by Ball, Donna
“She probably flew commercial into St. Martin,” supplied Miles, “and took the ferry over to avoid the record of a private flight into St. Bart’s. Then, just to make sure she covered her tracks, she took a cab to the airport, where drivers are accustomed to picking up incognito guests and no one asks any questions.”
Susan gave an amused shake of her head. “Miles, you’re astonishing. Who knew you had such an imagination? If you’d used some of it while we were married, we might have lasted longer.”
“I doubt that,” replied Miles. He sounded a little sad. “If I had used any imagination at all, I would have known what you were a lot sooner.”
The amusement faded from her face.
I said, “She would have had to have been a pretty close look-alike to step in for Rachelle in some of those action scenes. Directors like close-ups these days, they’re more convincing. With hair and make-up, a really good actress could fool just about anyone. Except her dog.”
“Now I see where this is coming from.” Susan’s cool smile did not touch her eyes as she looked at Miles. “Congratulations, darling, you finally found someone as impressionable as you are.”
Alex turned his head slowly to look at Susan. “My God,” he said quietly. I couldn’t tell whether the expression in his tone was contempt or admiration. “You did this? All of it?”
Susan shot him an annoyed look. “Shut up, Alex. They’re trying to trap you into saying something, God knows why. The whole thing is some absurd little drama the two of them have concocted and they’re so pathetic they don’t realize it doesn’t even make sense. Even if it were possible to kill a person and bring someone else in to take her place, why would you, for heaven’s sake? And to think you could get away with impersonating someone as famous as Rachelle Denison? It’s ridiculous.”
“But that’s what made it easy,” I said. “Rachelle wasn’t that famous. Not like a major movie star with hundreds of handlers, advisors and hangers-on, not to mention fans, that you’d have to fool. She had just been in the business a few years, didn’t have that many friends, no close relatives. Her show had been canceled for almost a year, so she didn’t go to work every day. Her agent, her manager, her lawyer—those were the only people you really had to worry about fooling. And you didn’t even have to fool them for very long—just until today, when Rachelle turned thirty and came into full control of her trust. The only problem was that everyone—and I mean everyone—knew how crazy she was about Cocoa, and how she was the only one who could control him. The first time Cocoa ran past her without recognizing her, or ignored her command, the gig would be up. So your first thought was to get rid of Cocoa. But you forgot to tell Rachelle—the fake Rachelle—you had done that, so when I asked her about Cocoa yesterday she told everyone in the room how happy Cocoa had been to see her when she got home. Big mistake, since she’d just blown your excuse for why Cocoa couldn’t be in all the photos with her, like he always was. ”
My throat contracted a little at the realization that I, with my careless interference, had been the cause of Cisco’s kidnapping, and Melanie’s. But I pushed determinedly on. “You had already seen how much Cisco looked like Cocoa, and how well-trained he was, and you figured that if you could pass off an imposter as Rachelle you could definitely pass Cisco off as her dog. But something went wrong, didn’t it? Melanie got in the way.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Susan turned impatiently on her heel toward the house. “I don’t have to listen to this. Show them out, will you Alex?”
But Alex’s eyes, and mine, were on Rachelle and Cisco. They had almost reached us, but Cisco hadn’t seen me yet, and the sea breeze had kept him from sniffing out Cocoa. The fake Rachelle, looking movie-star perfect in her wind-tossed coral dress and chiffon scarf, raised her hand to wave at us, and that’s when it happened. Cisco’s head swiveled and his ears went forward. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, although I did not immediately know the reason why. Part of me thought, No, no, no… while another part thought, Run, Cisco, run, run as fast as you can!
And that was exactly what he did. Rachelle was barely holding the leash at all and she gave a startled little cry as he jerked it out of her hand on his way back down the terraces to the beach. He galloped past the photographer, who didn’t even try to stop him. He galloped toward the sound of a voice he loved, and my heart stopped as I recognized it too.
