Eighteen
Within minutes the door was revealed, and as suspected, locked with a similar padlock.
“I just realized something. The last person to come through this tunnel was going into the house, because this padlock is inside the wall, just like the other padlock was inside the house.”
“Oh, you’re right!” Sahara cried. “Let’s see if this key works here, too.”
He repeated the process, spraying the padlock and then inserting the key. After a few tries, the lock turned. This door opened inward, revealing a wall of more green vines, but as she pushed some aside, she recognized the location of the exit.
“This is perfect. It opens into an alley,” Brendan said. “Wait here a second, I’m going to squeeze through. I need to orient myself as to what streets are at both ends and which way I would return. As soon as I’m out, you can watch, but don’t come all the way through, okay?”
She nodded, her heart pounding with anticipation as he pulled out a pocketknife and began cutting straight down through the vines, like parting a curtain. It took a few minutes before the opening was large enough for him to slip through.
Sahara pushed the greenery aside to look out, watching him as he ran from one end of the alley to the other end, pausing each time to identify cross streets.
He slipped back into the tunnel, pulled the vines back in place, then shut and padlocked the door. They made their way back through the tunnel, returning to the house and padlocking that door as well before hanging the key back on the nail. He grabbed the can of WD-40.
“Come on, baby. Up the stairs we go. You first. I’m right behind you.”
Billie was still waiting for answers.
“It’ll work,” Brendan said, as they reached the top of the stairs.
Billie sighed. “When is this crazy plan supposed to take place?”
“I have to talk to the detectives and set it up. Hopefully in the next day or so. I need to use the WD-40 again on these hinges. Once all this goes down, I don’t want anyone hearing me coming back inside.”
Sahara stood out of the way as Brendan began spraying the hinges to the passageway, then opened and closed the doors over and over until they were silent. When they went shut for the last time, he gave the spray back to Billie and winked at Sahara.
“Now we lay the trap.”
* * *
Detective Shaw found the email from Brendan late in the afternoon after he got back to the precinct. When he opened the attachment and realized the bodyguard had actually uncovered a probable half brother to Sahara Travis that no one knew about, and that he was someone she’d known all her life, his first thought was to compare the DMV photo Brendan had sent to the security footage they had from The Magnolia.
It took a few minutes to get everything set up. When he notified his lieutenant to update him, Lieutenant Coleman opted to sit in on the viewing.
“Afternoon, Lieutenant. Go ahead and take that chair if you want.”
“Now, what is it we’re going to be doing here?” Coleman asked.
“I received a DMV photo of Sahara Travis’s newly discovered half brother. We’re going to compare it to the security footage from The Magnolia and see if there’s a match.”
Shaw started the playback where it picked up the repairman on security cameras outside The Magnolia, then again inside at the service entrance, then in the elevator going down to the basement.
They could tell the man’s approximate height from stationary objects he had passed, and they were assuming the hair and mustache were fake. Then they picked a still shot from the security footage and on a split screen brought up the DMV photo.
“What do you think?” Shaw asked, as they eyed both faces.
“I don’t think it’s the same guy,” Coleman said.
“Neither do I, which is disappointing. Still, to be on the safe side I’m going to put them in facial recognition.”
It didn’t take long for the program to kick out an answer. No match.
“Well, that’s that,” Coleman said. “Keep me in the loop. We’re getting flack from some Hollywood bigwigs because Sahara Travis is still in danger.”
“Yes, sir,” Shaw said, and then sat down at his desk and called Detective Fisher in New Orleans.
* * *
Fisher was already working on the new information from McQueen’s latest email, going through Sutton’s bank records to see if he’d made any large cash withdrawals that would coincide with the cash found on Harley Fish’s body, and was going through his credit card accounts to see if he had made any recent flights to LA, but so far they’d found nothing.
And then his phone rang.
“New Orleans Homicide. Detective Fisher speaking.”
“Detective, this is Detective Shaw in LA. I assume you also received the new email from Brendan McQueen?”
“Yes, sir, we did. We already knew he’s a damn fine bodyguard, but he’s not half-bad as a detective, either. We’re understaffed here, so there’s no way of knowing how long it would have taken us to dig all this up.”
