“I need to get my car at your house.”
“Have you talked to anyone about this?”
I looked at her. “Will I need to get a taxi?”
She drove.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HOW IN THE hell had my savior, Nathaniel Ross, showed up right when I needed him? The only reason Roberto would have hired him was because he already knew about the murder, and he could only have known about the murder if he had had a part in it. Thinking of Roberto as a suspect didn’t fill me with glee. It made me angry. Because if it were true, he’d get away with it.
Penelope was going to get away with it.
My father was going to get away with it.
Hell, even I was going to get away with what I’d done.
Everyone was going to walk away scot-free.
First, I checked the phone calls I’d made from my phone that night. I must have found Colin’s body around midnight, judging by when I called Stevie.
Then I called Nathaniel from my car. “I have a quick question.”
“Tell me you are not investigating Colin’s murder.”
“No, not about that. I’m wondering about Monday night. When you…got hired.”
“What about it?”
“How did that happen? You get a phone call to the Batcave or something? Because you were at Colin’s apartment awfully quickly.”
“My service got a call from our mutual friend and they told me to get the hell out to Hollywood.”
“What time did they get that call?” I asked.
“What? Who cares?”
“Can you check, please? It’s actually important.”
“Go home and drink a margarita or something, would you?”
I did the next best thing. I started my long return drive to Pacific Palisades. There is no quick way to cross the west side of Los Angeles, so I had plenty of time to think. An hour into the traffic, Nathaniel called me.
“You first,” he said. “Why do you want to know?”
“I found Colin’s body at midnight. I called Stevie a few minutes later.”
“The service called me at twelve thirty-eight. I’m sure they’d gotten the call no more than five minutes before that. It was top priority.”
After I’d found Colin’s body. Not before.
Not a chance would Roberto have cut it that close if there was a remote possibility I was going to be found with the body. He was much too savvy for that. He would have kept me away from Colin’s apartment. Or had Nathaniel on standby.
Roberto hadn’t killed Colin, and he hadn’t subcontracted the job.
“If I don’t talk to you in an hour, come on out to Sir Gareth’s house.”
“Why?” Nathaniel asked.
“Because I might be about to commit a murder,” I said, and I hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STEVIE LOOKED UP from her book when I walked in. She marked her page with her finger and smiled. “You’re back! You’re never going to believe what I’ve found out!”
I leaned against the doorframe between the living room and kitchen and didn’t say anything.
The enthusiasm drained off her face. “What is it?”
When was the last time I had seen my sister? Seen the person she’d grown into over the past eleven years? Stevie was small and girlish, but it was time to stop thinking of her as my eleven-year-old sister. She hadn’t been that girl for, well, eleven years. She’d been my auxiliary, the person who did stuff because I told her to. But you couldn’t have a brain like the one she did and keep being a child. You’d explode or something. So at least I’d taught her something.
I folded my arms across my chest. “How did you start off the conversation with Roberto? ‘The good news is, you don’t have to worry about your son-in-law causing a public relations hassle. The bad news is, you still have to worry about you-know-who causing one.’”
She put the book down beside her, page forgotten. She didn’t fool me, though. We’d been together too long, and I knew her tells. She was about to deflect. Stevie doesn’t lie so much as she skirts around the issue. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t do this. Please don’t do this, Stevie. I’m trying to talk to you and not…lose my temper.”
Her only response was to pinch her lips more.
“You called Roberto, didn’t you? You’re the one who told him where we are. Say it! How could you do that?”
She curled up further into herself and leaned a little away from me. After a few seconds, she nodded.
What the hell did she have to look so miserable about? She wasn’t the one Roberto and Jane were going to happen to.
She had made that call. I couldn’t let myself believe it for certain until I saw her face. She had told him where we were and made sure that I was going back to…well, to whatever it was they had lined up for me. After all of these years together, she was the one who said, that’s it, game over, we’re done.
“How could you not have told me you did that?”
“You’d be angry,” she whispered.
“You got that right.” I ran my hands through my hair, pulling it, messing it up. “Why? Why did you do it?”
The tears in her eyes were making the dark blue irises even larger than normal. “I was afraid you were in serious trouble this time.”
“You thought I’d killed him.”
“No. I didn’t, Drusilla, honest and truly. But I couldn’t go through it again. I can’t lie and run and hide and start all over again. Not anymore.”
I dug my toes into the carpeting, pushing them against the floor until they started to hurt and at last I felt something. We had been on the run for eleven years, me because of what I’d done, her because I was her only family in the world. And she didn’t know any other way of living, but she knew she didn’t want to do this anymore. Maybe it was this house. The power of having a soft bed at long last.
What the hell. Tell her everything. “Roberto gave me an ultimatum. I will go home to New York, get all my money, and live really, really well. You, on the other hand, have to go away somewhere, far away, and I have to agree to never see you again.”
“Why?”
