The Stars Trilogy (69 page)

“Huh?”

“He’s been asking me to represent him and I haven’t accepted yet. I can ask him to be your escort.”

“Wait...slow down, Kels. This is the Cannes. Everybody will be there. All the big names!”

“Yup, including you, my dear. Oh, I’m gonna make you a superstar!”

“You’re scaring me. I don’t want to be a superstar. I just want to be an actress with a decent role, however tiny, in a decent movie.”

“Oh no, no no, my dear! A superstar with a string of awards! We will work hard on that!”

Oh Lord! Not even in her wildest dreams had she envisioned herself as a famous Hollywood actress. She just wanted to be with Dare, share his world so that she won’t get left out. She just wanted to do something for herself while he did his own gig so as not to feel like a doormat at home while he was surrounded by beautiful, successful women in Hollywood. The books said that a couple must share common interests for the relationship to last long. A woman must learn to enjoy her man’s interests, share his entertainment. She had no plans of really making a career out of being an actress. But Kelsey had other ideas, big ones, and she was getting overwhelmed. Could she actually handle the demands of being a bona fide Hollywood actress?

She’d have a few months before her pregnancy started showing. She’d take advantage of that to start her acting career. She had to tell her family, too. Her father and brother would surely disagree. She had a VP seat waiting for her at their TV Network. To top all that, Dare was still married and she was carrying his child. Now THIS, her parents won’t ever live down. Gosh, what to do?

Her mother called to inform her the other day that she’d be visiting her soon. She hoped Dare’s divorce would be final by then so she could tell her mother some good news. Being with a married man even if he was already in the process of divorcing his current wife made no difference to her folks. Dare was still married and it was a big sin to be with a married man, said her Mom who was a devout Catholic. Now, telling her Mom that she was pregnant would be too much for her to take, she knew.

She and Kelsey were having coffee at an outdoor cafe when Dare called.

“Why didn’t you wake me up before you left?” He sounded peeved.

“And why would I do that? You were still sleeping like a log.”

“I could have come with you.”

“I’m fine. Wanna talk to Kelsey?”

“No. What time are you coming home?”

“In a while. I have work to do today.”

“Work?”

“Kelsey will take me to a studio to shoot my portfolio. Before that, we’d go hunting for outfits.”

He sighed. “I haven’t seen you today.”

“I’ll see you in a while. Okay, bye.”

She hung up.

Dare stared at his phone. Did she just hang up on him?

He was about to call her back when Cruz called.

“Dare, can you come over to your place? I need to show you something.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Just now. I took the first flight out of Thailand.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No. Code Black.”

“The day before you arrived in Phuket at around dawn, the CCTV cameras within the entire property stopped rolling for a good thirty minutes. Then they resumed.”

“This tells us nothing. You questioned everyone in the villa, right? Nothing turned up?”

“I went to check the Phuket airport manifesto. And I found this.”

He stared at the name Cruz pointed in the manifesto. A very nondescript name. John James. “Who is he?”

“I had all the people who arrived in the Phuket airport two to three days before your arrival checked.”

“That’s a lot of work, man.”

“I hardly do anything for you. My real expertise doesn’t get utilized driving you around LA.”

“Go on.”

“Everyone checked out. Most were frequent tourists in Phuket. Except John James. It was his first time to go there. He arrived and left on the same day.”

“And...?”

“So, I latched on this guy. I went to the immigration section and had his picture extracted from the files. “This is him.” Cruz flipped up a blown up photograph of a bearded John James.

He stared at it for a full minute.

“It’s Morgan,” he said, recognizing the familiar face despite the obvious effort to disguise it.

Morgan Walsh, one of his trusted men. He had met Morgan, a mechanical engineer during his first ever foray into the gas exploration business five years ago. They had become good friends. He introduced him to Ulysses in the Texas project and he had been working there since two years ago. “What was he doing in Phuket?”

Cruz shrugged. “You tell me.”

He fell silent.

“Is there any significant thing that happened in Texas before you flew to Thailand?”

