Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  “I am not guilty of this awful crime,” Keith said flatly. “I am confident that the truth will come to light.” His mud brown eyes moved from Walker to Simone. Very quietly, he said, “You will pay.”

  Police brought Furlong into the building, and Sandiford started to follow. “Either of you guys want to call me this afternoon, I’ll give you a statement,” he said. Then he patted Walker on the shoulder. “Good luck to you,” he said, before walking inside.

  Simone stared at Walker.

  He forced a smile “So, can you believe Furlong was—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Furlong.”

  The smile left his face. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “That isn’t good enough, Neil. Last night . . .” Her vision started to blur. Oh, no, you will not cry now. She closed her eyes, composed herself. “Last night . . . I don’t usually . . .” She tried again. “Last night should have changed things between you and me.”

  Walker said, “It did.”

  “Obviously not enough.” Strange, but on the cab ride over, Simone had come up with a whole speech about trust in relationships, and where there’s no trust, there’s no respect, no caring. It had to do with feelings—real, honest feelings, and how they should always outweigh the job, the scoop. At the time, she’d been so angry she finally understood expressions like He makes my blood boil. But now, looking at Walker standing silent, his blue eyes dulled and cloudy, she couldn’t feel anger. She couldn’t feel anything but sad.

  She turned and walked up the block, took her cell phone out and called a cab, wishing more than anything she had one of those memory-erasing sticks from the Men in Black movies—anything to yank last night out of her mind.

  “Be patient with me, Simone,” Walker said. “Please. I’m still learning.”

  But he was standing alone on the sidewalk. Simone had already left.

  Randi DuMonde was used to throwing money at people, just as she was used to people throwing money at her. That’s what her business was, really. The continuous tossing back and forth of large bills—for beauty, for protection, for fame, for privacy. . . .

  She got that. It was basic. And unemotional. She was not one for emotions . . . or at least not the show of them. It embarrassed her, those wet tears, that weakness.

  So, when Emerald Deegan’s assistant had called in the middle of her party, asked to meet with her and talk about Emerald and Randi’s former association, she had thought, first, of money. Write Holly Kashminian a check, shut her up. Clean and simple.

  Admittedly, when Holly had first explained what she’d found, Randi had gone pale. It was bad enough to have been in business with two of these girls. But three—to have that brought out in the open—that was terrible. Not to mention Desire. What would Blake say when he got those calls from the police, from the press?

  Holly had to know that. Odds were, she was a smart girl. They were all smart out here. After listening to what Holly had to say, Randi had taken out her checkbook and said, “Where can we meet to discuss this further?”

  “My house,” Holly had replied. “I can’t leave my house.” And then she had lost it, weeping into the phone.

  This came as a shock to Randi, an unwelcome shock. “Now, now,” she had told Holly lamely. “Now, now, dear,” thinking, Dear God, make her stop. Holly had asked her to come over immediately and at first she’d agreed. But as Nathaniel pointed out, Randi couldn’t leave her own party. So she’d called Holly back. “I can’t leave here tonight. How about seven thirty in the morning?”

  “That sounds perfect,” Holly had said, all business this time, not a trace of emotion in her voice. Either she’s got split personality disorder or this girl could teach a graduate-level course in screwing with my head.

  That morning, Randi got dressed in flowing red linen pants, a matching silk T-shirt, and red pumps. She shoved her checkbook into her purse along with a huge wad of Kleenex, hoping, praying that Holly would not cry again. Randi could negotiate. She could bargain and she could bend. She could write a check. But comforting—that was not one of her skills.

  Randi got into her Mercedes-Benz and drove to the address Holly had texted her—a pretty little bungalow down the street from where Emerald had lived. She parked in front of the house and walked up the path, clutching the purse. She noticed how nicely mowed the lawn was, how neat the garden was. This is all a good sign, she thought as she rang the bell. Where there is order, how can there be disorder—mental or otherwise? Does that make any sense?

