License to Thrill (32 page)

“And,” Nolan added, “unfortunately enough, Spencer Cahill stumbled across the records from 1955 and he was putting the squeeze on Blade’s wife to put in another fix.”

“So,” Maybelline told Charlee, “this was when Cahill got involved and sent hired guns after your father with the intention of rubbing him out.”

“We’re quite familiar with Sal and Petey and what they’re capable of.” Charlee shook her head.

“Elwood had no knowledge of the Oscar fix until he went to confront Blade in person and tell him to call off his goons. He found Blade in the process of shredding documents. He and Blade had a fight and Elwood stole some of the documents. He didn’t really understand what he’d uncovered but the date was 1955, so he brought a copy to me.”

“Your grandmother knew I’d purchased controlling interest in the accounting firm for nostalgic reasons and she rightly supposed I had no idea I’d been cheated out of the Oscar in 1955. She called and asked me to come to Vegas and help her sort this out,” Nolan told Charlee.

Then turning to Mason, he said, “I took the half mil from the company fund not only because I was going to pay Elwood’s blackmail fee to keep him quiet about what had happened, but to get the family to send you after me.” He grinned. “I knew they’d send you and not Hunter.”

“You wanted me to come after you?”

“Of course. I needed help and I couldn’t do this alone but I had to keep things quiet. Couldn’t risk any of this leaking out.”

“Why didn’t you want them to send Hunter?”

Nolan laughed. “You’ve got to get over this second-son-in-the-Gentry-family syndrome, Mason. It held me back for too long. Kept me from my first love.” He gazed tenderly at Maybelline. “Besides, Hunter couldn’t find his ass in the dark with both hands.”

Mason had to laugh too. “I can’t take the credit for finding you. Charlee’s the bloodhound.”

“I’d say you make a pretty terrific team,” Maybelline said.

This probably wasn’t the time to burst their bubble and tell them that he and Charlee had found them purely by accident.

“Where’s the money now?” Mason asked.

“I stashed it in a safe deposit box in Vegas,” Nolan said.

“In the meantime,” Maybelline said, “Elwood gets another visit from his creditors. He goes back to Blade, convinces him he’s on his side, and offers to kidnap us and hold us hostage until after the Oscars are over.”

Nolan continued the story, telling how Elwood had taken them to the vacant studio lot outside Tucson, how they’d escaped but been recaptured by Blade and Elwood working together after the camper broke down. He told them about being held prisoner in the abandoned mine shaft, how they’d found a false bottom in the floor, tunneled their way out, and hitched a ride to L.A. with Angelina.

Mason and Charlee then related everything they’d been through.

“What time is it?” Mason asked, after they’d finished their stories. “The Oscar ceremony starts at seven.”

“But the Oscars drag on for hours,” Charlee observed. “We can make it.”

“Unfortunately, best supporting actor is one of the first nontechnical awards given out,” Nolan said. “The sooner we get there the better.”

“We have to get backstage,” Mason continued. “Tell the presenters there’s been a discrepancy. We can do major damage control if we can make it in time to stop the Oscar from being awarded to Blade.” His eyes met his grandfather’s.

“I know.” Nolan nodded. “If we don’t stop it beforehand, they’ll think our family was in on the fix.”

Maybelline consulted her watch. “It’s five-thirty now and at the rate Angelina is driving, I’m afraid we’re still a good two hours out of L.A.”

They parted company with Angelina in Palm Springs and Mason’s grandfather rented a Ford Explorer. Nolan drove hell-bent for leather, but the closer they got to L.A. the thicker the traffic grew. By the time they arrived at the Academy Awards venue, it was twenty minutes after seven and the place was swarming with security and media.

“How the hell are we going to get in?” Nolan gloomily asked him.

Mason pulled the crumpled tickets Pam Harrington had given him from his back pocket. “I’ve got it covered. Once Charlee and I get in, we’ll identify ourselves, explain what’s going on, and send someone out after you two.”

“Sound plan.” Nolan nodded. “Go, go, go.”

Mason and Charlee tumbled out of the Explorer and rushed the red carpet.

After running a gauntlet of security checkpoints where the guards simply couldn’t believe these two dirty, bedraggled wayfarers held VIP invitations to the lavish event, they finally stepped inside the theater lobby at seven forty-five.

