Heart of Glass (2 page)
This was no hyperbole; Anna had watched the Cammie Effect in action more than once. With lush, shoulder-length strawberry blond curls and an even more lush, curvaceous body, she oozed so much sex appeal, she made Scarlett Johansson look like Ugly Betty.
“Hey, Sam. How goes it, Gwynnie?” Cammie asked, plucking Sam’s drink from her hand and taking a sip.
Anna did a mental eye roll. The “Gwynnie” reference was Cammie’s way of saying that Anna looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, pre-marriage and pre-babies (Cammie always clarified). Anna herself did not see the resemblance, except for hair color, height, and—maybe—build.
Cammie, who never left the house without looking perfect, was well dressed for the evening’s activities—watching the fireworks that would be launched from a barge a half mile out to sea (a private show paid for by the hundred or so homeowners on this stretch of beach) and then some serious clubbing at House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. She wore a white-and-blue Chloé spaghetti-strap slip dress, mile-high baby blue Jimmy Choos, and a delicate ruby, sapphire, and diamond pendant. How very patriotic.
Anna glanced down at her own T-shirt, faded jeans, and black Reef flip-flops and felt like a lost wren to Cammie’s confident peacock.
“Who let you in?” Sam asked. She leaned against the railing and held her face up to catch the setting sun.
“Gertrude, Sue, Madeline, Lisette—whatever the housekeeper’s name is.” Cammie lifted the curls from her neck. “I adore coming to Malibu. It reeks of sex. Except in that direction.” She pointed in the direction of a blocky beach-front mansion to the south. “Do you know who your neighbor is? Or should I say, Marty’s neighbor?” Sam shrugged.
“Gibson Wills. My father’s WLE—Worst Living Enemy.” “Everyone in this town is your father’s worst living enemy, Cammie,” Sam pointed out. “Unless he’s your father’s NBF—New Best Friend.” Back when she lived in New York, this interchange would have left Anna utterly baffled. Now, she understood the code. Cammie’s dad was Clark Sheppard, a founder of Apex Talent and notoriously the worst son-of-a-bitch agent in Hollywood despite his many deals and successes. Anna knew this firsthand, since—God help her—she’d briefly worked for Clark as an intern. That experience had ended when Cammie had plotted a complicated, and successful, scheme to drive Anna out. Amazingly, Anna also knew who Gibson Wills was, since Gibson was almost as big an international action movie star as Jackson Sharpe. Or at least he had been a decade earlier.
“Gibson sued my father over some deal. Who knows, who cares?” Cammie went on. “And he lost. He claims that was the beginning of the end of his career as a movie star. That’s probably the truth. Last I heard, he was doing TV commercials in Japan for anti-aging face cream.” She’d taken Sam’s drink and proceeded to drain half of it. “The man is a joke. He hasn’t spoken to my father in years but sends him petrified rabbit pellets in a Godiva chocolate box every Christmas. Hey, want to go check out his manse? It’s probably hideous. Gibson has zero taste. Seriously. My father says he has people dress him.” All this “my father this” and “my father that” was curious to Anna, because she was pretty sure Cammie did not get along with Mr. Sheppard at all.
“Who’s coming with?” Cammie asked. She looked at her nails. “God. I need a manicure.” Sam shook her head. “Not me. I have to go tell Marlene—that’s her name, by the way—that we’ll want dinner out here on the deck. “And I have to find something—anything!—for my feet. Maybe I’ll go raid Mrs. Martinsen’s closet. Just kidding. Don’t be too long, okay?” “Let her know we want champagne. I’m dying of thirst.” Cammie headed for the narrow, weather-beaten wooden staircase that led down to the beach. “What time do the fireworks start, anyway?” “We’ve got forty-five minutes, so we can eat while we watch.” “Know what, Sam? Screw food. Get the bubbly—we can eat at the club. They actually have a decent kitchen. But I’ve got my dad’s car and driver, so we can drink all we want. Let’s go, Anna—want to come with and check out Gibson’s monstrosity?”
Anna was shocked that Cammie was inviting her; usually the two of them barely held onto civility. Yet being Cammie’s enemy was exhausting, not to mention an utter waste of time. If, for some unknown reason, this was Cammie’s version of an olive branch, she was inclined to accept it.
“Sure, why not?” Anna told her.
They moved toward the staircase together. Five minutes later, while Sam was prowling barefoot around Marty’s French-style kitchen in search of the Taittinger’s, she and Cammie had kicked off their own footwear and started down the magnificent and largely deserted beach that was Malibu’s greatest and most famous asset. Gibson’s estate was a few hundred yards to the south of Marty’s—the very next one over.
