Celebrity Sudoku (23 page)

Looking at the woman wrapping Liza’s wrist in tape, knife held pirate-fashion between her teeth, Liza decided that rational argument wouldn’t get very far.

Still, she had to try. “So, unless Lolly is lying in wait for Michael at Santa Monica, I guess you’re the person we were really looking for.”

The tape roll dropped, and the knife blade flashed in front of her eyes. “Lolly had nothing to do with it!” Rikki shouted. “I’m trying to protect her.”

She got her volume down and the knife away from Liza. “I had an audition for a TV role in one of the other sections of the studio and stopped by the bungalow, figuring I’d wait there and have lunch with Lolly. But she wasn’t there, only that—that—”

“Ritz?” Liza supplied when Rikki couldn’t come up with a bad enough name for the deceased.

“She laughed at me, telling me the story she’d heard from her friend down in Mexico.”

Rikki was definitely angry, but she didn’t have the same crazy glint in her eye she’d shown when Liza suggested Lolly was involved in the killing.

And Lolly told me she’d never gotten a passport.
The thought swam up from her memory.

“But you already knew about Lukas and the make-believe wedding, didn’t you?” she said.

Rikki nodded. “When Lolly was a little girl I was looking for the license—what I thought was the license—to get a passport for her. We had a Mexican housekeeper—”

Like about 99 percent of the people in L.A. who can afford one,
Liza thought.

“She got very excited to discover that I owned a piece of land near her hometown,” Rikki went on. “That’s when I discovered the license was a sham—the whole marriage, too.”

She used the wrist of her knife hand to push her hair back out of her face, tore off another length of tape, and began fastening Liza’s right ankle to the front chair leg.

“Lukas was much older than I was—almost twenty years,” Rikki said.

About the same difference in years as there is between us,
Liza thought.

“We argued a lot on the boat. I told him I was getting off at the next port and walking back if I had to. Instead, he got a priest, or so I thought.” She softened a little. “I think he felt bad about it. All through his next film, he talked about having another ceremony, a big one, bringing my parents over from Poland. But I was enormous with Lolly at the time. We agreed to wait until after she was born. But then Lukas went sailing and never came back.”

“And a few years later, you discovered you’d never really been married.”

Rikki smiled bitterly. “Yeah, the joke was even worse than people said. The dumb Polish actress not only slept with the writer; she let him fool her into believing she was married. Even worse, people were getting crazier over the whole immigration thing. I kept hoping it would die down, but it just got worse.”

“So you kept it hidden,” Liza said.

Rikki’s face hardened and that fanatical gleam came back to her eye. “And then that bitch started mocking me—‘Imagine what will happen when it turns out that America’s sweetheart is actually an illegal alien.’ She bragged that she had connections at
The Lowdown
to smear the story all over the country.”

Rikki was working on Liza’s other ankle now, pulling the tape so tight, she threatened to cut off circulation to the foot.

“Then Ritz told you she wanted a part in Lolly’s film.”

“Imagine that talentless drone in a Stanley Lumiere production!” Rikki seethed. “She’d gotten everything else she wanted in her life, so she was willing to jeopardize my daughter’s career because she wanted this. And she
laughed
about it!”

Her face twisted. “Well, she stopped laughing when the earthquake started. We both ran for the door, but I got there first. She went to push past me, but got caught on something. So I pushed her back—”

Liza found herself remembering what happened to Chick Benson when the paparazzo tried to block Rikki’s path.

“I just wanted her to see what it felt like to come in second. I didn’t expect the whole house to come down.”

“But you didn’t get help for Ritz, either,” Liza pointed out.

“I thought it was a gift from God,” Rikki replied simply. “I just got out of there, thinking that Lolly would be able to prove she was somewhere else. She often went out for walks. But she got hurt, there was the whole amnesia thing, and the police suspected her.”

She rose to her feet, gripping the knife. “And then you and Michael got involved, trying to help. When Michael called, saying you were going to the police, I had to do something. Lolly was in the bathroom. I took her phone to send Michael away and came here.”

Liza could feel her heart pounding in her chest, but she managed to keep her voice calm. “What are you going to do, Rikki?”

“I would die for my daughter,” Rikki said. “If I thought it would do any good, I would confess to killing that slut. But then the rest of the story would come out.”

And she’s already killed once to keep that from happening,
Liza thought.

“It will look like a home invasion.” Rikki wasn’t really talking to her, just thinking out loud. “You were taken first; Michael comes back and walks in on it. I’ll take some jewelry; there must be a computer, whatever electronics I can find . . .”

At the mention of Michael, Liza turned toward the living room where her cell phone still sat on the couch.

Why doesn’t he call?
she wondered.
He was supposed to ring me up when he got to the pier. Did something happen to him? Did I do something stupid like leave it on silent mode?

Or maybe it wasn’t so stupid.
If he calls and the phone just buzzes in the other room, it will go to voice mail. Michael will know something’s up.

Taped securely to this damned chair, Liza could do nothing else but hope—and maybe pray a little bit.

“Rikki—” Liza began.

“You won’t talk me out of it.” To ensure that, Rikki slapped a length of duct tape over Liza’s mouth. Then she stayed looming over Liza with the knife. The silence stretched until it frayed almost as badly as their nerves.

Rikki jumped, nearly nicking Liza, when the refrigerator started cycling in the kitchen.

Then they heard the front door open—and Michael’s voice. “Liza, no one was there.”

You idiot!
Liza silently screamed at him.
Why didn’t you call? You’re going to get killed because you didn’t call!

His voice came nearer, sounding worried but still unsuspecting. “Liza? Where are you?”

