Chasing Venus (28 page)

He had numerous friends
at the LAPD of whom he could ask that last question.
 
But he didn’t want to make the
call.
 
How odd would it look, how
suspicious, that he’d picked this night, this hour to think she might have been
apprehended?
 
And if she had been,
what could he do about it anyway?

He pulled the key to
Sheila’s cabin out of his jeans pocket and fingered it as if it were a
talisman.
 
It was a ticket out, a
ticket to safety for her, at least for a time.
 
But it was useless until he saw her
again.

It surprised him how
bereft he felt, how hollow, beneath the worry.
 
In the event that Simpson linked her to
him, Reid had taken pains to erase all evidence of her from his home.
 
He’d collected every stray brunette
hair, he’d dusted and scrubbed and vacuumed, he’d aired out the master bedroom
and bath to dispel any last trace of her scent.
 
And when he was done he carried the
trash to a distant Dumpster, the better to sever any physical link between her
and him.

But housecleaning could
not make him forget her.
 
Her
laughter tinkled in his ears; he could picture every detail of her face in his
mind’s eye.
 
The memory of her was everywhere,
darting, prancing, teasing, just out of reach and yet always, always there,
like a phantom that vanished when he tried to grab hold.

He glanced at his
watch.
 
9:22.
 
Five hours she’d been out there
alone.
 
She might be anywhere.

He picked up the remote
and jabbed the power button, no longer able to stomach the roar of a crowd
obsessed with something so meaningless as a basketball score.
 
He strode to the tall bureau in his
bedroom, where he’d left his cell and the keys to his truck.
 
What he wanted to do was go back to
Hollywood and look for Annie.
 
Maybe
check out the overlook.
 
She could
have been mugged, she could be hurt, she could be in all sorts of trouble.
 
He had to do something.
 
He couldn’t sit still; he couldn’t stay
here.

He glanced at his
watch.
 
9:24.
 
She
could show up any moment.
 
Give her
a little more time.
 
He shook
his head, irritated with himself.
 
He was never this indecisive, or impatient.
 
Give
her a little more time
, the voice repeated.

He dumped the keys back
on the bureau.
 
He’d give her till
10.
 
Then he was out of here.

*

Annie scrambled to her
feet in Frankie’s grassy backyard, pitch black beneath a low overhang of
clouds.
 
Pain shot up her legs from
the shock of her jump to the hard ground.
 
From about six feet away,
Luto
watched her,
head cocked to one side as if he understood this was odd behavior but wasn’t
sure it was threatening.
 
She held
her hand out toward him, palm up.

“Say hi,
Luto
,” she whispered, and he loped closer to sniff
her.
 
A second later he wagged his
tail.
 
“Good doggie,” she said
again, really meaning it, and scratched his head behind his big perky
ears.
 
He wagged his tail with more
vigor and Annie let out a relieved breath.
 
His master might be a killer, but
Luto
sure
wasn’t.

Still petting the dog,
she surveyed the rear of the house.
 
Her eyes widened.
 
There it
was, her way in.
 
A doggie
door.
 
And since
Luto
was a German Shepherd and not a Maltese, the door was plenty big enough for
her.

She stared at it, her
mind working.
 
If Frankie was
allowing
Luto
to go in and out of the house at will,
he couldn’t have armed a motion detector.
 
Meaning she, too, could move about the interior freely.

Presuming Frankie
wasn’t home.

She raised her head
toward the windows that dotted the house’s salmon-colored stucco.
 
They stared back at her darkly.
 
Yet any one of them might be hiding
Frankie, two hundred eighty pounds of ponytailed Frankie, six feet four inches
of a man who might be a serial killer.

She squared her
shoulders.
 
Her fictional heroes
wouldn’t quake at a moment like this.
 
And neither would she.

“Come on,” she told
Luto
, then approached the doggie door.
 
“You first,” she added but the dog
merely cocked his head again as if this game he didn’t understand.
 
“Okay, me first,” she amended, then
dropped to her knees, turned sideways to get her shoulders through, and pushed
past the rubbery flap to shimmy into Frankie’s kitchen.

Luto
followed her inside, giving no indication he was upset that she’d entered his
lair.
 
She looked around, amazed
she’d gotten into the house so easily.
 
Was fate giving her yet another sign that she was doing the right
thing?
 
Or were the gods laughing,
preparing to smite her when they would find it most amusing?

She stilled, trying to
hear beyond the rapid thumping of her heart.
 
It was much more nerve-wracking inside
Frankie’s house than it had been outside.
 
No lights were on and it was church quiet save for the ticking of a
round white-faced clock over the kitchen nook pine table.
 
A car whooshed down June Street and a
distant siren wailed but she could hear nothing in the house itself.
 
Frankie definitely wasn’t home.
 
The man was a steamroller.
 
If he was in that house, she’d hear him.

But if he’s the killer, he knows how to be quiet.
 
You didn’t hear anyone when Michael was
murdered, did you?

That realization caused
her to swallow and lick her dry lips.
 
True.
 
She should inspect the
house to make certain he wasn’t there, then proceed with her search.
  
She crept forward, alert to any
movement not her own.
 
The house was
designer from floor to ceiling, as unlike its owner as a house could possibly
be.
 
Everything was stylish and just
so, as if it had been staged for potential buyers.
 
It was impersonal, really, but that had
to be an improvement over Frankie’s taste, which ran the gamut from tacky to
tackier.

She edged into the
dining room, which boasted a table that could seat sixteen with no addition of
leaves, and continued into the massive living room at the front of the
house.
 
