Born To Be Wild

by Catherine Coulter

  “All lit up,” Jack said. “Good, our boy is still there. That surprises me. He had to know Mary Lisa would see through those pictures he gave us, that we’d be back. Maybe he thought it would take us longer.”

  Lou Lou jumped out of the backseat. “I’m going to kick that little pissant’s butt myself. Hey, Danny, why don’t you take a photo, we can sell it to the Enquirer.”

  Jack said, “Leave your fantasies about Puker to us, Lou Lou. And stay behind me.”

  When they reached the second floor, Jack knocked firmly on the door, twice. There was no answer.

  Daniel called out, “Mr. Hodges, police, open up. We want to speak to you.” And he rapped hard on the door.

  Suddenly, Jack knew something wasn’t right. He grasped Mary Lisa’s upper arms, lifted her, and set her down against the stucco wall beside the door. “I don’t like this. Please, both of you stay right here, don’t move from this spot.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Mary Lisa, trust me on this, okay?”

  Daniel nodded to Jack, who tried the doorknob. It was locked. He took a step back and sent his foot into the door. It shuddered, but didn’t give. He kicked it again, nearly on the doorknob this time, and the door crashed inward.

  Both men had their guns in their hands when they ducked inside. They swept the foyer, and stepped into the living room. It was obvious there’d been a fight. The sofa was knocked caddywumpus, and a chair lay on its back, a lamp broken beside it. Magazines were strewn on the floor, along with some books from the two bookcases. It was a royal mess. “Puker put up a fight.” Jack turned and shouted, “You guys stay out there until we check the rest of the apartment.”

  Daniel called for backup.

  The kitchen, Puker’s bedroom, and his darkroom looked okay; the fight hadn’t gone in there. They didn’t find Puker. In his darkroom, there were maybe half a dozen photos strewn around on the floor, as if someone had looked them over and tossed them aside after checking them, but otherwise the equipment was okay.

  “I’d say the guy either found the photos and took Puker anyway or he didn’t find the photos and took Puker to get information out of him. Either way, you need an APB on him, Daniel.”

  Mary Lisa and Lou Lou stood in the foyer, staring at the wrecked living room. A lone fern had been toppled onto the floor, soil scattered and crushed, as if someone had walked in it on purpose. They heard sirens in the distance. Daniel walked toward them, his gun holstered.

  “Is Puker dead? Is his body in there?”

  “No, Lou Lou, Puker isn’t here.”

  “By the looks of the living room,” Mary Lisa said, “the guy who’s after me dragged Puker out of here.”

  “Looks like,” Daniel agreed. “Okay, I’ve got to stay here, fill in the LAPD when they show up since we’re in their jurisdiction now. Jack’s going to take you guys home.”

  Lou Lou took one last look around. “He fought. I’m glad he wasn’t a wuss.”

  “Yeah, he fought,” Detective Vasquez said. “I’ll bet the guy didn’t find the photos and that’s why he took Puker. He’s going to pull Puker’s toenails out if he doesn’t tell him where they are. Either that or kill him. What I can’t figure is how this guy even knew Puker had photos of him in the first place.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Mary Lisa said. “There’s no doubt in my mind Puker found out who he was and decided to try a little blackmail. After all, he tried it with me, didn’t he?”

  Jack and Detective Vasquez both nodded, then herded them toward the car. “Puker will have to fend for himself until the cops find him.”

  By the time Jack got ready to leave Mary Lisa’s house, Lou Lou was already in a pair of Mary Lisa’s pajamas, standing in the bedroom doorway, yawning. Mary Lisa was still pacing her living room, looking down at her lovely French pedicure that needed a redo. Jack took her hand and pulled her to the front door, out of Lou Lou’s hearing. Without thinking, he tucked a thick curly strand of red hair behind her ear. “I know you’re scared. Your life feels like it’s out of control. Hang in there, Mary Lisa, and don’t ever be alone, okay?”

  Mary Lisa grabbed up her mess of hair, pulled it in a ponytail, and looped a rubber band from her pocket efficiently around it. But she’d clammed up.

