by R. J. Kaiser
Jade had no problem fending off unwanted advances. In fact, when it came to that, she didn’t have a timid bone in her body. Her problem was finessing a tricky situation, like the one she faced with Art Conti. But somehow, she’d find a way to make it work. She always did.
Jade got the front wheel of her bike out of the trunk and attached it to the frame. Then she got her riding helmet from the back seat, strapped her fanny pack on over her spandex riding togs, locked up the car, took a swig from her water bottle and took off up the street. Glancing at her watch, she estimated she would be half an hour late, enough to send Ruthie into a shit fit.
The plan was for Ruthie to help her find a dress in time to get any necessary alterations done. Actually, the dress had been all Ruthie had talked about the past week, ever since Art had issued the invitation. When Jade had called to tell her friend what was in the works, Ruthie had been stunned. A good five seconds had passed before she could even reply.
“You’re going to a what?”
“A ball.”
“You mean like Cinderella?”
“Everything but the glass slipper and the prince.”
“Whoa, girl. And you’re going with What’s-his-name?”
“Yeah, Arturo Conti.”
“How’d this happen?”
“It’s a Chamber of Commerce Ball. Art said a lot of business and networking goes on, and it’ll be a chance for me to meet lots of people, including Mac McGowan.”
“So now lover boy is helping you with your career.”
“He knows I’m just getting started and need contacts, Ruthie. And there will be hundreds of businesspeople there. I figure I’ll stuff my purse with business cards.”
“I guess things have been a little slow for you.”
“Slow? It’s been six weeks since I’ve had a case of any consequence. All I’ve done is piddling stuff, nickel-and-dime work. I still haven’t paid this month’s rent.”
“But Mr. Art’s ridin’ to the rescue.”
Jade thought about that a moment. “Think there’s any chance he’s doing it out of the kindness of his heart, Ruthie?”
Her friend laughed.
“Yeah,” Jade groaned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, girl. What’s this dude like?”
“He’s good-looking enough, I guess. And, of course, he knows it.”
“That’s not necessarily bad. Could be he’ll show you a good time.”
“Ruthie, I’m not interested in that. All I want is a chance to meet Mac McGowan and get the job.”
“Honey, you can use him to get to McGowan just as much as he can use you. It’s all about knowing the tricks of the trade. And fortunately you got yourself a world-class consultant.”
So, Jade had accepted Art Conti’s invitation to the Chamber of Commerce Ball with every intention of turning it to her advantage. She did face a few practical problems, however. First, she wasn’t a dress-up kind of girl— she didn’t even like to wear a skirt. And second, she wasn’t much of a dancer. Naturally, Ruthie had a solution to that, too. But Jade had refused to go to any clubs with her. “The lessons I got in junior high will have to do.” Ruthie, who wasn’t easily denied, had come over Monday night to put on some music and demonstrate some steps and moves, anyway.
The third reason was the most important of all. Jade didn’t want to get pressed for sexual favors in exchange for a job, and she knew Conti would at least make a stab at it. Ruthie seemed to think a guy like Art could be humored enough to keep him in her corner without giving away the store, but Jade herself wasn’t sure how much she could stomach. A few years ago, it might not have been so tough, but ever since Ricky Santos, Jade had had a major problem with men.
Still a few blocks from home, she glanced at her watch. She was going to have to hurry to get cleaned up so they could make it to the charity shop. A charity shop seemed to Jade like a strange place to find a ball gown, but Ruthie assured her it was the place to buy an affordable dress. “Honey, we ain’t talkin’ Salvation Army. Society ladies run this place.”
The whole thing still seemed like a bad idea, though. Here she was in her spandex shorts, sweating like a pig on her bike and supposedly trying on ball gowns in less than an hour.
As she rounded the corner and started down her street, she could see Ruthie’s car. After several more yards she saw Ruthie, too, sitting on the front steps. Ruthie did not get up when Jade swung into the drive and screeched to a halt. In fact, she had a sober look on her face. Jade got off her bike and walked it across the little patch of lawn to where Ruthie sat.
