by Dianne Emley
“I also got a call from Detective Auburn,” Rory began. “The grand jury found sufficient evidence to try Richard for Junior’s murder, as an accessory to Anya’s murder, for destroying evidence, and a couple of other things.”
“No charges for molesting Anya as a teenager?”
“No evidence. Auburn’s looking for other victims. My mom sometimes had these young girls she called her protégés at the villa, so maybe something will turn up. Auburn says that Richard’s attitude is ‘Bring on the trial. I’m innocent.’ ”
“Richard could go to prison for a long time. And he still has the Laras’ civil suit to deal with.”
“Guess all the secrets will come out. Makes me uncomfortable, but if that’s what has to happen, so be it.”
“Think the dirty laundry will harm Langtry Cosmetics?”
“I’ve been talking with one of the top damage-control fixers, who suggested picking a new face for Langtry. I think Anya would agree, knowing full well a model’s half-life.”
“At least some good came out of all this, when the Langtry board forced out Richard and Richie and brought in two of your picks.”
“Revenge. A dish best served cold.” She looked at the sliver of ocean she could see. “That’s what Anya tried to do. Still, I can’t imagine that even if she had married Richard and got her revenge on my mom, she would have been happy. Maybe being a mother would have finally brought her happiness.”
Tom let her sit quietly for a bit, looking at the ocean. Finally he said, “Breakfast at the omelet shop?”
She stood up. “Absolutely.”
68
Richard wasn’t used to being alone in the villa. Rosario and Hector had resigned, moved their family out of the carriage house, and found a good position on the west side of L.A. The daytime household staff had gone home. The only invitations he received to dine or golf were from his son, Leland Declues, or a few longtime friends who refused to believe the child sex abuse and murder accusations. Even some business deals he was involved with had gone south, with dubious reasons offered by the other parties. He never saw Rory and Tom anymore. He’d received an impersonal printed announcement of their marriage and heard it had been an intimate affair. Richard found himself alone a lot. Being alone in this cavernous house could do a number on him if he let it.
The trial date was set. Leland Declues had assembled a defense dream team and was confident that Richard would beat the charges. The evidence was slim and the testimony of some of the key witnesses, like Rory, would be easy to annihilate. Richard wasn’t so sure.
He indulged in a pour from a rare bottle of scotch that had belonged to his father. It was the last bottle of the case and it was nearly empty. He took the glass to his favorite place in the villa, his office, and sat in his favorite spot, his leather chair, with his feet on the desk. He lit a Cuban cigar. He’d opened one of the French doors and was taking in the gentle, late spring evening.
As much as he worked on it, he wasn’t enjoying his sensual pleasures. What he really wanted, he could never have: Anya and Boo back in his arms.
Still, he took his time finishing his drink and cigar, as was appropriate. He left his office and climbed the main staircase of the quiet mansion until he reached the third floor. He turned toward the villa’s western wing. Reaching the closed double doors to the spacious suite at the end of corridor, he went inside.
This was where Anya had lived during the time she had shared the villa with him. Wonderful years. Then she had broken his heart and moved a continent away. For years, Evelyn had perpetuated the story that it was she who maintained Anya’s rooms and house just as Anya had left them. It was part of the way that he and Evelyn had learned to work together, one hand washing the other. They’d been doing it for so long, it had become second nature. Evelyn. He missed the old girl.
He entered the walk-in closet. He took a deep breath, trying to detect Anya’s scent on the clothing. He always imagined he could. He pulled open a drawer in the lingerie cabinet. From it, he took out the claret silk nightgown, taking his time, letting it come out inch by inch until the hem swung free. He had bought the nightgown for Boo in Italy when they had circled the globe on their yearlong honeymoon. The gown had fit Anya perfectly when she was a younger teenager, but she had quickly outgrown it, shooting up much taller than Boo’s adult height.
He draped the gown across both hands and carried it to the bed, where he laid it out. He climbed onto the bed beside it and lay down, reaching to touch the silk where Anya’s thigh might have been.
He thought of Anya’s pornographic texts to him and became aroused.
He’d had two great loves in his life, Boo and Anya, and he’d lost them both.
From his pants pocket, he took out his Para-Ordnance pistol. With one hand still resting on the silk gown, he put the gun in his mouth with the other and pulled the trigger.
