The Bequest

by kindle@netgalley. com

  Her cell phone rang once again, the blare of Magnum P.I. breaking the radio silence. She looked at the read-out, the name MIKE glowing just above the announcement of “21 missed calls.” On her right, a green and white sign told her she would be in New Mexico in ten miles. Far enough away now.

  She answered. “Mike?” “Jesus, Teri, where the hell are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to get you for hours.”

  “It’s been a rough day. I just needed some time to myself.”

  “Bob’s dead.”

  Teri tapped the brakes, as if slowing the car could stem the onslaught of tragedy that had dogged her lately. As quickly as she hit the brakes, she slid her foot back to the accelerator and pressed harder. The speedometer jumped ten miles an hour.

  “What happened?” she asked. She clenched the wheel, her knuckles whitening.

  “They said he killed himself. That he walked right out in front of a truck.”

  Teri tried to process the words. Bob Keene, suicide? Right when he was on the verge of his biggest success? That didn’t make sense. She had known Bob for enough years to realize that he worshipped at the altar of the almighty dollar. He was counting on The Precipice to be his golden parachute out of the Hollywood craziness and into blissful retirement. He hadn’t said anything, but she was pretty sure he had invested a considerable portion of his personal wealth in the project. There was no way he killed himself. Not now. Not this close to the opening.

  “Three is too many,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Three is too many.”

  “Three what is too many?”

  “Suicides. Leland Crowell, Spencer West, and now Bob. Three socalled suicides. I know they say tragedies come in threes, but what are the odds? Throw in Mona, the second death of Leland Crowell, and someone trying to kill me—twice. That’s too much. And, by the way, if I’d been run off the road, what do you bet that would’ve been called a suicide, too? Actress, distraught over scandal and the near-death of her friend, takes her own life. Hell, I’d have even been the prime suspect in the shootings up at Big Sur and at Mona’s.”

  There was nothing but silence on Mike’s end. Had she lost the connection?

  “Mike, are you still there?”

  When he spoke, his voice sounded distant. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought it was wracked with emotion. “They said Bob was like a zombie. Like he didn’t see anyone around him. He just stood on the curb until a delivery truck was coming, and then he stepped right out in front of it.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you were close to him.”

  “That’s not it. Don’t you see what I’m saying?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t any of that sound familiar to you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He sighed. “The Precipice? Your new movie. Remember?”

  Even before he finished speaking, Teri saw his meaning as the frazzled synapses in her brain put two and two together and finally came up with four. “Oh, my God!”

  “Yeah. A serial killer who hypnotizes people into killing for her, then they kill themselves.”

  Teri thought of those two strange visits from Annemarie Crowell, the low monotones, the subtle swaying as she perched on the edge of her chair. And drowsiness.

  “Do you think Leland Crowell was writing about his mother?”

  “What do we really know about her, anyway?”

  “Just what the lawyer told me. That she was his mother.”

  “I’m going to see what I can find out about her,” he said. “In the meantime, you stay out of sight. Maybe even go to Texas.”

  “I’m one step ahead of you. But you be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You just take care of yourself.”

  Mike hung up the phone. He sat on the edge of the bed in his darkened bedroom and buried his head in his hands.

  My God, what the hell is going on?

  A creaking sound drew his attention to the door. He looked up, startled to see the outline of a person standing in the shadows.

  “We have to keep her safe,” the person said in a low monotone. “Where is she?”

  Then the shadow began to sway.

  CHAPTER 39

  Detectives Nichols and Stillman worked at adjacent desks in a makeshift office the Beverly Hills Police Department had quickly set up for them as a courtesy to the state agency. But even makeshift in Beverly Hills had all the earmarks of elegance, from matching maple desks, cheerful tropical prints on the wall, and cutting edge electronics, including dual monitor computers, high-speed wireless connection to the Internet, and a latte-dispensing coffeemaker.

  Nichols worked the old-fashioned way, flipping through pages in manila file folders, while Stillman clicked away at his computer. A copy of the screenplay for The Precipice rested on the corner of Nichols’s desk. Both men were running on coffee and adrenaline as they puzzled over a series of obviously related deaths and near-deaths. The connections seemed obvious on their face, with a screenplay as the common factor, but the reasons behind the events eluded them both.

  They worked their way through the classic motives: passion, power, revenge, and greed. It was that last one that seemed to offer the most promise. After all, a movie based on the screenplay was about to open to what promised to be an unprecedented box office haul. But that fact also appeared to undermine the greed motive. By all accounts, if the box office hit even close to the projections, there would be enough money to go around, Hollywood accounting notwithstanding. How much was too much? If money was involved, maybe the issue was whether there was something that would negatively impact the box office or the distribution of profits, but damned if either one of them could see what that might possibly be.

  The key to the whole affair, the detectives concluded, lay with the late Leland Crowell, he of the two-time demise. Choosing to divide and conquer, Nichols took the Hollywood path while Stillman worked backward from Crowell. The result had been a lot of nothing. Until...

