by Susan Dunlap
“Your name is on the lease.”
“Then chances are I did rent it.
“For Ms. O’Shaughnessy?”
“Describe her.”
She could hear a slight intake of breath from his end of the line, just enough to remind her that he wasn’t an underling but a policeman whom she might need to use later. Then he said, “She’s little, with short dark curly hair, probably in her thirties. I could check for you; we took down the data from her driver’s license.”
“No, no. Don’t trouble yourself, officer,” she muttered. She had heard enough. This housebreaker must be the woman who’d crashed the rushes. What did this woman know, and how had she gotten on the scent so fast? And how much of it involved the police? “Officer, you’ve got the lease, and you’ve apparently got Ms. O’Shaughnessy, but something is still bothering you. Just why is it you’ve called me in the middle of the night?” she asked, in the tone that had led more than one producer to believe that he was the one sane person on location that she had found to work with.
“Because, Ms. Uberhazy, she suggested we call you. According to her, you wouldn’t mind being woken up at this hour,” he said, with such clear triumph that she could have laughed.
She did emit a laugh, the same laugh she used with those producers. But Dolly Uberhazy wasn’t smiling. She knew more than she wanted to about the intrigues that were the ebb and flow of life on the set. She hadn’t heard the truth in so long, it could have been a nursery rhyme. But if this woman had broken into Lark’s apartment, there was more going on than she realized. Particularly when she was dealing with a woman who had the chutzpah to get the cops to make her introductions. “Well, officer, Ms. O’Shaughnessy is wrong. I’m no more delighted to be up at this hour than you are to be wasting your time on wild goose chases. I suspect I did hire the woman, but I still can’t say for sure. Could you leave that question open for twenty-four hours while I check into it? And Officer Melchior, would you impress that on her and have her call me? Right away.”
“You can count on that, ma’am.”
As she set down the phone, she smiled uneasily. She’d have Kiernan O’Shaughnessy up here before dinner. The woman might be a detective. But being a senior vice-president carried its own unwritten perks. She had her own ways of getting what she needed. And by the time O’Shaughnessy arrived on her doorstep, she would know what way to use.
CHAPTER 15
IT WAS RAINING. SHE ought to close the windows at the head of the bed. Instead, Kiernan squeezed her eyes tighter shut against the dull morning light and pulled the comforter over her ear. Rain was nature’s way of saying “Sleep in.”
The rain was heavier. It couldn’t be rain; it must be sleet. But it smelled wonderful. Like roses. Eyes shut tight, she wriggled around under the covers until her nose was inches from the window. The roses must be growing out of the ocean. The sweet perfume wafted through her nasal passages into her lungs like a rosy sedative, leading her softly back into sleep.
Ezra let out a guttural moan. “Ez,” she grumbled. Tchernak wouldn’t have left without walking him. No, surely not. Even in the rosy sleet, he’d have taken him. “Hush, Ezra.”
The sleet rapped harder on the window. Next to her ear, Ezra barked. Her eyes shot open. “Whatsamatter, Ez?”
The rain rapped again. Not rain. Somebody rapping on the window—her second-floor window, over the boulders on the beach twenty feet below the house. She looked out through the slats in the headboard. Into a bouquet of pale orange roses.
Holding it, and himself perched precariously on the wrought-iron railing of the window box, was Trace Yarrow. The Pacific wind was mussing his curly black hair. His lapis blue eyes were gleaming, and there was a grin on his broad, tanned face. For an instant she thought he was Greg Gaige.
But Greg was light-haired. And Greg was dead.
Yarrow proffered the bouquet through the open window. It wasn’t raining, but the night fog hadn’t lifted yet. “Like some company? I could stand to get warmed up.”
“Yarrow?” she said, still sleep-dazed. “What the hell are you doing out there?”
“I’m propositioning you. Or didn’t I make myself clear?”
“I figured the exertion of getting up here had clouded your judgment. Since you’d brought the flowers, I was going to overlook your momentary tackiness.” Was her mother in the room in heaven, saying: “Who would have thought my Kiernan could handle any social situation?” Well, maybe not, considering the social encounter was taking place over her bed.
