Chapter 5
Oz ran his hand through his hair, signed the Nathan contract, and shoved the papers over the desk to the lawyer. “We'll start scheduling the production next week. You have my assistant's number. Keep in touch.”
Wearing Hollywood casual, the lawyer rose from the pedestal swivel recliner Oz provided for his guests. “I'm taking the client out for drinks this evening. Want to join us? He has some intriguing ideas.”
Normally, Oz would have done just that. He liked knowing the people whose money he took.
But turquoise eyes and rose-colored glasses haunted his curiosity, and he needed to talk to pragmatic Conan before weird ideas of magical genies took root. “Another time. I've got a hot project almost in my hands. When that's settled, we'll talk.”
The lawyer nodded and departed, leaving Oz free of accountants and lawyers and nagging Ritas. After a barrage of Rita's irate phone calls, his secretary had blocked her number from the office phone. The woman would probably come after him with a pickax shortly, but he still had time to call his brother.
Conan strode in before Oz could punch the call button. Tall and more lanky than muscled, wearing black-framed glasses, he still managed to fill a room when he entered. Oswins did not do meek well, no matter how techie they might be.
Conan threw a folder on Oz's empty desk. “Your girl could fill a filing cabinet. I reduced the file to her more dramatic moments.”
Oz flipped open the folder, saw the first page was Syrene's very public meltdown, and closed it again. The photo of her grief and rage expressed in the twisted cry of her wide mouth, with rivers of mascara running down her cheeks, churned his stomach. “Do you have anything on her parents, where she's from originally?”
“What in hell does that have to do with anything? She's a big girl now. She doesn't need anyone's signature but her own. Did she agree to the show?” Conan took the chair just vacated by the lawyer and swung around, admiring Oz's trophies and the bank of fog covering the city view out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“She's an orphan.” Oz riffled through the folder. She was right. The startling color of her eyes didn't really come through on film. Interesting. She was still gorgeous, even as a teen angel with costume wings and long silver hair. “She wants to know who her family is.”
“She was in foster care. Social Services can't tell her?” Conan grabbed the file and flipped the pages he'd obviously memorized. His whiskey-colored hair fell over his wide brow, and he shoved it out of his eyes. He produced a document and flung it across the desk.
Conan was thorough. He had a copy of the papers giving Philippa Seraphina Malcolm into the care of Patsy and George James for a nominal sum per month, which were dated over twenty years ago.
“They know nothing about her, not even her date of birth. She was found wandering around a fire station in Bakersfield.”
“If they didn't know who she was, where did she get all the names?” Oz flipped through the next few pages, but they were mostly school records. She'd been a straight-A student while she attended public school. Hitting the stage at age twelve had required private tutors, and the grade reports stopped. The file included a copy of her GED diploma and transcripts from two years at a community collegeâboth obtained after her public breakdown.
“Don't know. I didn't realize you were interested in toddler Pippa. I'll have to drive out to Bakersfield to research. This is just what I dug out online.”
“Impressive.” Oz pulled out a paparazzi shot showing a platinum-haired teen with an uncertain smile. “The eyes are wrong. She's wearing blue contacts in this. Her eyes are a weird turquoise. Her hair is red now. I didn't ask if that was natural.”
Conan flipped through the file and produced an official-looking document probably hacked from a government agency. “Red hair, blue eyes. Some flippin' producer probably had her bleach the hair platinum to increase sales.”
Since Oz was a flippin' producer and paying Conan's bill, his brother restrained his opinion of the entertainment industry.
Perfectly aware of what greedy money men could do to a child star, Oz hesitated before ordering Conan to dig deeper into her career. As these few photos showed, Pippa was damaged goods, so fragile that even he debated the wisdom of carrying through with this.
But then he thought of Donal, and he set his jaw. “Dig into everyone she ever came into contact with if you need to. There ought to be enough collateral damage willing to talk for a price. Try not to get too greedy on my dime, but I need to know who she is, or I'm out a lot more money than you'll cost me.”
Not easily dismissed, Conan sprawled his legs across the pricey piece of modern art that Oz called his office carpet. “I know you, bro. You're not telling me something. There are ten dozen has-been teen sensations on the market. Why the bitchy, crazy one?”
“She writes the books I'm basing the show on,” Oz said reasonably enough. “Now get out of here, so I can get some work done.”
