The Desert Waits

by J. Carson Black

  “Am I a suspect?”

  He grinned. “Do you want to be?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We’ve gotten close to a hundred calls from people confessing they killed Caroline.”

  “Looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, I guess.”

  An old Chevy pickup hurtled toward them on a billow of dust, two blue-tick hounds barking from the truck bed. The driver fanned his fingers up from the steering wheel in a friendly salute.

  “I wish Rollie wouldn’t drive so fast on these roads. One of these days, he’ll take a corner too fast and those dogs will fly right out,” Nick muttered. He glanced at Alex. “You were with Caroline the night before. Did she mention to you anything about the scenes she’d be doing the next day?”

  Alex thought back. “I don’t think so.”

  “She didn’t mention her astrologer?”

  Come to think of it, Caroline had said “my astrologer” a few times. Alex said so.

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Are you aware you’re beginning to sound like a detective questioning a witness? And no, she didn’t mention a name.”

  Nick McCutcheon sighed. “Apparently Caroline insisted on shooting the climactic scene—where Luther shoots her—on her birthday, even though originally they’d planned to shoot it later. The reason she gave the director was her astrologer told her it would be good luck.”

  “Good luck?”

  “It could ‘turn her career around.’ The property master told me she was quite adamant about it—apparently, she put a lot of faith in her astrologer.”

  “Could she do that? Change the shooting schedule on a whim?”

  Nick shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t such a big deal. If it made the star happy ...”

  It was another world. Imagine having that kind of power and wasting it on the word of an astrologer.

  “I don’t know if it means anything,” Nick said, “but I don’t believe in coincidences. If you think of anything else she said or if you remember a name ... Here’s your Jeep.”

  Alex thanked him and climbed down, careful not to jar the cat.

  As she drove back to the hotel, she pondered Caroline’s reliance on an astrologer. She didn’t believe in coincidences either. And she was relieved to know that, despite her assumptions to the contrary, Deputy Nick McCutcheon was still actively working on the case.

  Alex placed the cat, still wrapped in the old rug of Maybelle’s, under the kneehole of the desk in her room. She filled a glass of water to the brim and left it near the animal’s head. She drove into Palo Duro to the Safeway and bought cat supplies.

  As she reached the checkout counter, her eye caught the rack of tabloids. Photographs of Caroline dominated the front cover of each, combined with lurid headlines that turned Alex’s stomach. One headline on the front of the tabloid True jumped out at her.

  MYSTERY WOMAN: CAROLINE’S SECRET LOVER?

  Alex saw herself framed in the hotel’s doorway. Looking frazzled in shorts and a shirt, probably caught when she returned from her hike into the canyon. She looked as if she’d just awakened from an afternoon tryst.

  Secret lover. So now they were trying to make Caroline gay. What had happened to this country? The media was a pack of snarling dogs ready to tear anyone’s reputation to shreds just for a headline. Forget death with dignity, forget even common decency.

  Secret lover. Alex thought of her parents, now living in Sedona. Thank God they were in Tibet right now.

  Angry at herself for putting out the money, she nevertheless slapped the tabloid on the counter. The clerk glanced at the magazine and then at her. Blinked in surprise.

  “That’s right. I’m Caroline Arnet’s secret lover. I’m a little upset right now, but I have to move on with my life, so how about dinner?”

  Flustered, the woman gave her the wrong change—in her favor. Alex pocketed the extra money feeling self-righteous. It more than paid for the tabloid.

  She drove back to the hotel, her heart jackhammering. Like a mantra, the words secret lover ran through her head. She felt as though she’d been physically attacked. They had no right to make up those kinds of lies about her. She was nobody. She didn’t pull down seven million bucks for starring in a movie. She hadn’t signed on for this kind of harassment.

  Back in her room, she filled the litter box and cat food dish with shaking fingers, then checked on the patient. The animal had its own way of dealing with the trauma—deep sleep. She wondered if it was in a coma.