Don’t let us be too late,
Charlee prayed.

An usher came forward, nose curled in distaste at their clothing, to escort them to their seats.

“We’re not going to be sitting down,” Mason started to explain but then Charlee spotted a tuxedoed Elwood leaving the men’s room. She grabbed Mason’s arm and whispered, “There’s my father.”

Charlee glared at Elwood. He looked like a convict caught scaling the prison walls at midnight in his underwear.

“Dad, you freeze right there,” she growled.

Elwood raised his palms in a defensive gesture. “Now, baby girl,” he said, “don’t go jumpin’ to conclusions.” A split second later he turned tail and raced toward the theater.

“I can’t let him get away,” Mason said and sprinted after her father.

In ten long-legged strides, Mason tackled Elwood in the archway.

“Sirs, sirs,” the usher chided. “No roughhousing at the Oscars.”

Elwood threw a punch but Mason blocked it.

Then her father tried to head-butt Mason. He simply grabbed Elwood in a headlock and the two men went down in a heap of windmilling arms and legs.

“Dad, stop it!” Charlee yelled. “It’s over. You’re busted.”

“You really don’t want to mess with me, buddy,” Mason growled through clenched teeth. “I’d love to plow my fist into your kisser for the way you’ve treated Charlee alone, never mind blackmailing my grandfather.”

“Stop fighting. Stop it right now or I’ll get security,” the usher cried.

Several elegantly dressed people seated near the entrance craned their necks to take a gander at the brawl, which was obviously more interesting than the thank-you speech of the guy who’d just accepted the Oscar for best theatrical lighting.

“And I want to thank my first grade teacher, Miss Dingleberry, and Phil, the guy who used to drive the Popsicle truck on my block, and my dentist, Dr. Purdy,” the P.A. system resonated the award-winner’s droning, endless speech.

Elwood flinched at Mason’s cocked fist. “Don’t hit me, man. It wasn’t anything personal against your grandfather. I had debts to pay.”

“It was pretty damned personal to Charlee. Imagine, her father is a blackmailing scumbag who kidnapped his own mother for money.”

Elwood slanted a shamefaced look toward Charlee. “I was in trouble. I owed the wrong guys money. They set my apartment on fire.”

“You’re always in trouble.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Sorry, honey, but you understand, don’tcha?”

“I understand all right. I understand you never cared about anything except yourself and money.” Uttering the words had a liberating effect on Charlee.

For years she’d made excuses for her father, unable to believe he simply was incapable of loving her the way she loved him. She’d hoped and prayed and wished for things to be different but they weren’t. Once she let go of her childish expectations, she understood he no longer held the power to break her heart. Elwood was Elwood and she could never change him. So be it.

“Get up.” Mason snatched Elwood by his lapels and lifted him to his feet.

“And next,” the dulcet voice of a famous actress resonated throughout the theater, “the award for best supporting actor.”

The announcement jolted Charlee’s focus off her father. They were about to give away the award for best supporting actor. To hell with Elwood, they had to stop the award presentation before it was too late.

She jerked her head toward the stage and that’s when she realized they were surrounded by cops.

“And the Oscar goes to…Blade Bradford.”

Mason grimaced. The minute the words left the presenter’s mouth, his life changed forever.

Music swelled. The audience applauded. Stunned, Mason watched as Blade Bradford got to his feet and made his way toward the stage.

“You are under arrest,” said the cop who was snapping handcuffs around his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Mason tuned out the rest of his Miranda rights, every bit of his attention concentrated on Blade Bradford at the podium waving his statue over his head in victory.

He’d been unable to stop Bradford from accepting his bogus Oscar. Mason had lost. He’d failed.

And now he faced the greatest moral dilemma of his life.

Save his family from scandal by covering up the accounting discrepancies and thereby compromising all his deeply held values, beliefs, and principles, or go public with the knowledge the Oscars had been falsified and accept the fact his family would be financially ruined.

As the cops hauled him from the theater along with Elwood, his gaze met Charlee’s. The tears glistening in her eyes sucker-punched him square in the gut.