Conan didn't move. “You wanted Syrene before you knew she wrote books. Maybe it's about time you start treating me like an adult with a brain in my head.”
“I trusted you enough to hire you and not some lame detective.” Oz flung a stress ball at him. “No one said that requires telling you everything.”
Conan caught the ball. Rising from the chair, he bounced it on the broad expanse of ebony desk. “It does if it affects the case. I hate puzzles with missing pieces.”
“Believe me, what I know has nothing to do with what she wants. This is the only way I can bribe her to take the job.” Oz knew he was being cryptic and probably driving Conan to bug his phones and intercept his email. That didn't mean he had to tell him everything. “I'm trusting you. You're going to have to trust me.”
Conan nodded, only half-mollified. “She's a nutter. You'll regret going after her.”
“Nutters do not write children's books so lyrical they can be sung,” Oz retorted with conviction. “She's going to make me a stack of green.”
“You'll earn every penny,” Conan said cynically, heaving the ball across the desk.
Catching the spongy rubber toy and squeezing it as his brother walked out, Oz didn't dispute that.
Pippa was big-time trouble. He became a producer so he could deal with money and contracts, not make nicey-nice with the creative neurotics he bought and sold. He didn't like getting personally involved with the hired help.
But he was making an exception this time. He checked his BlackBerry for messages and then began his list of phone calls to find people willing to work in the outback of El Padre. While he waited on hold, he skimmed the file Conan had provided.
Until he learned why anyone would believe Pippa could help find Donal, he wasn't leaving the lady alone.
***
“I will not unleash the Beast,” Pippa muttered her new mantra while carrying a tray of freshly baked cookies down the path to the day care. “I am a mature, responsible adult who does not need to have her own way, does not need to beat up annoying strangers, and does not shriek at imbeciles. I can handle this rationally.”
She still wanted to pound the tray over the head of the man sitting in his inconspicuous gray Ford in the day care parking lot, rattling away on a keyboard while watching her every move. She wasn't stupid. Her manager had hired bodyguards when she was young and hormonal. She recognized a goon when she saw one.
She stopped at the Ford's open window and leaned over to hold out the cookies. “I don't poison them the first time. I wait until you seriously begin to annoy me.”
Wearing the lined, cynical face of a retired cop, the driver helped himself to a chocolate chip treat. “Some people are grateful for protection.”
“I have a black belt and a secret weapon. I don't need protection, but you will if you don't move on. Tell Mr. Oswin that if he really wants my help, he'll leave me alone. I value my privacy.”
The ex-cop looked noncommittal. “I'll pass on your message, but he's the one footing the bill. It's his call.”
Be
one
with
the
breeze, Pippa
, she told herself.
Take
the
anger
where
it
belongs.
She smiled, baring the teeth she'd painted with gold stars. “You may also convey to Mr. Oswin that neither you nor he will see me again until you're gone. Have a blessed day.”
She strolled off, comfortable in her baggy overalls. She let no man have a piece of her these days, not even an eyeful.
Entering the day care's back door, she left the tray of cookies with the cartons of milk for the midday snack. She wouldn't disappoint the kids because the cowardly Beast inside her felt like running far, far away.
So she gave them story time as usual. The day care was an excellent place to test out new story lines, and the one about the little green pig was going over well. Afterward, she helped distribute snacks and clear up spills. Then, waving to Bertha, timing her departure to the daily supply delivery, she climbed into the back of the UPS van when its doors were open and remained there as the truck rattled back to the road.
“Just drop me off at the trailhead, Jorge,” she told the driver.
He acknowledged her request with a wave of his hand. Half a mile down the road, he stopped long enough for Pippa to hop down, well out of sight of the day care and the hired goon in the Ford.
It had cost her a small fortune to have the studio built down the side of a mountain. At least there had been a road to the property at the time so the workers could drive their vehicles in and out. A small mudslide a few years ago had reduced the terrain to little more than a goat trail. It wasn't her favorite access but a useful one when she wanted to avoid people who knew about the front path.
She slid down the rocky slope and then trotted through sage and cactus until she reached the geodesic dome designed specifically for her purposes. She could explode a bomb inside the walls, and no one would hear it.
Her Voice could be more devastating than a bomb. A bomb killed people and put them out of their misery. Her Voice could cripple and leave them suffering for a lifetime. Bombs required mechanical devices and deliberate detonation. The Bane of her Existence required only an emotional trigger to explode without warning.
