“Do you . . . do you have any idea who . . .”
Simone recalled Blake Moss in her apartment twelve hours before she found the picture in her kitchen trash. She remembered that look in his eyes . . . that look, as if he’d just completed a project. She remembered what he’d said: You’re a famous movie star, people open doors for you, and she thought, Nia Lawson would open the door for Blake Moss. She thought about his relationship with Emerald, a.k.a. Desire. She remembered his name on Julie’s “date” list—a list created long before they were costars. And then, she recalled what Charity had said, back in Pleasures. She had some deal going on, said she was going to be famous. Destiny would have opened the door for Blake Moss, too.
“Yes,” said Simone. “I have a very good idea.”
Simone spent the rest of the day in the hospital, hanging out in the waiting room when the nurses asked her to, and then she stayed the night in Walker’s new room. She told him her suspicions about Moss, and learned that Walker shared them—he’d shared them for a while. “The only thing I don’t get,” he said, “is the Dolores King connection. ”
“I know,” said Simone. “That’s what we’ve got to figure out.”
They phoned Sandiford and told him. And while he was still skeptical that a movie star had committed the murders, he agreed to send some undercover men to observe Blake at the Mann’s Chinese Devil’s Road premiere the following night. After they hung up, Walker said, “Wish I could go to that damn theater. I’d follow Moss home, see how he likes getting run off the road.”
Simone stared at him, her eyes getting wider and wider.
“No,” said Walker.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not going to the premiere,” he said. “I don’t want you in the same room with Moss.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Look,” he said, “I may not have known you for that long, but I know you well enough to be able to tell when you’ve got an idea.”
“I do have an idea,” she said. “But I’m not going to the premiere.”
The screening was at eight o’clock Friday evening. That morning, Simone called in sick again and spent the day in Walker’s hospital room. By five in the afternoon, her plans were in place.
Via Erika, Kathy and Matthew snagged catering jobs for the preparty, which would take place in the lobby of the Chinese prior to the screening. They would call her when Blake Moss arrived, keep their eyes on him throughout the evening, phoning her the minute he stepped out the door.
Elliot, meanwhile, had snuck over to Moss’s house during the day and stealthily planted Kathy’s amber bracelet under the front mat. Simone left her laptop in Walker’s hospital room so he could spend the evening finding any and all information about Dolores King.
At seven thirty, Simone received the call. She was already parked at a gas station on Coldwater Canyon five minutes away from Moss’s house. Calmly, she started up the Jeep, drove to her destination. She buzzed the gate until she heard the elderly woman’s accented voice, saying, “Yes?” over the intercom.
“Hi,” said Simone. “I’m a friend of Blake’s? I was here last night, and I think I left my bracelet? It’s amber beads with a silver clasp?”
“I didn’t see anything like that.”
“Please,” said Simone, “my mom gave it to me. I think it dropped off when I was leaving. Can you check, like, the front doorstep?”
The woman sighed. Five minutes later, she was back. “I found it.”
Yes, Elliot! “Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “Listen, you don’t have to come down with it. I’ll just run up the driveway.”
Simone closed her eyes, thought, Come on, come on . . .
In moments, the gate opened, and Simone tore through it, running not up the driveway but around the back of the house, through the expansive grounds.
The sun had set, and with no tiki torches lit, no candles in the pool, no light at all except for a few artfully placed landscaping bulbs dotting the gardens, it was hard for Simone to find her way around. She kept slipping on plants, bumping into rock formations, and at the same time she heard the maid’s voice calling out, “Hello!” and “Come back!” and “I’m in front!”
Simone’s heart pounded. Moss. Where do you keep your damn garage? She ran past more rock formations, past a small bungalow and a large garden shed. And that’s when she saw it—another driveway. A sort of back entrance, at the top of which stood a garage.
“Who is there?” She could barely hear the woman’s voice now, the house was so big. Don’t worry, she thought. I’ll be out of your way soon. There was a window at the side of the garage. It was dark, but Simone had brought her flashlight. She shined it through the window, peered in.
