“Yeah.” Burton stood, swinging his briefcase off the table.
Darcy lurched to his feet. Between the hours of interrogation and the stress, he was just exhausted. He would call Elizabeth the minute he left the station. The sound of her voice would be like a soothing balm. Maybe she could even come to Pemberley.
As if he could read Darcy’s mind, Burton laid a hand on his arm. “Stay away from anyone involved in the case, especially the Bennets.”
“No way.” Surely that solace wouldn’t be denied as well.
Burton shook his head. “If you contact them, it could appear as if you’re trying to sway their opinion. Witness tampering.”
“But—”
Burton turned from the door and gave Darcy a level stare. “Would you prefer five years in prison for reckless endangerment?”
Darcy let out a long breath. “No.”
“Because right now you’re skating on thin ice. You have to do everything by the book, or you’re going to dig yourself into a deeper hole.”
“All right.” To his own ears, Darcy’s voice sounded so defeated he might as well have already lost the case.
“So you won’t contact the Bennets?”
Darcy restrained the urge to punch his own lawyer. That would be self-defeating. “No, I won’t talk to them.”
***
With reporters staking out their home, Elizabeth’s parents had decided on an impromptu family meeting at the hospital. At least hospital security wouldn’t permit the press past the lobby. Elizabeth had stopped in for a quick visit with Lydia, who was sleeping soundly. Her color was better, and she was hooked up to fewer machines; Elizabeth was heartened by the sight.
She then hurried to a nearby family lounge. Intended for families to consult with doctors, the small room had a bunch of chairs pushed up against the walls and a plethora of tissue boxes. High in one corner of the room, the television was turned to ZNN. The fact that it was muted didn’t stop the parade of headlines flashing across the screen: Drug Use and Car Accidents Part of a Pattern with Darcy. Darcy Appeared in the Victim’s Father’s Latest Movie. Witness Puts Darcy in Car with Unconscious Woman. Everything suggested Will’s guilt.
Her stomach churning, Elizabeth finally took a seat in a molded-plastic chair underneath the television so she wouldn’t have to watch it. The rest of her family—her parents, Kitty, Mary, and Jane—had been talking in hushed tones when she arrived. But all conversation ceased the moment she entered the room.
Elizabeth pretended not to notice. “What are the doctors saying about Lydia’s condition?” she asked her parents.
Her mother dabbed her eyes. “She won’t be well enough to audition for Fast and Furious 32, but maybe in time for Fast and Furious 36.”
Elizabeth nodded, unsure if this represented a good or bad thing.
“They think recovery won’t take too long if she works hard at the physical therapy,” Jane said.
Her father grinned. “She seems like she’s in good spirits. You know Lydia, always putting a good face on everything.”
“She’ll be back to her bubbly self in no time!” her mother exclaimed.
Nobody was talking about the Darcy-shaped elephant in the room—the reason they were all there. Elizabeth couldn’t take it anymore. “Dad, you need to issue a statement saying that we believe Will is innocent.” The words burst out of her.
Her father rubbed his forehead and didn’t respond.
Elizabeth pressed forward. “We all know that Will didn’t have any interest in hanging out with Lydia. We never saw him use drugs; he took weekly tests for God’s sake!”
Kitty scowled. “You’re saying that the family should proclaim the innocence of a man who has a history of drugs and car crashes?” Despite her jealousy of Lydia, Kitty had often been her partner in crime and had been devastated by the accident.
“There’s no reason to think Will was in the car with her,” Elizabeth argued. “George Wickham makes a lot more sense. Lydia was spending time with him, and he has a history of drug dealing—”
Mary regarded Elizabeth sharply. “How do you know that?”
She sighed, knowing how it would sound. “Will told me—months ago. His family had some run-ins with George.”
“That’s awfully convenient,” Kitty sneered.
“I’m sure George was high at Charlie’s party,” Elizabeth added.
