You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (27 page)

My voice bounced off the grand marble staircase and echoed throughout the mansion. There was no response.

“He likes you, Stevie. He won’t mind if he finds you here.”

“He will mind the intrusion. He will.”

We started walking up the giant staircase. I squeezed her shoulder. “He’ll forgive you a lot faster than he’s going to forgive me.”

“For what?”

In case things went south with Penelope, of course. Every aspect of this goddamned mess pointed right back to her. “Remember, if Gary finds you here and he gets angry, cry. Actually, no matter what happens, I want you to cry, make those big puppy dog eyes, and then run as fast as you can.”

She gave me a thumbs-up.

The door to the media room was closed. I knocked on it, on the off-chance he was in there. No answer. I swung the door open and Stevie went in. Then I went back to the giant window that faced out toward the driveway and courtyard and waited.

Penelope’s white BMW pulled into the driveway of Gary’s estate and parked in the front courtyard area, near the fountain, exactly as I’d instructed Penelope to when we spoke. I watched as she got out and walked down the stone path that led around the house to the garden area. I watched her totter on her five-inch high sandals on the uneven stones and wondered why she didn’t keep a pair of flats in her car.

I’d left the large gate on the side of the house unlocked, but she’d still have to fiddle with opening it, which gave me the time to walk downstairs and wait for her in the outdoors living room. I turned on the fire in the freshly restocked cast concrete fire pit table and made myself comfortable on the sofa. She came through the grove of trees, clutching her thin, fashionable purse to her side. So, she didn’t come bearing the extra money she promised me. That’s okay, I wasn’t going to give her the photos. This way, no one was happy, which was fine.

“Do you have them?” she asked.

“There’s wine and beer if you need anything.”

“Just give them to me.”

“I have a question for you first.”

“Do you even have them?” she said.

I pulled out the well-worn envelope of proofs and slapped a couple on the edge of the table in front of her. She sat down on the sofa catty-cornered to me and looked at them. She stared at them, her eyes completely without feeling for what the girl in the pictures was doing. She might have been looking at ads for refrigerators.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Do you have the negatives?”

“For what happened to you.”

She wrinkled her nose at that, although there wasn’t too much wrinkle. Already using Botox, perhaps. “I’m fine.”

“Have you talked to someone? Some kind of psychiatrist?”

That question genuinely confused her. “Why?”

“Because what happened wasn’t normal. And neither is what you’re doing about it.”

She looked at me, a slight smile on her lips, and then she laughed. It was a weird, high-pitched laugh, completely out of character. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

“Let me guess. You’re blackmailing Ian Jack Reynolds.”

“I’m going to be a very big star. He can make me a movie star. And he will.”

Something was very wrong with Penelope. Something I couldn’t fix. She was just damaged enough that yes, just maybe, she could have murdered Colin for standing in her way.

“I have one question,” I repeated.

“I’ve paid. Give me the negatives.”

“I will. Tell me one thing first. When did you find out you didn’t have the right negatives before?”

“Why?”

“It’s a simple question. Did you find out before midnight, or after midnight?”

“Yeah, don’t answer that,” said a male voice behind me.

Fuck
.

I started to turn around.

“Slow down there,” said Vin Behar. Who was standing about five meters behind me. And holding a gun.

Hearing Vin Behar’s voice over the open phone line from the phone I’d stashed in the cushions of the sofa should be all the prompting Stevie would need to call the police. Because if she didn’t, the next ten minutes were about to get very, very difficult.

I turned back around to Penelope. “You invited Vin to join us? I thought you were close with his brother, Mike.”

Penelope simpered. “Mike said Vin would be better at handling this. So I told him to meet me here.”

There was only reason she would need Vin Behar with her: to do the dirty work.

“Let’s see your hands,” Behar said, closer now. “Come on, hold ’em up.”

I flopped my hands upwards. “So you own a gun.” Behar used guns—undoubtedly without serial numbers; hello, Las Vegas—and yet Colin hadn’t been shot.

“Vin, that’s kind of scary. Put it away.”

The older man’s hand didn’t move. “Give me the photos,” he said.

“Before midnight or after?” I asked Penelope.

