Shadows May Fall (25 page)

Jenna Rhodes and Carly Mills were both conveniently on the premises at Spank Me productions when Lou and Dillon finally arrived just after four. Dillon’s favorite receptionist buzzed for Deidre Love the second they stepped foot in the door.

“Ms. Love will be right with you.” The woman winked at Dillon before he even was able to flash his badge.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t catch your name when we were here last time.” Lou asked, thinking it wouldn’t be a good idea to call her Miss Whip-It, as she had before.

“Marla.” The librarian-looking woman told her with a smile. “Marla Thorpe. Nice to see you again Detective Lou.”

It was hard not to like the girl’s sass. “Hey, Marla. Nice to see you too. Thanks for the whips, if I didn’t thank you before.”

“Happy to share a giggle!” Marla clearly enjoyed her work. “Can I ask you a question?” Lou asked, leaning in a bit closer as she perched herself on the reception desk.

“Go right ahead!” Marla leaned towards Lou and smiled a little brighter.

“You know of anyone who goes by the name Lady V?” Lou asked quietly. “Her first name is Vanessa, I think?”

Marla sat up straight in her chair and looked around. “Careful.” She warned. “That is one nasty bitch.”

“Oh?” Lou tried to play it cool but felt excited that Marla knew who she was asking about.

Marla leaned in closer to Lou before she spoke again. “Her father was the founder of Spank Me, back in the day when it was S.P. Enterprises, and porn was an under the radar business. I’m talkin’ when things were still shot on eight millimeters and shown in peep show booths.”

“What was his name?” Lou asked.

“Robert Sturn.” Marla whispered.

“Robert Sturn? The Robert Sturn?” Lou asked in disbelief, knowing that Sturn was an infamous American pornographer from back in the 1960’s.

“The Robert Sturn.” Marla confirmed. “Lily Conrad was like his fiftieth mistress, but she trapped him in the nineties and had Vanessa. His only kid, ever, which seems ridiculous with a guy like that. Can’t imagine someone like him being that careful aside from wanting to protect his billions. Anyway, he never married Lily but he acknowledged Vanessa as his daughter. When he died in ninety-eight, he left everything in trust to Vanessa and zip to Lily. That’s when this place changed to Spank Me. Sturn’s attorneys agreed to liquidate the studio and put the proceeds in a trust. The old staff made a bid for what was left and made a go of the place under the new name. It was total charity on the lawyers part making the sale contingent that Lily was given some place in the new studio, even if it was in name only. She didn’t know jack about the business and was bombed out of her mind most the time anyway. The new owners used her past with Sturn, her name and the scandal around it, to get a foothold and she trusted them to run things. She had nothing to offer them. Lily was too old to be in any of the films. They totally took advantage of her and made her beg for scraps.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Dillon was fascinated with her story.

“I did my thesis on her.” Marla smirked. “The oppression of women in the sex trade.”

“What happened to Lily?” Lou asked.

“Honestly? She prostituted herself to keep the lights on at home after she got frozen out of this place. The will allowed her to live in the estate as long as she took care of Vanessa, but she wasn’t given much of an allowance for its upkeep. The executor of the estate was a total scumbag that made her, shall I say sing for her supper?” Marla wiggled her eyebrows. “Vanessa saw all of this while she was growing up, her mother whoring herself out just to keep up appearances of some bizarre affluent lifestyle. She died of Neurosyphilis a few years ago.”

“So Deidre knew her? How did she become CEO here?” Lou couldn’t believe that a woman like Deidre Love would have allowed Lily to rot while she cultivated the Spank Me empire.

“Deidre is the one who came in and cleaned up this place!” Marla informed them. “I guess she and Vanessa knew each other in grade school before Deidre’s family moved abroad and she went to boarding school. When Deirdre came back to the states, she did a hostile takeover of the place, got Lily into hospice care. That’s right before Vanessa re-appeared. She had taken off to college somewhere when she turned eighteen and didn’t come back until after her twenty-fourth birthday when the trust got turned over to her.”

“Wait, Deidre went to school with Vanessa?” Lou thought she missed something.

“Deidre is older than Vanessa. I think she felt responsible for her, guilty that she left, and Vanessa’s mom just went to shit. I wasn’t exactly going to ask my boss the scoop. Ya know what I mean?” Marla shut up as soon as she saw Deidre Love come out of the office door. Lou and Dillon knew that was all they were going to get out of her for now.

