Elizabeth doesn’t answer, just keeps fleeing along the path leading through the woods, toward the edge of the park.
Harper stands in front of the mirror, shaving cream lathered on his face, a towel wrapped around his waist.
He isn’t meeting Elizabeth for a few hours, but figured he might as well get ready now.
You’re not too anxious for tonight, he thinks wryly, reaching for his razor.
It’s just that it’s been so long.
He tilts his head forward and moves the blade over his skin, wondering how long it’s been since he has held a woman, any woman, in his arms.
Then he realizes he doesn’t have to wonder.
He knows exactly when the last time was.
Over a year ago, back in Los Angeles, before …
No.
He doesn’t want to ruin his exhilarated mood by thinking about that.
Instead, his mind conjures Elizabeth Baxter, with her big brown eyes and her skin that looks so soft and smooth, skin that is faintly scented with subtle perfume that reminds him of a glorious spring bouquet.
He smiles, wondering if she’s found his little surprise yet …
Then winces as his blade slips, slicing into his flesh so that a stinging trickle of crimson runs down his neck.
The traffic on 1-95 is snarled as usual. What else would you expect on a Friday afternoon before the last true weekend of the summer, especially outside a coastal city like Boston?
It’ll get better when the traffic for the Cape branches off in a few miles, she thinks, moving her foot from the brake to the gas and inching the Toyota forward a few feet before braking again in sync with the red pickup truck in front of her.
On the radio, the traffic copter reporter says blithely, “And it’s a snail’s crawl into and out of the city this afternoon, with a slow go on the Mass Pike and routes 128 and 93. And if you’re unfortunate enough to be out on 95 south of the city, it’s bumper to bumper all the way to the split, with a serious car-tractor-trailer accident tying things up at Exit 11. Back to you, Steve.”
Pamela reaches out and turns off the radio, which she had turned on a few minutes earlier to drown out Hannah’s whining from the backseat.
Sure enough, as soon as the car is silent, her daughter cranks it up again. “Hannah’s hungry, Mommy. Hannah needs something to eat. Eat now.”
“Hannah, when we get to Nana and Papa’s, then you can eat something.” If they’re around.
She had tried to reach her parents before leaving home earlier, but there had been no answer. She hopes they’re only out to lunch or shopping, that they haven’t decided to go up to their house in Maine for the weekend. Not wanting to wait until she’d spoken to them, she had left a message on the machine telling them that she and the kids were coming for the weekend, but hadn’t told them why, of course.
She isn’t about to let them know that she’s left her husband—maybe temporarily, maybe for good. That depends on his reaction to the note she’d left him on the kitchen table.
Dear Frank,
I’m taking the kids to my mother’s for the weekend. Call or come if you want to talk to me.
Pamela
That’s it. No further information. And not Love, Pam the way she usually signs notes to him.
Had the note been straightforward enough?
She hadn’t mentioned how upset she’s been, or that he’s the reason she’s left. But he’ll have to know. He’ll have to come after her. After all, she’s never left town to visit her parents without first discussing it with him.
He probably found the note when he stopped home, as he often does, while out on patrol.
She used to think it sweet that he did that—that he would check up on her and the kids during the day, to say hello and make sure everything’s okay.
But now she wonders about his true motive for coming around like that.
Is he hoping for a glimpse of their beautiful neighbor?
Hoping to impress her with his patrol car, his uniform?
Is it Pamela’s imagination, or have his visits home become more frequent lately?
It’s not your imagination. You saw him sneaking back from her place the other night, she reminds herself.
The pit of rage ignites in her stomach once again.
She stares out the windshield, realizes they’ve been at an absolute standstill for several minutes now.
In the backseat, Hannah’s whining has turned to crying, and, of course, Jason has awakened and has joined in. The din is deafening.
“Cut it out, you guys,” she yells. “Quiet down. I’m trying to drive!”
“Mommy not driving. Mommy park car,” Hannah stops crying long enough to observe.
“We are not parked!”
Pamela jams her hand down on the horn.
“Move, dammit!” she yells vainly at the cars clogging the road in front of her. Her voice is tight with frustration, despair. “Move!”
Elizabeth drives slowly down Green Garden Way, wondering if she should have stopped at Manny’s grandparents’ house. She had driven by several times, looking for a sign of … Something.
A sign of Manny, a sign of a police investigation, anything that would tell her what’s going on.
But there was nothing to see.
She has to do something. There has to be some way of finding out if Manny’s okay without involving herself with the authorities.
Now, of all times.
“Manny, where are you?” she mutters aloud.
On the seat beside her is a large zippered canvas bag, a bag she brought to the bank so that she could empty out her safety deposit box.
The bag is bulging now.
She rounds the curve at the end of the street and sees her house up ahead.
This is it—the last time you’ll ever do this.
The last time you’ll ever come home here.
And it has been home, she realizes
Not the one she would have chosen for herself years ago, nothing like Gran’s big, cozy Nebraska farmhouse or as grand and comfortable as the Malibu mansion she had abandoned.