  There was no answer. Strange. She’d figured Holly for the type that would open the door when she was still coming up the walk. Randi rang the bell again.

  Still no answer. Just for the hell of it, she tried the knob. And to her surprise, the door drifted open.

  Why would a girl who was afraid to leave her home leave her door unlocked?

  “Holly?” she called out.

  No response. The living room, like the yard, was nice and neat. Another good sign. Maybe the girl was just a sound sleeper. Randi moved through the living room, across a short hallway, to an open door that had to be the bedroom.

  “Holly? Are you asleep? It’s Rand—”

  For a moment, Randi lost the ability to speak. Everything in her froze—her bones, her muscles. Her lungs stopped breathing. . . .

  The bed was awash in bright red blood. Lying on it, a girl who had to be Holly. She had what looked like a wadded-up newspaper jammed into her mouth, and her throat . . . her throat had been slashed, from ear to ear. Randi stared at her, thinking, Oh, dear God, no, not like that, no, no, no. Not again. No . . .

  Then the girl’s eyes blinked.

  Randi grabbed her cell phone out of her purse, called 911, screamed something into the receiver about a cut throat—she couldn’t even tell what she was saying, but the paramedics would find her. That was their job, it was what they got paid for. Randi yanked the newspaper out of the girl’s mouth and her lips started moving, she made a gurgling sound. Randi realized she was trying to speak. “No,” she said softly. “Rest, Holly. Okay, please just . . .”

  The bloody mouth formed a word: “Trash.”

  Then the eyes closed and Randi heard sirens and the paramedics arrived, rushing around Holly, going to work. Randi backed up for them with that image in her mind: the girl’s eyes on her, the ruined mouth. The word. Trash.

  The paramedics had Holly on a stretcher now. They carried her through the bedroom door and Randi followed.

  Next to the door was a small wicker wastebasket lined with a plastic bag. As Randi passed, she saw a solitary item inside. A picture of some sort. Trash. On her way out, she grabbed the picture. She didn’t look at it until she got out of the house and the paramedics were loading the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. “Do you want to ride along?” one of them asked her.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll follow in my car.” And then she looked at the photograph. Randi knew it. She had seen it before: a little girl with strawberry blond hair and a big smile, standing next to Snow White at Disneyland.

  Randi fell to her knees, and started to scream.

  Once the cab dropped her off at her apartment, Simone showered fast, shoved a few pieces of bread into her mouth and stared into her closet, Kathy’s voice in her head. You’re young and cute. Feel it. Work it. She chose a short sleeveless plaid dress from the Gap—not exactly that skimpy Brittany ensemble, but it would do. She put on the dress, her platform sandals, and checked herself out in the mirror. Not bad. A little makeup, I’ll have something to work with.

  Of everything that had happened between her and Walker the previous night, Simone was glad of only one thing: When he had told her what the Portuguese chambermaid had said, she hadn’t revealed what she’d been thinking.

  Walker had assumed the maid was referring to Furlong by the name he’d checked in under. But that didn’t make sense. Chambermaids dealt with room numbers, not the names given to the front desk. The maid had told Walker
about a conversation she’d overheard between two men, one of whom was named Cole. Why would Furlong’s lawyer call him by an assumed name?

  Sure, maybe it was Furlong and his lawyer, who was calling him Cole for the benefit of eavesdropping maids. But what Simone thought was this: The maid had overheard a conversation between Furlong and Cole. Maybe the manager wasn’t exaggerating back at Bedrock when he told Simone he was Furlong’s silent partner, his Karl Rove.

  She recalled what Walker had said: The guy was telling him to get rid of some videotapes. And Furlong said, “No. We’re screwed if I get rid of those.” And the other guy said, “I don’t care. I want them destroyed.” But Walker had thought Cole was Furlong. When you switched it around, it actually made more sense: Furlong, asking his reluctant “number two” to dispose of some incriminating tapes.