“Agreed,” Shaw said. “We sent you footage from the security cameras at The Magnolia, right?”
“Yes, it’s in the computer file.”
“Have you had time to compare that man in the footage to Sutton Davidson?”
“No, I have not,” Fisher said.
“Then I’ll save you the trouble. They’re not the same man. According to Sutton Davidson’s DMV information, he’s six-four, one eighty pounds, which makes him damn skinny at that height, and the man in the security footage is not that tall. He’s also not skinny. And the facial recognition program we use kicked him out.”
Fisher sighed. “Well, I guess I should say that’s good to know, but it’s really not. We already know our killer is willing to hire a hit man, because we have a dead one here on a slab in the morgue.”
“Oh really?” Shaw said. “You’re sure it was a hire?”
“Yes. A local with a bad rep named Harley Fish. He had a thousand-dollar roll on him and the address of the Travis estate written on the back of a scrap of paper. And...when a relative came to officially identify the body, we learned Harley Fish could read some and knew his numbers, but his handwriting was illegible, which means Fish did not write that address on the receipt himself,” Fisher said.
“Damn it. This is like trying to pin murder on a ghost.”
“Agreed,” Fisher added.
“Okay...so we have another heir to the Travis estate, but we can’t tie him to either one of these hits,” Shaw said.
“Not yet, we can’t,” Detective Fisher said. “But we both know shit floats. He’ll make a mistake, and when he does, we’ll get him.”
“Then I wish you luck,” Shaw said. “Stay in touch. If you take him down, let me know.”
“You can count on that. Thank you for staying in contact,” Fisher said, and then disconnected.
* * *
Bubba was on his way home early.
The longer he’d thought about the challenge Sahara had thrown out, the more irrational he’d become. The scenarios running through his head were rash, with little chance of succeeding. It would do him no good to kill her if he got caught in the process.
He thought about taking a couple of days off work to find a location where he could watch the house. If enough people left the premises and he was in disguise, he would take the chance on going through her bodyguard to get to her. With a big enough gun, he could take anyone down.
* * *
That little trip outdoors through the tunnel of wisteria whetted Sahara’s appetite for freedom, which made the impossibility of walking out the front door an insult all over again.
So to stay on the move, she prowled the rooms from top to bottom, looking in places she’d forgotten were even there with Brendan patiently at her side. She showed him a tiny room on the servant side of the house where a slave skilled in sewing would mend laundry and make clothes. She showed him the ballroom on the grand side of the mansion, where Katarina regularly held parties, and a single chair in an empty room that used to be where the gentlemen of the house got their haircuts.
The antiquity of this house along with the historical aspects were impressive, but Sahara’s opinion of the place came from her life experiences, not the grandeur. Each place she talked about held a dark memory. Never one of joy. When she’d finally announced there were no more rooms to be seen, he shook his head.
“There’s one more room you haven’t shown me.”
Her eyes narrowed angrily. “I’m not going there.”
“It was your bedroom,” he said.
“It was my upstairs room. I didn’t live there. It was for show when guests came for dinner. Katarina made a big deal about putting me to bed there, which made everyone comment on what a great mother she was. Of course, she loved the attention, and after I reached my teenage years, they made me live up here full-time. I didn’t know why then, because I missed being down with Mama, but looking back, it was probably her way of splitting us up. She didn’t love me, but she expected me to acknowledge her as the dominant woman in my life.”
“Do you mind if I look at it?” he asked.
The question startled her. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I saw where you lived with Billie. I would like to see where you lived the lie.”
She shoved her fingers through her hair, digging them into her scalp in frustration.
“God, McQueen, whatever...knock yourself out. But I’m not going inside.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
She frowned. “I thought you didn’t want me out of your sight.”
“Then come with me,” he said, and held out his hand.
She sighed. “You tricked me.”
He led her up the stairs, stopped at the first door on the left and walked inside.
For Brendan, seeing the opulence in this room was shocking. Furniture, carpet, draperies, bedspreads, pillows, even the walls were either snow white or as brilliant as Midas’s gold. The walk-in closet was almost as large as the room itself, and the bathroom was spa-worthy and gilded to boot.
“Wow,” he said, and then realized Sahara hadn’t said a word.
What he didn’t know was that she was speechless.