Cammie stopped, put her hands on her hips, and took in their surroundings. Anna did the same.
“This place is so beautiful.” Anna knew she was stating the obvious.
“It is, I agree.”
“My mind goes round and round about the whole class thing all the time. It did in New York, and it does here. How it might just be fundamentally wrong for the few to have so much when the many have so little. Not that it’s such a revelation, I know.” “Well, that’s because it
is
. . . how did you put it? Fundamentally wrong,” Cammie asserted, pushing some curls off her face.
Anna was surprised at Cammie’s reaction. She’d always thought of the girl as having the conscience of a—she hated to say it, but it was a perfect simile—mascara wand. And then she realized. “Adam’s starting to rub off on you, Cammie.” Adam Flood was a good friend of Anna’s; in fact, she’d briefly dated him, though even then her heart had belonged to Ben. Adam was far from being a Beverly Hills rich kid who took everything for granted. Instead, he was a Michigan native and one of the most decent human beings whom Anna had met north of the 10 and west of the 101—an excellent student, the starting point guard on the BHHS basketball team, and one of the few people Anna knew out here whose mother and father were still married to each other. When Adam and Cammie had hooked up toward the end of the winter, Anna had been sure it was the oddest pairing in human history and destined to end quickly. But it hadn’t.
“I’m working on making him more shallow,” Cammie deadpanned. “All that Adam Flood goodness is hard to take.” They kept walking until they were about two hundred yards from Gibson’s mansion. From the beach, it appeared low-slung and boxy, with a wider area to the rear lined with rectangular windows, and an incongruent New England–style widow’s walk along the roof.
Cammie rubbed her chin. “It’s mega-ugly. Notice that the house has a fat ass, just like Gibson. What a hoot. Wait till I tell my dad.”
“It sounds like you and your dad are getting along better these days,” Anna ventured.
“Oh, believe me, Anna, I know my father is a sphincter. But he’s an effective sphincter. He doesn’t let anyone take advantage of him. In fact—” “Stop right there, you two!” An angry male voice bellowed over the loudspeakers on Gibson’s deck. It was so sudden and so loud that Anna literally jumped. Immediately, two blinding spotlights were fixed on her and Cammie.
“What the fuck?” Cammie exclaimed. Anna felt a shiver of fear. “Who is it?” “It’s Gibson!”
“You’re on my property! Identify yourselves!” the crabby voice boomed out over the sand.
Cammie cupped her hands and shouted up toward the house. “Turn off the spotlights!” Anna winced. Not a good way to win friends and influence people.
“Identify yourselves!”
“I’m Cammie Sheppard, daughter of your nearest and dearest friend, Clark. Now turn off the goddamn spotlight! You’re blinding us!” There was silence, but the perfect circle of white light remained on them.
“What an asshole,” Cammie mumbled. “Let’s just keep walking—screw him.” “HOLD IT, DAUGHTER OF THE JACKASS OF
THE WESTERN WORLD!” The voice was twice as loud now. Anne literally had to cover her ears.
Cammie whirled, irate. “You’re the jackass! Stop screaming at us!” “Don’t egg him on, Cammie,” Anna urged worriedly. “Let’s just get out of here and go back to Marty’s house.” “DON’T MOVE! DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS!” Annie exchanged looks with Cammie. “Is he serious?” Clearly, Cammie wasn’t any more certain than she was, so they both just stood there. Not more than two minutes passed before they saw Gibson Wills himself charging down the stone steps at the back of his house, flanked by two uniformed Malibu police officers. His face, pulled so tight his skin was practically translucent under the spotlights, was alight with glee. As he approached them, Anna could see he wore black jeans and a simple white sweatshirt.
“I’m having my annual Fourth of July party for the municipal employees of Malibu,” Gibson told them, and then motioned to the two cops. “Thank God these two officers of the law arrived early. Gentlemen, these two young women are clearly trespassing on my property. Do your duty and arrest them.” Cammie made a face of disbelief. “You can’t possibly be serious, Gibson.”
“Mr. Wills,” Gibson corrected.
“Gibson,” Cammie said again, in a move that Anna knew would infuriate him. It was like Cammie couldn’t resist.
“Do it,” Gibson ordered the cops.
