The Bequest

by kindle@netgalley. com

  “He was just trying to protect me,” Teri said.

  “I know.”

  “I should have protected him. Just like I should have protected Mona.” She fought back a sob, but made no effort to check the tears that ran down her cheeks. “And Mike.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done for Mike. And it looks like you protected Dr. Palmer just fine.”

  “Did Bozarth kill Mike?”

  “We don’t know yet. We do think he was behind the attack on Ms. Hirsch, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just a guess at this point, but we noticed her laptop was on and she was logged into the Internet, so Beverly Hills PD put their tech guy on it. She’d been doing research on Doug Bozarth.”

  “I asked her to,” Teri said. “But how would anybody know?”

  “Who knows. Spyware? Some kind of virus? Maybe just a straight-out hack job. Like I said, it’s just a guess, but Mr. Bozarth apparently likes his privacy.”

  Teri lapsed into silence. It wasn’t until they got on I-10 heading south to San Antonio from the small town of Boerne that she spoke again.

  “Why did he try to kill me?”

  Stillman looked at her in the rearview mirror. “How much do you know about him?”

  “Not much. Mike and Bob said they vetted him, so I never saw the need to look any deeper for myself.”

  Nichols put his arm on the seat and turned to face the back. “Then why did you have Ms. Hirsch doing Internet research on him?”

  Teri started to answer, then bit back her reply. She didn’t know how much they already knew. They knew enough to come to Texas, presumably after her, though, and not after Bozarth. It had just been her good fortune—in a very strange way, of course—that they happened upon a murder attempt that clearly painted her as a victim, not a perpetrator. Assuming, of course, that Chad regained consciousness and corroborated her story. But as far as she knew, they were looking for her. Because of Mike? Did they think she had anything to do with that? The timing of the calls would clear her of that, once they followed the technology trail and placed her in Arizona or New Mexico, or maybe even Texas, at the time of his death.

  But what about Bob’s bizarre suicide? Or the demise of Leland Number Two? Was she still a suspect in those deaths? She couldn’t tell them of the late night meetings where she, Bozarth, Mike, and Bob strategized and schemed—a prosecutor might say “conspired”—about how to deal with the extortion effort by Leland Crowell. Even though she never really knew what Bozarth had in mind, and even though she voiced some concerns, she had closed her eyes and her mind to the possibilities, content to let Doug Bozarth run free so long as it benefitted her.

  “Ms. Squire?” Stillman said. “Something on your mind?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Chad.”

  “You were about to say why you asked Ms. Hirsch to research Doug Bozarth.”

  “I guess it was too little, too late, but I started wondering where the money came from. Back when this all started, I was so desperate for a comeback, I was just glad Bob and Mike found investors. I didn’t ask where the money came from, and I didn’t care. Like I said, Mike told me they had vetted the investors and that the source of the funds was cleared through the Patriot Act.”

  “So what made you start worrying?”

  “I wish I knew. But now I wish I hadn’t. If that’s what set this all in motion, if it’s what put Mona and Chad in the hospital, and Mike...” She choked up, and her voice trailed off.

  “We’re just getting started on it,” Nichols said. “But it looks like you were right to worry about where the money came from.”

  “What have you found?” she asked.

  “Nothing concrete. But we do know he made his money in the oil and gas business, primarily in the Middle East. At least his legitimate money. But there’s plenty of illegitimate money to be made in that part of the world for a man with his contacts. We’re still trying to run that down.”

  “And you wouldn’t tell me if you had found anything, would you?”

  He smiled and turned back around. “Here’s all you need to know: You started checking him out, and he tried to kill you. I think you can draw your own conclusions from that.”

  “Am I a suspect for anything?” she asked.

  “If you were, we’d have to Mirandize you,” Stillman said. “And we haven’t, so again, draw your own conclusions.”

