Damage Control: A Novel
Page 35
Anabelle shrugged one tawny shoulder. “It wouldn’t have.”
I stood up and walked to the window. High above the canyon, a hawk rode the thermals.
I cleared my throat. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I owe you an apology. I should have stayed with you that night. In Playa del Rey. If I hadn’t left you alone with Ivan, none of this would have happened.”
Her head jerked up. Her eyes roamed the room like a cornered animal.
“I told you to leave,” she said. “I practically begged you.”
“I shouldn’t have listened. I wish I’d had the courage to defy you. Do you know how many times I’ve gone over that night in my head, wishing it had been different? Wishing even that I could have . . . that we . . . that it had happened to me instead. Because then maybe you’d be okay now.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “That is pure sick.”
“I know. But I see how it’s eaten away at you, like a radioactive half-life.”
“Don’t even think that. I know you like to take care of everyone and make it better but . . .”
“I can’t help it. That’s the way I’m wired.”
She shook her head sadly. “There are things in life that can’t be fixed.”
Like her. Like me.
“Let me help you, Anabelle. I’m strong now. Not like before. I won’t let you down. I’ll help you get to the bottom of it and then we’ll put it behind us forever.”
“If you keep trying,” said Anabelle, “you’ll doom us all.”
For a moment we sat there, locked in our private cages of pain.
Then I said, “Did you know there was a detective downstairs talking to your dad and Simon?”
Alarm flashed in her eyes until I explained the good news about the DNA results.
Anabelle scooted back on the bed until her back pressed against the headboard. She pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“It’s so awful that Dad and Simon had to go through that. I hope they find the boyfriend soon.”
“I’m not so sure that will be the end of it.”
She gave me a sharp look. I sensed the mood begin to change.
“The feds are looking into Blair’s dealings with your dad and other clients. There’s a federal investigator who’s contacted me twice now, wanting me to cooperate with him. So far I’ve told him no.”
She gripped the edge of the comforter. “Does Dad know?”
“Probably. I told my boss about it the first time. But the second time . . . it’s beginning to freak me out. I think you ought to tell the police everything. I’d sit in with you if it made you feel better. For moral support.”
She looked at me coldly.
“Is this your professional advice on behalf of the Blair Company?”
“No. This is personal advice from me, your friend Maggie. To hell with Blair. I can always find another job. But this is killing you. And it’s killing me to stand by helplessly and watch.”
“You don’t know anything about us, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Paxtons don’t do things that way.”
“But, Anabelle, the lies are piling up and it’s just a matter of time before—”
“Lies? I suppose that’s something you know a lot about, in your business.”
“We don’t lie.”
“You don’t always tell the whole truth either. I’ve watched you on TV, speaking before the cameras. Nerves of steel. You’re as cold-blooded as me, in your own little way. And you’ve had plenty of practice.”
“What?”
“You were always a liar, Maggie. Even back in high school. That’s one thing I admired about you. You made up your own reality, concocted it from whole cloth.”
My palms started to sweat. “I didn’t!”
“Maggie,” she said patiently, “we all knew your dad wasn’t a screenwriter. Luke had a friend whose dad ran a film noir festival in Hollywood and knew all about Monogram Studios. We asked him about your father. We were curious. We never said anything because we didn’t want to embarrass you.”
I laughed. “I guess I never told you he wrote under a pseudonym. He’d been blacklisted by Joe McCarthy and his red-baiters, see, and—”
She winced. “Don’t, Maggie.”
I picked at a loose thread on the comforter. What a stupid word, “comforter.”
“And the big house in Encino?” Anabelle continued, trying to hurt me now, get me back for hurting her. “We tried to go there once, on your birthday. We had a cake and we wanted to surprise you. So imagine our surprise when we looked you up in the directory. Hard to believe a good liar like you didn’t realize how easily your deception would be uncovered. Maybe you thought if you wished hard enough it would come true, like Cinderella and her mouse-drawn pumpkin.”
“Stop.”
“But the thing was,” said Anabelle, “that in some weird way, it impressed us. That you’d go to all that trouble to concoct elaborate lies. For us! As if we wouldn’t love you if you were poor and lived in a crappy part of the Valley.”
Even now, I flinched.
“You were always so sure of yourself, so cocky and unassailable, and it made us realize how fragile you really were underneath the armor. It made you more, I don’t know, human.
“But deep down, I must have sensed you were a guttersnipe, and that attracted me. My life was so predictable and boring. Do you think I’d ever bought anything in a thrift store before? Mom would have died. The only time Paxtons went to thrift stores was when we donated our own things. I didn’t have the eye to spot the Dorothy O’Hara frock and the Catalina vase amid all the junk. And the music? All those cool edgy bands. It was a revelation.”
The room dissolved and I saw sixteen-year-old Anabelle holding a pair of concert tickets, asking if I was interested.
“But you liked PJ Harvey,” I protested. “That’s what first drew us together.”
