You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2)

by Diane Patterson

  Stevie looked at me. “It’s ‘Lay on, Macduff’. Not ‘Lead on.’”

  “Thanks ever so much for the update,” I said.

  We went in the French doors at the back of the house and up the staircase made out of slabs of travertine marble. The house was dark and hollow. Every sound we made echoed off the walls. I wondered how he could stand living here alone.

  Upstairs, he led us down a long green carpet past several heavy Brazilian cherry doorways, to the one at the end of the hall. “Here it is. Let me know if you need anything. Like a proofer.”

  “Thanks, we’ll be fine,” I told him. I blocked off the entrance to the dark room with my arm to keep him from following us in.

  Stevie put her arm across the doorway to block me from coming in. “You can’t be in here,” she said.

  “I need to see what you’re doing.”

  “Darkrooms tend to be small, and you take up too much space.”

  Stevie was the only person on earth who thought I was too large. Given how small and thin she was, this attitude troubled me sometimes. And I would worry over whether she had a body image issue when I had the time.

  “Stevie. These pictures.” I didn’t need to say the obvious.

  “I’ll be okay. I don’t need to look at them to develop them.”

  She slammed the door in my face.

  #

  The room at the center of the upstairs was a fabulous media room I coveted deeply and sincerely. One entire wall was the screen, set to that Chelsea v. Arsenal game—wasn’t that over and done with yet?—with life-size players. Large, soft armchairs in blue and gray ultrasuede were parked at various spots around the room, each with its own side table and small snake light attached on the edge.

  Gary was at the other side of the room, a script in his hand while he kept an eye on the match. He grinned at me and pointed to the refrigerator at the side of the room before going back to his reading. I pulled out a beer to sip while I waited.

  “Are you interested in this?” I asked, cocking my head at the screen.

  He shrugged and held up a black remote control. I nodded and he tossed it to me. I channel-surfed until I got to an Errol Flynn movie—oh, wasn’t he beautiful—and lounged back in a chair.

  The next thing I knew, Stevie was pinching my cheek.

  I slapped her hand away. “Could you try something simple, like saying my name first?” I asked.

  Gary was still sitting in the lounger at the far side of the room. “She did. She also tried yelling it. Then she tried shaking you. I suggested using open flame next.”

  Stevie’s disappointment bloomed all over her. “You’ve been drinking today.”

  “That happens every day. Get over it already. You’ve found something?”

  She nodded. Her lips pinched and she kept fiddling with the strands of hair that had escaped her braid.

  I put a hand on her arm, which was trembling as though she were freezing, so I pulled her into a tight embrace for several seconds. She struggled a bit and I let go. “You should see this,” she said quietly.

  I started to follow her. So did Gary. I asked him, “Don’t suppose I could tell you to fuck off for a bit?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t suppose you could.”

  The three of us went back to the darkroom. Stevie had not lied. It was cramped. The two of us wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in there together while she worked, especially when the only light was dim and red. The cramped confines were much easier to deal with when the room was bathed in normal white light. A number of wet sheets hung from a plastic line. What had been so difficult to see in the negative strip now showed clearly in black and white: A blonde girl, wearing heavy makeup but with the baby cheeks of a young girl giving a blowjob to an older man in a tux.

  The man’s face was half cut off by the angle of the shot. I didn’t recognize him. The young teenager was Penelope Gurevich.

  “Seems very definitely blackmail,” Stevie said.

  I massaged the back of her neck with my fingers. How many of these photos were bringing up waking nightmares for her? I didn’t give her enough credit for working through things that made most people want to cry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair, over and over. If only I had killed the bastard earlier. Before I realized how stupid I’d been. How stupid my father had encouraged me to be.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Stevie said.

  I widened my eyes and took a deep breath. “Are the rest of the pictures like this?” I asked her.

  She pointed to the last sheet on the drying line without looking at it. “More or less.”

  The contact sheet showed all the photos on the strips. Penelope had things done to her on film that I would never have suspected she had even heard of, let alone participated in. Hell, some of them would have given me pause. And she was so young. I chuckled to myself as soon as I thought that. When I was thirteen, I’d been having sex regularly with an older man, too. But however old she was here, it was young. Much too young.

  “Poor Penelope.” Then I remembered what a manipulator she was and added, “Perhaps.”

  Gary leaned in close to the second picture on the line, and then he stepped back, his eyes a tiny bit wider than they had been. He glanced at the first photo, and then joined me at the contact sheet.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You want a larger version for your personal collection or something?”

  He shook his head and turned away, as though he could unsee the pictures. “Give the negatives to the police and pretend you never saw them.”

  “I’m going to give them to the police. Why does no one believe I’m going to do that?”

  He flicked the corner of one of the pictures without looking at it. “You don’t recognize who’s in these pictures, do you?”

  “Yes, it’s Penelope—”

  “Not her, you idiot, who gives a damn who she is. Him.” He pointed to another picture. “And him. And him.”

  I looked at the pictures again. Nope, a couple of older white guys getting their jollies. I shook my head.