  It was a pretty cat: long-haired with a perfect gray bonnet and a thick gray stripe down its back to a feather boa tail. Alex gently lifted the tail. Female. Now she could come up with a name. Not that she was sure about keeping it. Wildlife photographers were gone a lot, and she didn’t have a support system at home. Besides, the desert there was chock full of coyotes.

  Oh well, she’d think about it later.

  She lay down on the bed, utterly exhausted. The tabloid glared at her from the bedside table, but she didn’t have the energy to look at it. Just yet.

  A breeze fluttered through the open window, redolent of the spring, and a coin of sunlight drifted across her face. She drowsed, awakened some time later by the rattle of tabloid pages turning. Her hand flailed out and she crumpled the stiff paper in her fist, then froze as she saw the picture.

  Alex recognized it at once. They’d been clowning for the camera in a booth at Walgreens. That was the summer Caroline’s family had wangled a house-sitting job in Venice Beach.

  The magazine showed the whole strip of four photographs. Two pretty adolescents, their heads together before a curtained backdrop. Thirteen years old.

  Her mind on that fantastic summer, she drifted back to sleep.

  It was dark. Disoriented, Alex thought she was still at the house in Venice Beach. Mrs. Arnet and the kids weren’t around, and she and Caro had gotten into some petty argument or other; Caro had slammed out the door and gone for a walk on the beach.

  The guy—he reminded her of a used-car salesman she’d seen on TV—was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich. Just making himself at home. He’d already turned the television to a baseball game. Alex didn’t like him, but what could she do? It wasn’t her place to say anything. She was out of here anyway. Packing, tears blurring her vision. Her heart hurt, physically hurt.

  Like a kaleidoscope, the pieces shifted just as she rose up through the depths to another level of wakefulness. Caroline was mad at her—saying really insulting things—standing there in her Harley T-shirt and her black jeans—and Ted Lang, his face sorrowful, was agreeing with every word she said.

  Just go home! I didn’t want you to come in the first place. The smell of the ocean, of rotting things.

  You are such a baby.

  Ted nodded his agreement and dabbled his toes in the pool.

  It was supposed to be so much fun. Three weeks at the beach. Alex felt like crying out in futility.

  Caroline yanked the chain off her neck and stomped the broken shell to smithereens beneath her Doc Martens. I don’t need your pity, she said. As a matter of fact, I don’t need you at all.

  Someone splashing in the pool, children’s voices.

  Alex sat up, aware that it was early evening and she’d slept the greater part of the day.

  The house at the beach. She didn’t remember much about that time except it had been fun, one of the best times of her life. She and Caroline had gotten into a few fights, but that was only because they’d spent so much time in each other’s company.

  She heard a lapping noise. The cat was up and drinking from the water. When Alex stirred, it looked up at her with golden-green eyes and crouched down low over its paws, a defensive posture.

  She, Alex reminded herself. It’s a she. “Here, kitty kitty,” she said, holding out her hand.

  The cat sat on its paws like a trivet, blinking at her. Wary, but not out-and-out scared.

  “Here, kitty kitty.”

  The
cat’s hindquarters rose, and she rubbed her shoulder against the dresser. Her luxurious tail climbed the air like a plume of smoke.

  A flirt.

  Alex didn’t know it, but she’d already transcended temporary custody and was on her way to becoming a full-fledged cat owner.

  Eight

  I’m picturing Daniel Day Lewis and Sandra Bullock. Faye Dunaway’s the madam. Retro, grungy, but it’s got heart: Three Coins in a Fountain meets Unforgiven.

  —Ted Lang pitching a spaghetti western to vice president of production at Warner

  After an early dinner, Alex went to get ice for her soda. Sprinklers stuttered intermittently, shooting jets of water onto the velvet lawn. She followed the walkway to the far corner of the courtyard where an ice machine percolated inside a brightly lit alcove underneath the low-hanging Spanish tile roof. To the right of the alcove, a corridor branched off, perpendicular to the courtyard, leading to the outside of the hotel. She and Caroline had taken this route the night they went outside with the tequila. A lifetime ago.

  A door opened right beside her. Luther van Cleeve smiled pleasantly and padded past her to the ice machine, his thongs slapping against the flagstone. He wore gym shorts and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. The man who had aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

  Alex stared at his broad back and wondered how he was handling it.

