City Of Mirrors: A Diana Poole Thriller Part 27

In the foyer we stared at each other, wondering if we could or should go back to the people we were before tonight, when the lies and the contradictions didn't strike so deeply.

He brushed his lips against mine, reminded me to lock the door, and was gone. I was abruptly surrounded by silence again. But if stillness can vary, be different, less oppressive, less threatening, this one was. Was that all it took? Great s.e.x?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

It was ten o'clock the next morning when I awoke. Stretching, I heard Mother's voice. I sat up. She was on TV, seducing Jack Nicholson on a sofa. Jack was wry, my mother was serious, her blond hair cascading around her bare shoulders and soft cleavage.

"Enough," I said.

She didn't hear me. She was busy earning her one and only Oscar. I turned off the TV.

Dressed in jeans, a black sweater, and suede driving shoes, I went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. While it perked I checked my cell to see if Celia had called. She hadn't. I left a message asking her to call me, that it was important. Then I found the number of St. John's Hospital and asked to speak to Ryan. He had a collapsed lung and an ego to match. It was his depleted confidence that worried me the most. Men such as Ryan are like birthday balloons, fun, but they popped easily. Promising I would see him soon, I hung up.

Now slathering marmalade on toast and sipping coffee, I wondered why I was so adamant that Celia was innocent. It was more than she was my friend and that I didn't want to be deceived by her. Then I realized it was hearing her scream over the phone and the terror I'd felt. And the next morning seeing her bruised face. I'd forgotten to tell Heath about that. My body grew alert at the thought of him.

Smiling, I forced myself to concentrate on Celia. The only thing I didn't understand was how she knew she was in danger from Parson. If only she'd answer her phone. Why didn't she? Had Parson's men found her? I stood up. Was she hurt or in trouble?

I went into my bedroom, found her house key, put it in my pocket, and left.

The fog had come in and settled like a wet gray rag over the coast. Running down the beach, I tried to outpace the ebb and flow of the tide, hoping I would find something, anything, in her house that could tell me where she'd gone.

As I ran up onto Celia's deck, I saw that the drapes were drawn across her French doors. I tried the handle. It was locked. Using her key I unlocked it, pushed aside the curtains, and stepped in.

It took me a moment to make sense of the chaos. All her possessions had been thrown onto the floor, smashed. Drawers hung open, contents scattered. Lamps lay on their sides and sofa cus.h.i.+ons were ripped open. Goose down had settled over the room like a blanket. Fear shot through me as I realized I might not be alone in the house.

I picked up the oldest prop in the world, a fireplace poker, and moved toward her bedroom, peering in. The linens had been ripped off the bed, nightstands tipped over, and paintings torn from the walls.

Tightening my grip on the poker, I edged sideways to the open closet door and paused, waiting for any sound or movement that might emanate from it. Not hearing any, I crept in.

Celia's closet was the size of a small boutique. Her clothes had been pulled off the hanger rods and thrown onto the floor, creating a tangled pile of clas.h.i.+ng bold colors. The red-framed full-length mirror was shattered. Had Parson's men done all this damage? But why break the mirror? I couldn't believe his thugs cared much about their reflections. I stared at my mirrored face, fractured by the cracked gla.s.s, and wondered who did care. Who hated their own image so much that they had to ruin it?

I went into the kitchen and abruptly stopped. Ben Zaitlin, his profile to me, was standing there staring intently at the door that led to the garage as if he were in a trance.

"Ben?"

He jerked his shoulders, startled back to reality. "Diana. I was looking for Celia. She's not here." His black hair was uncombed and he was unshaven. Dark circles shadowed his creaseless eyes.

"Did you do this?" I gestured with the poker toward the living-room entrance. Then I put it down on the table but still within reach.

"What?" He blinked his long lashes and rubbed his face as if trying to wake himself up.

"The destruction of Celia's ..."

"Perfect life?" He shrugged. "Yes. I was p.i.s.sed off, I guess."

"How did you get in?"

