Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (8 page)

     "Have housekeeping order as many as they need," she said to Simon. "Any that are taken will not be charged for."

     It was an issue upon which Simon disagreed with Beverly, but he knew it was pointless to argue. He had discovered that Miss Burgess was not in the hotel business strictly for profit; her livelihood did not depend upon revenue from the hotel. Although he had no idea where her personal wealth had come from, he did know that while in Brazil she had made some investments in emerald mines and coffee plantations.

     He placed the report on her desk, paused a moment, then came around the desk and stood next to her. "They are decorating the Christmas tree in the Grand Ballroom," he said. "All the guests are helping. And the chef has prepared the most delicious marinated quail with wild mushrooms. Why don't you join us, Beverly?"

     She looked into his gentle gray eyes and realized that she wanted to be part of it all. But one of the prices she had had to pay for destroying Danny Mackay was her freedom. Even though she had changed her hair color and style, she still couldn't risk being recognized. Especially now, with
Butterfly Exposed
being such a big seller and filled with photos of Beverly Highland.

     "Thank you, Simon," she said. "But I have work to do."

     "Always work, Beverly," he said. "I have known you for over two years, and I have never seen you do anything but work. It's not good," he added softly.

     His nearness, the sense of his strength reaching out to her, made Beverly think of the elusive something that Simon Jung always seemed to remind her of—the half-remembered melody, a perfume from long ago. And now, suddenly, for the first time, she realized what it was. Simon Jung reminded her of love.

     "Please," she said with a smile. "Go downstairs, enjoy the company, make sure everyone has a good time."

     He started to say something, then turned and headed for the door. "By the way," he said, "Ricardo Cadiz telephoned a while ago. He's had to cancel his reservation. An emergency came up, he said."

     Ricardo Cadiz was the Argentine novelist who had recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. Beverly had been looking forward to meeting him. "The bungalow will go empty then?" she said. Cadiz had reserved it for two weeks.

     "Fortunately we received a fax a while ago from Australia, someone wishing to stay with us as soon as possible."

     "Australia?"

     "A Miss Philippa Roberts."

     Beverly searched her memory. "That name sounds familiar."

     "She owns Starlite Industries. She and her party will be arriving in four days. They said that they will be pleased to have the bungalow."

     After Simon left, Beverly walked around her office. A model of the resort stood in the center of the room, measuring six feet by five and resting on a large mahogany table. The artist who had rendered the model had put special care into making it as near an exact replica of the real resort as he could, right down to the alpine terrain, the gullies and gorges that cut into the mountain, the miniature pine trees, and even a few bighorn sheep to indicate where the Star's property abutted the border of Mount San Jacinto Wilderness State Park, where the endangered sheep were protected.

     Scattered over the many acres were additional guest residences: three large bungalows, each with two bedrooms, full kitchen, and private
swimming pool protected by a wall; then the cottages with hot tubs and private gardens; farther out were the cabins with wood-burning fireplaces and clearings shielded by pine trees. Little winding paths crisscrossed the grounds for guests to follow by golf cart or on foot; green lawns were carefully plotted out, with fountains and private places with stone benches. There were two large swimming pools, tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course laid out in such a way that a total of twenty-seven holes could be played, a driving range, and a ski lift to four runs of varying degrees of difficulty. The health club complex was outfitted with separate men's and women's gyms, saunas, lap pools, indoor running tracks, and the exclusive members-only Starlite salon.

     And finally there was the Castle, overlooking Coachella Valley, from where, on clear days, one could see all the way across the desert into Arizona.

     Although people came to Star's for the seclusion, the luxury of the place (many arrived with scripts to read and study, contracts to pore over, secret liaisons to enjoy), many also came for the beauty and the history. There wasn't a room in Star's, a wall, a piece of furniture, that did not vibrate with the legends of filmdom's colorful past. People wanted to see where Dexter Bryant Ramsey had been murdered; they wanted to see the two-thousand-square-foot closet where Marion Star had kept her thousands of gowns and costumes; they came to "ooh" and "aah" over the stairway bannister down which a drunken John Barrymore was supposed to have come sliding one night. Even Beverly's office housed an interesting bit of history—a polished medieval suit of armor. The story went that in 1932, when Marion was holding one of her parties and a game of hide-and-seek was in progress, a young Gary Cooper had decided to hide in that suit of armor but had gotten stuck inside and hadn't been found for hours. Whether such tales were truth or legend, it didn't matter; it was the
idea
of Star's that drew many people here.

     When she heard someone pass by in the hallway, humming a Christmas carol, Beverly was suddenly reminded of her aloneness. She had no husband, no children, no family. Just a lifetime of painful memories. Had it been worth it, she wondered, all those sacrifices, just to seek revenge on Danny Mackay? If only she could find her twin sister, then perhaps it might
have all been worth it. She wouldn't be so lonely then, knowing that at least she had family somewhere.

     She had tried to find her sister, hiring a private investigator who had spent years following false trails. After determining that her sister had been adopted by a family named Singleton and raised as Christine, the investigator had lost her trail. The trail had ended there, and Beverly had never found her. And so the final, hard truth was that, despite her immense wealth, Beverly Burgess felt very much alone.

     She went to the silver tea service that had been brought up earlier and poured herself a cup of Earl Grey, adding a touch of honey. There was a plate of Italian cookies with the service, Amaretti di Saronno, one of Beverly's weaknesses. The Star's dessert chef was a master at whipping the sugar, egg whites, and apricot kernels into perfect, crisp, light-as-air biscuits, and Beverly, who assiduously watched her weight, allowed herself to indulge in them now and then.

