Authors: Hallie Ephron

Photoplay (3 page)

BOOK: Photoplay

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That's when something on the floor caught his eye. Yellow lace. He stooped to get a better look. It was the dress he'd last seen Joelen's friend wearing. Now the top was ripped and the skirt was stained red. Dark red. A new smell came to him, sharp and metallic like the inside of a tin can. He had to force himself to raise his camera to capture what he saw. The little girl's room with one twin bed stripped of its bed linen.
Click.
The soiled dress crumpled on the floor.
Click.
He reset the camera and braced himself against the wall, trying to get a wider angle.
Click.

He lowered the viewfinder. A good picture told a story, but this one asked a question. Where were the girls who should long ago have been tucked into these beds?

The window lit up. Flashes of light, but no siren. Duane looked out. An ambulance was pulling up behind the patrol cars. The driver got out, strolled around, and opened the back doors. He stood there talking to a uniformed police officer who gestured toward the upstairs of the house. Obviously neither of them was in any big rush to go up there. That meant that either there was no dire emergency, or the person the ambulance had come for was beyond help.

Duane glanced back at the torn, stained yellow dress. His stomach twisted. But this was no time to get sentimental. If he was going to get his picture, it was now or never. He forced himself back into the hall, stopping just before the bend and peering around it. A police officer was in the hall, facing into the bedroom at the top of the stairs. Duane aimed the camera and got off a shot.

The moment the shutter snapped, a figure burst out onto the landing. Duane drew back, waiting and counting to ten before he dared to look again. When he peered around the corner, Sy Sterling stood not four feet away, his arms folded across his chest, staring directly at him.

Duane expected Sterling to attack, or at the very least smash his camera and ream him out. Instead he just stood there with his head tilted, considering. “You came back.”

“I .Â .Â . I .Â .Â .” Duane groped for what to say. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

“Did you find it?”

Duane gave a mute nod.

Sterling's gaze dropped to Duane's camera. His eyes narrowed and a muscle worked in his jaw. Then he smiled, or at least his mouth did. He stepped over, put an arm around Duane's shoulders, and squeezed, pressing up against Duane's side. “Good. Now you can make yourself useful.” He propelled Duane into the bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Duane blinked away the bright lights as he entered. The room was lit up like a stage set with every fixture on, plus some portable spotlights the police must have brought. Against the far wall was a bed with a pink satin tufted headboard. The bedding was rumpled, as if someone had just gotten out of it.

Mounded on the floor beside the bed was the twin to the daisy-Âprinted quilt that Duane had seen in Joelen's bedroom. It was covering what could have been a body, or possibly even two. Where were Joelen and Deirdre? For that matter, where were Bunny and Tito? Who had Duane overheard Sterling talking to?

“Go ahead. Take pictures,” Sterling said.

Astonished, Duane raised his camera and took the shot. None of the officers stopped him.

The door to what Duane suspected was a bathroom or dressing room opened and Elenor Nichol stepped into the room. She wore a loosely tied, black silk dressing gown, her hair in tangles and her eyes red. The swollen bruise on her cheek was lividâÂwhatever makeup she'd used to conceal it during the party had been removedâÂand there were red marks around her neck.

Sterling elbowed Duane. Duane took a picture.

“I did it,” Bunny said, her voice scratchy and raw.

Click.

Bunny's gaze lifted. She snuck a look in Duane's direction, gauging her effect as she might have checked herself in a mirror. She offered up her wrists like a penitent.

Click.

Duane was adjusting the settings for a close-Âup when Bunny stared past him, her look of calm turned stricken. He turned. Joelen stood in the doorway, wearing a floor-Âlength nightgown patterned in tiny flowers. At the party, she'd look like she was going on thirty; now she looked as if she were going on twelve.

“I did it,” Joelen said.

Duane turned his camera on Joelen, but he couldn't seem to get the viewfinder to focus. When he finally did, for first time that he could ever remember, he couldn't shoot. He lowered the camera.

“Don't listen to her,” Bunny said, color rising in her cheeks. “I did it.”

“No. It's all my fault,” Joelen said. She rushed over and hugged Bunny. “IâÂ”

“Enough,” Sterling said, his voice echoing in the room.

Joelen's gaze shifted from her mother to Sterling. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “She wouldn't stop. I had to protect her.”