  They rode in silence the rest of the way to University Hospital, just off of Interstate 10, northwest of Loop 410 in San Antonio. They pulled up to the emergency entrance and parked. Stillman opened the rear door to let Teri out, and the two detectives escorted her inside. Nichols approached the front desk, made his inquiry, and then returned to Stillman and Teri.

  “He’s still in surgery,” he said. “Looks like we’ll have to wait.”

  Teri nodded. She found a seat in the half-empty waiting area and sat. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She slumped in the chair and closed her eyes. The throbbing behind them kept pounding as she tried to force the pain away.

  “Ms. Squire?”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at Nichols, who handed her a bottle of water and two aspirins. It was a small kindness but a welcome one.

  “Thank you, Detective,” she said. She put the pills in her mouth, took a swig of water, and swallowed. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt a nudge at her shoulder and a woman’s voice.

  “Baby?”

  She opened her eyes and looked into the face of her mother. “Oh, Mama,” she said.

  She broke into sobs as Mary put her arms around her and held tight. “That’s okay, Baby. It’s all gonna be okay. Shhh shhh shhh.”

  Nichols and Stillman stood across the waiting room and watched, almost embarrassed to be intruding on such a private moment.

  A gray-haired doctor clad in green scrubs entered the room. The detectives both snapped to attention, as did Teri, pulling away from her mother’s embrace. She and Mary stood and approached him.

  “Are you Dr. Palmer’s family?” the doctor asked.

  He scrutinized Teri, as if he knew who she was—or at least as if he thought he was supposed to know who she was. Teri guessed her appearance, the product of a broken nose, driving all night, a chase through the woods, and a gunfight, left her looking a whole lot less like the famous actress Teri Squire than she appeared on the big screen.

  “We’re the closest thing he has to it,” Mary said.

  “So you must be Peggy,” he said to Teri. “I’m Dr. Owens, his surgeon.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Teri noticed a glance pass between Stillman and Nichols at the name “Peggy.” Let them be curious, she thought. They’d probably figure it out sooner or later, anyway, if they haven’t already.

  “How is he?” Teri asked.

  “He’s going to be just fine. The bullet didn’t hit any organs, but it nicked an artery. We got that taken care of, but he lost a lot of blood. We’re getting it pumped back in him as fast as we can, and he should be up and about in just a matter of days.”

  Teri let out a big sigh. She hadn’t been aware that she was holding her breath until she let it go.

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “He’s asleep, and probably will be overnight. He just had one instruction for you before we put him under: Take care of the horses.”

  She smiled. “That sounds like him.”

  The doctor looked around the room, his eyes finally coming to rest on Stillman and Nichols. “Are y’all the police?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Stillman said.

  “He just had one instruction for you, too: Don’t talk to his client without him being there. I assume you know which client he is referring to.”

  Now Stillman smiled. “I think he sometimes refers to her as Annie Oakley.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve delivered my messages, so I’ll leave you to sort them out.”

  T
he surgeon left without another word, clearly annoyed that a man as talented as he had been reduced to being a messenger boy.

  “What did he mean about talking to his client?” Mary asked Terri. “I don’t understand.”

  “He was talking about me, Mama.” Then something suddenly struck her. Actually it was more of something that wasn’t there that struck her. “Where’s Daddy?”

  Mary dropped her head and looked at the floor. “He said he had work to do. He said tending to the folks laid up in the hospital was woman’s work.”

  “So he knows I’m here.”

  “He knows you weren’t hurt. Just Chad.”

  “Does he know what happened out there?”

  “Honey, I don’t even know what happened out there. I just know that Chad got hurt.”

  “That he got shot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Daddy think I did it?”

  “Of course not, Baby.” She paused then looked up. “Did you?” “Oh, Mama, how can you ask that?”

  Teri looked away. She saw the detectives studiously ignoring the conversation, which meant they were listening to every word.

  She walked over to them. “Are you going to wait here until Chad wakes up?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stillman said. “We need to talk to him about what happened out there.”