     As she bit into one of the astonishingly sweet cookies and followed it with a sip of the exotic-flavored tea, her thoughts went back to the book on her desk.

     Why was Otis Quinn coming here? Did he know she was Beverly Highland? Had he some proof? Did he plan to expose her? Or was he coming for some other reason altogether, so that she should be careful not to do anything to put him on the scent? Star's attracted lots of people who were titillating; perhaps he was after another story now that his book about Butterfly had been published. Paparazzi were always trying to sneak in, to snap pictures of a princess, a drug-troubled playboy, an adulterous movie star. But Beverly's tight security system was constantly on the alert to protect her guests; it had even worked well the time Robin Leach had come to do a spot for "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Beverly had permitted no pictures to be taken of guests, only the resort grounds and the fabled Castle where the sensational murder had taken place.

     Perhaps that was all Quinn wanted. Maybe he would just come to see the bathroom where the murder took place, or the infamous bedroom where Marion Star had supposedly entertained the entire USC football team one weekend. Perhaps it was the haunting legend that was bringing him here;
ghosts made good copy. Or maybe he just wanted a glimpse inside the retreat of the super rich and super famous, to see how they lived and played. Possibly his visit here had nothing to do with
Butterfly Exposed
or his claim that Beverly Highland was still alive.

     As Beverly watched the snow fall and obliterate the lights of Palm Springs far below, she felt her old courage and fighting spirit rise up. No matter how determined Quinn might be to uncover people's secrets, she was more determined to protect them. She was prepared to fight him at all costs. No one was going to do an expose at, or about, Star's.

     And she wasn't afraid of Otis Quinn. She wasn't afraid of any man. Once, long ago, there had been a man whom she had feared. But he was dead. Danny Mackay was dead; she was safe. And she need never be afraid of him, of any man, ever again.

D
ANNY
M
C
K
AY WAS DEAD.

     Dead, dead, dead.

     And that was exactly how Danny liked it. He had even come around to thinking that being dead was better than being alive.

     "I tell you, Bon," he said to his old friend, Bonner Purvis, who was sitting by the window looking out at the Malibu night, "there's a lot more advantages to being dead than I expected. For instance, I can commit any crimes I want, as many as I want, and no one would consider me as a suspect."

     Danny stood before the mirror with no shirt on, studying himself, turning this way and that, flexing his muscles. Months of intensive training had gotten him back into shape—better shape even, he thought, than before he had died. Heck, he looked like a man half his age.

     Of course it hadn't been easy, reclaiming his former strength. When he had regained consciousness in that old clapboard house in San Antonio over three years ago, he had been told that he had been in a coma for four months. There had been some kind of brain damage, Bonner had explained.
Something had gone wrong with his faked suicide in his cell in the Los Angeles County Jail; Danny really
had
died, or almost. So when he finally woke up, to find Bonner anxiously staring down at him, Danny had found himself trapped in a prison of atrophied muscles and wasted flesh. The road back to health had been long and difficult. Many times Danny had almost wanted to give up, when his speech failed him, or his sight blurred, or any number of symptoms randomly struck, reminding him of the injury that had been done to his cerebral arteries.

     But finally Danny had had help. A book called
Butterfly Exposed
had come on the scene, and as soon as he read it, a surge of fierce, new determination had flooded his weakened body.

     "You know, Bon," Danny said to his friend, "that Quinn guy isn't so dumb. Listen to this." He picked up the dog-eared book and opened to a page he had almost memorized. "'
It is this journalist's theory that Danny Mackay and Beverly Highland had in fact known each other secretly for many years, that their histories had gone back far enough to a point where they were either friends, business partners, or possibly even lovers, and that it was something in that mutually shared distant past that had caused Beverly Highland to lay out a complex and brilliant plan of revenge against the unwitting Mackay.
'"

     Danny laughed and tossed the book aside. "Quinn reckons I done her wrong, as the song goes. He's a regular rocket scientist, that one."

     He walked away from the mirror and went into the next room to look out a smaller window. Pushing the curtain aside, he surveyed the house next door. There were no lights on inside, no car in the driveway. Otis Quinn had not yet come home.

     "Boy hidey, Bonner," Danny said, lapsing into the West Texas speech of his youth, as he always did when he felt good, "it's funny how fate works, ain't it?" He picked up an electric blue silk shirt off the bed and slowly put it on, savoring the feel of the material against his skin. There had been a moment three and a half years ago when for a split second Danny had thought he was never going to feel anything ever again. "I mean," he said as he did up the pearl buttons, "there I was, planning my own fake death and thinking all the while that the bitch had been killed when her car went over the cliff, and
now, over three years later, I discover that she faked her death, too! I should have expected it. I wouldn't put it past the bitch to pull a stunt like that. We both had the same idea."

     His face suddenly darkened. "Except that her faked death didn't damn near kill her as mine almost did."

     He laughed again and ran his hands over the silk. The shirt had cost two hundred dollars; Danny had had it custom made.

     "I tell you, Bon, when I saw that Quinn guy on TV, saying as how he thought Beverly Highland was still alive, and that he had proof..." He looped an alligator belt through his pants—no fruity Wall Street suspenders for Danny, no matter how trendy they were. "Well, you were there, Bon. You saw how wild it made me. To think that she's still alive! Of course she is! Once Quinn said it and I got to thinking about it, I realized what a fool I'd been, just like the rest of the world, thinking she had really gone into the drink in that flashy car of hers."