Chasing Venus (26 page)

 
A few minutes later Reid arrived at the
studio.
 
He parked in the
subterranean garage, well aware there was no way to get inside the building
without leaving a digital trail.
 
Both the garage and the front entrance were protected by a key-card
system; if the records were ever checked, GARDNER, REID would pop up next to
the exact second of his entry.
 
That
couldn’t be helped, and it was undeniably strange for him to appear twice at the
studio on a Saturday.
 
So, to give
himself a plausible excuse for this second visit, he made an unnecessary stop
in his office and scooped up some paperwork he’d just have to carry back in on
Monday.

He strode across the
concrete floor of the darkened set toward Sheila’s glass-walled cubicle, his footfalls
echoing in the deserted building.
 
His imagination, in overdrive all week, created shadowy figures behind
every huge rolling camera, on every movable backdrop that would spring to
colorful life with a flick of the klieg lights.

Inside Sheila’s cubicle,
Reid didn’t flip on the overheads.
 
In the small space illuminated only by the flickering red and white
lights of the adjacent studio’s electronic equipment, he moved behind her desk
and pulled open its shallow center drawer, feeling blindly for the key.
 
It wasn’t immediately obvious so he
reached in further, encountering all manner of small office supplies but no
cabin key on a silver ring.
 
His
fingers closed on what felt like a photo, and out of curiosity he pulled it
out.

Dim light and memory brought
the image into focus.
 
Him.
 
Sheila.
 
Sunshine.
 
Day off.
 
Years ago, when he’d turned in her
direction and found her waiting with open arms.

She was still waiting,
he knew.
 
She was endlessly
patient.
 
He didn’t know if that
made her a fool or a paragon.
 
Or
merely a woman in love.

The photo pained
him.
 
To this day he didn’t know
whether he’d been fair to Sheila.
 
He just knew what he felt and what he didn’t.
 
He also knew that a few short hours ago
he’d taken advantage of what she’d always felt for him.
 
He told himself he did what he did for a
greater good but he doubted she’d take it the same way.

He returned the photo
to the drawer.
 
Now was not the time
to revisit the past or analyze good versus bad behavior.
 
He resumed his search for the key and
this time was rewarded.
 
He beat a
hasty exit from the building and was back in the truck within minutes.

It was nearing
sunset.
 
The sun was flirting with
Hollywood’s roofline; the sky above the tawdry environs glowed orange and
purple and pink.
 
Reid turned right
onto a residential street that climbed into the Hollywood Hills.
 
He drove with care in the fading light,
keeping an eye out for a lone woman making her way downhill.
 
He crested the hill disappointed, and
reversed.
 
Still no Annie.

Into the flats of
Hollywood then, the commercial district, where there was lots more
traffic.
 
It was tough to drive
slowly and to try to distinguish Annie from all the other unaccompanied bottle
blondes walking the streets, several of whom perked up at the sight of his
slowly cruising truck.
 
He made a
few passes up and down the route that he’d instructed Annie to travel.

No sign of her.

After half an hour he
was flat-out worried and bordering on angry.
 
Had she again ignored what he told her
to do?
 
Or maybe she’d gotten
lost.
 
Or maybe …

He switched on news
radio.
 
If she’d been arrested, it
would be a top story.
 
With the
jarring audio in his ears and unease in his gut, he headed for the motel.
 
She didn’t get arrested, he told
himself.
 
Either she’d headed for the
motel earlier than they’d anticipated or she’d simply made it there in good
time.
 
She was probably scared when
he failed to show up at the overlook.
 
No doubt she assumed that Sheila had decided to blow their cover and
that SWAT teams would soon be combing the LA basin searching for her.

The one-story Palm Tree
Inn didn’t have much to recommend itself.
 
Its flickering neon sign boasted about the cable TV and telephone in
every room but Reid doubted most patrons checked in to watch CNN or call friends
and family.

Reid walked into the
small reception room.
 
He was less
than thrilled about asking after Annie but couldn’t think of any other way to
find out whether she’d checked in.
 
He eyed the clerk who manned the desk, a fiftyish turbaned fellow in
glasses.
 
It took the man a beat or
two to turn away from the small TV set across the room.
 
When he did, his eyes behind his bifocal
lenses did the REID GARDNER! double take.
 
That was unfortunate but nothing could be done about it.
 
“May I help you?” the man asked.
 
His accented voice was smooth and
polite.

No way to be subtle
about it.
 
Reid cleared his throat
and leaned his elbows on the counter.
 
“I’m meeting someone here.
 
She would have checked in within the last hour.”

The man spread his
hands.
 
“I am sorry, sir, but there
is no one like that.”

“You’re sure?”
 
Reid kept his voice casual.
 
“Blond?
 
About—”
 
He raised his hand to just below his
shoulder, indicating the five feet two inch height that Annie stood.
 
“Wearing jeans and a tan windbreaker?”

The clerk shook his
head.
 
“I am sorry.
 
No one like that has checked in all
day.
 
Maybe she went to the wrong
motel?”

“I doubt she would have
made that mistake.”

“Well …”
 
He threw up his hands in the
international gesture of resignation.
 
“Women!
 
What can I tell
you?”
 
As if on cue, a door opened
behind him to reveal a plump, petite female in a sari and cardigan.
 
A delectable aroma of curry and spices
wafted into the check-in room behind her.
 
She cocked her chin at the clerk, no doubt her husband, and said a few
words in a language Reid couldn’t identify.
 
The man turned again to Reid.
 
“I am very sorry I cannot help you,” he
declared, then followed the woman into the other room and shut the door behind
them.

Reid waited only a
moment before hoisting himself soundlessly over the counter and searching for
the guest register.
 