  “Am I free to go?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Just don’t go too far.”

  She turned, then stopped and looked back. “Am I safe now?”

  The detectives exchanged glances again. By now she was pretty well clued in on their little signals.

  “Why am I not safe? Sheriff Waggoner’s got Bozarth. Who else is out there?”

  “Annemarie Crowell,” Nichols said.

  “Annemarie? I know she’s a bit creepy but—”

  “Did you know she was a hypnotist?”

  That made sense, as Teri thought about it. Mike had first brought it up, but now she remembered the way Annemarie had sat in her house, speaking in a low monotone and swaying.

  Had Annemarie been trying to hypnotize her? And if so, why?

  “We think she may have killed her sons,” Nichols said. “And maybe Bob Keene.”

  “Sons?”

  “Leland and Rodney. Twins. You may have met Rodney recently.”

  Teri felt her knees go weak. Her head spun. She felt for a chair and sat, lest she pass out and take a nose-dive on the floor. “What makes you think she killed Bob? I thought it was a suicide. He walked out in front of a truck.”

  Then it hit her: Annemarie was a hypnotist! The parallels to The Precipice were unmistakable. In her foggy state, she was slow putting the pieces together, but that had been exactly what Mike had suggested in her last conversation with him. Had Leland Crowell’s screenplay been a true story, about a murderer who hypnotized others into doing her dirty work? Is that why he had gone off the cliff—because his knowledge was a threat to his mother? But that didn’t make sense. After all, it was Annemarie who had hand-delivered the screenplay to her. If she had been covering up, she would have buried it.

  “We’re just guessing about all this right now,” Nichols said, “so I’d prefer not to say anything. Just suffice it to say we have good reason to think so.”

  “And to make things worse,” Stillman said, “we’ve lost track of her.”

  “Do you think she’s coming after me, too?” Teri asked. This was all too much to process.

  “But we have no reason to think she even knows you’re in Texas,” Nichols said. “We lost track of her before you left town.”

  Teri looked at her mother, whose face registered confusion. Teri had left her completely in the dark on most of what had transpired over the past few days. All Mary knew before was that her daughter was in trouble; now she knew that she was also in danger. She had already lost one child. From the look on her face, the possibility that she might lose another seemed too much to bear.

  “Take me back to Chad’s, Mama, so I can take care of the horses. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”

  CHAPTER 54

  When Teri and Mary arrived back at Chad’s ranch, they found Gretel standing forlornly in the moonlight in the middle of the meadow. The sight was a great relief to Teri, who had simply dismounted and rushed into the trees earlier without tying her off. When they emerged from the woods later, Gretel was nowhere to be seen. She assumed—or maybe the correct word was hoped—that Gretel had found her way back to the barn. She prayed that Gretel had not found her way to the opening in the fence and wandered off. So seeing her standing proudly in the meadow lifted the blanket of guilt that had draped itself around her shoulders, replacing another guilt blanket that had been lifted by unburdening herself to Mary. She wondered how many blankets were still left.

  Mary turned her truck into the opening in the fence. In the beam of the headlights, Teri scanned the area then looked toward the woods. The body she had seen close to the fence was gone, as were the trucks that brought Doug Bozarth and his minions to the ranch, no doubt now being scrutinized by Bandera County’s forensics personnel, or maybe even Texas Rangers. Only Chad’s truck remained at the far edge of the meadow. There were no other signs that a crime, or crimes, had been committed here.

  “Tell Daddy I want to talk to him,” Teri said as she opened the door to get out. “He can either come to me, or I can come to him. But it’s time we talked.”

  “It’s long past time,” Mary said. She leaned over and kissed her daughter on the cheek. “I love you, Baby. Your daddy does, too. You have to believe that.”

  “I want to.” She paused, one foot on the ground. “I’ve gotta go get Gretel. But you tell Daddy. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  Without looking back at Mary’s departure, she walked across the meadow to where Gretel waited patiently, munching on grass and looking at her.