"Stole Robert's key." He slumped against the sink counter, hands stuffed in his cargo pants pockets, head hanging. He wore a black polo s.h.i.+rt, and flip-flops on his strong wide feet. "I've been up all night. No sleep. The police want to see me in about an hour." He lifted his wrist to look at his watch and saw he wasn't wearing one. "Guess I left it at home." He raised his eyes to meet mine. "Do you know where Celia went?"

"No. But she had to leave."

"She didn't tell me."

"Why would she?"

"Because she's my alibi. That's why I came here, to make sure she would back me up."

"And because she wasn't here, you trashed her house?"

"I told you I was p.i.s.sed off," he snapped, like a truculent teenager.

"Why do the police want to talk with you?"

"They saw me on The Den security tape talking to Jenny Parson the night she was murdered."

"I thought you didn't know Jenny."

"You could never know her. But we shared the same ... disgust. We hated the same people. But in different ways."

My stomach tightened. "What people?

He fell silent staring at the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Pus.h.i.+ng his hair from his forehead he finally said, "The people we were blackmailing."

"Ben." I sat down at the table, smelling the soft aroma of its polished old wood.

"Jenny felt this rush of power. I just felt a kinda revenge. But then I was sick of all their old naked bodies. Sick of their needs. Sick of her, sick of me." He tossed his head back defiantly. "Aren't you going to ask me how Ben Zaitlin, who has whatever he wants, could do such a thing? Aren't you going to say I'm disappointed in you, Ben?"

"No."

His expression softened, and he looked even younger than his twenty-one years. "No, you wouldn't, would you? You're the sanest person in this f.u.c.king town."

"Not saying much, is it?"

For a moment I thought he was going cry, but he quickly turned toward the sink, flipped the faucet on, and threw water on his face. He tore off a section of paper towel from its wrought-iron holder and dried himself. Wadding it up, he threw it into the sink.

He swung around to face me. "Those people we blackmailed were just like my parents, only concerned about what they needed at the moment. Jenny said that we were feeding the beasts. Some of them were even at my birthday party." He smirked like a frat boy talking about a prank. "They sucked up to me because I'm Robert's son. They'd asked me what projects he had lined up, as if I could do something for them. And they didn't know I was the one taping them, making them pay. I stayed in the shadows just like a cinematographer on a set."

"Not quite."

"s.h.i.+t. It wasn't even good p.o.r.n. It was pathetic. Zackary Logan was the only one true to himself. He knew who he was. A pimp. Even Jenny in her own sick way was trying to please her father or be like him. I never knew who I was ... except that I had always been used. And I hate it!" His cheeks flushed and he looked at the garage door again.

I kept my voice calm. "You said you came here to see whether Celia would back up your alibi. Why wouldn't she?"

"She's a liar."

"You weren't with her the night Jenny was murdered? You didn't hit her?"

"Yes, I was with her." His eyes settled on mine. "And what else would the son of a rapist do but attack a woman? It's so believable, isn't it, Diana?" He pushed himself away from the counter. "I have to talk to the police." He strode past me and down the hallway to the front door, his flip-flops slapping at his feet.

I sprang up and hurried after him. Grabbing his arm, I turned him toward me. "I'll call Robert. He'll get you a lawyer."

"You do that, Diana. Call the biggest loser there is besides me." He opened the door, pulled away from my grip, and beat it down the flagstone pathway.

Running after him, I yelled his name.

His Jeep Cherokee was parked on the side of the highway. He jumped into it. Revving the engine, he swung it out into traffic and made a screeching U-turn, causing oncoming cars in both directions to brake and skid. Horns blared. I watched him speed north, away from the West L.A. police station, away from his parents, away from Celia's house, away from Hollywood.

When I couldn't see Ben anymore, I went back into the kitchen and stared at the door that had so fixated him. My hand trembling, I slowly opened it. The garage was empty, no white Lexus. I let out my breath. What did I think I would find? Celia's corpse? Closing the door, I stepped back and felt something crunch under my foot.

I bent down and picked up a crumpled photograph. Had Ben dropped it?

