Emancipated (17 page)

Sometimes John-Michael reflected that his one mistake in leaving home was that he hadn't done it soon enough.

The day his father had called to ask him to come back had come entirely out of the blue. The one expense that his father had continued to pay was his cell phone. John-Michael hadn't understood this, had asked for the cash instead. But that last day, his father had told him why.

“I've never given up hope that you'd come home.” There'd been a long, considered pause. “Some things are only for family.”

He hadn't told John-Michael the whole story on the phone. Just enough to ensure that he hopped on a
bus and made his way back to Carlsbad. A three-hour trip, all told.

That time, he'd taken three buses to get back to his dad's house—with one crucial stop-off on the way. If anyone ever found out about that five-minute meeting, if anyone ever identified the guy he'd met with, John-Michael's life could go nuclear pretty much overnight.

He'd spent just under an hour with his father, talking, arguing, crying. All for nothing. Things would never be right between them. He should have known that the minute he answered the call.

Today, the wind was in his hair as the Benz rode the freeway back to Carlsbad. John-Michael forced himself to focus on the positives. Dad's car, a monthly allowance, cash from the sale of the house, too, eventually. Even if his dad's will had permitted it, John-Michael didn't want to live there after what had happened. A shared room in Venice Beach beat living in Carlsbad any day. Take all that into account and life sure was better without the old coot.

Quite the contrast to when his mother had passed away.

John-Michael reached his father's place around four in the afternoon. A car was parked outside the house, but there was no sign of anyone inside. He listened at the door, then let himself in, went to his old bedroom to fetch his one suit. He took a suit bag from his dad's room and left the suit inside, hanging on a coat peg near the front door.

Then he did what he'd really come to do.

His father's bedroom wasn't a place where he'd spent much time. He didn't have any idea where to look. Yet what he was looking for couldn't be in the drawers or cupboards. If it were, the cops would have found it.

He pushed aside the nightstands and began to shift the bed. Then he stopped. Was there someone at the door? For several seconds John-Michael stood still, waiting. He went to the front door and stood behind it, listening. Nothing. He moved to a window at the front of the house and checked outside. There was no one there. The car was still parked, but empty. After a final quick check at the periphery of each window he returned to the bedroom.

This time he moved the bed out by a few feet. He stood in the gap between the wall and the bed. His eyes searched the wall carefully for any sign of disruption. Nothing. He looked underfoot. The hard oak floorboards fitted together neatly, no gaps. But at the edge of one board he could see that the varnish was chipped. A neat rectangular block about half an inch long was missing, as if it had been snapped off by a tool. John-Michael opened his father's nightstand, searching for something that he knew very well would still be there.

His father's Ranger Swiss Army Knife. He picked it up almost reverently. The last time he'd been allowed to touch it, John-Michael had been nine years old.

He opened several tools, in the end going with the sturdiest blade. He jammed it in the sliver between two boards, one of them the chipped one. Then he slid the blade down, working the board free. After a second or two, he felt the board buckle. The blade had found a large dent, a section where the board was narrower. He levered the board up and felt it lift out. John-Michael looked at the board. It had been carefully filed down in one section.

He leaned back to shift his shadow away from the hole in the floor. There was a cardboard file box underneath. He grabbed the edge of the box and jimmied it out through the narrow gap. He pressed the side studs to release the catch. Inside was a thick wad of papers and images of medical scans.

The evidence was all here.

Then he heard a car door slam shut. His heart rate shot up. For a couple of seconds he couldn't think straight. He almost dropped the box, but managed to catch it before it slid down his knees. He shut the box and replaced it, hurriedly, under the floor. He pushed the floorboard back into position.

Then a sound that almost froze his blood: the front door was being opened. With the side of his shoe, he hurriedly brushed dust from another part of the floor to cover the boards he'd disturbed.

He heard casual footsteps as someone strolled around the front of the house, opening doors.