69
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so much stuff in all my life.”
Donna’s voice reached Rory where she was working in the hall closet of Anya’s house, standing among piles of things she’d sorted. Rory went to her aunt, who was in Anya’s gigantic closet off the master bedroom. Rory stopped in the closet’s doorway and shook her head.
“I know,” Donna said. “It looks like a department store in here.”
“Auntie, thanks so much for helping me. I’ve put this off too long. Tom suggested just hiring somebody to clean out Anya’s house. Makes sense, but I want to do it myself.”
Several weeks had passed since Richard’s suicide. Rory and Tom had respectfully attended the funeral and stayed a suitable amount of time at the reception that followed at Richard’s club, but neither of them had shed a tear.
“It’s your house now, Rory,” Donna said. “Thank goodness your mom had the sense to have put her affairs in order.”
“My mom…” Rory let the words hang in the air as she stared into the closet at nothing. “It’s been months since she died and I still think about her all the time. I find myself saying things that she said. Remembering her tidbits of advice, like never, ever go to bed with your makeup on.”
“I think about her a lot too, honey. I still think about our mom every day, Evie’s and mine, and she’s been gone for twenty years.”
“I guess you never get over missing your mom.” Rory sniffed and sighed. She started giggling when she heard her aunt’s stomach loudly growl, breaking the sad moment.
Donna laughed too. “Where is Graehme with that lunch order he went to pick up?”
“He’ll be back soon. He’s been such a great help. I’ve never had a personal assistant before, and now I’d be lost without him.” Rory looked down at herself. “I’m filthy. I’ve got the stuff from the hall closet in three piles: auction, Salvation Army, and garbage.”
“I’ve done the same in the office.” Donna freed a floor-length leather coat from a packed closet rod. “The store tags are still on this. This room is packed with clothes that Anya never wore.”
“We’ll take the tags off. The clothes will bring more at auction if people think she wore them. Anya was always giving away clothes. Her housekeepers and their families were among the best-dressed people in town. Just like my mom’s.”
“Speaking of your mom, are you going to participate in the Evelyn Langtry film festival her fan club is putting on?”
Rory was trying different looks with a Hermès scarf she’d found. “Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Her movies are more popular than ever.”
“She would’ve loved that.” Rory took off the scarf and dropped it onto a chair. “I’m starting another auction pile here.” She opened a drawer that was crammed with scarves. “I heard something she wouldn’t have been happy about. Richie and Paige have said arrivederci to Mom’s Tuscan-themed décor. They’ve gutted the villa, getting it ready for them to move in.”
“Not letting any moss grow under their feet, are they?”
Rory tossed more scarves o
nto the chair. “They ought to tear that place down after everything’s that’s gone on there.”
Donna used both hands to lift a bunch of clothes off a rack. She carried them to a rolling garment rack outside the door. “Have you decided what you’re going to do with this house?”
“Not sure. Tom and I have talked about what to do. Part of me wants to sell everything and be done with it, but it’s such a great house and location. My beach condo is cramped with both of us living there now.”
Donna came back into the closet. “I think Anya would have liked you and Tom living here.”
Rory shrugged. “Maybe. She was hard to figure out.”
“I still don’t see how she could have planned to marry Richard.” Donna shuddered. “I wonder if it was more about money to support her lifestyle than revenge on your mom. You’d think that Anya could have done better than going back to Richard, a man who molested her as a child.”
“I’ve asked around about that. Turns out it’s not that uncommon for the abused to go back to their abuser. It makes me so sad to think about it.”
Donna nodded. They both fell silent.
After a minute, Donna said, “I don’t have the strength for this on an empty stomach. I’m going to have a bite of the Luna bar in my purse. You want some?”
“No, thanks.”
Donna left. Rory bundled up the scarves and carried them out. When she returned, she looked around, trying to decide where to focus her energies next. She peered up at shelves crammed with shoe boxes that reached the ceiling. A rolling, library-style ladder provided access to the higher shelves. She climbed the ladder, grabbed a stack of boxes, came down, and set them on the floor. After several more trips, in the back corner of the highest shelf, hidden by boxes stacked in front of it, she found a ragged cardboard box, brittle with age. It was the only thing she’d found in the house that hinted of history.