Sitting down at the table, I pressed it flat with my fingers. The very young faces of Celia and Gwyn looked back at me through the creased folds. Gwyn was holding a newborn. Ben. She had the righteous, enlightened look of those who see another reality. Celia had her straight-ahead-feet-on-the-ground expression. This had to have been taken when Gwyn was in Switzerland, after having given birth, and still recovering from her breakdown. For a woman who didn't keep photographs, why was Celia keeping this one?

Studying it, I tried to think back twenty years. I would have been maybe twenty, Celia and Gwyn were twenty-one, Ben's age now. How long had Celia been trekking in Europe, staying at hostels and visiting Gwyn? Five or six months?

I rubbed my forehead. Gwyn had been raped while she was hearing voices and hiding in bushes. Crazy and pregnant, her parents had swept her off to Switzerland. Three or four months later Celia decided to take a trip, to get her head together, to figure out what she wanted to do with her life if she couldn't make it as an actress. And also she wanted to visit Gwyn. Three or four months after Gwyn had left the country. A pregnant woman would begin to show around that time.

Feeling the oppression of the perfect domestic kitchen Celia had created for herself-a woman who didn't cook, who didn't want a family-I peered at the two young women again and sighed. Was I weaving a fictional story that had nothing to do with the reality of this picture? It could just be what it looks like-Celia, the friend, sharing a moment with Gwyn and her baby. Or was it a picture of Celia standing next to her infant son, who was now cuddled in Gwyn's arms? And that was the true picture. The one Ben had found, then crumpled in his hand and dropped on the floor. Christ.

I reached for Celia's landline and called Robert and Gwyn's home but got the machine. I tried Robert's office number and got voicemail. But no answer didn't mean they weren't home.

I slipped the picture into my pocket and left.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

I drove up the long driveway to Gwyn and Robert's elegant "farm" house. The coastal fog never seemed to reach up here. It gathered below their hilltop like a smoky moat.

A team of gardeners were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and feeding the country garden. Getting out of my car, I smelled freshly mown gra.s.s wafting through the air. Bees hovered over the lavender plants. Some homes are too perfect, too beautiful. I felt the photograph in my pocket. There is no way their center can hold. I rang the bell.

Gwyn quickly opened the door. "Diana," she said surprised. "I thought you might be Heath." Strands of hair hung messily around her ragged face. Uncharacteristic for her. Behind her the Zaitlins' pasty-faced houseman, Olin, craned his neck at me.

"I've been trying to get ahold of him," she rambled on, chameleon-like eyes flicking.

"I need to talk you, Gwyn," I said.

"I can't. Maybe later."

A primal moan erupted from the area of Zaitlin's office and echoed off the limestone walls in the high-ceilinged foyer.

"Is that Robert?" I asked.

"He's been drinking," she said.

Robert was many things, but not a heavy drinker. I started to walk in but she blocked my way. The houseman's eyes widened. Another sobbing groan rebounded around the foyer.

"Go away, Diana." Gwyn was shaking with emotion now. "You started all this. Why did you have to find Jenny's body?"

I shoved her aside and ran past the houseman and into the office.

Behind his desk, Zaitlin weaved and swayed. A pistol lay on his desk beside an empty vodka bottle and a pile of scripts. A crystal-cut gla.s.s had been knocked on its side.

"Robert," I said his name softly.

He stopped pacing and swung his body toward me, mouth sagging, lips wet with saliva. Sweat covered his shaved head. He swiped at the desk; now the gun dangled from his fingers.

"I was ... smartest guy in town."

"You still are."

"Ju..sh another a.s.shole. Right, Gwyn?" he said to his wife who now stood inside the office door next to Olin.

I took a step closer to Zaitlin. "Give me the gun."

"Can't. Parson told me to kill myself."

"Some men were here earlier. They searched the house for a camera," Olin said. "Before they left, this man called Parson gave him the pistol."

"You know what?" Zaitlin staggered.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm ... an a.s.shole and a coward." His eyes turned toward Gwyn. "Get out of here!"

She fled. Olin held his ground.

"Why would Parson want you dead?"

"Ben." His head lolled.

I edged closer. "Then you know what he was involved in?"

"Never loved him. But ... if I knew ... if I knew... ." Knees buckling, he swayed backward.