He realized then that if he took the easy way out, kept quiet and allowed Cahill and Bradford and their henchmen to get away with their crimes simply to salvage his money and reputation, he would be just like all the other men who had betrayed her. From her shiftless father to that creep of a senator who groped her in the pantry to Gregory Blankensonship who’d taken her virginity, treated her like she didn’t matter and made her question her own worth.

He could not let her down.

In that moment Mason knew what he must do, the consequences be damned.

CHAPTER 21

T
he next morning Charlee paced the hallway outside the meeting room of the Beverly Hills Grand Piazza where Mason had scheduled a press conference.

After the fiasco at the Academy Awards, Nolan had booked her and Maybelline a room at the hotel while he’d gone to retrieve Mason from the county holding cell. For the time being, she and Maybelline had decided against posting Elwood’s bond. Let him stew in jail.

Charlee hadn’t seen Mason since he’d been arrested and she was nervous. Going before the press, admitting his family’s company had been involved in an accounting scandal so huge it threatened to rock Hollywood to the core, could not be easy. She also felt at loose ends with herself, not knowing what to say to him, uncertain of her role in the outcome of the unfolding events.

They’d left so many things unsaid. So many important issues not discussed.

What did he need from her?

What did she want from him?

Where did they go from here?

The place buzzed with news media speculating on the details of why they’d been assembled. Camera crews strung wires and cords throughout the conference rooms. A soundman checked the podium mike. Charlee forced herself not to chew her fingernails.

At five minutes before nine, a well-dressed middle-aged couple hurried down the corridor looking harried and concerned; beside them walked Mason’s ex-fiancée-to-be, Daphne Maxwell. The man bore a striking resemblance to both Nolan and Mason.

And then she realized the couple must be Mason’s parents.

Panic clutched her. Not wanting to be seen, Charlee glanced around for a place to hide, and spied the reprieve of a bronze metal modern art sculpture just a few feet from the open door of the conference room.

She flung herself on the other side of it and crouched down just in the nick of time. Her heart stabbed her chest. She heard the sound of footsteps on the terrazzo floor. Daphne and the Gentrys came to stand beside the sculpture. Daphne had her back to Charlee but she stood so close, Charlee could have reached out and wrapped her wrists around the woman’s slender panty hose-clad ankle.

Oh, crap.

“Mason said he’d meet us here before he started the conference,” Daphne murmured.

“I just hope we’re not too late to talk some sense into our son,” Mason’s father said.

“I’m sure he’ll listen to reason,” his mother soothed. “If Mason absolutely insists on going public with this Oscar mess, then the least he can do is mend fences with Daphne. After all, she’s willing to forgive and forget, which is very generous of her, and he owes the family that much consideration.”

“You’re absolutely right,” his father said. “Our stocks are going to take a terrible hit in the fallout. We can’t lose Daphne as both our publicist and future daughter-in-law too. Our son has got to listen to reason.”

“Mason just went a little crazy, dear, but I’m sure once we speak with him, he’ll see the error of his ways,” his mother went on.

“It’s that woman,” Daphne said darkly. “She’s corrupted his values. Once he’s back home in Houston, surrounded by friends and family, he’ll forget all about his little road fling.”

Charlee’s throat constricted. Road fling. That’s all she was and she knew it. She could never be good enough for Mason and his family. She was no sleek, chic, high-society woman.

More footsteps echoed and when she heard Mason’s voice she came completely unraveled. Her knees shook and her hands turned cold and clammy.

“Mother, Father.” A long pause ensued. “And Daphne. I want to thank you for staying on as our publicist and agreeing to represent Gentry Enterprises in this matter.”

“Daphne isn’t here just as our publicist, son.”

“She’s willing to give you a second chance and for the good of the family business your father and I feel you should listen to what she has to say.”

Charlee wished she could see Mason’s face. What was he thinking? How did he feel about the pressure his parents were putting on him? Would he eagerly embrace a return to his old life and leave her in his rearview mirror?

Before Mason could respond, she heard someone else approach.

“Mr. Gentry, Paul Stillson with KEMR news. Is the rumor true? Has your accounting firm been rigging the Oscar votes for almost fifty years?”

“Please,” Mason said. “Have a seat in the conference room with the other reporters. I’m on my way in. Mother, Father. Daphne.”