She saw a Hummer and a Jaguar. There was another car she couldn’t quite see. She found another window in the back of the garage, and when she shined her light through it, she saw the third car. A red Ferrari, next to a Ducati motorcycle.
Well, that was anticlimactic. She headed back to where she came from, past the garden shed. As she hurried by, she noticed the door of the shed was slightly open, something glinting from within.
Headlights.
She didn’t hear the woman’s voice anymore. Her phone wasn’t ringing. She had time. She crept back to the shed, eased the doors open, shined her light inside . . . on an early-’80s green Impala.
Hello, Dolores.
Her gaze shot over to the bungalow next to it, a quiet little bungalow behind all the rock formations, in a hidden area of these expansive, surreal grounds. Was this the place where Blake Moss kept all his secrets?
Simone listened for the maid. Not a sound. Maybe she’d given up, figured Simone had left. . . .
She walked up to the bungalow and tried the door. It opened. Inside, it was warm. The windows were closed and the air was thick, holding the smell of a man’s sweat. She turned on the lights. There was a couch in the room, a modern-looking coffee table, but no bookshelves—just an enormous flat-screen TV, an odd wash of beige and peach and brown filling the screen, a frozen close-up of something, Simone couldn’t figure out what. At the end of the room was a closed door.
Simone tried it. The room was dark. She noticed a single bed pressed up against the wall. She flicked the light switch, expecting nothing more than the bed, a small, spartan man’s bedroom. But then the room flooded with bright overhead light and she stood there, frozen.
The entire far wall was covered in yellowing newspaper articles from twenty years ago. She scanned the headlines: SLEAZY PRODUCER’S DARK DOUBLE LIFE: WIFE TELLS ALL! EXPLOSIVE TELL-ALL: MY STEAMY TRYSTS WITH HOLLYWOOD’S HOTTEST MEN! SWAMP DEMON CUTIE: “MY HUBBY IS IMPOTENT!” GAY PRODUCER SLITS THROAT: WIFE’S TELL-ALL TO BLAME! There were hundreds of them—many of them in multiple copies—all from second-rate tabloids long out of print. Simone moved closer, until she was standing inches away from the one titled SWAMP DEMON CUTIE. . . . There was a picture, a headshot of Dolores King.
Simone stared into the eyes, and her blood ran as thin as tap water. She was twenty years younger and easily a hundred pounds lighter, but there was no mistaking it. Dolores King was Randi DuMonde.
Her phone vibrated. She looked at the screen. A text message from Walker. Her eyes still on the article, she opened it up, then read: Dol and Reg had son.
She texted him back: Dol is Randi, but just as she sent it, another one came in, at the same time as she heard heavy footsteps coming toward the bungalow. She texted Walker: Send help. The footsteps drew nearer. She opened the new text message, again from Walker, just as she heard the voice, a man’s voice . . .
“You found my pad,” it said, as the words popped on the screen.
Son name Nathaniel.
The phone clattered to the floor.
“Blake’s letting me stay here, rent free, till I can get out of debt. Isn’t that nice of him?”
Simone stared at Nathaniel. He was wearing a Hard Rock Café T-shirt and baggy shorts, and he he
ld a bloody knife in his hand. “I just killed the maid,” he said calmly. “I didn’t want to. She’s not right for the Project at all, but you know . . . we couldn’t have her hearing us.”
Strange, he had one of those faces that seemed so pleasant when you saw it in passing. But when you examined him closely, when you stared into his eyes, something wasn’t right. Something big.
He moved closer to her. “Your super is a nice guy. He let me in so I could mark you.” He may as well have been schmoozing her at a cocktail party, save for the knife in his hand.
Knock the wind out of him. Simone moved forward, but he grabbed her shoulder and threw her to the ground like a rag doll, her knees crashing into the hard floor in front of the wall of articles. Then he kept talking, chatting her up, as if nothing had happened. “So I have been in your place, but I didn’t go there last night,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out how to shame you.”
Simone said, “Shame me?”
He nodded. “You don’t seem to shame very easily.” He laughed, a genial laugh. Then his smile dropped away. “But see, this is perfect. You’re in my personal place, eavesdropping. That’s what you do. Check it out: Your death. Here. That’ll shame you good.”
