Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (19 page)

     Picking up a pair of scissors from her desk, Amber walked slowly over to Frizz, opening and closing the sharp scissors while waving the pork chop at Christine.

     The air was suddenly charged with fear and excitement as the girls watched and waited to see what Amber was going to do. She snapped the scissors close to Frizz's face, then she said, "I think this girl has too much hair. I'm going to give her a haircut."

     "Leave her alone," Christine said.

     "Eat the pork chop like a good little doggie and I will. Otherwise..." Amber made vicious slices in the air with the scissors.

     When Christine looked at the pork chop that Amber held out to her, Frizz said, "Don't do it, Christine. I don't mind. I hate my hair." But there was a sob in her voice.

     Christine felt the eyes of the girls riveted to her; she heard the frightened thumping of her own heart as she looked from Amber's cold expression to Frizz's eyes, wide with terror. "No," she said at last, "I won't do what you say. And you aren't going to hurt Frizz, either."

     To everyone's surprise, she pushed past Amber and pulled the other girls away from Frizz. Facing Amber again, Christine said, "And you're not going to hurt us ever again. You're mean and cruel, Amber, and I feel sorry for you. And anyone who follows you and does what you say can't feel very good about herself." She looked at the others, who wouldn't meet her eye. "You make fun of us because we're not perfect like you, but at least we have our pride. My father taught me to respect myself. And that's just what I'm going to do, Alexandra Huntington. I'm not going to let you bully me or Frizz ever again."

D
ON'T WORRY
,
D
OLLY
. I
T WON'T BE FOR LONG
. W
E'LL BE
together again real soon."

     As the voice echoed down from the past, Philippa laid her pen down and looked out the window of the Starlite private jet at the night and stars and black ocean below. After a refueling in Fiji, they were now headed for Southern California. The cabin was dimly lit. Charmie, sitting across from Philippa, was reading; Ricky was in the galley making coffee and heating up danishes for the flight crew. They were the only passengers on board.

     When the sense of foreboding started to come over Philippa again, she picked up her pen and tried to concentrate on her work. She read the last line she'd written: "Two qualities are required to determine success: they are commitment and self-discipline." This was in the pep talk chapter of her book,
The 99-Point Starlite Weight Loss and Beauty Plan
, a chapter to which the reader was invited to turn again and again for inspiration. The writing contained nothing new; rather, it was a condensed collection of
the philosophies and adages that had, over the years, become trademarks of Starlite: "Success is knowing what you want." "Winning is determination."

     Philippa stared for a moment at the page that was only half-filled with writing and finally put her pen back in its case. She couldn't concentrate. A growing sense of impending loss was taking her mind away from the task at hand, back to a foggy night in San Francisco, forty-two years ago, when she had experienced her first traumatic loss, a night in which she had lost everything, including her innocence. There had been no forewarning, no premonition, no sign preparing her for the sudden, drastic turn her life was about to take. And it made her think of the two other catastrophic losses that had occurred in her life: the first, when she had gone to a dingy apartment behind Grauman's Chinese Theatre back in 1958, when the course of her life had been determined forever; and the second, when she had stood at Point Resolution and watched the
Philippa
go down.

     Was another such turning point waiting for her at the end of this flight? she wondered. Philippa tried to analyze her fears; she didn't know which frightened her more, the possibility of losing her company or discovering that one of her friends had betrayed her. Please, she prayed silently to the black night beyond her window, if there is a traitor in the company, don't let it be one of us.

     There was a low table between her and Charmie's seats, and on it were a tray of fresh fruit, a plate of biscuits, and a crystal pitcher of Perrier with lemon slices floating in it. Pouring herself a glass, Philippa tried to settle back in her seat. There was so much to think about.

     Beverly Burgess in Palm Springs was on her mind. Ivan Hendricks had asked Philippa back in Perth, "Does the name Burgess sound at all familiar to you?" She had searched her memory, but had found no Burgess in her past. She pictured again the full-page ad for Star's that Hendricks had shown her, a splash of silver stars against a dark blue background. The interior of the Starlite corporate jet was decorated in shades of blue, with silver stars woven into the upholstery, and Philippa wondered again if it was true what she had heard about the coincidences that occurred in the lives of twins who had been raised separately. She recalled in particular an article she had read not too long ago about twin sisters, separated at birth, who had married
similar-looking men, had the same hobbies, donated to the same charities, and had even given their children the same names. Were the names Starlite and Star's, and their disturbingly similar logos, proof that Beverly Burgess was her sister?

     "Are you all right?" Charmie asked quietly, setting down her book and removing her reading glasses.

     "I don't know," Philippa said. "I'm worried about what we're going to find at the other end. I can't stop thinking about the threat of a corporate raider taking Starlite, or the fact that it might involve someone within the company, someone very close to me. Are you sure no one knows I'm coming?"

     "Believe me, they haven't a clue. They all think I'm in Ohio, as I usually am at this time of the year. When you walk through the doors of Starlite's offices, you'll shock everyone out of their socks."

     That was precisely what Philippa wanted to do—observe their reactions to her sudden return. Something surely should show on the faces of the guilty ones.

     "I wasn't prepared to leave Perth yet," she said as the plane suddenly shimmied and vibrated. The pilot had warned them that they might skirt a tropical storm. "I always felt that as long as I was there, and I kept alive the hope that he had somehow survived, that he
would
come back. But by leaving, I almost feel as though I'm robbing him of that chance. Does that sound crazy?"

