Dying to Have Her (7 page)

“He’s wonderful. Wonderful! I love every minute with him. You should see him smile. He’s going to be a heart-breaker. He looks just like Conar, except his eyes are bluer, just like mine. But his hair is dark, and he has so much of it.” Jennifer’s eyes lit up when she talked about the baby. She came alive in a way Serena had never seen before. “And you should see the way he watches and listens to everything—” She broke off suddenly, flushing. “Okay, I’m gushing. You just wait. You’ll see what it’s like,” Jennifer told her.

“Jen, you can gush to me anytime you like, you know that. I adore the little angel. I just wish he were mine.”

“You’ll have your own.”

“Not if I get much older,” Serena commented, looking around and assessing the display of the funeral once again. Um, but people were dressed. They milled about and chatted in the sunshine. The young and beautiful sidled up to the old and powerful. Lunch dates were made. Photographers snapped pictures with a fury. Lights flared, even in the sunlight of the beautiful, powdery blue day.

Jennifer grabbed Serena’s arm, swinging her around to oblige a photographer.
“LA. Times,”
she whispered.

“This is a funeral,” Serena reminded her, smiling for the camera, then remembering it was a somber occasion.

“Thanks!” the photographer said.

“Certainly,” Jennifer told him.

He nodded and moved on. There was a B-movie queen ahead of them on the sidewalk. Other photographers were beginning to gather.

“You know, this
is
a funeral,” Serena repeated.

“Um. But we aren’t rich and famous enough to be nasty when that decent fellow from the
LA. Times
is giving us a photo op.”

Serena groaned. “Jennifer! That does not sound like you. And I’m willing to bet that the diva up ahead never met Jane Dunne.”

“Well, you know, it’s sad but true: a funeral does remain a photo op,” Jennifer said with a shrug of her shoulders.

Doug Henson stepped up between them. He really was incredibly good looking. Everyone assumed he should want to be an actor, but he loathed acting, loved writing. And though he mocked his soap writing himself, he was excellent at it. Still he longed to do his own great American novel. He kissed Serena’s cheek. “A funeral for a bitch. The goddamned Wicked Witch of the West, and that’s not gossip but a major consensus. And you’re not old.”

“What?” Serena said.

He grinned. “Couldn’t help but eavesdrop.”

“You’ve been eavesdropping for a long time!”

“Trying to reach you. I even got stopped by the paparazzi on this one. I’m your designated driver, you know. And besides,” he said to Serena, suddenly indignant, “I’ve been around you charming ladies often enough. I know you wouldn’t dream of shopping for any important occasion without my advice. Now that should include a husband, and you’re quite right, I haven’t seen Mister Perfect around yet myself. Not for you, anyway.”

“Well, thanks. I wouldn’t want to snag Mr. Wrong again.”

“You almost had Mr. Right,” Doug told her.

She felt a strange warmth seize her; her tongue felt suddenly dry. She knew to whom he was referring.

“No, he wasn’t Mr. Right at all.”

“He sure as hell looked damned good.”

“Looks are deceiving, and I don’t want to discuss this.”

Doug decided to back off. He grinned and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “If you want, and you’re free this weekend, we can have lunch on Sunset and watch the men go by.”

She didn’t answer him right away. His comments had made her feel unnerved, opened a wound that was just beginning to heal.
Yes, I’d thought that he was Mr. Right, too!
she might have said. And she still felt that same hurt and loss when she thought about … him.

Her almost Mr. Right.

She wasn’t going to allow him to torture her mind and soul. Especially now.

“Please?” Doug said hopefully. “It would be fun. We haven’t done it in a long time.”

His endearing look was sincere. She couldn’t help but smile and laugh. “I don’t know. You’re too good looking. You always get a guy, and I don’t.”

He winked at her. “We’re looking for different things in a fellow, remember?”

Serena slipped her arm through Doug’s. “We’ll have lunch this weekend because I love you to death and we haven’t had lunch together in a while, how’s that?”

“Maybe I’ll come, and bring the baby,” Jennifer suggested.

“I would love to have you, but we’re going on a hunt!” Doug told her. “A man-hunt. Men don’t coo-coo over babies the way that women do.”

“We’re not going on a man hunt. Jen, you’re coming to lunch,” Serena said.