The shorter of the two policemen, who had the perfectly white Chiclet teeth of a twentysomething guy who had hoped to become a movie star before giving up and joining the men in blue, unclipped a set of handcuffs from his belt and strode over to Cammie and Anna, who hadn’t moved since Gibson’s voice had first boomed out over the loudspeaker, and ordered them to hold their ground. “Ladies, happy Fourth of July. You are both under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of—” “We know, we know,” Cammie declared, tossing her strawberry blond mane disdainfully. “We watch
CSI
. In fact, my father packages all three
CSI
s. Just get the flipping cuffs, okay?”
C
ammie and her lawyer—a no-nonsense woman with aggressively short jet-black hair and a bone-thin physique, and wearing a magnificently tailored black Armani skirt-and-jacket combination—stepped into the brightly lit, windowless conference room where Anna and her own lawyer sat waiting at a long black conference table. “Carol Farrell,” Cammie’s attorney introduced herself quickly, and nodded in Cammie’s direction. “Sit.” She pointed to the cheap leatherette seat next to Anna.
“Hello, Carol.” Anna’s attorney was Richard Lodge, courtly, portly, and white-haired. “Nice to see you again.” “Can we can the chitchat and move this thing along?” Cammie asked them both, as she fell dramatically into the black pleather seat next to Anna. “I’m meeting Sam for facials and an ayurveda massage at A La Mer in an hour. I really don’t have a lot of time.” “That’s why I’m here,” Carol declared, as she leafed through some papers in her black briefcase. “To get you out of here. This is the most ridiculous case I’ve ever heard of. Come on, Richard, we’re going to talk with the DA and get this thing dismissed.” Richard smiled and retrieved his own briefcase. “I couldn’t agree more, Carol. Anna, relax. This shouldn’t take very long.” The two lawyers departed.
“She’s a bitch,” Cammie announced. “I love that in an attorney.” She took out a nail file and went to work on her left hand, despite the fact that she was allegedly on her way to a manicure.
Meanwhile, Anna’s hands were sweating and she felt a little sick to her stomach. She’d hardly slept at all the night before, visions of herself in cold, unforgiving handcuffs and behind bars seared into her brain.
Perhaps they would have gotten off with a warning if Cammie hadn’t insisted that Gibson and the cops who had arrested them were all “total idiots.” Lesson one: Cops don’t like to be called idiots. Go figure. In fact, the police had threatened to add the additional charge of resisting arrest as they loaded both girls into their black-and-white police cruiser. At the Malibu police station, they were dumped into a spartan, fluorescent-lit holding cell with a couple of fiftyish drunk women and three stunning young women from an escort service who tried to recruit Anna and Cammie with promises of “five hundred on a bad night, seven-fifty on a good one.” Cammie took one of their business cards just for fun.
After an excruciating hour of mostly terse silence, they were issued a citation for misdemeanor trespassing and told to return to the courthouse the next morning at ten for their arraignment. Would they need court-appointed attorneys?
Cammie had laughed at that one.
Free to go, they’d immediately called Sam, but it turned out that Sam had already heard the news of their arrest and was outside in the waiting area. Sam and Cammie had continued with their evening excursion to the House of Blues, but Anna had called Caine to bow out of their clubbing plans. Caine had understood and said he’d phone her in the morning. Then she’d driven back to her father’s place in Beverly Hills, never letting her Lexus get anywhere near the speed limit.
What was strange, and somewhat reassuring, was her father’s reaction. Jonathan Percy had been remarkably calm about the whole affair when Anna had recounted the story. After assuring Anna that it was highly unlikely that she’d be doing hard time at Vacaville for trespassing, he’d called Mr. Lodge, one of the lawyers he kept on retainer, and instructed him to meet Anna the next morning at the DA’s office. “Don’t worry, Anna,” Jonathan had insisted. “It’s going to be fine.” “Have you ever been arrested, Dad?” she’d asked, after she’d gotten herself a bottle of Fiji water from her father’s fridge.
“No. Though I came close when I was at Yale. A bunch of us went streaking down Main Street in New
Haven the night before the homecoming game and got hauled in, but they let us go when they saw we’d written
Harvard Sucks
in black magic marker on our asses. You don’t have to worry—you were trespassing. It’s not like armed robbery.” That was easy for him to say, Anna had surmised. She’d tossed and turned all night, had barely eaten any breakfast, and had carefully chosen clothes that she thought would make a good impression on a judge, were she to end up before one—a conservative knee-length navy skirt, a white blouse, and kitten-heeled navy sandals, topped off with her grandmother’s pearls.