  The house phone rang. He heard Lou Lou answer it. She called out, “It’s okay, Mary Lisa. It’s not the creep.”

  Jack said, “Good. Now, I’ve got to go. Keep your doors locked, all right? And turn on your security system. It’ll be okay, Mary Lisa. We’ll figure this out.”

  Lou Lou came up behind Mary Lisa. “Carlo’s on his way over with some of his friends, said he and his surfboard were going to camp out here for a couple of nights.”

  “Good. Have a pajama party, the more the merrier.” He nodded to both of them, and left.

  Mary Lisa drank a cup of tea and went off to bed, not wishing to see anyone that night. Almost immediately she was dreaming about John Lennon. They were dancing in the huge engine room of a submarine and he was twirling her around and around, and then he started ringing. He didn’t look at all surprised, he just puffed out his chest and rang.

  It was her cell phone and it was one o’clock in the morning.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Nicole Kidman played a glue-sniffing teen on the Australian soap A Country Practice.

  The phone rang again, then once more.

  “Hello?”

  “What have you gotten yourself into? What is going on down there?”

  It didn’t sound at all like John Lennon. “Who is this?”

  “John Goddard. What’s happening?”

  His voice was warm and deep and definitely pissed off, and she smiled into the phone. “Oh, a John by another name. It’s good to hear from you, but how did you know anything was happening? It’s kind of late down here, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry to call you so late. What do you mean a John by another name?”

  “I was dreaming about John Lennon and he started ringing and it was you. So, what’s going on?”

  “Your dad called me, said Jack had called him, told him it was getting really complicated down there and he was going to stay to see if he could help resolve things.”

  “Complicated? Is that cop talk for understatement? Can you sing, John?”

  He laughed. “Lock me in a shower and you can’t shut me up.”

  Right there in her mind’s eye was the visual of him crooning while she looked at his lovely wet butt. He turned and smiled at her. But it wasn’t John’s face, it was Jack’s, and she jerked the shower curtain closed real fast. “Okay, I’m awake now. Why did my dad call you?”

  There was a slight pause before John the tough district attorney said, “Why shouldn’t he call me? I asked him to, I was worried about you. He thinks I should come down there, said Jack was okay, but it’s time for the big gun.”

  Big gun, huh? “My father called you the big gun?”

  “Maybe not his exact words.”

  “John, it’s a nice thought, but you’re preparing evidence for Milo Hildebrand’s trial, aren’t you? Seems to me you’re pretty busy right now. Isn’t Patricia Bigelow all over you with motions for this and that?”

  “Well, the thing is, we’ve got all the evidence we need locked down. Pat can shriek and pull her hair if she likes, make motions until all the cows migrate to California, there’s nothing she can do but wait for a plea bargain offer that’s probably not going to come. And we don’t have to worry about Milo skipping the jurisdiction. With obvious premeditation, Judge Howe turned down bail in a minute. Milo’s in jail for the long haul.”

  “John, listen to me. I’m working all day tomorrow. Besides the police department, we’ve got the big rottweiler here on the case. Jack’s a pretty big gun, don’t you think? There’s simply no reason for you to disrupt your life to come down.”

  “If you have to know,” he said, “your sister was pissed when Jack left town after she’d put some of her moves on him, so now s
he’s decided to light up my life again. I’m scared.”

  “So you think Jack showed up down here just to escape my sister? And you want to do the same?” Mary Lisa forgot for a moment that she’d been afraid to poke her head out her own door that day, and laughed. “So Kelly’s got both of you machos on the run?”

  “Sometimes telling the truth really hurts.”

  She had no sooner punched off than it rang again. “Grand Central.”

  A short pause, a strained laugh, then, “Lots of people calling you at all hours, huh? Mary Lisa, Jack swore to me you were all right. But I’ve been lying here and I can’t sleep. I’m coming down tomorrow.”

  “Dad, there’s no reason, I promise. This is exactly why I didn’t want to worry you with all this when I was up there. After work tomorrow, I’ve got an interview with Soap Opera Digest and then a birthday party for a friend to go to. You already sent Jack Wolf down here to run loose in Malibu. Believe me, no one in their right mind would try anything with the original bad-ass close by.”

