Never a Bride

by JoAnn Ross

  “I’ve had very good training. And a great deal of help, sir.”

  She did not mention that although she’d found what had become known as The John Squad an interesting change from patrol car duty in the beginning, the challenge had begun to wear off. She was also needing weekly pedicures to soothe the blisters caused by pounding the pavement in high heels every day.

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat, rested his elbows on the walnut table and eyed her thoughtfully over his linked fingers. “We have a proposal for you, Officer Carrigan,” he said. “One which you should think about carefully before you agree to accept.”

  He exchanged a brief look with the commissioner, who, with a curt nod, sent a silent message Cait could not understand.

  “If you do choose to accept,” he continued, making Cait feel as if she’d suddenly been zapped back in time to the set of “Mission Impossible,” “and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion, I will personally recommend your promotion to the Sex Crimes Unit.”

  Cait still had no idea what the assignment he was referring to was. But it didn’t matter.

  Because she knew that if it would help her get the plum assignment that had been her goal since graduating from the Police Academy, she was definitely going to say yes.

  * * *

  THE DAY AFTER the Pet Parade Brunch, Natasha Kuryan stood in front of Bachelor Arms, awaiting the car that would take her to the Regent Beverly Wilshire, where, in the elegant, European-style Lobby Lounge, she and three long-time friends would have tea.

  She knew younger moviegoers would undoubtedly recognize the hotel as the one where millionaire businessman Richard Gere ensconced himself with pretty woman Julia Roberts. High-style shoppers would think of it as the hotel that anchored south Rodeo Drive.

  But Natasha would always remember the grand Beverly Hills hotel as the site where, in December of 1928, she spent a clandestine, glorious weekend with Gary Cooper, from the film Wings— Even now, decades later, memories of the charismatic actor’s passionate, weakeningly slow lovemaking could still send a wicked heat coursing through her veins.

  Natasha sighed. Youth, she thought, not for the first time, was definitely wasted on the young. What she wouldn’t give for a chance to replay that weekend instead of her planned afternoon of eating scones and drinking tea and gossiping with a clutch of gabby old women.

  A white stretch limo pulled up to the curb. A muscularly fit young man in a snug navy blue T-shirt, white jeans and running shoes climbed out of the driver’s seat, greeted her with a dazzling flash of perfect white teeth and opened the limousine door with a dramatic flourish.

  The hotel was not that far away; Natasha and her friends—a former studio hairdresser, a former costume designer and a one-time character actress—could easily have taken a taxi. But the four women were survivors of the old studio system.

  They could remember when Hollywood was the most glamorous spot on earth. Unable to do anything about the passage of time and unable to bring back those glory days, they nevertheless insisted on maintaining some vestige of the old glamour. Which was why, on the first Monday of every month, they always traveled to tea in a long white limousine.

  Natasha settled into the lush leather seat with a flourish of lacy peasant skirts. Busy greeting the others, she failed to see Blythe’s Jaguar pull up in front of the apartment house.

  As Blythe parked in front of Cait’s sun-washed pink building, she had a sudden, unbidden feeling of déjà vu. “That’s impossible,” she murmured. “You’ve never been here.” The strange feeling was followed by an even eerier one of foreboding.

  “You really have been working too hard,” she scolded herself as she shook off the unsettling emotions.

  Although her lunch meeting with Sloan had gone surprisingly well—his enthusiasm had equaled hers and his demands had been few—it was more than a little apparent that they both had a great deal of work to do before bringing the film to production.

  The building really was charming, Blythe considered as she walked up the brick walk. It boasted turquoise trim, lacy iron grillwork on the windows and balconies on the upper floors and a turret, which while not in keeping with its Spanish style, somehow seemed to fit.

  “Bachelor Arms.” She read the plaque on the outside wall by the arched front doorway out loud. Like the turret, the name seemed out of place.

  Below the plaque, someone had scratched some words. Blythe looked closer. “Believe the legend.”

