Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  Aimee’s eyes narrowed as if she knew that Serena wasn’t being completely honest with her. “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t see her. Is that all?”

  “I do have one more question,” Serena went on. “I was wondering if you’re aware of any rumors floating around the industry about Dean Casperson.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I think I already did tell you once before. I won’t gossip about Dean.”

  “Because you’re scared of him?” Serena asked.

  Aimee didn’t answer. Her defenses went up like a wall.

  “One of my partners talked to an actress who had a bad experience with him when she was starting out,” Serena said.

  “What kind of experience?”

  “She says Casperson assaulted her,” Serena said. “He drugged and raped her.”

  Aimee flinched sharply, as if she’d been struck. “If that’s true, why didn’t she go public about it?”

  “You said yourself that Casperson has the power to make or break careers. This woman thought it was smarter to stay quiet.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Casperson gave you your big break a few years ago, didn’t he?” Serena continued.

  “That’s right.”

  Serena hesitated before going on. “Was there a price for it?”

  “What are you talking about?” Aimee asked.

  “We both know what I’m talking about.”

  Aimee got up from the wicker chair. Her face reddened with anger, and she fought back tears. She extended her arm and pointed her index finger at the front door. “Please get out.”

  “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “Get out, Serena, just get out.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  Serena headed for the door, and Aimee stayed where she was. When Serena opened the front door, she looked back, and Aimee was still frozen in the living room. The actress had her face buried in her hands, and Serena watched her body quiver as she sobbed. She thought about going back to comfort her, but instead she slipped out of the house and closed the door softly behind her.

  Serena wasn’t psychic.

  Even so, she knew she was right. Aimee was hiding the truth about Dean Casperson.

  *

  Half an hour later, Serena met Guppo at Rochelle Wahl’s house.

  She could feel the devastation in the room as they talked to Rochelle’s parents. Her father said nothing and stared down at his lap. Her mother kept a photo album locked in a fierce grip in her hands, as if someone might steal it from her. Condolence flowers filled every table, but they were already starting to wilt, giving a faded look and sour odor to the room.

  “I’m not sure what you want to know,” Marilyn Wahl said. “Why are you asking questions about Rochelle? I thought the investigation was closed.”

  Serena tried to figure out what to say. She didn’t want to alarm them over nothing. She didn’t want to speculate about their daughter’s death and find out she was wrong.

  Guppo came to her rescue. “When a case involves the death of a minor, even an accidental death, we often have senior personnel review the details to make sure nothing was missed. This won’t take long. And trust me, I have five daughters myself. I’m sympathetic to the pain you feel.”

  Marilyn sniffled but didn’t object. She was in her late thirties and attractive. Mark Wahl had the lean look of a runner. Their faces were both drawn with grief, but Serena could see the close resemblance to their daughter. She’d reviewed photographs of Rochelle, who had long reddish-brown hair, turquoise glasses over dark eyes, and a bottle-cap nose that was slightly flattened on the end.

  “Can you review the time line on Saturday and Sunday for us again?” she asked. “I know you were away.”

  “Yes, it was our seventeenth wedding anniversary weekend,” Marilyn said with a glance at her husband that suggested they both knew their anniversary would never be the same. “We had tickets to the Guthrie in Minneapolis, and then we stayed overnight at the Hilton. This was the first time we’d left Rochelle on her own. She was adamant about it and said we didn’t have anything to worry about. She was going to watch a Harry Potter movie marathon in her room and make microwave pizza.”

  “What time did you leave on Saturday?” Guppo asked.

  “Around one o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Were you concerned that Rochelle might have friends over for a party or that she might go out on her own?”

  Mark Wahl looked up from his lap. “Rochelle was very reliable and mature. She was fifteen going on twenty-five. She’d never given us any reason not to trust her.”

  “Plus she didn’t have many friends,” Marilyn went on. “She painted and wrote and kept to herself. She was very self-contained. We were always encouraging her to find more friends, but she didn’t have a lot in common with girls her age.”

