by Tina Whittle
“But you think she’s lying. You think he came back to his house and killed Jessica, that he was never at Addison’s apartment.”
“I do.” Trey pointed to the map of Chastain Park. The tree-lined trail to the golf course ran along the edge of Powers Ferry, the street that bordered the backyard of the Talbots’ home. “Talbot had no way of knowing that Macklin would return. He expected to have more time staging the scene before the body was discovered. He hadn’t planned on using the murder weapon on Macklin, but he had planned on fleeing through the backyard back to the golf course clubhouse, where his car was parked. That was always a part of the plan.”
“Did anybody see him?”
“We received several reports of a man matching his description crossing Powers Ferry that morning.”
“A white man in golf clothes headed for the golf course.”
Trey exhaled. “You see why this was not a conclusive ID.”
He stretched his legs out and rolled his head in a slow circle. I crawled over and sat behind him. He bowed his head forward and let me massage the corded tendons of his neck.
“What about other people in Jessica’s life?” I said. “Finn said she’d had multiple affairs. Surely there were some jilted lovers? Jealous wives?”
“We never found any with both motive and opportunity.”
“Any other suspects?”
“Not that we discovered. We checked out the other members of the family—Talbot’s brother and his wife, both of whom were verified at the Talbot Creative offices when Macklin called in the murder. We checked out the other employees of Talbot Creative. Also alibied. We ran background on all the service workers with access to the house. All of them came back clean and—”
“Let me guess. Alibied.”
“Yes. And without motive. No matter where we looked, the evidence pointed to Nick Talbot.”
“Except for his alibi.”
“His highly suspect alibi.”
His index finger tapped erratically against his thigh, his caffeine level reaching critical mass. What could I tell him? Let the dead lie? Let the past go to dust and sweep it away? I wasn’t the one to make that case. I knew how hard it was to pull your roots out of the dirt that had made you, leave that ground behind, no matter how poisoned it had become. All our regrets and mistakes and hauntings, they were always ours, always. We hauled our own private graveyards with us everywhere we went.
I rested my chin on his shoulder. “Trey?”
“Yes?”
“Say you decide to do this. What if you learn that you were right all along, that Nick Talbot really is a cold-blooded killer?”
He kept his head bent forward. “Then I gather the evidence and take it in.”
“It wasn’t enough to get an indictment then, and it certainly won’t be now, four years after the fact. And I don’t think the APD is going to take your word on it, either, no matter how awesome your lie-detecting ability is.”
He didn’t answer. I pressed the heel of my hand into one particularly stubborn knot, and he inhaled sharply, but didn’t complain. The night outside the window was complete, as complete as it ever got in the city.
I held the pressure, but the knot refused to yield. “You’re going to see him regardless, aren’t you?”
Trey exhaled, emptying his lungs. “Yes.”
Chapter Fourteen
As I’d predicted, Trey slept terribly, tossing and turning most of the night. Despite that, he went to work an hour early so that he could leave in time for his meeting with Nick Talbot. I usually slept in on Mondays, the last day of my weekend. This Monday, however, after reading even more about the crime committed against the unsuspecting Jessica Talbot, I went to the gun range to practice my defensive skills.
I had new hearing protection earmuffs to try out, the electronic kind that blocked gunfire while still allowing conversation to come through. Trey had given them to me, and they did the job perfectly, which on this particular afternoon was a good news-bad news situation. They deadened the heart-stoppingly loud .357 Sig rounds from the lane next to me, but they amplified the conversation of the two guys shooting them off. Each whoop and holler barreled straight into my ear canal.
I turned the volume way down, blocking their voices as much as possible. Practicing with speedloaders meant I needed to concentrate. I didn’t enjoy the process, though. Speedloaders were speedy, yes, and from a tactical perspective, necessary, but there was something satisfying about thumbing bullets one by one into the chamber, slow and purposeful. I’d shot many guns since I’d opened the shop, from the bulky Magnums to the sleek Heckler and Koch semi-autos, but the snub-nose Smith and Wesson 640 was my weapon of choice.