  Although the day had dawned bright and sunny, a chill suddenly came over her. She shivered, remembering a line from that long-ago teenager slasher movie she’d starred in with Drew Montgomery, about someone walking over her grave.

  Shaking off the feeling, Blythe climbed the stairs to the third floor.

  Cait answered at her first knock. Her bold grin revealed that she was reveling in her new assignment.

  “I was hoping I’d arrive here and find out you’d changed your mind,” Blythe said as they hugged.

  “Not on a bet. This is a lifetime opportunity. I’d be a fool to pass it up.”

  “A live fool,” Blythe pointed out. “To think your friends all worried when you were assigned to the decoy squad.” Although Cait had insisted the Vice Squad duty was absolutely safe, Blythe had never quite believed that.

  “Oh, this is lots better,” Cait said.

  She’d told Blythe about her new assignment to the fugitive squad last night on the phone, and although she hadn’t gone into detail, what little she had said had left Blythe feeling horribly concerned.

  From the bright gleam in Cait’s green eyes, Blythe knew this latest assignment might be a great deal more dangerous than dressing up like Kathleen Turner in Crimes of Passion and sashaying up and down Hollywood Boulevard.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually considering going undercover to catch a rapist.”

  “I’ll fill you in on the details while I finish packing.”

  Blythe followed Cait into her bedroom and sat down on the edge of the lacy, white iron bed, watching as Cait took a hot pink sweater from a dresser drawer and added it to the jeans and underwear she’d already packed.

  “Remember a few years ago, when that Surfer Rapist was running loose on the beach?”

  “How could I forget?” The man had terrorized the beach communities for more than a year.

  “Well, he escaped. And according to his cell mate, he’s on his way back here.”

  “You’d think he’d want to get as far away from where he was arrested as possible.”

  Cait shrugged. “I guess, if he was a normal, clear thinking kind of guy, he wouldn’t be a serial rapist.” An oversize gray LAPD T-shirt she liked to sleep in joined the sweater. “It gets worse.”

  “Terrific,” Blythe muttered.

  “Apparently, while he was locked up, he told more than one fellow prisoner that if he ever got out, he wasn’t coming back. The trick, he decided, was not to leave any witnesses.”

  “Are you saying he intends to start killing his victims?”

  “If you can believe these guys, and granted, they’re not exactly boy scouts. But there isn’t any real reason for them to lie. Everyone from the mayor to the police commissioner to the captains from every one of the beach cities all think he’s deadly serious.”

  As Blythe considered that unsavory scenario, something flashed through her mind. “He was caught using a decoy, wasn’t he?”

  “A Venice detective from the squad’s Rape and Domestic Violence Unit,” Cait agreed. “Charity Prescott, who is currently serving as police chief of Castle Mountain, Maine. Wherever the hell that is.”

  Blythe closed her eyes. When she opened them, she groaned as she viewed Cait’s expression. She looked, Blythe considered, like a high-strung thoroughbred at the starting gate.

  “That’s why you’re going to Maine, isn’t it?” She rubbed at her temple, where a headache was beginning to threaten. “To learn how to draw the rapist out. To trick him into attacking you instead of a civ
ilian.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.” She tossed a pair of gray leggings into the suitcase.

  Blythe sat still for a long silent moment, taking Cait’s news in. Deep down, she’d suspected something like this last night, when Cait had first mentioned her latest undercover sting operation. But never would she have guessed that the man Cait and the team were trying to apprehend could be so brutally deadly.

  “I hate the idea of you putting yourself in danger this way.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I know.” Blythe had accepted that idea, even though she’d never quite gotten used to it. “But why couldn’t you choose something safer? Like handing out parking tickets? Or hauling in little old ladies for jaywalking on Rodeo Drive.”

  Rather than take offense, as she would have if anyone else had suggested such a thing, Cait laughed. “Now you sound like my mother. Lord, maybe it’s contagious.”

