City Of Mirrors: A Diana Poole Thriller Part 14

"I'm outta the movie," I finally said.

"What? Oh, G.o.d, I'm sorry. Robert wanted to keep you."

"I know he did. Where'd this couch come from? Looks like early-brothel."

"It was the only piece of furniture the owners left. I guess they thought it warmed the room."

We smiled, but it was obligatory.

"The police showed me the body," she continued. "Why would they think I'd know who he is ... was?"

"It's what they do. How did he get in?"

"I don't know. Why would he be killed here?" She clasped her hands tightly.

Not having any answers, I pulled my gray leather jacket more closely around me and stared into the soot-blackened fireplace. Acanthuses were carved in relief on the limestone surrounding. My mother and I and the man who I had given myself to by the pool had once roasted marshmallows in it. Mother was desperate to create the fantasy of a holiday family. A Norman Rockwell sleaze-bag was a stand-in for my father. A man we had both screwed. "Look!" she had exclaimed. She held her firm white marshmallow, speared on a long-handled fork, over the flames, watching it shrivel and sag. "It's like seeing a beautiful face age in seconds." She watched the sleaze-bag pop his gooey blob into his mouth and added darkly, "And then they eat you up." And I knew she'd been talking about herself.

Celia reached over and took my hand. "I'm sorry I got so angry at you."

"You need to tell me why," I said.

The double doors opened and Spangler strode in.

"Later," Celia whispered.

"I'm p.o.o.ped. Do you mind if I sit?" Spangler gestured to the small s.p.a.ce on the cushions between Celia and me, and squeezed her wide rear end into it. Now all three of us sat jammed thigh-to-thigh and shoulder-to-shoulder.

Grinning, I said to her, "You're very theatrical in your own way."

"Am I?" She was pleased. "Maybe it's because I work the West L.A. Division. It kinda rubs off." She glanced sideways at Celia. "I just have a few more questions. You said the house has been empty for almost two years. Why is that?"

"The market. Houses like this that need work are not big sellers right now. And the owners won't come down in price."

"Does anybody ever use the house?"

"As I said, the owners live in Italy. Genoa."

"That's where the salami comes from. Do they have a son?"

"They have no children. They're an elderly couple."

"You never saw signs that the house might have been used for parties? Kids find a way of getting in and using empty homes for all kinds of things."

"There's a gardener, a pool man, and a cleaning crew that comes in when we need them. They've never said anything. I've told all this to your partner."

"The kid has keys on him but none of them fit any of the doors to this place. So somebody had to let him in."

"Or the person who killed him could've taken the key," I said.

"That was next on my list. Now why would the murderer do that?"

"I don't know but the kid, the body, looked more like a man to me," I said.

"You're right, Zackary Logan was twenty-eight according to his driver's license." She swiveled her head back to Celia. "How'd you get the bruise?"

Celia touched her cheek. "It has nothing to do with ..."

"Then you won't mind telling me."

"I fell. I was a little tipsy. I was wearing very high heels."

"I tried a pair of those on, and I couldn't even stand up in them let alone fall down. Where did you take your tumble?"

"At home. I hit the edge of the coffee table."

"Had to hurt." She extricated herself from between us and stood, pulling her blazer down and adjusting her thick blond stub of a ponytail.

"It happened two days ago," I said, hoping to make it clear to Spangler that Celia's bruises had nothing to do with the dead man in the side yard.

Glancing up at the chandelier, she said, "I can tell even in this light that they're not fresh." She thought for a moment. "Jenny Parson was murdered two days ago. Thank you, ladies, you can go now."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

It was dark when Celia drove me down Sunset Boulevard to the ocean. Her hands moved nervously on the steering wheel. "Why did Spangler make that comment about my bruises and when Jenny Parson died? She's an idiot. And what's with the Country b.u.mpkin in Hollywood routine?"

"I think she knows exactly what she's doing," I said.

"Do you remember when we were sixteen and driving down Sunset in your mother's Mercedes convertible, music blaring, sun in our hair, picking out mansions that each of us would live in when we were successful, madly in love, and married?"

"Gwyn was with us then."

"Sitting in the back seat."

I thought of Gwyn's chameleon-like eyes appraising me in the rearview mirror. It was the same jealous expression she'd had when her son, Ben, had kissed me at his birthday party.

"You chose a tiny clapboard house with a brick walk lined with pansies. Gwyn and I thought you were nuts."

"I chose it because a movie star would never live there."

"I picked that big Spanish house with the rolling lawn because it was grand and had great curb appeal. Everyone could see it from Sunset."

"Gwyn picked the old gracious white house with the conservatory."

"The one that the son of a wealthy Arab bought and put up naked statues all around the property which p.i.s.sed off the Beverly Hills elite!"

We laughed, a weak imitation of the gusto we'd had back then.

Before I married Colin I had searched for that little clapboard house but it was long gone; an ersatz mansion stood in its place. Celia's beautiful sprawling 1920s Spanish house was still there with its rolling lawn and the same palm trees dipping toward the red tile roof. Gwyn's old gracious white house with the conservatory had burned down. The son of the wealthy Arab had fled the country.

"Heath said he didn't hit you." I stared straight ahead.

"We had such hope back then, driving down Sunset, didn't we, Diana?" she asked plaintively as if I hadn't said a word.

"We had youth."

"I had hope." An oncoming car spread a bleaching light across her bruised face.

"Did you hear me, Celia? Leo Heath says he didn't hit you. Is he lying?" I persisted.