My eyes flew to Miles in a flash of panic and he started forward, but Melanie was too fast for us. Rachelle, remembering herself, cried, “Cocoa, Cocoa, you bad dog, come here!” almost at the same moment as Melanie came running up the terrace steps from the beach, a delighted Cisco bouncing at her side. “It’s okay, lady, I’ve got him!” she called.
We had had such a great plan, Miles and I. Not a perfect plan, to be sure, but one that was as foolproof as we could possibly make it. We had not counted on this. How could we? It all spiraled out of our control within seconds, and there was absolutely nothing we could do.
Rachelle turned to thank Melanie and to take Cisco’s leash. Rita came up the steps only a moment behind Melanie, wearing her sun hat and carrying a beach bag over her shoulder, exclaiming, “I’m so sorry! Melanie you can’t just run off like that!”
It was easy to see what had happened. Melanie, too excited about Cisco’s safe return to stay still and with only a few hours left in the islands, had become impossible to keep in the house. Rita had agreed to let her go down to the beach while waiting for us to return, fully confident that the danger had passed. The kidnapper was dead, Cisco was on his way home, and she would not allow her grandchild to live in fear. The Barry estate was less than a five-minute walk up the beach. Why shouldn’t Melanie have called out a greeting to Cocoa when she saw him on the terrace above? And why shouldn’t Cisco, hearing her voice, have run toward her?
Still, everything might have been fine if Melanie had simply returned the leash to Rachelle and raced back down the hill, or if Rita had had time to catch up with her. But before either of those things could happen, Melanie noticed us.
“Dad!” she exclaimed. And then, seeing me standing there holding Cocoa’s leash, her face split into a wide, delighted grin and she cried, “Cisco!” she thrust the leash she was holding into Rachelle’s hand and raced toward us.
Cisco naturally noticed us as well and raced after her. Rachelle either never had a good grip on the leash at all, or dropped it in surprise. Cocoa, seeing both a child and a loose dog running toward him, lunged forward. I did the only thing I could think to do. I dropped the leash.
Cocoa, doubtless remembering their last romp on the beach, plowed happily into Cisco and the two dogs rolled and tumbled across the grass, red leashes tangling, until even I lost sight of which one was Cisco. Rachelle, directly in their path, cried out and shrank back, and Rita held onto the rail. The confusion gave Miles a chance to run forward and scoop up an astonished Melanie, which was all I had wanted.
Cisco and Cocoa regained their feet and started racing in happy circles, tails whirling, faces grinning, cutting and bowing, spinning and dashing. As far as Cisco was concerned, his family was back together, no one had given him a counter-command, and it was time to party. As for Cocoa, he had never missed a chance to run wild and he wasn’t about to begin now. A stack of chairs went flying. An urn filled with cut flowers tumbled to the ground. One of the leashes caught the leg of a glass table and sent it crashing to the stone patio. Susan cried out, “For God’s sake, Lisa, catch him!”
Rachelle shrank back in dismay. “Which one?”
And I think we all realized what Susan had said at the same moment.
My uncle, sheriff for thirty years, used to say that crimes usually are not committed by smart people. Most of the time this is true. But this particular crime, this elaborate production of a hoax, was a very smart crime, committed by a very smart person. I spent a lot of time afterwards trying to figure out how someone who had planned everything down to the smallest detail, even going so far as t
o kidnap a golden retriever to make sure the imposter was photographed with her beloved pet, could have made such a stupid, careless mistake. And then it occurred to me. Susan was the producer, not the talent. She was not prepared to step into a major role in her own play. She was, quite simply, under-rehearsed.
Alex stood slowly, staring at Susan. “Jesus Christ,” he said. Again, it would have been impossible to say with any degree of accuracy whether his expression was disbelief or admiration, or perhaps a mixture of both.
The dog game had circled toward me, and I ran forward and grabbed one of the leashes, leaving Rachelle to snatch up the other. I honestly did not know until the leash was in my hand which golden retriever I had. And I was sure Rachelle did not.
Miles set Melanie on her feet and pushed her into Rita’s arms. “Get her out of here,” he commanded.
