Dead Memories (Carol Ann Baker Crime Book 2)
Page 26
Bryan lifted his bottle to hers.
‘You okay sitting on these stools?’ he asked her.
‘Just fine.’ She straightened up like it pained her. After the lighting strike she had spent a couple of nights in the hospital. But she looked in good shape. It wasn’t like her hair was scorched off.
‘We can take a booth if you prefer.’
‘I don’t prefer,’ she said then softened up. ‘But thanks for asking. Anyway you look worse off than me. What’s up with you?’
‘Nothing much,’ Bryan said. ‘I just feel like…Well, you know, I wish this case of mine hadn’t decided to leave so soon. I really felt like I didn’t get to the bottom of her story. But if she feels well, then who am I to argue?’
Susan nodded. ‘I can sympathize. Sometimes, it’s the same for me.’
Bryan looked up. She meant police cases.
‘When someone leaves the picture you feel like something is missing.’ She shook her head. ‘You can’t believe this is the way it ends.’
There was a buzzing sound coming from his pocket.
‘Excuse me.’
Bryan reached down to fish his phone out of his jacket. He had a new email message and had to tap one-handed through a few screens to get it.
‘Huh! This will amuse you,’ he said. ‘I wrote to a celebrity last week, trying to find out if there was any connection between her and J.K.,’ he laughed. ’J.K was convinced that she knew her. And I got a reply. Finally, the agent of a real, 100% genuine Hollywood celebrity has written back to me. Get this. Cassandra Stephenson. Do you know who that is?’
Susan stood up so fast her stool flipped back over. And she stood there, her eyes burning, panting like a mountain lion about to attack.
‘What does she say?’ Susan asked.
Cassandra
She woke up to the sound of her phone ringing, muffled somewhere, in the stratum of silk pillows and bedding surrounding her. Terence was in Morocco, thank goodness, and for the next 48 hours, she didn’t have to do a damn thing except for sleep and maybe smoke a little weed, although she had already done too much of both.
She patted the bedding until the phone stopped ringing, but decided to sit up anyway. She wanted a ‘spritz’, as Terence called them, a sparkling water with a dash of fresh orange and cranberry juice. Elinda made very good spritzes and usually decorated the plate beneath with flowers. Although, whenever Terence was away, Elinda seemed to run out of hibiscus flowers...and plates, sometimes ice cubes too. Passive-aggressive bitch.
Well, Screw Elinda. If Cassandra Stephenson felt like a spritz with a Goddamn hibiscus flower on the side, she was going to get one. She didn’t let Terence McCoy do the things he did all night to be denied a spritz by an illegally employed maid!
Cassandra leaned over towards the Louis XIV style house phone Terence had installed on her side of the bed and lifted the receiver. But before she had the chance to berate the staff, her mobile phone beeped again and Cassandra replaced the porcelain phone into the cradle.
It was her agent. He had left a voice mail.
‘I forwarded you an email. It’s about that person you’ve never heard of, only now the cops are involved and we don’t need them sniffing around. Terence does not need them...sniffing around. They sent a photo now, to help refresh your memory. Take a look, if you can do that much?’
Cassandra moaned and hung up. She rolled onto her back, squinted up at the screen and tapped on the link.
It was from some guy in Indiana, he called himself a social worker and he had sent her a photo of Lilly with short black hair and no makeup. The guy had written something about his being sure Cassandra might know her, that she was in trouble, that they needed her help.
‘Oh my god!’ She rolled over to take a closer look. ‘What the hell has she done to herself? Black hair, Lilly, really?’
She sat up and typed one-fingered on the screen.
‘What the hell has she done now???’
But then paused. Her agent was right, with Bobby Alvin in jail for the murder of that agent from Wilcox’s, the last thing they needed was to get involved in anything to do with the cops. She backspaced through the message and retyped.
‘Sorry. Don’t know her.’
Whatever the hell Lilly had got herself into this time, she’d just have to get herself out of it, alone.
‘Have a nice day!’ she added. Smiley face.
She flung the phone down into the layers of silk and then flung herself down with it. But now the house phone was out of reach.
‘Elinda!’ she shouted out at the top of her lungs. ‘Elinda!’
There was no answer.
Cassandra Stephenson was too busy for this nonsense. She wanted her damn spritz and she wanted it now...
Thanks for reading the next installment of Carol Ann’s experiences.
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While the main aim of these stories is to entertain, I have also tired to create here a tale with some social realism, to confront the nature of sexual exploitation and violence, and the way it contaminates all the people who come into contact with it.