Face of Danger (36 page)

Next was a simple parchment invitation. Dinner at the home of Angus Gaites. She recognized the famous director’s name, but another one on the page jumped out at her.

To honor Isobel DeSoto’s Oscar Winning Performance.

The other victim of the Red Carpet Killer. Isobel died after attending a party given by a director in her honor.

A dance of chills worked its way up Vivi’s spine, landing at the base of her brain, where her investigator’s cells had just woken up to go to work.

“Where did you get these?” she asked.

“I found them in Joellen’s room.”

She looked up and met Mercedes’s painful gaze. “You realize what this means?”

“I don’t believe it. She’s not capable of… that.”

But maybe she was. “Mercedes, do you have any idea where she is?”

Her lip quivered. “No, I really don’t. But…” She blinked away moisture in her eyes.—“She instructed me to let the dog out that night when you were shot.”

“She called and told you that?”

“She texted.”

“But Marissa’s been using Joellen’s phone.”

A light of hope sparked in the other woman’s eyes. “Maybe Marissa was the person who did this.”

Vivi looked at the papers again, flipping through them.
“Where were these? In a desk or what?” It was all so… neat. Too neat. Too incriminating.

“Under her bed.”

“Was anything else there? Any other evidence?”

“No, but you’re welcome to look.”

The cell phone Vivi had stashed in her back pocket vibrated. As she pulled it out, she cursed herself for hoping it was Lang. But the name that lit the screen dashed that hope and replaced it with genuine curiosity.

“Cara?” she asked tentatively.

“Vivi, I need you.” The actress’s distinct voice sounded strained and stretched. “You have to meet me at the airport, now.”

“You left the hospital?”

“Let’s just say I got out. I had to, and you’ll understand when I see you. But you have to meet me at the lot near the private-plane tarmac, right now. Where are you?”

“At your house. But, Cara, are you driving?” She had two bullet wounds, for crying out loud. Neither serious, but surely she shouldn’t be up and about yet.

“I’m fine. Just meet me at the airport.”

Vivi looked down at the papers in her hands. “Have you heard from Joellen?”

“Not a word. Bridget covered for me at the hospital, but they’ll find her soon, so we have to hurry. I have to get out of here before the press or… anyone else figures it out. Meet me at the airport, now. I need a decoy.”

“I’m out of my disguise, Cara.”

She puffed out a frustrated sigh, the sound of Cara not getting her way. “Get a wig in my closet, wear my clothes,
and meet me. Vivi, I need your help and you
are
still working for me, right? I’m still paying you an astronomical sum of money, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re still responsible for my safety.”

No argument. “I’ll be there.”

“Okay—and, Vivi, please, please bring Stella. I can’t go another minute without her.”

“Will do.” When she hung up, she gathered the incriminating evidence. “I’m keeping this,” she told Mercedes. “I have to show Cara. Maybe she can convince Joellen to come to her. So we can help her,” she added.

Mercedes just closed her eyes.

“She wants me in costume,” Vivi said. “Can you help me?”

Mercedes followed her back upstairs, getting clothes while Vivi put on a wig and a fast pass of makeup. When they finished, Mercedes gave her that same look she had when Vivi had first walked in.

“You really do look like her,” she said.

“But you don’t,” Vivi replied. “Or, more accurately, Cara doesn’t look like you. Joellen has your coloring.”

Mercedes’s cheeks deepened. “Cara isn’t my biological daughter.”

“Oh, really? She was adopted?”

“I never really adopted her. Her father… my husband… just brought her home as a baby, and announced she was his. I raised her as mine, but we don’t share blood.”

Vivi searched the woman’s face. “You’ve been through a lot in your lifetime.”

She lifted a brow. “And I have a lot more to go
through,” she said. “But you must know something about those papers we found.”

“What is it?”

“Joellen isn’t capable of that.”

But Vivi thought differently. “That’s what we need to find out,” she said, gathering her stuff and heading back downstairs.

In the kitchen, she paused to scoop up the dog, who growled low when Vivi slipped her hands under her warm belly. “Come on, pooch. We’re going to see your favorite person. Your
other
favorite person.”

“Oh, and Vivi.” Mercedes was on her heels in the utility room.

Vivi turned. “Yes?”

“I just want you to know that…” She took a shuddering breath.—“I think that FBI agent loves you very much.”

The statement, so not what she was expecting, made Vivi inch back. “Yeah? Well, he hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“But you have.”

Vivi smiled. “I have,” she agreed.

“I bet that feels good for you.” Mercedes’s rare smile was empathetic. One only another survivor would understand.