Rita wrapped both arms around Melanie’s chest and took a backward step down the stairs. That was when Susan said, “Stop right there.” And Rita’s eyes went wide. She stopped.
I turned, and saw Susan standing on the patio with a gun in her hand.
I don’t know where she got it. It was the kind of powerful, compact weapon a man obsessed with security would have kept stashed strategically around his house in easy-to-reach places. Perhaps in a kitchen drawer just inside the open door. Perhaps in a hidden compartment underneath the outdoor bar. Perhaps in a flower urn. She held the weapon in a strong, two-handed grip, and it was pointed at Melanie.
Miles stepped in front of his daughter. I felt my breath go still.
“Okay, Susan,” he said calmly, “that’s enough. You were the one who was concerned about a felony kidnapping. You’re not going to shoot anybody. Why don’t you just put the gun down before this gets out of hand?”
Her gaze was steady, and so was her aim, for a long and terrifying moment. She said, without shifting the gun, “I’m sorry about your boat, Miles. It was supposed to be a distraction, not a total loss. And I never meant to hurt your little girl. God, I’m not a monster. And you were always good to me. But Rick… what an idiot. The only thing he got right was getting Rachelle’s body in the boat that night and dumping it out at sea. After that, it was one giant screw-up after another.”
I looked desperately back down toward the terrace, where the photographer who had been left behind might be our only hope. If he came in sight of the patio and saw a woman with a gun… But he had moved his equipment down to the beach and was setting up for shots of the ocean. He was not coming back to the house.
I wound the leash around my hand twice for security, and I spoke up solely to get her attention away from Miles. My voice was a little shaky, I won’t deny. “You knew Rick had a criminal record, and used it against him. Is that how you got him to work for you?”
She cast me a dismissive glance. “I’m the one who got him this job. He was small-time, B&E, and most of what he scored went up his nose. This should have been a simple in-and-out, the easiest job he’d ever done. But he couldn’t get rid of the damn dog. That was all I asked him to do. Get rid of the dog. And then twice—twice—he bungled the break-in. All he had to do was put a leash on a dog , for God’s sake. Some people are too stupid to live.”
“So you killed him,” Miles said.
She shrugged. “He was a liability. Sentimental, stupid, and a coke-head—not to mention that he knew way, way too much. He was completely unreliable. He would have overdosed himself eventually. I just hurried it along.”
My friend, Sonny, believes that dogs can read our minds, and sometimes she has actually seemed to be able to communicate with them. I am skeptical, but before an agility run I will often picture the course in my head and whisper the commands to Cisco as though he could remember them. And what handler hasn’t stood across from her dog during the long down in an obedience trial thinking Stay, stay, stay…? It was for all of these reasons that I studiously kept my eyes off my dog, that I deliberately did not think about him at all, even though my heart was bursting in my chest to have him so close and still in danger. I did not want to take the slightest chance that he would read something in my body language, or my mind, that would draw attention to himself and upset the delicate balance of power between the crazy person who held the gun and all the rest of us.
So I deliberately kept my focus on anything other than my dog, and the terribly vulnerable position he was in. I said, “What I don’t understand is why you came to Miles. You had everything under control. All you had to do was keep people believing Rachelle was alive for another few hours and then you and Alex would have control of her fortune. Why risk everything by bringing someone else in?”
She cast a single, contemptuous glance at me. “So you’re not as smart as I thought. I couldn’t let Alex in on this. He was too greedy. And I hate to admit it, but a little smarter than I thought. He almost ruined everything at the press conference yesterday. And here’s the funny thing— it was the dog that made him think he might have been wrong the first time, and this might really be Rachelle. That’s how they all looked like such a happy family on television this morning. You’re right—everybody knew about Rachelle and that damn dog.” She cast a brief glance in the direction of Alex, who was standing near her right shoulder, but never really took her attention, or the gun, off Miles. She said, “But letting Alex sit in jail while prosecutors and defense lawyers dug around for evidence wasn’t an option. We had to have him where we could control him.”
