by Helen Jacey
I stared at the writing.
My instinct now matched up with Beatty’s.
Olive was innocent.
64
I was winding my way back through the Canyon towards Sunset when I realized I wasn’t alone. The wheels were churning up a dust cloud, but as it subsided, a dark car came into view, a fair distance behind me. It was black or very dark gray. I could make out one driver, a shadowy figure. A tail? When had it picked me up? And more to the point, who was it? My stomach knotted up. Had Jim Fraser found me already?
I wasn’t in the mood to die today, or to go to Tatiana Spark’s house with someone tracking me. I put my foot down and picked up speed, careering down the hill, the car lurching as it bounced over potholes. I had no idea how lose a tail, but logic dictated to keep moving and fast. I was tempted to stop, and see what the car, or rather the driver, did. But the place was deserted and there was nowhere to run. I didn’t fancy my chances.
I soon reached the more populated foothills with their manicured gardens and smoother road surface. Houses and humanity offered a greater sense of security; I could always pull up, ring a doorbell, and pretend I was lost.
The car kept a reasonable distance.
At last I blended into the traffic on Sunset. It was busy. The black car was still behind me. Was it a Plymouth? I had to lose it.
I weaved in and out of several cars, switching lanes jerkily. Somebody blasted a horn at me. Screw them. I glanced back. There was a big truck ahead. I overtook it, and caught sight of a right turn, a narrow lane. I dived down it, without indicating. The alley was punctuated by the back doors of restaurants, overloaded garbage cans and hungry alley cats. I slowed down slightly. In my rear mirror, on the main road behind, the dark car charged straight on.
He hadn’t seen me turn.
The sign for Juniper House was barely legible, eroded by years of salty air. It poked out from thick evergreen shrubs. The road climbed past the house, which was not visible from the road.
I drove on, finally pulling into a turnout before a major bend. I got out of the car. The turnout offered a good vantage spot over the hill. It was deadly quiet except for the distant roar of the ocean. Juniper House itself was in fact two single-story houses with pitched shingle roofs, set far back in grounds that reminded me of a fairy-tale forest. It was all the more atmospheric with the mist hovering between the pine trees and the house. The whole thing felt rural, as if the occupants had wanted to forget they were in a fast, modern American city and create a tranquil little corner of Europe.
Looking down, there was a long garage and I could only see the part of the drive that led to the forecourt, where two cars were parked. A large, black car and a smaller, mushroom-colored convertible. I couldn’t make out the models. Was it the same black car as the one that had tailed me? No. Impossible. I’d have seen it.
There was no sign of life in the grounds of the house. I lit a cigarette and walked a little higher up, to view the ocean. A group of pelicans passed over me, magnificent shapes over a pink sky. I’d only ever seen them before in cartoons. They headed east and were soon lost in the gray haze.
I turned back to look at the house at exactly the right moment. A tall female figure in shades with a wide-brimmed hat headed towards the convertible. Janice? The long-lost kid, a daughter?
The woman jumped into the mushroom sports car with agility, and drove down the drive. Her movements – the elegant stride – had something familiar about them.
Soon the car disappeared from view, under the heavy trees. If she turned left, the woman would pass me on the hill and could easily spot me. I dashed back to the car and crouched down behind the bonnet on the nearside. I hoped my car would look it was abandoned.
Sure enough, a powerful engine soon surged up the hill. The coupe flew past. I peeked out. Up close, it was a very nice car. Immaculate, gleaming, and fast. The sort of car I’d buy in another life.
I was torn. Should I watch the comings and goings at the house? My desire to follow the woman was overwhelming and I jumped back in the car.
Beatty had said no sudden moves. I was to check in with her. But if I lost this opportunity, and it led to the truth, surely I’d regret it. I could equally imagine her telling me I was stupid for not acting on instinct.
I was soon cruising some fifty yards behind her. I happened to glance in my rear mirror. I jumped. A tiny black speck behind me. The tail?
