Dead Shot

by Annie Solomon

Luckily, her own safety was the best argument for doing so, and Gillian bought it. She closeted herself in Maddie’s room, and though he didn’t know what she said, when they came out around six, Maddie had her suitcase with her.

  Ray was standing in front of the TV, gazing intently at the picture instead of Maddie’s closed bedroom door. Long lines at the Gray doubled and tripled around themselves as people waited to be among the first to see the controversial dead shots. Off to the side, protesters still carried placards and banners, harassing the line, but they weren’t keeping anyone away.

  “I guess what they say is true,” Gillian said, watching a reporter stick a microphone in the face of a woman in line.

  “No such thing as bad publicity,” Ray said, completing her thought.

  He switched off the set and, without being asked, relieved Maddie of her suitcase. He told the guard outside to call for a bellhop and a cab, and alerted Landowe she was ready to be escorted out.

  Maddie eyed him, and he faced her, doubts still circling. The fact that she was leaving was a check in the pro column. “Look,” he said, albeit reluctantly, “suspicion goes with the territory.”

  “Is that supposed to be an apology?”

  “Of a sort.”

  She pursed her lips, thought it over. Glanced at Gillian as though weighing her options for and against forgiveness.

  Gillian held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. You’re on your own here.”

  Maddie turned back to Ray. “I’ll think about it,” she said, and swept past him. At the doorway she turned, gave Gillian a rueful smile. “Take care of yourself, goofball.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do.”

  She cut Ray one last glance and turned to go. “He does have a nice ass,” she said over her shoulder. And then she disappeared down the hallway.

  Landowe put Maddie in the back of a cab, where she sat quietly and let herself be driven to the airport. She even let the cabdriver unload her suitcase once they arrived. She paid him and tipped generously. If the police came snooping around, she wanted him to remember her.

  A baggage handler approached her. “Check your bags, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She wheeled her own suitcase through the glass doors into the building. Passed the crowded check-in lines for Southwest, and followed the signs for “baggage area,” then “transportation.” Stepping onto the escalator, she rode two levels down, then exited the building and walked to the taxi stand.

  The first cab in line pulled up. The driver—a Sikh in turban and beard—swung her suitcase into the trunk while she got into the back.

  When he returned, she gave him the name of a downtown hotel not too far from Gillian’s. If she had to, Mad-die could walk between the two. And knowing what she knew, she might have to.

  The cab slid away from the curb, and Maddie sank against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to let Ray Pearce chase her out of town. Not when she had so much riding on what happened there.

  33

  An hour after Maddie left, Ray put Gillian in the limo and took her to the Grays’ for dinner.

  A growing crowd of protesters and paparazzi had gathered outside the estate gates, which had been lifted off their rusted hinges and reconfigured on new ones that would allow the gates to close. The two men Carlson had placed at the estate had requested backup, so in addition, Ray brought Landowe along.

  For once, Gillian seemed to welcome the extra protection.

  The limo crawled through the photographers and placard carriers to the slowly opening gates. A couple of papa razzi slipped inside the property, and Landowe jumped out to round them up while others on the security team held the rest of the crowd back.

  Meanwhile, the limo crept forward to the entrance, and Ray escorted Gillian inside. A maid showed them into the living room, where Chip presided over a bar cart, and Genevra gave Gillian a disapproving once-over, lingering on the thigh-high skirt and the knife-blade bootheels.

  “Streetwalking today?” Genevra asked.

  Gillian grinned. “Not in four-inch heels.”

  Ray sensed a heightened awareness in the room, as if everyone knew chaos reigned just outside the walls, but no one wanted to acknowledge it. He took up his position at the doorway, where he could keep an eye on the room as well as the hall.

  Gillian followed, grabbed on to his arm, and held fast. “Ray is joining us for dinner,” she announced.

  He stared at her. “I don’t think so.”

  “Of course you are. Genevra’s dinners are legendary.”

  “The man is working, Gillian,” Chip said.

  “He can’t protect you and cut his duck at the same time,” Genevra added.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. Ray can do anything.”

