DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (39 page)

She had slept on park benches, been thrown in jail for vagrancy, and shared beans from a can with a guy in rags who talked to her all night about how Jesus was a cunt and a liar.

It was no more than she had expected. Coming from Idaho where a third-rate high school drama teacher enthused about her talent on stage, thereby unwittingly sealing her fate, she had no reason to believe she'd land a part in a sitcom the moment she hit town. Hell, she couldn't even get in to read for a part for over a year. They took one look at her ragged nails and shoes that were run down at the heels and they showed her the door.

Luckily, she had met Karl in a little bistro in Brentwood where everyone was dressed in exercise gear and pristine white Nikes and Karl had saved her life. He took her from the street, helped with the rent for six months until he found her a small part in a thriller, and taught her how to behave and how to show gratitude other than by offering her body.

She owed him everything.

Which was why his phone call tonight made her angry enough to reinvent the new painting with a red, boiling sky.

She and Karl had had a thing. Like he said. A thing. He hadn't wanted to, but she had insisted and pressed herself on him until he couldn't refuse. Wherever Karl showed up, she was there. When he was alone, she latched onto him like an octopus, fearless and totally without inhibition. Had she not pursued him, she had explained back then, she'd have never been able to repay him and she couldn't stand being in debt, her pride was so great.

Yet she had been touched by her affair with Karl LaRosa deep down, so deep she had almost stopped painting altogether. She never thought that could happen. She had been painting as long as she had been acting. And she had been acting since she was a child, lying her way out of whatever small trouble foretold coming punishment.

When their affair took hold of her soul and she told him, he began to move away from her, a slow steamer making for the shipping channel. She saw it, almost from the corners of her eyes, his faithful tracking into the distance.

When she confronted him with her knowledge of what he was doing, he at first denied it and then said to her, "I never wanted this to happen in the first place, Lori. I was afraid it would come to this."

He was afraid!

It would come to this!

She quit him. Then and there, marching out of his office with her shoulders thrown back and her head lifted. She had seen one of his more luminous clients do that to him once and had determined if it ever came to it, that's exactly how she would exit. Haughty as hell. Cold as an ice storm. Expressionless and silent as a glacier.

Her agent found her work and she paid back every penny

Karl had lavished on her. She even sent back the heavy-link gold bracelet, though she thought it her good luck charm. At Christmas he gave all his clients nice gifts, so she packed up the bracelet and the crystal angel and the bronze elephant, all gifts from Christmases past, and mailed them to him.

She bought her own gold bracelet. And wore it to all tryouts and to the set each day, though she had to take it off for the scenes she played.

She put down the paintbrush and sipped from the cup of cappuccino. She brushed back the feathered blond bangs from her forehead and let air out of her lungs before breathing in deeply again. Was she in shape? Should she ride the stationary bike tonight?

She put down the coffee mug. Took up the paintbrush. To hell with Karl LaRosa.

She would be a star soon, very soon, and Karl LaRosa could just go to hell for all she cared. Let him fucking go to hell.

18

"Too caustic? To hell with the cost. If it's a good picture, we'll make it."

Samuel Goldwyn, The Great Goldwyn

"You let making movies kill it between us," Gary said. He was in the process of packing his bags. There was a betrayed, hang-dog look in his eyes. He accused Hollywood and everyone in it, said that show business was her lover, a thing he couldn't compete with. He'd been vying for her attention for three years and was at the end of his tether. He was right; Catherine Rivers loved Hollywood more.

She stood in the bedroom watching him, rather relieved to see he had made up his mind. The thought of divorce hurt her terribly, but not as much as the thought he might stay. All they did was ravage one another, their arguments so poisonous that they made her sick for days afterward.

"I'm sorry, Gary. I guess you're right."

He stopped packing to look at her. "You don't care, do you? You don't care that this place and this business killed our marriage. Three years down the drain!"

"I care but there's nothing I can do about it. I won't give up my job for you and that's the truth."