“Detectives.” Deidre Love glided up to them and shook both of their hands. “Jenna and Carly are doing promos right now. If you will follow me to the conference room, they’ll meet you there as soon as they finish up.” Deidre lead them down a hall and into a large, very business like conference room. It took Dillon and Lou a while to realize the large abstract art hanging on the walls was very tasteful, albeit odd angled photographs of the human form. Lou had to admit they were rather beautiful and in no way pornographic.

“Ms. Love, may I ask about your relationship with Vanessa?” Lou took a shot and bluffed.

“Vanessa?” Deidre tried to keep a cool visage, but a tiny twitch in her left eye gave her away.

“Yes.” Lou smiled a bit. “How exactly did you two meet way back when?”

Deidre Love stood up straight, smoothed the front of her St. John suit then swallowed hard. “I was Vanessa’s helper when she was admitted to St. Genevieve’s School for Girls.” The woman took a seat before she continued, Dillon and Lou taking seats across the table from her. “Vanessa was a little behind the curve when she came to school. She hadn’t attended kindergarten or pre-school and was woefully behind the other girls. When something like that happened, the Sisters would assign one of the bigger girls to get them up to speed. I was assigned to Vanessa. She was six, and I was eleven.”

“And you’ve stayed friends all this time?” Dillon kept digging. “That’s very rare.”

“No.” Deidre said with absolution. “I mean...” She paused to calculate her response. “I was quite young, and my parents taught me to be charitable. I took personal responsibility for Vanessa for the next three years. Tutored her at home to get her caught up with the other kids, taught her social skills, that sort of thing. She had been very sheltered.”

“Sheltered, you call it?” Lou smirked, trying to push the envelope a bit after what Marla had told them about Vanessa’s mother and father.

“I’m not sure what you think you know, Detectives.” Deidre spoke coldly. “Robert Sturn had little to nothing to do with Vanessa or her mother after she was born. Sturn left Lily shortly after she got pregnant and lived the last of his years out in a penthouse in Manhattan with a pack of whores tending to his withering state. He was a misogynist who exploited women in the worst possible way to amass his fortune.”

“Yet here you are running his old studio.” Dillon pointed out. “This is not his old studio.” Deidre Love shouted now. “When I returned to the states and discovered what had become of Lily and Vanessa, it drove me to take over this place and make it a place of empowerment for womens sexuality. A safe work environment for women in adult entertainment! Not the cesspool of sexually transmitted disease and abuse that it was when Robert peddled his peep shows out of his filthy excuse for a studio!”

“So taking the place over was revenge?” Lou corrected Dillon’s provocation.

“You could call it that.” Deidre calmed herself, picking a piece of lint off of her lapel. “I call it a wise business move, while righting wrongs.”

“So how did Vanessa fit into all of this?” Lou continued asking questions.

“Only tangentially.” Deidre explained. “Lily was the wrong in my story. When I was Vanessa’s helper, I would walk her home and see the huge house they lived in, built as a home for beautiful things. But the place was virtually empty. Empty halls and massive rooms made to be filled with exquisite furniture, fine art, all the things my family worked so hard to acquire and yet her place was hollow and a hovel all at the same time. The kitchen was next to bare and even though Vanessa always had some beautiful dress or fancy toy delivered every week from no one. I assume it was from her father, or one of his staff. Something to assuage his guilt, assuming he had any. She looked like a rag doll most of the time. Lily essentially walked the streets, bringing johns back to the fancy house just for a few bucks to keep the lights on, the water hot, logs on the fire in the winter. She was a desperate, crazy woman who had zero skills to prepare her to be a mother and Robert Sturn didn’t give a shit about her or his illegitimate child. When I came back and found Lily rotting away, Vanessa nowhere to be found. I moved her to a care facility where she could die with some semblance of dignity and peace. Vanessa only showed up to sign the papers and lord her trust fund over me and mock me for my compassion for her mother. She had become as cold as her father, despite the fact she never knew the man.” Deidre got up from the table and walked to the small bar, pouring herself a cold glass of water from the crystal pitcher. She drank deeply with her back turned to them and stood silently for a moment before she spoke again. “So no, Detective. Vanessa and I were never really friends and we sure as hell are not now. She is everything I despise in women like her. Manipulative, cold, cunning, using her beauty as a weapon and consuming the souls of every man she comes in contact with. Sex is a tool of destruction for Vanessa and she likes to destroy, make no mistake.” Dillon and Lou looked at each other after Deidre’s last words, both knowing they had just found their femme fatal.

