DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (43 page)

"You can't do that."

"I, by God, can do that. I'll threaten them or fire them. I'll stop this right now before it goes any further."

Robyn looked at her hands on the table. "He dated Olivia once."

"Olivia! Jesus Christ, I can't fire Olivia. I can't even threaten to fire Olivia. I need her."

"That's right, you do. We do."

Cam ran both hands through his hair. It now stuck up and out from his head, a black halo. "Who else? Go ahead and tell me everything."

"Catherine had an affair with him. It was right after we split up. He was on the rebound and she was there to catch him. I think it lasted a few months before they broke it off."

"Not Catherine."

"And Marilyn was a client of his at one time. It was a while ago. I heard she put the make on him and I'm not sure if he took her to bed, but he probably did. She left soon after I heard the rumors about them being an item."

Each name Robyn gave out caused Cam to shrink back. He now sat completely against the booth, his mouth hanging slightly open. These women were the backbone of his film. His assistant director, his actresses.

"There might be more," Robyn said, hurrying to get all the bad news out before she lost her nerve. "Karl is . . . well, he's a good-looking man, and he's got a lot of power to help actors. You know how women swarm to men in this town with a little bit of authority. I don't know if even some of our extras or bit players might not have had a thing with him."

Cam jerked toward the table and leaned across to her. "That's it, then. We don't say anything. We're not fucking private investigators, we can't be responsible for ex-husbands and people who go off their nut. We start sniffing around our people, they're going to find out why. The news will leave the set and travel. The nondisclosure form won't stop something like this from spreading. The cops will get called in and we'll find our schedule loused up. You understand?"

"I was afraid you'd say that."

You never saw it coming when Cam exploded. His temper was like lightning striking from out of a clear blue sky. "You can't tell him about this! If you do then everything we've worked for goes down the drain. If you really suspect someone, if you get a direct line on this, you can try to talk to the person privately, but you better be goddamn sure of yourself before you do it. If you're the one who burns down this project, we both get scorched. I'm not letting anything stop my production, you got that? Nothing!"

"You're right, Cam. We can't let this out. We can't endanger the film."

"Okay, we agree on this. If you tell Karl what's happening, if you clue in people involved with the film, it's all over for us. I don't know what loony's out there running around mimicking our scenes, but there's really nothing we can do about it.” "There's just one more thing, Cam." She could see from the red blush creeping over his face that his blood pressure was up, but she had to tell him. If he blew a heart valve and collapsed right in front of her, then she'd know she had gone too far.

"What is it?"

"The end of the script. Remember how it ends?"

He sat back again, slumping into the booth. It was as if she'd taken a two by four and knocked the wind out of him. The end of the script.

Murder. Bloody, chilling, and violent.

The stalker killed the main character. Olivia killed Landry.

Which meant someone probably meant to do the same to Karl LaRosa.

Robyn knew that neither she nor Cam might be able to live with that. Making a movie was one thing, but standing by while a real crime was committed was another entirely.

Robyn had always loved Karl.

24

"Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day."

Marguerite Duras, Alcohol

When Robyn left him, Cam sat for a while alone in the booth of the Roost, drinking beer and bemoaning the risks involved in the life he had chosen to follow. Wasn't it enough he had scraped by in this town when he was trying to get his first film off the landing pad? He must have walked off two layers of shoe leather and pulled half his hair out. He had to grow a whole new persona to deal with the assholes with the money in this fucking town. He had to play the same brand of hardball. He had sacrificed everything to get started as a writer and director.

Now this.

If what was happening to Karl LaRosa found its way to the trades, his film would be notorious. Not only that, but everyone and his brother would read the whole plot of his movie before it ever got canned or distributed. Hell, before it ever even finished shooting. Down the rathole of failure, that's where his project would go. Sliding down into the crud where failed films dropped off the face of the earth. The studio wouldn't just shelve it. They'd destroy every copy.

"Mind if I sit with you, baby?"