"Job?" He hawked out a sarcastic laugh. "It's your whole life. It consumes you. You haven't had a moment for me since you started this picture with Cam. Pure and Uncut, that's all I hear. Cam did this, the actors did that, the producer did the other."

"You're acting like a spoiled child. You knew it was my important break, Gary. It's my big chance to learn from the best director this town's ever seen. If you listened to me, you'd know why I'm all caught up in shooting this script."

"This is also your chance to lose me and good riddance, I suppose." He threw the rest of his things haphazardly into the suitcase and snapped it shut.

His hair was wiry with curls which, when they were damp, like now after a shower, gave him an angelic appearance. He was too soft for this town. He never should have moved here from the East Coast. He should have lived all his life in New York and married a nice Jewish girl.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked when he brushed past her through the door.

"I'm absolutely certain. I don't hear you begging me to stay."

She let him go. Heard the front door shut.

She went to Barb's bedroom and looked in on her to see if she had woken. No, she lay asleep, arms flung out above her head, covers hiked down below her knees. Couldn't keep covers on the kid. Catherine used to worry about Barb getting cold, but unless she zipped her into a flannel pillowcase, she wasn't going to keep her under the covers.

Barb would miss Gary, but he wasn't her father so it wouldn't be as difficult as it might have been. Her father was a retired director, not a famous man, but not a failure at the game, either. He picked her up on weekends and took her for cotton candy and walks at the beach.

As Catherine stared at her little girl sleeping, she was reminded of the pregnancy before Barb, of how she had ended it. She thought then, when she did it, she'd never think of it again. But now that she had given birth to a child, the thought of the unborn came unbidden into her mind all the time. What if she'd had the babies? She had been carrying twins. Boys, girls, one of each? She didn't know. The pregnancy termination decision had been made too early to know the sexes of the fetuses and she hadn't wanted them to tell her, even if they'd known. At that time of her life, the pregnancy was just a nuisance. They'd been fathered by a man she did not love.

Still, regret struck at times, and she wished she could go back a few years and have a talk with her younger self. The decision might have been different. And would having children have really interfered with her career plans? Really? Maybe. Too late to know that for sure now.

Catherine closed Barb's door quietly and went to the kitchen for coffee. The house seemed empty with Gary gone, but it was a good emptiness. When he was here their voices were raised and they fought over her work. She had been so unlucky with men! If Gary had been in the business, it wouldn't have been that way. But he was a medical supply salesman, on the road a lot, and he didn't understand one iota what she was doing or why.

She poured the coffee and opened the door onto the patio. She sat down at a patio table just outside the kitchen. In the moonlight, with the kitchen light at her back, she might relax and forget. All gone, all the men in her life. The father of the unborn twins, Karl, Barb's father, and now Gary. She might as well admit it—she was a terrible risk as a mate. She was no good at it. Men came and went in her life like brief spring showers.

Tomorrow Cam had the location shooting and she had to pay attention. No one could get shots like Cam, no one could get a performance out of an actor like him. He was one of a kind and it was her great fortune he had asked her to be his assistant. It meant long hours and she didn't get to see Barb much. At least she had live-in help for when Barb was home after preschool and didn't have to worry, but she missed seeing her daughter.

A shadow flickered to Catherine's right and she flinched, staring in that direction. Nothing. Just a limb of a tree swaying in a breeze. She was on edge, that's all. What was it Karl LaRosa used to tell her? That she was too uptight? Wound up like a toy dog that walked and squawked and wagged its tail. He insisted she took too much to heart, said she made too many connections, she was water dancing in a hot pan. It was the reason they had split up. He hadn't done a damn thing for her career, either, to be truthful. In fact, her time with Karl was a real washout.

Face it, she told herself. All her time with the men of her life had been a washout.