  He looked from the gleam of amusement in Gillian’s eyes to her grandparents. “Will you excuse us?” He pulled her out of the room. “This why you didn’t kick when I brought Landowe?”

  “He can stand guard duty for one meal.”

  Could his hands actually meet around her neck? Were two hands even necessary?

  “Look, I need the distraction,” Gillian said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be question, lecture, question, lecture all night.”

  “Nothing like the bodyguard sitting down to a cozy meal with the whole family to deflect attention off you.”

  She shrugged. “Food’s good.” She grinned. “Come on, Ray, help me out. Call Landowe on your Jack Bauer radio and tell him to take up his post here.”

  Ray should have demurred. Not only was dining with his client unprofessional, but also getting caught in the Gray cross fire wasn’t his idea of a pleasant evening. But he had a few questions that only the Grays could answer. And it wasn’t likely he’d get a better chance to ask them.

  Which is why he came to be seated across from Gillian at the Gray’s eighteenth-century walnut dining table, while Landowe stood guard at the room’s entrance.

  “Everything all right?” Chip asked Ray in a lowered voice. And then with a fast look at his wife, “We understand there’s been another—”

  “Charles,” Genevra barked.

  Ray took the measure of the moment: Murder and mayhem did not make for appropriate dinner conversation. So he left out all the detail. “Everything is under control.”

  “Well, except for the second murder, that is,” Gillian said, undermining the silent pact he’d just made with her grandparents.

  “We will not discuss it at the table,” Genevra said.

  “She was, what, sixteen? Or was it fifteen? Which was it, Ray? Fifteen or sixteen?”

  “Sixteen,” Ray said curtly. “The duck is delicious, Mrs. Gray.”

  “We have it sent from a farm outside Jackson,” Genevra said.

  “They hack the necks off first,” Gillian said. “At least, I think they hack the necks off first.” She turned to her grandmother. “Do they hack the necks off, or do you take care of that personally?”

  Ray remembered Harley’s words about Mrs. Gray and her refusal to talk about her daughter’s murder or admit there might be anything wrong with her granddaughter. That damn cold bitch, Harley had called her. Ray cut a glance at her. Cold, yes. But there was also something in her face Ray recognized. Defiance. A refusal to give in. Not unlike someone else at the table.

  “I do it personally.” Genevra gave Gillian a direct look. “If you want a job done right . . .” Calmly, she put a forkful of duck in her mouth. It was deftly done, graceful and dainty. Her mouth closed around it, and she chewed. Swallowed. Laid the fork down. “I thought you’d like to know that the art auction is going well. We’ve had a wonderful response and hope to raise quite a lot of money for the new hospital wing.”

  Gotta admire the way she declined to rise to Gillian’s bait.

  Ray did some mental dancing. The art auction was the charity event at the end of next week.

  “Genevra’s the event chair,” Chip explai
ned to Ray. “She’s done a remarkable job, too.”

  “Even I donated something,” Gillian said. “Big Date. Have you seen it?”

  Ray thought back to the coffee table book. Couldn’t place it.

  “Blonde in a tub of bloody water. Lots of lotions and soaps lying around.”

  Oh, yeah. That one.

  A beat. The two Grays looked momentarily horror-struck.

  “Just kidding.” Gillian smirked.

  “I asked for the flowers,” Genevra said.

  “And that’s what I sent.”

  Chip cleared his throat. “Where are you from, Ray?”

  Here it came. Deflection time. “Originally? Long Island.”

  Genevra asked, “Do you still have family there?”

  “My mother died when I was in college.”

  “And your father?” Leave it to Gillian to ask the question he didn’t want to answer.

  “Out of the picture,” Ray said at last. “The less said the better.”

  Gillian brightened. “Really? I had no idea we had so much in common.”

  Ray sensed another level of tension in the room. It intrigued him. In all the file information Ray had read, Gillian’s father had never been mentioned. Not even his identity. Briefly he pondered using the short silence to ask his questions, but it felt like piling on. And Genevra spoke first.

