The Bequest

by kindle@netgalley. com

  Teri hoped no one noticed the hitch in her breathing before she answered. “I don’t know. I guess she was just coming over here to talk to me and saw what was happening.”

  “Lucky for you,” Nichols said.

  Teri could tell he didn’t believe her. “Yeah, lucky.”

  “So what did she want to talk to you about?” Swafford asked.

  Another hitch. She kept her focus on the bullet hole in the couch, afraid her eyes would give her away. “She wanted to talk about the movie. I think maybe she wanted to make some kind of connection with her son.”

  “The son who died twice,” Nichols said.

  “Is the sarcasm necessary?” Mike asked. He moved over behind Teri and stood with his hands on her shoulders.

  “It’s one of my few pleasures,” Nichols said. “But you can see how strange this all is.”

  “Mike,” Teri said, “they’re just doing their jobs.”

  “Did you tell Ms. Crowell that you met up with her long-lost son last night?” Nichols asked.

  Teri looked up and made direct eye contact with him. “I don’t know who that was last night, but it wasn’t Leland Crowell.”

  “And you know this, how?”

  “I just do. And no, I didn’t tell her about last night.”

  “Where did she go when she left?” Swafford asked.

  “I was crawling around on the floor at the time. Sorry if I didn’t ask.” “See how much fun sarcasm can be?” Nichols said.

  “Especially when you mix it with people trying to kill me.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Stillman said. “Are you sure you couldn’t make out anything about the driver who was tailing you?”

  “I think he was doing a little more than just tailing her, don’t you think?” Mike said.

  Nichols looked at him and smiled an insincere smile. “See? Fun.”

  “This all raises a very interesting question,” Swafford said. “Ms. Squire, just who in the hell would want to kill you?”

  “And why?” Nichols added.

  CHAPTER 35

  The detectives reconvened on Coldwater Canyon Drive, where crews were still working on pulling the Mercedes up the hillside. A

  wrecker had backed up to the broken railing, with a winch and chain cranking slowly, dragging the car inch by inch through the brush. The detectives watched wordlessly until Swafford broke the silence, expressing what had been on everyone’s mind.

  “I sure would like to get an advance print of that movie,” he said. “Yeah, me too,” Stillman replied. “You read the screenplay?” “No. I want to see that, too.”

  “Do you really believe the movie’s got anything to do with all this?”

  Nichols asked.

  “I don’t know. But what I do know is that it’s weird that a

  screenwriter would will it to an actress, and it’s weird that the

  screenwriter died twice, and it’s weird that his mother just happened to

  save the actress’s ass out here, and it’s weird that the mother was in the

  house when someone took a shot at the actress, and it’s weird that none of

  this happened two years ago when the writer died the first time and willed

  away his script, but it’s all happening right before the movie gets released. “There was a lot of buzz back when they first starting working on this

  thing, what with the circumstances of the script and all, but now is the

  money time. For all I know this is about generating heat to fire up the box

  office. But—and I know this is a big but—what if there’s some kind of

  message in the movie that someone’s trying to squash?”

  “So how would this squash it?” Stillman asked.

  “Well, look at it this way. If you just wanted to legally stop it, you’d

  try to get an injunction. But if you’re worried about the message—or clue

  or secret or whatever—getting out, you’d have a couple of problems.

  First, file a lawsuit and you make sure the movie gets analyzed scene by

  scene, frame by frame, by lawyers and juries and experts and God knows

  who else. If there’s a secret in there, someone’s gonna find it.” “Plus, everyone’s gonna know who wanted to keep it from getting

  out,” Swafford said. “It’ll be the guy who files for the injunction. Not to

  mention that they’re hard to get, so there’s a pretty good chance the

  movie gets released anyway, with a whole buttload of scrutiny around it.” The wrecked Mercedes crested the hill, rear end up, as the winch

  continued its work. There were paint scrapes on the driver’s side, running

  from the driver’s door to just midway through the rear door. Most likely

  the sideswipe that sent it through the railing.

  “But,” Swafford continued, “hard as it is to believe, Hollywood

  sometimes does show a little sensitivity. It wouldn’t be the first time that a

  studio shelved a project because of a tragedy. Or at least delayed it.” “But there are some people who’d stand to lose a whole lot of money

  if that happened,” Stillman said. “How much money did this thing cost to

  make? Hundred million or something like that?”

  “I’m just saying there are a whole lot of questions we don’t know the

  answer to,” Swafford said. “And I don’t know if there are any answers in

  the screenplay or the movie, itself, but I’m a big fan of gathering all the

  information first, then sorting it out later.”

  “I hear you,” Nichols said.

  All three detectives walked to the front of the Mercedes, angled

  down as its rear end hung from the winch. The grill had been smashed,

  both headlights were out, and dark blue paint was sprinkled across the

  metal. They knew that the paint would likely match the scratches on the

  rear of Teri Squire’s car.

  “But I’ve got a lot more questions,” Nichols added. “Why was Teri

  Squire meeting with the dead screenwriter last night? And why do our

  witnesses say he left with her? And what happened to her partner, Mona?

