The Bequest (21 page)

Teri stood in
front of the smaller closet in her bedroom, her mind a
blank. She felt as if she had just awakened from a nightmare, not sure what
the dream had been about, but only that it had been traumatic. She
couldn’t even remember what she was doing in front of the closet or how
she had gotten there. Although the police had left her with a very movielike “don’t leave town,” she knew that she had to get away. She had run
from her problems before, but would that work now?

As her thoughts returned, they took a turn for the melodramatic.
Phrases like “dark forces” took root. Sure, she was an actress who made
her living off of drama, but there was no question that dark forces had
been set in motion against her. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean
they’re not out to get you, and just because you’re melodramatic doesn’t
mean someone doesn’t want you dead.

And speaking of paranoid, Mike hadn’t been much support. He had
also been a little too quick, a little too glib, in coming to the defense of
Doug Bozarth. What did they really know about him, anyway? Nothing,
that’s what. He was almost a non-entity as far as the Internet was
concerned. How was that possible in today’s age, where “Google” had
become a verb and one’s clout was measured by how many “hits” you got
when your name was Googled. But not Doug Bozarth. He was just an
anonymous billionaire who showed up out of the ether, checkbook in
hand, and begged to foot the bill for the movie.

She wasn’t surprised that Bob had tethered himself to Bozarth, and
she probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Mike had, as well. She
knew how important money and success were to him, things she had
provided over the years until her fall from grace. She had been naïve
enough to think he stuck by her, after a shaky start, because he believed in
her and wanted to nurture her back to the top. Now, though, she wasn’t
so sure. His alliances seemed to run deeper with Bob Keene and Doug
Bozarth than with her. So deep, in fact, that his ability to question and to
think critically seemed to have vacated the premises, pushed out by blind
faith in the promise of wealth and prestige from strangers.

Teri pulled a variety of suitcases from the closet and scattered them
across the floor.
God, who needed this many?
Most of them had been gifts from productions she had been on and at
least one full set came from an ad for a national brand she had done. They
nearly filled this closet, adjacent to her regular closet, added for no other
reason than to store things she didn’t need, like her suitcase collection.
But behind all those bags was the one she was looking for. The battered
vinyl bag of faded green, its zipper discolored but still workable, albeit
prone to hang-ups. The one that she filled with all her worldly belongings
nearly twenty years ago when she had thrown it in the bed of a battered
Ford F-150 pick-up truck in the middle of the night, then pushed the truck
down the driveway until it was far enough from the house that she thought
she could start it without being heard inside. Back when she left Bandera,
Texas, behind for a shot at fame and fortune in Tinseltown.
As she had all those years before, she filled the bag with essentials,
then lugged it to her SUV and tossed it in the back. With no need for
silence, no eyes or ears inside to avoid, she got behind the wheel and
turned the key. The Highlander started instantly, unlike the pick-up truck
that had required her to pop the clutch as it rolled downhill in the
driveway. She pulled out of her driveway and headed for points east.

Police and paramedics dominated the scene outside the Century City
office building that housed TAA. A crowd of on-lookers gathered on the
sidewalks on both sides of the street, trying to get a glimpse of the body,
or at least of some blood. There was curiosity from late arrivals, who
wondered whether this was just another scene being shot for a movie.

When Mike Capalletti turned off of Santa Monica Boulevard onto
Century Park West, his first thought as he saw the crowd that had
gathered was the same as the question from the onlookers. Was someone
shooting a movie? Not uncommon in Los Angeles, and certainly not
uncommon outside
of
his
office
building.
He
quickly
dismissed
the
thought. If someone was shooting, he would have known it. Permits had
to be issued, permissions from building owners obtained, and notices
would have been sent to the building’s tenants advising them. After all,
with the demands of movie-making for controlled silence and orchestrated
traffic, it was a standard protocol to advise tenants so they could schedule
their comings and goings accordingly. It could be a nuisance at times, but
it was one most gladly accommodated. After all, it was the movie industry
that put food on the table—and bought luxury cars and summer homes,
and provided seven figure incomes.

