The Bequest

by kindle@netgalley. com

  She got out of the car, wearing her same unsuccessful disguise from the day before: baseball cap, ponytail, and sunglasses, despite the lack of sun. Given the location, the hour, and the shadows, she hoped it would be more effective than it was the last time. She stood beside her car for a moment, steeling her nerves. She had to restrain herself from looking around, searching for Doug Bozarth’s men, who surely were out there somewhere. She would feel better if she knew exactly where they were, but she would have to be satisfied with the sure knowledge that they were, in fact, there.

  Or would she actually feel better if they weren’t there at all? She wasn’t entirely sure.

  She entered the diner with a façade of bravado. “Show no fear,” she thought, although she was painfully out of her comfort zone. The trick, though, was not to let anyone know that. She stood in the entryway for a moment and let her eyes adjust to the light. It would have made sense to take off her sunglasses, but she opted against that.

  A waitress approached, dressed in a dirty tan uniform, decorated by the various foods and drinks she had served that day. When she smiled, she revealed a black tooth in front that almost made it look as if the tooth were missing.

  “How many?” the waitress asked.

  “I’m meeting someone here,” Teri said, “but I don’t see him.”

  “Some guy just went to the men’s room.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, thin, longish hair.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “I’ll take you to his table.”

  The waitress led her to the back of the diner, the last booth against the wall farthest from the door. As Teri passed a scattering of late-night customers, she wondered if any of them could be Bozarth’s men. None paid her any attention as she walked by, but then again, a good surveillance man would ignore her. The faux leather seats on the rear booth, colored a sickly orange, were split, with tufts of foam rubber sticking out. A half-empty cup of coffee sat on the far side of the booth, so she slid in across from it.

  “Need a menu?” the waitress asked, as she set a glass of water on the table.

  “No, thank you.”

  The waitress left, and Teri sat rigidly, posture ramrod straight, and looked out the window. After a few minutes, she heard footsteps behind her. She refused to turn her head as a shadow loomed, then Leland Crowell—or whoever he was—slid into the far side of the booth. He wore tattered jeans, his bony knees poking out, and a long-sleeve blue denim workshirt that was so faded as to be nearly white.

  “Ms. Squire, how good of you to come,” he said.

  She said nothing in reply, but simply stared at him.

  “Are you hungry? Let me get you a menu.”

  “This is not a date. I don’t need a menu.”

  “No reason we can’t be pleasant.”

  “Actually, there’s every reason we can’t be pleasant,” she said, “so let’s just get this over with.”

  “Ahh, tsk tsk, so little manners today. Okay, fine, let’s have it your way.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, each acting as if expecting the other to talk first. Finally the thin man said, “Well, have you got something to tell me?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, dear, are we back to that again? You know who I am.”

  “I know who you say you are.”

  “And I know who you say you are…Peggy.”

  She tried hard to maintain her composure, but still blinked. The question was whether he noticed it. “My name is Teri.”

  “Credibility is a fragile thing.”

  He had noticed.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Teri said. “Something I’ve always wondered about the script. Why did you end the first act the way you did?”

  For a moment, she sensed that she had shifted the momentum. This time, he blinked. Like a frog, with lifeless eyes, his expression totally blank.

  “It just seemed like it was the best way,” he said. A bead of perspiration popped out above his right eye then trickled down his jawline despite the coolness of the diner. The question obviously made him uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, but what made you think that would work as a plot point?” she asked. “You developed the set-up so well, but then you had your protagonist—” She stopped, almost ready to laugh at the blankness that had replaced cockiness on of his face.

  “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?” she asked. “You don’t know what a plot point is or where the act break is, or anything.”

  Silence, the frog blinking in rapid succession.

  “Leland Crowell would know,” she said. “The writer would know exactly where the act break was and why he put it there. But you don’t have a clue.”

  “I don’t have to have a clue. I’ve got a copyright certificate.”

  “But the certificate says that Leland Crowell owns the copyright, and you’re not Leland Crowell. You just proved that. Did you kill him? Huh? Did you throw him off that cliff?”

  The man leaned back in his seat and stared out the window for a moment. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeve and stuck his arm across the table, with the blue football helmet tattoo directly under the light. He pressed his lips together, as if to say, “There. That proves it.”

  For just an instant, Teri flashed back to the Crescent Hotel, straining for a memory that lurked deep in the recesses of her mind. What was it? Oh, yeah, now she remembered: The tattoo was smudged.

  Wordlessly, she took her water glass and poured a few drops on the tattoo, then rubbed it with her thumb. She had to swallow the bile that rose up in her throat as she touched his bare arm, but her little gambit did the trick: the tattoo smeared.

  “I’m not a lawyer, but I think I can help you get your money back from the tattoo parlor,” she said. She kept her eyes locked on his face, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you really are Leland Crowell,” she said. “You know what’s really pathetic about that?”

  Now he met her eyes. For the first time, emotion filled his. A mix of rage and fear, and she wondered if she was pushing him too far. But she also knew she couldn’t stop now. She felt that she was on the verge of something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re already dead.”