But this little Cape has sheltered her for half a decade; within its simple clapboard walls she has felt as safe as she ever could have under the circumstances.
Now she’ll be cast adrift once again, roaming in search of a new refuge.
She doesn’t feel like going, dammit. She doesn’t want to run again. She’s tired of running, exhausted from fear, weary of the tedium, the loneliness of her existence.
But you have no choice.
If you don’t go, you’ll die.
She’d been so damned wrong about Harper Smith.
How could she have imagined that he might be someone who could rescue her from the nightmare, when in reality he’s the one who has caused it?
How could she have been imagining what it would be like to kiss him while he, most likely, had been fantasizing about killing her?
She pulls into the driveway and looks at the house.
Something has captured her attention, something she glimpsed just now, out of the corner of her eye.
For a moment she can’t put her finger on what it is.
Then she sees it.
On the front step.
Some sort of package, wrapped in green tissue paper.
The kind of tissue paper florists use.
She jerks the car to a halt, staring at it, a roaring in her ears as panic rushes through her veins.
“Elizabeth?”
She gasps at the distant sound of her name, turns to see Frank Minelli poking his head out his front door.
She can’t reply, only looks at him, one hand still clenched on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift.
He’s saying something else, but she can’t hear him through the glass. She should roll down the window, but she can’t move.
She can’t move …
You have to roll down the window, she commands herself. You have to pull yourself together.<
br />
She reaches for the lever, cranks it so that it opens halfway, enough for Frank’s voice to reach her ears.
“Have you seen Pam?”
Have you seen Pam?
Have you seen Pam?
It takes an eternity for her to decipher the question, to find her voice, to conjure the correct response.
Have you seen Pam?
“Earlier,” she manages to say in a strangled tone. “With the kids. Leaving.”
“Did she say anything to you about where she was going?”
Elizabeth shakes her head, looks back at the ominous package on the front steps.
“She left a note saying she went to her mother’s in Boston, but I’ve been trying to call and I keep getting the machine. She should have been there by now.”
Elizabeth tries to focus on what he’s saying.
“Hey, are you all right?” he asks, coming closer to the car, peering at her face. “You look terrible.”
“I’m …” She can’t seem to speak coherently.
“You’re not still spooked by what I told you about Harper Smith, are you?”
She can’t reply.
“Listen, relax,” he tells her. “You’re only going to dinner with him, right? You weren’t planning to be alone with him, were you?”
Planning to be alone with him?
Wishing, yes.
Hoping, yes.
Yes, she had allowed herself to imagine that dinner at Momma Mangia’s would lead to something more …
Until Frank had told her that Harper Smith is suspected of stalking an actress in L.A., and killing two other people.
You don’t know it, Frank Minelli, but you’ve saved my life, she thinks, looking into his warm brown eyes.
No. You’re not safe yet. You won’t be until you get out of here.
But she still has a few hours until she’s supposed to meet him at the restaurant.
He won’t realize she’s on to him until she doesn’t show up, and by then she’ll be …
“Elizabeth?”
She shakes her head, focuses on Frank again.
“You look very upset. Do you want to come over to talk? I took the rest of the day off, and I’m waiting to hear from Pamela, so I’ll be around.”
She shakes her head, again looks at the flower arrangement on the step.
He follows her gaze.
“What is that?” he asks, looking at her.
She shrugs. “I have no idea. I guess … he sent it. Harper.”
“Aren’t you going to check?”
She shakes her head, numb.
“Do you want me to go look at it?” Frank asks kindly.
“No! No, Don’t touch it!” she calls, but he’s already striding across the lawn.
She leaps out of her car, calling, “Frank, Don’t—”
But he’s already picking up the green tissue-wrapped package …
And nothing’s happening.
No explosion.
No screams of pain.
No blood.
He walks back over to her, holding the package in one hand, and offering her a small square cardboard rectangle with the other.
“This card was attached. It’s a floral arrangement. See?”
He tilts it toward her, and she flinches.
She takes the card gingerly, turns it over, sees the printed note and signature.
Looking forward to tonight. Harper.
“This is a woman’s handwriting,” she tells Frank, studying it in disbelief.
“He must have ordered them over the phone. Whoever took the order at the florist shop wrote the card. The delivery person must have left them there when you weren’t home.”
“Oh …”
Of course.
The person in the shop had written the note. A woman.
And there is no bomb planted among the fresh summer blooms.
Not this time.
Looking forward to tonight …
She’s filled with foreboding.
Just, she’s certain, as he had intended.
He wanted the flowers to trigger the memory of what had happened in L.A.
He had known she would be paralyzed with fear at the sight of that arrangement sitting on the steps.
You bastard, she thinks, and thrusts the card at Frank.
“Take this,” she says, “and the flowers. Get rid of it for me, will you?”
He looks hesitant. “Elizabeth, I told you, when I said that about Harper I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” she says emphatically, “get rid of it for me. Please, Frank.”
