Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (10 page)

     Danny smiled. "A newsman's hunch? Kind of like the one that got Woodward and Bernstein the Pulitzer Prize?"

     Otis's eyes widened. He liked this—Danny Mackay was obviously taking him seriously. "Yes," he said quickly, feeling self-confidence return. "It's just like that. Boy, I tell you, Mr.—Reverend, it's not easy being a good journalist. So many hacks around these days, you know? I had this hunch that Beverly Highland was still alive, so I started doing some looking. Now, I
came up with several leads, and I tracked them down one by one until I think I've found the real one."

     Danny reached down and picked up the newspaper photograph. He studied it for a moment, then said, "Is
this
Beverly Highland?"

     Otis looked at the picture. No, she wasn't Beverly. She was the rejected one, the woman whose identity he had recently verified. "Let me explain," Otis said. "That woman is the same age as Beverly and lives a rather reclusive existence. She is immensely rich and bears a
resemblance
to Beverly. I assumed that since Beverly was so rich and involved in so many enterprises, she had invented this identity for purposes of tax evasion. Then I did some further research into this woman's background and—"

     Otis turned away from Danny to reach for the file on Beverly Burgess, the woman he was now convinced was Highland. He never saw the knife. All he felt was a sudden, sharp burn across his neck, as though his ulcer had exploded and sent heat up his throat, and then there was a warm wetness on his collar.

     He gave Danny a brief, perplexed look, and then he slumped to the floor.

     Danny stepped over the dead man and went to the desk where he picked up the other half of Otis's sandwich. A bit too much mustard, he thought as he took a bite and chewed, but it was good enough. He couldn't take his eyes off the newspaper photo in his hand, under which Quinn had scribbled "Is this Beverly Highland?"

     Suddenly he was sent back three and a half years to a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel. The outer room was crowded with Danny's presidential campaign staff, and the phone was ringing incessantly. In the inner room, he sat with Bonner, Beverly, and her bodyguard, and Beverly was saying to Danny, "If you want me to save you, Danny, you have to beg me. I want to see you beg, the way I once begged you. One word from me, Danny, and you'll either be the next president of the United States or the world will turn its back on you and you'll spend the rest of your life in prison."

     Considering the alternatives, he had had no choice. He had gotten down on his knees, with tears streaming down his face, and he had begged her.

     And then she had flung him to the wolves.

     He studied the face in the news photo, and while it didn't look exactly like Beverly—the face wasn't quite the same, and the blond French twist had been replaced by dark shoulder-length hair—it
could
be Beverly. Makeup altered a person's face, and she could have had plastic surgery, as she had done once before, years ago.

     The longer Danny stared at the picture, the more convinced he became that she was Beverly. He wanted to believe it; he
needed
to believe it.

     He read the name in the caption beneath the photo: Philippa Roberts.

     Danny smiled. "Philippa Roberts," it said, "currently living in Perth, Western Australia."

     So he had found the bitch. And now he was going to go after her and make her pay.

Perth, Western Australia

W
HEN TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD
R
ICKY
P
EMBERTON HAD
come out from Tasmania five years ago, having given up the excitement of living on an apple farm to go in search of adventure along Australia's west coast, he had not dreamed he would end up as a secretary, to a woman at that. But, as he waited for the faxed communication from Star's confirming their reserved bungalow, he looked through the window of his employer's office, where he saw the shimmering swimming pool and Doric columns standing against the sparkling backdrop of the Swan River, and he decided that he couldn't imagine a better life than working for Philippa Roberts.

     And to think that he had landed the job because of a five-dollar pub wager.

     It sometimes amazed Ricky to look back on those days—was it only a year ago?—when he had filled his time crewing on boats and hanging
about the beach, waiting for the odd job to come along, when his entire wardrobe had consisted of jeans and an old Akubra hat that he'd bought from an Aborigine for the price of a pint. He hadn't bothered with shirts and shoes then; he'd driven a Subaru Brat with a bumper sticker that said OCEAN RACERS GET BLOWN OFF SHORE, and he hadn't known from week to week where the rent money was coming from. But he'd been happy, in a transient, looking-for-an-opportunity sort of way. He didn't want to be a beach bum forever, but he also wasn't possessed of the kind of ambition that drove other young men to go to college and make sacrifices. Ricky, like most of his friends, wanted the good life, the easy way. Many of them found it by working on the millionaire's estates that fronted the Swan River; they worked as bodyguards, boat crew, gardeners, houseboys, even dog walkers. The pay was usually good and the work generally easy. And that was how the subject of the reclusive American, Philippa Roberts, had come up one evening among Ricky and his friends.

     Although Philippa Roberts wasn't the only antisocial person living along the beach from Perth to Fremantle, she was one of the most talked about. For one thing, she had shown up suddenly two months ago, taking up residence in a villa that had stood empty for some time. For another, she headed a company that was so well known that even Ricky was familiar with it, his own mother having been a member of Starlite for as long as he could remember. And so it happened that one evening, after a hard day crewing for tourists, Ricky and his mates had been unwinding over a few beers at their favorite pub, and the name of Philippa Roberts had come up. More specifically, how to get past that high wall of hers and land a cushy job.