“Did you see him take anything?” Mary asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. How could they believe Will had anything to do with this? “Lydia hung out with George; he even told her he’d cast her in his movie. Will didn’t—”
“Lydia idolized Darcy,” Kitty said fiercely. “She would have done anything he asked.”
Elizabeth pushed hair impatiently from her eyes. “But he didn’t want anything from her—”
“A witness saw him!” Kitty yelled. Everyone in the room flinched. “The witness identified Darcy,” she continued in a lower tone of voice. “How do you explain that?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth conceded. “Maybe George paid the guy off.”
“That does seem like a bit of a stretch,” her father said. The doubt in his eyes was crushing. Nausea roiled her stomach. How could everything go downhill so quickly? First she had been responsible because of her association with Wickham and now closeness to Will was damning her. Would she always be at fault somehow?
“Look!” Jane pointed to the television. Elizabeth twisted around so she could read the screen: Breaking News: Police Sources Say Darcy Does Not Have an Alibi.
Damn. Why, oh why hadn’t Darcy spent that particular afternoon in a very public location surrounded by a lot of people? It would have been far more convenient.
Elizabeth turned to her father. “If we stay silent, then it looks like we believe Will is guilty, too.” She could hear the pleading tone in her voice.
“What if he is guilty?” Kitty exclaimed. “We don’t want to let him off the hook.”
Elizabeth sprang from her chair. “He isn’t!”
Kitty surged to her feet as well. “How do you know?”
“I just do!” Will wouldn’t touch drugs, but Elizabeth couldn’t tell them the truth about the incident in Palm Springs.
“I thought you didn’t even like him.” Kitty narrowed her eyes. “Why are you suddenly defending him?”
Elizabeth said nothing, but the answer must have been written on her face.
“Oho!” Kitty exclaimed. “That’s it! A couple nights in the sack, and you’ve decided he couldn’t possibly hurt our sister. Did he promise you a role in his next film, too?”
“Kitty!” Jane said sharply. “That’s not fair.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “I’m going to be a doctor,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling.
Mary crossed her arms. “That doesn’t mean you’re immune from his fame—or his pheromones.”
Elizabeth hunched in on herself, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t make things worse.
Kitty rounded on their father. “Dad, I don’t think we should say anything to the press until we have more information. We should let the police do their jobs and not get involved one way or the other.”
“I agree,” their mother trilled. “This accident cost Lydia some valuable roles. It was particularly sad that she missed the audition for the Froot Loops movie.”
Her father sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I’m sorry, Lizzy. I don’t think Will is responsible, but I agree that we shouldn’t make a statement yet. Let’s wait and see what the police have to say.”
Just when everything with Will and her family seemed to be getting better, now Elizabeth was in the middle of a ten-car pileup. Tears burned behind her eyes, but at the moment letting her family see her cry seemed like something she needed to avoid at all costs. She had to escape before she broke down.
Elizabeth stalked to the door and slammed out of the room, ignoring Jane’s distressed pleas.
Will’s number was au
todialing on her phone before she reached the end of the hall. He picked up right away.
“Will—”
“I can’t talk to you, Elizabeth. I’m sorry.”
“Will—!”
He had hung up.
She dialed again; it went directly to voicemail. She hung up. A text pinged on her phone: My lawyer says I shouldn’t talk to anyone in your family, or it might look like witness tampering. I’m sorry.
No, no, no! Her thumbs flew over the phone as she replied: I know you didn’t hurt Lydia. We need to figure out how to prove it. We need to work together!!!
But a message came back instantaneously: The user of this account has blocked messages from this number.
“God damn it!” Heads from all over the hospital corridor turned toward Elizabeth as she threw her phone at the wall.
Chapter Sixteen
An hour later, Jane found Elizabeth huddled on the top step of the cold, drafty hospital stairwell. Nobody seemed to use this particular set of stairs at the end of a long corridor, so Elizabeth had believed she was safe to brood in peace. She hadn’t counted on her older sister’s persistence.