Doug sniffed. “We’ll attract nothing but women with Serena’s own nesting instinct,” he said with a sigh. “But if that’s the way you want it …”

“Doug, you cannot pick up good men by watching people go by on Sunset,” Serena said.

“Speak for yourself, my poor dear sweet!” Doug told her.

Doug caught her arm, hurrying her along again until they reached his car. It was a brand-new sporty Mercedes in metallic silver. Once in the driver’s seat, he revved the engine, and a smile lit his face, as if he were in heaven, just listening. “God, I love that sound. Just hearing it … I almost feel as if I just had some great sex.”

“Luxuriate in the afterglow later, Doug,” Jennifer commanded dryly. “We’re at a funeral. Going to a grave-site. Remember?”

Doug cast Jennifer a hurt look. Serena patted his knee. He revved the car again and drove off.

They arrived at the burial ground to another crowd. The famed old Hollywood cemetery was as mobbed as the church had been. The fabled graves of the stars of yesteryear were rudely trampled as the attendees crushed forward for close spots around the new grave. Serena would have hung back, but Jennifer caught her arm. “Look. The guys have saved us places.”

They wedged forward. Cameras were flashing. News trucks, reporters, broadcasters, cameramen were everywhere. NBC, ABC, CBS, and cable.

“She would have loved this! Loved it, adored the attention!” Andy raved, whispering as Serena, Jennifer, and Doug found their places.

“Just spectacular!” Joe Penny said. He pinched Serena suddenly. “Can you cry?” She stared at him indignantly. “Then look remorseful, please. The cameras are right on us now.”

The priest began the grave-side service. Serena noted vaguely that even he was a good-looking man, tall, handsomely tanned, with a fine speaking voice. It was Hollywood. Maybe he had come out here to be a movie star—and decided on the cloth instead. She winced, ready to kick herself. When had she gotten so jaded?

She wasn’t aware when the service came to an end. Close to the coffin, she was handed a rose to toss down upon it. She did so and walked away, feeling Doug’s escorting hand upon her elbow. They were followed by the others in their party.

“Miss McCormack!”

As her name was called, she turned around. At first she thought it was the man from the funeral home. Then she realized that it was just someone who looked similar to him.

“Yes?”

He handed her a flower. A beautiful red rose in full bloom.

“I … I set a flower upon the grave,” she said.

Something almost like a smile touched his face. “No, this one is for you. From a fan. It would be a kindness if you would take it.”

“A fan?”

“Someone shy, I think. But someone who very much wants you to know that … you’re watched. Please … as I said, it’s from a fan.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. Thank you very much.”

She took the rose and turned away with Doug once again.

An odd chill suddenly seeped through her.

“See? You are adored, my lovely diva of the daytime!” Doug teased.

But Serena wasn’t really listening. Being in the cemetery had made her uneasy, as if she were being watched.

She turned back, looking through the crowd for the nondescript man who had given her the rose.

She curled her fingers more tightly around the stem of the flower she carried.

“Hey, careful!” Doug warned her.

She looked down. She hadn’t felt the thorn digging into her flesh. Her hand was bleeding. Doug pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket and quickly blotted the wound.

“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “Just a prick.”

“Man, it’s bleeding like a son of a gun,” Doug said.

“It’s all right.”

“Let me help you get the blood off, at least. You’ll ruin that great outfit.”

She barely heard him. Her eyes were still searching through the crowd for the messenger. He was gone. Gone as if he had never been.

All that remained was the rose, held in her bloody hand.

A rose. Just a rose.

Liam had kept his distance from the
Valentine Valley
people at the funeral. At the cemetery he’d found a large oak where he could lean back and watch. As he saw the man give Serena the rose, he was troubled. Why? It was a rose, a pretty gift for a beautiful woman. But he saw the troubled expression on her face.

He left his tree, hurrying across the cemetery. The place wasn’t that big. It was set in the middle of studios and offices, and visited daily by all manner of tourists. The man who had given Serena the rose had headed toward the mausoleums. Liam followed him in that direction.

He entered the first memorial courtyard. No one. He entered the second, cursing himself for not moving quickly enough. He entered the third, and the fourth, then looked up in the last of them. A wall had crumbled. There was a fair space for a man to have slipped through—and into the stream of the city.

It was just a rose,
he reminded himself,
from a fan.
Someone taking the opportunity of the funeral to get close to Serena McCormack.