She used the keypad to unlock the entrance and reset the alarm after she flipped on the lights. The temperature was set at a steady seventy degrees to protect the equipment.
With the ease of familiarity, she set up the recording and sound machines, arranged the background chords, and switched on the computer. She'd once spent fortunes on technicians and musicians to handle the mechanics of the trade. These days, to maintain her privacy and protect the innocent, she'd learned to do it herself. There was something innately satisfying in taking a song from idea to disc without interference of others.
And the simple tasks gave her time to calm down, forget Oz and bodyguards, and focus on the Beast gnawing at her guts. Once she slid her earphones on and opened up the mic, the world went away.
She'd gone beyond the worst of the pain these past few years, which provided her with this small semblance of discipline. Poor Robbie was a ghost who still haunted her, a pathetic creature as lonely and tortured as she had been when they married. If she'd had any experience at all, she would have known he was weak, despite his macho bad boy image. But she'd been sixteen and in love. Her stupidity was excusable. And from the distance of time, Robbie's descent into adultery and addiction was predictable.
Killing him with tears was neither excusable nor understandable.
So she still cried with that long-ago pain and then wept out her heartache from the isolation she'd suffered all her life, the loneliness that stalked her, despite the friends she'd managed to cultivate. She had no family to miss or to miss her. She didn't regret losing her singing career. But she regretted the loss of the audience, the brief illusion of being loved, if only for a few hours.
She poured into the microphone her sorrow that she would never know love of any kindâparental, maternal, romantic.
And once she sang away her tears, she was free to let her fury boil upward, to lash the scales, to destroy the harmonies, to scream and bang her head to the canned beat. She shouted. She shook her fists at the roof. And she let the Voice cry agony until it was raw. She could harm no one releasing it in here. No one would ever hear these discs.
By the time she'd emptied her soul and sent the recordings to her password-protected cyberspace library, her security camera showed it was dark outside, and she was starving. She texted Bertha, too depleted to attempt talking.
Cop gone?
she asked.
Dscvrd u missg few hrs ago. Cursed. Left.
He could be anywhere. She hoped he'd returned to L.A., but as long as the man was being paid, it wasn't likely.
She could give the hired bodyguard and Mr. Oswin a real panic attack. She didn't have to leave here until she knew the coast was clear.
Opening the freezer in her studio kitchen, she dug out a frozen meal and nuked it. She'd spent many long nights on the futon in here. She could occupy herself for days, if necessary.
Let omnipotent Mr. Oswin put that in a pot and stew it.
Chapter 6
A text from the Librarian arrived just before Oz shut down the office for the day.
The Silly Seal Song
was all it said.
After an hour of Googling every possible variation of that title, when he should have been hunting dinner, Oz didn't know whether to curse or weep. There was no such title in any index he could locate. Maybe the Librarian simply hated him or thought he ought to give up having a life.
The title sounded like a children's song. Oz had bought CDs of kids' songs to keep his son amused when they were in the car. He and Donal used to sing along with them while stuck in traffic. The kid had crowed over his favorites.
Donal would be five in May. Would he still listen to silly songs? Or was he too terrified to enjoy silliness? Provided his son was even alive. Oz pressed his fists to his eyes, refusing to trek down memory lane.
Digging deep inside him to where the pain lived and clamping it down, Oz reached for the phone. Maybe this was the connection to Syrene the Librarian had alluded to. Maybe Pippa knew the song.
The phone rang before he could key in the number. Checking Caller ID, he answered curtly, “Yes, Bob?”
“She's scarpered,” the ex-cop said without preamble, “just like she warned you. If she's in town, no one's talking.”
Oz's fury escalated, multiplied by the frustration of this past hour. She was his only damned
hope
. He should be allowed one lousy little hope.
“They're her friends. They won't talk.” He buried his hand in his hair and glared at the desk he'd spent the day emptying. “Go home. I can play this game too.”
He'd lost any interest in playing games the day his son had been stolen. If Pippa James had any part in Donal's kidnapping, she would pay, and she would pay dearly.
Except even
he
was still rational enough to know that all he had was a hunch and anonymous messages to believe his son was alive. For all he knew, he was badgering the damaged singer for nothing. And yet, he meant to go on badgering her until he lost all hope. That was his idea of fun these days.