  They laughed together, the tension soothed. “I really do like your new place,” Blythe said, looking around the cozy room. She’d always thought it an intriguing contrast that Cait, who, before her prostitute duty, went to work in a stark, unattractive dark blue uniform designed for men, returned home at the end of her shift to lacy furnishings that were a romantic tribute to the Victorian Age.

  The white eyelet bedcover was adorned with deep ruffles and accented with decorative pillows. The walls were sprigged with tiny blue rosebuds and white lace filtered the bright California sunlight, allowing the dark green ivy plant hanging in front of the window to flourish. Roses bloomed on the blue needlepoint rug that covered most of the oak plank floor.

  Against the sea of soft blues, a white wicker dressing table and chair created a peaceful oasis. An antique crocheted shawl had been draped over the bedside table and a white Victorian birdcage adorned the top of the ornate, Victorian bureau.

  “I like it,” Cait agreed, looking around with satisfaction. “Although it doesn’t have the amenities of some of those huge complexes that are springing up like weeds—the ones with on-site gyms, party pavilions and volleyball courts—I fell in love with it at first sight.”

  She grinned at the memory of how she’d been driving down the street in her patrol car and had nearly caused a three-car pileup when she’d slammed on her brakes at the sight of the For Rent sign outside the gracefully aging pink building.

  “I know it sounds like some of that La La Land New Age stuff, but the minute I saw it, I almost felt as if destiny had brought me here.”

  She laughed, sounding a little uncomfortable. “If I weren’t such a feet-on-the-ground kind of woman, I’d almost believe the Bachelor Arms legend.”

  Her statement brought back to Blythe the words scratched below the apartment’s name. Believe the legend. “What legend?”

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I already think you’re crazy.” This dangerous plan to capture the Surfer Rapist was proof of that.

  “Well, according to legend, weird things have happened here, including some mysterious deaths. There’s a mirror down in 1-G. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard about it. Supposedly it’s this huge pewter thing with lots of scrolls and rosebuds and stuff.”

  “Sounds like just your style.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Cait shot a quick, appreciative glance at the gilded, ornately framed full-length mirror in the corner of the room. “Anyway, people say that sometimes you can see a woman in it.” She grinned sheepishly. “I told you it was crazy.”

  “It sounds a little far-fetched,” Blythe admitted. She picked up an old-fashioned snow globe from the bedside table, shook it gently and watched the white flakes drift down over the quaint little Victorian village inside. “But this certainly wouldn’t be the first supposedly haunted house in town.”

  Three such cases that came immediately to mind were the house on Hollywood Boulevard where Ricky and David had grown up that was supposedly haunted with the ghost of Ozzie Nelson, George “Superman” Reeves’s former home on Benedict Canyon and, of course, the burned ruins of Harry Houdini’s estate.

  “It gets even stranger,” Cait revealed, on a light laugh designed to show that she didn’t really believe in such supernatural goings-on. “There’s also a legend that says if you see the woman in the mirror, your greatest wish could be granted. Or your greatest fear realized.”

  The words, casually spoken, struck some deep inner chord. Blythe was glad she was sitting down. The glass ball slipped through her suddenly frozen fingers. Fortunately it landed safely on the mattress and not on the wood floor.

  “Blythe?” Cait was staring at her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” When her voice broke, Blythe gave herself a minute to get her equilibrium back. “Really.”

  “You’re as white as Ozzie Nelson’s ghost.”

  Blythe refused to squirm beneath the worried, intense gaze. The hard, deep way Cait was looking at her reminded Blythe that this was a woman accustomed to getting the truth from people determined to lie.

  “That’s what I get for skipping lunch. Next time I’ll at least get a candy bar at the commissary.”

  Personally, Cait thought that there was a lot more wrong with Blythe than a sudden sugar drop, but she’d known her friend long enough to know when not to pry. Something had happened. Something that had caused a faint, but unmistakable fear to haunt her dark eyes.

  No, Cait corrected, not fear. Terror. Cait wondered if Blythe’s reaction had to do with the news about the rapist. Or something else. Whatever it was, Blythe would tell her when she was ready.