The guys next to me did a rapid-fire session and my earmuffs kicked in, dampening the booms into a white electronic hum punctuated with soft poofs. I adjusted my goggles, sighted and fired. Five rounds fast at ten yards, defensive distance. I placed the gun on the counter and stretched my fingers out as the target fluttered my way. Four ragged holes at center mass, one in the shoulder. I cursed. If a shot went wrong, it was always that first one, which was not the one I wanted to go wrong.
I sent the target back to the mark. I’d briefly considered bringing Trey’s nine-millimeter. A matte black P7M8, it was the smoothest handgun I’d ever shot, too heavy to haul around in a carry purse, however. He still practiced with it, still cleaned and maintained it, but ever since he’d pulled it on his boss in a moment of spectacularly bad judgment, he’d relegated it to the personal gun safe next to his bed. Whenever I asked when he might carry it again, he shook his head and changed the subject.
The men next to me high-fived each other. I felt a tap on my shoulder—Patrick, the range guy. I turned up the amplification as he pointed to my tote bag in the corner. “Your phone’s going off.”
“Sorry about that! Thank you!”
He tossed off a little salute and continued down the line. I placed the gun on the counter and knelt beside my bag. Seven missed calls in the last three minutes. All from Trey.
I felt a wash of nervousness. Something had gone wrong, bad wrong. I had my thumb poised to call him back when it started ringing again. Trey. I pushed through the first set of doors, then the second, yanking off the headset.
I put the phone to my ear. “What’s happened?”
“You have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the meeting with Nicholas Talbot. There’s an accident. I can’t get off the interstate.”
“Call and reschedule.”
“I can’t. I…hold on.” Horns sounded at his end, woven with the wail of an ambulance. Police sirens too. His voice was tight with frustration. “There’s no way out. I’m blocked. If I can get to the next exit, I’ll be there, but I’ll be late. You have to go.”
“Trey—”
“He’s on set at Kennesaw Mountain. Go to the parking lot at the summit, next to the trail entrance.”
I pulled off my goggles. “And what am I supposed to do when I get there? They’re not going to let me in. You’re on the security list, not me.”
“I’ll call and get your name added.”
“But—”
“There’s no time. He could change his mind. The Talbot board could reconsider. There may not be another chance.”
His voice held an edge of panic. I heard another horn, this time from the Ferrari. I felt a larger stab of worry. Trey was not a lay-on-the-horn kind of driver.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I’m fine. But this is the second time the truck beside me has swerved into my lane. He’s not paying attention, he’s texting. Nobody is paying attention, and the wrecking crew hasn’t even…hold on.”
He hit the horn again. I was suddenly relieved he didn’t have his gun, because if some unfortunate soul tapped that car, Trey would go ballistic, and nobody wanted actual ballistic
s in his vicinity if that happened.
I steadied my voice. “Trey. Listen to me. You need to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“No, you are not.”
“Go to the meeting.”
“But I have no clue what to—”
“Please. I think it’s a fair request. Considering.”
He didn’t have to explain what needed considering. All the times he’d stood by me as I dug some hole deeper and deeper. All the times he’d helped me out of those very same holes.
“Are you seriously playing the ‘you owe me one’ card?”
“I am.”
I checked the clock above the coffee bar. 5:45. I could just make it.
“Fine. I’ll go.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. Remember, only Talbot and his brother know why we’re there, so be discreet. I’ll be there in…” Another honk of the horn, and what sounded like a muttered curse. “As soon as I can.”
Chapter Fifteen
Both peaks of Kennesaw Mountain belonged to the National Park Service, as did the almost three thousand acres of fields and woods at its base. The park itself didn’t allow camping, but the surrounding pastureland was in private hands and popular with local reenactment groups. On certain nights, when the fog rolled thick through the knee-high grass, and the only sound was the low talk of men around a campfire…on those nights it felt as if I’d slipped into a crack in time and found myself a hundred and fifty years in the past.