Whatever or whoever it was, it was catching up.
My stomach lurched. I was following the woman, while being followed.
Dammit!
We drove for several miles. I kept a big enough distance. So did my tail. The woman was heading deeper inland, into agricultural land. The odd farmhouse was dotted here and there. Simple structures for simple lives. I recalled Lauder’s words about me running and holing up in the sticks. He’d got me wrong. I’d go crazy out here.
A truck loaded with grain began to pull out from a country lane, turning right. The vehicle was so massive, the move took up the whole road. I had to wait, impatiently tapping my foot, cut off from the car ahead. My tail seemed to slow down, no doubt to avoid being obvious.
I let the truck pass, cursing inwardly. I reached down for the pistol out of the purse and put it in my lap, remembering I still hadn’t stocked up on bullets.
As soon as the truck passed, I sped up. Finally I saw the coupe in the distance, just as it turned right down a drive. A second later and I’d have missed it altogether. I slowed down, to cruise past. My tail followed relentlessly behind me. I glanced down the drive. Behind some tall, rusting iron gates, now open, there was an old farmhouse nestling on the hillside. The grounds were full of well-established, bushy fruit trees. I decided to park as soon as I could and go over the hill on foot.
If the guy tailing me chose to join me on my hike, he’d have to find out it was a rather hazardous jaunt. But I only had one shot. I couldn’t waste it.
I parked and jumped out, grabbing the gumshoes from the trunk. I slipped them on and clambered through a hole in the broken fence. I could hear the engine of the tail racing past. Was he slowing down? I kept looking back in case a figure appeared on the horizon. I scrambled over the scrubby land. Slow going over the long furrows of tufts of straw, rigid remnants of the harvest. I looked back – nobody was in pursuit.
I almost laughed.
The car was being driven by somebody who had zero interest in me, someone just going about life.
In the distance, I could make out the fence around the farmhouse’s large plot. As I got closer, I could see it was just chicken wire attached to posts. Easy enough to climb over, particularly in the pantsuit.
A dog started barking. Shit! I froze, rigid, then darted behind a large, pale shrub with a lot of bees buzzing around its orange flowers. I crouched down, out of view. The mutt was on high alert, and didn’t shut up.
I heard a door open and a woman call out something. The voice was familiar, somehow. The dog whimpered and I heard a rustle.
I peered around the leaves.
The car was parked outside.
A tall blonde woman was bending over, stroking the dog.
Starlet blonde.
Lena?
Impossible!
It couldn’t be. Not Lena. Tatiana Spark’s long-lost daughter could not be Lena.
The wide-brimmed hat had gone but in every other respect it was the woman who had left Tatiana Spark’s house. No, it must be a look-alike. Just another tall blonde in a city chock-full of them. I had to be seeing things, like the ‘tail’. Turning into a crazy fool. That’s what life on the edge does, right? I was just a wreck.
You never mourned your loss and this is what happens. You’re seeing her because you want to.
The woman was standing still at the door, holding the dog’s collar, both alert. It was a large, brown hunting dog. A killer with a strong nose.
I didn’t move.
The dog began barking again. He knew I was there, and he was makin
g damn sure she knew it.
The woman took a last look around and then she turned around and closed the door.
Should I knock on the door and quiz her? See for myself up close that this was somebody else? Stop my delusions, once and for all?
No. I should creep back up the hill quickly, quietly. Get in the car, fly back to Beatty’s and let Beatty tip off the cops to check up on Tatiana. Avoid any mention of chasing the woman. Avoid revealing the one element of my past I’d neglected to tell her. That on the day of my release, my best friend in jail had killed herself. And now it turned out her look-alike was living in L.A.
Let the cops figure it out. Sweat broke out over my face. I had to get out of here.