Walking back across the cemetery, he made sure that he could still see the
Valentine Valley
group. Serena was getting into Doug Henson’s car. Doug was talking to Conar; they were probably discussing somewhere to go for a cup of coffee.

Liam headed for the hearse and the three tuxedo-clad men from the funeral home who were closing it up. “Hey, do you guys have a fellow working for you who is ash-blond, about five-ten, late twenties, and in a tux?”

The apparent head of the group responded. “No, sorry, we’re the only ones from the funeral home at this site. You looking for a friend?”

“Not exactly. Did you notice anyone fitting that description take off around here?”

“I’m afraid not. But there were hundreds of people here. Lots of fans, you know. We tried to maintain a certain decorum, but … maybe someone wore a tux to look like a mortuary employee in order to rub elbows with some of the elite. This place was a zoo; anyone could have been here, you know.”

“Thanks for the help.”

He turned quickly and hurried to his car, aware that Doug Henson had slid into the driver’s seat of his vehicle.

Moving into traffic, keeping the group in sight, he told himself again that it had been a rose, just a rose. Serena had legions of fans.

Still, the rose incident bothered him, and he knew why.

Olsen had shown him the set. The police markings had shown him where the body of Jane Dunne had fallen, the way her arm had been extended … And right where her hand would have been there was a single red rose.

When it was all over, the killer stood at the gravesite. In darkness and shadow, the killer was just a silhouette, standing before a grave, head bowed, as if in mourning.

Hands … the killer stretched them out. There was no blood on those hands. No way to see the weapons of a killer. Who would have thought that it could actually work? Well, almost work. Still, these were now the hands of a killer.

The cops were suspicious, but they
knew
nothing. It
w
ould be harder now. Yet better. Now
she
would be afraid.

Serena had seen the note. She was suspicious. Soon she would be scared.

The killer would watch.

And wait …

T
HE SET SEEMED STRANGE
on Friday morning when Liam arrived.

It was his second trip to the studio. Yesterday, Olsen and Joe Penny had accompanied him. He had seen the crime tape and the markings. He also met up with Bill Hutchens for a drink. They’d never been partners, but they’d always worked well together. He wanted to make sure that Bill was okay with him on the case.

“As long as
you’re
okay with it,” Bill told him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Serena.”

“That’s been over.”

Bill shrugged. “Hey, you know, I took her out for coffee and stuff after. That was some heavy ‘over’ between you two. But, hey, actresses, huh? They live in a different world.”

“So it seems,” he assured Bill. They went over a few notes Bill had taken. He learned nothing new, except that he became convinced that if it had been a murder and not an accident, it was definitely an inside job. And a peculiar one at that. No matter how you fooled with equipment, it would be hard to know exactly when it would fall.

Today Liam was meeting with Emilio Garcia and Dayton Riley, the lighting technicians. Emilio started out not surly but weary. “I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been through this all with the police,” he told Liam.

Liam had met him briefly before, and he liked the man. A big fellow with dark hair and a dark moustache, he looked like the Frito Bandito.

“I know that,” Liam told him. “And I know that you and Dayton are longtime pros. That’s why this is such a mystery.”

“Mystery, hell!” Dayton Riley said. He was me opposite of Emilio Garcia—thin as a beanpole, barely thirty, with carrot-red hair and a face full of freckles. “I’m telling you, Emilio and I are never careless. I could almost swear I watched Emilio on the ladder tightening the clamp on that light.”

“Hey, I know, guys. Joe Penny told me that you have never had so much as an exploding lightbulb before.”

They both seemed mollified.

“Since I can change a fuse and a lightbulb and that’s about it, would you mind explaining some of the setup here? I need to understand what happened,” Liam continued.

“If you look up,” Emilio said, “you’ll see that we have a ceiling light grid that supports suspended equipment. It’s common in smaller studios like this—especially where we have a number of permanent sets. Lamps, or lights, are clipped, clamped, or slung. As you can see, it’s a tubular, lattice structure. See there—at the far ends of each side? Those are the power outlets, fitted right into the workings. There were two Fresnel spotlights on the piece of grid that went down.” He sighed. “Heavy lights. They were focused on the action at the front table. The light beams had softened edges, making the light blend well with the dimmer lamps that lit the background of the set.”