This afternoon the past was truly past, though, and Hollywood had conquered where even General Sherman had failed. I found the base camp by following the yellow directional markers with the word “redbird” on them until I reached the second parking lot, closed now to tourists. The coded signs were necessary to keep the lookie-loos from finding the set, but the Moonshine folks had put in extra protections, including portable chain-link fencing, roving security guards, and a check-in station.
I had to park on the grass because the paved portion of the lot housed a collection of silver trailers and utility vans. At the entrance to the trail head, a cherry-picker hoisted a camera crew three stories high. Men and women in jeans spoke into handheld radios, while other people schlepped screens and umbrellas and reels of cable back and forth. In the center of this bustling mechanical chaos, in a circle all by herself, stood Mad Luna Malone.
Not Luna, I reminded myself. Portia Ray. An actress.
But all I saw was Luna.
She wore clothes typical of her 1920s moonshiner character, a homespun sleeveless tank and men’s trousers held up with suspenders, but the low afternoon light highlighted her otherworldly presence. Her pale skin gleamed, her hair tumbled in white-hot tangles, and her biceps looked cut from marble. In one thirteen-episode binge, I’d watched Luna defeat both crafty revenuers and rival bootleggers, battling her way to the top of her werewolf clan only to be left for dead in a cliffhanger season finale. And now here she was, three-dimensional flesh and blood, emphasis on the blood—a rusty blotch on her chest, a smear along her forehead, a clotted bite on her shoulder.
She held a machine gun in one hand and a LeMat revolver in the other as a photographer circled her with a light meter. I knew diddly about the automatic weapon, but I’d sold the film crew the LeMat. In the lore of the series, it had belonged to Luna’s grandfather, a backwoods wild man who refused to fight for any side but his own.
I heard footsteps and turned. The makeup guy stood behind me, eyes on Portia. He carried a plastic crafter case filled with spray bottles and paint palettes and rubbery pretend wounds. Spare-framed and friendly-looking, he had a wispy beard trimmed to disguise a soft chin. It was the hair that cinched the identification—dark brown, curly, pulled back in a ponytail. I peeked at the ID clipped to the hem of his tee.
Nick Talbot.
I suppressed a shudder. I couldn’t look at him without remembering the newspaper photos, the mug shot, Jessica Talbot’s body on the floor. I couldn’t look at his hands without thinking of them holding a gun, pulling the trigger three times.
Before I could say anything, a woman scooted up in a club cart, her cinnamon hair blowsy around her face. Three men got out of the cart. They wore deep charcoal business suits, almost identical, with ivory shirts open at the throat. White guys, nondescript, one of them obviously the alpha of the pack—the other two flanked him, mirroring his movements and never interrupting. They were smiling, easy with each other and with whatever privilege they were wielding. And they had some, that was for sure—they wore no IDs, yet they walked right up to Portia as if they were old friends. A khaki-clad security officer shot a quizzical look toward the woman in the cart, but she shook her head, and he backed down.
The woman climbed out and hurried toward Nick. Her jeans hugged her with painted-on efficiency, and her V-neck tee displayed an abundance of cleavage. She’d laid the perfume on a little thick, probably to cover the mosquito repellent, but her makeup was flawless.
“Where’s Mr. Talbot?” she said.
Nick didn’t take his eyes off Portia. “Quint’s in my trailer. Who are these people and why are they being allowed to disturb a photo shoot?”
“They’re investors. Big ones. They insisted on seeing her, said Mr. Talbot had promised to let them through.”
“And you believed that?”
“After I called him and verified, yes, but now he’s gone, and he’s not answering his phone. The guard post says he checked out thirty minutes ago.”