“Sorry to be late, kid. Damn car ran out of gas over on Fairfax. Fortunately, I had backup transportation.”
Her friend did not smile; she did not grunt or groan. She continued to look depressed.
“Ruthie, what’s wrong? You pissed?”
Rubbing her bare arms, Ruthie got up. “Jade, I think I saw Ricky.”
“Huh?”
“It was maybe ten minutes ago. This old Chevy came down the street kind of slow. I didn’t pay much attention until it was right out there in front, then the guy gunned it and went flying up the street.”
“And it was Ricky?”
“I couldn’t swear to it, not a hundred percent. The guy had on shades and a baseball cap, but it sure looked like him. Definitely Latino.”
“You must be mistaken,” Jade told her. “Ricky’s in Mexico.”
“He could have come back.”
“If so, he wouldn’t be coming around here.”
“Why not? Maybe he still loves you.”
“Ruthie, he might have been desperate a couple of years ago—desperate enough to lurk around—but too much time has passed. And stalking, if that’s what you’re suggesting, isn’t his style.”
“Maybe he was just curious.”
“And maybe it wasn’t Ricky at all. He did reconcile with his wife, you know.”
“Could have got a divorce.”
“You almost sound like you want it to be Ricky,” Jade said.
“No way. You know I hate the sonovabitch as much as you. I’m sayin’ be careful, girl. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Careful of what?”
“Guys can get crazy over women.”
“It wasn’t Ricky,” Jade told her. “Much as I hate the fact, I know the guy. Trust me. He’s in Mexico with his wife and children.”
Ruthie looked at her watch and sighed. “Well then, table that and let’s get going. We’re wasting perfectly good shopping time. You’d better get your butt in the shower.”
Jade took her key out of her fanny pack and unlocked the door. Then she wheeled the bike up the steps and inside. Ruthie, who’d slung her bag over her shoulder, followed her into the house.
“I’ll get something for you to wear to the shop,” Ruthie said, “assuming I can find something that doesn’t need ironing.” She headed off to the bedroom.
When her friend was out of sight, Jade went over to the window and looked out at her peaceful tree-lined street. She remembered the day she’d pitched Ricky out the door. It had been one of the most emotionally wrenching days of her life. Shivering, Jade headed for the bathroom, thinking that whoever Ruthie saw, it couldn’t have been Ricky Santos. Surely.
Bel Air
Mac tried for the fifth or sixth time to reach Stella, but all he got was her machine. After the second time, he stopped leaving messages. The urgency of his need to speak with her had already been made clear. But not being able to reach her only added to his anxiety. He still couldn’t believe it. After all these years. The ten words kept going through his head like a commandment from God—“I know what you did on Friday, October 13, 1978.”
Who? he wondered. Who could be behind this?
Manuela and Bri came to mind, if only because he’d just had encounters with them, but there was no way either of them could know he’d killed Aubrey St. George. Nor did either woman have a motive for harassing him. T
he writer of the note clearly intended to make him sweat. And he or she was doing a good job.
Mac paced about the house, as he had been for the better part of an hour, picking up a phone every so often to make sure it was working or to try to reach Stella yet again. He’d been so certain that their dirty little secret was safe. Obviously he was wrong. “I know what you did on Friday, October 13, 1978.”
Who?
He didn’t know who Stella had been talking to, but she’d definitely talked to somebody because Mac hadn’t breathed a word to a living soul. That meant Stella had blabbed to someone. Unless it was Stella herself who’d sent the note. There was no other explanation.
Losing patience, Mac picked up the phone and again dialed his wife’s number. Again he got the answering machine. He slammed down the receiver. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought Stella was doing this to torture him. Where the hell was she?
It actually was no surprise she wasn’t home. Stella spent her time shopping, going to luncheons, teas, parties and— to her credit—she did a little charity work, as well. She kept busy.
