Sweetie's Diamonds (51 page)

She snaked through the slender window and dropped to the floor inside.
 
Wherever she was, it was pitch dark.
 
She lay there a moment to allow her eyes to get used to the lighting and eventually she could make out the interior of a storage room.
 
She had barely missed falling on top of a mop bucket.
 
Dana stood and went to the door.
 
She cracked it open and looked out into the warehouse.
 

She saw nothing but boxes.
 
She left the storage room and crept quietly through the stacks of product until she got to the center, open area of the building.
 

Her heart skipped a beat.

There were bodies.
 
Dead, bloody bodies.
 

Dana scanned the room to make sure there wasn't anyone still alive.
 
Then she darted out to take a closer look.

Eduardo was on his back, his Colt .45 lying nearby.
 
His chest was ripped full of holes.
 
Three of his henchmen were dead as well, draped over tables and chairs like rag dolls.
 
Close to Eduardo was the body of a black man whom she didn't recognize.
 
He, too, had been shot repeatedly.
 
Further away, three more corpses were strewn, black men, very bloody, very grotesque.
 

A large open briefcase sat on top of a card table that had been set up near where Eduardo lay.
 
The case was full of the biggest, most beautiful sparkling diamonds Dana had ever seen.
 

Angela was nowhere in sight.

“Sweetie?” she called.

Then she noticed the trail of blood leading off between the stacks of boxes.
 
Dana carefully followed it to the warehouse office, and there she found Angela lying in a pool of blood.
 
She had somehow sustained a gunshot wound in the head, crawled to the office, and phoned Dana from there before collapsing.
 

Dana examined her and listened to the girl's chest.
 
The heart was beating!
 
Sweetie was breathing!
 

They had to get out of there.
 
Valentine and his people would surely come soon.
 
Maybe the police, too.
 
Dana dragged Angela's body out of the office toward the loading dock.
 
Before taking her outside, though, Dana removed Angela's blouse, tore it, and laid it over the lip of the open incinerator.
 
Then she removed her own blue jeans and dropped them on the floor next to the furnace.
 
She also dropped her wallet next to the pants after retrieving her driver's license and what money she had.
 
Perhaps it would appear that both Angela and Dana Barnett had been thrown into the incinerator.
 
Dana had heard the rumors floating around Erotica Selecta that this is what had happened to some of the other actors who had gone missing.
 

Dana struggled with Angela's limp body, pulling it toward the roll-up steel door.
 
She wasn't sure how to operate it but she examined the controls, punched a button, and watched as the door rose slowly with a horrible grinding noise.
 
Dana glanced at the top of the tall opening and saw that the mechanism wobbled and appeared to be on the verge of collapsing.
 
No wonder it was so noisy…

Once the door was all the way up, she pulled Angela out onto the dock ramp and stood there for a moment to catch her breath.
  
“I'm gonna save you, Sweetie,” she said to the blonde, bloody girl lying in front of her.
 

Eventually she got a second wind and picked up Angela's body, carried her to the car, and laid her in the back seat of the Nova.
 
Dana went back inside the warehouse to make sure she hadn't left any other signs of her presence besides the torn clothes in front of the incinerator.
 
She then stood over the case of diamonds and carefully picked one up to examine it.
 
It glittered and shone like nothing she had seen before.
 

These belong to Sweetie
, she thought.
 
Without a second thought, she closed the briefcase, picked it up, and took Eduardo's Colt .45 from the floor.
 

And as fate would have it, the loading door mechanism came loose from the ceiling and fell directly on her head just as she was walking outside.

S
he wasn't sure how long she was out.
 
When she opened her eyes, she lay on the loading dock ramp, the night sky above her.
 
All was quiet.
 

Her head hurt like hell.
 

She sat up and the earth tilted.
 
She immediately felt nauseated, crawled to the side of the ramp and vomited.
 
After a few minutes, she was able to stand.
 

Where was she?

Oh, right.
 
The warehouse.
 
Sweetie was in the car.
 
Dana had been a bad girl and was hurt.
 
It was up to her, Diane, to see that her sister was taken care of.

Diamonds.
 
Sweetie's diamonds.

The briefcase was there on the ramp, where she had fallen.
 
So was Eduardo's gun.
 

What had happened?
 
Something had hit her on the head.
 

She touched the back of her hair and felt something wet and sticky.
 
She wiped her bloody hand on her bare leg.
 

Where were her pants?
 