She squirmed into her robe, envisioning her mother complaining to her deceased friends: “I told her to wear a nightgown. Nice girls don’t sleep naked. Would she listen to me? Now, when she has a trespasser …”
She motioned Yarrow in and to the bathroom sink with the flowers. The surprise was wearing off, and she found herself wavering between amusement and a prickling of violation. Tchernak, she thought, wouldn’t waste time on amusement; fortunately he’d already be gone. And Ezra seemed to deem Yarrow an acceptable guest.
She needed to ask Yarrow something. What was it? Damn, she couldn’t think when she was still half asleep. Settling on one of the padded wicker lounges across the room, she said, “How did you find my address?”
“Nothing’s hidden from a guy who really wants to know. I called the Irish Wolfhound Society and said I was looking for a walkmate for my O’Toole.”
Kiernan laughed. Her glance rested on the clock. Nine thirty A.M. “Yarrow, I am charmed by the roses. And the Tarzanship. But I’ve got to leave for L.A. in half an hour.”
“Okay, okay. The offer of my body was just an extra. Are you going to L.A. to see Dolly?”
“How’d you know?”
“A guess. Bleeker’s still on the set here, so you’re not driving to L.A. for him. You should have taken me up on my offer.” Before she could protest, he held up a hand. “Would have given you something in common with Dolly.”
“You slept with Dolly Uberhazy?”
“No, no. Not me. I always made it a point to keep business and pleasure separate. You don’t sleep with sharks.” He sat on the other chair. “But the first couple of weeks on the Companions set, Dolly was gaga over some hunk there.”
“Who?”
Yarrow shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t think I knew then. My gags weren’t scheduled until the end of the second week, and then I got canned three days later. So I’m telling you what I heard—but on good authority—not what I saw. Anyway, who he was wasn’t the point. The funny part was Dolly carrying on like a teenager. I mean Dolly, for chrissake. The stories about her were worth the trip out there. One minute she’s shouting down the union rep, the next she’s fluttering her fan and making eyes.”
“This from a man who’s just scaled my wall with roses.”
“I just don’t want you going in with your eyes shut.”
“Yarrow, I don’t shut my eyes.”
“Ever?” He grinned.
She looked him in the eye. “Only when I sleep.”
“I’ll wait and see.” The grin faded from his face. “Look, I just want you to be prepared for the kind of people you’re dealing with. Dolly Uberhazy has elbowed her way to the top, over the bodies of guys who were bigger, louder, and better connected. She’s not about to admit that when she should have been paying attention on Bad Companions, she was making eyes at the hunk. Now she’s the one with the power. This is Hollywood. Everything’s magnified. Success is the sun and the moon, and failure’s a pit as deep and cold as the ocean. There are actors, directors, writers who would kill for Dolly’s approval. Literally. What’s running a stranger off the road compared to seeing your name in the movie trailer?”
She didn’t quite believe him, but she wasn’t clear enough to say why. And there was still that question she needed to ask him, something from last night. From Lark’s apartment. What?
“Take Jason Pedora—”
“Who’s he?”
“Greg Gaige’s half-brother. Been worki
ng on the story of Greg ever since he died. He didn’t kill him—I’m not suggesting that—but if he’d thought there was a story in it, he might have. Guy’s a nutcase. If Dolly said she’d buy his screenplay, he’d be willing to mow down everyone west of Burbank.”
“Was he on the set yesterday?”
“Can’t swear to it. Then again, can’t imagine he wouldn’t be. You want me to check?”
She nodded, and stood up. “Yarrow, I appreciate the warning. I was a gymnast, I’m used to scoping out things before I make a move. But Dolly Uberhazy hasn’t called me to her own office to blow me away.”
“Not literally. What she’s going to do is try to co-opt you.” He walked to the casement windows, the limp apparent. “She’s going to tell you that she got me to agree to tell her what you find.”
“She bought you!” Kiernan snapped.
Yarrow turned. “She thinks she bought me. I haven’t told her anything.”
“You don’t have anything to report. Lark’s been dead less than a day!”