“Crap. He’s probably gone to the house and left me to deal with Portia’s wrath. He knows how much she hates sucking up to the money.”
That part was obvious. I watched her slip a look of extreme malice at the newcomers, a look she wiped from her face the second they got close to her. She glowed then, as if she’d been waiting for them all day. The one in charge shook her hand, obviously dazzled. The other two men waited politely behind him, didn’t say a word to her. Portia held his hand warmly between hers. The second he turned his back, she glared at Nick, who shrugged apologetically.
The woman beside us gathered her hair into a loose bun and clipped it into place. “Great. She’s gonna eat me for dinner.”
“Not if you get those people away from her ASAP.”
“But Mr. Talbot said—”
“Investors start to devalue the asset if they get too much access. Haul them down to props, let them play with the fake guns. I’ll run interference with Quint.”
Relief flared in her eyes. “God, thank you. You’re the best.”
“Least I can do. Did you bring her shake?”
“Freshly made and waiting in her trailer. Lots of weird herbs and a scoop of that nasty protein powder.”
“The kind that smells like sardines?”
The woman laughed and nodded. She was very pretty in a calculated way, perhaps a bit strong in the jaw, but she’d make a fine werewolf. Assuming she got the attention of someone with the power to cast her. And from the way she was looking at Nick, I was betting she thought she had. She had cunning in her eyes. Hunger, too, though not for a protein shake.
Nick waved a hand toward the men. “Go get ’em, Bree. Quick quick.”
Bree scurried over. She expertly corralled the men, murmured an apology to Portia, who waved it off even as she glared at Nick, who didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Having one’s brother as executive producer provided a certain shield, I decided, even from celebrity anger.
“You’ve got a fan,” I said.
He shook his head. “Bree? Hardly. Every runner around here thinks I’ve got the gold ticket to stardom.”
“Do you?”
His smile turned wry. “I’m toting around silicone scars and bins of latex. What do you think?”
Portia rolled her shoulders, adjusted her grip on her weapons again. Beads of sweat marked her forehead and chest. The photographer
said something, and she twisted around to examine her shoulder.
“Uh oh,” Nick said. “Time for a touch-up.”
He jogged over. After a quick confab, he lifted the prosthetic scar on her shoulder, then gave it a little squirt from a tube and smoothed it back. Portia tilted her head, and he spritzed her neck with water, patted it with a towel. She said something that made her mouth curl at the edge. Nick shook his head, his expression pleasant and unperturbed. He returned to my side as the photographer moved in again.
He examined me curiously. “Who did you say you were?”
I held up my visitor pass. “Tai Randolph. Mr. Seaver sent me. He’s been detained.”
“Mr. Seaver, huh?” Sharp amusement laced his voice. “Is he your boss? Because you don’t say that like he is. You say that like someone who never calls him Mr. Seaver.”
“He’s my partner.”
“Partner.” Nick smiled knowingly. “I see.” He knelt and screwed the cap on a bottle of viscous red liquid. “Did Mr. Seaver tell you why I asked him here?”
“He did.”
“And you’re cool with being his stunt double?”
“I am.”
One of the photographers pulled his camera from around his neck. At that cue, a young man hurried up with a fresh bottle of water for Portia. She favored him with a smile, and I watched him melt. I’d never seen someone with such control over her charisma. She could deploy it like a smart bomb.
“Does Luna make it to next season?” I said.
Nick didn’t look up from his kit. “So you’re a fan.”
“Just curious.”
He laughed. “Everybody is. But I’m the makeup guy. They tell me nothing.”
“Your fiancée not telling?”
“Addison doesn’t know either.”
“I thought she was the show’s writer.”
Nick wiped his hand on his jeans, leaving a streak of foundation. “She’s one of the writers. There’s a stable of them. Addison wrote one version of the season two debut, but somebody else wrote the other. They haven’t said which one is legit. They’re running counter-intelligence big-time now.”