Good Sister, The

by Diana Diamond

  Peter stopped by to see how she was surviving the day. She could stay in his apartment, he said. He could easily move into his club. And the company’s security force would assign additional people. They could put a woman inside the apartment with her and guards outside the door, on the roof, and in the lobby.

  “I’m not frightened,” she lied. “I have no problems with going back to my apartment once they fix my door and put a new gate on the fire stairs.”

  “That’s being taken care of,” he promised. He didn’t tell her that he had already made arrangements with the security firm for a guard on the roof, one in the elevator, and one in each of the stairwells.

  Who had tried to get to her, Jennifer wondered. And why? She posed the questions over and over again and tried any number of answers. But in the end, it always came up Padraig. He was the one with the most to gain. As long as she stuck to the concerns of the business and followed the money motive, Padraig was the only name that fit.

  But suppose money had nothing to do with it. Suppose the intruder had no interest in who ran Pegasus, or whether the movie was finished or was sold. What if the reason for the attack was as irrational as the attack itself? What if madness was the only motive? Then it was her sister who jumped to the top of the list.

  Her sister? Unthinkable. And yet it was the only scenario that she could explain to herself. She was fairly certain that Catherine had once come close to killing her. They had become tangled while diving in Belize, and she was sure that her sister had grabbed for her air hose. Catherine had, of course, said it was the other way around. She had accused Jennifer of trying to tear out her air supply. But that was Catherine’s bizarre gift: She could turn the truth to fit any scenario.

  And now Catherine was frightened. She suspected Jennifer of hiring the man who had come within a few inches of hurling her off her balcony. Why wouldn’t Catherine strike back? Maybe just to frighten her and show that two could play the violence game. Or maybe to kill her and put an end to their lifelong competition.

  It should be unthinkable. But it was the only solution she could believe. Far more logical than the suggestion that Padraig O’Connell, who seemed truly penitent, had reached all the way from California to harm her.

  When Padraig called that night to satisfy himself that she was safe, Jennifer asked straight out whether it could have been her sister. “You know Catherine well. You’ve shared secrets with her. Is it possible that she could want me dead?”

  “Jay-sus, but that’s a frightening thought,” he answered. “There’s no doubt she would love to see me join the faithful departed. But you? I really don’t think so. I know that she can be … how can I put this tactfully?”

  “A cunt,” Jennifer said.

  “Yes. That’s tactful enough. And possibly the most self-centered woman on earth. And she told me a hundred times how much you get on her nerves, which I naturally find impossible to believe.”

  “Padraig, please, just tell me.”

  His tone changed. “Well, she’s absolutely certain that you hired someone to kill her. But I think her reaction is more fear than vengeance. She’s more afraid that you’ll try again than she is determined to get back at you. So I’d have to say no. I don’t believe that Catherine would ever try to kill you.”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE POLICE were back at Catherine’s house, but this time just the two detectives, without the usual army of forensics experts. In the past they had brought people who measured the height of her balcony railings, cut pile from the bedroom carpet, ran tests on the electrical connections of her alarm system, and looked for traces of blood in her bathtub. She had lost patience with their meticulous investigation of her story, as if they were determined to disprove any alternative explanation of the events. “He attacked me in the bedroom,” she had repeated over and over again, then detailed everything she could remember about the struggle until the intruder was dead at her feet in the kitchen. If they wanted to run any more tests, she had threatened, they would have to come back with a court order. But the two detectives had promised that there would be no more forensics. Just a few questions that they hoped would “wrap things up.” They accepted coffee and sat with her in her den.

  “This will be a bit difficult for you,” one of the men began, “but can you think of any reason why your sister might want to have you killed?”

  “My sister?” Catherine was almost laughing.

  “I know it probably sounds incredible,” the other detective interjected.

  Catherine shook her head. “No, not incredible at all. I’m laughing because you seem to think that it would be the furthest thing from my mind. But I’ve thought of little else since that night.”

  Carefully and accurately, she explained the details of the business arrangement she shared with Jennifer. Jennifer would vault into the limelight if anything happened to Catherine, not to mention instantly becoming about $5 billion richer. But they knew all that. The operations and worth of Pegasus were public record.

  She listened while they reviewed the coincidences of the intruder living in Jennifer’s building and working in her rehabilitation center. While they flipped the pages of their notebooks, she reminded them that Will Ferris had also worked in a coffee shop that Jennifer frequented. But all that had been known within hours of the break-in. Why were they focusing on it now?

  “Because we went through your sister’s telephone records and found a call placed from her home to Will Ferris’s apartment,” one of the detectives told her. “One call isn’t terribly significant by itself. They were both members of a tenant’s committee. But your sister said that she had never heard the man’s name, and that doesn’t seem likely since she called him.”

  Catherine shifted to the edge of her chair. “She knew him?”

  “So it seems.”

  Then the second detective took over. “We also went through the checks at the restaurant where Ferris worked. There were two checks within three months of your attack where her credit card was used and Ferris was the waiter credited with the tip. Again, people don’t always remember waiters. But your sister was positive she had never seen the man before. Actually, he had waited on her a week earlier.”

