by Nancy Bush
“Baby, is there something wrong?”
“Nothing more than usual. Thanks.”
Alone again, Denise listened as Carolyn’s footsteps receded down the upstairs hall. Drawing a breath, she collapsed on the bed. Somewhere inside herself a thousand wings had begun to flutter. More anxiety. Deeper still, she sensed something dark and evil reach upward, its malignant fingers grabbing harder, closer. Someday they would grab her soul and squish it like a grape.
Self-hypnosis, she thought, panicked. Let the poisons collect in the center and then push them out. Push them out.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on John. Her powers of concentration sometimes astonished her because it felt so real. He was there. John Callahan. Her lover and husband. John, whose maleness enveloped her; John, who turned her to melting fluid.
“Make love to me, John.” She reached for him beseechingly, but he stared down at her dispassionately. Unwrapping the towel, she placed his imaginary hand on her breast.
“I tried, Denise. I’m not going to try anymore.”
“John, John, John.” Her hands climbed up his torso and she rubbed against him like a kitten. Soft, smooth, tactile. The sweetness of love.
“What do you want this time, Denise?”
“Just the lead in Blackbird. That’s all . . .”
He grabbed her hair in a tangle, pulling her head back, glaring at her. He stared at her so long and hard that her pulse rocketed. He was going to give in this time. He couldn’t resist. His hand slid down her back, over her hips. She was wet and waiting for him. She guided him down to the bed, until he was sprawled atop her, his mouth like fire kissing her all over.
She squirmed deliciously.
The vision changed. It wasn’t John. It was someone else. Someone who wanted to hurt and punish her. “Please,” she moaned. A black, buried memory rose instead, smothering her. She cried out and sat bolt upright, fully awake, drenched anew in sweat.
Completely alone.
Crazy. Sick. Sexually deviant.
And why had she blown it by asking him for the part in his next film when she knew he would never consider her?
“Because everything you touch turns to shit,” she muttered furiously. The Sadim Touch. Midas, spelled backward. She had it in spades.
With shaking fingers, she reached for the landline and dialed Stone’s number.
Hayley narrowed her gaze on the brown-haired man standing behind the cameras in the dense California heat. The sleeves of his blue work shirt were rolled to his elbows. His gaze was directed at the lithesome actress draped across the table as if she were tonight’s special entrée. It wasn’t a bad scene, really. The dialog made up for the cliché. But Hayley wasn’t interested in Act II, Scene III of Borrowed Time. She was interested in the man in the work shirt and jeans. He was one of the top producers in Hollywood, a chauvinistic, arrogant, sexist, self-important boor.
He was her brother-in-law, John Callahan.
And he was her ticket to stardom.
“Unbutton the top button of your jeans,” Callahan said to the actress, who instantly complied. The actor leaning against the table glanced at him for direction.
Callahan might be the producer at this party, but his directing credits were pretty impressive, too, and since the actual director of the picture, Frank Carello, was standing to one side and schmoozing with some losers from the studio, Callahan was doing the work.
“Go,” Callahan said.
The scene began again. A love scene. Hayley supposed it was passionate, but there were so many people standing around, of which Callahan was her main focal point, that she had difficulty even paying attention. And the actor himself seemed so robotic. Good God, he couldn’t fart without checking with Callahan first. Did he have no sense of timing or creativity? About the kindest compliment she could give him was that he was dead-on Marlon Brando. The youthful Brando, that is. All smolder and growl and intensity. God forbid the man might actually smile either on-camera, or off.
She moved slowly to the other side of the camera, checking another angle.
Didn’t the guy get it? You had to go after something—really go after it—to achieve it. If he didn’t improve, and soon, Borrowed Time would be his last stop on the track to stardom.
She, Hayley Scott, knew what to do. Whatever it took. Whatever price must be paid. She could do it. More importantly, she would do it. Without a whimper of protest.
Since the moment she could think, Hayley had yearned to be an actress, to be the actress. She play-acted everything. All the world was her stage . . .
