Alex felt queasy.
“You know what I find strange, Alex? I find it really odd, a real coincidence that this clot’s the one ends up shooting her. Don’t you think that’s strange? “
“if it wasn’t for Caro, I’d break your neck,” Lute said and started humming again.
“it should be the other way around, pally. She was afraid you’d dump her. She just didn’t expect you’d go to such lengths!”
Luther’s powerful stride faltered momentarily. He shot Ted a look of absolute hatred. “I didn’t kill her. I’d never hurt her!”
Ted turned to Alex. “This guy is scum. He’s to blame for destroying Caroline Arnet, even before he pulled the trigger. Ask him if he was ever serious about their relationship. He won’t be able to answer because it was just another dalliance for him.” He paced the room. “She was self-destructive, and this guy exploited that. Caro was an easy target. She was desperate for attention— craved it, especially from the opposite sex. Didn’t even give a damn she was HIV-positive. She was a sex addict, and Lute used that for his own purposes.”
Shock bolted through Alex. “HIV?”
“You didn’t know that, did you? Your old school chum slept around a lot. Did you know she was a prostitute before she became a star?” He gulped his drink. “Caro was like that. Crazy. Slept with Cro-Magnon man here, even though she might have infected him. That’s love, isn’t it?”
The landscape of the room became surreal. “I don’t believe it.”
“Ask pretty boy, here. Ask him all about safe sex.”
Alex flailed for the couch arm, stood up. “I’d better go.”
Ted reached out to steady her. “I’m sorry, Alex, I know it’s a shock. I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know what got into me.”
Her stomach felt like an elevator that had dropped ten floors. “I just want to go now.”
“I can’t hold my liquor. One drink knocks me flat and I’ve had two. I didn’t mean to tarnish her image; I wouldn’t do that. I have too much respect for her. Jesus, Alex, I loved her.”
Alex saw the anguish in his eyes. In that moment she understood why, in his inebriated state, he’d struck out at Luther. She understood it and forgave him, but still wanted to get away.
Luther left his NordicTrack and hovered over them like a confused bear. “You really didn’t know?” he asked.
Ted slapped him away, his arm protectively around her. “You’ve already done enough!”
“I think we should talk,” said Luther.
“I just want to get home.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’ll ring your room when we get back.”
Out on the walkway. Horribly cold.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you. Luther brings out the worst in me. He’s stupid, but he’s cunning. A real psychopath. He knew her self-worth was all tied up in how men thought of her, and he used it to his advantage. I get so mad I lose it. We’d almost overcome that, after years of therapy.
“I shouldn’t have told you. You didn’t need to know. I just lost control—the way that guy comes on, like he’s the hottest thing since sliced prosciutto. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed her arms. “You’re cold. A hot toddy would fix you up. We could go to the bar.”
“No,” she said wearily, “I’m going to turn in.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’m going to the canyon.”
“You need to get the whole story. No one else will tell you the truth around here.”
“I don’t want to know anymore. Please,” she added as she shut the door on him. The cat was asleep.
Numbly, Alex crawled into bed and lay staring at the ceiling. The terrible revelation swung around and around in her head like a carnival ride from hell.
Alex reached the trailhead at dawn. There were no other cars. Shivering in the coolness, she pelted down the trail. Running. As if she could run away from everything she’d learned about Caroline.
What did it matter now anyway? Caroline was dead. The fact that she was HIV-positive and sleeping with her costar—who cared?
No wonder she had been on the edge. The pressure she’d been under. The media watching her every move, a deranged fan stalking her.
If the media discovered she was HIV-positive, they’d be on her like a pack of dogs. And the secrets had begun to unravel.
Secrets …
The camera was where she’d left it. Six frames of the roll had been shot. Alex packed up the camera equipment and hiked out of the canyon. She drove down the dirt road past the Hotel Sonora to the highway leading to Tucson. Two hours later, she turned the film in at Photographic Works Lab, asked them to put a rush on it, and went to El Greco’s for an early lunch. She ordered her favorite, souvlaki, and ate two bites.
HIV.
From El Greco’s she drove to Fort Lowell Park and walked aimlessly in the late summer sunshine, nodding to joggers and dodging exuberant dogs, hearing the cries of kids on baseball diamonds and the thud of tennis balls against chain-link fences.
Life: mundane, ordinary, good. No million-dollar contracts, lunches at the Beverly Hills Hotel, HIV virus, or deranged fans.
Why did she call me? What could I do?
Could it be that by reaching back to her school friend, Caroline was able to maintain the illusion of simpler times? She could still be the adored one. Alex’s presence would be the boost she needed to overcome this latest assault on her sanity.
Caroline and Alex. Guru and student. Suspended in time.
The photographs were a disappointment. A wandering deer had triggered the camera—she had six shots of deer legs.
Alex stopped by the house to pick up a few extra clothes and pieces of camera equipment and drove back to the Hotel Sonora. She took the remote-control camera, infrared sensor, and tripod back to the same spot and set it up again. She replaced the old Q-tip with a new one, laying on the cat scent.