  Should she tell them? Catherine thought. Should she tell them about all the times when Jennifer had lied about her, stolen from her, even tried to kill her? They were looking for motives in the business relationship that the two sisters shared. They didn’t have even a clue what Jennifer’s real motive would be. But could they understand? Was there any way to make them see her sister’s insane jealousy? Could they possibly believe how Jennifer had hovered around her like an angel of death ever since they were children? They wondered whether there was any reason why she might want to see Catherine dead. There were a thousand reasons, starting with a blinded doll in a yellow dress. All of them were much more important than money.

  “Your sister is married to Padraig O’Connell, the actor?” the first detective asked, taking his turn in the interview.

  “Yes, although they’re in the process of a divorce.”

  “And you have a business relationship with Mr. O’Connell?”

  “I do, but again that’s in the process of being terminated.” She explained briefly that she was a co-owner of Leprechaun Productions but was planning to sell her interest. “It hasn’t been a happy experience.”

  Now the other detective cleared his throat. “Is that what you and Mr. O’Connell argued about in a Hollywood restaurant?”

  “Yes,” she said, concealing her surprise that policemen were up on Hollywood scandals. “We have differences over how the company spends its money.”

  “Did your sister resent your business relationship with her husband?”

  Catherine thought of a dozen ways to explain the strain that O’Connell had caused. It wasn’t just the business relationship that Jennifer resented. It was the personal relationship that had driven Jennifer to threaten her. But she kept to the facts. “Yes, she was very upset t
hat I was involved with O’Connell.”

  “Could she have blamed you for the failure of her marriage?”

  “She could, but she also blamed her husband.”

  The detectives paused to review their notes. “Where is all this leading?” Catherine asked impatiently.

  One of the men sighed and slipped his notebook into his pocket. “Just one more question: Do you have any idea who might have tried to break into your sister’s apartment?”

  “None at all,” Catherine answered.

  “No one comes to mind who might have a grudge against both you and your sister? Because you won’t believe the odds against two sisters suffering break-ins at two different locations. Statistically, it’s likely that there’s a connection of some sort.”

  Again Catherine explained that she and her sister co-owned a large business venture. “I suppose anyone who has a problem with Pegasus might want to take it out on us.”

  They seemed satisfied as they finished their coffee. They rose together and saw themselves to the door with Catherine trailing at their heels. At the last minute one of them turned back to her. “Oh, we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk to your sister about this interview.”

  “You suspect her, don’t you?”

  They looked at each other. Then the detective admitted, “She certainly is a suspect.”

  Catherine nodded slowly. At long last, people were beginning to understand her sister.

  Padraig had been working furiously and driving his associates at his own frantic pace. His film, titled Inheritance, was nearly finished, and he was determined to meet the deadline for its first screening. Not that the date had been dictated by higher authority and set in stone. It was just that the coffers filled by Jennifer’s loan were almost empty. He couldn’t afford to run over by even one more day.

  He had seen the entire film in segments, out of order and in various stages of completion. Some parts he had viewed while the special effects were in progress, others before the music score had been mixed in. He wasn’t sure of the artistic impact of his work. He could reorder the scenes in his mind and mentally hum the music. He could imagine how the effects would work and how one bit of dialogue would evoke an earlier theme. But the finished project existed only fleetingly in his mind, and its quality soared and according plummeted more to his mood than to objective criteria. “It’s going to be great,” his coworkers kept reassuring him. But he knew that even the biggest flops were great until the the first screening, when a picture left the hands of the craftsmen and tried to fly with its own wings.

  The event would be small. Just Padraig, his partners, and a few key production associates. None of the cast would be invited. All actors would do was moan over scenes that had been cut or dialogue that was truncated. No sound people or special effects artists. Inevitably, they wanted to fix imagined defects in their own contributions. And certainly not studio heads or screen owners. A hundred defects that could be fixed or at least glossed over would become apparent at the first screening. There was no point in sharing these with the buyers.

  He called Catherine with the date. She should fly out the night before the screening, which would be the morning after. They would look at the film, spend a few hours discussing what they had seen, and then look at it again. She was excited by the prospect. “How is it?” she begged.

  “We won’t know until we look at it,” he snapped back.

  Catherine promised to extend the invitation to Peter.

  Then Padraig called Jennifer. “I’m ready to repay your loan,” he announced.

  “Really!” She hadn’t been following his progress and was taken by surprise.

  “Not in money, mind you. It will be a few months before the cash registers start ringing. But in artistic beauty. The movie is assembled and ready for showing. I want you to see it.”

  Jennifer bubbled with enthusiasm. “The music works the way you thought it would?”

  “Like a dream. A wonderful dream. Listen to the music and you understand the story. You know exactly how to feel about the things you’re seeing.”

  “And the effects? All that you hoped for?”

  “More. These people lift the story right off the film. They make things happen that you couldn’t even imagine, much less stage.”

  She promised to be there. “You said it would be dark and that I wouldn’t even know you were in the room. But I think, as I watch it, I also want to see the expression on your face.”