  Serena thought about Cat. And about herself. It was easy to understand the kind of girl that Rochelle Wahl was. She also knew that every fifteen-year-old going on twenty-five was still no older than fifteen.

  “Did you talk to Rochelle during the day?” Serena asked.

  “Yes, she texted us every hour, exactly as she promised.”

  “I mean, did you actually talk to her on the phone?”

  Marilyn’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t think so. We never really had the chance. Just when I’d think of calling, she would text us again. I was pleased that she was being so thoughtful about it.”

  Serena couldn’t help thinking that Rochelle wasn’t being thoughtful. She was being crafty.

  “What did she say in her texts?” she asked.

  “Nothing much. She was asking about whether we were having fun on our trip. She sent us a picture of the first Harry Potter movie on television that afternoon when she started watching. She was such a huge Dumbledore fan.”

  “When did you last hear from her?”

  “Around eleven-thirty, she texted that she was going to bed,” Mark said. “She sent us a picture of herself in her pajamas in bed. She had this big smile, waving at us, with a little ‘good night’ emoji. Then, in the morning, we couldn’t reach her. That’s when we began to panic.”

  Guppo shifted his girth in the chair in which he was sitting, and the wooden legs complained. “I’m sorry to ask this, but did you ever know Rochelle to drink alcohol before that night?”

  Mark Wahl shook his head violently. “Never.”

  “This was just so unlike her,” Marilyn added.

  Serena gave them a sad smile. “Would you mind showing us her room?”

  Mark didn’t get up, but Marilyn guided them out of the living room and down a hallway to a large bedroom that overlooked the backyard. Sliding glass doors led outside. The bedsheets were still rumpled and unmade. Dirty clothes made a line from the bed to the closet. There were movie posters hung all over the walls. Harry Potter. Guardians of the Galaxy. And a poster from a movie adaption of a popular YA book from the previous year.

  The movie starred Dean Casperson.

  “Rochelle must have been excited about The Caged Girl being filmed in Duluth,” Serena said. “It looks like she was a big movie fan.”

  Marilyn’s face lit up. “Oh, you can’t imagine. It’s all she could talk about. She thought a movie being made here was the greatest thing ever. And as you can probably see, she loved Dean Casperson, too. She got that from me. I’ve had a crush on him since I was a kid.”

  “Did the two of you go to see any of the filming?”

  “We were planning to. I was just so busy at work. Rochelle wanted to take the bus down to Canal Park one day when they were filming there, but I didn’t want her going by herself.”

  “Of course,” Serena said. “Do you mind if we take a look at Rochelle’s phone?”

  Marilyn looked embarrassed. “Unfortunately, we haven’t found it.”

  “It’s missing?”

  “Mark and I searched her room. It’s not h
ere.” Her voice cracked. “It’s probably—well, it’s probably lost in the snow from when she went outside. We won’t find it until the spring.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Is there anything else?” Marilyn asked them.

  “No, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Serena replied. “We just need to take some photographs of Rochelle’s room if that’s okay. For our files.”

  She nodded. “If you like.”

  Rochelle’s mother left the room, and Serena and Guppo were alone. Guppo’s round face was as grave as Serena had ever seen it. He’d come to the same conclusions as she had.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think this was a very shrewd fifteen-year-old who decided to go on the adventure of her life,” Serena said.

  She noticed a forty-inch flat-screen television on the wall opposite Rochelle’s bed. Below, among the bookshelves, was a Blu-ray player. She walked over and pressed the eject button on the player. When the drawer opened, she spotted a disk still nestled on the shelf inside.

  “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” Serena said.

  “That’s the first movie,” Guppo said. “She didn’t get far.”

  Serena nodded. “There was no movie marathon. Rochelle took a picture of it to send to her parents. She probably staged the picture of herself in her pajamas, too, so she could send it later. And then I’m betting she ran out to catch the bus and head downtown.”