“Or dispose of him,” said Miles. He kept his gaze, very calm, very neutral, on Susan, and on Alex behind her. I tried very hard not to look at anything at all.
Susan just smiled. “In a situation like this, it’s important to be prepared for any contingency. It would have been better if the police hadn’t tried to get cute at all. The only point of planting the regulator was to make sure that if anyone, including Alex, decided to claim that Rachelle was really dead, it would look as though he killed her. But when he got scared and called that press conference, we had to do our big reveal before we were ready.” She shrugged. “We knew things might not go according to plan, and we had a Plan B. Fortunately, we also have a Plan C.”
Rachelle, whose name was actually Lisa, said impatiently, “What am I supposed to do with this dog now? Can’t I just let him go?”
“No,” Lisa said sharply. “Bring him over here.” To Miles she said, “You’re right. I’m not going to shoot anyone. A little girl, a grandmother… That’s just not me. But I’ll kill both of these dogs right in front of your kid and it won’t cause me a minute’s pain. I don’t even like dogs.”
Looking at her, I knew she would do it, and my heart contracted in my chest. I wound the leash tighter in my hand. I did not look at my dog.
Melanie said in a small, tight voice, “Daddy, don’t let her hurt the dogs. Don’t let her shoot Cisco.” And I could see, from my position, Rita’s arms tighten around Melanie. Miles kept his eyes on Susan.
He said, “You’ve got to know this isn’t going to work. Too many people know the truth now. Do you really think you can keep all of us quiet? There are too many loose ends. What if the police find Rachelle’s body? And what about your patsy here…” He glanced at the woman playing the part of Rachelle. “Lisa, is it? As soon as she gets her hands on the trust fund she won’t need you anymore. You haven’t thought this through.”
Lisa laughed and glanced at Susan. Susan just smiled. Lisa said, “Men are so naïve. Susan and I were together long before we came up with this plan. In fact, the whole thing was actually my idea, two years ago, when Rachelle got the stomach flu and Susan called me in to do a television interview for her. No one even knew it was me! I already knew I was a better actress than she was, but that day proved I could even be a better Rachelle than she was. So Susan and I started planning, and rehearsing, and getting everything just right for the day we’d start our new life together. That’s what this has been about. Us.”
Miles nodded slowly. “And in a week or two, Alex, despondent over his
failing business, would be found with a bullet through his head and a gun in his hand, a suicide note left on his computer so no one could dispute the handwriting. One less loose end.”
Susan just laughed. “So dramatic, darling. Why go to all that trouble when there’s enough for all of us? In a few months, a nice divorce settlement, and as soon as the movie comes out, Lisa and I will too.” She smiled at her own small joke and glanced at the other woman to share it. “Alex is no threat to us, he’s in this as deep as anyone. So this is what is going to happen.” I could see behind her eyes a mind that was busily working, improvising, making it up as she went along. “We’re all going to go inside the house, and we’re going to wait for another…” She glanced at Lisa. “What time is it?”
Lisa looked at her watch, a thin, diamond tennis-bracelet thing that I was sure had belonged to the real Rachelle. “Ten thirty.”
“We’re going to wait for another hour and a half,” she said, “at which time Rachelle’s trust will officially transfer to her. The real Rachelle signed the papers before she left for her anniversary trip—my idea, by the way—so everything is set to go. As soon as Lisa makes a call transferring her assets to an account in the Caymans, you can say whatever you want. In fact, I might even have you on my show and let you tell the world about the fake Rachelle. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. Even if the authorities believed you— which they won’t— these kinds of investigations take years and years, and the money is already gone.”
“Meantime,” said Lisa, caressing Susan’s shoulder with a brief affectionate smile, “we will be Hollywood’s new power couple. I’ll be the star I deserve to be and Susan will be the producer she was meant to be, and a little scandal will only add to our cachet. Seriously, you have no idea how many times I’ve gotten away with playing Rachelle already. Do you really think we would have spent two years planning every little detail of this operation if we didn’t think we could pull it off?”
