Chasing Venus (25 page)

Reid seemed to sense
she had softened.
 
Again he grasped
her by the arms, very gently this time, and gazed into her eyes.
 
“Sheila, she is innocent.
 
I know it.
 
She has been framed and she has been
through hell.
 
I want to do the
right thing here.”

“The right thing is to
tell the police how innocent you think she is and then let them decide if the
whole matter should go away.”

“You know it’s not that
easy.”

No, it was not that
easy.
 
Life was near impossible most
times and difficult all the rest.
 
She shook herself free.
 
“I
cannot believe you bought that woman’s story hook, line and sinker.”

His voice
hardened.
 
“And I cannot believe
that you are unwilling to consider the possibility that she is a victim.
 
Even when I tell you so.”

“And that is supposed
to be good enough?
 
When it flies in
the face of everything else?”

“Sheila, please!”
 
He shook his head as if she were
exasperating him.
 
“Have I ever told
you anything that wasn’t true?”

“The truth as you
believe it to be,” she muttered, but still, she knew he had not.
 
He was scrupulous with the truth.
 
He was the sort of man you did not ask
if he loved you unless you wanted to spend the rest of the night weeping.
 
She moved further away from him and
crossed her arms over her chest.
 
“All right, you want to believe this idiocy, you go right ahead.
 
But I still want to know what this has
to do with me.”

“I want your help.”

“You said that
before.
 
But what exactly does that
mean?”

“You know I’ve never
asked you for anything.”

She choked on a bitter
laugh.
 
That was not precisely
accurate.
 
He asked her, daily, to
work beside him, to be his friend, to keep his confidence.
 
This was all the while he knew she loved
him desperately.
 
That was asking
quite a bit in her opinion, but she guessed that now he’d ask for something
more.

And he did.
 
“I want you to let her stay with you,”
he said, and then he explained why.
 
It was preposterous, all of it, and it convinced her of only one thing:
that Reid’s involvement with this fiendish woman had already changed him, had
already made him scheme and lie, had already sent him on a spiral that could
only end in disaster.

She would not
participate in that.
 
Nor would she
allow herself to be a victim of collateral damage.
 
So, after he had talked himself out and
she had given him his due by listening, her jaw clenched in fury the entire
time, she delivered her answer.
 
“No.”

*

I know who you are
.
 
Annie froze as she listened to the man’s declaration hang in the warm
air.

She screwed up her
courage and glanced at him.
 
He was
scruffy, dark-haired, in his mid-twenties.
 
Wearing dirt-streaked jeans and an expression she couldn’t call
friendly.
 
“I don’t know who you
think I am, but I’d really rather be left alone.”

He shook his head with
what looked like disgust.
 
“Just
what I should’ve expected.
 
You
actresses are all such snots.”

She released a
breath.
 
He doesn’t know who I am
.

“That sitcom of yours
was shitty anyway.
 
Maybe if you
bothered to respond to the fans who wrote to you, like me, it wouldn’t have
gotten cancelled.
 
Now you can have
your effing privacy.”
 
He stalked
away, shaking his head and giving her the occasional backward glance as if now
he’d really seen it all.
 
Then he
disappeared down the incline.

Fine.
 
He’d mistaken her for some actress whose
name was now mud in his book.
 
She
could live with that.

Annie resumed her
meander down the hill.
 
Eventually
time worked its magic and she calmed down.
 
Briefly.
 
Because in short
order the same old worries returned.
 
Reid not showing up.
 
Being
forced to move to Plan B.
 
Being
once again on her own.

It was quite a
transition from the wanting-to-be-alone Annie she’d been for the last year,
until Reid appeared on the scene.
 
Annie was unsettled enough without speculating what that change in her
attitude might mean.

6 o’clock came and went
with no sign of him.
 
She told
herself it was too soon to get nervous.

At 6:30 it was harder
to make that argument.
 
At 6:45,
with the sun below the horizon and the ranks of the hikers thinning, it was
impossible.

He still has fifteen minutes
, she told herself.
 
But as the seconds ticked away, paranoia
tightened its icy grip on her mind.
 
Sheila’s blown your cover.
 
Simpson’s probably already gotten the
call.
 
Reid’s in custody and they
know you’ve got to be around here somewhere …

Even darker scenarios
swam to the surface.
 
Maybe Reid
never went to Sheila.
 
Maybe this
was his way of getting rid of Annie.
 
Maybe he’d had enough, decided it was fun playing the rebel for a few
days but now it was time to get back to reality.
 
Maybe there was a
Crimewatch
crew staking out the motel in Hollywood that he’d told
her to walk to.
 
Maybe he was
planning to stage her takedown and she was falling into his trap like a seal
pup who didn’t see the big wide net until she was trapped inside it.

Her digital watch
clicked to 7:00.
 
Still no
Reid.
 
This was it—the moment
he had told her to abandon the overlook and head for the motel.
 
Those were his instructions and she knew
he would get seriously upset if she ignored them.
 
I
call the shots
, he’d reminded her more than once.

She halted on the path
that led downhill to the canyon’s Hollywood gate, reluctant to stay and
reluctant to go.
 
Where is he?
 
Something must have happened to
him.
 
I can’t believe he would
betray me, I can’t believe it.
 
But
where is he?

She had to decide what
to do.
 
Soon it would be chilly and
dark.
 
Did she want to be in this
canyon then?
 
