Double Exposure (6 page)

What could be a bigger than owning a preeminent movie studio that made billions of dollars a year? She had a feeling she was about to find out she was still just a small fish in a big pond full of sharks.

“Thanks, Virginia. I’ll see you in the morning.” Kate ended the call but discreetly opened the GPS app on her phone to make sure it was active. She turned to her friend. Charlotte
was still in her self-defense stance, ready to do more battle. “Charlotte, I have to go. We’ll reschedule our dinner.”

“Wait a minute!” Charlotte jumped in front of her. “Kate, don’t go with them. This doesn’t feel right.”

“Charlotte, it’s OK. I know this seems very intriguing, but I trust Virginia. She wouldn’t tell me to go with them if it wasn’t on the up and up.”

“But still—”
Charlotte looked over her shoulder. “I’d be an awful friend to just let this happen.”

“You are the greatest.” Kate gave her a reassuring hug and whispered in her ear. “Call John and tell him to find Scar.”

“I’m on it.”

“OK then.” When Kate pulled back, she showed Charlotte the open GPS app and winked. Charlotte gave her a subtle nod, stepped back onto the curb, and held her phone
up to her ear.

* * *

Kate was kind of disappointed the men escorting her didn’t try some cheesy move like blindfolding her or putting a pillow over her head. As if she’d let someone muss up her stylish new hairdo. Instead she was offered a cocktail and her preference of music but wasn’t given any more explanation about who’d summoned her to the council meeting.

She peered out of the tinted window as the SUV continued on the highway. They’d been driving for a half hour and so far she had a pretty good idea of where she was. She worried about Chris. The vague, preemptive text she’d sent about being OK prompted a firestorm of texts from him, and her cell battery was running low. No doubt he was going insane by now. She’d just given him the lecture of a lifetime
about the reckless behavior involving Darwin and here she was taking the same stupid risks. She took comfort in knowing Scar was with him. Their lives hadn’t been normal since the day they met.

She gripped the leather armrest when something tapped the back of the SUV. It was hardly the time for a fender bender when she was already in the middle of a kidnapping. She looked out the back window
to see her cousin Billie and the other part of Billie’s trio, the elusive Athena in a black SUV of their own. What was Billie doing here? She knew Athena had been around, but Billie was supposed to be out of the country. When the driver wouldn’t slow down after a second firm bump, they drove up ahead, got up in front and came to dead stop. The driver of the SUV had no choice but to slam on the
brakes.

Kate opened the door and jumped out when she saw Billie reach into her backseat and retrieve a shotgun. Athena had a device in her hand that she’d activated, but Kate wasn’t sure what it was. Despite being pretty far up the coast, there was still plenty of traffic around.

“I’m OK!” Kate yelled. “There’s no need for the hardware.”

Billie didn’t look convinced, so Kate
went over to her. “Hey cuz, funny you didn’t mention you were in town.”

“We’ll discuss my travel itinerary later.” Billie rolled her eyes. “I need you to get in the backseat and get on the floor.”

Kate glanced over at Athena; the device she held had started beeping. “Athena, do you mind turning that off?”

Athena looked to Billie. So Kate turned her attention back to her cousin.

“I talked to my secretary Virginia. This is all on the up and up. They’re going to take me to some secret meeting. It’s an organization Marvin used to belong to, and they’ve extended an invitation to me. If you maim everyone here, I won’t find out what all the cloak and dagger crap is about.”

“You’re not going alone. We’ll follow. You’re with us.” Billie shouted loud enough so the men
could hear.

Kate got into the SUV with Billie and Athena and followed the SUV another ten miles until they reached their destination. They stopped at iron security gates with the initials E M on them. Once the gates were opened, they drove down a tree-lined road for a few miles until the end of the clearing where a massive estate sat. They pulled up to the front door to be greeted by another
burly man dressed in a black suit. An older man stood beside him. He was tall, slender, and had a pair of deadly ice-blue eyes. He was dressed in a pair of slacks and a shirt with an outlandish scarf tied around his neck. She’d never seen him before.

“You sure you want to do this?” Billie looked back at her. “I have no compunction about fighting our way out of here.”