A sob escaped her lips. She swerved off onto a side street and stopped, tires b.u.mping into the curb. Her head drooped forward against the steering wheel and she wept.

I waited, looking out the window at a dark residential street dotted with the yellow glow of porch lights.

"Ben," Celia finally gasped. "It was Ben Zaitlin."

I closed my eyes, wanting everything to stop.

"That's why I couldn't tell you," she said.

I opened my eyes.

Celia had straightened up and was wiping her face with her sweater sleeve. "I'm so tired of crying."

"So am I."

She shook her long dark hair and breathed deeply. "I was afraid if I didn't give you a name, you'd call 911 or the police or make me go to the emergency room. I know you, Diana, you don't stop." She gripped the wheel so tightly that her knuckles looked as if they would pop through the taut skin of her hands. "I knew Heath, or whoever he said he was, wasn't interested in buying the house. I thought you and I would never see him again. And you have to admit he looked like the kind of guy that might batter a woman. I needed you to believe me. I was desperate." She turned toward me, her face twisted with grief and damage. "I'm sorry I lied to you, but ... I couldn't tell you. I was afraid Robert would find out. And G.o.d knows what Gwyn would do. And you're probably not going to believe me, but I wanted to protect Ben, too."

Again I remembered Ben telling me that he had discovered his father had a mistress; and asking me if I had gone to bed with his father and then his defiant kiss. I'd never once considered the anger that drove him to ask that question or to kiss me.

"It's all changed," she continued. "My relationship with Robert. I can feel it. Everything I've built my life on. And now there's a man shot at Bella Casa. Say something, for G.o.d's sake, Diana."

"I don't know what to say."

"Ben made me feel ashamed. Do you remember when I screamed at you that I deserved to be hit?"

"Yes."

"I meant it. I mean, I deserved it from Ben's point of view. From how he felt I had it coming."

"Celia."

"No. Let's stop all the bulls.h.i.t, Diana. I'm taking his father away from his mother as far as he's concerned. He's young. He discovered his family is a lie. You think kids are more sophisticated today, but they're not. He didn't know how to accept it." She let out a jagged sigh. "And why should he? So I could live the kind of selfish life I wanted?"

"Tell me how it happened."

"He called and asked to meet me. He was at that place called The Den. It was around eleven-thirty at night."

"The night Jenny was murdered."

"Yes. He asked if I was alone. I'd just gotten home from having dinner with Robert. I didn't tell Ben that. He said he had to talk to me. No, he said he needed to talk to me. He begged, Diana. He wanted to come to my place, but I said no. He gave me the name and address of a bar. He said no one would see us there. And he was right. It was a vacant lot. When I drove up, he was leaning against his car waiting for me."

"Why didn't you drive away?"

"He's Robert's son, and he wanted to talk. That was very important to me. Can't you understand?"

"I think so."

"He apologized for the location, said he couldn't think of any place where we wouldn't be recognized. Then he got into the pa.s.senger seat of my car. And the rest is as I described it to you earlier."

"You mean he just started hitting you without saying anything?"

She shook her head. "He said 'I don't know what to say to you.' Then he reached over as if he was going to rest his hand on my shoulder. Instead, he was on me, kissing me, and suddenly he was. .h.i.tting me harder and harder, screaming 'b.i.t.c.h' at me. Then he stopped and just stared at me as if he'd never seen anything so ugly." Her voice broke. She took a deep breath and continued. "Finally he jumped out of the car and drove away in his. I hadn't expected him to ... I don't know what I expected. I really believed we'd have some cathartic meeting where we could talk and that I might even become his friend." She let her head flop back against the headrest and closed her eyes. We sat for a long time in the dark.

Then she asked, "What are you going to do about what I've told you, Diana?"

A deep sorrow, not for the dead but for the living, engulfed me. "Nothing. It's all been done."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

It was about eight o'clock when Celia dropped me off. The paparazzi had disappeared, thank G.o.d. Drained, I unlocked my front door and walked into the dark living room. The TV in the kitchen was still repeating the news over and over like an idiot savant. Reaching for the lamp switch by the sofa, I felt cold damp air and the ocean sounded louder. The sliding gla.s.s door was open-but I hadn't left it that way.

I jerked my hand back from the light switch, leaving the room unlit. Not moving, I listened in the darkness. After a few moments I heard a drawer slam shut in my bedroom. Shaking, I crept across the room and grabbed one of Colin's Oscars. The sound of heavy scuffling footsteps came down the hallway.

Ducking out through the open sliding-gla.s.s door onto the deck, I pressed back against the side of the house and held the award upside down, ready to swing the heavy base at the intruder. I was breathing hard, as if I'd been running.

Peeking through gla.s.s into the living room, I watched the shadowy figure of a large man emerge from the bedroom. I ducked back out of sight, trying to decide what to do. I could go to Ryan's for help, but he'd probably be drunk and useless. I still had my purse on my shoulder. As I fumbled inside for my cell phone, the light in the living room went on, illuminating the deck. I froze until I realized the intruder couldn't see me. Carefully leaning toward the open door, I peered in.

Ryan Johns was bent over my side table, rifling through the drawer. What the h.e.l.l was he doing? He straightened up, running a freckled hand over his face. He turned and eyed the bookcase next to the fireplace. Rushing to it, he began pulling out books, opening the plastic cases of CDs and DVDs.

I slipped into the room as quiet as one of my ghosts on the mantel. "What are you looking for, Ryan?"

At the sound of my voice, he almost leapt out of his Uggs. "Jesus, Diana, you scared the s.h.i.t out of me."