  And this.” He pointed at the battered Mercedes. “Who’s trying to kill her?

  Or is someone really trying to kill her? Awfully convenient that she left

  the curtains open just enough to create a firing lane, but the shooter just happened to miss her anyway. Maybe it’s only supposed to look like

  someone’s trying to kill her.”

  “My head hurts,” Swafford said.

  “And here’s one more question, because we both know it’s

  inevitable: What the hell weird is going to happen next?”

  CHAPTER 36

  Bob Keene sat at his desk, focused on the computer screen. The bloggers had broken the story first, but now all of the news sites were picking it up, as were the tabloids. No one had enough actual news yet to know what the hell was really going on, but speculation fueled by journalistic imagination lacked the patience to wait on facts. The truth might turn out to be boring, so the media typically kicked early into overdrive to feed on the sensationalism—the “breaking news”—before reality set in. The corrections could be filler on the inside pages or footnotes at a later date.

  He clicked from link to link, headline to headline, a faint smile on his lips as he mentally calculated the escalating opening box office. His internal guesstimate had already cranked up to a minimum opening weekend of at least one hundred twenty-five million. “Two time Oscar Winner Questioned in Homicide” was the main theme of the articles, but the subplot included questions about the shooting of Mona Hirsch and where that fit with a murder near Big Sur.

  “Love Triangle Ends Badly for Actress.” That one was the most farfetched, although it tried most earnestly to tie the two events together. It had Teri and Mona in a threesom
e with an unnamed lover that ended with Mona shooting him in the back up at Big Sur, then Teri, in a fit of rage, shooting Mona in the back.

  Bob had been fielding phone calls non-stop for the past two hours before delegating that duty to a squad of younger agents, whose mantra was, “We have no comment at this time about Ms. Squire’s involvement in either shooting,” thereby implicating her while at the same time spreading gasoline on the rumor wildfires. That had been Bob’s idea, one he cleared with Doug Bozarth, who was equally enamored with the idea of upping the hype before the release of the movie, even if it meant sacrificing Teri Squire’s reputation. The agency would dump her after all this, anyway, so the goal was to capitalize as much as possible before that happened.

  He spun around in his chair and gazed out the window at a layer of smog descending on downtown Los Angeles to the east. God, he was glad he officed in Century City and not downtown. He hearkened back to his younger days, working at a wannabe entertainment law firm on the 28th floor of a bank building in L.A. At least he had been drawing a paycheck while his law school classmates toiled long hours in the mail rooms and at assistant’s desks of talent agencies. But they soon moved into agent’s offices while he struggled for fifteen years to build his own entertainment clientele.

  Then came his big break, a young actress from Texas with no family and no discernible background, shunned by the all the agencies, whom he had befriended at the diner where she waitressed while taking acting classes and going on endless auditions. She brought her first real contract to him—a guest spot on a sitcom—and when she got her big break, a low budget indie film that earned her an Oscar nomination in a supporting role, Bob had ridden her coattails to TAA, where his star skyrocketed. His client list grew exponentially and bore so much fruit that he was now willing to sacrifice his first-born, so to speak, on the altar of show business. He rationalized it by telling himself that she could rise from the ashes again, just as she had a couple of years ago with The Precipice script that, ironically, now threatened to take her down. She was still under forty; she had time for another rebound.

  And besides, he had a piece of this one. He hadn’t told anyone, but he had put in some of his own money with Doug Bozarth’s investment group. Not a lot by Hollywood standards, but enough that he could retire and ride off into a tropical sunset with the fountain of income that this project, his final project, was going to create for him.

  His cell phone rang. He looked at the read-out: NUMBER BLOCKED. And yet it was someone who had his private number. He answered. “Hello, this is Bob Keene.” A pause, then, “Who?” Another pause, then “I’ll meet you on the corner across from the mall.”

  “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on,” Mike said. Teri kept her head down, focused on the glittering glass as she swept the shards into a pile, scooped it up in a dustpan, and dumped it into the trash. It sounded like off-key wind chimes as the pieces clanked against the metal sides of the can, before coming to rest in the bottom. A slight breeze filtered in through the broken frame of the sliding door, carrying with it a hint of plumeria from below the deck, the sweet smell taking Teri back to the north shore of Kauai and her vacation stay in Hanalei, the summer before the box office bomb that sent her career into a tailspin. Oh, to be back on Kauai, hiking to the Alaka’i Swamp or on the Hanakapi’ai Trail along the Na Pali Coast, where her biggest concerns were keeping enough sunblock on her face or avoiding slick spots along the muddy trails, with no worries about cars trying to run her off the road or snipers firing through her windows.

  Or intruders shooting her friends in the back.

  “You know as much as I do,” she said.

  “Do I?”

  “Do you really need me to answer that?”

  “I think I do.”

  She swept the last of the glass into the dustpan then dropped it into

  the trash. “Okay, here it is in a nutshell. You and Bob fired me. Then, when I found a good script, you acted like bygones were just bygones. You brought in investors who have no past and untraceable money. A dead screenwriter showed up at my door and demanded a cut of the movie. Your investors told me to meet with the dead guy, who ended up dying all over again. Someone tried to run me off the road. Someone tried to shoot me. Someone nearly killed Mona.” She kicked the trashcan over, sending the shards across the floor again. “And now you’re here asking stupid questions.”