“I know and I
love you for that fighting spirit. But, yes,” Kate said. “I owe it to Marvin. Like it or not, I inherited his legacy. The good and the bad.”

Athena got out and opened the vehicle door for Kate. The older, fashionably dressed man approached.

“Mrs. Cavanaugh, so nice you decided to join us. May I call you Kate? I feel like I already know you. Marvin used to speak so fondly of you. I’m
sorry about all of the drama. This isn’t how we planned to introduce ourselves to you.”

“OK,” Kate replied and pointed at Billie. “This is—”

“Your doppelganger, Wilhelmina St. James,” the older man replied. “NYPD detective when the mood suits her and all around loose cannon. She has a very interesting family tree and she’s married but doesn’t use her husband’s name.”

“I see you’ve
been doing some digging,” Kate said.

Athena held out her hand. “Are you going to read my palm too?”

“You are a beautiful mystery my dear. I can’t get one shred of evidence you exist at all. I’m not sure you even have a social security number.” He gave her a once-over.

“It’s better that you don’t,” Athena replied.

Kate cleared her throat. “Back to the reason for the theatrics?”

“There’s no need for your entourage to remain. This is a private matter.”

“They stay or I go.” Kate folded her arms over her chest.

“Very well.” He motioned them into the mansion and guided them through an opulent foyer to the massive living room. “Would you like something to drink?”

“I’d prefer an explanation.”

“And explanations will be given. But before we go any
further, I must insist they stay here. We will be going down the corridor to my office. The others are waiting for us inside. We’ve never had anyone other than council members in the meeting.”

“I guess I don’t have a choice if I want answers.” Kate nodded then looked over at Billie and Athena. “I’ll be fine.”

“Ladies, make yourselves at home.” The older man gave a curt nod and took
Kate by the elbow and led her out of the living room and down a long hall. “If you agree to take Marvin's place on the Council, we can reconvene many things on our agenda. Hollywood doesn’t simply run itself.”

“What part do you play in this?”

“I wiggled down the rabbit hole and emerged forever changed. There was no return to the land of make believe unless I was willing to embrace
the ignorance from whence I ran.” He flashed a cryptic, enigmatic smile.

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Mr. Monroe.”

“Why have I never heard of you before?” She’d been privy to lot of Hollywood power circles the past several months and had never seen the man or heard about any power player named Mr. Monroe.

“I am invisible. I go about my day and do my job. And my job is
to keep this wonderful fiction-riddled cesspool we call the entertainment world balanced. With celebrity comes the incessant need to be apologetic. And I hate apologizing. It’s so unnecessary if the person making the statement would just have the balls to own up to their own fucked up views of the world. The fact that they voiced their opinions stirred from some deep subconscious urge anyway. For
once I’d like to see someone run with it and ride the wave until it crashes. That’s what we old folks used to call conviction.”

“Let me guess? Your job includes moving people around like pawns.”

He stopped when they reached his office door. “I’ve never met a person to, when offered the chance to make their deepest desires come true, turn it down. It’s amusing to see people rationalizing,
bargaining, and even eventually giving away their self-respect to be, ironically, respected by the faceless masses who know nothing about them. A good friend of mine used to say the empty adoration of a million strangers was the equivalent to the best drug you could find. But like all narcotics, the feeling doesn’t last long.”

She knew that phrase. Marvin used to tell her that all the time.
He’d often equated it to the reason Henry couldn’t shake his drug habit. It was about keeping perspective about the reality around you. “That was one of Marvin’s favorite lines.”

“He was a brilliant man.” Mr. Monroe winked and opened the door.

Once inside, she saw there were five other people in the room. Four, who were older like Mr. Monroe, she’d never seen before. The fifth person,
however, she knew. It was Raymond Whitland. It seems she was fated again to be involved with the man whose constant mission was to undermine her at Pinnacle.

“Raymond. Why am I not surprised you belong to this secret society? It seems right up your alley.”

“Kate.” Raymond walked over and extended his hand for a shake. “I hope you can let bygones be bygones. At least when we meet here.”

