “Twice.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
He held her smoldering gaze. “You were on the phone.”
“I know where I was, Brodie,” she snapped, then took a deep breath and composed herself. “Okay, let’s try this again. Why are you here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
The fax machine at her elbow began to whir. She ignored it and gave him a suspicious look. “About what?”
“Leo Rockland’s getting married this week. He was the producer on The Three Fates.”
“I know.” Her suspicion deepened visibly. “Where did you hear about the wedding?”
“Through friends,” he said with a deliberately enigmatic smile. “You?”
“Guido Bocce. He’s an old friend. He works in the archives.”
The fax machine whirred on. Aidan fought a sigh. Of course she would look delicious in that purple pantsuit and matching two-inch pumps. His fingers could close easily around her slender upper arm. He’d read somewhere that Margaret Trues-dale possessed the same fine bone structure. Maybe Sam was the reclusive star’s granddaughter at that.
She moved a negligent shoulder. “I gather invitations are scarce—for the press, at any rate.” Her gaze slid to the incoming fax, started to move away then did a double take. Her head snapped up. Irritation flared deep in her golden brown eyes. “You bastard!” she declared with feeling.
She’d managed not to call him that earlier. Aidan noted the rolling paper. “What is it? A list of my childhood misdemeanors?”
She came out from behind the desk, tearing off the sheet as she passed. “Don’t you dare joke. How did you do it, Brodie? No press. No one under seventy-five, according to my friend at ‘Who’s News.’ And yet here you are, big as life on Leo Rockland’s reception list.”
He took the sheet she was shaking at him and scanned the names. “Dennis Rockland’s younger than me,” he said, apparently with sufficient wryness to fully ignite her temper.
“You son of a…Get out!”
Since any show of amusement would undoubtedly earn him a punch in the stomach, he met her glare straight-faced. Careful to keep his tone even, he said, “Ask me again why I’m here, Sam.”
“I don’t give a damn if you have the story of the century tucked in your hip pocket. I hate gloaters.”
Aidan’s Celtic humor got the better of him. His lips twitched at the corners. “You have a suspicious mind, Sam. The Irish use sarcasm like a tonic. We never gloat.”
Still fuming, she demanded, “Did your brakes really fail?”
The implication would have been clear to a three-year-old. “Meaning?” he challenged levelly.
“You don’t want me on this case. You think reporters are a pain, and—”
“They are.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Using his height to advantage, he moved toward her. “You heard me well enough.”
“Save the scare tactics, Brodie,” she scoffed. “My brother’s six-five and built like a bear. Get out of my office.”
A grizzly with cubs wouldn’t have her angry bite. “Are you finished?” he countered, his expression steady.
“Yes. Get out. No…Wait a minute. Why did you come?”
Back to suspicion, but at least her temper was beginning to subside. “I had a deal in mind.”
She contemplated his tone. “Go on,” she said at length.
“You have direct contact with Margaret Truesdale. I have contacts in other areas.”
“Like Leo Rockland’s wedding camp?”
He shrugged. “A pool of knowledge is better than a few solitary drops, or so my grandmother used to insist.”
“The Irish one or the Scottish one?”
“Irish. It tends to dominate.”
“I’ve noticed. Okay, Brodie, I give you access to Margaret in exchange for what? An in at Rockland’s wedding reception?”
“We work together,” he said. He was crazy, he knew, to make such an offer, but God help him, there it was. It wasn’t in his makeup to renege.
He expected wariness and got it in spades. She surveyed him the way a cat might a new and unfamiliar opponent. “I’d have to talk to Margaret first,” she told him. “She might say no. Will you still get me in to Rockland’s party?”
“I’ll think about it. And to answer your unspoken question from before, no, I did not rig my brakes to fail.”
A trace of delicate perfume drifted past him. He felt his body tighten in response. Self-control had been his trademark since he’d been thirteen years old and his family had moved from Dublin to Boston. Even vacations in Ireland hadn’t affected him adversely. Well, they had actually, but he’d never let it show except to his grandmother Maeve. He prided himself on that hard-won control and the fact that, even when sorely tested, his temper rarely got the better of him. So why, he wondered, his gaze sweeping her discreetly from head to toe, was he having such a problem with this woman? So much so that he’d spent most of last night viewing old movies and picturing Sam in the role of heroine.