I had been asking myself that question over and over since Roberto had laid the situation out for me. My first explanation was that my mother hated Stevie. And while that was still true, that wasn’t the reason. Not deep down. No, my family’s much more pragmatic than letting a little thing like emotions rule their behavior. They’re playing a bigger game than that.
“They’d have a hostage to ensure my good behavior.”
Stevie nodded. Of course.
“You’d be very comfortable. Probably be able to get anything you could want.”
“Except see you.”
I nodded. “So that’s where I am, Stevie. I don’t want to do this anymore, either. I want to go back to New York and do piles of cocaine and party every night and not give a good goddamn about anything. I can’t do that here. I can’t do that—”
“With me.”
My toes dug into the flooring again.
“And what if you don’t agree?”
“Roberto kidnaps me and takes me back, I suppose. Or worse, he simply reveals who I am. Without the family’s resources to protect me. And when Daddy finds me, I’m dead.”
“They wouldn’t do that to you.” She sighed and pulled on her ponytail. “It’s much more psychologically effective to have you make the decision. And alive.”
That’s my sister. Analytic to a fault.
“I can’t believe you called him.”
She glared at me. When had Stevie learned to start glaring? “You’d be in jail, Dru. If you rang me right now, I’d do it again.”
I nodded. We were screwed, no matter how we looked at it.
We sat in silence for a while. Half an hour. An hour. I wasn’t sure. My mobile phone rang. Nathaniel asked if I had, in fact, killed anyone. “No, not yet. Sit tight, though. The night is young.” I hung up. “You w
ere going to tell me good news when I walked through the door. What was it?”
“Guess what the name of the security coordinator on The Night Glen is.”
Twenty questions. My least favorite game. I shrugged.
“Mike Behar.”
I sat up straight. “Would he happen to be Vin’s brother?”
She nodded. “He would.”
“Jesus—” Stevie’s grunt of annoyance shut me up. I invoked some other deity and then told her what had happened that day, with Anne, with Eileen, with Ian Jack.
Stevie got that heavy-duty look on her face that meant her brain was analyzing. “So, after a break-in at her mother’s house last May, she needs someone with a very specific skill set to help her. She definitely wants someone to…”
“Seduce her mother and steal the photos,” I added, trying to be helpful. “She talks to her security guy, who calls his brother in Las Vegas, who says, ‘I know somebody.’” A huge rush of tension left my body, now that we had found that association. Everybody is connected to everyone else on this planet, some more than others. “Although why Colin would have done any kind of deal with Vin Behar, I have no idea.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps there was the money? By the way, Mike Behar has a juvenile record for violence. Amateur boxing gone wrong. Sealed, but…”
Mike Behar wailing on Colin could fit, but I had the same problem with that scenario as I did with his older brother Vin killing Colin: there was no way in hell Colin would have turned his back on either of them that night in his apartment. I shook my head. “Penelope gets her photos, or at least she thinks she does. She gets the photos from Colin and then wants to shut him up. So why doesn’t she just take out a gun and shoot him?”
Stevie raised an eyebrow at me.
“Come on. It’s the American way. But she doesn’t do that. She says she’s going to tie him in with the blackmail, only she doesn’t have the right photos.”
My sister shook her head. “What I’ve wondered is, why did Colin give her the wrong pictures? You said he sounded scared on the phone. Why would he be scared if he’d done that? He would know he had her over a barrel. He would have all the power.”
The answer was obvious. “Because Colin didn’t know he had the wrong pictures.”
“Someone switched the pictures on him.” Stevie leaned toward me. “You know what you should find out?”
“When did Penelope find out the pictures were fakes?”
Stevie nodded.
If Penelope found out before midnight, most likely she killed him in a rage. If it was after midnight, she had the wrong photos and Colin was already dead.
My lawyer was going to kill me for investigating, but I simply had to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I CALLED PENELOPE and left a message saying I had her lost items. She called me back within twenty minutes and said she was still on set, in some hellhole called Reseda, but she would meet me at her condo at ten p.m. I told her that Pacific Palisades was closer and she should come to me. I didn’t fancy being cornered in her condo if things went south.
“Where do I go hide?” Stevie asked.
I waggled a thumb over my shoulder. “There’s space under the kitchen sink.”
She snorted and flushed a little.
“Is there a football match on anywhere in the world that you might want to watch?” When she nodded, I asked, “Would you feel okay watching it in Gary’s house? Without me? He might or might not be there while you are.”
After a second’s hesitation, she nodded. But it was the least sincere nod I’d ever seen. She wasn’t that thrilled by the idea. I considered calling Anne, but by the time we parted that afternoon, it had finally dawned on me that getting cozy with a journalist who might be very interested in my past could prove detrimental to my health. So I called the only other person who had a vested interest in me and Stevie walking away from this in one piece. Or rather, in two separate yet still alive pieces.
“Are you kidding me?” Nathaniel said.
“The beautiful thing is, you get to charge your hourly rate and all you have to do is drink beer.”