  Blythe watched Cait assess her words and was relieved when she decided not to push. An oddly strained silence settled over them.

  A silence that was blessedly broken by the sudden burst of music filtering up from the apartment below. “Does this happen often?” Blythe asked.

  “Every morning and every afternoon, like clockwork. In the beginning I was tempted to run the guy in for disturbing the peace, but—call me crazy—I’ve kind of gotten to like it.” She grinned. “Let me tell you, it makes one helluva wake-up call.”

  “I can imagine.” Blythe shook her head in a blend of amazement and admiration. They were having to shout to be heard over the blare. “I didn’t even know it was possible to play ’Blue Suede Shoes’ on a bagpipe.”

  “Wait until you hear ’Jailhouse Rock’,” Cait advised.

  On cue, the bagpipes moved on to the old Elvis hit.

  “Amazing,” Blythe shouted. “I think I’ve figured out the secret of Bachelor Arms.”

  “What’s that?”

  Blythe’s grin chased away the lingering shadows in her eyes. “Elvis’s ghost is living in apartment 2-C.”

  They laughed, the uncomfortable moment put away. For now.

  As Cait finished packing, she filled Blythe in on the few tenants she’d met thus far.

  “Jill’s gorgeous. And a dead ringer for Linda Evans.” She described the interior decorator who’d helped her arrange her furniture in her new apartment. “In fact, Saturday she was shopping at Vons and one of those celebrity look-alike agents came up to her and offered her a job, right there in the frozen food section.”

  “Did she accept?”

  “Of course not.” Cait grinned, knowing how Blythe reluctantly tolerated the two women who made their living cutting grand opening ribbons and appearing at parties posing as Blythe Fielding. “She told me she moved here from Boston after her divorce to reinvent herself. Not pretend to be someone else.

  “Let’s see. There’s also Bobbie Sue and Brenda. They want to be actresses.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Don’t be catty,” Cait advised. “Not everyone is lucky enough to get the Ivory soap gig while still in the cradle. Anyway, I’ve only run into them in passing in the laundry room, but Jill says they’re nice.

  “Then there’s this one old lady you’ve got to meet,” Cait said. “Natasha Kuryan. She showed up my first night to welcome me with t
hese sweet little almond cakes and tea in glasses.”

  “Like the Russians drink it,” Blythe murmured, thinking of Alexandra Romanov.

  “Exactly. Anyway, the woman’s a treasure trove of gossip about the old days. Believe me, the sixties generation definitely did not invent the sexual revolution. According to Natasha, she had affairs with some of the town’s biggest stars.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell. Blythe wondered idly if the woman might have known Alexandra. “Did she marry any of them?”

  “I don’t think so. If she did, she hasn’t mentioned it. It’s my impression that Natasha was much too busy having fun to settle down with any one man. Not all women,” she said pointedly, “view marriage as Valhalla.”

  “Not all women are so jaded,” Blythe returned calmly, without heat. She was not about to get into another argument about Alan.

  Cait opened her mouth to comment, then decided that Blythe knew her feelings regarding marriage in general and marriage to Alan Sturgess in particular.

  In an unspoken agreement to change the subject, they continued to chat while Cait finished packing. The stream of consciousness conversation moved smoothly from world and national current affairs, to Blythe’s successful, yet strangely unsettling meeting with Gage Remington, to what the weather might be in Castle Mountain, Maine, which they both guessed would be iffy this time of year, to Lily Van Cortlandt’s arrival in Los Angeles.

  Lily had still been Lily Padgett when the three young women became inseparable during their college days at Brown University. After graduating at the top of her class, she’d gone on to Harvard Law, where she’d fallen in love with J. Carter Van Cortlandt, the dashing scion of an old Manhattan banking and law family. Recently widowed, and pregnant with her first child, Lily was to be Blythe’s bridesmaid.

  “How did she sound when you talked with her the other night?” Cait called out from the bathroom where she was packing her toiletries.

  “It’s hard to tell. She said she and the baby are fine. But I thought I could hear an awful lot of stress in her voice.”