  She remembered what Ted had told her, his belief that Luther and Caroline had been having an affair. If that were true, Luther would know about the stalker. Then again, he might have known what he was doing when he pulled the trigger. He might have found his affair with Caroline a liability, although Alex couldn’t imagine why he’d want to kill her.

  All these thoughts flashed through her mind as she watched him at the machine. He pressed the button and waited patiently as the ice rattled like dice into the plastic container. He didn’t look particularly sad. In the fluorescent light, his face was the color of hamburger under the warmer at McDonald’s. He pivoted and walked toward her, saying “hi.”

  “Hi,” she replied, wondering what to do now. He must have noticed her staring, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He was almost to the door when she said on impulse, “Excuse me, but I was wondering if ... ” She trailed off.

  Luther van Cleeve turned around. He had a jawline like a boat prow, Fabio with a buzz-cut. Nice eyes, though. The color of oxidized copper. “You’re not press, are you?”

  “Me? No.” Despite the fact that she was on firm ground here, Alex’s pulse quickened. She felt the way she did while waiting for a clerk to check her credit card—that dreadful, growing certainty that somehow they’d know she was a fraud and send for the police despite the fact that she was nowhere near her limit.

  “You look familiar.”

  Alex held out one hand and her ice bucket slipped down to her midriff. She clutched at it with her forearm. “I’m Alex Cafarelli—”

  “Caroline’s best friend?”

  Was that how Caroline had seen her? Still her best friend after all these years?

  “She told me about you. Said you were coming, but after what happened ... ”

  His eyes turned inward, as if he were staring at a nightmare landscape. “Shit,” he said at last. Shook his head. “It’s still not real. I’m her costar, Luther van Cleeve.”

  “I know.”

  “You want to come in? We were going over the script for tomorrow, but we’re just about finished.”

  Alex nearly demurred, but realized she wanted to talk to Luther. Not just wanted, needed to talk to him. He was close to Caroline; he would know something about the stranger she had become ... if he could even talk about her after what had happened.

  He opened the door for her. She found herself staring at his right hand, the hand that had held the gun. She noticed the knuckles were skinned and bruised.

  Three men occupied the suite. Luther introduced them as Grey Sullivan, the director of Jagged Impact, Barry Doian, first AD (whatever that meant), and Howard DelMonaco, director of photography. The director stood out only because she knew he was the head honcho. In his thirties, he had a smooth face, dark wavy hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore Dockers and sneakers. His long-sleeved olive shirt clashed with the serape draped over the leather couch on which he sat. His feet were propped on the coffee table. Alex’s gaze swept over the other two: a balding fiftyish man in heavy jeans and a workshirt, his face tanned up to mid-forehead where a cap brim must have taken over; and another guy in his thirties, stocky, red hair gathered into a short cue on his neck. She heard the toilet flush and in the periphery of her vision saw the bathroom door open. Ted Lang walked into the room.

  “Alex!” he greeted her, kissing her on the cheek. “I tried your room earlier, but you were out.” His tone was one of mild reproach.

  Grey Sullivan turned to Luther. “So you okay with the changes, Lute? Howie will still have time to set up over at Palo Duro, so we won’t lose any time there. That way we won’t need the second unit. They’re pushing overtime anyway.”

  “Fine with me.” Luther took some prongs and added ice to a glass. “Want anything to drink?” he asked Alex.

  “Club soda?”

  “I like what you’ve done. Grey. It’ll explain why Solana isn’t there,” Ted said. “I really like it.”

  “Perrier okay?”

  “Great.”

  The phone rang. Luther answered, talked for a few moments, and then handed the phone to Sullivan. “It’s Ollie.” Turned to Alex, “The producer. He’s afraid the whole thing’s gonna fall apart. He’s been calling Grey every five minutes.”

  Ted perked up. “Ollie? Let me talk to him when you’re done, Grey.”

  Alex felt as if she’d been dropped into the middle of a blizzard. “I can see you’re busy—”

  “We’re done,” Luther said. “Sit down; take a load off.” He placed her drink on the coffee table and sat down opposite her. “I was hoping I’d catch you. Didn’t know if you’d come and gone again.”