Rikki pressed herself against the wall by the entrance from the living room, knife raised.

But Michael didn’t come ambling in; he charged, going for Rikki’s knife hand.

He almost got it.

At least he deflected Rikki’s stab. Even so, Liza winced to see the blade angled across Michael’s chest, cutting into the muscle near his armpit.

Michael staggered past Liza toward the kitchen. Rikki came after him, out of Liza’s sight line. All she heard were the sounds of scuffling—then Rikki came tottering back, slashing wildly.

A second later, Michael followed, holding Liza’s discarded walker.

For a few moments, it looked like some surreal version of geriatric lion taming, Michael fending off Rikki with the walker. But Liza watched in horror as the wet red blotch on his shirt got bigger and bigger.

Then Lolly Popovic appeared in the entranceway. “Mom, you’ve got to stop this!”

“Go away! Get out!” Rikki tried to angle herself so that her knife threatened Michael while her body hid the bloody blade from her daughter—an impossible geometry.

Lolly stepped between her mother and Michael. “I knew something was wrong when I came out of the bathroom and you were gone. Then I looked on my phone and found that message to Michael. I ran to the pier—caught him as he came in the parking area. When we didn’t find you in Santa Monica, we rushed right here.”

Lolly gulped for breath. “On the way, Michael told me about Mexico—what Ritz found out.” She stared at her mother in horror. “I wouldn’t believe what you did to her, till I saw this.”

“It was for you!” The cry came torn from Rikki’s throat. “If you got her the part, do you think that would be the end of it? Ritz Tarleton was the kind of leech who couldn’t be satisfied. She’d want a bigger part, more lines, more, more, more. And to get it, she’d ruin your career—your life!”

“I can understand what you did to save me.” Lolly’s voice wobbled and her face was pale. “But, Mom, you can’t do this!” She stretched her arms out. “Please,
Matka
?” The Polish word was the plea of a young child waking from a nightmare.

Tears ran down Rikki Popovic’s face. She put the knife down.

Buck Foreman came into the room, his pistol aimed. “Please turn around, ma’am,” he said, his voice strangely gentle as he brought out a pair of handcuffs.

Michael leaned over Liza, cutting her wrists loose from the duct tape with his pocketknife. “Besides talking to Lolly on the way here, I phoned Buck.”

“Thank God I was at Michelle’s office in Century City,” Buck cut in. “And thank God twice that Michelle was in a meeting.”

Yeah—I don’t think she’d have been a calming influence,
Liza thought.

She looked up at Michael. “And you—you’re all right?”

“Just a scratch,” he assured her. “Never better.”

Then he fainted into her lap.

Liza grabbed hold of him, squawking in pain as he jostled her injured knee. With her ankles still taped to the chair, it was all she could do to keep from toppling over to the floor.

But she stayed upright and held on. Advice from a long-ago first aid course kicked in.
Compress a wound to limit bleeding.

She wrapped both arms around Michael, clamping both hands over the bloody patch on his shirt.

When the ambulance team arrived, they almost had to pry him away from her.

Liza only held Michael’s hand when he came to in the ER. “If this is heaven,” he said, smiling woozily.

“Don’t even start, Langley,” she told him. “What did you think you were doing?”

“Saving you,” he replied. “What did you think you were doing, tied to that chair? It’s a freaking cliché.”

A doctor pushed through the curtains surrounding the bed. “Back with us, Mr. Langley?” he said. “You’re pretty lucky. We stitched up the hole that got stuck in you, and now all you have to do is restore all the blood that leaked out. That requires bed rest”—he gave Liza a reproving look—“and quiet. All right, Mrs. Langley?”

The doctor left, and Michael grinned at her. “Mrs. Langley?”

“They only let family members stay in here,” she told him. “You should have seen the fuss Michelle put up. She was annoyed enough already, missing the grand finale of the case.”

“Oh. Right.” Michael tried to survey his arm in a sling and the bandage on the side of his chest. “What happened to Rikki?”

“Quigley has her,” Liza reported. “He’s not exactly happy over how that happened, but he’s not going to make a fuss.”

“He wants the credit,” Michael translated. “Not that we’ll be grabbing for it. We don’t come off looking very smart in this case.”

“I’d call it more blinded by loyalty,” Liza told him.

“How about Lolly?” he asked.

“Michelle moved in to deal with the media circus. Some idiot on the radio is demanding that she be sent back to Poland—”

“Interesting,” Michael commented, “considering she’s never been there in her life.”

“Alvin Hunzinger is trying to straighten out her immigration status. As for the rest of the fallout, that remains to be seen. Stanley Lumiere hasn’t axed her from his film.”

“Speaking of films, there’s something I need to tell you. I had a script green-lighted. It’s not a Stanley Lumiere production—”

“But that’s wonderful!” Liza said. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I was going to, but then that board landed on your leg, and things kept happening.” His voice went down a little. “I ruined things between us, acting like an ass until you were ready to divorce me. God, I’m so sorry for that. This time around, I didn’t want it to be more of the same, being that insecure guy yelling, ‘Ooh! Look what I got!’ ”

“You’re not, and I’m glad you got it,” she told him. “So when does production start?”

“Lord knows,” he replied. “With my luck, probably tomorrow.”

“Well, they said you’ll be going home.”

Michael smiled. “Maybe I can telecommute.”

“You’re going to need someone to take care of you. I’ve volunteered.”

He looked at Liza’s walker, parked beside her chair. “That’s great. And who’s going to take care of us?”

“Ysabel,” she replied with a smile. “She told Michelle she was already past due for quitting again.”

Michael cocked his head, a little confused. “If you’re staying, what about your column? What about that dander machine of a dog of yours?”