But tricky, despicable fate had intervened and dropped opportunity at Denise’s feet like an unwanted, unloved child whom Denise had then abused and abandoned. Hayley had followed her sister’s short-lived, disastrous career, consumed with envy and horror. Furious with Denise, furious with fate. It should have been her chance, her opportunity. Her sister had squandered it, for God’s sake. Tossed it away and stomped on it. Sucked all the life from it so now Hayley was starting below zero, having Denise’s failure attached to her own name like a bad smell.
But Denise had married John Callahan. And Hayley’s connection to her sister might serve her in good stead with him.
Or it might boomerang.
“Move back,” one of the lower-than-low assistants to an associate producer commanded her.
Hayley gave him a bright smile and stepped back. She was determined but she wasn’t stupid. Today’s nobody was tomorrow’s most powerful Hollywood producer. She wasn’t beautiful like her older sisters, and, though she loathed admitting it, she wasn’t as naturally talented as Denise. But she possessed something neither of her sisters did: a single-mindedness as hard and brilliant as a diamond. She cultivated friendships as if she were to be tested on her proficiency at it. She planned her life to the instant. She organized and worked and charged toward her goal with machinelike purpose.
She wanted.
Borrowed Time’s director, Frank Carello, was a bear of a man with a nauseating manner of hugging people and acting as if they were part of his family. But John Callahan, the film’s producer, had the slow-walkin’, slow-talkin’ appeal of a cowboy. Had Hayley been interested in men as something more than a stepping stone to success, she might have fallen a little in love with him herself. As it was, she calculated just how she could use her connection to him to her advantage. He might be willing to cut her a break simply because she was his sister-in-law, but the irony of it was he didn’t know they were related! Denise, bless her screwed-up soul, had long maintained the myth that she was the only child of a pair of luckless Indiana farmers who’d died in a fire when she was nineteen.
Neither Hayley nor Dinah had been invited to the wedding. She doubted Callahan even knew they existed.
“Mr. Callahan?”
The voice came from Tonja Terkell, the breathless first assistant who wore such tight shorts, Hayley imagined she could read the brand of her underwear. Callahan favored Tonja with a distracted smile and shook his head to whatever gibberish she was going on about. The director looked pissed. Chastised, Tonja gingerly tiptoed out of the way.
Hayley inwardly groaned. She was here at her sometime friend Tonja’s invitation and if Callahan or the director chose to rescind it because Tonja was too much of a pain in the ass, all her hard work would be for naught.
Grabbing Tonja’s arm, Hayley wheeled her out of earshot. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
Tonja looked surprised and hurt. “My job, thank you very much. What’s the matter? Nobody notice you yet?”
“I can’t get to Callahan.”
“Why don’t you work on Frankie? He loves everybody.”
Hayley glanced at Frank Carello and felt weary. She didn’t want someone who loved everybody. Besides, Carello’s thick arms reminded her of her stepfather’s muscular biceps, and that in turn reminded her of Thomas’s beefy hands. Ugly hands. “I don’t want to be part of the family.”
“Well, okay,” Tonja relen
ted. “I got some good news for you.”
“What?”
“Callahan’s newest project.”
Hayley zeroed in on Tonja. “You know what it is?”
“You bet. I heard him talking to Frankie about it yesterday afternoon. They don’t pay much attention to me, but I listen.”
“So what is it?” Hayley demanded with increasing excitement.
“Blackbird.”
“Blackbird?”
“Uh-huh. I think it’s about a hooker.” She shrugged.
“Serious stuff?”
“More like Pretty Woman. You know, ‘hooker with a heart of gold and a few bad breaks finds the man she loves and changes her spots.’ The usual bullshit.”
“Pretty Woman was a huge success in its day,” Hayley said reflectively.
“Not to mention what it did for Julia Roberts.”
Magic words. Magic, magic words. Tonja had no idea what her innocent comment did to Hayley’s equilibrium.
“But I think there’s a darker side in there somewhere,” Tonja went on. “John said something about interviewing real hookers.”
“Are you sure you didn’t overhear them making plans for the evening?” Hayley remarked sarcastically.