“Look, I didn’t have to let you in on this. I could have just taken my studio job and my health coverage and let you walk blind. But I’m risking the last chance I’ll get for good medical and telling you the woman’s a viper. A viper with friends and lackeys.” He headed for the door.
“Yarrow! Wait! Who or what is Boukunas?”
“A. J. Boukunas? A stunt man. Died in a three-figure high fall. Designed a new air bag to land on, smaller, less expensive. Did a three-hundred-twenty-one-foot high fall onto it to prove its worth.”
“And?”
“Proved it wasn’t good enough. It exploded. He died. Why?”
“ ‘No Boukunas, not Greg!’ Lark wrote that in her scrapbook. What did she mean?”
Yarrow shook his head. “Greg didn’t do three-figure high falls.”
“And? Come on, Yarrow, this is our only clue. They were both stunt men. They had different specialties, used different equipment—”
“But Greg never experimented with equipment. Never. He never took a chance on equipment that wasn’t proven. The risks are in the illusion, not the props—that’s what he said.”
She watched Yarrow walk out. He’d answered her question and told her nothing. Lark Sondervoil hadn’t put her career on the line for a press conference to announce what the stunt community already knew, that Greg Gaige was careful.
CHAPTER 16
JASON PEDORA WAS NOT standing at the bar. He didn’t do that kind of thing—too much of a Hollywood cliché. He was damned if anyone would call him a failed screenwriter, draped like a dish towel over the bar, trying to impress ingénues with tales of his dead half-brother. He sat at a corner table by the railing, his espresso with a twist just far enough past the center of the small red-clothed table to pass for a NO ADMITTANCE SIGN. A drink—straight Tanqueray—was what he needed, but he didn’t allow himself liquor before eleven thirty in the morning; he wasn’t about to be the Betty Ford prospect cliché, either.
Pedora ran his fingers through his wavy gray hair. Still thick if not still black. And he had a lot more of it than that little prick of an agent of his. Last time he did lunch with him, he was sporting a rug and drinking Perrier like all the yuppie Puritan post-boomers who ran Hollywood. Whole scene was so uncomfortable, he could hardly taste the Tanqueray without thinking that every ginny breath reeked has-been. Or never-was.
He swallowed the rest of the espresso. He could pick up one of the wanna-bes. Venice was full of them. To hear them tell it, the movies were peopled by B-list actresses with A-list luck, while they, au contraire … They were full of it, but he didn’t care; the dreams, the delusions, the outright lies—it was all material for a writer. And Venice Nights, his screenplay, had almost made it. Even before Greg died, there’d been studio people in Creative hooked on that one. Or almost hooked.
He eyed his watch: eleven fifteen. Damn! He could break his rule. He laughed to himself: he’d broken more than rules in the last twelve hours. Why not a drink? He needed it this morning, hell, he deserved it, after what he’d been through yesterday: the whole bit in the apartment, and before that, seeing Greg’s Move again. He’d had to see it, to catalog his own reaction to it. That second script guy in Creative, the one who’d called him—not vice versa—after Greg’s death—damn, Greg would have been proud if he’d known about that interview—studio’d come within a hair of buying Venice Nights then… Not enough guts, emotion, Creative had said. Well, how could he be expected to create emotion on paper after his brother had been burned to a crisp? ’Course, he shouldn’t have expected a twenty-five-year-old in Creative to have any compassion, he knew that now. He should have cottoned to it then. Youth and nepotism, the twin horsemen of Hollywood!
Well, he for one had never traded on his youth. And there’d never been any big Pedora back at the studio to open doors for him, like that little prick Dratz on Greg’s set. Not even Greg had really been any help.
Well, not a total loss. In fairness he’d gotten some of his insurance money, but only because his mother—their mother—had given it to him. Hardly what you’d call brotherly love. He’d helped Greg perfect the Move. Fat lot of credit he got for that. The Gaige Move. Not the Gaige-Pedora Move. But no use in telling that to anyone now. Just sounded like whining. Even when he’d wowed the young, lithe stunt hopefuls with his tales of Greg, he’d had to watch it, to make sure he came across as not whining. And now, it was so long since the fire, none of these girls even remembered Greg.
Until now.
