Chasing Venus

by Diana Dempsey

  His expression was fierce. “They’d have greater faith in me once they understood the whole story. They’d know I did as much as I possibly could to help an innocent victim.”

  Several phrases came to Sheila’s mind to describe Annette Rowell but “innocent victim” wasn’t one of them. Instead she felt like the victim here, her work, her reputation on the line because this man was being hoodwinked by a woman who, in the space of a few weeks, had stolen his heart as well as his common sense. The realization cut her like a blade.

  “Reid, you’re destroying the show. You’re destroying yourself.” All the months, the years of thwarted love gathered like soldiers behind her, pushing her toward a front line from which she couldn’t retreat. “And you, you’re the one doing it. For some—” She threw out her hand, searching for an appropriately damning epithet. “—murderous slut who’s convinced you she’s as pure as the driven snow. Honestly, how much of an idiot can you be?”

  She would not wait for an answer. Nor would she stand by and watch him destroy everything they’d both worked so hard for. She spun on her heels and headed for the phone.

  *

  Annie, strolling, did her best to blend in with the crowd. The rational part of her brain knew she did not stand out among the runners, hikers, and dog walkers enjoying a Saturday afternoon on Runyon Canyon, a chaparral-covered hillside a few miles west of the Hollywood sign. Yet with her blonded hair, unfamiliar makeup, and new Gap jeans, she felt like a neon advertisement screaming Look at Me!

  Reid had left her off an hour before at the Mulholland Drive entrance to the park. “Just hang out. Hike, take in the view, do what everybody else is doing. Don’t take off your cap and don’t talk to anybody unless you have to. I take a walk there every once in a while so nobody will think it’s odd when I show up. If I’m not at the overlook by seven, you know what to do.”

  Please let Reid show up. Annie walked on, tugging on the bill of her baseball cap and mouthing a silent prayer to any and all angels keeping watch over lone women being unjustly accused.

  Though at the moment she couldn’t care less about it, she forced herself to look at the vista that the overlook afforded. The Los Angeles basin sprawled obscenely, a gaudy metropolis of low-slung white and beige and gray buildings interspersed with the occasional six-story-tall billboard. Late afternoon sun glinted off the rooftops through a shimmering layer of haze. In the far distance she could see the ocean, and the soft mound of Catalina Island.

  She glanced at her watch and tried to keep a grip on her nerves. 5:07 PM. Reid was due within two hours.

  She understood the strategy he had mapped out. It was risky but there was risk whatever they did. She agreed that she couldn’t simply stay put while he approached his colleague Sheila. If Sheila decided to blow the whistle, SWAT teams would descend on Reid’s home and truck and office and Annie would be done for. This way at least Annie had a chance to escape.

  She had to wonder about Sheila. Reid had been tight-lipped about her. All he’d divulged was that they’d worked together from Crimewatch’s pilot episode and that he trusted her to come through for him. Annie didn’t care to probe how that deep trust might have been forged. Clearly the two of them shared a powerful bond if he was willing to confide in her on a matter of this magnitude.

  Annie was allowing herself a morbid interlude in which to imagine just how intimate Reid and Sheila’s connection might be when she noticed that someone was standing at her left staring at her profile.

  It was a young man. She looked toward her right, intending to ignore him.

  Then he spoke. “That baseball cap isn’t working.”

  She forced herself not to react. She had a vision of him pointing at her face screaming You! You! You’re the killer!—after which she’d be wrestled to the ground by an irate mob.

  “I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind,” she said, still looking away.

  “No such luck. I know who you are.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sheila had barely grabbed up the kitchen phone when Reid was suddenly beside her. He lay his hand over hers and forced her to push the receiver back into its cradle. “Sheila, listen to me.”

  His voice was soothing but she was too enraged to be lulled. “No.” She tried to shake him off but he had her by the shoulders now, he was holding her back against that body of his, he was calling up all the memories she treasured, the fantasies she still held dear. Still in his arms, she twisted around. Rage rose within her like a geyser, loosening her tongue. “Are you sleeping with that woman?”

  Apparently she’d shocked him, for his eyes flew open and he let her go. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  She thought for sure he wouldn’t answer, and part of her wasn’t really sure she wanted him to, but then he looked away and said, as if to himself, “I guess you do have the right to ask that question, since you need to know that I’m thinking clearly about all this.” Then he looked again at her. “No, I am not.”

  It felt like a small victory. Annette Rowell had not gotten that out of him at least. In that regard, if in no other, she and that manipulator were on a level field.

  Reid seemed to sense she had softened. Again he grasped her by the arms, very gently this time, and gazed into her eyes. “Sheila, she is innocent. I know it. She has been framed and she has been through hell. I want to do the right thing here.”

  “The right thing is to tell the police how innocent you think she is and then let them decide if the whole matter should go away.”

  “You know it’s not that easy.”

  No, it was not that easy. Life was near impossible most times and difficult all the rest. She shook herself free. “I cannot believe you bought that woman’s story hook, line and sinker.”