  “How long have you been in Nashville?”

  Her effort to change the subject did not go unchallenged. “We all have fathers,” Gillian said. “Not everyone has a father no one talks about.”

  “There’s little to say,” Genevra snapped. “Your father is dead.”

  “How convenient for me,” Gillian said.

  Ray looked between the two women. Clearly a sore subject.

  “More club soda?” Chip asked Ray, whose glass was already full.

  “I’m fine.”

  Chip held up his own glass. “You don’t drink?”

  “No, sir.” He didn’t explain. These people were already burdened with their own pasts. They didn’t need his as well. “I went to college in Birmingham,” Ray said instead. “Played hockey for the Chargers. You played football, didn’t you? Vanderbilt?”

  “Quarterback.” Chip beamed. He plunged into a story about being selected SEC Player of the Year, and the conversation moved to safer ground.

  Dessert was served in the library, a room with polished wood and studded leather. Shelves of books lined one wall. An ancient globe sat on a stand in one corner, a grandfather clock in another. In the shuffle between locations, Ray excused himself to talk to Landowe.

  The night appeared quiet, the estate as well. “Some of the protesters have drifted off,” Landowe told him. “But a few of the ’razzi are still there.”

  “Everything else set?”

  “Just give the word.”

  Gillian appeared and glided over to Landowe. “Can I get you anything? Cigarette? Scotch?” She put her arm through his and leaned in. “A little weed?”

  Landowe shot Ray a fast glance. “No, thank you.”

  “Good.” She grinned and let him go. “Because I was kidding about the weed.”

  Ray ignored her shenanigans. “Need a break?” he asked Landowe.

  “I’m fine.”

  He took Gillian by the arm and escorted her back to the library. “Leave Landowe alone.”

  “He’s a grown-up. He can take care of himself.” She thrust a coffee cup at him. One of those dainty china things that feel like they’d break in your hand. “Black as coal,” she said, “and tastes the same. Just the way you like it.”

  He sampled the hot liquid. It was good and strong.

  A maid was serving some kind of cake. He refused a piece. Wondered how many times the Grays had sat down to dinner in their own home with the help.

  In deference to that rarity, and to the fact that he felt more in control, he remained standing. The room was quiet, the tick of the grandfather clock filling the silence. Gillian’s grandparents were braced on matching leather armchairs that were deep enough to have been thrones. They appeared armored and protected, and that was the best position they’d been in all night. He took his shot.

  “I went for a ride today,” he said to no one in particular. “Out Highway 100.”

  Three pairs of eyes suddenly focused on him.

  “I saw the house.” No one asked what house he was talking about. “If Holland moved there today, she would be in the middle of suburban sprawl. But back then, she was in the middle of nowhere. Remote. Cut off. Made me wonder.”

  “We aren’t going to talk about this.” Genevra’s face was sharp enough to kill.

  “Wonder what?” Gillian asked.

  He turned to her. “Wonder why she left this beautiful house. Her family. The safety net she had right here.”

  “Safety net?” Gillian muttered. “Cage more likely.”

  Gillian was focused on him, so she didn’t see the tiny flinch in her grandmother’s face.

  Genevra set her coffee cup on the arm of her chair. “Holland was always wild. Never listened to anyone.”

  “But she came here to get away from the wild side,” Ray said. “At least, that’s what the press reported.” He ignored the scowl on Gillian’s face, the dagger stares from Chip and Genevra. He shrugged. “The media rarely gets anything right, so . . .” Ray lifted his free hand. “I wondered if there was some other reason she came home.”

  “She came home for me.” Gillian’s eyes glittered. “To give me something better than a drugged-out party life.”

  Ray sipped his coffee again. “Well, she’d had you for, what—six, seven years? She didn’t seem to care about her celebrity lifestyle in all that time. Why the sudden change of heart?”

  Genevra rose, overturning her cup and saucer. The cup landed on the rug, but the saucer hit the strip between the rug and the hardwood floor, and shattered.