He shrugs. “Okay, sure. No problem.”
“Thank you.”
He turns toward his house, then looks back at her. “You sure you’re going to be all right?”
She nods.
“Well, if you need anything, you holler. I’ll be around all night, so if your date tries anything funny …”
She nods again, thanks him.
She isn’t going to tell him that she’s not going on any date with Harper Smith.
That she’s leaving town as soon as possible …
Now.
She can’t even stick around to find out what’s happened to Manny.
Her life depends on getting out of there as fast as she can, and not looking back.
Chapter
9
Martin de Lisser’s Napa Valley home is modest by industry standards. It’s nice, but not the spectacular digs one would expect from a director of his ranking.
This’ll be on the market soon was Rae’s first thought upon seeing it; he would trade it for an estate on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air, a penthouse on Central Park South in Manhattan, a mansion on Miami’s Star Island—the customary real estate for a man of his stature.
Though she’s fully aware that a year ago no one had ever heard of him, Rae had found herself disappointed—by both the setting and the director himself.
She had been expecting evidence of vast power, yet the man mirrors his unassuming home.
Martin de Lisser’s current residence, a two-story wood-frame house at the end of a meandering, oak-shaded drive, is simple and rustic, adorned with window boxes and white-railed porches. It sits on a dozen scenic acres dotted with redwood and eucalyptus groves and bordered by vineyards, with the Vaca Mountains looming in the distance.
Meanwhile, the bespectacled, somewhat paunchy de Lisser is shorter and balder than he appears in photographs she’s seen, and he has a slight, but disconcerting, speech impediment.
He speaks as though he’s slurping through a mouthful of saliva, and after their short, introductory conversation, Rae had found herself wanting to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and shout, “Swallow, why don’t you?”
Now, as she finishes her reading from the script, with de Lisser’s girlfriend, a model named Lita, woodenly playing the other role, Rae glances at the famed director to gauge his reaction.
He’s sitting sprawled on the burgundy leather couch, his legs straight out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and his hand rubbing his goatee thoughtfully.
Beside him on the couch is an impeccably dressed studio executive who happened to be in town for a meeting and came by to hear her read.
In a matching wing chair off to the side sits Flynn, and he nods encouragingly at Rae when she catches his eye.
She’s careful to maintain her Mallory-sparkle, to give a flippant little curtsy the way Mallory might, to casually toss her hair—worn in Mallory’s signature style, blown straight and swept back from her face with a side part.
“Thank you,” de Lisser says at last, rising, along with the studio exec, whose name escapes her.
Bob, or Tom, or Jim—something like that.
She knows she should have been more careful to make note of it; it’s just that she had been so nervous when she was introduced earlier.
It hadn’t helped that they’d been forced to fly up here on a tiny twin-engine plane that kept shuddering and lurching, or
that the landing at the Sonoma County Airport had been a perilously bumpy one, thanks to the wind.
Rae has never been crazy about flying; she avoids it whenever possible.
But damn, she would have personally taken the controls of Wilbur and Orville’s original glider in a hurricane if that were her only means of getting here for this audition.
She can hardly believe de Lisser agreed to see her, or that the studio exec—what the hell was his name anyway?—happened to be in town.
“It was a pleasure—the script is very amusing,” Rae tells them, her voice a perfect echo of Mallory’s distinct cadence and accent She has worked painstakingly on it over the past twenty-four hours, reconstructing it not just from memory, but from videos of her late friend’s movies.
She had a French manicure, Mallory’s signature style. And she doused herself in Mallory’s favorite perfume, a buoyant floral fragrance that’s much lighter than Rae’s usual scent.
She’s even wearing Mallory’s clothing—a navy linen shift and matching pumps that her friend had lent her for an audition just a few weeks before her death. It’s been hanging in the back of Rae’s closet ever since, neatly pressed, its classic style pleasingly current.
“Would you mind stepping outside for a few moments?” de Lisser is asking Rae.
“No problem.”
“Lita will show you the way to the sunroom. It was nice meeting you.”
“You too, Mr. de Lisser.” The words are more casual than any Rae would have spoken; this is Mallory’s breezy, chummy style.
She goes over, shakes his hand, again in a laid-back, easy manner. She moves next to the executive whose name she has forgotten, shaking his hand and saying warmly, “I’m so glad you happened to be in town.”
“I am too,” he says, casting a glance at de Lisser, a glance that sends a chill of apprehension down Rae’s spine.
Are they interested?
She’ll know soon enough, she thinks as she follows the bony, black-clad Lita from the room, leaving Flynn Soderland alone with the director and studio suit.
They head down a long hall that runs the length of the house, lined with rooms that appear, from the glances Rae sneaks, to be impeccably furnished and decorated in California modern.
“You can wait here,” Lita says as they reach the end of the hall. She opens a pair of French doors, and Rae sees that they lead to a glassed-in room at the back of the house.
Fade to Black Page 19