  His voice hardened. “And I cannot believe that you are unwilling to consider the possibility that she is a victim. Even when I tell you so.”

  “And that is supposed to be good enough? When it flies in the face of everything else?”

  “Sheila, please!” He shook his head as if she were exasperating him. “Have I ever told you anything that wasn’t true?”

  “The truth as you believe it to be,” she muttered, but still, she knew he had not. He was scrupulous with the truth. He was the sort of man you did not ask if he loved you unless you wanted to spend the rest of the night weeping. She moved further away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “All right, you want to believe this idiocy, you go right ahead. But I still want to know what this has to do with me.”

  “I want your help.”

  “You said that before. But what exactly does that mean?”

  “You know I’ve never asked you for anything.”

  She choked on a bitter laugh. That was not precisely accurate. He asked her, daily, to work beside him, to be his friend, to keep his confidence. This was all the while he knew she loved him desperately. That was asking quite a bit in her opinion, but she guessed that now he’d ask for something more.

  And he did. “I want you to let her stay with you,” he said, and then he explained why. It was preposterous, all of it, and it convinced her of only one thing: that Reid’s involvement with this fiendish woman had already changed him, had already made him scheme and lie, had already sent him on a spiral that could only end in disaster.

  She would not participate in that. Nor would she allow herself to be a victim of collateral damage. So, after he had talked himself out and she had given him his due by listening, her jaw clenched in fury the entire time, she delivered her answer. “No.”

  *

  I know who you are. Annie froze as she listened to the man’s declaration hang in the warm air.

  She screwed up her courage and glanced at him. He was scruffy, dark-haired, in his mid-twenties. Wearing dirt-streaked jeans and an expression she couldn’t call friendly. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’d really rather be left alone.”

  He shook his head with what looked like disgust. “Ju
st what I should’ve expected. You actresses are all such snots.”

  She released a breath. He doesn’t know who I am.

  “That sitcom of yours was shitty anyway. Maybe if you bothered to respond to the fans who wrote to you, like me, it wouldn’t have gotten cancelled. Now you can have your effing privacy.” He stalked away, shaking his head and giving her the occasional backward glance as if now he’d really seen it all. Then he disappeared down the incline.

  Fine. He’d mistaken her for some actress whose name was now mud in his book. She could live with that.

  Annie resumed her meander down the hill. Eventually time worked its magic and she calmed down. Briefly. Because in short order the same old worries returned. Reid not showing up. Being forced to move to Plan B. Being once again on her own.

  It was quite a transition from the wanting-to-be-alone Annie she’d been for the last year, until Reid appeared on the scene. Annie was unsettled enough without speculating what that change in her attitude might mean.

  6 o’clock came and went with no sign of him. She told herself it was too soon to get nervous.

  At 6:30 it was harder to make that argument. At 6:45, with the sun below the horizon and the ranks of the hikers thinning, it was impossible.

  He still has fifteen minutes, she told herself. But as the seconds ticked away, paranoia tightened its icy grip on her mind. Sheila’s blown your cover. Simpson’s probably already gotten the call. Reid’s in custody and they know you’ve got to be around here somewhere …

  Even darker scenarios swam to the surface. Maybe Reid never went to Sheila. Maybe this was his way of getting rid of Annie. Maybe he’d had enough, decided it was fun playing the rebel for a few days but now it was time to get back to reality. Maybe there was a Crimewatch crew staking out the motel in Hollywood that he’d told her to walk to. Maybe he was planning to stage her takedown and she was falling into his trap like a seal pup who didn’t see the big wide net until she was trapped inside it.

  Her digital watch clicked to 7:00. Still no Reid. This was it—the moment he had told her to abandon the overlook and head for the motel. Those were his instructions and she knew he would get seriously upset if she ignored them. I call the shots, he’d reminded her more than once.

  She halted on the path that led downhill to the canyon’s Hollywood gate, reluctant to stay and reluctant to go. Where is he? Something must have happened to him. I can’t believe he would betray me, I can’t believe it. But where is he?

  She had to decide what to do. Soon it would be chilly and dark. Did she want to be in this canyon then? Who knew what nocturnal creatures would emerge from their lairs, both animal and human. Nor did she really want to go to the motel. What if it was a set-up? Maybe that was irrational; maybe her addled mind was playing tricks on her. But could she risk it?

  Annie forced herself to make a decision. She would head for the motel. If, when she arrived in Hollywood, something didn’t feel right, she would find the bus station. She had cash in her carryall. She could get the hell out of Dodge.

  She put her plan into action. As the sun’s rays slanted soft light on the city, she left the canyon and walked downhill on the residential street Reid had told her to use. She didn’t allow herself to think or to speculate. Her goal was to make it to Hollywood and then make her call on how to proceed.

  Eventually the street let out onto famed Hollywood Boulevard, lined with souvenir shops and prowled by tourists and local hucksters alike. To her left, a few blocks away, was a sizable intersection. She moved toward it. The sign for the large cross street read LA BREA.

  The name reverberated in her memory. Of course. La Brea was a major boulevard which ran north/south through the city.

