“So this is how the other half lives,” Maggie said as Cab steered his Corvette down the narrow spit of Captiva Island past the mansions that hugged the waterfront. The homes were lavish, but despite their size, they still had a rustic Florida feel, as if a beach bum had found $8 million in a treasure chest to buy a place on the sand.
“I like to come down here now and then to make myself feel poor,” Cab replied with a grin. “This is where the Bentleys all have bumper stickers that say ‘My other car is a Phantom.’”
“Have you been to Dean Casperson’s place before?”
“Inside? No. I’ve taken a boat down the sound a couple times and sailed in close enough to get their security pretty nervous.”
“Haley Adams didn’t get in here without an ID and an invitation,” Maggie said. “She had to be on a list somewhere.”
“Definitely, but those lists disappear once the party’s over. Haley was here, but we’ll never be able to prove it. I’ve tried.”
Cab slowed on Captiva Drive as he approached the pink stone driveway of the Casperson estate. The sandy walking trail to the Gulf was on their left. He pulled the Corvette into the driveway and drove past thick hanging greenery to the main house, where he parked next to a row of shaggy palm trees. The house was three stories, painted pastel yellow. Most of the upper level was glass. She could see a Roman-style Olympic-size pool attached to the north side of the house, surrounded by travertine tile and covered by a glass-and-stone atrium. The double-wide front doors gave a view straight through to the green waters of the sound.
“So Tarla and Mo are friends?” Maggie asked dubiously. “Even after what happened to her?”
“I wouldn’t say friends, but Hollywood is a small community. The players tend to know each other.”
“Well, I’m impressed she was willing to get us in here, given her history with Dean. Do you think Mo knows?”
“You mean, what Dean did to Tarla? What kind of man he is? Honestly, I don’t know. They’ve been together for decades. It’s hard to believe she could really be unaware, but sometimes you develop a blindness for things when you need to.”
A large Filipino man in a white suit met them at the Corvette. He was friendly and polite, but Maggie was sure he was armed and could have snapped both of their necks in seconds if he’d been so inclined. He led them inside the house, which had the airiness of cotton candy and was painted in shades of peach and sea-foam green. Warm, moist air blew through the interior with the fresh Gulf breeze. She saw a grand piano. A vast wet bar. An indoor-outdoor dance floor. It was a mansion built for entertaining, and it was strange to see it completely empty of people.
This home was a shrine. Everywhere Maggie looked, the house showed off memorabilia of Dean Casperson’s career. The walls were covered with decades of photographs of Casperson with nearly every mover and shaker in Hollywood, posters from his dozens of movies, awards from nonprofit organizations, pictures of Dean in impoverished areas overseas, and honorary degrees from ten different colleges. In a built-in bookcase, behind locked glass doors, she saw a lineup of his acting trophies. Among them were four Golden Globes, an Emmy, and two Oscars. It was a reminder of who they were dealing with.
A star. A living legend.
The guard led them all the way through the ground floor of the estate without stopping and then to the patio overlooking the water. The Florida sunshine beat down. The day was perfect, and the water was calm. Maggie could see a sleek fifty-foot speedboat bobbing next to the boat dock on the sound. The name of the boat written on the stern was mo better. She wondered if Mrs. Casperson knew that the phrase was actually urban slang for passionate screwing.
Mo Casperson sat by herself on the patio with a red-and-orange cocktail in a hurricane glass and a laptop open in front of her. Maggie felt a little as if she were approaching the queen for an audience. Mo wore a chic lemonade-colored sun hat over her golden hair. Her flowered knee-length dress would have fit in well at an upscale beach wedding. She had long nails, each individually painted with a different pastel design. The only jewelry she wore was her wedding ring. The square-cut diamond made a statement, and that statement was “I’m one of the richest women on the planet.”
She didn’t get up, but she removed her sunglasses and greeted them with a smile. “Cab Bolton. I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you were fifteen years old. I’m sure you don’t remember it.”
“Positano,” Cab replied easily. “You were visiting the Amalfi Coast, and you had lunch with my mother during the filming of Sapphirica.”
Mo’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Well, either you have an amazing memory or I’m very memorable.”
“It’s all you,” Cab assured her.
“And this must be Sergeant Bei?” Mo asked.
Mo held out a hand, and Maggie wasn’t sure if she should shake it or kiss it. She decided to shake it. “Mrs. Casperson, thank you for meeting us.”
“Anything for Tarla,” she replied. “You’re from the Duluth police department, is that right? I met your boss, Lieutenant Stride, when I was chatting with Dean yesterday. Stride has quite a presence about him as a man. He’s very attractive.”
“That’s true.”
“But of course, I don’t need to tell you that,” Mo went on.
Maggie’s eyes squinted in suspicion as she tried to grasp the woman’s subtext. Was it an innocent comment? Or was she trying to make it clear that she knew about Maggie and Stride’s affair? Mo lived in a world of innuendo where you never said exactly what you meant. Maggie felt an urge to check her back to make sure there wasn’t a knife in it.
“Please, both of you, sit down,” Mo said. “Sergeant Bei, I can understand why someone would want to get out of Minnesota in January—in fact, I can’t understand why anyone would stay in Minnesota in January—but I’m curious what you’re doing here. And why you and Cab have joined forces.”
“We’re investigating a murder,” Maggie replied.
“Two murders, in fact,” Cab added. “One in Florida, one in Minnesota.”
“How terrible. But why talk to me about it?”