She was his age, not young, and overdressed for the joint, a little black skimpy number that clung to her ripe body like a banana peel.

The eye shadow was blue and made her look like a kewpie doll. The lipstick was pink, dime store variety. The jewelry was fake and glittery. She reminded him of a jungle predator, one of the fast toothy ones, maybe a jaguar or a black leopard and he liked her immediately.

"No, I don't mind," he said, knowing she was just what the doctor ordered. "Have a seat."

She slid in across from him, where Robyn had sat earlier. She smiled, showing a row of crooked, lightly stained bottom teeth. Nicotine. She took out a cigarette now from a small gold lame purse. She waited for him to light it for her. He didn't have a lighter, didn't smoke. He shrugged and said sorry, but he took her lighter from where it peeked from out of her purse flap and flicked it, holding the flame to the end of the tobacco.

"I make movies," he said while she inhaled.

"Yeah, ain't everyone doing that? I happen to have been in a few movies myself. Once upon a time."

"Sunset Boulevard?" It was a joke and not a nice one. It was a film about a faded, old, really old, movie star losing her mind.

"You trying to be funny?"

Oh, she knew her movies now, didn't she? She couldn't be fooled. He was sorry to have said something so cruel. She was too smart to put down that way. Sometimes his mean spirit found itself abashed when confronted with the human results of his loose, killing mouth.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you obviously don't deserve that. So what kind of movies were you in? I don't remember seeing you, I'm sorry to say. I bet you were a knockout."

Her shoulders rose a little, then fell. "I don't want to name them. They weren't much."

Porno then, Cam thought. Actresses always reeled off their credits, no matter how bad the movies, unless they had played in porno. Then they didn't.

"What's your name? I'm Cam."

"Rhonda."

"What you drinking, Rhonda? And will you go home with me after we lift a few?" He gave her the full grin, the one the women seemed to always fall for.

Her wide eyes lowered in schoolgirl fashion, trying to say to him, "I'm shy, don't treat me ugly," but nevertheless she nodded. Surprising himself, Cam found her sweet and vulnerable. Nothing like how she looked. Imagine finding a sweet girl beneath an older woman in too much makeup and too little fashion taste. Life was a wonder, it really was.

"Rhonda, I need to talk to someone about my movie, you mind listening a while?"

She took a puff from the cigarette. "No, I don't mind. I'd like that. Maybe I can help."

She would help him all right, she would keep him warm in his bed later, and she might even be a good lay. He would tell her he had serious problems on his set, but he wouldn't tell her exactly what. He had to be circumspect in these places sometimes. The women he romanced all knew how to pick up a phone and dial in news to the columnists. There was a little money in it. Too tempting not to spill secrets.

He ordered her a drink, rum and Coke, and they sat in the booth with him talking and her listening until he felt better. And then he took her to a motel where he treated her gently, with gentlemanly concern.

Her skin, beneath the clothes, was smooth as satin, and she kissed him with the abandon of a young schoolgirl. He loved her smell—damp and musky, the intimate scent of a woman on the verge of losing her looks and a reason to go on. He even loved the blue eye shadow glinting at him from her closed lids while he mounted her. He made love to her the way a husband of many years might, taking his time, relishing the long, slow moments that he took to make her trust him, love him, really love him.

She was a treasure hidden behind tacky packaging. He told her how wonderful she was. She moaned and planted a trail of hot kisses along his neck then she took one of his hard nipples into her mouth to tongue. An exquisite thrill ran down his chest to his groin.

"Do that again," he told her.

He threw back his head and allowed the sensation to take over his mind. Nothing in the world existed but the woman named Rhonda with her hands behind his back and her mouth on his nipple and her soft sweetness lying open beneath him.

This would be one of the best nights he had experienced in ages.

Sometimes he got lucky that way.

25

"'For your own good' is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction."