“Frankie’s wife’s here and he would never screw up that relationship. And John Callahan has too much class.” She eyed him longingly, with a bit of hero worship thrown in.
“Can you get me a copy of the script?” Hayley asked.
“No way. I could lose my job!”
“Is it that much of a secret?”
She shrugged. “Until John Callahan starts sending out copies himself, I’m not messing with it. You want a flunky to take risks for you, find somebody else.”
Empty words, since Tonja practically owed Hayley her job in the first place. It was Hayley who’d encouraged her to follow her dream, and it was Hayley who’d pushed her toward Callahan Productions.
So she had her own best interests at heart. So what? This was Hollywood.
“Calm down,” Hayley soothed Tonja. “I don’t want you to lose your job. I just want a chance, that’s all, and I’d be perfect for this role.”
“Yeah, well, half of Hollywood would be.”
Hayley shook her head, her gaze pinned on John Callahan, whose father had run one of the most powerful movie studios in Hollywood before his death and had made his son famous and successful in the process. John Callahan, whose reputed womanizing had led to two paternity suits, both unsubstantiated, and whom insiders claimed had married Denise Scott as a means to staunch his playboy image, was successful in his own right, but no one could forget his roots.
Was the man really as reformed as he would like people to believe? Hayley asked herself as she watched him squat down, lean his clipboard on one jean-clad knee, and scribble madly. He radiated sexuality. She knew for a fact that he and Denise were over; the tabloids had trumpeted their breakup for weeks.
So what did he do for female company these days?
Hayley toyed with the idea of finding out personally, but she broke into a cold sweat at the mere possibility. Men were not her cup of tea. Neither were women for that matter. She’d come to the conclusion years earlier that she was asexual, and though it sometimes felt like she was missing out on some vital part of life, most of the time she was simply grateful. Too much anguish, too much worry, too much gnashing of teeth.
Love and sex got too tangled up with what was really important. Witness Denise, who gave the term promiscuous new meaning. Even Dinah had had her one, mortal heartbreak, although she’d turned misery to her advantage by writing about the foibles of romance.
For no particular reason Hayley thought about her mother. Had she really loved Thomas Daniels, a man to whom abuse came naturally?
For a moment something happened. Raw pain flooded through her, startling her. An ugly memory burned brightly: Daniels slapping Mama, laughing like a maniac as Mama cowered in humiliation; Daniels’s cruel eyes sliding Hayley’s way, her feet pounding across scarred linoleum; his laughter sweeping after her like a foul wind.
Hayley took a breath and followed John Callahan as he sauntered off the set to one of the studio offices.
If Thomas Daniels wasn’t dead yet, she hoped with every inch of her heart someone would kill him.
The Logan household had calmed down after the initial discovery, but Matt still felt like a pretty big wheel. He’d embellished the tale a bit now. He’d told that whiney Sherry Mesner that the skull had chattered at them. Just a little bit. Coulda been the wind, but more likely it was Daniels warning them away.
’Course Sherry had acted like she wasn’t scared, then went and tattled to the teacher. Still, it had been worth seeing her eyes bug out while she’d screamed that he’d made the whole thing up.
But that was kid’s stuff compared to this. Uncle Jack was here, standing in the kitchen. Flew in this morning and drove from Portland all the way to Wagon Wheel. Talked to Sheriff Dempsey—an old friend of his since high school, Mom said—about Daniels’s skull. It wouldn’t be long before there was bound to be another picture in the paper.
“So how much are you really going to get involved?” Mom asked Uncle Jack. He was her younger brother and she always used that older sister tone on him. Were all older sisters the same?
“Depends.”
Uncle Jack never said too much. Wore jeans and looked like a regular person, but you just knew he was thinking real hard about putting somebody away.
“Matt, go upstairs. I want to talk to Connor without an extra pair of ears.”
“Ah, Mom!”
“Go.”