  “Now here’s something interesting,” Stillman said. Nichols looked up from the file folder he had just opened. “What’s that?”

  “It seems that Annemarie Crowell originally hails from Ludlow, out in the desert, but she got her professional start in Illinois, where she once had a very successful psychiatry practice.”

  “She seems more like a patient to me than a doctor.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Would you lie on her couch and tell her your deepest, darkest secrets?” Nichols asked.

  “The good news is that at least she wouldn’t laugh at you. It would break her face.”

  Stillman’s eye scanned the monitor as he focused on the document on the screen, which bore the letterhead of the State of Illinois Department of Medical Licensing. “Her specialty was hypnotherapy.”

  Nichols abandoned his file folder and rolled his chair over next to his partner. “Now that is interesting. Especially the way some of those witnesses said Bob Keene looked like he was in a trance. Hypnotized, maybe?”

  “But how would she do it? Hypnotize Keene, I mean. We’d need some way to put the two of them together before we can make that leap. Did he even know her? Other than who she is, I mean.”

  “We know Teri Squire knew her,” Nichols said. “Maybe there’s a connection there.”

  Stillman read a few lines more. “Illinois took away her medical license a few years ago. Right about...” He flipped through his notes until he found what he was looking for. “Right about the time she showed up in California.”

  “What’d they take her license for?”

  “Doesn’t say.” Stillman made a note on the pad beside the computer. “But I’ll find out.”

  “Be interesting if it was for hypnotizing people and making them do stuff for her.” He picked up the screenplay and tossed it to his partner. “Like in this screenplay.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Did you read the whole thing?”

  �
�Enough of it to know that Leland Crowell wrote a screenplay about a woman who hypnotizes people and makes them kill for her.”

  Stillman snorted. “That can’t happen. You can’t make someone do something they wouldn’t normally do, hypnotized or not.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Did you ever see The Manchurian Candidate? I’m talking about the original, with Frank Sinatra. The actress from Murder, She Wrote gets this guy to kill people, including taking a shot at a political candidate, just by calling him and telling him to play solitaire. He goes into this trance then, when he sees this certain card, he goes out and kills people.”

  “Frank Sinatra does?”

  “No, I think it was Laurence Harvey. But the point is, all she had to do was call him on the phone and say the magic word.”

  “But even if that works, she’s still got to have access in the first place, you know, to hypnotize him and plant the suggestion or whatever.”

  “Then I guess we need to see if we can put the two of them together,” Nichols said. “Anything else in that file about Annemarie?”

  Stillman scrolled down and clicked to the next document he had uncovered. “She does have a son, but his name isn’t Leland; it’s Rodney. Rodney Leroy.”

  “Not Rodney Leland?”

  “Nope. Rodney Leroy.”

  “Close, though. Maybe he changed his name.”

  Stillman made another note. The page was filling up fast. A lot of todo’s.

  “Anything at all about another son?” Nichols asked.

  “Not that I’ve found so far.”

  Nichols rolled his chair back to his desk and flipped through the file folders stacked on top. “What we need is a DNA sample from her. Then we try to match it to the corpse in the morgue. Next, we—”

  “Exhume the jumper from two years ago and try to get a match to the stiff and to the mom,” Stillman said, picking up the phone. “I’ll get the warrant started.”

  The sun was rising, but was still low on the horizon, at eye level. Teri squinted and pulled down the sunshade. She rubbed her face, then grabbed her coffee from the cup holder and downed the last few drops. She looked at the clock on the dash. Accounting for the two-hour time change, that made it still 5:30 a.m. back in Los Angeles. Mike was probably asleep. She wanted to talk to him, to work through some of the crazy thoughts that had engulfed her on her night-time run. He had his problems, but one of his strengths was his ability to think logically, to reason through her craziness, and to keep her grounded. But there would be time for that later. For now, she would let him sleep.

  The green and white sign on the side of the road announced that she was 46 miles from El Paso. Forty-six miles from Texas. Forty-six miles from home.

  But would Texas still be home when she got there? She didn’t know the answer to that question.

  She grabbed her cell phone and hit Mike’s speed dial number.

  Mike’s phone sounded on his nightstand, playing The Rockford Files theme music, the ringtone he had selected for Teri’s calls. Mike lay on his back in the bed, still dressed as he had been the night before, too exhausted to undress. He ignored the phone as it continued to play. Dead to the world.

  The bullet hole between his eyes also said dead for good.

  CHAPTER 40

  Stillman and Nichols arrived at TAA’s offices with little fanfare, surprised to find a business-as-usual attitude among the employees, as if the death of Bob Keene hadn’t even registered on the radar. Men in full suits and women in dressed-to-kill outfits bustled about, crossing the detectives’ path like stunt car drivers as they stepped off the elevator and sought the reception desk. The red-haired woman behind the transaction counter wore a headset while she worked her computer keyboard. She stopped and eyed the detectives warily.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” she asked.