John-Michael slid back out to the edge of the bed and pushed it as painstakingly slowly as he could, not daring to make more than the tiniest noise.

When he was done, he realized that he'd been holding his breath. His heart was pumping hard. The footsteps were approaching his father's bedroom. He was about to replace the Swiss Army Knife. Then he had a change of heart.

The door opened. John-Michael looked up in shock as an Asian American man in jeans and a black T-shirt approached him. He brandished the knife, flailing. “Get away from me, man, I got nothing worth stealing.”

The newcomer just folded his arms and looked askance. “Slow down, pal. I'm a police detective. Put the knife down.”

For a second John-Michael was confused. And then fear swept through him. If he didn't get that box, things were going to get pretty damn horrible for him. His only chance now was to play dumb. He gave the cop a sullen stare. “This is
my house
now, dude.”

“Put it down or I'll arrest you.”

John-Michael dropped the knife. Petulantly, he said, “At least you could show me some ID before you fleece me.”

The detective picked the knife up without taking his eyes off John-Michael. He checked the knife, folded it up. Then he took a badge from his back pocket and showed it to John-Michael. “Detective Shawn Leung. Where'd you get the knife?”

“My dad's nightstand.”

“You came all the way back from LA for a lousy pocketknife?”

“I came for my suit. I got a job interview coming up.” As he said the words, John-Michael was praying that it wouldn't occur to the cop to cross-check.

“Where's the suit?”

John-Michael walked him to where he'd left the suit in its carrier. The detective unzipped the suit carrier and peered inside. He stared hard at John-Michael. “Next time you want to go inside, call the station. We'll send someone to escort you.”

“Why?”

“Didn't anyone tell you? This is a murder scene.” The cop handed back the Swiss Army Knife. “Don't go waving that at folks now.”

John-Michael took the knife, picked up his suit, and left, aware of the detective watching him all the while. He got back into his car. He drove four blocks away to a Pollo Loco, ate some chicken taquitos, and drank a Diet Coke. He put up the top of the car and prepared to let the hours pass until dark. The box of medical records under his dad's floorboards would have to wait.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

CULVER STUDIOS, TUESDAY, APRIL 7

“Go ahead, take something from the breakfast buffet. Just don't make me look like someone with a bunch of freeloading friends.”

Candace tried to smile. She looked somewhat less confident than when she'd first promised she could get her stepsister and maybe a couple of housemates into the TV studios as visitors.

Grace watched Candace take a piece of cantaloupe and another of pineapple. “Aww,” she said, pouting. “Stuff like this is wasted on you, isn't it?”

Paolo grabbed a plate. Eagerly, he loaded it with slices of Swiss cheese, baloney, and crispy bacon. “You gotta love Hollywood.” He turned to Lucy, who was picking out a muffin from a tray with six different types. “So, your rock band buddies. You're going to say yes eventually?”

Lucy took a nibble of poppy seed muffin. “To the band? Eh. That Bailey guy seems like kind of a jackass.”

Paolo sighed. “Lucy, the guy wants to be a rock star. Of course he's a jackass.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes to slits. “Hmmm.”

Grace poured a glass of milk to go with her powdered donut. She felt uncomfortable around Paolo when he was sharing cozy little moments like this with Lucy. It could have been worse, she reflected; she might have wound up sharing a bedroom with Lucy. At least she had the possibility of getting away.

Jealousy was something she hadn't expected or welcomed. It had simply appeared in her life one day like a stray dog. Difficult to avoid, insistently reminding her that things were not quite right in the world.

She stole a surreptitious glance at Paolo. If he'd been gorgeous with the boyish, thick mop of hair, he was even more arresting now. She'd even caught the director of Candace's TV show eyeing him with interest.