Who knew what
nocturnal creatures would emerge from their lairs, both animal and human.
 
Nor did she really want to go to the
motel.
 
What if it was a
set-up?
 
Maybe that was irrational;
maybe her addled mind was playing tricks on her.
 
But could she risk it?

Annie forced herself to
make a decision.
 
She would head for
the motel.
 
If, when she arrived in
Hollywood, something didn’t feel right, she would find the bus station.
 
She had cash in her carryall.
 
She could get the hell out of Dodge.

She put her plan into
action.
 
As the sun’s rays slanted
soft light on the city, she left the canyon and walked downhill on the
residential street Reid had told her to use.
 
She didn’t allow herself to think or to
speculate.
 
Her goal was to make it
to Hollywood and then make her call on how to proceed.

Eventually the street
let out onto famed Hollywood Boulevard, lined with souvenir shops and prowled
by tourists and local hucksters alike.
 
To her left, a few blocks away, was a sizable intersection.
 
She moved toward it.
 
The sign for the large cross street read
LA BREA.

The name reverberated
in her memory.
 
Of course.
 
La Brea was a major boulevard which ran
north/south through the city.

She stopped, remembering.
 
She used to drive along La Brea when she
went to Frankie’s parties.
 
He lived
several blocks east of it, near the Wilshire Country Club, in the Hancock Park
area.
 
As the crow flies, she
realized, Frankie’s house was probably only a mile or so away.

Annie stood still, the
night wind whistling past her, and pondered.

*

Sheila refused to
listen to any more of it.
 
More than
an hour was quite enough.
 
So she
excused herself from Reid, walked into her bathroom, closed the door in his face,
and perched on the porcelain tub, trying to decide what to do.

A few decisions were
set in stone.
 
She would not allow
that woman to stay with her, no matter how many times Reid asked.
 
Too damn bad that he had no other
“workable options.”
 
She would not
allow her own reputation to be compromised.
 
She would preserve the integrity of the
program, as much as she was able.
 
And she would not lie if posed a direct question by an officer of the
law.

Yet Reid had succeeded
in shaking her certainty that Annette Rowell was guilty.
 
Sheila was now willing to allow that she
might, she
might
, be innocent.
 
So Sheila had agreed not to alert the
authorities to what she could guess of Rowell’s whereabouts.

Not yet, anyway.
 
And in her heart of hearts, she knew
that was a concession she was making much more for Reid than for Annette
Rowell.
 
For that woman, she would
do nothing.
 
For Reid …

Sheila sighed and
levered herself up from the tub’s edge.
 
She moved to the sink, rested her hands on its cool surface, and raised
her head to the mirror that fronted the medicine cabinet.
 
She might have been displeased with her
appearance before but she would be quite happy to trade that for what stared
back at her now.

What had become of her?
she wondered.
 
When had she turned
into a woman who would go so far for love?
 
She had scoffed at that concept years before, when she was all about
getting herself and the rest of her family out of India and forging a new life
in the United States.
 
She was proud
of all she had achieved but it didn’t do much to salve the ache inside, to fill
the hollowness that came from all those nights alone.

She gazed into the
depths of her own eyes and knew that she could not turn Reid away with
nothing.
 
She simply did not have it
in her.
 
She would try to leave a
route between her heart and his by giving him what she could and yet not being
a fool about it.
 
And maybe, when
this lunacy was over, he would see what she had done and he would think again.
 
Maybe then he would ask her a question
she wanted to hear.

She smoothed her hair
and pulled open the bathroom door.
 
He rose from the loveseat when he spied her, awaiting her verdict.

“All right,” she said
as she approached him.
 
“Here is
what I’m willing to do.”

*

Reid slapped a staccato
rhythm on the truck’s steering wheel.
 
He was stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard, which was predictable.
 
There was no way to get across Hollywood
fast on a Saturday evening, not with everybody and their brother headed to
movies and bars and restaurants.
 
His eyes repeatedly darted to the digital clock on the dash.
 
Now its indigo numbers read 7:08.

He had two choices:
drive to the overlook and hope Annie hadn’t left yet or continue on to the
studio and pick up the key to Sheila’s family’s cabin near Santa Barbara.
 
The key Sheila kept in her desk.
 
The key which would provide a hideaway
for Annie.
 
The key which would give
Sheila deniability if she were ever questioned by the FBI.
 
No,
I did not give the key to Reid.
 
But
he knew where it was.
 
He must have
just taken it
 
…

It wasn’t what he’d
wanted but it was something.
 
And at
this point he’d take anything he could get.

The stoplight turned
green and traffic lurched forward, then halted again when a homeless woman with
a brimming shopping cart suddenly stepped into the crosswalk.
 
No one honked and no one tried to get
around her, as if in tacit acceptance that this was her territory more than it
was theirs.
 
Eventually she made it
across and the flow of impatient vehicles resumed.

Reid made a
decision.
 
He’d go to the
studio.
 
He needed that key if he
was going to get Annie safe.
 
He
didn’t want her in the motel unless it was absolutely necessary.
 
It was a No Tell Motel in a smarmy
neighborhood but that was about the only place she could walk in with no
notice, pay cash, and not raise any eyebrows.
 
And even though he’d miss her at the
overlook, he was sure he could catch her en route to the motel.
 
It would take her a while to walk there,
plus he had given her very specific directions and instructed her not to vary
from them.
 
Not that he was
confident she’d listen.