“Madison comes with us. I don’t want her alone.”
“I think he’s saying women aren’t tough enough,” Jane told Kat.
Sean shook his head. “I am worried, and I have perfect faith in every member of this team. But I’ll feel better if Madison is with us. Besides, her take on what Benita has to say could be useful.” He looked directly at Madison. Is that okay with you?”
She nodded but then she remembered what else she’d wanted to tell them. “Benita’s got the blood connection,” she said, “but I was just thinking about something else Oliver said. He was talking about a day Helena came in. Apparently she had her hands all over Eddie—as in, maybe dipping into his pockets.”
“Dipping into his pockets—to steal a key? Have a copy made and then replace it?” Sean asked.
“That’s how it sounds to me.”
“Let’s start with Benita,” Logan said. “I hadn’t expected to get anywhere until tomorrow, so we’ll be ahead of the game.” He paused. “Call Eddie’s house. See if you can talk to his houseman and find out if Helena is there. Make sure she’s not out and about and that we’ll be able to speak with her tomorrow. If she is there, just lie. Say you’re calling to ask how she and Eddie are doing. We won’t tell her we need to speak with her again. I don’t want to spook her.”
Sean made the call, waiting as Pierce went to check on Mr. and Mrs. Archer. Then he hung up. “Pierce said that both Archers retired soon after Eddie got home. They had a quiet dinner and went to bed.”
“Let’s go talk to Benita,” Logan said.
* * *
Benita Lowe was at the police station when they arrived; she’d come in just minutes after Knox had called her.
Sean spoke with the detective before going in to question her. He’d been assigned the task, since the interview would seem the friendliest and least threatening if he were to do it.
When he sat across from her at the table, she raised her brows and a smile slowly curved her lips.
“Am I a suspect now?” she asked him.
“Not really or no more so than anyone else at the moment,” he said, settling into his chair. “It’s just that some interesting information has come up—regarding you.”
She leaned toward him. With her catlike grace, Benita could be extremely sensual and charming when she wanted, and her amusement seemed real.
“What, exactly?” she asked him. “The fact that I’m bisexual, or that my great-grandfather was Pete Krakowski? I’m sure you’ve discovered that by now.”
“I’m embarrassed to say we just discovered it tonight. I’m surprised more people don’t know,” Sean told her.
She shrugged elegantly. “Why would that be? I couldn’t see how it would benefit me to advertise that I’m distantly related to some minor actor who ran around all over the place, drank like a fish and wound up dead on a set, electrocuted. Frankly, it’s something I’d just as soon not have out there, you know? And I doubt anyone cares. I’m assuming other people can hear this conversation, so…” She paused, waving to whoever might be standing behind the two-way mirror that separated them from the police observers. “Hey, you guys! That’s not for the news—not until I’m really rich and famous, all right?”
“These conversations aren’t for public consumption, Benita,” Sean assured her.
She smiled. “You know what, Sean? I really do care about Eddie. And, believe it or not, I honestly thought we’d make a go of our marriage. Granted, there are certain little idiosyncrasies about me…if you choose to see it that way. Personally, I consider myself a freethinker and a freewheeler, and the world is my oyster. Leave it to Eddie! The majority of men would give their eyeteeth to be in a threesome. Not Eddie. I love him, Sean. I really love him. And I care about Alistair, which is more than I can say for Helena.”
“But you and Helena are friends.”
“We were friends, once,” Benita said. “Now she’s afraid of me, threatened by me. Look, I swear to you—I wouldn’t hurt Eddie, and I wouldn’t hurt Alistair, and I never even met Jenny Henderson. Come on, Sean. You know me.”
“I know pretty much everyone involved with the studio,” he told her. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m asking you to help me.”
“People don’t always mean to, but they talk.” She leaned close to him again, as if they were conspirators. “I understand you’ve been prowling around in the basement at the studio. Can you imagine me in the basement, Sean? Seriously?”
“It’s what we least imagine that often proves to be true.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Me—in dirty, dusty places filled with spiderwebs? Not in this lifetime.”
“Maybe that’s not characteristic of what you’d do, Benita, but revenge could be a factor here,” Sean said. “Revenge for Pete Krakowski’s death. And maybe there’s more than one person involved in this—one person to do the deed and another to work on cleanup or alibis or—”
“Well, that’s a great theory, Sean,” she broke in. “Except what I heard from my grandmother is that Pete Krakowski was a drunk who gave nothing to his family and cheated on his wife from here to eternity—when he wasn’t knocking the crap out of her. The best thing he ever did was die on that set and leave his wife a nice settlement. And…” She drew the pad and pencil that lay on the table toward her. “I’m giving you two names. Two. They’re both my alibi.” She looked into his eyes. “We were together all night. You’re welcome to verify my alibis for Sunday night—just do it discreetly, huh? Some people prefer to keep their private lives private.”
Sean wasn’t sure if he was relieved by the conversation and Benita’s easy assurance that she had an alibi, or disappointed. Relieved, he decided. He liked her, with all her brash—and perhaps honest—ways.