  She stopped, remembering. She used to drive along La Brea when she went to Frankie’s parties. He lived several blocks east of it, near the Wilshire Country Club, in the Hancock Park area. As the crow flies, she realized, Frankie’s house was probably only a mile or so away.

  Annie stood still, the night wind whistling past her, and pondered.

  *

  Sheila refused to listen to any more of it. More than an hour was quite enough. So she excused herself from Reid, walked into her bathroom, closed the door in his face, and perched on the porcelain tub, trying to decide what to do.

  A few decisions were set in stone. She would not allow that woman to stay with her, no matter how many times Reid asked. Too damn bad that he had no other “workable options.” She would not allow her own reputation to be compromised. She would preserve the integrity of the program, as much as she was able. And she would not lie if posed a direct question by an officer of the law.

  Yet Reid had succeeded in shaking her certainty that Annette Rowell was guilty. Sheila was now willing to allow that she might, she might, be innocent. So Sheila had agreed not to alert the authorities to what she could guess of Rowell’s whereabouts.

  Not yet, anyway. And in her heart of hearts, she knew that was a concession she was making much more for Reid than for Annette Rowell. For that woman, she would do nothing. For Reid …

  Sheila sighed and levered herself up from the tub’s edge. She moved to the sink, rested her hands on its cool surface, and raised her head to the mirror that fronted the medicine cabinet. She might have been displeased with her appearance before but she would be quite happy to trade that for what stared back at her now.

  What had become of her? she wondered. When had she turned into a woman who would go so far for love? She had scoffed at that concept years before, when she was all about getting herself and the rest of her family out of India and forging a new life in the United States. She was proud of all she had achieved but it didn’t do much to salve the ache inside, to fill the hollowness that came from all those nights alone.

  She gazed into the depths of her own eyes and knew that she could not turn Reid away with nothing. She simply did not have it in her. She would try to leave a route between her heart and his by giving him what she could and yet not being a fool about it. And maybe, when this lunacy was over, he would see what she had done and he would think again. Maybe then he would ask her a question she wanted to hear.

  She smoothed her hair and pulled open the bathroom door. He rose from the loveseat when he spied her, awaiting her verdict.

  “All right,” she said as she approached him. “Here is what I’m willing to do.”

  *

  Reid slapped a staccato rhythm on the truck’s steering wheel. He was stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard, which was predictable. There was no way to get across Hollywood fast on a Saturday evening, not with everybody and their brother headed to movies and bars and restaurants. His eyes repeatedly darted to the digital clock on the dash. Now its indigo numbers read 7:08.

  He had two choices: drive to the overlook and hope Annie hadn’t left yet or continue on to the studio and pick up the key to Sheila’s family’s cabin near Santa Barbara. The key Sheila kept in her desk. The key which would provide a hideaway for Annie. The key which would give Sheila deniability if she were ever questioned by the FBI. No, I did not give the key to Reid. But he knew where it was. He must have just taken it …

  It wasn’t what he’d wanted but it was something. And at this point he’d take anything he could get.

  The stoplight turned green and traffic lurched forward, then halted again when a homeless woman with a brimming shopping cart suddenly stepped into the crosswalk. No one honked and no one tried to get around her, as if in tacit acceptance that this was her territory more than it was theirs. Eventually she made it across and the flow of impatient vehicles resumed.

  Reid made a decision. He’d go to the studio. He needed that key if he was going to get Annie safe. He didn’t want her in the motel unless it was absolutely necessary. It was a No Tell Motel in a smarmy neighborhood but that was about the only place she could walk in with no notice, pay cash, and not raise any eyebrows. And even though he’d miss her at the overlook, he was sure he could catch her en route to the mote
l. It would take her a while to walk there, plus he had given her very specific directions and instructed her not to vary from them. Not that he was confident she’d listen.

  A few minutes later Reid arrived at the studio. He parked in the subterranean garage, well aware there was no way to get inside the building without leaving a digital trail. Both the garage and the front entrance were protected by a key-card system; if the records were ever checked, GARDNER, REID would pop up next to the exact second of his entry. That couldn’t be helped, and it was undeniably strange for him to appear twice at the studio on a Saturday. So, to give himself a plausible excuse for this second visit, he made an unnecessary stop in his office and scooped up some paperwork he’d just have to carry back in on Monday.

  He strode across the concrete floor of the darkened set toward Sheila’s glass-walled cubicle, his footfalls echoing in the deserted building. His imagination, in overdrive all week, created shadowy figures behind every huge rolling camera, on every movable backdrop that would spring to colorful life with a flick of the klieg lights.

  Inside Sheila’s cubicle, Reid didn’t flip on the overheads. In the small space illuminated only by the flickering red and white lights of the adjacent studio’s electronic equipment, he moved behind her desk and pulled open its shallow center drawer, feeling blindly for the key. It wasn’t immediately obvious so he reached in further, encountering all manner of small office supplies but no cabin key on a silver ring. His fingers closed on what felt like a photo, and out of curiosity he pulled it out.