  “But he’s not your father.”

  “Dad, please. Stay in Goddard Bay. Truth is, I’d worry myself into a coma if you were here nosing around.”

  “But-”

  She heard her mother’s voice clearly in the background. “You can’t go to Malibu, George. Monica needs us at her campaign fund-raiser Saturday night. Come back to bed.”

  Her father’s voice, a bit muffled because he’d obviously put his hand over the receiver, said, “Mary Lisa is in danger, Kathleen. A fund-raiser is nothing.”

  Her mother’s voice became indistinct. She realized her dad had pressed his palm down harder over the phone.

  She waited briefly, and her dad said, “Mary Lisa, I’ll call you tomorrow morning, see what’s going on. Yes, yes, I’ll check in with Jack too. When do you leave for the studio?”

  When Mary Lisa punched off her cell, she lay back and stared up at the ceiling. She listened to the sound of the waves, a bit closer, a bit frothier since a light rain was falling and the wind had picked up. She got up, checked on Lou Lou, who was sprawled in the middle of the guest room bed on her back, arms and legs snow-angeled, deeply asleep. Her thick streaked hair frothed around her head and over her face, and she looked adorable in Mary Lisa’s cat pajamas. If Elizabeth had been here, she knew the two of them would have been sprawled side by side, but Elizabeth was still back in Connecticut dealing with family problems of her own. Another asshole man, she had said-or was she being redundant? She’d have to run that by Jack, to see the look on his face. At least she’d be back in the next day or two. She’d called, but neither Mary Lisa nor Lou Lou had told her anything more about the trouble. Elizabeth had enough on her plate without adding this course.

  Mary Lisa went out onto her covered back deck, leaned her elbows on the railing, and watched the rain sheet lightly down in front of her. Carlo said from the depths of his sleeping bag, “You okay, Mary Lisa?”

  “Yep, I’m fine, Carlo. Sorry I woke you up. You’re not cold, are you?”

  “Nah, this thing was made for the Antarctic. Good thing for you it’s cool tonight because I sleep in the nude.”

  Mary Lisa laughed, thanked him, and headed back to bed. She said one final prayer-she thanked God she wasn’t at this very moment lying in her bed in her mother’s house in Goddard Bay.

  THIRTY

  With cries of American soap imperialism in the 1980s, the French and Germans launched their own direct imitations. Neither country’s soap attempt flew very high or very long.

  Lou Lou came out to the front porch the next morning, still in Mary Lisa’s cat pajamas, carrying mugs of coffee on a tray. “Here’s some coffee, sweetie. It’ll clear the cobwebs.”

  Mary Lisa was sitting on a deck chair in her front yard wearing rumpled shorts and her favorite pea green T-shirt. She smiled up at Lou Lou as she took the coffee. “You’re a princess.”

  She looked over to see Carlo talking on his cell phone, the toes of his bare feet digging into the rain-soaked grass, wearing a black and silver Oakland Raiders T-shirt and loose black pajama bottoms. Mary Lisa wondered briefly if he’d lied to her about sleeping nude or if he carried this stuff around in case of emergencies, such as now.

  Carlo trotted over when he saw the mugs of coffee and took a cup from Lou Lou. “Those kitty cats on your pajamas are a real turn-on, Lou Lou.”

  “Good to know. Hmm. I think if Daniel said that, I might jump his bones. It’s too bad you don’t wear a badge, Carlo.”

  Carlo, who had more money than God, looked thoughtful. “That,” he said, “could be arranged.”

  Mary Lisa spurted coffee, coughed, then laughed. “What a lovely way to start Friday morning. It’s going to be a long day, Lou Lou. When did everyone go home?”

  “Not long after you went to bed. Hey, there’s some good news.”

  Mary Lisa’s eyebrow went up.

  “I wish I could do that, but both eyebrows go straight up when I try.”

  “It’s a gift, unfortunate that it’s from my mother. What happened that’s so good?”

  “Jack has volunteered to take you to work, and stick. You’ve got to be at the studio in forty-five minutes. As for me, I’m out of here as soon as I change out of my hot jammies.”