He yanked her to her feet. “Give me your fingers.” Simone tried to back up, but she couldn’t move. She was pressed against the wall. She felt newsprint on the back of her neck, her arms. She lunged, tried to push him away, but he took her wrists fast in his hands. He was wearing latex gloves. He squeezed hard, cutting off the circulation. Simone cried out.
“Give me. Your. Fingers.”
He took the knife. Jabbed her index finger. A current of pain shot up her arm. She screamed—a screech that bounced off the walls, echoed throughout the grounds. She’d never known she could scream so loud.
He clamped a hand over her mouth. His fingers were thick, and she smelled latex and blood—her blood, the maid’s. Thick fingers, like an overgrown child’s. The blood looked like finger paint. “No one’s going to hear you,” he said. “But you’re hurting my ears.”
Simone recalled the text message she’d sent Walker and thought, Hear me, hear me, hear me. . . . Nathaniel took his hand away from her mouth. Hear me, please. . . .
She breathed in and out and found her voice. “Don’t do this. Randi isn’t worth it.”
He flinched at the name. “Randi,” he said, “is not my mother. Dolores was my mother. Dolores is dead.”
Simone looked deep into his eyes. She wanted to make him flinch again. Her finger throbbed, but the pain wasn’t there anymore, so she could ignore it, ignore her blood dripping onto the floor. “Did Randi make you say that, Nathaniel? Randi is not your mother. Dolores was your mother. Dolores is dead.”
“Stop it.” He didn’t move, though. He watched her, a strange smile on his face.
“Did she make you say that over and over and over, after she killed your dad?”
“No, no, no. My dad . . . he did that himself.”
“Did she make you say that too, Nathaniel?” Simone’s mouth was parched. She felt her heartbeat in her neck. “Because she did it. He might have taken the hunting knife to his throat, but it wasn’t the knife that killed him, was it?”
Nathaniel shut his eyes. “I want you to write ‘Scum’ on the wall. On the tabloid stories. I want you to write it with that finger.”
“It wasn’t the knife.”
“Stop saying that.”
“It was shame. Shame killed your father. And Dolores was the one who shamed him, wasn’t she?” She stared at him. “Randi was the one who shamed him.”
He opened his eyes, and there were tears in them. Tears and fire. He raised the knife over his head, but Simone ducked, threw herself into his stomach. He doubled over, wheezing, as she ran out of the bedroom, into the living room with that strange, frozen image on the TV. She heard a long, sick animal shriek and then he was out of the bedroom, in the living room with her, rushing at her, the knife raised over his head. Simone tried to duck again, but there was no time, not now. The hand came down, plunged the knife into her chest. She fell to the floor, feeling not so much pain as pressure, as if someone were standing on her lungs, then a rush of fluid—a type of drowning from within. She heard sirens pulling into the driveway, doors slamming, voices shouting, “Police!” He dropped the knife. She looked up into Nathaniel’s frightened face—his eyes a child’s eyes—and she wished she could say it. You feel shame, don’t you? You feel it worse than anyone. . . .
But Simone didn’t say it. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. All she could do was watch Nathaniel’s face fade to black, just like the end of a movie.
EPILOGUE
It was rainy season and as the plane landed at LAX, the view out the window was breathtaking, with LA awash in green. It looked like a different city, Simone thought. The Emerald City.
She had been living back in New York for the past three months. After spending two weeks in Cedars-Sinai recovering from a knife wound to the lungs, Simone gave an exclusive to the Asteroid (HERO REPORTER TELLS ALL: MY NIGHT OF TERROR WITH THE STARLET SLASHER!), packed up her bags and moved back across the country. For two months she stayed with Greta. Then they both decided it would be best if she found a place of her own, so she did—a rent-stabilized walk-up on the Lower East Side—and took a job as a copy editor at a major publishing house. As action-packed as her time at the Asteroid had been, Simone decided she’d rather read mysteries than star in them.