“When was the last time you saw or spoke with her?” Lou asked.

“She brought a girl in and asked us to use her in one of our productions.” Deidre seemed to recall exactly when. “As a personal favor. I agreed, but the girl never came back. Her name was Eve something or other. We never even got a W-2 filed on her.”

Lou could see Deidre was starting to make the connection and knew she would be shutting up very soon. “Did Vanessa know Hunny Trainer?” Lou asked before Deidre shut down completely.

“I couldn’t say for sure.” Was all Deidre said before she got up again. “If that’s all, I need to get back to work. Jenna and Carly should be in shortly.” The woman didn’t wait to hear if they had any further questions before she left the conference room.

It would be an easy enough thing to track down Vanessa’s last name now that they knew who her father was and where she had gone to grade school. The question on both Dillon and Lou’s mind was whether or not Deidre Love would tip her off. By the way she spoke and her tone, Dillon doubted it highly, but Lou didn’t want to take that chance. Time was now of the essence.

Carly Mills was the first to arrive at the conference room after Deidre left, all scrubbed and shiny and looking nothing like a porn actress. Her long ginger hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail and she wore a pale peach sundress that was modest enough for Sunday church. She introduced herself to Lou and Dillon with proper southern belle manners that would have put Caroline to shame. Her crystal blue eyes twinkled as she spoke to them and it made Lou a little angry that such a sweet lovely girl was swimming around in such filthy waters as the porn industry. The girl explained, however, that she was right where she wanted to be and was extremely candid when she expressed her relief that Josh Rawlings was dead. Of course, she felt horrible about the manner in which Rawlings met his end but she wasn’t exactly shocked.

“I’d been working at the Gentlemen’s club for about six months when Josh asked me if I wanted to earn extra cash working a private party for some big studio executive’s birthday.” Carly told them. “It was all pretty harmless at first and kinda fun, to be honest. It was a theme party. The guy dressed up as a sultan and all us girls dressed like his harem.” Carly giggled. “It was a huge place all decorated like somethin’ out of Aladdin and most of us just danced and teased the boys. Same as when we danced at the club but the house was way nicer. Some of the girls went into back rooms with different guys, but I just danced and fed fat men grapes and fancy food. That part was pretty gross, but I made good tips. I didn’t mind it, which is why I was happy when Josh told me I could work more parties. But that was the last one like that. They just got worse and worse.”

“How so?” Dillon asked.

“They got more and more evil.” Jenna Rhodes said as she walked into the conference room.

“Yeah, that’s it. Evil.” Carly agreed.

“It started innocently enough I guess.” Jenna said as she sat next to Carly. “Theme parties like Carly said. One where we dressed as sexy prison guards and cops, handcuffs and a little police brutality, if ya get my drift.”

“So you were the dominants at those parties?” Lou asked.

“Yeah.” Jenna nodded. “But Josh had a staff meeting with us girls that worked the parties, and some fancy lady explained the whole bondage thing, the rules and stuff. She had us come up with our safe words and Josh wrote them down.”

“Fancy lady?” Lou backed Jenna up a bit.

“He introduced her as Lady V.” Carly clarified. “She was really hot. Perfect hair all done up like she was goin’ to a debutant ball and dressed like she was about to be in some fancy horse riding competition with shiny leather boots and one of those tight, button up coats. She asked us if we understood what a dominatrix was and then explained the rules, like Jenna just said. I paid attention sorta, but I didn’t care as long as the money was good. Boy, I wish I had known then.”

“She showed us whips and collars and all kinds of weird shit then Josh brought in a rack of new costumes.” Jenna elaborated. “Leather and rubber, corsets that you could hardly breathe in. After she left, Josh told us we would be working very special parties and made us all sign non-disclosure agreements.”

“Yeah!” Carly interrupted. “After the second party, when things switched, that made sense to me then.”