“My friend Charlotte liked PJ Harvey. I’d never heard of her. That’s why it was thrilling when I found you. You introduced me to your world. And I loved it.”
“Maybe you loved it a little too much.”
“Whatever, don’t overanalyze it like you always do. We each had something the other needed.”
Her face darkened. “And on top of everything else, I had Luke.”
I froze.
“You think I didn’t know? Come on! We spent every waking moment together for two years. But you didn’t understand about Luke either. You saw what you wanted to see.”
“I know he didn’t care for me. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I didn’t use you to get to him.”
“I know,” she said softly. “And that’s why I put up with it. But there’s no denying that things began to change between us when Luke came home.”
She sighed and rolled away from me, staring at the wall.
I stood to leave.
“Thanks for the company, Maggie,” she said, her voice small and far away. “And the perfume. It did make me feel better there, for a little while.”
“You’re welcome. Next time I’ll bring the whole bottle.”
39
As I drove to the office, my thoughts drifted from Anabelle to the Emily Mortimer DNA results. Brothers had similar DNA, didn’t they? What about parents and children?
I looked it up when I got to my desk, wondering what my brain was trying to work out.
The Internet told me that full siblings shared about 50 percent of their DNA. Children shared about half of their parents’ DNA, and Y chromosomes were handed down intact from father to son. I found this reassuring, and it took me awhile to puzzle out why:
The DNA found at Emily Mortimer’s apartment was not genetically linked to the DNA of the Paxton brothers. That meant it was not linked to Anabelle or Luke either, because the tests would surely have flagged any result that showed a 50 percent match.
This brought me around to the one Paxton family member whose DNA had not been vetted by the police: Miranda.
And suddenly, I sat up straight and Tyler’s words the other night looped like a refrain in my brain.
Miranda, with her strange fetish-art mannequins and her private fortune. Enough to hire ten hit men, if she didn’t want to get her hands dirty. Not that she seemed to mind, I thought, recalling Anabelle’s description of her mother in the desert, pumping her mannequins full of holes in the name of art.
How much further would she go in the name of protecting her family? Miranda wasn’t a typical politician’s wife, content to sit on the sidelines. Oh, sure, she knew how to play the gracious senatorial wife, but her wealth and her standing in the art world gave her an independence and a flair that were unusual in politics. Only in a blue state like California, her supporters joked, would she be considered an asset to her senator husband.
What lay behind that exquisitely buffed and polished surface?
And how could I find out?
40
We were back at Villa Marbella. Faraday was on the sidewalk in front of the Paxton house, doing stand-ups with the media. I was drafting a news release at the kitchen table. Then Tyler walked in with boxes of pizza and green salads.
I’d spent the last two days conjuring him into a demon. Now the sight of his lanky form caught me like a left hook in the gut.
“What’s the matter?” Tyler said.
“We need to talk.” I looked around. “Let’s go outside, where it’s more . . . private.”
I led him out back, past the swimming pool, into the orchard where the gardeners lovingly tended the fig, apricot, peach, plum, and lemon trees whose fruit no one in the family ever touched.
At the base of a gnarled old pomegranate tree, Anabelle’s dog Bangs was busy digging a hole in an attempt to catch something that was tunneling away. When she heard us coming, Bangs stopped, butt poised in the air. Her snout was encrusted with wet dirt and her pink tongue lolled, flecked with saliva. For a moment, she regarded us hopefully, as if we might pitch in. Then with an enthusiastic bark, she went back to digging.
“Is this clandestine enough?” Tyler said.
He stepped closer. Around us rose the homely smell of nature decaying—dirt and mulched leaves.
“Are you still working on the JTM Financial account?” I asked.
For a moment, Tyler looked surprised. “That bankrupt firm Senator Paxton’s committee is looking into?”
He ran his hand through his hair in that disarming way he had.
“I did a little work on that account when I first started at Blair,” Tyler said. “If I recall, they were buying another firm and there were some regulatory issues that worried Wall Street. Mr. Blair was grooming me to do financial PR.” Tyler laughed. “That was before he realized I’m not a numbers guy.”
“How long did you work the account?”
“About five hot minutes.” Tyler shot me a lazy grin.
“So you’re not working it any longer?”
“I just told you.”
“Does JTM Financial still use Blair?”
Tyler’s eyes glinted as suddenly he understood.
“As a matter of fact, no. They didn’t like our rates so they ran off to Sitrick or some other ambulance chaser a long time ago. And look where it got them.”
“How do you know they didn’t come back to Blair when their stock crashed? Maybe he assigned the case to someone else, like Faraday?”
“Anything’s possible, Maggie. But I think I would have heard.”
“How? We’re not supposed to talk about clients, not even with other Blair associates. Need to know and all that.”
“Sure, but with a clusterfuck of that size, word would have gotten around. So if you’re envisioning some conspiracy theory here, with Blair screwing one client to protect another who’s paying more, you can drop that crazy idea right now.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Yeah, you did. That’s what you think. You’re totally frigging paranoid from all the Adderall you take.”