  “Detectives Stillman and Nichols, California Highway Patrol,” Stillman said. “We need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

  She smiled ever so briefly then almost perceptibly wiped the smile

  from her face.

  “Is that funny?” Nichols asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounds so—so—television.”

  “I’ve got a bad scriptwriter,” Nichols said.

  “Screenwriter,” she said.

  “I stand corrected. But we still need to see whoever’s in charge.” “Do you have badges?”

  Stillman and Nichols exchanged looks. “Are you always this

  skeptical?” Stillman asked. “Not that it’s a bad thing.”

  He pulled his badge from his coat pocket and showed it to her. She

  leaned forward and squinted as she read it. Then she pulled away and

  looked at him, still smiling.

  “It looks real,” she said.

  “It is real.”

  “Look,” she said. “Do you think you two are the first actors to come

  in here and try to pull something like this? If you don’t have an

  appointment and if you don’t have a demo reel, acting like cops won’t get

  you in to see an agent. And here’s another little hint for you: Pretend to

  be Beverly Hills or Los Angeles cops, not Highway Patrol, unless you’re

  actually on a highway.”

  “First of all,” Stillman said, “we’ve got jurisdiction statewide,

  something which I’m getting pretty damn tired of having to explain. And

  secondly, we need to talk to someone about Bob Keene’s death.” She leaned back again, as if making a decision. Maybe it was the set of

  his jaw or the look in his eye, but her smile slowly disappeared. “You’re

  serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hold on.” She dialed an extension then turned her head as she spoke

  into the headset microphone. “I have two officers here who need to talk to

  someone about Mr. Keene.” She paused, then nodded and turned back to

  them. “Mr. Hotchkiss will be right here. He’s one of our managing

  shareholders.”

  The detectives backed away from the counter and stood silently,

  amused at the pretense of the office. Their amusement was quickly ended

  by the sounds of leather-soled shoes on marble floors, the staccato beat

  indicating the walker was a person approaching with a purpose coupled

  with an air of self-importance.

  Marcus Hotchkiss’s appearance matched his stride. Barely five feet

  six inches tall, his hair heavily sprayed into place, graying at the temples,

  and wearing a silk suit and tie, with European tasseled loafers that made

  even his small feet look arrogant.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked. There was a hint of the South

  in his tone, but just a hint, as if he was making a conscious effort to

  suppress it.

  Both detectives showed their badges. “Stillman and Nichols,

  California Highway Patrol,” Nichols said. “And before you say anything,

  we have jurisdiction both on the highways and off.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Hotchkiss said. “How can I help you?” “We’ve got some questions about Bob Keene,” Stillman said. “Why? I thought that was an accident, or at worst a suicide. Hardly

  something for CHP to get involved with.”

  “We’re not saying it wasn’t. We just have some questions.” Hotchkiss glanced at an empty conference room, located through

  glass walls behind the reception desk. “Let’s talk in here,” he said, leading

  the way.

  Once inside, he closed the door and sat at the head of the table.

  “What kinds of questions? And what can any of this have to do with CHP?

  Jurisdiction or not, I don’t understand how a truck running down a

  pedestrian in Century City would bring Highway Patrol into my offices.” “There’s
a possibility it may be related to a death on the Coast

  Highway,” Nichols said.

  “Is this the one Teri Squire’s involved with?” Hotchkiss asked. “No one said she’s involved with it, but yeah, that’s the one.” “The person you really need to talk to is Mike Capalletti. That’s

  Teri’s agent. And he worked the closest with Bob.”

  “Is he here?”

  Hotchkiss picked up the phone on a credenza behind him and

  punched an extension. “Get Capalletti down to the conference room at

  reception.”

  He hung up and turned back around. “He’ll be here in a minute.” “Did Mr. Keene have any visitors yesterday?” Nichols asked. “Not that I know of.”

  “How about phone calls?”

  “Again, not that I know of. I can check and see if anything came in

  through the front desk, but if it was on his direct dial or his cell phone, we

  wouldn’t have any way to know.”

  “Do you know if he ever met with an Annemarie Crowell?” Stillman

  asked.

  “The mother of the dead screenwriter? I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Hotchkiss, do you have security cameras in the office?” Nichols

  asked.

  “We’ve got them in the reception area and in the halls, and security

  has them in front of the building. None in the offices or conference rooms.

  They’re digital. Why?”

  “We’d like to see whatever you’ve got from when Bob Keene left the

  office yesterday.”

  Hotchkiss leaned back in his chair, his brow wrinkled, as if trying to

  process what seemed to be an odd request.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked. “Do you have

  some reason to believe Bob’s death wasn’t just an accident? Or a suicide?” “Mr. Hotchkiss,” Stillman said, “we—”