Initially, Jane said nothing; she simply sat beside Elizabeth on the step, a comforting presence. Elizabeth had stopped crying, but her eyes were still red and sore, swollen and sensitive. “I know he didn’t do it, Jane,” she said finally, noting how scratchy her voice sounded.
Her sister put an arm around her shoulder.
“You don’t believe he did it, do you?”
Jane sighed. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Elizabeth’s entire body grew heavier. If Jane wasn’t convinced of Will’s innocence, how could anyone else be?
Jane continued. “He didn’t show any particular interest in Lydia, but she flirted with him the entire time we were filming. She might have…you know…”
“Convinced him to hook up?” Elizabeth finished bitterly.
“You had rejected him,” Jane said in her infuriatingly reasonable voice. “And Lydia can be very persistent.”
“Will wouldn’t have given Lydia drugs.”
“She could have gotten them somewhere else,” Jane said softly. “Mom and Dad don’t want to admit it, but she doesn’t always have the best judgment.”
“What does Ricky think?” she asked.
Jane wouldn’t meet her eyes, just stared at the painted cinder-block walls. “He…um…doesn’t think Will did it, but Ricky admits he doesn’t know the adult Will very well.”
Elizabeth felt like she would burst out of her skin. She wanted to scream. “Will doesn’t use drugs, Jane!” She made a conscious effort not to shout. “He wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Lizzy, I’d like to believe that, but this is a guy who was arrested for reckless driving and possession of cocaine.”
Elizabeth ground her teeth together. She hated to betray Will’s secrets, but surely this was an extenuating circumstance. “There’s something he told me about that night in Palm Springs— something the police don’t know. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Okay.” Jane’s tone was dubious.
“His sister, Georgiana, was driving the car that crashed into the swimming pool. She’s had drug problems ever since George Wickham got her hooked. It was her coke in the car. Will took the fall because he knew she would get sent to prison.”
Jane inhaled sharply.
“He hates drugs. He hates what they’ve done to his sister. Do you understand why I know he couldn’t do it?”
Jane was silent for a long moment. “Lizzy, forgive me, but how do you know that story is true? Of course, it might be true, but…people who use drugs can be very convincing liars.”
Elizabeth didn’t say anything for a moment; she was torn between bursting into tears and screaming at her sister.
Jane continued. “The first time you met this guy he almost hit you with his car.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together against the impulse to issue an immediate denial; being a bad driver didn’t automatically make someone a criminal. But she tried to pull together some scraps of logic and examine the situation rationally. Without that, how could she explain her defense of Will in a way that made sense? Even worse, did her defense of Will make sense?
Her initial impression of William Darcy—the one she’d held for many weeks—had not been flattering. She had viewed him as arrogant, proud, and unfeeling. What if that had been an accurate view of the man’s character? She only had Will’s word that George Wickham was an untrustworthy drug dealer. Maybe George’s story about the Darcys was the truth.
Before I met George and Will, I was so confident in my judgment of people. Then it was all ripped apart, but what if my initial impressions were the right ones?
Will was an actor, after all; it wouldn’t have been that difficult to pretend he loved her. Maybe it was a game to him. Maybe he had a bet going with Charlie that he could seduce the woman who disliked him. What a huge triumph that would be. What a big ol’ notch on the bedpost.
How easy it would be to return to her old ways of thinking about Darcy. At the moment everyone she knew was either unsure about him or convinced of his guilt. Team Darcy was a lonely place to be.
Closing her eyes, she recalled the expression on his face when he said he loved her. She had waited her whole life for someone to say that to her and to look at her like that. And then she hadn’t said anything in return. She hugged her knees to her chest.
Yes, there were a lot of reasons to disbelieve Will, but Elizabeth had seen his heart. He had shown her everything, baring his secrets and his feelings to her. She believed in the integrity of what he had shown her. She believed in him. Either I understand him in a way that nobody else does, or I’m the most severely deluded person I know.