The noise he made indicated the money was the least of his problems with this plan. “Why are you talking to Penelope at all?” he said.
“You make an excellent point. You should come here and stop me.” I hung up on him and looked at Stevie. “Let’s go see how Gary is with this plan.”
We walked from the guesthouse, passed the tennis court and the pool cabana, and walked through the outdoor living room to the French doors into the back of the house. Inside, the only lights on were the low-level mood lighting that was probably controlled by a computer somewhere.
“He’s not home,” Stevie said.
I took out my set of lock picks. “That’s not a problem.”
Stevie reached out and turned one of the antique pewter handles on the door. It was unlocked.
“You’re good,” I said.
“You never start with the simplest possibilities,” she told me.
We walked into the house and I called out, “Gary!”
My voice bounced off the grand marble staircase and echoed throughout the mansion. There was no response.
“He likes you, Stevie. He won’t mind if he finds you here.”
“He will mind the intrusion. He will.”
We started walking up the giant staircase. I squeezed her shoulder. “He’ll forgive you a lot faster than he’s going to forgive me.”
“For what?”
In case things went south with Penelope, of course. Every aspect of this goddamned mess pointed right back to her. “Remember, if Gary finds you here and he gets angry, cry. Actually, no matter what happens, I want you to cry, make those big puppy dog eyes, and then run as fast as you can.”
She gave me a thumbs-up.
The door to the media room was closed. I knocked on it, on the off-chance he was in there. No answer. I swung the door open and Stevie went in. Then I went back to the giant window that faced out toward the driveway and courtyard and waited.
Penelope’s white BMW pulled into the driveway of Gary’s estate and parked in the front courtyard area, near the fountain, exactly as I’d instructed Penelope to when we spoke. I watched as she got out and walked down the stone path that led around the house to the garden area. I watched her totter on her five-inch high sandals on the uneven stones and wondered why she didn’t keep a pair of flats in her car.
I’d left the large gate on the side of the house unlocked, but she’d still have to fiddle with opening it, which gave me the time to walk downstairs and wait for her in the outdoors living room. I turned on the fire in the freshly restocked cast concrete fire pit table and made myself comfortable on the sofa. She came through the grove of trees, clutching her thin, fashionable purse to her side. So, she didn’t come bearing the extra money she promised me. That’s okay, I wasn’t going to give her the photos. This way, no one was happy, which was fine.
“Do you have them?” she asked.
“There’s wine and beer if you need anything.”
“Just give them to me.”
“I have a question for you first.”
“Do you even have them?” she said.
I pulled out the well-worn envelope of proofs and slapped a couple on the edge of the table in front of her. She sat down on the sofa catty-cornered to me and looked at them. She stared at them, her eyes completely without feeling for what the girl in the pictures was doing. She might have been looking at ads for refrigerators.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do you have the negatives?”
“For what happened to you.”
She wrinkled her nose at that, although there wasn’t too much wrinkle. Already using Botox, perhaps. “I’m fine.”
“Have you talked to someone? Some kind of psychiatrist?”
That question genuinely confused her. “Why?”
“Because what happened wasn’t normal. And neither is what
you’re doing about it.”
She looked at me, a slight smile on her lips, and then she laughed. It was a weird, high-pitched laugh, completely out of character. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”
“Let me guess. You’re blackmailing Ian Jack Reynolds.”
“I’m going to be a very big star. He can make me a movie star. And he will.”
Something was very wrong with Penelope. Something I couldn’t fix. She was just damaged enough that yes, just maybe, she could have murdered Colin for standing in her way.
“I have one question,” I repeated.
“I’ve paid. Give me the negatives.”
“I will. Tell me one thing first. When did you find out you didn’t have the right negatives before?”
“Why?”
“It’s a simple question. Did you find out before midnight, or after midnight?”
“Yeah, don’t answer that,” said a male voice behind me.
Fuck.
I started to turn around.
“Slow down there,” said Vin Behar. Who was standing about five meters behind me. And holding a gun.
Hearing Vin Behar’s voice over the open phone line from the phone I’d stashed in the cushions of the sofa should be all the prompting Stevie would need to call the police. Because if she didn’t, the next ten minutes were about to get very, very difficult.
I turned back around to Penelope. “You invited Vin to join us? I thought you were close with his brother, Mike.”
Penelope simpered. “Mike said Vin would be better at handling this. So I told him to meet me here.”
There was only reason she would need Vin Behar with her: to do the dirty work.
“Let’s see your hands,” Behar said, closer now. “Come on, hold ’em up.”
I flopped my hands upwards. “So you own a gun.” Behar used guns—undoubtedly without serial numbers; hello, Las Vegas—and yet Colin hadn’t been shot.
“Vin, that’s kind of scary. Put it away.”
The older man’s hand didn’t move. “Give me the photos,” he said.
“Before midnight or after?” I asked Penelope.
You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) Page 21