Five minutes later I got back to my car, breathless. I fumbled for the key. Where the hell was it? Had I dropped it? Maybe it had fallen out when I crouched down by the orange-flowered shrub. Booby, indeed. I had no choice but to retrace my steps. I headed back the same way, creeping back down the field, an eye on the ground, trying to spot the key. I had to find it before the dog heard me again.
I reached the plant, and scrabbled around the base.
Crack!
An explosion of light, filling my eyes as my head seemed to spin into its own orbit. Then the pain, before the darkness.
65
Something or somebody was knocking a nail into my head. It pounded in time with my heart. I tried to feel my head, but couldn’t move my hands, or my legs. My eyelids were too heavy to open. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, like a dried-out sponge. I must have sweated buckets in here before coming around. My clothes were drenched, glued to my body.
I was lying on my back. I lifted my head slightly and tried to look down at my body. Bound across the chest with thin nautical rope. Somebody had removed my jacket top. I seemed to be in some kind of shed, lying on a soft, sagging surface. I groped with the tips of my fingers and felt rough canvas. A cot? Striped deck chairs and recliners were propped against the walls. I had to be on some kind of camp bed or lounger.
A sharp, chemical smell hit me. Huge waves of nausea took over, making the pain in my head play second fiddle. I willed myself not to vomit.
Vomit, you’ll choke.
Choke, you’ll die.
Two pale blue eyes, staring into mine. Familiar eyes. The mouth was making shapes at me. I couldn’t hear anything. The pounding in my skull made it impossible.
I felt wetness on my forehead – a damp washcloth? It did nothing to relieve the pain.
A face came into sharper focus.
Lena’s face.
Was I hallucinating? I tried to open my mouth but couldn’t move my lips. Her hand came towards my face and made a yanking gesture. My lips were ripped apart as tape was pulled off.
‘Lena?’ My voice was hoarse.
She hissed, ‘Don’t even twitch, if you know what’s good for you.’ The same Aussie twang. Unmistakably her.
I looked up at her as she peered into my face. She threw her head back, and burst out laughing. ‘Imagine this, a Holloway reunion. Jemima fucking Day.’
I murmured, ‘You died. I saw – inside. I thought…somebody killed you.’
‘Aw, sad were you? You were a tough little thing. Sorry I couldn’t kiss you goodbye. Did your hair up, though.’
I didn’t know this woman. I had never known her. ‘The suicide was a setup. They got you out. Why? Are you pretending to be Tatiana Spark’s daughter? Or her nurse?’
‘Nosey Parker, all of a sudden? Never asked a thing inside.’
‘What’s going on? You’re a spy?’
‘And you’re some kind of sleuth?’ She waved one of Beatty’s cards over my face. ‘You work for this Falaise Investigations?’
I stared at her in shock. Lena tossed the card on the ground and reached down for something. A bottle of lemonade came into view.
She held it to my mouth, sliding her hand behind my head. Fuck her. I twisted my head aside, feeling the liquid splash my face.
‘Stupid cow, drink.’
‘Damn you!’ I spat out whatever fell into my mouth at her.
‘Suit yourself.’ She stood up again and downed the drink. ‘We’re going on a long hot drive.’
What? Where?
‘I saw you. At a club, Seven Palms. What are you doing here?’
Lena rolled her eyes. ‘Tell you what, you first.’ She produced a menacing revolver and waved it in my face. ‘You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, so you better have a bloody good reason.’
My brain couldn’t think fast enough.
‘I was released, same day as you…they…staged your death. I bolted, jumped probation. I managed to get here, to L.A. I just wanted to find my father.’
This lie could work.
‘Your father?’ Lena wasn’t expecting this.
I nodded, turning my head to meet her eye. ‘He’s a Yank. Turns out the yearning for a reunion wasn’t mutual.’
‘Ah, poor little Jemima, Daddy didn’t want to see her? Bullshit!’ She knelt down and jabbed me with the gun, hard on the ribs. ‘Try again.’
‘That’s the truth.’