She grunted. “The next morning. Mike had this viewer to look at them.”

The next morning. Penelope had sauntered away from Colin’s apartment, absolutely sure she was large and in charge, and the next morning discovered she’d been played. When it was too late for Penelope to do anything about it.

She hadn’t murdered Colin.

“Now you got it,” Behar said. “I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

“No, he’s not,” Penelope said.

“Shut up,” he said.

Penelope looked up at him, sharply. Perhaps that was her first clue that Behar wasn’t here to protect her. She thought he was on her side, but he wasn’t. When he said, “I’m not going to let you hurt her,” there was only one person he could mean. Of course.

“Kristin,” I said.

“Who’s Kristin?” Penelope asked.

“The person who murdered Colin,” I said.

“Where are the goddamned photos?” His voice was gravelly and his hand shook, just a little. I was right with my guess. Kristin had murdered Colin, and Behar had helped in whatever capacity he could.

A shaky gun hand is a scary sight. A guy who’s already party to one murder and might have nothing to lose is a scarier one.

A ball of energy swirled in my solar plexus. Nervous energy. Anticipation. And fear. Most of it was fear that something would go wrong and I was about to get hurt. I don’t enjoy pain, not even a little bit. Fear that I would get myself killed and leave Stevie alone. Fear that I would blow my one shot at getting out of this hellish mess. Fear that more than one of the three of us here needed to die. “They’re not here.”

Penelope shrieked with frustration. Should I tell her that we had much, much bigger problems on our hands? No. Let her find out the hard way.

“I’m deeply moved that you’re so chivalrous. Who knew down deep Vin Behar was such a romantic?”

“Shut up and give ’em,” he said.

His trigger finger was getting itchy.

So was mine.

Ten years ago, after we’d been in hiding for a year, I made Stevie a promise. Three promises, to be exact. Three things I would never do.

One: despite how badly we needed money, I would never get involved in illegal operations, like selling drugs.

Two: despite my penchant for using men to find places to live when we first moved anywhere, I wouldn’t turn pro at it.

And three: I would never ever kill someone again. No matter what the circumstances.

“
There is always a better way
,” she had said to me. “
Look at what it’s done to you
.”

But promises were made to be broken, and ten years of keeping my promises to her was not too shabby. That was ten years longer than I’d kept a promise to anyone else.

Right now, I could not hesitate. I could not bargain. It was going to be him or me, and right now my only goal was to be the one to walk away.

I shook my head slowly. “I won’t tell you where they are if you shoot me.”

“Yeah? Well, I can shoot her.” He swung the gun toward Penelope.

Which is when I grabbed the small fire pit shovel and hurled a scoopful of coals toward him.

He ducked and pointed the gun downward, which was all I could have hoped for with that maneuver. I leapt up before he could right himself, and I slammed my foot into the side of his knee at the same time I struck the underside of his nose. He grabbed me as he fell, pulling me after him. We seemed to fall in slow motion. Everything goes a lot slower when you’re in the middle of things. Even with Penelope screaming in the background.

“Stupid bitch!” he yelled.

I landed on top of him and took advantage of the moment to drive my elbow into his throat. I then took the fire pit shovel and jammed it into the wrist of the hand holding the gun, hard. Not hard enough, dammit: I didn’t cut the skin. But he let go of the gun.

The second I reared back, preparing to drive the shovel where it would do the most harm—his face—Behar roared up, pushing me off and to the side. He socked me pretty good in the stomach, which felt like a boulder smashed into me and got worse from there, spreading a flood of fire. Holy Olympus, that hurt. I spit up bile as he pulled me behind him and reached for the gun. I’d failed. I’d had my shot. And he was going to get his.

“Bitch,” he said.

The command “Freeze” from somewhere near the door into the house was quite easy to notice, despite the blood rushing through my ears. I froze.

Behar seemed not to hear it. He kept moving.

“Hey, idiot,” Detective Gruen said. “Freeze.”

Only then did Vin Behar look up.

I dropped the fire pit shovel and stayed mostly frozen, moving only enough to look back at the detective. Penelope was cowering behind him, safe from the Big Bad World.