She carefully carried down the large flat box, afraid it would fall apart. She set it on the carpet and plopped cross-legged in front of it. She took off the lid and leaned back onto her hands, stunned by what she had found.
She lifted out one of the red leather boots. The silver-toned zipper down the back was tarnished, but the soles showed little wear and the red hue was still bright. She took out the mate and stood them side by side, facing her.
She was transported back to her Uncle Dave’s vegetable garden, that hot afternoon shortly after her and Anya’s fourteenth birthday. She had been pulling weeds, alone with her thoughts, starting to become accustomed to solitude after never having experienced it, even in the womb. Then she’d seen Anya, picking her way through the vegetables, beautiful, chic, and arrogant, wearing the very same boots that Rory had wanted for her birthday, the ones that their mother had deemed too extravagant.
Rory remembered watching the boots at eye level while Anya had delivered her message. “I came to tell you something. You can’t live in the villa. I don’t want you at the Polytechnic School either. I don’t want you around me. Just stay away from me. Get it?”
It was the moment that Rory had begun to hate her sister, launching the anger that would fester for years in Rory’s heart.
Anya had gotten what she’d wanted, as usual. Rory didn’t have anything to do with her or the Villa del Sol d’Oro for ages. Rory now understood that Anya had spurned her one true friend when Anya had needed a friend the most. She had made Rory hate her, knowing exactly how to do it, to save her sister from the abuse that she had encountered at the grand hilltop estate.
Rory pulled off her tennis shoes. The boots’ old zippers barely gave. She slipped her feet inside, zipped the boots over the legs of her jeans, and stood. She walked to a full-length mirror. She felt the presence of her big sister, older by six minutes, taller by two inches, fatally troubled, and braver than she’d ever realized.
Rory wiggled her toes. Even with socks, the boots were too big.
For my husband,
Charles G. Emley, Jr.,
A love whose burning light
Will warm the winter night…
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you, as always, to my longtime, wonderful editor, Dana Isaacson. It’s always a joy to talk about stories and share lots of laughs with you. I deeply appreciate and am elevated by your unflagging faith in this book and in my work.
Special words of appreciation for my agent, Robin Rue, her excellent assistant, Beth Miller, and everyone at Writers House.
I’m grateful to the Random House/Alibi team for their support. Special thanks to Scott Biel for the fabulous cover design and April Flores and Kim Cowser for savvy PR and marketing. A big hat’s off to Dianna Stirpe for the excellent copy editing work.
Thanks to the various medical professionals who helped me get the details right, especially D.P. Lyle, MD.
For the readers who like to track down actual locations mentioned in books, the Pasadena neighborhood of Five Points, the Killingsworth Building, and the Villa del Sol d’Oro are products of my imagination.
Several friends played pivotal roles in the development of this book, reading messy early drafts and rendering wise advice. Thank you: Jayne Anderson, Jackie Baller, Ann Escue, Mary Goss, Leslie Pape, and Debra Shatford.
A special debt of gratitude to my pal, Toni Johnston, who not only read numerous drafts of this book but was also its unwavering champion during all the years that I thought it would forever stay in a bottom drawer of my desk.
I also acknowledge my father, William Pugh, and his end-of-life experience that partially served as an inspiration for this book.
And last, but never least, thanks to my husband, Charlie, my safety net, my love, for all the big and little things.
BY DIANNE EMLEY
The First Cut
Cut to the Quick
The Deepest Cut
The Night Visitor
Dianne Emley is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author and has received critical acclaim for her Detective Nan Vining thrillers including The First Cut and Love Kills and the Iris Thorne mysteries including Pushover. Her short fiction has been published in Literary Pasadena among other anthologies. Her books have been translated into six languages. She has held jobs as varied as drill press operator, California Department of Consumer Affairs complaint handler, clothing boutique buyer, egg and poultry industry marketer, software company sales manager, and technical writer. A Los Angeles native, she lives in the Central California wine country with her husband, Charlie, and is gleefully happy with her favorite and final profession: crime writer.
www.DianneEmley.com
Facebook.com/DianneEmleyAuthor
@DianneEmley
goodreads.com/author/show/83073.Dianne_Emley
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