He'd skimmed her file throughout the day, looking for clues. Besides the devastating photos of a lovely child deteriorating into a half-starved, bedraggled hellion, it contained a familiar litany of offenses committed by the entertainment industry, none of them new or unusual.
Philippa Seraphina Malcolm James had been rescued from poverty and a foster home and given a life of hard work, wealth, and adoration, and she'd blown it all in a spectacular meltdown after her young husband's death. The only real news was that her management had never robbed her. She'd taken charge of her extremely healthy trust fund on her eighteenth birthday and disappeared.
He wouldn't let her fall off the radar again. If she held clues he needed, he meant to find them.
He went home, packed a bag, and flung it into an old Dodge Ram pickup he'd driven as a kid to carry his surfboard and gear. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone surfing, but the truck had a lot of miles left on it. He saw no reason to throw it away.
Driving into the mountains, he left his headset and BlackBerry off. He'd spent the day lining up production people for the children's show. It was a simple, inexpensive concept that in the right hands would have the project in motion and talent lining up within a week. He had time to ponder the neurotic singer's vanishing act.
Pippa wasn't quite as fragile as she seemed, he was beginning to suspect. She'd broken when he'd revealed that he knew about her past. But she'd recovered swiftly enough to retaliate.
He based his career on knowing people, understanding their idiosyncrasies, judging how far he could push them. Pippa had the tensile strength of fine steel concealed behind that skin-and-bone facade.
Which meant she probably wasn't shivering in fear in some dark corner but carrying out her threat until he restored her privacy. He respected that.
But if she was the key to his son's disappearance, he couldn't let her out of his sight. He'd better hope he discovered something soon because it could get damned tricky sticking close to a devious madwoman who didn't want him around.
It was dark by the time he booked a room at the B&B. He'd flung an air mattress in the truck with his suitcase. He'd buy new mattresses for the lumpy beds in the morning. He was used to the finer things in life and saw no reason to accept less.
He'd had the drive up the mountain to develop a strategy. It wasn't much of one, but his patience was limited. After checking into the El Padre Inn, he strode across the road to Dot's Café and let the screen door slam behind him. Dot's customers stared as he stalked up to the counter still wearing his office attire of silk pullover and designer blazer, although today the shirt was white and the coat silver-gray. He could
aw
-
shucks
with the best of them, but tonight, he meant to make an impression.
“Coffee, black,” he told the waitress behind the counter. She was young enough to be Dot's daughter. “And the biggest burger you can fry. A side of fries with that.”
When she had the order, Oz turned with his back and his palms resting against the counter so he could sweep the room with his gaze. Old ladies in a corner booth glanced up at him and then whispered among themselves. A couple of old men at the counter pretended he wasn't there. A young Hispanic family ignored his posturing and stayed focused on keeping the toddlers fed and in their chairs.
Oz might never persuade Donal to eat his spinach again. Forcing down the familiar pain, he concentrated on the adults in the room now that he had their attention.
“I understand the church needs a new roof,” he said in a mild voice that easily carried over the whispers and dying conversations.
“The whole town needs roofs,” declared a wag wearing a billed cap bearing a tractor image.
“I'll be hiring shortly,” Oz acknowledged. “Buy roofs with your wages if you want. But the only reason I'm here is Miss James. Without her, I go away. She doesn't like me much, so I'll have to rely on you to keep her interested in the project. Can I have your cooperation?”
He didn't hear footsteps behind him, but he ducked instinctively at Pippa's first words.
“You're a jerkwad, you know that?” she declared.
The remains of a lemon pie skimmed the top of his head, leaving whipped cream to dribble down his cheekbone. He wiped off a smear and licked his finger, turning around to admire the irate fairy who had flitted in from the kitchen.
Damn
, but he was good. He'd expected it would be morning before his theatrics would draw her out. Somebody at the B&B must have warned her of his arrival.
“You're a hysterical nutcase, but I can deal with that.” He grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser to wipe down his blazer. His dry-cleaner would earn his pay.
While dabbing off lemon pie he kept an eye on Pippa. She'd painted her teeth today. The streak in her hair was gold, to match the glitter on her cheekbones. She looked like sunshine personified. Even the overalls were orange and gold, with a glittering sun painted on the bib.