A silver glow from the
curbside streetlights poured through the windows’ diamond-shaped paned
glass.
 
The room was gorgeous, with
whitewashed walls and roughhewn ceiling beams and a dramatic iron
chandelier.
 
Across a wide foyer,
with a black-and-white tiled floor, was a study, into which she poked her
head.
 
Her eyes roamed a masculine-looking
desk with papers strewn across its surface; a yawning fireplace, dark from the
smoke of countless fires; and crammed walnut book cases.

Still no Frankie.

On to the second floor.

She slipped up the
stairs, the risers colorfully decorated with Malibu tile.
 
At the landing she faced a long hall
with rooms gaping open on both sides.
 
She edged into one unlit room and then the next, scanning them
methodically, confirming that all closets and en-suite bathrooms were empty,
that Frankie wasn’t lurking, waiting for his moment to pounce.
 
She arrived at the master suite at the
end of the hall and hesitated only briefly before forcing herself inside.

Here were signs of
recent life.
 
Sheets in a tangle on
the king-size bed.
 
Clothes dumped
on the hardwood floor.
 
A tumbler
holding—she sniffed it—whiskey, as if the master of the house had
enjoyed a kip while dressing for the evening.
 
The half-melted remains of ice cubes
floated in the amber liquid, evidence that Frankie hadn’t been gone long.

Assailed by another
surge of nerves, Annie glanced behind her before she advanced into the enormous
walk-in closet.
 
She flipped the
switch for the overhead light.
 
One
look revealed the meagerness of Frankie’s wardrobe.
 
No way he was hiding in there.
 
She shut off the light and backed out.

She padded into the
master bath.
 
Very large,
naturally.
 
Double sinks, a Jacuzzi
tub, and a slate shower with an elaborate array of jets from ceiling and walls.

Annie eyed herself in
Frankie’s humungous mirror, startled anew by her shock of short blond hair,
unfamiliar clothes, face full of makeup.
 
It did nothing to relieve her pallor or the panicked look in her eyes.

So here she was.
 
In the bathroom of a man who might be a
serial murderer.
 
And who might have
framed her for his crimes.

She stiffened.
 
If so, time to make him pay.
 
Time to get proof to nail him to the
cross of guilt.

Newly resolved, she
began to investigate the drawers beneath the marble counter, trying to keep her
mind open to whatever she might see.
 
She stilled as one drawer revealed a straight razor, the kind barbers
use, next to a pot of old-style shaving soap and a short, bristly-haired brush.

Could Frankie have used
this to kill Michael?
 
A swipe of
that six-inch blade could slash a man’s throat.
 
Could Frankie do such a thing, then
return the blade to his toiletries drawer to use on himself the next time he
lathered up and shaved?

She slid the drawer
shut.
 
A killer could.
 
A killer would.

She moved on, finding
nothing more of interest in the master suite.
 
She returned to the small laundry room
she spied earlier off the second-floor corridor.
 
Indeed there were clothes in the
dryer.
 
She turned on the overhead
fluorescents and poked through them, finding out more about Frankie than she
really wanted to know.
 
But nothing
revealed faded, hard-to-get-out blood stains.
 
And whoever had killed Michael would
have been drenched in blood.
 
In
fact, most likely the killer would have thrown out whatever he’d been
wearing.
 
She should examine the
garbage bins as well.

She forced herself to
move swiftly through the bedrooms, wanting to be thorough yet fast.
 
By this point she’d almost forgotten
about
Luto
.
 
She was startled sometimes to find him watching her from the
hallway.
 
Other times he left for a
while and meandered downstairs.
 
At
length she followed him, dispirited.

Nothing.
 
She had seen nothing to tie Frankie to
the murders.
 
She glanced at her
watch.
 
9:41.
 
Frankie being such a party animal, he
wasn’t likely to be home for a while.
 
She probably had a fair amount of time to play with.
 
Still, she had the whole first floor to
cover.
 
She’d start with the study,
she decided, where he kept his desktop computer and his paper files.

She made her way to the
built-in walnut book cases.
 
They
were beautifully carved.
 
A rolling
ladder provided access to the upper shelves.
 
No doubt the decorator would have much
preferred elegant leather-bound volumes but Frankie’s taste—and
profession—lent themselves more to
dogeared
mass-market paperbacks.
 
And indeed,
right there at eye level, in a neat row, were all five of her published books.

She ran her eyes over
the other shelves.
 
She wasn’t the
only client—current or former—well-represented in Frankie’s
study.
 
There were a bunch of Maggie
Boswell’s books, and on the uppermost shelf Michael’s.

Elizabeth Wimble’s,
too.
 
And Seamus’s.
 
They had never been Frankie’s
clients.
 
They did fit, however, in
another category.

That of murder victim.

Did it mean
anything?
 
Or was it mere
happenstance, evidence of nothing?

She squinted at the top
shelf, where Michael’s novels were arranged.
 
One of them was out of line with the
other volumes and its spine seemed particularly beaten up, as if it had been
read over and over again.
 
It was
one of Michael’s last releases, titled
The
Bethlehem Prophecy
.

Annie rolled the ladder
beneath the book, grimacing as the wheels rumbled noisily on the hardwood.
 
Then she mounted the ladder and pulled
out the book.
 
It was truly
dogeared
, its binding weak from
overhandling
.
 
It flipped open to a point midway through.
 
She held it close to her eyes, peering
at the print, trying to make sense of the words in the dark.
 
Then she caught her breath.