When he went to La Jolla yesterday, he’d expected to spike the creative juices by seeing Lark Sondervoil do Greg’s Move. Who the hell was she to do the Move that he and Greg had created! There had been something fishy on that set. Just like on Bad Companions: trucks sneaking onto the set in the middle of the night. They’d barred him from the Bad Companions set—Greg’s fault—but in the last ten years he’d learned how to keep out of sight. Yesterday they hadn’t even noticed him on the set. Ten years ago, if he’d been as smart as he was now, he’d have had proof about what was in those trucks. He saw them driving onto the set and pulling back out half an hour later. PACIFIC BREEZE COMPUTER, they’d said. Shit, they don’t deliver computers in the middle of the night, even in California!
He had put it all in Midnight Cargo. And they’d called that screenplay unbelievable! In Hollywood! Well, he’d give them believable. That trot over the bluff yesterday, that was believable. And that little blonde, how had the little bitch learned so much about Greg? What else did she know? Had Greg told her what was going down at Bad Companions, when he hadn’t let on to his own brother? There’d been no letters from Greg in her apartment. No diary. Nothing. He could have landed in jail, and all for nothing.
Of course, the cops wouldn’t have caught him. They didn’t. He was too smart and too quick; the bitch who walked in on him found that out. Even afterward, when he’d stood under the window and listened, neither one of San Diego’s finest had heard a sound.
Pedora turned to face the ocean. The water was too far away to see, but he could hear the crash of waves and smell the brine that seemed to come directly from teahouses on the shores of Yokohama.
No, wait—damn!—this Lark girl had been nineteen years old. She was nine years old when Greg died! Greg wouldn’t have talked to her or written his secrets to her; he wouldn’t have known her.
There had to be some connection.
That fall over the bluff had been no accident. Of course she had had it coming, stealing the Move he and Greg created. How had she figured out the tricks no one but Greg knew?
Notes—maybe she did have notes stashed away somewhere else. Somewhere the little dark-haired bitch discovered after she’d forced him out of the apartment. If she had let the police see them—Sweat poured down his sides. The cops wouldn’t understand the value of those notes. They’d leak them to the press! His material! The final touch for Midnight Cargo!
He lifted the small white cup and waited for the last br
own drop to roll down the inside into his mouth, then swung his long legs over the wrought-iron fence that separated the cafe from the Venice sidewalk beside the beach. The morning fog still hung over the sidewalk and the beach. He eased his hands into his jacket pockets. A block beyond the cafe, the sidewalk was empty, the sand as bare as some tropical island. Some cold tropical island. Even the beach houses that faced the canals like rows of stamps in a five-dollar book—rows of stamps, that was a good image, he’d have to remember that—even the houses seemed attached to the canals rather than the beach. If it were night, cops would be driving by on the sand, warning him not to walk alone. But he didn’t worry; he’d lived here too long, knew too many of the guys that the cops were warning him about, knew too much for them to mess with him. Hell, he could have written a blockbuster about some of them—if he didn’t mind it being published posthumously.
But no time for that now. Lark Sondervoil’s notes; he had to find them. He could get back in her apartment… Dangerous; the cops would be watching it… But no, no need to risk that. The little dark-haired bitch, she had had time to hunt around in there—the time she’d robbed him of. She’d know.
A smile spread across Jason Pedora’s narrow face. Her, he knew just where to find. She and Dolly together—he liked that. Should he take her down right there, in Dolls’s office, or wait and get her alone? No need to decide now; when he had her face to face, his gut would tell him what to do.
He’d let his chance get away before and had paid for it with ten years of living like a bum. This time nothing and no one was going to stand in his way.
CHAPTER 17
KIERNAN PULLED UP TO the Summit-Arts Studios gate at twenty to two. Hot valley air oozed in through the open window; spears of light reflected off the chrome of the Miata ahead, pricking at her eyes. The sky was an opalescent blue, a million miles away, with no connection to this exposed platter of a city too naive or distracted to shade itself with more than a palm tree. She leaned forward, shaking her shoulders to free the sweat-stuck blouse. Every time she left the ocean breezes at home for L.A., she dressed too warmly. Now she could have done without the gray linen jacket and the long sleeves on her green silk blouse.