Janet Frame, Faces in the Water

Olivia Nyad hurried up the walk to Karl's front door. Tired and worn from her day on the set, she looked her age. Fine spidery wrinkles radiated from the corners of her eyes. Her mouth drooped and her movements, usually swift and youthful, tonight were sluggish.

She rang the bell, then stood nervously putting a cigarette out on the brick at her feet. When Karl opened the door, she swept into his arms, a dramatic heroine. She could see herself, as if she stood back watching a scene being shot. That's how she lived her life, viewing it from the outside to see if it passed muster. She thought everyone else did the same. Calculating gestures and actions, she believed, were part of being human.

He gave her a brief hug then took her by the shoulders to move her back so he could see her.

"What are you doing here, Olivia?"

"I heard about your house. I couldn't believe it and had to come by to see for myself." She pushed past him to the interior of the house and stopped, surveying the dregs of the damage that had not been cleaned up. The living room was empty of furniture, the walls had dents in the plaster, the sliding glass door opening to the outside was still a starred wide sheet of safety glass.

"The glazier can't show up until tomorrow," Karl said, noticing how she stared at the glass.

She turned around to Karl who had followed her inside. "Where's your furniture?"

"It had to be taken away. It was all broken and ruined. I haven't been anywhere to order new yet."

"Who the hell did this to you?"

"Someone who must hate me with all her heart."

Olivia didn't like the way he had said that. She didn't like he way he was looking at her. She felt defensive, as if he were making a silent accusation. "Karl, I told you once already that I'm not responsible for what's happening to you. I don't know why you keep suggesting I have something to do with it. You really think I'd come in your house and do . . . this?" She swept her hand around at the empty, desolate room.

"I guess not," he said softly, moving around her to the kitchen. "Do you want something to drink? I just laid in new stock. Everything in the cabinets had been busted and spilled on the floors and walls."

"You have scotch?"

"Sure."

She stood at the end of the counter and watched him pour it over ice cubes. He knew she took it over the rocks.

"I hope you don't mind the plastic cup. I haven't had time to buy dishes either."

She looked around. There was a dent on the front of the refrigerator door as if someone had kicked it. There were holes in the walls and streaks of rust and yellow that must have been made from splattered food. One cabinet door below the sink hung from the hinges.

She took the clear plastic cup and said, "I don't mind what I drink from."

A silence fell between them while they both sipped from their drinks. Finally Olivia blurted, "Karl, I wouldn't hurt you for the world, you know that, don't you? I loved you once and I was hurt when we broke up, but you can't believe I'd get in here and do this thing, do you?"

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. He looked older, weary unto death. There were new lines on his face and a darkness of surrender in his eyes she had never seen there before. She almost moved into his arms again to hold him. He had always brought out her maternal instinct. She wanted to baby him, to rock and soothe his furrowed brow and tell him everything was going to be all right.

He said, "I don't know what to think anymore, Olivia. I don't think it's you. No, I don't think that."

Even though he tried to sound sure of himself, Olivia detected the hesitation. He really did think she might be the guilty party? She felt something inside her shrink. Tears formed in her eyes and she turned away from him.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.

"Tell me who's doing this," he said.

"I wish I could."

"Look, I've got something to show you." He had raised his voice and then he walked around her from the kitchen, across the empty living room. He was headed for his bedroom where they had spent many a lovely, long night in one another's arms. She could hardly follow him, her legs had suddenly grown so weak. The memory of being in Karl's arms, having him inside her, feeling his breath against her face, his lips upon hers . . . It was enough to cause her to grab the edge of the counter to keep her steady.

Goddamnit, she wasn't over him yet. She'd never get over him. Being in the same room with him made her want to fling herself against his chest, tear off his clothes, and tell him what a mistake he had made to leave her. No other man in her life had caused her to feel so deserted, so alone. She had taken lovers since her affair with Karl and none of them filled the empty hole in her heart left behind by him. She was a torch carrier. Just like the woman who must be trying to destroy him. And Karl knew that about her. No wonder she was a suspect.