  “He’s a producer by the name of Aaron Ueberfeld.” Stevie’s sudden intake of breath told me her knowledge of movies was paying off. Gary seemed pleased that somebody present had a clue about what he was talking about. “This one is Ian Jack Reynolds, and he’s currently president of Lang Studios. And this chap, I don’t remember his name, he’s got a development deal at Warners, but at the time this picture was taken he was most likely the guy in charge of the PAN television network.”

  I berated myself for being so witless. My father certainly would have axed me off his strategic council for missing something so obvious. “These pictures aren’t about Penelope. There were much bigger fish in the sea.”

  “Your husband had a monstrous problem on his hands.” Gary reached up and fingered the edge of one of the pictures, the one with the Lang Studio president in it. “Jesus Christ.”

  Stevie cleared her throat. “So where did Colin get these?”

  Good question.

  Gary laughed to himself. “What’s so fucking hilarious about this is how sanctimonious these sons of bitches are. Take this one.” He pointed to Ian Jack Reynolds. “His wife is the Grande Dame of Los Angeles charities. The perfect holier-than-thou couple. Utterly hilarious, given what she was like when she was an actress. In these 70s movies, playing the hippie chick. And it was typecasting, if you know what I mean. Amanda da Silva was no virgin—”

  “Who?” I said slowly.

  “Amanda da Silva. Well, Amanda Reynolds, but she was Amanda da Silva then.”

  Funny. I’d met another player in this game who had the last name da Silva. Coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences. Stevie must have been thinking the same thing I was. I nodded at her. “Find out if they’re related.”

  She was already heading out the door and back to her computer.

  Gary stood in my path. “What did I say?”

  I
picked up all the photos. “Thanks for the darkroom. It’s been a real help.”

  He lightly grabbed me by my upper arm. Touching me without permission is not advisable under the best of conditions. With substantial effort, I checked my initial impulse to flip him over backward.

  I stopped and picked his hand off of me. “Don’t.”

  He didn’t seem to pay any attention to my reaction. He leaned in toward me, crowding my space. Gary Macfadyen wasn’t a big man but he always felt imposing simply through his presence. “Listen to me. You have to get rid of those.”

  I held up the pictures. “These?”

  “Get rid of them and pretend you never saw them.”

  “What happened to the man who thought that this was the mostest and bestest fun ever?”

  He didn’t smile. “This isn’t a game. You are dealing with heavy-duty shit here. Get rid of them. Walk away.”

  “Where is this sudden concern coming from?”

  “You’re involved with murder and blackmail and who knows what else.” His hands curled into claws. “And you’ve brought it into my house.”

  Half an hour before it had all been a giant lark. Before that, contrite. Before that, raging.

  “You’re bipolar, aren’t you? You’re supposed to be taking medications and you’re not.”

  The startled blink was all the response I needed.

  “This up-and-down behavior—you’re rapid cycling.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  “Oh, I will. Not right now. But very soon. I need something else from you first.”

  “For the love of Jesus,” he yelled. “What is it now?”

  “First off, I want you to start taking your meds. You have them for a reason. Take them. For another thing…I need to find a good psychologist immediately. Go ask your friends. Someone has a recommendation.”

  “For you?”

  “For Stevie. Any names you can get, I’d be most grateful.”

  “You will get out of my house.”

  I smiled. “Of course I will. But you’re going to have to put out first.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  GARY DISAPPEARED AFTER my little interaction with him. Was he calling the police to have me removed? Or asking his friends for the name of a reputable psychologist? Did he have any friends?

  I couldn’t worry about our erstwhile host right now. My thoughts were about Stevie.

  I had sent her off without much thinking about what she was probably going through. I’m not the most sensitive person in the world, but I try to make up for it by showing what concern I can feel.

  In the guesthouse, Stevie was staring at a computer screen, her eyes focused really hard on the screen. Working hard was her version of counting backwards. I put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her away from the computer. “Hey,” I said. “Do you want to talk?”

  “Wikipedia is an extremely useful resource,” she said.

  I brought the laptop’s screen down and the computer shut off.

  Stevie stared somewhere over my shoulder.

  “Can I do anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head, still staring off at things that weren’t there. “I’m fine.”

  You’d think having me around as a role model would have taught my sister better skills at lying. Or at least a few flashy head fakes.

  “Why don’t you take a break from this?” I said.

  “Because I like keeping my mind occupied.”

  I brushed her bangs off her face. I needed to take her to get a haircut. I needed to take her clothes shopping. I needed to make everything all better. I couldn’t do any of them. “This can wait. There’s plenty of television that needs watching.” I took her by the hand and led her out to the living room, where I sat her on the sofa and put the blue cashmere throw over her.

  A quick sweep through the thousand channels brought up a direct feed from Sky TV. One of those detective shows set in the Lake Country. Starring a much younger Liam Bishop in some kind of cosmic coincidence. Aphrodite’s hair, he was a good-looking bastard.