Connor was Uncle Jack. Connor Jackley, but Matt thought Connor was a stupid name and had called him Uncle Jack from the moment he’d realized he had this special, beloved uncle who was a real police detective. Or at least he had been. For some reason he wasn’t on the force anymore and there was fear in Matt’s heart that Uncle Jack had quit for good. But it had to only be temporary. Matt simply couldn’t bear to think of Uncle Jack as anything but an honest-to-God law enforcement officer.
“Do as your mama says.” Dad spoke from the end of the table. He was leaning over a newspaper, but that didn’t mean nothing. He always knew what you were doing, and like Uncle Jack, he didn’t say much but when he did, BLAM! You’d better run for cover ’cause it did mean something, yessirree.
Still . . .
“I’m the one who found the skull,” Matt reminded them all.
Uncle Jack smiled in a way that made Matt know he was on his side. But then he said, “I do have to talk to your mom and dad.”
“Can’t I—?”
“No,” Mom cut him off.
Matt stomped away, then retraced his steps and hovered on the other side of the kitchen door, one eye peeled for Heather, his rotten, snitching older sister.
“Was it murder?” Mom asked softly.
“Yep,” Uncle Jack said.
“And you know who did it?”
“Dempsey’s got some ideas. One that leads right to Los Angeles.”
Sheriff Gus Dempsey and Uncle Jack had gone to school together in Bend, or something. Matt was thrilled that they were both working on the case. His case. The Case of the Rotten Skull.
“Well, it’s bound to be someone from here,” Dad put in. “Daniels pushed too many people, too hard.”
Uncle Jack breathed in slow, like he was thinking real hard. “According to Gus, Daniels had three stepdaughters. One of ’em’s Denise Scott, the actress.”
Mom stared. “You’re kidding.”
“She’s the Denise Scott from Wagon Wheel?” Dad asked in surprise.
“Yep. She married John Callahan, a producer of some fame, but I think they’re divorced now.”
“She’s from here?” Mom said, sounding as boggled as Dad. “I thought that was all rumor.”
Uncle Jack kinda snorted, like he was having trouble believing the whole thing, too. Matt wished he knew who this actress was. He didn’t pay too mu
ch attention to girls.
“Dempsey says people in this town remember the Scott girls, but it’s all kind of vague. He wants some help and since I’m from L.A. . . .” Uncle Jack left the thought unfinished.
“Gus Dempsey called you here specifically to help, huh?” Dad asked.
“He knew who to call,” Mom added softly.
“It’s not going to make me go back to L.A.P.D.,” Uncle Jack said suddenly, as if he thought Mom was pushing. She probably was, Matt thought darkly. She had that way of just going at something that could drive you crazy. But Matt desperately wanted Uncle Jack back on the force, too.
“Maybe he’ll deputize you,” Mom said lightly.
“I’m familiar with the case, so he wants me to check it out,” Uncle Jack said. “That’s all.”
There was a long silence where Matt could hear the ticktock of the grandfather clock. He held his breath and wished himself invisible.
“How long do you think you’ll be here?” Dad asked.
“Awhile.”
“Matt, honey,” his mother said with tight-lipped tolerance, “go upstairs.”
Shit. He skidded away to the worn back stairs.
“I said I’d help, so I guess I will,” Uncle Jack’s voice trailed after him. “I’ve got an address for Denise Scott in Malibu. I’ll start with her. But while I’m here, I think I’ll pick up the threads of their lives in Wagon Wheel. I mean, after all . . . if they know anything about Daniels’s death, it all started here.”
“Damn right!” Dad’s harsh tone caught at Matt’s heart. He stopped short, straining to hear. “And it ended here. And I don’t think there’s a person in this town who’d say they’re sorry Thomas Daniels rotted to death in a culvert.”
Chapter Three
Dinah scanned her column, pleased that Flick had left it relatively intact. You never knew which way that man would jump. Sheer orneriness could keep him from printing it. If there were a person on Earth guaranteed to shoot her frustration level to all new highs, it was Flick.
She folded the Santa Fe Review and left it on the table. Through windows paned with rust-colored metal inserts, she could see the beach and restless, gray ocean. Everything was gray today: the sky, the water, the sand, the chunks of ragged driftwood.