She looked at his hand, then looked back up at him. “I’m not that thick-skinned.”

“It’s unfortunate how that fact-finding mission for the owner of the six percent shares ended in the demise of Raymond’s bodyguard, but we can’t have infighting. It distracts from other, more important things we need to monitor. Like that Cooper Harding that’s been sniffing around.”

“You’ve heard
of him?”

“Yes, Mr. Harding is desperate to dig his heels into the Hollywood life and he’s been very aggressive about acquiring big game like Pinnacle.”

“How does your Council fit into all of this?”

“We’re going to stop him of course.”

“Why would you want to?” she demanded. “He seems harmless enough. He seems like his mission is to be the biggest power player in town.”

“That can be dangerous. He doesn’t respect the rules and he practically lives on social media. We’ve lasted this long because there’s a high amount of discretion involved.”

She looked around. “So what are you?”

“We’re a group of seven. Our goal is to keep a certain level of leverage going on to benefit some parties and hinder others.”

“Who’s to say you should be judge and
jury?”

“Due to our system, we’ve managed to keep down the perversion and stave off the rampant money laundering that goes on. This town was the original shell game. We do our part to protect our interests.”

“How does this work?”

“We occasionally gather and vote on things like killing careers, covering up scandals, or getting rid of idiots that threaten to decay our system.” Mr.
Monroe picked up a black velvet bag and poured the contents, colored marbles, onto a tray on the desk. “The votes are anonymous. Green marble means yes. Red means no. The gray marble means you’re neutral and the black marble is what we call a deal killer. You can use it to veto a decision that’s been made, but I have to warn you. Each marble is returned at the conclusion of each vote. But if you
use a black marble, it won’t be returned to you for one year.”

“Why?”

“We’d never get anything done if we didn’t use a constraint on that veto power.” Mr. Monroe laughed. “Marvin was the reason we instituted that rule.”

It was all too surreal. No, it sounded like insanity. How could Marvin be a part of something like this? She could ask Clara about it, but if Clara didn’t know,
Kate would be telling her something about her beloved deceased husband she might not want to know. She looked around at the other, older, seemingly faceless men. He had mentioned Marvin was the reason they wouldn’t give back the black marbles so soon after a vote. Maybe he’d known how they were and had tried to stop it while keeping an eye out on his legacy in this town. Sure, there were crooks,
perverts, and people with severe mental illnesses around that masqueraded their quirks with bravado and fan applause. She had to believe Marvin had participated to offset some of this superiority wafting around the room.

Still, Raymond Whitland was an issue. She’d been battling him at Pinnacle every day and now she’d be spending time with him here. How could she just ignore all that he’d
done? She was sure he’d had a hand in Chris’s accident and suspected he may have had something to do with Brianna’s suicide too.

Kate pointed at Raymond. “So I’m supposed to ignore the fact that he sent his goon to kill me?”

“He didn’t set out to kill you. You interrupted the retrieval of a document,” Raymond fired back.

“Is that supposed to make everything all right? He didn’t
intend
to kill me? Which makes me wonder what he would have done if Clara were home.”

“I would never hurt Clara. I made sure she wouldn’t be home.” Raymond’s jaw clenched. “She may be angry with me for enabling Henry all those years, but I never wanted to see any harm come to her.”

Mr. Monroe intervened. “We’re prepared to give you a peace offering.”

That was the point. There
hadn’t been any peace, just constant worrying about another attempt on her or Chris’s lives.

“What could possibly erase all that’s happened? Why should I believe you?”

“We can help you focus your energies on more important things, like who’s really trying to harm the people around you. The people in your life seem to be dropping like flies. First your number one artist, now Brianna
Sage.”

“The man responsible for some of it is standing right here.” She scowled at Raymond.

“I staged the break-in, but I was not responsible for that car running Chris off the road,” Raymond replied.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I just admitted to ordering someone to break into Clara and Marvin’s house for that document. Vaughn took it too far when he tried to
rough you up. I have nothing to gain by harming Chris. He’s turning into quite the moneymaker for the studio. Besides, you weren’t on my radar when your rapper friend was killed.”