  Catherine balked when she learned that she would be in the same suite as her sister. “For God’s sake, Peter,” she whined, “the police have all but told me that Jennifer hired my killer. With her so close, I might die in my sleep.”

  Peter told her again that he couldn’t believe that Jennifer would harm anyone. And she countered with all the hard evidence that the police had amassed. She told him about the telephone records and Jennifer’s tips to Will Ferris at his restaurant. “I used to be wary of Jennifer. I always tried to keep a cautious eye. But now I’m terrified. I asked you if we should be getting her help and you laughed at the idea. Now I’m telling you. Jennifer is right at the edge, maybe even over the top if she really tried to have me killed. She belongs in a hospital, not at a Hollywood screening.”

  Her hysteria was so apparent that Peter had to take her seriously. “You really believe that Jennifer tried to kill you? That she’d try again?”

  “I believe the police. And I know things about her that they haven’t even guessed. Yes, I think she tried to kill me. And until she gets some help, I’ll be damned if I’ll give her another chance.”

  Peter agreed to change the arrangements. He put each sister in a separate hotel, and he promised not to tell either Catherine or Jennifer where the other was staying.

  Peter went out to the Coast a day early. He had been disappointed in the failure of his investigators to find the photographer who had taken the damning pictures. Someone, he reasoned, had to be bragging about photos of Padraig O’Connell in the altogether. But, as the detectives explained, they had pretty much covered all the photographers. They were now working on the private detectives, who would be much more reticent to talk about their work.

  “Do you have any idea how many private investigators there are out here?” one of the investigators told him. “Almost as many as out-of-work screenwriters. They must all keep busy following each other’s wives.”

  “Put more men on it,” Peter urged. “People’s lives are in danger until we find out who hired the photographer.”

  He drove past Padraig’s beach house, convinced himself that there was no one home, and then drove down the driveway. He figured that there were alarms, so he didn’t go to the doorway or climb up on the deck. But just by walking around the property, he was able to figure how the photos were probably taken.

  Padraig’s bedroom opened out onto a walkway that connected with the deck overlooking the beach. The photographer could have climbed to the deck and then gone around to the walkway. There he could literally press his nose against the glass slider. Or he might have parked up on the road, then walked halfway down the hill. From there he could see into the bedroom and take his pictures with a telephoto lens.

  The only problem Peter could think of as he looked up at the house was that there was a drape drawn across the glass door. With the drape closed, there was no way to see into the room. So, he wondered, why wasn’t the drape drawn when Catherine and Padraig were in bed together? Were they just careless? Or did one of them want to be seen and photographed? Maybe they wanted the light from the stars and the sound of the crashing sea. But maybe the event had been staged to destroy Jennifer’s marriage. He needed to know for certain who had hired the photographer.

  The first screening was held in the bunkerlike offices of the film editor, with Peter between the two sisters and Padraig sitting by himself. They were in a basement screening room, a theater with three rows of couches built to seat a dozen people. The lights lowered, and a visual countdown filled the
screen while the sound system crackled and hissed. When the numbers got down to zero, the screen went black.

  Then, in the darkness, came the distant sound of a tin whistle blowing a soft, lazy dirge. Slowly, a landscape came out of the darkness, a rolling countryside in early morning, the trees still outlines and the green grass nearly black. In a long shot, the camera panned the pastoral setting, finding the detail of morning. A lamb stirred and staggered to its feet. A light appeared in a window. There was a trace of smoke from a sod fire in a hearth. The camera searched and found peace everywhere.

  Suddenly the flat drum began to beat, its pounding rising over the tin whistle melody. Simultaneously, the camera caught distant headlights moving along the meandering hillside. In an instant, the mood went from serenity to urgency.

  The car came closer, but still in the long shot so the headlights were simply dots jumping out from the enormous background. At last it emerged from the mist, a 1920s English touring car with its roof up and the curtains pulled down. It turned from the main road onto a side road, where a two-story farmhouse came into view, and killed its lights while rolling. The drum went still. The whistle died. An unseen dog began barking. Three men jumped out and walked purposefully to the house. They were all in long coats. One wore a fedora and the other two caps. They went straight in through the front door.

  Lights were on inside the house. There were voices, and then a few shouts raised in argument. Suddenly the door burst open. The three men came out, walking a man who was still in his nightshirt between them. They steered him into the car, and then they backed out onto the road. The headlights came on as the car lurched and drove away.

  Then came the first cut, to a window on the second floor of the house. A boy looked out, his nose pressed to the glass, his breath creating a fog. A dog’s face, tongue panting, jumped up beside his. Across the scene came a simple white title, Inheritance. The small audience settled back into the sofas.

  The movie ran nearly three hours, the sequence shot from the helicopters taking fifteen minutes by itself. It ended with a close-up of the dog walking to a grave, circling it briefly, and then lying down on top of it. The camera pulled back slowly, eventually losing the grave site as a detail in the much wider panorama, a duplicate of the opening scene. Then there was a fade-out, ending in the last breathy tone from the tin whistle.