  Alex found it difficult to concentrate. Ted had the phone now, and he was pacing the room like a tiger. “I know, I know what you said, but I’ve done this before and I know it’ll work. The audience won’t know the real Solana from the fake Solana, I swear. It’s in the editing.” Pause. “I know that.” Another pause. “You want to spend a little more money, or do you want the whole thing to go down the tubes? Because if you do it halfway, you’ll—”

  He listened.

  “That’s what it’s all about. Taking risks ... I know it’s manipulative, that’s the name of the—I don’t have to remind you that Grey has final cut—”

  “Give me the phone, man,” Grey Sullivan said.

  “Shh! Just a minute.” Ted ducked away, spoke in a hurried whisper.

  Luther was saying something to her. Alex wanted to listen to him, but she couldn’t ignore Ted’s voice. The tension had ratcheted up; a guitar string on the verge of breaking. “What did you say?” she asked Luther.

  “Caroline really wanted to see you.”

  Ted, shouting: “Caroline would want it, and since she put up half the money for this project—”

  “Ted,” Sullivan said.

  “You check the contract.”

  “Ted!”

  “In a minute.” Pause. “As a matter of fact, I have talked to my lawyer. Not only that, we’ve got a forum. Dateline NBC. That’s right. We’re talking Stone Phillips. We’re taping it tomorrow. You can be damn sure I won’t pull any punches—shit!” He slammed the phone down. “Hung up on me.” He grinned sheepishly, all charm. “That’s showbiz; everybody gets hot under the collar. Alex, you coming on the shoot tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be in the canyon.”

  His face fell. “Sometimes I think you’re avoiding me.”

  “Avoiding you? What do you mean by that?”

  He grinned again. “Nothing. I’m just hyped right now. This film’s going to be better than anyone ever expected. Everything’s falling together, isn’t it,
Grey?” He slapped Grey Sullivan on the back.

  Sullivan looked at his watch. “Got to get an early start tomorrow,” he said neutrally. “Nice to meet you, Ms. uh ...”

  “Alex.”

  The first AD and the director of photography stood up, too. They mumbled their goodbyes and left.

  Ted poured himself a Scotch and sat down beside Alex. “And then there were three.”

  “You’re gonna get Grey into trouble talking like that,” Luther said.

  “Everything I said was true. He does have final cut. Caroline and I handpicked him for this picture—”

  “You aren’t even on the payroll,” Luther said.

  “I’m associate producer on this flick.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You never could face reality, could you?”

  “I’m not listening to this.” Luther walked over to the NordicTrack set up near the windows and started on the cross-country ski simulator. Alex watched his smooth, gliding movements, the muscles in his calves and thighs flexing like dancing cobras.

  “If I don’t have any say on this picture, why don’t you kick me out? You’re not going to do anything to alienate me because in your heart you know it’s true.” Ted poured himself another Scotch. “You’re the one who has some explaining to do. You’ve pretty much single-handedly ruined this picture.”

  Luther began humming “In-a-gadda-da-vida” to drown Ted out.

  Ted pointed at Luther, glass in hand. “She got you this part, chucko, and you know it. Grey wanted Sly. But she thought it would be a big step up for you, help your career, you stupid firm-bunned troll.”

  Luther stared straight ahead, skiing determinedly and humming.

  Ted leaned over Alex. “Caroline slept with all her leading men. I understood that, didn’t hold it against her because she had low self-esteem. She needed that rush; it made her feel important. But I draw the line with him!” He wiped his lips. “There’s no accounting for taste!”

  Luther hummed louder.

  “He used her,” Ted said, waving his arms and splashing the drink. “You’re smart, Alex. You think it’s a coincidence that the film is almost in the can and now she’s dead? Mr. Steroid here doesn’t want to hurt his image. No talent, just muscles and a cerebral cortex that could dance the lambada on the head of a pin, trading on the careers of people like Ahnold. She would’ve been the next Marilyn Monroe if she hadn’t hooked up with him.”