  21

  “So this is how the other half lives,” Maggie said as Cab steered his Corvette down the narrow spit of Captiva Island past the mansions that hugged the waterfront. The homes were lavish, but despite their size, they still had a rustic Florida feel, as if a beach bum had found $8 million in a treasure chest to buy a place on the sand.

  “I like to come down here now and then to make myself feel poor,” Cab replied with a grin. “This is where the Bentleys all have bumper stickers that say ‘My other car is a Phantom.’”

  “Have you been to Dean Casperson’s place before?”

  “Inside? No. I’ve taken a boat down the sound a couple times and sailed in close enough to get their security pretty nervous.”

  “Haley Adams didn’t get in here without an ID and an invitation,” Maggie said. “She had to be on a list somewhere.”

  “Definitely, but those lists disappear once the party’s over. Haley was here, but we’ll never be able to prove it. I’ve tried.”

  Cab slowed on Captiva Drive as he approached the pink stone driveway of the Casperson estate. The sandy walking trail to the Gulf was on their left. He pulled the Corvette into the driveway and drove past thick hanging greenery to the main house, where he parked next to a row of shaggy palm trees. The house was three stories, painted pastel yellow. Most of the upper level was glass. She could see a Roman-style Olympic-size pool attached to the north side of the house, surrounded by travertine tile and covered by a glass-and-stone atrium. The double-wide front doors gave a view straight through to the green waters of the sound.

  “So Tarla and Mo are friends?” Maggie asked dubiously. “Even after what happened to her?”

  “I wouldn’t say friends, but Hollywood is a small community. The players tend to know each other.”

  “Well, I’m impressed she was willing to get us in here, given her history with Dean. Do you think Mo knows?”

  “You mean, what Dean did to Tarla? What kind of man he is? Honestly, I don’t know. They’ve been together for decades. It’s hard to believe she could really be unaware, but sometimes you develop a blindness for things when you need to.”

  A large Filipino man in a white suit met them at the Corvette. He was friendly and polite, but Maggie was sure he was armed and could have snapped both of their necks in seconds if he’d been so inclined. He led them inside the house, which had the airiness of cotton candy and was painted in shades of peach and sea-foam green. Warm, moist air blew through the interior with the fresh Gulf breeze. She saw a grand piano. A vast wet bar. An indoor-outdoor dance floor. It was a mansion built for entertaining, and it was strange to see it completely empty of people.

  This home was a shrine. Everywhere Maggie looked, the house showed off memorabilia of Dean Casperson’s career. The walls were covered with decades of photographs of Casperson with nearly every mover and shaker in Hollywood, posters from his dozens of movies, awards from nonprofit organizations, pictures of Dean in impoverished areas overseas, and honorary degrees from ten different colleges. In a built-in bookcase, behind locked glass doors, she saw a lineup of his acting trophies. Among them were four Golden Globes, an Emmy, and two Oscars. It was a reminder of who they were dealing with.

  A star. A living legend.

  The guard led them all the way through the ground floor of the estate without stopping and then to the patio overlooking the water. The Florida sunshine beat down. The day was perfect, and the water was calm. Maggie could see a sleek fifty-foot speedboat bobbing next to the boat dock on the sound. The name of the boat written on the stern was mo better. She wondered if Mrs. Casperson knew that the phrase was actually urban slang for passionate screwing.

  Mo Casperson sat by herself on the patio with a red-and-orange cocktail in a hurricane glass and a laptop open in front of her. Maggie felt a little as if she were approaching the queen for an audience. Mo wore a chic lemonade-colored sun hat over her golden hair. Her flowered knee-length dress would have fit in well at an upscale beach wedding. She had long nails, each individually painted with a different pastel design. The only jewelry she wore was her wedding ring. The square-cut diamond made a statement, and that statement was “I’m one of the richest women on the planet.”

