by Dianne Emley
He removed the domes with a flourish. “Chef made chicken soup with her homemade stock. Mmm…Smell that.”
She took a sniff, placating him. The sooner she ate a few bites, the sooner he’d leave.
“And…” He took off the other dome. “Your favorite. Popovers. Homemade blueberry jam.”
A smile played at the corners of her lips. In another life, she had loved popovers.
He ladled soup into a spoon and started to move the spoon to her mouth when she took it from him.
“I can do it,” she said.
His expressive face showed annoyance, but just briefly, quickly grabbing control and donning a textbook example of a concerned expression.
She sipped the hot soup. It tasted good, but she was happier not eating, not having her senses stimulated in any way. She’d feign eating, until Gig was satisfied enough to leave. She was a pretty good actor herself.
“You feeling better?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied without missing a beat.
“You look much better.”
She knew that was a lie. She reached for the popover and peeled off a layer of flaky crust. “Gig, I want to see my baby. I want to see Liliana’s body. Where is she?”
“Oh, honey.” He stroked her hair.
She wanted to recoil, but didn’t. “I don’t even have a picture of her. I want a picture of her in the casket. I want a tiny white casket, lined with pink satin.”
“Sure, baby. Anything.”
He sat beside her on the bed and slid his arm around her waist. She retracted, ever so slightly. He got the message and let her go.
“What happened to my baby?”
“She suffocated, honey.” Gig looked genuinely anguished. “She choked on amniotic fluid. I know this doesn’t help you right now, but we can have another baby, okay? You’re in perfect health. You can have lots of kids.”
“But I heard her crying.”
“That was a lovely dream you had, nothing more.” He toyed with the lace edging on the duvet. “Sinclair…I hope you don’t blame me for what happened. I mean, having the baby here, following The Method. We both agreed on that, right?”
Her dark eyes grew darker until they looked like fathomless pits. She didn’t respond.
“What are you watching?” He picked up the remote control from the nightstand and clicked the Information button. “Freddy Versus Jason. That’s nice and cheerful.” He channel-surfed, stopping on a gossip program that was broadcasting a story about the birth of the Berryhill baby girl.
Sinclair stared into the bowl of soup.
He turned up the volume. “I sent flowers to congratulate Stefan and Georgia. I called, too. Talked to both of them.”
“What did they name the baby?”
“Simone Marie. Stefan’s mother’s name and Georgia’s mother’s name.”
“That’s right. I remember now. Those were their choices for a girl. I can’t see them for a while. I can’t see their baby.”
“I understand. They understand, too. It’s gonna take time, sweetheart.” He paused.
She sensed a tremor in his silence, like a violin string still vibrating after the tone had faded into a range beyond human perception. It was the proverbial pregnant pause and she had no patience for it. She cut it off. “Who’s called for an interview?”
He bit his lip as if sharing the pain. “Everyone. The Today show. Good Morning America. Larry King. Oprah is making a big play to be first. She’ll come here. I know it’s too soon to make any decisions, but we have to think about it at some point.”
“What if we just said no, Gig? No to the cameras. No to the intrusion into our private life. No, no, no.”
“We’ll talk about it later. I’m sure you’ll feel differently.”
She shoved at the tray, but it got caught on the thick bedding and didn’t budge.
He got to his feet and picked up the tray. “You didn’t eat very much. I’ll set it over here. Maybe you’ll want some later.”
“Take it, please. I don’t want it if it’s cold.”
“You might change your mind.” He headed toward the door without the tray.
“Gig…”
He turned with a hopeful look on his face.
“Thank you. I am feeling a little bit better.”
He beamed. “That’s great, Sinclair. I’m glad.”
“I’m going to sleep now.”
“Okay. I’m heading out. Brian has courtside seats for the Lakers game.”
Brian was his agent. Drinks would follow the game. Gig would be out late. She didn’t care.
“Paula will check in on you later. She’s having a guided-meditation session at six.”
When she heard the door close, Sinclair sighed in relief. She pulled down the pillows from where they were piled behind her back and was slipping her arms around them, curling into a fetal position, when she heard Georgia Berryhill’s voice on television. Sinclair looked at the TV and saw that it was an old interview. Suddenly, she wanted to talk to her friend Georgia. Georgia lived in the same celebrity universe as she and Gig. She understood the pressures of being under the public eye every second. Through her pain, Sinclair was happy about the birth of Georgia and Stefan’s baby.
She climbed out of bed. Standing, she felt woozy and put her hand on the bedpost until her head cleared. She walked to the secretary on the other side of the room, where she’d left her iPhone, turned off. She powered it on and watched the message count on the icon for her e-mail in-box grow higher and higher. She ignored it and looked up the listing for Georgia’s private landline.
Stefan answered the phone and knew it was Sinclair from the Caller ID. “Sinclair, cherie, how are you?”
“I’m doing okay, Stefan. May I talk to Georgia?”
“Of course, you may, Sinclair. Georgia will be delighted you called. We both desperately wanted to chat with you, but…It was awkward. She’s in the baby’s room, feeding her.”
Sinclair heard a rustling noise through the phone line.