He hadn’t told Cruz about that yet. His Sphinx Energy involvement was something he kept at a minimum disclosure.  He didn’t want to be identified with it and be pegged as the poster boy for Sphinx who got under fire from local environmental advocates who were opposing the drilling in that county. So he kept most information about the drilling activities, even from Cruz. Cruz only knew the tip of the iceberg. But it seemed necessary to tell him everything now.

“A week or so before we took off for Thailand,  Morg called me. He said there was a huge hit, a deep well.”

“How huge?”

“It could jump up the project’s worth to five billion dollars.”

“That’s a whole lotta money, Dare,” Cruz pointed out simply but his eyes said something more.

“What are you saying?”

“That kind of money could easily motivate someone to have you killed.”

“But...how?”

Cruz just looked at him.

“What...you mean Morg? No!”

“Don’t discount any possibilities.”

“No! He’s my friend!”

“Didn’t Brutus kill his good friend Caesar?”

He suddenly went weak at the knees. The new info staggered him. “But how can he get hold of my money? He’s just an engineer!” he argued.

“Think, man. Who stands to benefit the most from that money if you were dead?”

He fell silent. His mind refused to accept what Cruz was telling him. But he had to face this. “Uly,” he finally said.

Cruz nodded.

“He alone will benefit. In my behalf, he can be the executor of all my shares at Sphinx.”

“My theory is, Morgan is his man. Their plan was to kill you. So Morgan sneaked into Thailand under a false identity to make sure it happens. He’s an engineer and he knows machines. He flies his own plane, too. If they had succeeded and your body was found immediately, that would have been easy for Uly to seize control of your shares since he’s your business partner.”

He nodded.

“But if your body didn’t turn up, you would be proclaimed missing and although Uly cannot really seize your assets as he’d have to wait six years for you to be legally declared dead, he can still negotiate in your behalf, like sell it and make a lot of underhanded profit out of it.”

“That’s plausible.”

“But you turned up alive.”

“He’s convincing me to sell our entire shares to Devereaux Oil. That was what we were talking about last night at the Mondrian.”

“I know. I had you bugged.”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry, just for that meeting.”

“Don’t bug me when I’m with Celine, I’m warning you.”

“Hey, that’s foul. I won’t listen to that.”

“Where’d you put the bug?”

“In your phone. Rogan stuck it there when you weren’t looking. ”

He picked up his phone from the table and scrutinized it. “Where is it?”

Cruz removed the phone’s battery and pointed to a very small, round, thin, transparent object stuck near the SIM card. “There.”

He wouldn’t have noticed it if had been sticking there forever. The thing was barely noticeable. “That’s a bug?”

“It can pick up all sounds clearly from a ten-meter radius.”

“Amazing. From now on, tell me where you put the bug, okay?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Anyway, going back to Morgan, he called me up the day they made the hit. He could have kept it to himself, right? I didn’t have to know about it since they were already planning my demise?”

“I think they haven’t come into an alliance before the hit. Morgan was still your man that day. Well, not anymore now.”

He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his entire body recoiling at the very idea. “I can’t believe this...I can’t....Not Morgan. Uly...we just talked yesterday!”

“Obviously, his plan didn’t work the first time, so you gotta be careful from now on.”

His mind raced. “How long have you suspected this?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t want to cause you unnecessary worries, and you might unintentionally alarm the suspects. We don’t want that. We have to catch them while they’re at it. Don’t worry, I already put all our men on full alert even when I was in Thailand. You actually have six men following you discreetly these past days.”

“No wonder Rogan looked always ready to throw up.”

“The poor guy’s been anticipating a bullet anytime.”

“Wait, what about Celine?”

“Carlos knows. The boys have been standing guard outside her place 24/7 since you’re practically cohabiting with her there.”

He exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thank you.” He shook his head. “This is really bad, isn’t it?”

Cruz nodded, his eyes really serious. “The LAPD and the FBI are on it already. We have to move discreetly, Dare.”

“The Feds?”

“Uly is a huge fish involved in the oil and gas industry. This case would affect certain negotiations he has going with other big companies co-owned by the government. With the amount of money involved, they deemed it a matter of national security if this blows sky high and Uly gets arrested. Stocks will plummet.”