He pulled into the building’s parking garage, descended to his floor,
and parked in his assigned spot. Ownership of a coveted parking space was
just one more perk of being an up-and-comer at Hollywood’s most
powerful talent agency. He rode the elevator to the ground floor then
punched in Teri’s number on his cell phone as he exited. He hadn’t liked
the way things had been when he left. Teri wasn’t thinking straight, not
that she could be blamed. No one had ever tried to kill him even once
before, much less twice. Still, now was not the time to make waves. The
only wave that mattered was the tsunami of publicity that they would all
ride to a smash box office weekend. Teri needed to tap the brakes, take a
deep breath, and relax.

Straight to voicemail, just like every other call he had made since
leaving her house. Well, fine. If that’s the way she wanted it, he would
wait her out. Sooner or later, she’d call him. She always did. And with
Mona in the hospital, she had no one else to call.

As he headed for the bank of elevators that serviced the agency’s
floor, his attention was drawn outside to the gathering crowd. Just what in
the hell was going on out there? He veered to the revolving doors and
pushed his way outside. Almost subconsciously, he tried Teri’s number
again as he forced his way through the crowd, as if he had a God-given
right to move to the front. A man wearing a pink polo shirt took offense,
refusing to move as Mike pushed on his shoulder. With his elbow, Mike
added an extra
oomph
to one last shove that did the trick. The man turned
and glared at Mike, who ignored him, just as his call went to voicemail.

“Damn it, Teri,” he said as he hung up and tucked the phone in his
coat pocket.
Nearly at the front of the crowd now, he got his first glimpse of
blood in the street and the body of a man, lying on his back on a gurney.
Visible only from the waist down, there was still something oddly familiar
about the legs.
And the shoes. Definitely something familiar about those shoes. One
shoe still on a foot, the other shoe about four feet away, on its side, as if
the man had been knocked clean out of it. It wasn’t the maker of the shoe
that grabbed Mike’s attention. Designer shoes were a dime a dozen in this
part of town. There were, however, two significant things about the
shoes. One was the extraordinarily small size for a man’s shoe. The other
was the way the sole, particularly the heel, appeared to be worn on the
outside, as if the wearer were unusually bow-legged, putting unnatural
stress on the outer edges with each step. Mike knew a man with small feet
and bowed legs.
He shouldered his way the final few steps to the front of the crowd,
panic rising inside as he got a full view of the body. He dropped to his
knees on the curb, afraid he was going to vomit. There was so much
blood. And where Bob’s head should have been was a flattened lump,
covered with a towel or some kind of cloth, as if hiding something horrible
from view. He saw bits of bone chips and oozing gray matter around the
edges of the cloth.
A cop glanced his way, then started over, obviously prepared to shoo
him back into the crowd. But something about Mike’s apparent agony—
his ashen complexion, the almost inaudible keening sound that emanated
from deep in his throat—must have stopped him.
“Sir,” the cop said. “I need you to stand back.”
Mike heard the jumble of words but couldn’t make them out. The
cop’s voice sounded like so much white noise against the backdrop of the
murmuring crowd.
“Sir? Sir?”
Mike felt a hand on his shoulder shake him, gently at first, then
rougher. He managed to tear his eyes away from the body in the street and
focus on the cop. The man was young, couldn’t have been more than
twenty-four or twenty-five.
“Sir, do you think you know this man?” the cop asked.
“That’s Bob Keene.” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.
“You’re sure?”
“Those are his glasses,” Mike said, as he pointed to the broken frames
lying next to the curb. “And I bought that tie for him in Scotland.”
“He works here?”
“He’s the head of our agency.” Mike looked at the body again, as
paramedics lifted the gurney and
slid it into
the back of a
waiting
ambulance.
“Is he going to be okay?” Mike asked. But even as he asked the
question, he knew how stupid it must have sounded. Bob’s head had been
crushed and covered. You didn’t cover the faces of the injured; only of the
dead.
The dead! God Almighty!
“What happened?” Mike asked.
“He stepped right out in front of a delivery truck. The witnesses said
it looked like he did it on purpose. Do you know why he might have done
that?”
“Suicide?”
The cop shrugged.
Suicide didn’t make sense. Bob stood to make a lot of money with
the release of
The Precipice.
They all did. What made more sense was
another murder attempt. Or, in this case, completed murder.
“Mike!”
A familiar voice, yet out of place. Mike turned and scanned the
crowd. He could make out faces of fellow workers from TAA, a few
assistants, one agent. Even one of the mail room guys. They were all
looking at him, but none gave any sign that they had spoken to him, or
even cared to.
“Mike!”
He turned to his right. Doug Bozarth stood next to a police cruiser,
talking to an officer who took notes on a pad. Bozarth looked directly at
Mike as he spoke. He glanced back at the cop and nodded. The cop flipped
his notepad shut and excused himself. Bozarth headed toward Mike.
What the hell was Bozarth doing here? And how did he get here so fast?