Gut instinct. He believed her. But…she was an actress.
“Thank you for coming in, Benita, and thank you for providing these names. We’ll be discreet, I promise.”
She rose to leave. When she walked out, she saw Madison waiting with Logan and Kelsey.
She smiled, and glanced back at Sean. “I guess you two have a lot in common,” she said, “what with the special effects and all.” She paused, saying good-night to Knox, Kelsey and Logan. “If you need me, you know where to find me.”
When she’d left, Knox turned to Sean, perplexed. “Sure as hell sounded as if she was telling the truth. So, you want the current wife brought in tomorrow?”
“Yes. We’ll just tell her it’s important we speak with her, and that we’re hoping she can fill in some details we need about other people. With luck, that’ll get her in here without calling her lawyer and making things difficult,” Sean said.
“Tomorrow.” Knox yawned. “I’m used to putting in some serious time, but we do have other shifts. You people are dedicated, not to mention workaholics.”
“Only on a case like this,” Logan said. “Yeah, we’re the first shift, the second and the third.”
As Logan drove them back to the hotel, Madison asked Sean, who sat in the back with her, “Do you really think that two people were involved?”
“Maybe. I don’t understand why time was erased on the security footage, unless it was done just to throw us off.”
“I think we might have one psycho ready to kill—and one with another agenda,” Logan said. “Or is one simply using the other? I don’t know. Or perhaps they both stand to gain from the killing.”
Sean met Logan’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I can’t imagine one person close to Eddie being guilty, much less two,” Madison was saying. “But suppose you’re right. You mean that one person did the actual killing and someone else made it possible? Maybe someone just hired a killer.”
Sean shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was too carefully orchestrated. The tunnel, the robe, the catacombs, the basement—as we’ve said all along, it had to be someone with real knowledge of the studio. And even hiring someone… That someone had to know how to get around the pl
ace and have a good alibi.” He sighed. “Those two missing minutes are still driving me crazy. I’m convinced the killer always planned to use the tunnels, and I’m beginning to believe the security footage was erased to send us in the wrong direction.”
They stopped for takeout along the way; when they returned they met briefly in the center room to divide up the food. Bogie was still with Jenny Henderson, both reclining on the suite’s sofa across from the TV. Jenny seemed…almost alive.
“Bogie’s been telling me the most fantastic Hollywood tales!” she told them.
“That’s great, Jenny,” Madison said, smiling.
“And we’ve been thinking, of course. Trying to come up with anything else that might help,” Jenny said.
The television was on. They were watching a rerun of The Danny Thomas Show.
“Yeah, yeah, and watching television,” Bogie said.
Sean grinned. “That’s okay.”
“Did you get anything?”
“I think we need to look at the domestic situation further,” Sean replied.
Bogie nodded. “Yes, closely. Very closely.”
Madison walked across the hall with Logan waiting at the door, watching her enter her own room. Sean looked at him. “She’s safe,” he said in a low voice.
“You’re going over there?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, then. We’ll get organized to question Helena in the morning. I’ll send Tyler and the others to the studio with Madison, and you and I can question Mr. Archer’s charming wife.”
Sean agreed and crossed over to Madison’s room, tapping at her door. She let him in quickly, but it didn’t seem to matter to her whether others noted his arrival or not. He handed her his meal, then shed his jacket, gun and holster, and placed the Glock on the side of the bed.
She set their food up on the desk, and despite the late hour, he was surprised to discover how hungry he was. They ate in comparative silence, asking common meal questions like, “Is there another packet of ketchup?” and “Hand me one of those foil things of butter, will you?”
When they’d finished, Madison threw away the trash. He watched her and found himself thinking that she was extraordinary, and not just because she spoke with ghosts. She moved fluidly and everything about her was natural. With Madison, there was absolutely no pretense in a world where pretense was everything; it was even what she did for a living. He’d thought her beautifully, sensually shaped when they’d met, and now he knew that his every lustful thought had been right, that her skin was like satin, her hair like silk. And when she looked at a man with those blue eyes wide and exhaled on a satisfied sigh, she was as erotic as he could have dreamed.
He stood, coming up behind her, slipping his arms around her. She turned easily into his embrace, and for a moment, he cupped her chin and met her eyes, searching them to understand how her shade of blue could be more beautiful than any other.
“What?” she whispered.
“Nothing. I’m exhausted…and deliriously happy to be with you. But I’m the kind of exhausted that makes me think I need a distraction—some activity—if I’m ever going to sleep.”
“I’ll show you activity!” she said, laughing. Her fingers brushed his chest as she undid the buttons on his shirt. Just her touch seemed to ignite something in him. He shrugged out of the shirt as her fingers moved to his belt buckle….
Later, when they lay spent and sated in each other’s arms, she spoke to him softly. “So…who was she? I don’t mean to open any wounds, but…when you left here, you went back to Texas….”
He was quiet for a while as he studied her. Then he smiled. “She was the love of my life at one time, and my best friend at another,” he said. “We did the mad, passionate on-and-off thing for years when we were in high school, and whenever we were home from college. But…”
“But?”