  “Hey, girl,” Teri said. “Sorry I left you, but I’m back now.”

  Teri ran her hand along Gretel’s side then stroked her nose. Gretel snorted, pressed against Teri, and nuzzled her.

  “That’s a good girl. Let’s get you back to the barn and get that saddle off you. I know how a lady hates to wear the same outfit too long.”

  She grabbed the reins, put one boot in a stirrup, and pulled herself up and into the saddle. She shifted her weight, getting comfortable, then eyed the woods. Part of her wanted to scout out the battlefield, to guarantee herself that no more men with guns lurked in the trees, but she knew Sheriff Waggoner and his deputies had already scoured the area. Besides, with Doug Bozarth in custody, his minions, if any had been left, would long since have scattered. She knew they had no quarrel with her. For them, she was just a job with a paycheck, but with the man who held the checkbook behind bars, it would take only the most idealistic of villains to keep the faith.

  She headed Gretel in the direction of the barn, alone in her thoughts as she rode. What the detectives had said made sense. The source of Bozarth’s money likely would not hold up to scrutiny, but since she had been the only person raising questions, she had become a liability. As had Mona.

  Mona.

  Teri pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked for a signal. She had programmed the hospital’s number into speed-dial before leaving Los Angeles, and had, in fact, gotten constant updates during her drive across the desert to Texas. Still critical, but holding on, had been the constant refrain.

  No signal. She would try again when she got back to Chad’s house.

  But what was all that about Annemarie Crowell? At least part of it made sense, the part about twin sons. It explained the resurrection of Leland, showing up at her doorstep demanding his cut of the movie’s proceeds. That must have been...Rodney, was it? An opportunistic mother and her conniving son. Brilliant, really, when you thought about it. Almost diabolical.

  She tried to come to grips, though, with why, if Annemarie was a hypnotizing killer, she did away with Leland, yet delivered the screenplay for production. Unless she simply never th
ought anything would come of it. But it had been mentioned, by name, in Leland Crowell’s will, which had been in the hands of Stuart West, attorney-at-aw. And it had been registered with the Writer’s Guild of America, which meant there was at least one copy of it in existence that was beyond Annemarie’s reach. Maybe she figured that, if others already knew about the script, destroying it might simply raise questions once it was actually retrieved from the WGA.

  But why all the ceremony about personally bringing the script to Teri? Unless, and this meant having a great deal of foresight, Annemarie was savvy enough in the world of Hollywood to understand that the sensational story of a despondent screenwriter taking his own life and willing his script to an Oscar-winning actress had some cachet to it. Enough appeal to maybe turn even a bad script into a money-maker. If not, then no harm, no foul. But if so, then she and Rodney would be on stand-by to capitalize when the moment called for it.

  Incredible!

  And yet here she was on the brink of the blockbuster opening of a movie with a compelling behind-the-scenes story, a trail of bodies that led from California to Texas, and a missing hypnotist.

  She rode Gretel into the darkened barn, dismounted, and turned the light on, though it barely lit up the center of the barn. She removed the empty scabbard from the saddle and tossed it to the floor. The sheriff had her rifle, but with a promise to return it as soon as they confirmed her story of the events on the ranch—not that she ever wanted to see that damn thing again. She took the saddle off and carried it to the tack room, where she grabbed a curry brush and then scrubbed Gretel down. When she finished, she led her to the stall next to Hansel, who whinnied a greeting. The hay on the floor of the stall had been scattered and beaten down, so she retrieved a pitchfork from beside the gun cabinet, scooped hay, and tossed it into the stall.

  As she worked, she heard a sound behind her, a scuffling noise, like footsteps. She looked over her shoulder, but saw no one. It must be her imagination playing tricks. After all, it was past midnight, and no one was here other than the horses and her.

  She hoped.

  She continued to scatter hay then paused as she heard the sound again. A shadow fell across the floor of the barn. She spun quickly.