As Gruen cuffed Behar, I sat up. The detective didn’t seem to be swinging two pairs of handcuffs, so maybe I was safe for now.

Penelope was standing off to the side, her jaw opening and closing, but no sounds came out. She had managed to scoop up the photographs and stick them back into the envelope, though. She was definitely focused on her number-one priority.

Four uniformed police officers ran into the yard. Gruen waved at Behar, telling them to take out the trash. Then Gruen looked at me. “You got anything you want to say?”

I shook my head. “My lawyer should be here soon. You’ll want to have a chat with Kristin Blake, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“She murdered Colin. She worked with us in Las Vegas. This bloke was helping her.”

The French door opened and Nathaniel walked out. “I made it here ahead of about four thousand cop cars. What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“Mr. Behar and I had a disagreement as to whether I should be alive or not.” I looked up at the detective. “How did you get here so fast?”

“Already on my way, and I got a call from your sister. You need a doctor?” Gruen asked.

I shook my head. I glanced up at Nathaniel and tilted my head toward Gruen.

“You were already on your way?” Nathaniel asked.

“Yeah, some friends of your client are in town.”

Ed and Fred, the feds. Why hadn’t they come with Gruen? I shook my head. This was a bad night.

“Where can I find Kristin Blake?” Gruen asked.

“I have her number in my phone. She teaches aerobics at the Medallion Health Club and Spa, and at night she dances,” I said.

“Exotic dancing?” Nathaniel said.

I nodded. “It’s amazingly good money. Honestly, if I had the sort of coordination required—”

“Where?” Gruen asked.

I looked at Nathaniel. When he nodded, I said, “The Canyon Jackal.”

After a moment’s pause, the detective said, “What?”

My nerves were shot, my stomach hurt like hell, and now I was drawing a blank on the name of the place. I never draw blanks. “Is that not a place? She said it was very upscale. The Canyon…some kind of animal.”

“The Canyon Coyote?” Nathaniel said.

I snapped my fingers. “That’s it!” I looked at him. “Please tell me you’ve heard of it because you have clients who work there.”

“I take the Fifth,” he said.

“Yeah, I know it,” Gruen said, as he took out his radio. Then he walked away.

“Men,” I muttered. “Are we all done here?”

“We need to talk,” Nathaniel said.

“We will,” I said. “Penelope?”

Penelope Gurevich, looking lost and alone and like a little girl, looked up at me. “What is it?”

I tilted my head off to the side. “I need to talk to you.”

The police officer who’d been standing with her fell into step alongside her.

I held up my hand. “Alone.”

Penelope stumbled, following me down the concrete path toward the pool area.

In the door of the cabana, I turned and looked at her. Her face was blue from the reflection of the underwater pool lights. “Don’t do what you’re going to do, Penelope. It’s a bad idea.”

“I deserve to get something for it,” she said.

I reached up to the edge of the overhanging canopy and wedged my fingers into the little slit I’d made in the fabric. My fingers hit the edge of the cellophane envelope and I pulled it out.

“Burn them. You have a good career.”

“What would you do?” she asked.

“Me?” I said. “I’d kill the son of a bitch so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.”

She tucked the package of negatives into her tiny purse. “You have your way, and I have mine.”

As I watched her walk away, I hoped I’d done the right thing. The photos most definitely belonged to her, after all. She’d paid the most heavily for them.

Nathaniel was waiting for me inside Gary’s house. Gary, I noticed, was at the top of the grand staircase, watching the goings-on downstairs.

“I got a call,” Nathaniel said.

“Let me guess from whom.”

“He requests the pleasure of your company at the Peninsula Hotel.”

I nodded. “If what the good detective Gruen just told me is true, then yes, I very definitely agree I should be there.” Ed and Fred might risk going after me there, but Roberto’s guards would run excellent interference. “I need you to take care of Stevie. My New York friend will take her off your hands as soon as he can.”

“Get whatever you need to bring with you, and I’ll take the both of you myself,” Nathaniel said.

I looked up the staircase again, and this time Nathaniel followed my gaze. Stevie was standing there now, too, next to Gary, both of them watching me. I shook my head at her. “She can’t come with me. I can’t explain why.”