This couldn’t have happened all that long ago. Nobody had even
called Mike yet to report the death, which surely would have been done
by now if the body had been identified. If the police had checked for ID in
Bob’s pockets and seen the ubiquitous business cards, they would have
contacted the office. But the officer who spoke to Mike hadn’t known who
the victim was.

Almost as if cued by the thought, Mike felt the buzz of his cell phone
vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the read-out. Sure
enough, it was his assistant. Mike answered.

“Yeah.”
“Mr. Capalletti, it’s about Mr. Keene.”
“I know all about it.” Then he hung up, just as Bozarth reached him.
“Helluva thing,” Bozarth said.
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“You okay? You don’t look so good.”
“They said it looked like suicide. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe it was a conscience attack.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Mike asked.
“How’s Teri?”
Mike tried to process the
non sequiter
. Bozarth was trying to tell him

something, to send a message, but Mike was having trouble connecting the
dots of the conversation. Then it kicked in, like a mule’s kick.
“Are you saying Bob had something to do with trying to kill Teri?”
Doug Bozarth, the inscrutable man with the textbook case of poise,
appeared to blanch. For a brief second, his eyebrows arched and his eyes
widened. Mike thought he detected a twitch at the corner of his lips. The
reaction might have
gone
completely
unnoticed had Mike
not been
focusing so intently on Bozarth’s face. He tried to process what it was that
had caused the reaction. It wasn’t the news about Teri. After all, he had
asked about her. How he knew, Mike wasn’t sure. Mike hadn’t called
Bozarth to tell him, and he felt sure Teri hadn’t. Yet Bozarth knew.
Then it hit Mike: the word that precipitated the response was Mike’s
use of the word “trying.” As in “had something to do with
trying
to kill
Teri.” Not “had something to do with
killing
Teri.” Bozarth had expected
Mike to tell him that Teri had been killed, which meant he knew all there
was to know about the gunshots from the hills. Which meant he had
something to do with putting the shooter on that hill in the first place.
“Is she okay?” Bozarth asked.
The
tone
of his voice
indicated
uncertainty, which nailed down the certainty for Mike. Teri had been right
about Bozarth all along.
“She’s fine. Pretty shaken, but otherwise okay.”
“Where is she?”
Mike hesitated, unusual for him. Lies usually formed instantly and
escaped his lips without delay, without thought. He was, after all, a lawyer
and an agent. “She went with the cops.”
“Why aren’t you with her?”
Mike searched for another lie but couldn’t find one.
“She shouldn’t be talking to the cops without her lawyer present,”
Bozarth said. “Why didn’t you go with her?”
“I was following them when I got the call about Bob, so I came here.”
Bozarth scrutinized Mike’s face, as if scanning for truth. Then he
abruptly turned and walked into the crowd, pulling his cell phone from his
pocket as he walked. When Bozarth put the phone to his ear, Mike dashed
through the crowd, back into the building. He had his own phone out and
repeatedly hit Teri’s speed dial number as he waited for the elevators to
the parking garage. It wouldn’t take long for Bozarth to find out that he
had been lying and that Teri was not with the police. That she was maybe,
in fact, still at home. Would he try again? He had to warn her.
“Come on, Teri,” he said as the phone rang. “Pick up. Pick up, pick
up, pick up.”
The bell sounded, the doors opened, and he stepped inside.