I made a noise of throttled indignation.
“You think I don’t see you popping them all the time? You have to ask yourself, Maggie, at what point do the drugs stop boosting your brain cells and start destroying them. ’Cause I think you’ve reached that stage.”
Many responses formed in my brain but failed to make it out of my mouth. Because another thought quickly overrode everything.
If JTM Financial Services was a Blair client, and they were doing exactly what Tyler said, then the best way to deflect it would be to accuse me of paranoia.
“What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense,” Tyler said. “Look around you. Does it look like we’re trying to set Paxton up? Seems to me that all of us are doing everything we can to help the senator and his hound dog of a brother. As soon as the cops catch that Slattery freak, the truth will come out.”
“I hope so,” I said stiffly.
He shook his head in mock disappointment. “And here I was hoping you’d brought me into the orchards to ravish me.” He took a step closer. One hand rested lightly on my hip.
“Seems a shame to waste the opportunity,” he murmured.
I knew if I looked into his eyes, I’d be sunk. Summoning my last shreds of strength, I pulled away. I still felt the warm imprint of his hand on my body.
“I’ve got to get back,” I said, and ran all the way to the kitchen.
* * *
Faraday had finished with the media and was sitting at the kitchen table when I entered, a paper napkin tucked into his dress shirt as he served himself a slice of pizza. He looked pink cheeked and robust, a vampire that had just fed. Really, it was disgusting how jousting with the press energized him when it left the rest of us so drained.
Now Faraday gave me a shrewd and knowing look. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
The front door slammed, and moments later Tyler walked in, hands shoved into his pockets, nonchalant as ever.
Faraday looked from me to Tyler and back again, but before he could say anything, Miranda walked in, trailed by Bangs.
She said hello, then got a tray and filled it with cheese, crackers, grapes, and a bottle of juice.
“What else?” she said.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Anabelle’s barely eating and I want to bring her up a snack. What else do you think she’d like?”
It said a lot, I thought, that Anabelle’s mother was asking me to recommend her daughter’s favorite foods.
“She used to like peanut M&Ms a lot,” I offered.
Miranda gave me a grateful look. “Thanks, I’ll check the pantry,” she said and hurried off.
Bangs eyed the pizza hopefully and I tore off a piece of crust and fed it to her. She ate it with surprising delicacy, then lay with her muzzle on the hardwood floor, eyes flicking anxiously.
Miranda walked back in.
“What kind of collar does that dog have?” asked Faraday. “Can I see it?”
“Sure, it’s just a regular collar. Come here, Bangs.”
Bangs walked over, wagging her tail, and Faraday bent to examine her neck.
“Okay,” he said, straightening up and showing no further interest in the dog. “I just wanted to make sure it didn’t have a recording device around its neck. You have no idea what the paparazzi are capable of. They switched collars once on a dog who belonged to a celebrity client of mine. Paid one of the help to put on a collar equipped with a minivideocam. Can you imagine?”
At that moment, my phone rang. The caller ID was blocked.
“Is this Maggie Silver?” a man said, his voice nervous.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
There
was a pause. “My name is Jake Slattery.”
I sat down, already beckoning Faraday over.
“Where are you, Mr. Slattery?”
“That’s not important.”
“I’m happy to hear from you. We have so many questions. Things that only you can clear up.”
Keep him on the line, Faraday mouthed.
“I need your help,” Jake Slattery said. “Here’s how it’s going to work.”
* * *
When he hung up, my hand shook so much it took three tries to jab the Off key.
Faraday was on his own phone. “Never mind,” he said, hanging up in disgust.
“How could you let him get away?” Faraday said. “The cops need time to trace these calls and I’d barely—”
“He wants to meet with me,” I said.
“What?”
“Tonight. He says he’s innocent and he’ll bring proof. Ten o’clock. Just inside Union Station downtown. He says to come alone or he won’t show.”
“It’s too dangerous,” said Tyler.
Faraday’s eyes had gone wide and dreamy. “It’s the PR scoop of a lifetime,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” Tyler shouted.
“You want me to do it?” I said in disbelief.
“Don’t go soft on me now, Maggie.”
“But he’s wanted by the police. He could kill me.”
“Why would he do that? You’re the messenger who’s going to tell his story to the world.”
I considered this. The idea was certainly alluring. I struggled not to get seduced by it.
Faraday said, “Imagine the free publicity this would bring us! What an exclusive: Blair, the crisis management firm that exonerates its client by catching the real killer. Our phones will be ringing off the hook.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Who said anything about catching anyone?”
“I thought Jake had proof of who the real killer is?”
“He said he’d ‘bring proof,’ whatever that means. Are you sure we shouldn’t call in the cops?”
Faraday cocked his head and pretended to think. He pursed his lips. His brow furrowed. “We can handle it,” he said.
“You mean I can,” I said sulkily. “You want it so badly, why don’t you go? Or send Tyler.”