  “Teri—” “What do you want from me, Mike? Do you really think I know why people are trying to kill me?”

  “It’s just—”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. If I knew, I’d tell the police. Do you think I want to get killed? Do you think I want Mona to get killed? If I knew anything that would prevent that, I’d take out a full-page ad in the trades and announce it to the world.”

  Mike stayed silent.

  “I’ll tell you one thing I do know,” Teri said. “I don’t trust Doug Bozarth.”

  That loosened Mike’s tongue. “Are you telling me you think he’s behind all this?”

  “I’m just saying he’s got a lot to lose here. Maybe more than any of us. My reputation was already trashed, but he’s got money on the line. Money that’s been put at risk by the resurrection of Leland Crowell, but now that risk has been taken care of. Awfully conveniently, if you ask me.”

  “Assuming that’s true, why would he want to kill you?”

  “Because questions about the rightful ownership of the script put the whole project under a microscope. I’m starting to wonder what will show up if that happens. I don’t think he can afford that to happen. It’s better for him to just get rid of anything or anyone that draws scrutiny, then sit back and rake in his winnings from the box office.”

  “You don’t think the death of the lead actor would draw scrutiny?” he asked.

  “Only if it can be connected to the movie. If it’s just another unfortunate Hollywood tragedy, it ends up as a segment on cable television, everybody clucks their tongues and says, ‘how sad,’ but it’s over. And, oh, by the way, it beefs up the box office.”

  “God, when did you get so cynical?”

  “When did you not?”

  Teri pivoted and walked through the door frame, stepping over the jagged shards at the bottom, onto the deck. She leaned on the rail and gazed at the hills, as if banishing Mike to invisibility.

  He watched her for a few seconds, then turned and left.

  Teri waited until she heard the opening and closing of the front door before turning back around. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  Bob Keene sat rigidly at his desk, cell phone clutched tightly in his right hand, a pose he had maintained since returning just minutes ago from the impromptu meeting down the street. No thoughts troubled his mind. His senses had all but shut down, oblivious to the ringing of phones and hustle of bodies moving by outside the glass doors of his office. His own phone rang. He put it to his ear, listened briefly, then put it in his side coat pocket, pushed his chair back, and stood.

  Moving stiffly, almost robotically, he stood. Arms at his side, not swinging, he walked around his desk to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway. The latest addition to the mailroom, an MBA from Stanford, nearly bowled him over with the mail cart as Bob walked directly into his path, before turning sharply ninety degrees and heading toward the elevators.

  “Sorry, Mr. Keene,” the MBA said, but Bob ignored him. Never even moved his head, as if he had neither seen nor heard the mail cart, even with its squeaky rear wheels.

  Bob moved on to the elevators. He pushed the down button, then stood with his feet together, arms at his side, and faced the doors. Several of his colleagues passed behind him, most saying nothing, but a few uttering his name in greeting, accompanied by nods, but getting no response. No one acted as if his lack of cordiality was any kind of aberration. The interactions spoke volumes about Bob’s relationship with his fellow workers, most of whom viewed him as the head of the agency— a view he certainly held of himself—while others ju
st considered him the old guy who made too much money and that, as soon as he was out, his share would flow down to them.

  A bell sounded, the down light glowed, and the doors opened. Bob stepped on, turned to face the front, and pushed the button for the ground floor even though it was already lit. A young woman carrying her smart phone to her face, as if having difficulty seeing, shuffled to the side to make room for him directly in front of the doors. She never looked up, nor did he acknowledge her presence. The elevator continued its downward descent, an express to the ground floor.

  When the doors opened again, the woman with the smart phone stepped toward the door, accustomed to being allowed to proceed ahead of men. Chivalry was apparently not dead, even in Hollywood. It was, however, dormant on this elevator. Bob cut her off, his eyes straight forward, still not acknowledging her presence. She huffed, a disgusted exhale of breath, as he stepped out of the elevator ahead of her. His head never swiveled her way, nor did his eyes track her. He had no idea she was even there.

  He turned sharply ninety degrees and headed across the lobby, toward the front door. As he passed the security desk, a blue-jacketed security guard, his close-cropped gray hair testimony to a military career prior to taking a cush position sitting on a padded stool and watching movie stars go by, called to him. “Afternoon, Mr. Keene.”

  Bob continued on a direct route to the revolving doors, oblivious to the greeting. And oblivious to the next words that escaped in a softer tone under the guard’s breath. “You tight-assed sonuvabitch.”

  He exited the building mechanically, as if marching with a precision drill team. The sun fell on his face and directed his attention skyward. It was the first time he had moved his head, much less re-directed his line of sight in any direction other than straight ahead. He stood for a moment, staring skyward, directly into the sun. But he never blinked.

  A couple in shorts and matching aloha shirts, the man clutching a digital camera, passed by in front of him. The man looked skyward. “What’s he looking at?”

  The woman glanced upward, and then at Bob. “Nothing. Let’s just keep moving.”