  Simone looked at her clock. Ten a.m. She had already called Nigel, told him she’d be late for work, but it should be worth it. She headed outside and got into her Jeep, thinking about what Cole had said to her on the night Emerald had died. He’s not around, I run the show.

  Well, Cole, let’s see how well you run it.

  Simone started up her car, headed up Ventura Boulevard toward Coldwater Canyon and West LA, where Bedrock was located. She turned on the radio, flipped the dial past some guitar rock station, Phish singing, “Each betrayal begins with trust . . .”

  Each betrayal.

  She banished them both from her mind: Walker and Julie, betrayer and betrayed. Right now, she was not a friend or a lover. . . . She was simply a reporter. And life was only about Cole—what he was hiding.

  To Randi, this was surreal, like something out of a bad dream, something out of her past. She was crying—crying for the first time she could remember, tears drenching her cheeks, her nose running—crying over some girl who’d been trying to blackmail her.

  She was sitting in the ICU waiting room at Cedars-Sinai while doctors operated on her blackmailer. She was talking to that detective, to Sandiford. He was asking her about her business, and she was trying to do what she always did, tailor the truth, just a bit . . . but it was hard to do that and think and worry and cry all at the same time.

  “Are you a madam, Ms. DuMonde?”

  “Huh?” She blew her nose into a Kleenex, wiped her eyes.

  “Are you a—”

  “I used to be. Not now. But I never liked that term.” Sniff. Some of Randi’s girls, they could cry at the drop of a hat. They wore their emotions close to the surface—it was what made them so good at their jobs. Not her, though. Not Randi. She was better at burying than releasing.

  “I’m not in Vice, Ms. DuMonde. I’m looking for a serial killer, and anything you tell me about the victims, their relationship to you . . . anything that could—”

  “A serial killer.”

  “Yes.”

  “God.”

  “So,” he said. “You understand the importance.”

  She breathed in and out. Breathed until she could function again. “Destiny,” she said. “Little girl in the Disneyland picture.”

  “Yes?”

  “I set her up on a few dates. After she signed with me. They were purely social. I am a manager, Detective. I get professional acting roles for my clients. My roster includes—”

  “I don’t need your résumé, ma’am.” Sandiford’s gaze was calm, serious. “Who did you . . . fix Destiny up with?”

  “I have a list of names. Back at my office. I can have my associate fax them to you.”

  Sandiford raised his eyebrows at her. She knew what he was thinking. “I am very organized,” she said. “I keep records of everything, including . . . blind dates.”

  A doctor stepped into the doorway, and everything else in the room fell away. The doctor looked at Randi as if she were Holly’s mother. And in a way, that’s what she felt like. A mother. How strange. “Do you happen to have phone numbers for her family? Friends?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, the tears coming again. “God, God, God.”

  Sandiford took over. “We have Ms. Kashminian’s cell phone,” he said. “We can check her apartment as well.”

  “That would be a good idea.”

  Sandiford said, “Is she . . .”

  The doctor shook her head. “Ms. Kashminian is stabilized, ” she said. “But she is in a coma.”

  Randi exhaled hard. Stabilized. That was a good word. People came out of comas all the time, you heard about it on the news, you . . .

  Why was this affecting her so strongly? But even as she wondered, Randi knew. Long ago, Randi had had a husband. You can let go of the past, her ex-husband used to say. But the past won’t let go of you. Wise man, Randi’s ex.

  She glanced at Sandiford. “Are you through with me, Detective?”

  “For now, ma’am, yes.”

  “In that case,” she said, “I’d better go home. I could definitely use the rest.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bedrock looked even cheesier by the light of day. Simone had heard somewhere that, in its previous life, this supposedly hot nightspot had been a budget chain restaurant, and you could still see that side of it—the glittery glass mixed into the stucco, the bright blue wooden beams framing the door. There was a metal flag holder, too, and while there was no flag in there now, it seemed the perfect place for a giant banner reading “IHOP” or “HoJos” or some other homey set of initials.