Lena lit a cigarette. ‘Want some more burn scars on that skinny little arm? Out with it!’
‘I swear it’s true. I’m on the run. I needed a job, so I’m working for an investigator on a missing person case. She doesn’t know anything about my past.’
‘So why are you spying on Tatiana Spark’s house?’
‘The missing person, she’s got a connection with Darlene Heymann’s death.’
Lena stood up. ‘The director who snuffed it?’
I nodded. So she knew about the film. If there was a scheme, she could be in on it. Or she was there for entirely different reasons and she didn’t know about Lyntner, Janice or Olive. Maybe there was a kid, somebody else in the house, and I’d got everything wrong. Everything – even Rhonda running, the overdoses, the lover, the daughter, Lena, Olive and Lyntner disappearing; maybe they all had no significance whatsoever. Maybe Beatty and I had just been blown along by the hot air of a canister full of assumption.
Lena finished the lemonade and tossed the bottle in an empty metal oil container. It ratted noisily before falling still.
‘And here we are. What a mess.’
I looked at her. ‘What’s a mess?’
She guffawed, mimicking me. ‘What’s a mess, says the fascist.’
I tried to bolt up, straining against the rope pinning me down. ‘What? I’m no fucking fascist!’
‘What was your story inside again? That your boyfriend had dumped you in it? But here you are, on the run, snooping on me. Want to wreck my operation, is that it?’
Operation?
‘What?’
She guffawed again. ‘You really take the fucking biscuit.’
This conversation was going nowhere.
‘I don’t know anything about you or what you’re up to. If you’re in on the murders, you want Spark’s money or whatever, I’m dead meat. Who cares? I’m on borrowed time anyway. If you’re impersonating Spark’s kid for some espionage-related reason, good for you. But Spark’s lawyer is up to no fucking good.’
Lena studied me. ‘Frederick Lyntner?’
‘He’s having an affair with the nurse, assuming that isn’t you, and he’s cleared out of his office. He could be after her money. Are you in on it? Is she dying?’
Lena burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Jem. You silly cow. Did you always have an imagination like this? Wish I’d known. Would have made the clink far more bearable.’
Jem. That’s what she used to call me; it felt weird to hear it again. I closed my eyes. If she was working with Lyntner, I could be dead any second.
‘All right. For old times’ sake, because I got fond of you and seeing you again is some party, I’ll give it to you straight. Spark is dying. Janice is her nurse, and the lawyer is taking care of her affairs. That’s all. No big murder plot, no shenanigans. And yes, I am impersonating Sophia Spark, as you guessed. Or
as you bloody well already know.’
‘Know? I don’t know anything about you!’
Lena moved around. She now leant against the wall, right in my line of sight, long legs crossed.
‘Enough with this whole P.I. rubbish. If somebody in Britain’s a triple agent, and feeding you intelligence about my work, you’ve got time to make your own deal. But you name names, or this is where the conversation ends.’
Deal? Crazy! I almost laughed with sheer panic that she thought I had some credible agenda, that I was after her, some kind of fascist spy. It struck me she definitely seemed more perturbed by this than anything I’d said about Lyntner and the nurse.
If I didn’t convince her otherwise, she would kill me.
Once again, there was only the truth card to play. But truth was a lame duck. I was against a master game-player, probably the best in town, trained to dig out duplicity. My mouth was sticky and dry. I tried to swallow, meeting her eye. ‘I’ve got no names to give. I was just a dumb gangster’s moll and my chap, Billy, set me up. He was a racketeer. I thought he was sending me out to collect a cargo of French brandy. But it was guns, and the Secret Service was onto it. I never had any interest in politics. The mass slaughter of Jews and Gypsies? Pure evil – I’m no fifth columnist. I’m no saint, either. The only reason I was dumb enough to keep my mouth shut all those years inside? It wasn’t for love. It was just to secure a way out of Blighty. Money and a way out.’