  “Big threat from such a little girl.”

  “It’s not a threat; it’s a fact, isn’t it? Leland Crowell already jumped off a cliff, so if he disappears again, who’s going to miss him?”

  The mix of rage and fear turned to pure rage. He leaned across the table and spoke in what could only be described as a growl. “I want my money.”

  “You’re not getting anything.”

  He pulled away, his back rigid against the booth.

  “That’s right; not a damn penny.” She stood and looked down at him. “See you in the funny papers.”

  Then she turned and headed for the door, fighting to keep her head high and her mouth set. From behind her, she heard the man’s shouts. As he yelled, customers turned and looked at her

  And recognized her!

  “You come back here. You can’t threaten me, Miss Bigshot Actress! I want what’s coming to me. You hear me? You won’t get away with this.”

  She picked up her pace, but kept it to a walk, albeit a fast one.

  Then she was out the door.

  He sat frozen to his seat as the actress disappeared out the door. How dare she! Didn’t she understand what was going on here? He was in charge, not her. He called the shots, not her. Or did he? She had been scared the last time he saw her, in his hotel room, but tonight she showed little of that fear. In fact, she seemed almost emboldened as she sat there, grilling him about the screenplay. Then that parting shot, threatening him. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A threat. Letting him know that she, or someone, had carte blanche to take him out of the picture. That could mean only one thing: It was a death threat.

  He
scrambled from his seat and bolted for the door. He pushed his way outside and scanned the parking lot. A dark blue Toyota Highlander SUV idled in a space near the building, its glass tinted to prevent anyone from seeing inside. As people inside the diner stared out the window, he raced to the SUV, snatched open the passenger door, and jumped inside.

  The vehicle drove off.

  CHAPTER 22

  As she left the dismal part of town that housed the diner, Teri found herself in a daze. What had started as merely strange had grown more fantastic almost by the hour, culminating in what now seemed like surreal territory. She didn’t know if the man in the diner had been the real Leland Crowell any more than she had known that night in his hotel room. It had taken all her nerve—and she had plenty; history proved that—to call his bluff, because she knew that not meeting his demands probably offered greater danger than caving in to him.

  Part of her felt comforted knowing that Doug Bozarth was waiting in the wings should things go wrong. Another part of her, though, knew that Doug Bozarth might prove to be an even bigger risk than dealing with Leland Crowell, or whoever he was. If anything happened to the scragglyhaired man, anything at all, she knew two things with certainty: (1) Doug Bozarth would be the man behind it; and (2) she would be a coconspirator, even though she had no idea what he might do.

  There was also a third thing she knew: Whatever might happen, it would be untraceable to Bozarth but, if traceable at all, would likely lead to her own doorstep. She felt sure Bozarth would see to that. And she would be powerless to do anything about it, since there were witnesses who could testify that they had seen the two of them together. Ponytail, baseball cap, and sunglasses notwithstanding, she was a recognizable figure in this town. Her visit to Spencer West’s former office proved that. In fact, she was not just recognizable in this town, but internationally. Her face was her calling card and now might be her undoing if anything happened. People had seen her and recognized her. And they had heard raised voices. Harsh voices. How many movies had she seen—hell, had she made—where the victim and the suspect had argued before the murder, and that argument had been hung around the suspect’s neck like a millstone?

  But wait. If anything happened. There was a clue there, provided she could call it to mind. If anything happened...If anything happened...If anything happened.

  If . That was the magic word. The uncertainty of danger from the man in the diner was more than counter-balanced by the certainty of danger if something happened to him. She had to make sure that nothing happened. If she could head off anything unfortunate from happening to the scragglyhaired man, she could achieve a small measure of comfort, perhaps even salve her conscience a bit. Not that she wanted to become this extortioner’s bodyguard, but she realized that her own welfare was in play. Self-interest was a bitch.

  She had barely gone two blocks when she swung her SUV around in a sharp U-turn in the middle of an intersection and headed back to the diner. She had no plan in mind, no course of action. But if nothing else, she would wait and watch. Information was power, and what she really needed right now was information. Not only on the scraggly-haired man, but also on Doug Bozarth. She had struck out on her own research, but maybe Mona had been more successful.

  She pulled out her cell phone from her purse and was just about to hit Mona’s speed dial number when she saw a Toyota SUV that looked remarkably similar to hers, right down to the color, idling in the parking lot of Caleb’s Diner. She couldn’t be sure, but it sure as hell looked as if the scraggly haired man had just jumped into the passenger side. Could it just be coincidence that the car he was in looked just like hers? She didn’t think so. And who was driving? Here was a chance to find out who was in cahoots with whom. The SUV pulled into traffic.

  She dropped the phone in her lap and followed.