Nick McCutcheon didn’t have to go far to find Caroline’s astrologer.
Lana Deane was packing when he caught up with her at the Hotel Sonora. Tall and willowy, with long brown hair and eyes the color of peridots, Lana Deane could have been a model. Nick didn’t know much about fashion, but he sensed that this woman did it exactly right. Even he could see the clothing was expensive.
He thought of the way Caroline had looked that last day of her life and reflected that a lot of people would have pegged Lana as the movie star.
“What do you want?” she asked, pushing an errant strand of hair from her face.
“I have a couple of questions.”
“I already talked to one of you guys.”
“I’m not asking.”
“Dammit!” She motioned him into her room and sat down on the bed. “Look, I’ve got a plane to catch, so could you at least make it fast?”
Nick sat down on the one chair in the room, opened his pad. “How long have you been Caroline’s astrologer?”
“Six months.” It seemed to him that her annoyance was hiding nerves. He wondered if she used cocaine.
“Did you tell her that she should postpone the big scene with Luther until her birthday?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try to remember.”
She knitted her brows together for a moment, then shrugged.
‘“Nuh-uh.”
‘Nuh-uh you didn’t tell her or Nuh-uh you don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember, okay?”
He tried a few more questions, but realized quickly he was getting nowhere. Lana Deane stuck to the party line. Even if she had given Caroline that advice, her predictions were based on science, and it was up to Caroline to use the information as she saw fit. She certainly wasn’t to blame.
“Is that all?” she snapped, standing up. She strode to the door and flung it open. “Sorry, but as I said, I have a plane to catch, and I don’t want to spend another day in this godforsaken hellhole.”
When she returned to the ho
tel, Alex went down to the pool, hoping the combination of sun and cold water would bring her out of her funk. The shock was wearing off, replaced by anger.
She couldn’t help being angry with Caroline, who had had every opportunity and had turned away good fortune with both hands. She had been slowly committing suicide even before Luther pulled the trigger.
As Alex reached the pool area, she spotted Booker Purlie. He looked like an ant in his tight zebra-striped Speedos, but when he stared at her, it chilled her to the bone. Feeling self-conscious, she wrapped the hotel towel around her waist and sat on a chaise. She opened her book and tried to ignore his blatant stare, reading the same sentence three times before giving up to gaze at the swarming ripples of the pool and the lawn beyond.
The sprinklers were still going. Mockingbirds ran around the diamond-spangled grass, lifting their wings to scare the bugs out of hiding. They reminded her of Dracula arching his cape.
She glanced back at Booker. He was sitting on a chair now, wiping between his toes, not a care in the world. His motions were elaborate, thorough to the point of anal retentive.
The sun was too hot. Alex could use the protective coloring of the pool. She plunged into the water and swam laps, aware that Booker was probably still staring at her. Let him. Watching someone swim laps had to be about as fascinating as watching a pot boil. She swam until her eyes were blurry from chlorine, then kicked over onto her back and stared up at the pepper tree, which leaned down toward her, trailing herringbone-patterned lace over the water. The trick was to pretend Booker Purlie didn’t exist.
It must have worked, because when she finally left the pool, he was gone. She picked up her book and stretched out on the chaise.
A card fluttered out of the book onto her stomach.
It was a Far Side card; a boa constrictor had just swallowed something huge.
Inside, scrawled in familiar, childish writing, it said, “I used to like her. Now I like you.”
Nine
I don’t understand all the fuss about the death of some two-bit blond bimbo who got seven million dollars for standing around looking hot. Who the (bleep) cares?
—Howard Stern
Shivering, Alex headed for her room. Ted Lang was talking to a maid at the other end of the walkway.
Alex halted, trying to work out how she could reach her room without him seeing her.
It was a moot point. He looked up just then, grinned, and waved.
Alex returned his wave without enthusiasm and walked briskly to her door. She jabbed the key into the lock. The tumblers were stiff. She sensed Ted coming toward her. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. Can’t he read body language? She didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to get onto the subject of the greeting card. The postage-stamp hotel towel wrapped around her waist added to her sense of vulnerability.
She pulled the key out and tried again. Chlorine blurred her eyesight; she nicked her own finger with the key just as she felt Ted’s breath on her neck.
“Hi, Alex. How are you doing?”
The lock disengaged and Alex opened the door. “Great,” she replied without looking at him. “I’ll have to talk to you later. I’m busy.” She closed the door in his face, not caring how rude she sounded.
She sat down on the bed, shaking uncontrollably.
Much later, after a long, hot shower, Alex called the sheriff’s office. Nick McCutcheon was on a call, but another deputy—his badge said Doug Childers—arrived about forty minutes later. He had a pinched face. An Adam’s apple the size of a golfball poked out of his long, scrawny throat. Silently, Alex dubbed him Deputy Fife.
He glanced at the card. “You have any idea who might have sent this?”
“Booker Purlie.” Alex hugged herself with folded arms. No doubt in her mind. No doubt at all.
“Is he at the hotel now?”
“He was about an hour ago.”