“We believe the same man killed the two young women with the same gun,” Maggie explained. “We only found out about it because of a car accident that killed him in Duluth. He has all the hallmarks of a gun for hire, and we’re trying to find out who hired him.”
“I still don’t see how I can help you.”
Again, Maggie tried to read her face, and again she came up short. Mo gave no hint in her expression of whether her confusion was genuine or whether she was simply covering up the truth.
“We’re pretty sure the young woman in Florida, Haley Adams, was at a party here not long before she was killed,” Cab told her.
“Pretty sure?”
“I can’t prove it. Unless you’d be willing to share your guest lists.”
Mo smiled. “I’m sorry, Cab, but you of all people understand how important privacy is in our world. Security, too. Do you have a photograph of this young woman?”
“I do.” Cab called up a photo of Haley Adams on his phone and held it up for Mo to review. She placed half glasses from a chain around her neck onto her face to examine the photograph. Then she shook her head.
“I don’t know her, but that doesn’t really mean anything. She certainly could have been here, but if so, I wasn’t the one to invite her. I don’t know how the party could have been connected to whatever happened to her, though. Unless you think she met someone here. I suppose that’s possible, but I wouldn’t know how to narrow it down for you.”
Mo was poised. She gave nothing away. Or she was simply innocent.
“The woman who was killed in Minnesota has a more direct connection,” Maggie said. “She was an intern on the set of The Caged Girl, but she was actually there for a different reason. She was spying on your husband.”
“Excuse me?” Mo said.
“I sent her there,” Cab added. “She worked for me. And now she’s dead.”
Mo shifted her stare to each of them in turn. She took a sip of her drink. Maggie waited for her to evict them from the mansion, but she didn’t. She simply shook her head as if they were misbehaving children. When she spoke, her voice was calm and full of syrupy disappointment.
“Cab, why on earth would you be spying on Dean?”
“May I speak candidly?” he said.
“Please.”
“I’ve been investigating the murders of multiple women over the last two decades, and they all have one thing in common. Your husband.”
Mo actually laughed. “Murder? Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Well, then I feel sorry for you. It’s ridiculous. Are you actually accusing Dean of murder? I mean, we’re used to getting bad reviews, but this is a first.”
“I’m not accusing anyone. Not yet.”
“Oh, well, now I feel better. Maybe you’d like to explain why you think Dean was somehow involved in the deaths of these women.”
“Probably because he sexually assaulted them and he was afraid they’d talk,” Cab told her.
This time, Mo’s face reacted immediately. Her eyes turned to ice that could have frozen the humidity in the Florida air. “What a grotesque thing to say. If you repeat anything like that in public, I promise you, we will take legal action. This is not a game, Cab. When you are in our position, there are always people who want to invent lies and cut you down to size. You learn to live with it. You learn when to turn the other cheek and when to sue. But honestly, I’m used to dealing with strangers and outsiders about this kind of venomous nonsense. Not people who are part of our world. You should be ashamed of yourself for coming here. You should be ashamed of yourself for manipulating your mother into getting you an invitation on false pretenses. You can both leave now and we’ll call this over and done, but I assure you, if I hear even the barest rumor of what you have said coming back to me in the future, I will do whatever is necessary to strip you and your mother of every dollar, every friend, every shred of goodwill and reputation you have in Hollywood. Are we perfectly clear about that, Cab Bolton?”
“Dean raped Tarla,” Cab said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“That is a despicable lie. Tarla would never say something like that.”
“It was on the set of Society of One. Dean got her the part. She paid for it by being drugged and assaulted. How many other times has he done it, Mo? Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
Mo didn’t speak for a long time. She got out of the chair and wandered to the balcony of the porch, where steps led down to the boat dock and the water. She spoke to them without turning around. “At least I understand now, Cab. I don’t forgive you, and I don’t take back a word of what I said, but I do understand why you would launch yourself on this misguided quest.”
“Misguided?” Cab said acidly.
“I really need to speak to Tarla about this.”
“Are you saying you had no idea that Dean is a predator when it comes to women?”
Mo spun around with the speed of a snake. She jabbed a finger at Cab. “Stop it. You don’t know what you’re saying. I wish we all lived celibate, virtuous, faithful lives, but we don’t. Tarla certainly never has. You think I don’t know how many marriages she’s broken up over the years with her affairs? You think I don’t know that you have no idea who your own father is? Grow up, Cab. Did Dean sleep with Tarla? Of course he did. Did I know about it? Of course I did. I’m very sorry that Tarla feels the need to reinvent herself as an innocent victim in a relationship that she instigated. Much as she did over and over again with other married men in the last thirty years.”
“You can’t possibly believe that Tarla seduced Dean,” Cab said.
“A wannabe actress trying to manipulate a huge star by using sex? You’re right; that’s a story we’ve never seen in Hollywood.”
Cab got up. So did Maggie. She felt shell-shocked, watching the back-and-forth as if it were some kind of battle of gladiators. Tall as he was, Cab loomed over both of them.
“If you’re that naive, Mo, I feel sorry for you,” Cab told her. “I’m not going to stop. You can’t hide from this forever. The truth about Dean is going to come out, and when it does, he’ll be in prison, and you’ll both be ruined. Count on it.”
The guard in the white suit appeared as if by magic to lead them out. Maggie and Cab retreated silently into the house, but as they did, Mo called to them from the balcony.
“Both of you, take a good look at the awards and the honors as you leave,” she said in a voice that carried through the empty mansion. “That’s forty years of doing good in this world, on-screen and offscreen. That’s my husband. That’s the truth about Dean.”