If asked prior to Monday afternoon, he’d have said he didn’t care one way or the other about films like Spellbound, The Big Sleep, or an early Margaret Truesdale film called Trustworthy. But there he’d laid on the sofa with his neighbor’s Siamese cat sharing his mug of Guinness, watching all three of them right down to the final credits.
The tempting wildness of her fragrance floated past again, causing him to tighten further. With a resigned smile for the self-restraint that had obviously abandoned him, he started for the door. He’d made his offer; it was up to her to react
“I’m in the book, Sam,” he said dispassionately over his shoulder. “Aidan Robert Roy Brodie.”
“Rob Roy,” he heard her murmur in faint amusement. “I should have known. I don’t trust people named Robert Roy. It’s a dangerous combination.”
“Only to dukes and cattle thieves.” His eyes glinted. “And people who slash brake lines. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll pick you up at five o’clock Friday afternoon. It’s black tie.”
THE STRING that bound the package was black, the paper was white—-just like her first movie, Mary thought in delight. Heavenly days, what a time she’d had to get this far, so close now that she could finally smell victory.
She smiled happily at the package on the table, reached for her ankle brace, a necessity ever since that fumble-fingered excuse for a doctor had set her broken leg, and shouted for Tobias.
“Get in here,” she ordered, then gave an evil little chortle and scooped up the package. She would trust the man to drive her to the post office, but not to mail the thing. Tobias didn’t approve of her scheme. He stopped short of objecting outright, but she’d seen the frown on his lips too often to test his loyalty all the way.
“Hurry up, you old goat,” she muttered.
A cough from the doorway announced his presence. Giving him a cranky flap of her hand, she sat—or more correctly, plopped, onto the sofa and began swathing herself like a mummy in black and brown linen.
She scowled when she reached her legs. When had her an-kles gotten so thick? Bet Margaret’s ankles weren’t thick. Well, what the hell, Margaret wouldn’t have any ankles left once Mary got hold of her. Chop, chop, Mary thought, and laughed with glee as she pictured the cleaver she would use to dismember her old rival.
“Is the car ready?” she demanded, still swathing.
Tobias gave a sober nod.
“Good, me too. Let’s go.”
But she fell back grunting into the cushions after three unsuccessful attempts to rise. With a grimace, Tobias relented and helped her.
“Don’t know why I’ve kept you on so long.” Mary puffed as he extricated her from the sofa. “Where’s my hat?”
“Right here.”
“And the package?” She swiveled around. “Where’d it go? Tobias, if you…oh, t
here it is. Well—” her head bobbed ac-cusingly “—you’d better not try anything, my friend. I’ve waited over forty years for this moment. Not you or anyone else is going to stop me.”
Tobias heaved a weary sigh. “Are you sure you want to send her this—thing?”
“Of course I’m sure.” A knobby finger shook in his face. “Don’t you back talk me, Tobias Lallibertie. I still control the purse strings around here. No institution’s changed that state of affairs. Now go and fetch the car. You know how slow mail moves these days. I want this to get to her during my current lifetime. I don’t want to have to come back from the dead to get her.”
Tobias hesitated then left.
Alone, Mary emitted a hoarse gabble of laughter and clutched the precious package to her bosom. She’d waited decades to have her revenge. It was worth every minute of the wait.
Chapter Four
Leo Rockland’s Beverly Hills home possessed all the lavish opulence of a movie set. The air smelled of honeysuckle and lilacs. Huge vases filled with white orchids and pale yellow roses stood at every opening, from the latticed French doors to the wide, sunlit windows. Cascading waterfalls of ferns and freesia spilled along tiled walls to the gleaming parquet floor. Rosewood siding, cherry-wood handrails, teak and pine cabinets, all shone in the waning rays of afternoon sun. Guests in tuxedos, silk gowns and jewels mingled in the hallways and living areas, though some had collected on the sprawling lawn in the backyard where a pool in the shape of a peacock’s tail fanned beneath willow, palm and citrus trees.
Sam had never before seen such a display of finery gathered in a single place. It would have robbed her of breath if her nerves and the sight of Aidan, long-haired and handsome in a tux with a red and black tartan cummerbund, hadn’t done so first.
“Smile and pretend you belong,” he said blandly, cupping her elbow in his hand as they strolled through the champagne-and-diamond crowd.
His touch sent a jolt of awareness up her arm. In retaliation, she stepped on his toe with her three-inch heel. “I know how to act, Brodie. Who’s your in? You never did tell me.”
“David Garret.”
She searched her memory. “That name wasn’t on the list”