     Ricky had seen her many times, whenever he happened to be crewing a boat or windsurfing near Point Resolution. She would appear every day at the same time and stand out on the point with her face to the wind, looking out to sea. She would stay for an hour and then walk back down the beach to the Greek-style villa where she lived alone. He had figured she must love boats and sailing. And that was when he had come up with his idea.

     "I reckon
I
could do it," he had said.

     "It's been tried," said his friend Freddo who, like Ricky, was tan and muscular and blond and believed that the future was only something that happened to other people. "Jacko over there walked right through her gate once, when it was open to let a furniture van in. He knocked on her door and told her he wanted a job. The chauffeur and a houseboy escorted him back through the gates."

     But Ricky wasn't thinking of gates, and the wager was made. The wad of fivers was placed in Freddo's care, and Ricky set about to win it.

     His plan involved the forty-foot Swan that was tied up at Philippa's private dock, an exquisite racing yacht that was left to sit out there, day after day, bobbing and swinging on the river's current, never taken out, signs of neglect showing in cracked wood and tarnished metal. Ricky chose a day when the wind coming in off the Indian Ocean wasn't too strong; he was counting on Miss Roberts taking lunch on that columned terrace behind her house. Going out on a dinghy with his equipment, he had gotten to work on the yacht, scrubbing the bird shit off the decks. Then, slipping into a wet suit and scuba gear, he went underneath to scrape the slime off the hull. He resurfaced every so often to see if she had come out, and finally his diligence was rewarded. He came up, and there she was, standing on the dock looking down at him.

     As he hauled himself out of the water and shrugged out of his gear, he started to give her his prepared opening—"Looks like you need a caretaker for this boat, ma'am." But she spoke first.

     "Boats frighten me," she said in a distant voice. "The ocean frightens me."

     Ricky stared at her. Close up, he discovered she wasn't bad looking. He had heard that she was maybe in her late forties, and to Ricky, who was twenty-six, that sounded ancient. But he found a face barely lined, a body in halter and shorts that was well taken care of, all topped off with rich auburn hair that waved around her face in the breeze. Ricky had been prepared for a tough, aggressive woman who was all hard edges with no soft center. He had not expected vulnerability.

     For a moment he was speechless, just standing there in his wet suit, dripping on the dock. Then he said, "Why? Why do boats frighten you?"

     "Because someone I loved died on a boat, just over there. It sank, and he went down with it."

     Ricky looked over to where she was pointing, and he couldn't recall any boats that had gone down there recently, not since—

     "Are you talking about the
Philippa?
" he said. "God, I had a mate on the
Philippa!
A school chum of mine. We came out to Western Oz from Tasmania together. The
Philippa
was getting ready for the Sydney to Hobart race, and a speedboat struck her. I was standing over there," he pointed to the distant shore, "when she went down."

     He felt Philippa's scrutiny from behind large sunglasses. A sea gull swooped down and perched briefly on the high white wall behind her, and then it was off again.

     "When I inherited this house," she said, "this yacht came with it. But I don't want it. I suppose I should have sold it, and now it needs repair, doesn't it?"

     "It needs work all right. Because it's been moored in one spot for so long, it hasn't weathered evenly. All the wood needs to be revarnished, the main halyard is frayed, I noticed some loose cleats, and you've got to do something about all these bird droppings."

     "Can you do it?" she asked.

     "It's nothing I can't handle," Ricky said. "She can be in perfect shape in no time. We might have to have her hauled—"

     "Then do it, please. And find a yacht broker, send him to my house. I'll pay you a finder's fee, as well as whatever you charge for the repairs. The quicker this boat is gone, the better."

     And that had been the start of it. After that, Philippa had found other jobs for him to do, errands to run, and when she had found out that he had had some computer training during his one year at college, she had hired him as her secretary. Ricky decided that his happiness would be perfect now, as the Star's reply began to come over the fax, if it weren't for two guilty secrets that dogged him, both of which he prayed Philippa would never find out: first, that he hadn't had a mate on board the
Philippa
, and second, that he had fallen in love with her.

     The sexual aspect of their relationship had happened by accident, barely a month ago, when they had watched the Melbourne Cup race on television together. Philippa had been rooting for a horse she had chosen
simply for its name, as she claimed to know nothing about horses or horse racing. When that horse had won, she had jumped up and impulsively hugged Ricky. The hug had lasted a heartbeat longer than necessary; the next moment they were kissing. Neither of them had intended for it to happen, and both had felt awkward about it afterward. But what amazed Ricky most of all was that he was in love with a woman whom he really knew very little about, even after nine months in her employ. He had been surprised when the detective came to the house a few hours ago with news of Philippa's sister. And he had been further surprised to learn that Philippa had once been named Christine. There were more mysteries to his boss than he had been aware of. The horse that had won the cherished Melbourne Cup, for example, Ricky hadn't a clue as to the significance of its name. Why should Philippa have chosen the horse just because it was named Beautiful Dolly?

San Francisco, California, 1950

     "That's it, Dolly! Eat up! There's a good girl!"