The deputy returned twenty minutes later. “I tried his trailer, but he wasn’t there. Nobody’s seen him. I left a message for him to give me a call.”
Alex remembered Caroline, pacing her room, her fear palpable. She’d gotten greeting cards like this, and now she was dead. “Is that all you can do?”
He looked annoyed. “Well, you could lock the door and stay in here until we have a chance to talk to him.” He might as well have spelled it out: You’re on your own.
After he left, Alex tried to calm down. She turned on the television and climbed under the covers.
The cat—Fluffy? Princess?—had been sleeping in the basket Alex had bought at Safeway. She stood up, stretched, and jumped on the bed. It was almost as though she sensed Alex’s fear.
She curled up in Alex’s lap and began cleaning herself. Alex stroked her fur gently, finding the repetitive motion and the warm purring a great comfort.
A parade of comedies scrolled down the hours, mesmerizing Alex. She barely registered their content, but the sound of voices and canned laughter made her feel less alone. They were also soporific—she was asleep by eight-thirty and woke before dawn.
A tennis match had gone on in her mind all night long over whether or not she should go to the canyon and check the camera. She must have worked it out in her sleep because she rose with a decision.
Booker Purlie was not going to intimidate her. The desert was her territory, and she knew how to handle herself there. She had a hunting knife and a can of red-pepper spray. Several months ago, she’d used the knife to hack off the head of a dead cow. The cow’s skull, cleaned of its flesh by beetles, now resided on the gate to her house in Tucson.
She thought of Booker, pale as a grub. Weak and small, a coward who terrorized his female victims because he didn’t have the courage to face them on equal footing. Even the way he’d killed Caroline was cowardly. If Alex did run into him in Groves Canyon, she’d be ready.
She allowed herself to wonder how Booker Purlie’s skull would look mounted on her gate.
At four in the morning, the hotel was like a ghost town. Alex slipped out into the darkness, at home with this time of day. Alert, aware of every sound, she heard only a mockingbird chortling, loud in the stillness. TV news vans and satellite trucks were lined up at the curb, but no one was about.
She drove up the deserted road past Maybelle Deering’s. The Caterpillar tractors slumbered in the disturbed earth, their angry engines silent.
As she followed the path into the canyon, Alex found herself looking over her shoulder often, and she stopped several times to listen. She doubted Booker Purlie could keep up with her without huffing and puffing. But she held the can of pepper spray in one hand, her thumb poised over the button.
She reached the canyon as dawn lightened the sky. It was still dark here, the purple twilight of time suspended between day and night. This part of the canyon would remain in shadow for hours.
The camera had been triggered thirteen times. Alex’s heart quickened with excitement as she shrugged off her pack and removed the roll of film.
A furtive sound in the brush. Alex froze.
it came again, a small scratching sound. It could be anything. She stood up, heart thumping, scanned the clearing, then stepped in the direction of the sound.
A lizard broke from the dry brush, arrowed across the path, and sped out of sight.
Alex realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out. Best to get out of here as soon as possible. No reason to tempt fate.
She jogged most of the way out of the canyon, slowing when the path became too steep. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her heart hammered.
Maybe she wasn’t a match for Booker Purlie.
At least not mentally.
The Jeep stood alone where she’d left it, the early sun gleaming on the bright-red finish. Its mirrored surface, closed-tight windows, and locked doors had a soothing affect on her psyche. Inside, she’d be safe. All she had to do was get across the clearing.
She could almost imagine the invisible stalker behind her, following, waiti
ng for his chance. Electrified by adrenaline, she jack-rabbitted across the clearing to the vehicle, fumbled with the lock, and jumped in. She pressed down the locking pin, checked the others.
She could feel her jugular vein pumping and blood pounding in her ears.
Someone could be behind the seat. Logic told her the Jeep was locked, that no one could have gotten in, but she could almost feel eyes burning a hole in the back of her neck.
Giving in to her impulse, Alex leaned over and looked down at the floor behind her seat.
Nothing.
Only then did her heart calm down. She stared around the clearing. The sun’s rays slanted over the mountain, shining through the lime-green translucence of the cottonwood leaves, catching a few of them just right and making them sparkle like diamonds.
She’d done it. She hadn’t allowed herself to be intimidated.
Alex reached the hotel just as the convoy of movie trucks, semis, and cars, followed by several press vehicles, pulled out in front of her like a wagon train. She had to follow their dust until they turned south on the blacktop. She headed north toward Tucson.
In another few hours she’d know if the jaguarundi had triggered the camera.
A few miles past the Hotel Sonora, Alex reached Quartz Springs Junction. The road she was on continued up to Tucson. Perpendicular to the Tucson highway, another road bisected the desert, headed toward Lukeville, Arizona. But to most people, the final destination was Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. Fun in the sun. Party, party, party.
The two buildings of Quartz Springs Junction appeared on the left, tiny against the broad backdrop of desert and the distant mountains. A Whiting Bros. gas station grew out of a bed of weeds, its many-windowed office and service bays boarded up, gas pumps torn out.
The Desert Waits Page 10