“We went in different directions. I wanted Hollywood. She wanted politics. We fought like wildcats after college, and then split up. I moved to California and she was a mover in Texas, giving fantastic speeches, fierce and loyal to all her causes. I watched her career from afar, and we kept up, mainly through Facebook and email.”
He hesitated again, thinking about Melissa. He remembered how the illness had taken her bit by bit, and yet never stolen her passion, her heart, her soul or her courage.
By then he’d realized they were friends. The best of friends. But when she died, it seemed that he’d lost the love of his life. Their histories had been interwoven.
Love could change. Love between them had become something different. No longer sexual. Something different, yes, maybe even something more.
He looked at Madison and touched her face with a bittersweet smile. “We were far apart in distance and in the everyday course of our lives. I was still fairly new out here, working constantly, having that occasional wild night out or superficial fling. And then…then I heard about the cancer. Melissa didn’t have family. Her dad had departed—left the family, more or less disappeared—when she was two, and her mom died when she was twenty-two. We’d been together during that hard time, and it might have helped cement what we had, I don’t know.”
“She must have had many friends and been adored.”
“She did and she was, but no one knew her like I did. And as she was failing, she didn’t want to be around others. It was pride, I guess. She didn’t want a lot of people to see her as she was—thin as a rail, balding, drawn. And pretense in front of people who aren’t really close can be exhausting. I thought about Melissa and our situation endlessly after she died. Maybe we were never meant to be. And maybe we both believed that we’d get ambition out of the way and then we’d be together when we were ready. It didn’t matter. When I knew how sick she was, I had to go to her, and she accepted me. I talked to her doctor…. He was a good guy. He never let her completely lose hope—but didn’t give her false hope, either. He told me they’d try everything they could while she had breath in her body, but the prognosis wasn’t positive. Melissa was an intelligent woman, and she could see that she wasn’t getting any better. There were good days when I first got back. Really good days. But what I learned was that ambition didn’t mean a thing.
“When she died, I was already gaining a reputation for special effects, especially computer-generated effects, in Texas. I got established in San Antonio, and there was a lot of work going on there. I stayed, thinking I might go back to Hollywood one day, but my heart wasn’t in it. I worked with the Texas Rangers and the state and local police on a few cases, and it seemed that I’d found my niche.”
He paused, and Madison nudged him to continue.
“A while back,” he resumed, “a man named Adam Harrison—who’d been called in by both private citizens and the government in strange and unusual cases for years—was approached by the FBI to put together a special unit. He formed the first Krewe of Hunters. Then he found out there was so much going on, some of it genuinely unusual, and some of it people playing at the unusual, that they figured they needed to create another team. No one really knows how Adam Harrison gets his information about people, but he has a knack for putting teams together. Five of us are from Texas and were working there. My cousin Kelsey grew up in Florida, but she’d visited Texas a lot. No one has to join the team, of course. We’re all allowed to make our own choices. It’s been good for me. It let me really step back, see where I’ve been and where I want to be.”
“You were approached because someone knew you could talk to the dead?” Madison asked him.
“Yes.”
“Were…were you able to talk to Melissa after she died?”
He nodded. “Once. At her grave site. She touched my face, kissed my lips—and told me to live my life. But at that point…well, I couldn’t. She told me she was going on, that it was only right. We had known how to say goodbye in life. Now we needed to do it after her death.” He remembered his emotions during that awful time when the cancer had become so unbearable he
prayed Melissa would die, so the pain would end.
“She was a wonderful human being,” Madison whispered.
He nodded, and hugged her tighter. He didn’t have to say anything else. He didn’t have to tell her she was wonderful, too.
He felt her gentle touch, and then the way she curled against him. He cradled her chin. “And you?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
“I used to feel like a truly odd loner for a really long time—and yet, I was never really unhappy, just scared and convinced I was crazy, and that I needed to keep my secret. When I was young…”
“Yes?”
“There was Josh.”
“The love of your life?”
“My young life. He died before we graduated. A ridiculous accident,” she said, and told him what had happened to the young man so full of promise. “Even at his funeral, all he wanted me to do was make sure everyone found a way to accept his death. And then after he died…I’ve dated casually. But Bogie followed me home when I was still in college, so my casual dating hasn’t been going that great. Maybe I’ve been afraid of getting close to people. My first experience with ghosts was Billy. I was so young that when I tried to tell people he was going to a better place, my mother was appalled. She doesn’t understand.”
“Poor baby!” he said, and he smiled. “There are those of us who do understand. You know that now, don’t you?”
“I know,” she murmured.
They curled together in a comfortable silence.
And then they were both able to sleep.
* * *
Vengeance was waiting. Vengeance didn’t like to wait. But the night was dark, and a low fog was hanging over the ground, eerie and mysterious. Rather nice, Vengeance thought.
She arrived, angry, as she tiptoed through the grass. “This is totally going to ruin my shoes. And getting here was a nightmare!”
Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited Page 50