It was surprising, though, that Bonny wasn’t home. Bonny was Stella’s French-speaking Caribbean housekeeper. She’d been with her since Troy was a year old. Originally from Martinique, Bonny was actually named Marie Boniface, but Troy had called her Bonny as a small child, and the name stuck. She’d been Mammy to Stella’s Scarlet for nearly twenty years, though the two women were about the same age. Bonny understood Stella’s needs and foibles about as well as anyone on the planet. During the negotiations for Stella’s and Mac’s separate maintenance agreement, Maury Levine, Mac’s attorney, had jokingly referred to the pair as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in drag. Not having been a college boy, Mac didn’t exactly understand the reference, but he had a pretty good idea the implications were comical.
Mac went to the entry hall to have another look at the note. Naturally, Stella’s absence—and for that matter, Bonny’s—made him paranoid. What if something had happened? Could someone have kidnapped Stella and forced her to divulge their secret? No, that was ridiculous. He wouldn’t have gotten a provocative note. It would have been a demand for ransom.
This thing was headed somewhere, he just didn’t know where. But no question, his butt was hanging out. He could be ruined. And there was always the possibility he could be prosecuted for Aubrey’s murder. Any claim of self-defense would ring hollow after all these years.
Mac had once asked Maury Levine if there was a statute of limitations for murder. It was while he was negotiating with Art to buy Pool Maids, Inc., which Maury knew involved personnel with criminal pasts.
“Nope,” Maury had replied. “But that’s not the only issue. What kind of time frame you talking?” he asked. “Is it something recent?”
“Twenty years or so.”
“That’s a hard case,” Maury said. “The D.A. can legally prosecute, but getting a conviction is a whole different thing. When you get up around twenty years, it starts getting hard to come up with witnesses, physical evidence, you name it. A case that old, without a confession, isn’t easy to make. What kind of citizen has she been since?”
“Exemplary.”
“No criminal record?”
“No.”
Maury looked puzzled. “I thought all these pool maids were ex-cons. You got one the law hasn’t caught up with yet?”
“Yeah, but it’s somebody with a very guilty conscience.”
“You can probably forget it.”
But Mac couldn’t. Over the years his concern hadn’t been about going to jail so much as protecting Stella and Troy. The only reason he’d agreed to the cover-up in the first place was to spare her the notoriety. From his present vantage point it hardly seemed a good reason, but he’d done it and had no choice now but to live with the consequences.
The way Mac looked at it, Glamour Puss had more than gotten his revenge. Mac and Stella had been locked in a twenty-year living hell of codependency. Their marriage had not had much of a chance, considering it was built on fear and guilt. Things had been uneasy between them from the moment they returned from Las Vegas. Stella had refused to move back into the house she’d shared with Aubrey, and Mac could hardly blame her, though he couldn’t help worrying about strangers living in the house.
Still, in the end, he let her have her way. But the problem was, there was only minimal overlap between his budget and Stella’s taste. Fortunately his business was growing, and yet another big contract came in as they were hunting for a place to buy. Using all the money she got out of the Brentwood house and a jumbo loan, they bought one of the grand old storied homes in Beverly Hills, moving in when Stella was eight months pregnant.
For a while Mac thought maybe their troubles were behind them. Even an unexpected visit from Detective Jaime Caldron on moving day hadn’t put a damper on their joy. “Hey, congratulations!” Caldron had said as he stood with Mac on the front lawn, watching the moving men carry Aubrey St. George’s sofas into the new house. “Nice to see you two got together and are moving right up in the world.”
“I’ve got a soft heart for widows,” Mac told him brazenly.
“Pregnant ones at that,” the detective noted.
They didn’t hear from Caldron again, but Mac figured his appearance had been planned for effect—sewing seeds of doubt and fear. The unspoken message was, “I’m watching, folks.”