She had done something with them but couldn't remember.
 

Best to get the hell out of there.
 

Diane took the gun and the briefcase full of gems, and then went down the ramp to her car.
 

The girl with the gunshot wound was in the backseat.

“Dana?” Diane said.
 
“Sweetie?”

She made sure her twin sister was still breathing by holding her finger under the unconscious woman's nose.
 

Have to get her to a hospital.
 
But not in LA.

Diane got behind the wheel and drove away from the scene that would haunt her in her nightmares for years to come.
 

She was going to save her sister this time.
 
Dana wasn't going to die.
 
Not this time.
 
She wouldn't be blamed for her sister's death this time.
 
No sir.
 

The drive to Nevada was a blur.
 
Somehow she got across the state line, driving into the desert, the sun appearing magically in the sky and brightening the rugged landscape.
 
All the while, brief flashes of memory shot in and out of her brain as she drove.

“I want to see the necklace, Sweetie…”

“You can't, it's mine!”

“Let me have it!”

“No!”

She found the small church by accident.
 
The white building with a cross on top of the roof was on the opposite side of the highway.
 
As she drove past, Diane noticed three nuns getting out of a car and walking inside.
 
Diane took the next exit, turned around, and got on the service road back to the building.
 
Nuns were nurses, weren't they?
 
They always were in the movies.

She carried Dana's body into the church and begged for the sisters to help them.
 
One of the women insisted on taking Dana to the hospital but Diane said that she and her sister had to remain anonymous.
 
No police.
 
No authorities.
 
Men were after them.
 
Men with guns wanted to kill them.
 
Surprisingly, the nuns took pity on her.

One of the sisters had an idea.
 
She had a colleague who ran a medical center in a small town not far away.
 
She would see that the two bloodied, blonde women would get medical care—no questions asked.
 

Diane stayed with the nuns for a month while Dana lay in intensive care.
 
Eventually she was told that nothing could be done for her sister.
 
Dana was in a coma.
 
Alive, but dead to the world.
 
Diane made arrangements for the nuns to keep Dana there until she made up her mind what to do.
 
She left Nevada and drove east, eventually winding up in Chicago, near where she and Dana had been born.
 

Diane missed her parents.
 
The only memory she had of her father was that he was a tall, lanky man with thick glasses and a bad heart.
 
He had died when she and her sister were three.
 
Or four.
 
She couldn't remember.

Her mother had died not long afterward.
 

Could she start anew in Illinois?
 

Diane made arrangements to transfer Dana to another quiet, clandestine convalescent center run by nuns, situated in central Illinois.
 
It was isolated, off the beaten path, far away from where the bad men might find her.
 

Diane would never let Dana die.
 
It was her promise to her sister.
 
She had let her die once but it wasn't going to happen a second time.
 
The diamonds would pay for her continued care.
 
That's the way it was going to work from then on.
 
Diane would start a new life, change her last name, go to school, and get a job.
 
Maybe even get married and have children.
 
She would leave the past behind her.

And never pull the plug on Sweetie, for someday she'd get well
…

S
omeone once said, “The truth shall set you free.”
 
This was certainly applicable to Diane.
 
Facing the facts about herself and her past was just the beginning of a long road to recovery from a mental illness she didn't realize she had.
 
As the story of that fateful night in the warehouse came out between hysterics and tears, Diane experienced a catharsis that left her trembling and exhausted.
 
Scotty Lewis helped her out of his office and offered to take her to the hospital but she refused to go.
 
She just wanted to go home and sleep for a day.
 

And that's what she did.
 

When she awoke, birds were chirping outside her window and the sun was shining brightly.
 
She looked at the clock and saw that it was 7:45.
 
In the morning?
 

She got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and then checked on David.
 
She looked in his room and saw that he was in bed, asleep.
 
Something would have to be done about his schoolwork but Diane didn't have the strength to deal with that now.
 
She had herself to think about first.
 
There was a lot to be done.

Diane went into the kitchen to make coffee.
 
There were messages on the answering machine so she listened to them one by one.
 
The first was from Scotty, who expressed concern for her wellbeing and asked that she call him when she could.
 
The second message was from Darren Marshall, the reporter who had successfully forced her to look into the mirror of her soul.
 
He, too, expressed concern for her and hoped that his revelations had not upset her too greatly.
 
He then added that he wanted to be the first to offer a sum of money for the rights to her story so that he could write a book.