  * * *

  Mona Hirsch scrolled from link to link on her laptop, curled up in her queen-size bed with a notepad beside her and a Diet Coke on the nightstand. She had tried to sleep earlier, but sleep wouldn’t come. Not until she heard from Teri and knew that she was all right after her latenight visit to meet the purported Leland Crowell. She had Googled the name and found the man to be, or have been, a mere cipher. Other than news stories about his strange bequest and the imminent release of The Precipice, with the inevitable comparisons to John Kennedy Toole and his A Confederacy of Dunces, the information superhighway was more of an information trickle. There wasn’t even an obituary from his death two years earlier. As far as the Internet was concerned, he had neither been born nor died, nor lived in between. It was as if he had never existed

  except as a character in a bizarre drama that was even now playing out. She glanced at her notepad, struck by how empty it was. Nary a single note, fitting, perhaps, as the sum of Leland Crowell’s pitiful existence.

  She grabbed her Diet Coke and took a sip. After she set it back on the nightstand, she keyed in a new Google search: Douglas Bozarth. Teri maintained a discreet distance from the SUV, staying far enough back to only be seen as headlights in a rearview mirror, but close enough that accelerating to clear intersections on yellow or red lights would not seem suspicious to the lead vehicle. She had tailed cars before, but only under the glare of spotlights with cameras rolling and a director ready to yell “Cut!” if anything didn’t look right. The worst that could have happened, then, was another take. But tonight, there would be no second takes if the driver up ahead realized he or she was being followed.

  And just who was the driver? Who was the scraggly-haired man’s partner in crime? What she wouldn’t give to know the answer to that.

  Then a thought hit her: What if the driver was on the payroll of Doug Bozarth? She had already thought through the notion that, if anything happened to the thin man, it would be made to look as if she had a hand in it. Was that what was going on here? Was that why a car just like hers had the thin man in it? Had he sought to join her in her vehicle as she left, only to discover he had been lured into a trap?

  Then she thought back to seeing the SUV pull out of the parking lot. If, indeed, that was the scraggly-haired man in the passenger seat–and she was pretty sure it was—he didn’t seem distressed. He appeared to be simply riding along just like any other passenger in a vehicle. And that could mean but one thing: He knew the driver.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mona pulled up yet another website that told the same generic story about Doug Bozarth that Teri had recited to her following her own research. She didn’t really expect to find anything, but at least it killed time since she couldn’t sleep anyway. No, the real inside scoop on Bozarth, if there was any to be found, would come from the computer major at USC she had emailed earlier, who was far more adept at research than Mona and Teri put together. That had less to do, Mona supposed, with surfing the Web than it did with the student’s ability to access databases supposedly impenetrable to hackers. Databases that had all kinds of initials and acronyms associated with them, including CIA, NSA, FBI, and DOD, just to name a few.

  She was surprised, though, that she had not yet heard a response from the student, who usually was glued to his computer at all hours, including while he was in class. She was sure her email would have gotten his attention, with the subject line of “Help” and the simple message: Need dirt on someone; will pay premium rates. And yet nearly two hours had gone by and no response. She had sent it, hadn’t she? She opened the Sent file on her email program and scrolled down. Yep, there it was, transmitted one hour and fifty-seven minutes earlier.

  A tone announced the arrival of a message. She switched back to the Inbox and saw the response she had been waiting for. She opened the message and read: Just got this, but there was no message. I see it was sent hours ago. Don’t know why it was delayed. Is someone monitoring your email? Was there supposed to be a message?

  She typed a reply: Why do you ask? And, yes, there was a message. His response: Sometimes hackers get into mail programs. They can divert

  mail or delete me
ssages. Sometimes that delays the delivery; sometimes it prevents delivery altogether. A noise from the far reaches of the house pulled Mona’s attention away from the laptop screen. It could have been just one of the normal “things that go bump in the night.” It might even have been the return of that nasty family of raccoons that had done almost two thousand dollars worth of roof and attic damage to her house just a few months earlier. And if it was the latter, Mona was prepared. She pulled open the drawer in her nightstand and took out a BB pistol. She had bought it after a “critter catcher” had advised her that it was as good a way as any to chase off unwanted animals.

  “You don’t need anything more powerful,” he said. “You don’t want to kill it or injure it badly. If that happens, it might crawl between the walls to die, and you wouldn’t know it until it stunk so bad, you’d never get the smell out.”

  She held the pistol in her right hand, slid her legs over the side of the bed, and stood. She cocked her head and listened. Nothing. She walked softly to the doorway to her bedroom and listened. She had learned to distinguish the sounds she often heard in this hilly and tree-lined neighborhood of Beverly Hills. Skittering sounds generally meant squirrels on the roof. Louder skittering meant squirrels in the attic. But pounding and banging, like a mini-construction project—that meant raccoons in the attic, treating the soft insulation as their own private latrine and ripping their way in and out through the shake roof.

  But there was only silence.

  She had just turned and was headed back to bed when she heard it again. Not a skittering sound, or a banging sound overhead. This was a very distinct sound. One that she knew meant trouble.

  It was the sound of a footstep. Inside the house.

  And it was close.

  Suddenly the questions about delayed emails and deleted messages made sense. Frightening sense. Teri had told her to be discreet in her search but never really explained why; no specifics, anyway. All Mona knew was that, for some reason, Teri was uneasy about Doug Bozarth and his money. Now Mona realized that Doug Bozarth might be just as uneasy about Teri Squire and her questions.