From her standpoint, it was a shock to see everything exactly as she’d left it, considering she’d literally been thrown out of the house.
“I do not get it. What the hell?”
She was obviously angry. Thinking he’d forced something that was going to be a mistake, he quickly reached for her hand.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing in this room has changed except that.” She pointed to a portrait of her hanging over the bed. “That portrait is less than four years old and is from a movie I was in. I can’t begin to imagine how they even knew it existed, or how they got their hands on it. Who does this?” she cried. “They kicked me out of the house and then turned my bedroom into a shrine. Now I’m back, they’re dead, and I own the damn place. Again, who does this?”
“Looking at this mess as an outsider, I can say that it’s far easier to claim a connection to someone without investing in them. Kind of like your fans. They love you so much, and yet you wouldn’t know one of them if you passed them on the street, right?”
She was listening, but he could see she wasn’t sold.
“So for them, the emotion is all from one side. From what you’ve told me, Leopold and Katarina were more in love with the idea of a child than the actual child herself. And once you became an adult, your physical presence beside her would be aging her on sight. People would see a lovely young woman and then her. Like the fairy tale... Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?”
Sahara gasped. “Oh my God! I never thought of it like that, but knowing Katarina, that is exactly why I was ejected from this house. So I would not be a reminder that they were growing old.”
She stepped back, looking at the room with new understanding. It wasn’t for her. It had never been for her. It had all been for them, playing at being parents without any of the risk—and certainly without any of the love. When she became a vivid reminder of what they were losing—their youth—she was discarded like worn-out shoes.
“Thank you, Brendan. Thank you for making me come back in here and face the past. I have never been able to come to terms with that night. The rejection from Katarina and Leopold, and then believing Billie had rejected me, too, was all-encompassing. I’ve always felt like something was wrong with me, that there must be something deeply unlovable about me. It nearly destroyed me.”
He stroked a finger down the side of her face. She was so much more than the face her fans adored. He would be forever grateful he’d taken this job.
“You’re the easiest person to love in this entire world, Sahara. One day this will all be over. And if you still feel the same way about me—about us—then I’m taking you home to Wyoming and showing you what real families are like.”
“What do you mean...if I still feel the same way?”
“Right now, I am your lifeline to survival. You have no idea how you’ll feel when it’s over, and we both need to know this thing between us isn’t all based on your fear.”
Her eyes welled with tears, but she didn’t budge.
“Fine. You are so wrapped up in your opinion of my feelings, you refuse to acknowledge what they really are, but there’s something you need to know. I cannot count the number of love scenes I’ve filmed, or the number of astoundingly handsome men who have made passes at me, claiming their undying love for me. But I can tell you I have been in love only once, and it’s with you. I never gave my heart away to anyone but you. So if you reject me, too, Brendan McQueen, then I am done with love. I am done with an emotion that doesn’t really exist.”
“It does exist and I’m holding you to this, because I damn sure don’t want to lose you.”
He kissed her there, beneath a shimmering candelabra in a room of garish gold, banishing the last of her fears that she would always be alone.
* * *
Lucy landed in LA, and the moment the plane touched down, her thoughts began to stir, thinking of the task ahead. Even though Sahara’s life revolved around make-believe, Hollywood was the city where magic was made. She couldn’t wait to get back to her apartment and unpack, and she still needed to call Harold and tell him what Sahara had sent her to do, then contact Adam and make sure he would be able to get her into the penthouse.
So much to do and so little time.
But first things first.
She had to make a quick call. The phone rang twice, and then Wiley picked up.
“Hello, baby. Please tell me you’re back home,” he said.
She sat down on the side of the bed and kicked off her shoes.
“I’m home, and I came alone. No duties for tonight, and light ones tomorrow until I’m able to get into the penthouse.”
“I’m still on the job, but I want to see you. I’m going to be late, though.”
“Whatever time it is doesn’t matter. I can’t wait to see you again.”
He chuckled, and the sound rolled through her like wildfire.
“Then I’ll see you later,” he said. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks,” she said, and then disconnected with a smile.
* * *
Brendan had been on the phone off and on all afternoon with Detectives Fisher and Julian. They finally returned his last call as he was waiting for Sahara to get out of the shower.