Bunny stroked Joelen's hair. “Shhh. It's okay. It's over now.” She glanced across at Sterling. “She doesn't know what she's saying. I gave her a sedative and she's delirious. She's not herself. She'sâÂ”

“Stop. Talking,” Sterling said. Duane remembered he wasn't just Bunny's business manager; he was also her attorney.

Sterling turned to one of the police officers. “Please, take them out of here.” Just like that, the officer ushered Bunny and Joelen from the room. Duane started to follow them out but Sterling held him back.

Sterling closed the door to the hall. He gestured to a police officer to remove the quilt. Duane dreaded what the officer would uncover. He hoped his Susan was tucked safely in bed. She liked to sleep late, and it was nearly seven in the morning in Maine.

“Mr. Foley,” Sterling said, “I hired you for the night.”

Duane had never imagined that his iconic photographic opportunityâÂhis James-ÂDean-Âcar-Âcrash, his Eddie-ÂFisher-Âwife-Âon-Âeach-Âarm momentâÂwould involve taking pictures of a dead fifteen-Âyear-Âold girl. His chest felt tight as he raised his camera, bringing the quilt's yellow-Âand-Âwhite daisies into sharp focus. He'd send Marie the money he made on tonight's gig, he promised himself. All of it.

He could barely stand to watch through the viewfinder as the quilt was pulled back. But this was his job, something he did automatically, and he did it now taking picture after picture. The carpet stained red. The black silk shirt, unbuttoned to the waist. Adjusting the angle, focusing in on a knife stuck in up to the hilt, just below the rib cage. Kneeling for a close-Âup. The perfectly sculpted face with an aquiline nose, the flesh turned waxy and the lips tinged blue.

All the while thinking,
Thank God it isn't Susan
even though he knew full well it couldn't have been, as his breathing eased and relief coursed through him.

“
T
HANK YOU,”
S
TERL
ING
said to Duane later as they stood in the driveway in front of the house. It was nearly six and the sky had started to lighten. Tito Acevedo's body had been carried off in the ambulance. Bunny and Joelen had ridden off with the police, and Sterling had promised to follow. No one had mentioned Joelen's friend, and Duane wasn't about to ask what happened to her.

Sterling reached into his back pocket for an envelope. He handed it to Duane. Duane looked inside. It was thick with one-Âhundred-Âdollar bills, at least double Duane's usual fee.

“I'll take the film now,” Sterling said. “All of it.” A pause. “From both cameras.”

Both?
Before Duane could muster a response, Sterling wrenched away his camera bag. Quickly he rooted through, collecting film canisters. He handed Duane one camera, and then the other, and waited for him to wind and remove film that remained in each and hand it over.

“Don't worry,” Sterling said. “You'll be credited for any pictures that get published. You just won't get to pick which or frame the images. Is that understood?”

At that moment, a baby-Âblue Buick LeSabre with a white roof drove up the driveway and pulled up in front of them. It was Duane's .Â .Â . actually, his wife's car. She'd picked it out, then left it when she left Duane. The driver, an older man in a blue work shirt and jeans, got out and offered Duane the keys.

But how was this possible? Duane had the only set of keys to that car. Right in his trouser pocket. He reached in but all he found was a pocketful of change. That's when Duane remembered how Sterling had hip checked him when he hustled him into Bunny's bedroom. He must have picked Duane's pocket, helping himself to his keys.

“Sorry,” Sterling said. “We needed to be sure you'd stay for the whole show.”

About the Author

HALLIE EPHRON is the award-Âwinning author of
Never Tell a Lie
,
Come and Find Me
,
There Was an Old Woman
, and
Night Night, Sleep Tight
. She is the mystery reviewer for the
Boston Globe
and lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

www.hallieephron.com

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

Also by Hallie Ephron

Fiction

Never Tell a Lie

Come and Find Me

There Was an Old Woman

Night Night, Sleep Tight

This is a work of fiction.Â Real people are used to give the narrative a sense of authenticity but are used wholly fictitiously. All dialogue and incidents in this book are the product of the author's imagination.

PHOTOPLAY.
Copyright Â© 2015 by Hallie Ephron. All rights reserved under International and Pan-ÂAmerican Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-Âbook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-Âengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperÂCollins e-Âbooks.

EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780062399700

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