  “The living room looked fine, no big mess.”

  “Nope,” Carlo said, watching Lou Lou’s pajama bottoms disappear into the house. “I set up a cleaning detail. One of Nicole’s friends even fluffed up a sofa pillow.”

  Mary Lisa settled again in her chair to finish her coffee. She stretched out her legs and breathed in the glorious Malibu morning air.

  “I wouldn’t want to tangle with that guy.” Carlo sipped his coffee and pointed with it. “He looks like he belongs in the Outback in Australia, like he camps out on top of Ayers Rock.”

  Mary Lisa followed his pointing mug to Jack Wolf, who was walking toward them in a black T-shirt, tight ratty jeans, and low black boots. “Really? To me, he’s just a guy, kind of ordinary, really.”

  “Other than looking like he could pull up that palm tree and scratch his back with it. Hey, you’re acting rather blasé about him, aren’t you, honey?”

  “Okay, you’re right, I was. Fact is, he scares me. Thanks for coming, Carlo. You’re a prince.” Mary Lisa walked back into her house without greeting Jack. She heard him and Carlo talking. She stopped a moment to look around her living room. It was pristine. She remembered she’d heard conversations from the kitchen floating into her bedroom after she’d gone to bed, heard the refrigerator door open and close multiple times. Oh dear, she’d have to find time to go grocery shopping, since the local locusts had surely cleaned her out.

  She went to her bedroom, shut the door, and reemerged eleven minutes later, dressed in a skirt and tube top. She was slinging her purse over her shoulder when a man’s voice said from not more than two feet away, “That was fast. Ready to go?”

  She nearly leaped out of her shoes. She clapped her palms over her heart. “Oh goodness, whatever are you doing in here?”

  Jack stared at her. “I told you I don’t want you to be alone. Lou Lou had to leave since she’s the one who smears on the makeup this morning and Carlo had to go wax his surfboard. As for Daniel, he’s got a real job to go to. That left me.”

  And like Lou Lou had said, Jack stayed on at the studio. In fact, Clyde was very pleased he was there, as was Betsy Monroe, who played Lydia Cavendish. She wondered aloud, in his hearing, if he was unattached. So he was a little on the young side for her, who cared? This was make-believe land, anything could happen. Jack looked alarmed, then saw she was kidding him and laughed, told her she was too hot for a small-town guy like him.

  Mary Lisa shot three scenes, from eight-thirty until noon. Jack mostly sat on a folding chair near the set with his legs crossed, beside Candy, whose job it was to keep an eye on Mary Lisa’s wardrobe and hair. When she was done with the third scene, Mary Lisa walked over to him. “Give me ten minutes to wipe the goop off m
y face.”

  Lou Lou had to stay on into the afternoon since she also had to deal with Margie McCormick’s makeup on Fridays.

  As Mary Lisa walked out of the studio, Jack was slightly in front of her, assessing everyone in sight, scanning the parked cars and a stand of trees beyond them. “So your father is a TV evangelist and that’s why he insisted your name be changed to Sunday?”

  The three scenes they’d shot had been intense, two of them repeated multiple times. She was exhausted. And Sunday had yet to see her long-lost father for the first time. The writers were stretching out the anticipation for as long as they could.

  “Yep, isn’t it cool what they’ve come up with? This means I don’t have to sleep with my half sister, Susan’s, husband, who’s a sleaze.”

  He grunted, never stopped looking. “Yeah, a real sleaze.”

  So he knew all about that, did he? She grinned up at him, but couldn’t make out his expression because he was wearing his dark opaque aviator sunglasses. She put on her own sunglasses. “I begged and whined and pleaded for them not to have Sunday sleep with Damian, and lo and behold, the consulting writer, Suzanne, came up with this. Sunday has never questioned her name. I don’t think anyone did until Suzanne came up with my supposedly long-dead preacher dad. This is going to change the course of the show for a good long time. On Monday I’ll meet Phillip Galliard for the first time.”

  He grabbed her arm, pulled her behind him as a green Chevy roared past.

  Then he saw the three teenage boys waving madly at her, whistling, calling out lovely suggestions.