They were reluctant to go along with the ruse. Frustrated, Brendan challenged them, asking if they were ready to arrest someone for the continuing attempts on her life.
They were forced to admit they were not.
“Then what do you have to lose?” he asked. “Damn it, if ever there were extenuating circumstances, this is it. Two people dead in LA, three dead here, counting Harley Fish. I gave you an heir you didn’t know existed, but you can’t put enough together to even bring him in for questioning. The longer you wait, the more she’s in danger.”
“Look, I hear you,” Fisher said, “but it’s not my call. This will have to come from the commissioner.”
“Then you ask him if he’s willing to accept the blame for her death after all of the info I gave you.”
“Well, hell, McQueen, why don’t you say what you really think,” Fisher muttered.
“If I haven’t heard from you by tomorrow morning, then be aware we will set it up on our own. There are plenty of people in Hollywood who would do anything for her at the drop of a hat. In the world of film, accumulating a squadron of cops with uniforms and cruisers, along with a believable bad guy, is a simple fix. It’s your call,” Brendan said, and disconnected.
He could still hear the water running and was glad she didn’t know the police in her hometown were dragging their feet.
A few minutes later she came out wrapped in a bath towel and went straight to the walk-in closet to dress. She emerged wearing a knit shirt and slacks, both in a soft shade of blue, and then went to check the cell phone she’d left charging. A big grin spread across her face when she picked it up.
“It charged!” She began searching contacts and email and was elated to find everything intact and functioning. “I can’t believe it! My phone still works!” she crowed, and began scanning the hundreds of messages that had accumulated since the initial attack.
Brendan looked over her shoulder. “Are you going to answer all of those?”
“Not all of them, but a few.”
He grinned. “Now I am about to find out if you’re as manic about your cell phone as other people are.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” she said. “Did you once see me freaking out about it?”
He laughed. “Just kidding you, honey, and no, I can’t say that I did.”
“Okay, then,” she said, and tossed it on the bed. “See. It stays behind. Let’s go down to dinner early and see if Mama needs any help.”
“Good idea,” Brendan said, and then patted her firm little backside as she sauntered past. “Nice slacks,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder and grinned. “You don’t give a damn about my slacks, and we both know it.”
He laughed out loud and followed her from the room.
* * *
Instead of a solitary dinner at home, Bubba went out with friends. One phone call with the invitation was all it took to send him out the door. He joined them at the bar while they waited for a table, and by the time it was ready, he was three drinks to the good and feeling no pain.
He sat with his back to a wall, giving him a clear view of the patrons, and realized he knew at least half the people in the room. That’s what comes from being successful, he thought, and when one of them saw him and smiled, Bubba raised his glass in a toast and smiled back.
A waiter came with menus, then came back later for the orders. By that time Bubba was on his fourth drink and the room was beginning to tilt just a little bit to the right. He was saved from making a fool of himself with the arrival of a bread basket. Once solid food hit his stomach, he began to level off.
The conversation hit a momentary lull, and when it did, he heard himself asking, “So, what do you think about all the drama going on with Sahara Travis? It’s like something out of one of her movies.”
They stared at him for a few moments, a little surprised by the change of conversation, considering it had all been about their NFL football team, the New Orleans Saints, for the last hour and a half.
“Yeah, I guess,” one of them said. “I haven’t really kept up with it.”
“All I know is both her parents are in the morgue and someone keeps trying to put her there, too,” another said.
Bubba nodded. “Can’t imagine what she’s been going through and I heard the cops haven’t got a clue,” he said.
The only married guy at the table rolled his eyes.
“So what else is new?” he drawled, everyone laughed and the moment passed.
But for Bubba, it was eye-opening. No one at this table seemed to give a shit about what happened to her. That took a little of the joy out of his goal, then he remembered the mass turnout at the gates when they thought she was already dead. There were plenty who would care. They just weren’t sitting with him at this table.
Their food came, and the more he ate, the more sober he became. By the time they parted company, he was stone-cold sober, regretting he’d ever mentioned her name and determined that tomorrow was the day he began his stakeout. All he had to do was to call in at the job tomorrow and tell them there’d been a death in the family and he’d be out of town for a few days.
It wasn’t exactly a lie; it was just a little premature.