At first, Grace had been shocked by the bleached-white scrub Paolo had presented one evening, a month ago. It had made him look like one of Lucy's crazy friends from the beach; a bunch of junkies from what Grace could tell. But Paolo had changed his mind almost instantly and gone back to a darker look. Now he looked like a soldier. Or a cop, or an investment banker—something serious. As cute as he'd been, that haircut, together with his toned, slightly muscular body, made him look like a man. Every time Grace saw him, she felt herself fall a tiny bit more under his spell.

Meanwhile, Paolo remained oblivious. All he could see, all he'd seen since the day she moved into the house, was Lucy.

The assistant director was calling actors to take first positions for the scene they were about to record. With a cheery wave, Candace left them at the buffet and headed off with her actor colleagues. Every one of them was skinny and pretty, but Candace aside, none of them quite had the head-turning presence of either Paolo or Lucy.

Maybe Candace had invited the housemates precisely to show her actor buddies just how cool her friends were?

The director announced, “Action!”

For a moment they all watched the actors. It was a scene set in a dingy back room where the characters were engaged in a little “underground” poker. The characters were sitting around a table. They picked up cards and threw down chips. One of the older females was smoking a cigar. Grace guessed that her character was meant to be “edgy” or even bad. After a few minutes, the director called cut. Then he began asking each actor to repeat their line, this time in a close-up.

Ten minutes in and Grace was bored. Her thoughts turned back to Lucy. With that girl's history, her background, talent, and looks, there was simply
no way
to compete with her. No boy was worth that. The attraction was mostly physical, anyway. The kind of idiotic thing you read about in romance novels. She wasn't going to let herself behave like an idiot to get his attention. She wasn't going to do a thing. Whatever she felt for Paolo would eventually fade.

If Grace had let Maya in on her secret, it was because she'd had no alternative. How else was she going to explain going through Lucy's things? Now Maya probably thought she was a crazy, jealous psycho. Well, that couldn't be helped. At least Grace hadn't needed to invent anything about her feelings for Paolo.

She watched the two of them drift back toward the buffet table.

“I didn't think it would be so boring,” Paolo said. “They're just saying the same thing over and over in slightly different ways!”

“It's called ‘direction,'” Lucy said with a smile.

After a few seconds, Paolo and Lucy went back to talking about the band she'd been invited to join. She was vacillating, but, of course, she'd end up accepting. There was no point in Grace sticking around to be invisible yet again. She poured potato chips into a plastic bowl, picked up her glass of milk, and left them to it.

Eventually the scene finished. The director called Candace to him. He spent a few seconds talking. Grace watched the expression on Candace's face go from polite to disbelieving. Wide-eyed, she nodded vigorously at whatever the director was telling her. After he'd moved on, she practically skipped over to where Grace was sitting in the catering area. She snatched a large potato chip out of Grace's fingers and took a solid, crunching bite.

“All right, sis, spill,” Grace said firmly.

Candace grinned with delight. “I'm actually getting lines in the next episode.”

“I thought you already had a line.”

“That was in the pilot.
So long, sucker
. As I snapped the neck of one of the bad guys.”

“Ooh. Pithy.”

“It would be so amazing if they developed Gina into a bigger character.”

Grace gave a sage nod. “It could only improve the story.”

“I'm only thinking about what's best for the show.”

“You're all about the selfless concern.”

Candace gave her stepsister an affectionate kick. She glanced across the studio toward a set that wasn't being used just then—the disheveled bedroom that was shared by Gina and another character on
Downtowners
. Lucy and Paolo were sitting on the edge of the bed, engaged in what seemed to be an intense conversation. “Hey, what's going on with Paolo and Lucy? They seem awful snug over there.”

“He's trying to get into her pants,” replied Grace. “And she's reviewing her options. Just a wild guess.”

“Cynic.”

“Independent observer.”

“You don't think he's, like, actually into her?” Candace asked.

Grace considered. “I think he's under the influence of his hormones, shall we say. If Lucy really decides she's not into him, he'll be after you next. Or Maya.”

“Or you.”

“No,” Grace said with vehemence. “Not me.”