A slow warmth, a conviction, welled up inside Elizabeth: I am in love with him.
If only she had realized it before. If only he were here at this moment so she could tell him. If only she could shout it from the roof of the hospital.
Believing in Will was believing in love. Believing in Will was believing in herself.
She stood up.
“I’m not ready to give up on him. There’s got to be someone who saw him that day, who can provide an alibi.”
“I’m sure the police will investigate that,” Jane said soothingly.
“They think he’s guilty; they won’t search very hard. He’s innocent. Someone out there can prove it, and I’m going to find them.”
Jane stared blankly at her for a moment. “Okay.” She stood and dusted off her jeans. “I believe in you. If you believe in him, that’s good enough for me. Where should we start?”
***
Darcy had answered the phone without checking the caller ID, and now he regretted it. Aunt Catherine had berated him for five minutes about how his carelessness would damage the family reputation.
Finally, he was irritated enough to interrupt her. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Of course, you didn’t,” his aunt said soothingly, taking him off guard. “None of us ever do, at least not intentionally. Now, I’ll share a little family secret with you. If you do find yourself in a difficult position again, I know of an excellent service, very discreet. I assure you, the authorities will never find the body.”
“I haven’t killed anyone!”
She clucked sympathetically. “Not yet, but I understand how these things escalate.”
Darcy would suspect his aunt was joking, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had no sense of humor. His aunt continued to talk. “I’ll text you the service’s contact information. They also have a Korean woman who does a terrific mani/pedi. The last time I saw you, your cuticles were a disgrace.”
Darcy’s call waiting beeped, and he leaped at the opportunity to exit the Twilight Zone. “Thank you for your offer to help,” he told his aunt. “I have another call coming in. It’s probably my lawyer, so I should go.”
“All
right. I’ll text the information right over to you. The code word is ‘Perambulator.’ Be sure to use it. Staying out of prison is the family tradition!”
As Darcy clicked over to call waiting, he wondered if he had ever known his aunt at all.
The other caller was Burton. “Have they found Wickham yet?” Darcy asked without preamble.
Burton sighed. “No. I’m sorry, Will. The guy seems to have evaporated.”
Darcy stifled a curse as he leaned back in his desk chair. He was in his study, where he’d been busily staring out the window and failing to get any useful work accomplished. But at least it kept him away from the television, with its cable news shows airing hot-and-cold-running pundits opining—without any evidence—about Darcy’s addiction, his issues with his parents, and how the scandal would affect his career.
The enforced inactivity was grinding Darcy down. He was accustomed to days full of appearances, filming, photo shoots, interviews, and lunches with friends. But everything had been put on hold. His part of the publicity for In the Shadows had been suspended, his next project was on life support, and Burton had advised him to keep public appearances to a minimum. Darcy didn’t mind complying; he hardly relished the idea of being mobbed by people demanding to know why he’d abandoned a teenager in a car wreck.
“Did you check with Wickham’s mother?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“And the friends I mentioned?”
“Uh-huh. Nobody has seen him. It doesn’t help that he’s unemployed and apparently owes money to a bunch of people.”
Darcy ran his hands through his hair, resisting the impulse to pull some of it out. Who knew that one day he’d wish he’d kept closer tabs on Wickham? He’d always thought the absence of Wickham in his life was a good thing. Unable to remain seated, Darcy prowled across the lush Persian carpet of his study. “He might have left L.A.”
“Could be.”
Darcy could tell that Burton had something more important he wanted to discuss. “What is it?”
Burton cleared his throat. “The police are getting closer to issuing a warrant for your arrest.”
A variety of expletives flew through Darcy’s head. He set both his feet on the floor and reminded himself, yet again, that the room was not getting smaller. The walls were not closing in on him. It just felt that way. “Th-They can’t do that.”
Darcy in Hollywood Page 24