     "No, it doesn't." Charmie leaned over and put her hand on Philippa's. "But you have to let go eventually, Philippa. He would want you to. He would want you to think of the future, not the past."

     "You're right, of course." Philippa smiled. "Esther is so excited that I'm coming home for the holidays. She's anxious for me to meet her boyfriend. So, in a way, Charmie, I'm glad you came and rescued me from Perth. If Esther's as serious about this boy as she sounds, we might be planning a wedding soon."

     "And soon after that," Charmie said with a glint, "you might be a grandmother."

     "Good heavens! Aren't I too young to be a grandmother?"

     Charmie took a sip of her gin and tonic, the plastic bracelets on her wrist clacking together. "Age is a state of mind," she said, eyeing Ricky's rear
end as he walked past her down the aisle with a cup of coffee and took a seat behind her.

     Since Philippa had swiveled her chair so that she rode backward, she could see Ricky over Charmie's shoulder. He was watching her. She said to Charmie, "I think I'll go and freshen up a bit."

     The lavatory at the back of the plane was slightly larger than the ones on commercial aircraft, with fresh towels, individually wrapped soaps, lotion dispensers, and a padded bench that folded down over the toilet so that the sink could be converted into a vanity. Quietly closing the door behind herself but not locking it, Philippa turned on the cold faucet and splashed water on her face. As she was patting it dry with one of the thick velour towels, she heard a discreet knock at the door.

     And Ricky's voice, saying, "Are you all right, Miss Roberts?"

     She said, "Yes," and waited.

     He opened the door, gave her a questioning look, then came all the way in and closed the door behind himself. "Are you sure you're all right?" he said more quietly.

     "I'm worried," she said. Philippa had filled Ricky in on the reason for the trip—the threatened corporate takeover, the possibility that Hendricks had found her sister. "And I'm a little scared."

     "Everything will be all right," he said softly. Then he put his hands on her waist and drew her to him. Whenever they touched like this, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis, Philippa was always amazed at how good he felt, how hard his young body was. She slipped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He held her gently at first, massaging the tense spot between her shoulder blades; then his embrace grew tighter. She drove her hands through his long hair; his mouth crushed hers, his tongue tasted sweetly of sugared coffee. Suddenly she wanted him. Quickly. Now.

     She reached down for him; he moaned. He lifted her up onto the edge of the sink, pulled her panties off, pushed her skirt up around her waist, and entered her, so abruptly and with such force that it took her breath away. He reached up under her blouse and half lifted her, rocking her as she clung to him, their mouths pressed together.

     When the plane shuddered, they weren't aware of it. And when they heard a knock on the bathroom door, Philippa barely got out a breathless "Yes?"

     It was Charmie. "The captain suggests you take your seat. He says we're about to enter some turbulence."

     And Philippa started to laugh, muffling it in Ricky's luscious hair.

     Philippa's photo was taped to the mirror, and as Danny Mackay worked on his disguise, he fantasized about the different ways he could punish her.

     Maybe he would string her up by a rope and let her dance like a hooked fish, the way
he
had in the county jail. He might even let her die, just as he actually had, and then revive her, the way he had had to be revived, because the jail doctor, who had been paid a fortune for his involvement with the faked suicide, had screwed up his timing and had had to perform CPR to bring Danny back and
then
declare him dead. It was a real high to imagine how she was going to cry and scream and beg him to let her go. Danny was going to savor it. And maybe, when he found her down in Western Australia, he wouldn't rush in to kill her right away. He might make friends with her, and it would be a real turn-on to have her being all nice and friendly with him without knowing what he planned to do to her. Hadn't she done the same thing to him, pretending to support his political campaign, donating money and everything, all the while plotting his humiliation and destruction?

     As Danny finished gluing the small beard to his chin, he couldn't keep from smiling at the thought of facing Beverly—or Philippa, as she called herself now—and getting her to like him while he savored his secret plan.

     He stepped back from the, mirror and regarded his work with a critical eye. Since his face was known to millions of people—never mind from being TV's top evangelist, but from his presidential campaign as well—it was important that he disguise himself enough so that no one would recognize him and start putting two and two together.

     Satisfied with the alteration in his appearance, Danny went methodically around Quinn's house and selected a few things to take with him: a press badge that might come in handy, a wallet containing seventy-three dollars in bills and change. Finally he took up the file labeled "Philippa Roberts," peeled
the photograph off the mirror, and slipped it in with the notes Quinn had made on her.

     Danny looked around to see if there was anything else he might need, his eye skimming past a folder with the words "Burgess/Star's" written on it. Then he turned and looked out to sea, where a mother-of-pearl sunrise was bringing the Pacific out of a dark night into a misty dawn. He saw that the tide had come in, washing up onto the smooth sand, leaving it shiny and frothy and erasing all traces of the three graves Danny had dug there during the night.

     As he left the house, feeling high on the morning and life and revenge, he thought of the secret hit list he had once had, a private roll call of the people who had crossed him one way or another in his life. He had systematically punished them, one by one. Danny decided that the best of them had been a kid back in Louisiana, a hotshot Cajun who claimed Danny and Bonner had raped his sister. He had reported them to the authorities, but the police had had to let young Danny and Bonner go, because the girl, it turned out, confessed to having spent the night with them willingly, as most women did after one of the boys' revival meetings. Danny and Bonner had left town laughing, but when their tent show brought them back through that part of the South a few months later, Danny had sneaked out in the middle of the night, rousted that hotshot from his bed at gunpoint, taken him out to the swamp, and buried him up to his neck in mud. By the time the search party found the boy, the alligators had already gotten to him.