Shit. It was becoming worse than he first thought.

“Does the FBI share your theory?”

“Yes. Uly is Russian by birth, after all.”

“Is there any chance you’re mistaken?”

“I could be. It’s just a theory with circumstantial evidence supporting it. We have to catch him in the act. He may attempt another time. Morgan is being watched as we speak, and Uly, too. One of them will eventually screw up.”

He stood up. “I gotta go home.”

“This is your home.”

“I mean to Celine.”

“Alright, stay cool but alert. Keep your phone open. I’ll be right behind you.”

“We have to be in France for the Cannes Film Festival next week. I’m a member of the jury. I have to be there. Do you think it’s safe to leave the country?”

“We can maintain safety now that we know who to watch out for. I’ll have the jet thoroughly checked before takeoff. I’ll bring my best men with us and also contact my friends in France for back-up. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks, man.”

TMZ definitely scored a scoop on this one.

Celine was destroyed.

Dare’s limousine was seen in a video footage entering and leaving Alana’s mansion last night. TMZ’s usual obnoxious way of reporting gossip really fired up her already steaming green-eyed monster.

“Maybe it was nothing, my dear,” Kelsey said in a consoling tone, patting her hand.

“You’re not born yesterday, Kels and that was your boss there! You more than anybody else know him!”

“Yes, yes...but in this case, I don’t really know, Celine.”

Her tears fell.

“Now, now, we’re on our way to the studio. Bruce has labored on your face and hair for three hours! Don’t cry, my dear, please!” Kelsey said in a panic.

She didn’t really care right now that Bruce Grayson, make-up artist to the super-celebs worked on her face to the tune of three grand!

“He was seeing his ex-wife behind my back!” she sobbed. After seeing him with Alana at THE Blvd the other day and now this! It was just too much.

“But we don’t really know why. Maybe it was just for business, you know, to talk about the film? You knew Alana’s going to be in Dare’s directorial movie, right? I told you about this.”

“At close to midnight?! I’m not stupid, Kels!”

“You have to talk to him first before you make any conclusions, my dear.”

“Do you think he’s cheating?”

Kelsey gave her a horrified look. “With that bitch? Oh hell, no! Anybody else but her!”

“Kels! I’m serious!”

“So am I.” Kelsey dabbed her face carefully with a tissue. “Now, don’t cry. Nigel will be pissed when he sees you. I requested his services for this photo shoot and he agreed because he’s been one of Dare’s official photographers for years. He’s a very busy guy and only extended his stay here in LA for a day to accommodate you. We don’t wanna waste his precious time, do we? Stop crying now.”

She sniffled, trying to control her emotions. “Bruce used waterproof make-up, don’t worry.”

“Still we want you to look perfect today. Your eyes will turn red if you continue crying.”

“There’s Photoshop.”

“Don’t ever say that to Nigel Barker, you silly girl! He will never speak to you again.”

“Like I care.”

“You’re already a brat. I can imagine myself  having more gray hairs courtesy of you.”

“You don’t have a single gray hair.”

“Thanks to the Sally Hershberger salon, I have Jennifer Aniston’s exact blonde shades and cut. Believe me, it’s all white underneath all those colors.”

She gave a short laugh. “I love you, Kels.”

“I love you, too. I don’t know why. All of Dare’s ex-bitches hated me like the mother-of-all plagues and the feeling was quite mutual, by the way. But you...you’re quite different.”

“Maybe because I really, really do love him? Him and nothing else?”

Kelsey stared in her eyes. “Now...hold that thought the entire day. If you really, really love him, give him the benefit of the doubt. Now, gimme a smile.”

She gave Kelsey a tearful smile.

“That’s better.” Kelsey straightened in her seat.

“Carlos, turn the fucking TV off.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Dare had been calling Celine but she was not answering her phone. They didn’t see each other this morning as he had to leave in a hurry to see Cruz. When he got back to her place, she had already left again.

He called Kelsey. “Where are you, guys?”