He found it
quickly and ran his eyes down the day’s list—a dozen or so names
carefully written in cursive script, next to the time of their arrival, room
number, and cash paid.

No DEBBY DUDLEY, the
name he and Annie had concocted for this purpose.
 
And apparently the clerk had been
telling the truth, for there were no women’s names at all.
 
And no check-ins within the last hour.

Reid didn’t let himself
think until he was outside the motel.
 
Then he stood on the curb, his heart in
his throat, and watched the world go by.

A world full of hordes
of people.
 
But not the only one he
wanted to see.

The neighborhood of
Hancock Park was just as Annie remembered, an oasis of civility in LA’s funky
landscape.
 
Here the homes were
large and elegant and set back from the street behind wide lawns and sweeping
driveways.
 
Here the trees weren’t the
tall showy palms of Beverly Hills, but the grand oaks and pines and sycamores
of an older, more mature enclave.
 
Here you could almost fool yourself into believing you were in an
affluent part of Philadelphia or Chicago—until a resident stepped out his
front door and you found yourself staring at the face of a primetime TV star.

Under nighttime skies
and a thickening mass of marine layer, Annie forced herself to walk at a
leisurely pace along June Street.
 
She tried to look like she belonged, like she was merely out and about
on an evening stroll.
 
That was
tricky given that it was more night than evening and that she had no
prop—no man, no dog, nothing to make her look less obviously like an
interloper out to wreak havoc.

Of course, most people
would put breaking and entering in that category.

Several houses ahead
she recognized Frankie’s property.
 
Even in this neighborhood, it was flashy—a massive salmon-colored
Spanish-style hacienda nestled behind a tropical garden of hibiscus,
bougainvillea, birds of paradise, and frond-like shrubbery Annie couldn’t begin
to name.

She walked past, pretending
not to give it a second glance.
 
One
thing was clear: Frankie wasn’t hosting a party.
 
In fact, it looked like Frankie wasn’t
home.
 
No light spilled from any
window, no music system poured forth a jazzy melody, and no red Porsche waited
in the driveway for its pony-tailed owner.
 
She knew Frankie never parked in his garage: he’d converted it into a
workout room.

The truth was that she
hadn’t expected Frankie to be home.
 
That was in part what had propelled her in this direction.
 
She knew her agent was a party animal
who liked his women and his drinking, two carryovers from his wrestling
days.
 
He wasn’t the type to spend
Saturday night curled up with a client’s manuscript in his lap.

Annie walked on,
remembering Reid’s reaction when she’d broached breaking into Frankie’s home to
search for evidence.
 
She knew it
was dangerous and didn’t doubt it was foolhardy.
 
But desperation cast foolhardiness in a
new light.

Something had happened
to Reid.
 
Either he’d betrayed her
or Sheila had betrayed him.
 
Maybe
the cops had found the rental car and linked it to him.
 
Then he couldn’t risk coming to get her,
at the overlook or the motel or anywhere else, for he’d know the cops would be
on his tail.

Nor did she want to
risk calling him to find out what had gone down.
 
In her trusty carryall was a slip of
paper bearing Reid’s cell number.
 
But if he was under surveillance and she called him from a land line
like a pay phone, she’d be pinpointing her location.
 
She knew her own cell was being
monitored, so she couldn’t use that.
 
And in the rush earlier that day, they had not managed to acquire
disposable phones.

She was choosing to
believe that Reid wasn’t plotting to turn her in.
 
Whatever made him hold back his heart
from her—and she had a pretty good idea what that was—by this point
she would stake her life on his integrity.
 
She believed him when he said he would protect her to the best of his
ability.
 
But maybe that ability had
been ripped away from him.
 
Where
did that leave her?

She kept coming back to
the same thing.
 
She was on her own
again.
 
She couldn’t rely on Reid or
anyone else.
 
She had to save
herself.
 
And fate had placed her on
an overlook, walking distance from a place where she might do exactly
that.
 
For what if Frankie was the
killer and she found proof?
 
She
could dig herself out of the pit into which she’d fallen.

As she’d told Reid, it
wasn’t unusual for a killer to hold on to incriminating evidence.
 
She might find plans in Frankie’s
computer, the same caliber of gun that killed Seamus O’Neill, left-over
curare.
 
It was possible.

At the corner she did a
180 and headed back toward Frankie’s property.
 
Now that she’d finalized the decision,
for good or ill, her adrenaline kicked in.
 
In her books, she told herself, characters made big, bold moves like
this all the time.
 
Tonight was her
turn.

*

Officer Lloyd Cutter,
one year out of the police academy and assigned to the LAPD Hollywood division,
drove his black-and-white past the Paramount Studios lot on Melrose
Avenue.
 
It was one of the more
recognizable local landmarks, and surprisingly vast—nearly the size of
Disneyland.
 
Its elaborate
entry—wrought-iron gates set in arched white stucco—drew tourists
by day and by night, who poked their noses between the iron bars hoping for a
glimpse of some star, any star, anybody they could brag about to their Aunt
Gladys or Uncle Freddie when they got back home.

Cutter’s partner,
Officer Manuel Guerra, stared out the cruiser’s passenger window, no doubt
performing the same crowd assessment that Cutter was.
 
Cutter concluded that none of the
tourists huddled at the gates posed a security risk, though he knew he wasn’t
concentrating as well as usual.
 
In
fact, he was more than ready for his noon-to-9 shift to end.
 
He had a date that night, and though the
lady in question didn’t boast movie-star looks, she was as close as he was
going to get.
 
He was hoping to
discover that she possessed the alley-cat morals of many of Hollywood’s starlet
wannabes.