Nathaniel Cannell (né King) was found legally insane and was sent to spend the rest of his life in a Northern California psychiatric facility. According to published reports, he would never see the light of day. If he was ever deemed “cured,” he would stand trial for the murders of Blake Moss’s sixty-seven-year-old housekeeper and four young women.
Yes, four. Holly eventually came out of her coma, gave up being a celebrity assistant, and put her nurturing talents to use teaching third-graders in Watts. “We get no money. I have to buy the schoolbooks myself—but those kids beat out stars any day of the week,” she had told Simone during her last visit to California. “This little boy, Sean? He asked if he could adopt me.”
Simone thought about that now as her plane touched ground—how fulfillment always showed up where you least expected it: Working at a tabloid, spending time with your sister, hanging out with Neil Walker. . . .
Simone was flying out for Matthew and Carl’s wedding. Though Provincetown had sounded fun to them, LA was warmer, so they were having the party here, then taking Elliot’s advice and flying to Hawaii in the morning to make it legal. Since it was two days before Christmas, the wedding invitation said, “Mele kaliki maka!” (Merry Christmas in Hawaiian). Carl had designed it. Turned out he was a very talented graphic artist.
Neil Walker greeted Simone in baggage claim, and just like every time she saw him, she regretted her decision to move back East. Before she could say anything, he grabbed her and kissed her, the feel of it lingering on her lips. Then he started asking her about New York, about her sister, about everything she’d been doing during the month since he’d seen her, even though he knew all this stuff already. He and Simone e-mailed each other a hundred times a day. When he plucked her one small bag off the conveyer belt, he said, “You are the lightest traveler I’ve ever met. You need to buy some shoes, start acting more like a chick.”
“I’ll buy shoes if you stop it with the show tunes.”
He smiled, but just for a moment. Then his face went serious. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“She asked me, Neil,” she said. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
Walker’s Volvo still had that new car smell, and as they drove to Pasadena, Simone inhaled it, listening to his Wicked CD, both of them saying very little. Tonight, Simone and Walker would go to Matthew and Carl’s wedding party at the W Hotel in Westwood. They would dance and get drunk and talk a lot about the future. But for now, they were both lost in their own thoughts, thoughts buried in the pa
st. They arrived at the place, a pretty but modest one-story on North Lake Street. It was a far cry from Randi DuMonde’s previous house. In fact, it looked more like where Julie used to live.
As they had agreed earlier, Walker waited in the car while Simone walked up to Randi DuMonde’s front door. Ringing the bell, Simone expected the Randi of old—the bright red outfit, the towering presence. But the woman who answered the door was just a large, middle-aged lady. She wore a T-shirt and jeans, and very little makeup. Her eyes were cloudy. For a second, Simone flashed on Wayne Deegan and thought, That’s the way it looks when you lose your child.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Randi said. “Come on in.”
Randi offered her tea or coffee or juice, but Simone knew it was just something to say. She could tell Randi was very nervous. “I don’t need anything,” she said.
When they sat down on her couch, Randi seemed relieved to stop standing. “I know we don’t know each other,” she said, “but I’m going to be leaving soon. I’m moving up north. There’s been a lot of press. And . . . believe it or not, you’re the only reporter I trust.”
Simone said, “I’m not a reporter anymore, Randi.”
“Must be why I trust you.” She smiled a little.
Simone smiled back
Then Randi’s smile fell away. When she looked into Simone’s eyes, Simone saw nothing there but sorrow. Randi said, “I killed those girls.”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“I let it happen.”
Simone’s gaze sharpened. “You knew?”
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said, “but yes.”
“How?”
“Nathaniel was always a sensitive boy. He had no idea what was going on between his father and me, how cold Reg could be. I was young and insecure. . . . I’m not making excuses for myself. I turned into a castrating bitch.” She looked at Simone. “I just wanted him to find me attractive. . . .”
“That’s your own business, Randi,” said Simone. “Who am I to judge?”
Randi took a deep breath. Her voice quavered. “Nathaniel loved his father. But he loved me more,” she said. “I was never around, always with other men. And he blamed his father for that. He would say, ‘It’s Dad’s fault. Not yours.’ Even when kids in his class would tell him I was a slut.”
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