If the L.A.P.D. hadn’t been able to put a crimp in their married life, ironically, the birth of their son had. Stella developed a severe case of postpartum depression. All she could do was cry and talk about her failed film career. She was terribly bitter toward the people who’d refused to give her a chance. Nor had she liked it when Mac had tried to convince her it might all be for the good. “Now you don’t have to worry about what might have been,” he’d told her. The remark had made her livid. “I won’t give up my dream,” she’d screamed. “I didn’t ask to have this baby. I was meant to be a film star. If I wanted this, I could have stayed in Iowa!”
But there was no arguing with the powers that be in Hollywood. Stella, even with the protection of a husband who was becoming progressively more wealthy, remained a pariah. Nobody would talk to her about being in a film. Once, a couple of years after they were married and Mac’s net worth had moved well into the seven figure range, she’d tried to convince him to invest in a hot project, Ordinary People, theorizing that money talked and a part in the film could be found for her.
“Stella,” he’d told her, “getting into stuff I know nothing about is a sure way to lose money. I’m a bricks-and-mortar kind of guy. I might as well flush my capital down the toilet as buy into a film deal.” She’d tried everything to get him to open his wallet—everything but turn him in to the police—but he’d held firm. “Making the money and investing it is my bailiwick,” he’d said. “You might call the shots in other areas, but not this one. Besides, what about Troy?”
“Women can both work and be mothers, Mac. Haven’t you heard that yet, or are you still living in the Stone Age?”
Stella never forgave him. Whether their marriage had been doomed even before their spat over Ordinary People or not, things were definitely not the same thereafter. As a gesture of defiance she began using her original stage name, Stella Hampton, and she spent several months going through the motions of pursuing a career in film. For a while she even had an agent, but nothing of consequence ever came of her efforts. Then she made yet another fateful decision. She decided to transfer her dreams to their son.
Troy did his first commercial at age three and had his first part in a TV movie at six. Stella had launched her career as a stage mom, making Troy her alter ego in the pursuit of fame and glory, much to Mac’s chagrin. “It’s one thing if you want to be in films or on TV, Stella,” he’d told his wife. “But your turning my son into a goddamn glamour puss, like—”
“Don’t say it, Mac! Troy takes after me. He has the soul of an artist. Is that so bad? There’s nothing
wrong with wanting to be an actor. Nothing!”
If Stella was blinded by her obsession, Mac was left feeling helpless. Not that Troy wasn’t a willing victim. The kid loved to ham it up, even as a toddler. The camera, the lights, the glitz really appealed to him. Maybe Stella had been right. Maybe Troy was born to it.
But that didn’t keep Mac from being disappointed and feeling shut out from his son’s life. Nor had Stella done anything to mitigate the circumstances, resisting Mac’s attempts to broaden Troy’s interests. Their fights became more and more bitter until finally she gave him an ultimatum. “Either let us have our dream, Mac, or I’m leaving you.”
He’d suffered quietly for a few more years, devoting himself to his business, which continued to grow, making him a leading figure in the industry. But it was clear he’d become the odd man out in his own home. By the time he left, Mac was convinced his and Stella’s differences were truly irreconcilable.
Hollywood and the ghost of Aubrey St. George may have driven them apart, but in a curious way, they also bound them together. If Stella had had relationships, they’d been discreet. Mac suspected her one true love could never be a man. She’d already given her heart to Hollywood and her dreams of stardom for Troy.
Whether Aubrey had gotten in the way of that, too, it was difficult to say, but Mac certainly felt the guy’s presence, even in death. He hadn’t been separated from Stella and in his new Bel Air home a month before Jaime Caldron was at his door. The detective hadn’t said anything direct, but it was pretty obvious he’d wanted to drive a wedge between them. “Showbiz marriages aren’t easy,” he’d said ironically.
Mac was determined not to give the man hope. He told Caldron he and Stella would always remain united in spirit, if not in fact. The detective had left, supposedly taking Mac at his word, but Mac sensed the bastard was smiling underneath.