“You're bribing an entire town to spy on me!” Hands on nonexistent hips, she looked as if she'd like to fling another pie, but she never raised her voice. Women usually shrieked when they threw things at him.
“I don't work with disappearing acts,” he admonished. “You're the one who insisted I move the production up here. I want a guarantee my talent won't do a flit after I've spent a few million. Fair is fair.”
“Now I remember why I left L.A. I don't tolerate insufferable asses.” She spun on her painted Keds and departed the same way she'd entered, through the kitchen.
One of the old men at the counter left a dollar beside his cup and stood up. “I'll see she gets home okay.”
And that was that. Figuring the entire town knew Pippa James walked a thin edge and needed looking after, Oz sat down and devoured a burger savory with triumph.
***
The insufferable ass was at Dot's the next morning, occupying the same booth they'd shared yesterday. Pippa aimed for the counter, ignoring him, until Dot waved Pippa's usual breakfast under her nose and carried it back to Oz's booth.
Cursing traitorous friends under her breath, Pippa considered walking out. Until those horrible months when she'd killed and maimed with her grief, she'd never learned to fight back. At twelve, she'd bent over backward in her eagerness to be agreeable. At sixteen, she'd simply walked away. At eighteen, she'd self-destructed. Since then, she'd learned calm acceptance and ignored that which could not be changed.
Calm acceptance and Dylan Oswin did not exist in the same universe. He simply tempted the shrieking furies of her Voice by his presence.
Today, he'd dropped the shark suit. In its place he wore a short-sleeved, blue cotton shirt. It had probably cost a few hundred to achieve that tailored, I'm-one-of-you-look. Except no one up here had highlighted hair styled to evenly brush the back of said collar. Or wore a half-grand art-carved gold loop in a pierced ear.
And damn if the result wasn't the sexiest thing she'd seen since watching Rhett Butler on the big screen when she was a kid. Oz hadn't worn that earring yesterday with his shark suit, she'd lay odds. This was his idea of laid-back and nonthreatening.
Which almost made her laugh. Almost. He held her life in his hands, though, and that wasn't a laughing matter. She slid into the seat across from him and let him admire the blue-green tears she'd painted on her cheek this morning.
“Good choice of color,” he commented before biting into his bacon and regarding her critically. “The camera will love you. So will the kids. You're a natural.”
“I'm about as unnatural as it gets. You'd better be lining up your actress because you're not getting me in front of a camera again.”
“Reneging on our deal already?” He didn't seem fazed as he sipped his coffee and studied her. “I've hired a dead ringer for you as your stand-in, but Audrey will never be you.”
She didn't like being studied. She hated that she found him attractive. Her skin felt two sizes too small under his scrutiny.
“I've tried finding my birth parents. I've spent a fortune hiring experts,” she informed him after sipping her juice. “I don't exist. So you may as well quit tormenting me and resign yourself to using my material and my town but not me.”
“Do you know a song called âThe Silly Seal Song'?” he asked out of the blue.
Her stomach dropped to her toes, and she stared at him as if he'd suddenly developed a crystal ball for a head. “Why?” she demanded. Her hands were clammy, and she didn't dare lift her fork for fear she'd reveal her trembling.
“You do,” he said with satisfaction. “Do you have the lyrics?”
Either he was too perceptive by far, or she wasn't doing as good a job hiding with him as she did with others. She'd
written
the lyrics. They'd been her first tentative steps toward writing her stories into music. She'd sent them to her cyberspace library when she'd bought a new computer nearly four years ago. No one knew of the song's existence. How could he?
“If you want to know all my secrets, Mr. Oswin, you can discover them yourself. Why should I make it easy?” She returned her attention to her eggs as if he hadn't dumped another hot load of burning oil over her head.
He was the one who looked uncomfortable. It looked good on him. Pippa recalled all the smug, arrogant men who'd pushed her around, turned her into a walking, talking Barbie doll, and manipulated her and her music and her life, and she hummed happily to herself. Turnabout was fair play, even if Oz wasn't the cause of her original grief.
She liked having control for a change. It had been a precious commodity for most of her life.
Pippa could see him plotting, scheming to get what he wanted without telling her why. He'd soon learn she was no longer the easily influenced child she'd been. She'd prepared herself for this moment for years.
She would notâeverâgo back to being Syrene.