  A moment of silence, as if the broken china represented everything wrong in the room. One violent act that smashed the world into pieces.

  Chip leaped to his feet and called for the maid. The uniformed woman who’d served dinner scurried in, threw up her hands, and scurried back out again. She ran back with a dish towel and proceeded to mop up the mess while everyone looked on stoically.

  The subject of Holland Gray was lost in the commotion, and when Ray looked up, Gillian was gone.

  34

  He found her upstairs in her bedroom, Landowe at the door. “It’s okay,” Ray told him. “I’ll take it from here. Get the limo ready.”

  Landowe left, and Ray slipped into the room. Gillian was bending over a thick scrapbook. He leaned against the door and watched her ignore him.

  “You ever go back to your mother’s house?”

  “No.”

  He quirked his brows skeptically. “Not like you not to confront your demons head-on.”

  Her head snapped up. She scowled at him. “I don’t need to go back to remember it. To see it.” She held his glance a moment. “Okay, so I’m chicken. Everyone’s allowed one small yellow streak.”

  But he wouldn’t call her reticence cowardice. It was a way of keeping her distance so she could re-create the reality in her photographs. Manipulate the memories. Objectify them, maybe. Dull the impact and make them easier to live with.

  He moved into the room, sat on the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t call it small. I’d call it barely visible.”

  He’d spoken gently but her eyes glared. “Why all the questions about my mother anyway?”

  “Just wondering,” he said mildly, not a little surprised at her disapproval.

  “It upset my grandparents.” Not to mention her.

  “So let me get this straight. It’s okay for you to upset them, but they’re off-limits to anyone else?”

  “Maybe,” she said grudgingly. “Something like that.”

  “Why, Gillian Gray.” He clapped a hand to his chest in mock astonishment. “You do have a heart.”

  “Very funny.�
�

  He nodded toward the scrapbook. “What’s this?”

  She opened the book. The top of the spine had separated from the binding because the book was so fat. “My grandmother still thinks she kept this from me, but I’ve known about it since I was eleven.” Slowly, she turned the pages.

  Articles about Holland mixed with magazine pages and photographs. Holland as a teenager in sale circulars for local department stores that no longer existed. Later, in catalogs for Bergdorf and Neiman Marcus. And still later, in the New York Times style section and Women’s Wear Daily. He’d seen some of the covers in the file, the public stuff, but the book contained private things as well. Keepsakes. A broken bra strap from a Valentino show in Rome. An invitation to Fashion Week in Paris. Photographs of friends and colleagues.

  “See what a liar my grandmother is?” Gillian said. “She pretends she hated my mother, but she kept every last scrap Holland saved.”

  Ray fingered the yellowed newspaper articles, the faded pictures of Fashion Week and the old Polaroids of photo shoots. “How many times have you looked through this?”

  “Thousands?” She gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “A lot. I used to go through the book and pick my father out from the pictures.”

  She showed him a behind-the-scene photo of a fashion shoot. Holland was in front of a glittery backdrop. A sandy-haired man straddled a camera on a tripod. “I liked his long hair.”

  She flipped another few pages, came to another candid shot of Holland, this one with her hair in rollers, laughing in a chair in front of a makeup mirror. A man with a hair-dryer stood over her. “Or maybe it’s the hairdresser.”

  “You know who they are?”

  She shook her head. “Not their names.”

  “How about your father?”

  “Oh, his name I know. It’s dead.”

  “Your father’s name is—”

  “Dead. At least, that’s all I ever got from anyone about him. Mommy, who’s my daddy? Your daddy’s dead, sweetie. Grandmother, who’s my daddy? Your daddy’s dead, dear.” She shrugged.

  “Didn’t you ever try to find out?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. Who wouldn’t? But after several tens of thousands, I decided dead was as good a name as any. I mean, what’s the point? He couldn’t sweep in and take me away anyway.” Wistfully, she ran her finger over her mother’s face in the photograph. “I like her like this. No makeup, hair in curlers. Laughing. She was so pretty.”