  She’d much prefer this place if it were an IHOP. As it was, the best thing she could say about it was it made her hungry for pancakes.

  The door was open, and so she walked in. It took her eyes a while to adjust. Even in daytime, it was close to pitch-black, just a few mood lights in the windowless space. She looked around, at the glow-in-the-dark cave paintings, the big bowl of pterodactyl eggs.

  Truth be told, the place reminded her of meeting Walker, and that made her reluctantly wistful. She thought about the previous night and was struck by a vision of Walker’s face above hers as they made love, his eyes looking deep into her own. . . .

  Stop it.

  And then she heard a man’s voice say, “Who’s there?” And she saw Cole at the bar, pulling bottles out of a crate.

  Simone pasted a smile on her face. She channeled Kathy. Feel it, work it. “Hi, Cole,” she said. “Remember me?”

  He smiled. “Sure I do . . . uh . . .”

  “Brittany.”

  “Right!”

  Simone could tell he had no idea who the hell she was. She looked at him. “Destiny’s friend.”

  “Oh, my God. Right. Hey, listen. I’m so sorry.”

  Simone swallowed. “I’ve been pretty freaked out about it,” she said.

  He unloaded three more bottles. “Yeah,” he said, “I could imagine.”

  Simone noticed something. Ever since she’d said Destiny’s name, Cole refused to look at her, his eyes darting everywhere else—the bottles, the fake brontosaurus, the signs for the bathrooms. But her eyes, her “exotic” green eyes, as he had called them . . . Cole was avoiding them at all costs.

  Forget young and cute. It’s time to be direct. “Cole, I have to level with you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m a private detective.” Okay, maybe direct isn’t the right word.

  He stopped unloading the bottles, looked into her face. “You are?”

  “I’m working with Ed Sandiford now, and—”

  “Shit.”

  “Ed told me that witnesses saw Keith leaving the Starbright—”

  “No.”

  “On the night that Destiny was murdered.”

  “Oh, fuck me.” He leaned over the bar, put his head in his hands.

  “Cole?”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “Did Keith kill Destiny and Emerald?”

  “No, of course he didn’t—”

  “What was he doing at the Starbright?”

  “He wanted to talk to her. To tell her . . . something.”

  “How did he find her there?”
>
  “I tracked her down for him. Leticia—”

  “Who?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You tracked Destiny down because Keith wanted to talk.” Simone stared at him. “I saw her body, Cole. That was some conversation.”

  “I swear to God he just wanted to talk. He . . . he found her and he was . . . horrified.”

  “But he didn’t call the police about it? Why?”

  He looked up at her, pleading. “Because they would ask him what he’d gone there to talk about.” He put his face in his hands again. Simone waited, but he said nothing more.

  She shook her head. This was going nowhere. “I don’t know if you know this, but if you’re covering up for him, you could be implicated as well. You could go to jail, Cole. Look at me.” She put a finger under his chin, tilted his face up. “Picture yourself. In jail. With those long, pretty eyelashes. ” Simone had no idea where this was coming from—that edge in her voice, that menace. It was as if every unpleasant encounter from the past few days—Furlong, Moss, Julie, Walker—every last one of them had balled up inside Simone, mobilized her against this one dimwitted guy.

  May as well go with it.

  His doe eyes sparked with fear. “He didn’t kill anyone, ” he said. “I swear.”

  “What did he want to talk to Destiny about?”

  “He wanted to make sure she didn’t tell about the . . .”

  “About the what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “About the what?”

  “When he found her body there like that, he freaked out, he didn’t know what to do. He called me, and—”

  “About the what, Cole?”

  His gaze went back to his hands.

  “Look at me.”

  He looked. His eyes glistened. He was actually about to cry.

  “About the videotapes?” she said. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  And like that, all the color drained out of Cole’s face, like sand out of an egg timer. One tear slipped down his cheek. “Do you still have them, Cole?” she said.

  He nodded. “I couldn’t throw them out, no matter what he . . .”

  “Are they here?”

  “Yes.”