“I’m walking the phone to her right now.” After a few seconds he said, “Georgia, it’s Sinclair.”
Through the line, Sinclair heard Georgia exclaim. “Wonderful! Can you take her, please?” She came on. “Sinclair? Hi, honey. How are you?”
“I’m doing all right. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It’s…” Georgia’s voice trailed off as if she’d been about to gush but thought better of it. When she next spoke, her voice was calm. “We’re very happy. But I want to hear all about you and how you are.”
“Well, I’m all right.” Now that she was talking to her friend with whom she didn’t have to keep up the good face, she felt tears welling. She took a deep breath, preparing to reveal the depth of her despair to Georgia, when she was struck silent by the sound of the baby crying.
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. She pressed the phone against her ear, trying to hear better.
“Healing takes time, honey,” Georgia said. “In the meantime, you mustn’t neglect yourself.”
Sinclair felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “That’s her.” Her voice was strangled. She cleared her throat and tried again. “She has strong lungs.”
“Yes, she does.”
The crying grew fainter as if the baby had been removed from the room.
Sinclair’s heart began pounding and her hands grew clammy. She had a hard time grasping her breath. “Who does she look like?”
“She looks just like Stefan.”
“Send me a picture.” Sinclair was panting. “Please. I’d like to see a picture.”
“Sinclair, are you all right? You sound short of breath.”
“I’m fine. Take a picture on your cell phone and send it to me.”
“Oh, honey. Soon. Don’t concern yourself with things here. Take care of yourself. Give yourself time to grieve.”
“I won’t give it to the media.”
“Sinclair, that’s the least of my worries. How’s this? You can tak
e a picture when you’re well enough to come see the baby. We’ll take pictures of all of us, okay?”
“Okay. That sounds good.” Sinclair’s voice had become wooden. “All right. I’ll let you go, Georgia. Give my love to Stefan. Kisses. Bye now.”
She ended the call. Her hand holding the cell phone dropped to her side. “That’s my baby.”
She was wobbly as she headed toward the closet, but she felt stronger with each step.
FORTY-TWO
Sinclair pulled the drapes closed, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed, pulling the bedclothes up around her neck. She left on the TV. She usually left it on all the time now.
Shortly before 6:00 p.m., she heard faint rapping at the door. It opened a crack and a slash of light fell across her face.
Sinclair heard quiet yet firm footsteps that she could tell were Paula’s, as the open-backed shoes she always wore slapped against her heels. The footsteps moved toward the table where Sinclair had left the tray. There was a small clang when Paula raised the metal dome covering the plate. She heard Paula utter an appreciative “Hmm,” finding the food gone.
Earlier, Sinclair had wolfed down the cold food, feeling surprisingly hungry. She hadn’t bothered with the spoon, but had raised the bowl to her lips and drunk down the soup.
She waited a couple of minutes after Paula had closed the door before throwing back the bedcovers. Sinclair was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She didn’t dare walk through the house, not knowing where Paula and her spiritual coach were having the guided-meditation session Gig had mentioned.
From beneath her bed, she retrieved a box with a flexible ladder. They were supplied in all the second-floor bedrooms, to be used in case of a fire or an earthquake. The ladder was made of two nylon straps with plastic rungs strung between them. Carrying it to the windows, she pulled open the drapes, opened one of the French doors, and went out onto the loggia. Setting the ladder on a metal patio chair, she crossed to the wrought-iron railing and looked across the courtyard.
It was dusk and the garden lights had come on. She looked at where John Chase’s room had been. Now, she could only rely upon herself.
She went inside her large closet, where she’d hidden her Sig Sauer pistol inside a plastic storage box where she kept yarn, needles, and unfinished projects from her fling with knitting between takes on movie sets. Her father had given her the gun when her fame had started to rise and she’d attracted a few creepy fans. Gig had been decidedly anti-gun until a scary stalker began troubling them. After that, Gig brought armed off-duty police officers to live in their home. Still, he wanted Sinclair to get rid of her gun. She hadn’t, mostly because it had been a gift from her father. But also, she had resisted Gig’s squeezing her entire persona into his vision of who or what she should be.
As she shoved the cold steel beneath the waistband of her jeans against the small of her back, she recognized the wisdom in that small act of defiance. A corner of her psyche had accepted what the rest denied.
While she was in the closet, she remembered that it was chilly outside. She grabbed a hooded, zip-front sweatshirt printed with a crazy design of skulls in Day-Glo paint.
Again listening at the door of her suite, she heard only morguelike silence, which is what the house had come to seem to her with its chilly tile floors and iron fixtures. She slipped her iPhone into her jeans back pocket. She took her keys, driver’s license, a credit card, and a wad of cash from her purse and put them into her other back pocket.
She hurried back outside onto the loggia, not feeling completely her old self but buoyed by adrenaline. Her mind felt crystal clear, unnaturally so, with only one thought that caromed around unobstructed and unchallenged: Get my baby.
She fastened the top of the ladder around the railing and unfurled it. The last rung was a few feet above the grass. She pulled a patio chair beside the railing, stepped on top, and swung her leg over, avoiding looking down. She got one foot and then the other on one of the rungs. She started climbing down.