Hair along the nape of her neck stiffened and a shiver ran over her arms though the breeze was warm. She looked again into the deep shadows. She felt watched. But in order to watch her, someone would have had to climb over the brick wall surrounding her property. That was ridiculous. No one would do that here in Beverly Hills. She was just nervous as water dancing in the hot pan again.

She'd go inside where she didn't have to see shadow play. Get some sleep, alone in her bed, the place on the other pillow empty again. No more thinking, no more regrets of the past or of the present. She was who and what she was, that wasn't going to change. And she was a good person. She would be a great director one day. Besides, though she might be losing her second husband, at least she had her little girl. That was what was important now. Her daughter and her career. It's all that she had ever really wanted.

19

"If you play a monster but don't touch on his humanity, he remains just a monster. If you can find his humanity, then I suppose that is the art of acting."

Gene Hackman, interviewed about his part in

The Quick and the Dead.

This had nothing to do with the script. The Body felt lured to Catherine Rivers' home, pulled by an invisible leash.

Standing with an ear pressed to the door, listening to the argument between Catherine and her husband, had done wonders for The Body's morale. A few minutes earlier or later and the whole conversation would have been lost.

Minutes after Gary left the house with his packed suitcase, Catherine wandered into the kitchen and poured a mug of coffee. The Body backed from the door and found cover in the black shadow of an overgrown crepe myrtle tree. Blending into shadows had become second nature.

The door opened and out she stepped, beautiful in her royal blue dressing gown with the sash at her waist, her dark hair tied back with a barrette. She stared straight ahead, feeling herself alone, and then she sat at the glass patio table, both hands around the mug of coffee, looking down into the steam rising from the liquid.

The first time she glanced toward The Body, tension rode the air like finely packed ozone particles. The Body drew in a single breath and held it. If she came to investigate she might get hurt. If she rose and moved into the shadows to investigate, she was lost.

She glanced away, shrugging off her sixth sense that warned her someone lurked nearby. She was heavy in thought, her brow puckered, hands still as death.

Then, after a while in contemplation, she looked again in The Body's direction and this time she took the creeping sense of being watched more seriously because she rose and entered the house.

Longing broke The Body's heart. It was necessary to lean against the tree, holding onto it to keep from falling. Hands held onto the bark so tightly that indentations pimpled The Body's palms.

Over the brick wall, onto the street, into the car and gone from Beverly Hills. Winding down toward the lights of the city, The Body reviewed the night's events. Karl in bed with that chunky high-toned bitch, Lisa Golden. How she begged to be taken in! Like a stray cat or dog, she wanted Karl to adopt her into his house, into his heart. Didn't she know Karl LaRosa had no heart? His feelings of love were like those of a king who had abdicated his throne. He didn't love women. He fucked them a few weeks or months and then he cast them off forever.

Slamming shut the door when exiting Karl's house felt like shooting off rockets on the Fourth of July. Let him know he had been watched. Let him know he had no privacy. His life was for shit. He no more had control of his destiny now than did the conductor on a runaway train screaming down a mountain slope.

~ * ~

Then driving over to Catherine's. Studying the layout of the house and grounds, finding a way to slip past a neighbor's Rottweiler without arousing it, discovering the chink in the brick wall that protected the back area of Catherine's house, the chink that afforded a foothold so the wall could be climbed.

And listening in glee as Gary left his wife.

And watching with heartache a thoughtful Catherine sitting alone on her patio, coming to terms with the emptiness of her life.

But then it's what she deserved! She should have no husband. She should have no child either, but she did, she did, and The Body wanted it, but that was insane. Better not to think of the child. Not for a moment's time. Lapsing into that kind of thinking was more dangerous than anything in the world.

Karl would suspect Catherine of being his stalker soon enough. And when it all was said and done, perhaps The Body would consider doing something about the child then.

A pretty little girl, slim and blond and bright as sunlight reflecting off amber. Barbara was her name. A terrible name, a grown-up, prissy name, didn't fit the child at all. The Body could rename her anything. The name Michelle had always been nice. My belle, Michelle.