  She didn’t get up, but she removed her sunglasses and greeted them with a smile. “Cab Bolton. I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you were fifteen years old. I’m sure you don’t remember it.”

  “Positano,” Cab replied easily. “You were visiting the Amalfi Coast, and you had lunch with my mother during the filming of Sapphirica.”

  Mo’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Well, either you have an amazing memory or I’m very memorable.”

  “It’s all you,” Cab assured her.

  “And this must be Sergeant Bei?” Mo asked.

  Mo held out a hand, and Maggie wasn’t sure if she should shake it or kiss it. She decided to shake it. “Mrs. Casperson, thank you for meeting us.”

  “Anything for Tarla,” she replied. “You’re from the Duluth police department, is that right? I met your boss, Lieutenant Stride, when I was chatting with Dean yesterday. Stride has quite a presence about him as a man. He’s very attractive.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But of course, I don’t need to tell you that,” Mo went on.

  Maggie’s eyes squinted in suspicion as she tried to grasp the woman’s subtext. Was it an innocent comment? Or was she trying to make it clear that she knew about Maggie and Stride’s affair? Mo lived in a world of innuendo where you never said exactly what you meant. Maggie felt an urge to check her back to make sure there wasn’t a knife in it.

  “Please, both of you, sit down,” Mo said. “Sergeant Bei, I can understand why someone would want to get out of Minnesota in January—in fact, I can’t understand why anyone would stay in Minnesota in January—but I’m curious what you’re doing here. And why you and Cab have joined forces.”

  “We’re investigating a murder,” Maggie replied.

  “Two murders, in fact,” Cab added. “One in Florida, one in Minnesota.”

  “How terrible. But why talk to me about it?”

  “We believe the same man killed the two young women with the same gun,” Maggie explained. “We only found out about it because of a car accident that killed him in Duluth. He has all the hallmarks of a gun for hire, and we’re trying to find out who hired him.”

  “I still don’t see how I can help you.”

  Again, Maggie tried to read her face, and again she came up short. Mo gave no hint in her expression
of whether her confusion was genuine or whether she was simply covering up the truth.

  “We’re pretty sure the young woman in Florida, Haley Adams, was at a party here not long before she was killed,” Cab told her.

  “Pretty sure?”

  “I can’t prove it. Unless you’d be willing to share your guest lists.”

  Mo smiled. “I’m sorry, Cab, but you of all people understand how important privacy is in our world. Security, too. Do you have a photograph of this young woman?”

  “I do.” Cab called up a photo of Haley Adams on his phone and held it up for Mo to review. She placed half glasses from a chain around her neck onto her face to examine the photograph. Then she shook her head.

  “I don’t know her, but that doesn’t really mean anything. She certainly could have been here, but if so, I wasn’t the one to invite her. I don’t know how the party could have been connected to whatever happened to her, though. Unless you think she met someone here. I suppose that’s possible, but I wouldn’t know how to narrow it down for you.”

  Mo was poised. She gave nothing away. Or she was simply innocent.

  “The woman who was killed in Minnesota has a more direct connection,” Maggie said. “She was an intern on the set of The Caged Girl, but she was actually there for a different reason. She was spying on your husband.”

  “Excuse me?” Mo said.

  “I sent her there,” Cab added. “She worked for me. And now she’s dead.”

  Mo shifted her stare to each of them in turn. She took a sip of her drink. Maggie waited for her to evict them from the mansion, but she didn’t. She simply shook her head as if they were misbehaving children. When she spoke, her voice was calm and full of syrupy disappointment.

  “Cab, why on earth would you be spying on Dean?”

  “May I speak candidly?” he said.

  “Please.”

  “I’ve been investigating the murders of multiple women over the last two decades, and they all have one thing in common. Your husband.”

  Mo actually laughed. “Murder? Are you serious?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, then I feel sorry for you. It’s ridiculous. Are you actually accusing Dean of murder? I mean, we’re used to getting bad reviews, but this is a first.”