She descended in front of the windows in the first-floor sunroom, where she saw Paula on a rattan easy chair. Instead of her spiritual guide, Paula had invited a girlfriend, who was on the rattan couch. The fully stocked bar cart had been rolled out, making it easy for them to refresh their drinks. Paula held a glass of red wine and the girlfriend was drinking from a martini glass. It was dark where Sinclair was hanging from the ladder, but they could have easily seen her if they’d looked up, but they were too busy laughing.
Guided meditation my ass, Sinclair thought.
She felt the heft of the gun against the small of her back and for a wild moment, thought of turning it on them. It was a crazy idea, she knew, but in the clear arena of her mind right now, it made perfect sense.
But she had more important business.
She reached the bottom rung and dropped onto the grass on all fours. She kept low, letting her black hair form a curtain to hide her white face from the sunroom windows. There was a pause in Paula and her friend’s lively chatter and Paula said something about hearing a raccoon.
When the chatter started again, she crawled on her hands and knees until she was around the side of the house. She got up and ran to the garage, which was in a separate building.
Inside the garage, she found the tote bag with her escape clothes, money, and documents that John had helped her hide. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, shoving her hair inside it. From the tote, she took out a ball cap and pulled it on over the hood. The tote held sunglasses too, and she put them on to further disguise herself.
There were several cars in the garage. The Mercedes SUV was “her” car and the one she felt most comfortable driving. She used the keys she’d taken from her purse, got inside, started it, and clicked open the garage door. When the door had rolled up just enough for the car to clear it, she threw it into reverse and backed out. In the driveway, she made a snap decision to exit through the back gate, as paparazzi and fans might be hanging out at the front. Paula and her friend were at the rear of the house and might see the headlights. She doused them and had to take off the sunglasses in order to see. Even though her heart was racing, she kept the car at a steady, moderate speed. Once she was off the property, she knew the back roads to take to the freeway, having driven these roads for years.
She didn’t know what would happen at the gatehouse, if the guard would give her any problems, if Gig had told him not to let her out. She stopped and gave him a wave. He released the gate. She was miffed. Gig didn’t think she’d try to leave. He was in for a surprise.
FORTY-THREE
Kissick and Vining were traveling north on the 101 and were close to the exit that would take them to Malibu Canyon Road when Vining received a text message from Getty. She read it aloud, “Can’t meet. Will contact you later.”
She let her hand with her cell phone fall into her lap and looked at Kissick, who was driving. “Crap. He doesn’t want me asking about Georgia’s Girls, he wants to meet away from the compound, and now he doesn’t want to meet at all?”
“We’re almost there,” Kissick said. “Might as well see what’s going on. Wonder if there’s still a big crowd at the gate.”
She picked up her phone. “I’ll text Getty, saying, ‘Got your message. Already here. Can you meet?’ See what he says.”
They headed into the canyon. There was even more traffic than when they’d made the trip yesterday. The expensive housing developments on the lower part disappeared and the terrain became rugged, with a rocky mountainside to their right and, across the opposite lane, a sheer cliff on the left. Around some of the curves, they caught the blanket of lights of the northwestern corner of L.A. County. A jagged line of lights outlined the coast. The Pacific was cast in purple twilight.
A sign announced a lookout point a quarter mile ahead.
“Is that the one Getty was talking about?” Vining asked.
“It would be about the right distance from th
e compound.”
He rounded a bend and hit his brakes hard. The road was clogged with a long line of cars that were nearly stopped.
“Is this for the Berryhills?” Vining asked. “Who would waste their time?”
“People who need a life.”
“The compound is locked up. I don’t know what they think they’re going to see.”
“They just want to breathe the same air as Georgia and Stefan.”
The traffic inched forward.
Kissick steered the car with two fingers of his right hand, which was resting in his lap.
Vining pointed at the lookout coming up on their left—a packed dirt and sand turnoff with a drive-through entrance and exit. It was jammed with cars, people, and TV news vans with satellite dishes on top.
Vehicles were parked along the narrow shoulder leading to the lookout, crushing the wild wheat, mustard, and foxtails. After a few yards, the shoulder disappeared, leaving no place to park off the road, as there was a steep cliff beyond the pavement. A stream of people walked along the shoulder.
A beleaguered sheriff’s deputy stood in the middle of the road, trying to keep traffic moving.
Vining glowered at the mob scene. “Getty picked a public place to meet. I doubt he was planning an ambush.”
After a few minutes of little progress, Kissick said, “Code Two and a Half?”
“Absolutely.”
Code Three meant using both lights and siren, and was to be used only in an emergency. Officers sometimes ignored regulation and used just the light bar to cut through traffic, which was jokingly called Code Two and a Half.
He was about to switch on the light bar when he caught sight in his rearview mirror of a car driving erratically. “Look at this guy. Passing on the left. Leapfrogging over cars. Yikes…That was close.”
She twisted to look through the rear window. A cream-colored Mercedes SUV took advantage of a small break in the oncoming traffic to pull across the double yellow line, pass two cars, and then barely squeeze behind the Crown Vic. The driver of a pickup truck coming from the opposite direction leaned on his horn.