  After a minute or so of the main character tramping around in the mud, my sister rested her head against my shoulder. “It doesn’t really bother me,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Because I know I’m safe.” She pulled back and looked up at me. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever feel safe.”

  I snorted. “I always feel safe, Stevie. The sharks and the polecats spend their time worrying about me.”

  She nodded, her eyes moving back and forth as she studied my face. Then she said, “This show was one of the only ones produced by Quaid/Hallett Television.”

  My jolt backward into the sofa was completely involuntary, I assure you. Quaid/Hallett Television was the initial joint venture, a small test. Before Quaid Media and the Hallett Group merged the companies entirely, creating a worldwide media conglomerate. Before I scotched that deal, and hard.

  After I recovered my breathing, I said, “They kept the name?”

  “This show’s eight or nine years old. The company’s been broken up since then. I’d like to watch something else, please.”

  I may have dropped the remote control once or twice while trying to figure out how to change the channel.

  “Today upset you, too,” Stevie said.

  I shook my head. “It can upset me when I have time.” I left the television tuned to some tennis match in Australia and grabbed my phone. “Until then, I have things to do.”

  The TV went off. “I’m going to go upstairs and lie down for a bit,” she said.

  Excellent idea.

  Stevie was right: I was upset. Any thinking human being would have been upset, seeing what Penelope had gone through. In addition, I now had a better idea of what had gotten Colin killed.

  Now my most pressing question was: what did I do with these pictures?

  The obvious answer was that I should get them out of my house and into Nathaniel Ross’s safekeeping. But I wondered if I should.

  Yes, I knew they depicted a crime. Was there a statute of limitations on what Penelope had gone through? And yes, it was almost crystal clear that the pictures had to do with Colin’s murder.

  Almost, but not quite.

  God only knew what would happen to me if the police found me with those things in my possession. I needed advice, and I needed it now.

  I called his office and within a minute had him on the line. Roberto’s money bought courtesy and promptness. I missed that part about having money. It would be oh-so-easy to get seduced back into it. Which is what Roberto was counting on, of course.

  “We need to talk as soon as possible,” he said.

  “When will you be here?”

  He hesitated a fraction of a second too long. “Look, Drusilla—”

  I brought out my bitchiest Oxbridge. “Mr. Ross, you are not being paid a small fortune so that I can conform to your schedule.” Shed-jewel. Two distinct words.

  “Christ,” he muttered. “Okay. I will be there in two hours.”

  “Make it ninety minutes.” I hung up. Then I took the opportunity to nap, since at the rate things were going I had no idea when the next time I’d get sleep would be.

  Nathaniel entered the estate two hours later. He could claim it was the traffic or last-minute business at the office, but we both knew better: he worked for me, and I was raised to be the one who ordered other people around. While I hadn’t had much practice at it during the past eleven years, you don’t forget that sort of attitude. It’s bred in the bone.

  Nathaniel walked into the guesthouse, and he moved straight to the sofa without so much as a hello or a handshake or whatever it was lawyers usually did to greet people. He hitched up the knees of his trousers and swung the briefcase up on the coffee table.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” I asked. “It’s cocktail hour already.”

  He ignored the pleasantries and snapped open the briefcase.
“Here’s a problem I’ve run into. You said you married Colin because he needed a green card and he was willing to pay?”

  “And his visa was running out. Yes.”

  He tossed a packet of stapled papers at me. He wasn’t being paid a fortune so that I’d have to start reading things. I tossed the papers back at him. “Summarize the issue.”

  Nathaniel grinned. “In LA it’s, ‘Give me the logline.’ The short version is that Colin didn’t need a green card. He had one already.”

  A herd of dancing goats could have wandered through that living room at that moment and I wouldn’t have noticed. “That’s insane.”

  He pointed to the photocopy of an ID card. “Permanent residency. He’d been here long enough.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “He showed me the papers. They were expiring soon and he needed to get married.”

  “He got permanent residency in late June of last year.” He put the papers down and folded his hands. “And you met him when, precisely?”

  I felt as though I’d gotten a kick in the stomach. “Beginning of July. We got married two weeks later.”

  “And he got permanent residency before he met you, and he still paid you for it? The cops are going to have questions about that.”

  I had questions, too. Who were we going to ask? He was dead.

  Nathaniel nodded, reaffirming what he’d just said. “You look like you could use that drink.”

  “I don’t get it. This can’t be true. Why would he pay me ten thousand dollars for a marriage he didn’t need? Because he was a nice guy who wanted to help me out of some money troubles?”

  Yeah, that sounded pretty unlikely to me, too. But Colin’s weakness for women extended beyond his need to romance each and every one. When he was on an upswing in his mood, anything was possible and doing anything he could for a woman—saving each and every one—was perfectly reasonable. He knew I needed money. Did he think I wouldn’t accept it without the marriage? The marriage worked well in his favor, too, of course. It was great publicity for the show. I wished he were there, so I could beat the answer out of him. After crying for joy that he was still alive, of course.

  Hades. This wasn’t even the worst development of the day.