“Like stepping into the sunshine,” Vivi said, extending her free arm to give Mercedes a quick hug. “Go wait for news. On the patio.”

Despite the exchange, Vivi climbed into an SUV in the garage more aware of the low throbbing pain in the back of her head.

The ache she felt when something was really, really wrong.

•    •    •

Colt paced through the tiny Nantucket air terminal after getting his ticket, threw his bag on a chair, and fell into the one next to it, his gaze drawn to the distant row of private planes out the eastern-facing window. Plenty of props and a few jets, but way at the end, one sleek Gulfstream G650, big enough for a private strip show in the back.

She’d been raped.

Anger, hatred, all vile and black and real, roiled through him. And he didn’t even know who to hit with all this hate. Some boy rapist who wrecked a beautiful, sweet, innocent girl, or himself, who took her against the wall because he couldn’t
say
what he didn’t
understand
.

And she loved him. Deep down, he already knew that. And what had he done with that love? Abused it. Thrown it away. Ran like the chickenshit dickhead moron pig he was.

Really, there weren’t enough bad words to describe him.

He forced himself to look away from the tail of that plane, refusing to remember how much better getting to Nantucket had been than leaving. And what had he said to her after she’d made a brilliant and brave move to keep him quiet that day?

You could have been raped.

He grunted softly, self-loathing infiltrating every cell in his body, just as his phone rang. Gagliardi. A welcome distraction.

“Lang here.” He even thought of himself as
Lang
now.

“You’re not in the air yet?” Gagliardi asked, hope in his voice.

“Thirty minutes. What’s up?”

“Because we just had a break in the Red Carpet Killer case.”

Colt sat up straighter. “What is it?”

“One of the hairs found in the bathroom matches the other two, purchased at a manufacturer in India called Bhanjee.”

His heart kicked up. “Found at the site or taken from Vivi Angelino’s extensions? I thought you said they weren’t a match.”

“Vivi’s extensions didn’t match. This is a whole new hair, picked up by our forensics people in the Nantucket house after Pakpao was shot. We’ve got an agent interviewing the owner of the wig company now and he’s acquired a list of U.S. customers. Guess who’s on it?”

“Joellen Mugg?”

“Uh, no. Mercedes Graff, Cara’s housekeeper.”

“Well, she’s not a suspect; she doesn’t leave the house.”

“Are you sure?”

Actually, he wasn’t—just that he’d never seen her leave. But if that was correct, then Vivi was in that house with her, unprotected and uninformed. “I’m going back, then. So I’ll be delayed.”

“Send someone else. We need you here.”

Not a chance. “No, I’m going myself.”

“Mr. Lang, we need you in Los Angeles. There’s a press briefing on the Emmanuel case and it’s a perfect opportunity to introduce the man who cracked the human trafficking ring as the new Criminal Programs SAC for the L.A. office. Sorry, but PR duties are a large part of the job.”

Not when he had it they wouldn’t be. “I’ll do my best to be there, but I’m not making any promises.” He grabbed his bag and headed across the terminal.

“You have to—”

“No, Joe. I don’t. If this…” His voice trailed off as an image caught his eye way out on the tarmac. A woman hauling ass across the wide-open space, long black hair flying. “I have to check on Vivi,” he said simply, squinting at the woman in the distance.

It looked exactly like… Vivi as Cara. Or maybe Cara herself. She hustled toward the Gulfstream G650, all purpose and speed.

Was that Vivi or Cara? Just like the first time he’d seen that woman get on that plane, he wasn’t entirely sure. He forced himself to listen to the man calling the shots in his life right now.

“Mr. Lang, get to L.A. No one’s going to kill Cara Ferrari today.”

The woman stopped, turned, waved to someone back in the parking area that lined that end of the airfield, then ran up the stairs into the plane, and seconds later,
another
woman with long black hair ran across the tarmac. Carrying a dog.

Now
that
was Vivi. In a wig, for sure, but he recognized that body even from this far away.

“I’m not going to L.A.,” he said vaguely as Vivi set the dog on the ground, running toward the plane, the dog at her heels, its funny little lopsided gait confirming that was definitely Stella. What the
hell
was going on?

“Excuse me?”

“I changed my mind, Mr. Gagliardi. I’m needed here.”

“You get to L.A.,” Gagliardi said, as if Lang hadn’t even spoken. “And tell the agent you put on this there is one more thing that’s interesting to note.”

“What is it?” he asked, barely listening as he watched Vivi, back in disguise, cross the tarmac.

“It’s about the dog prints.”

That pulled him back into the conversation. “What dog prints?”

“There were dog prints in the dirt on Mulholland where Adrienne Dwight’s car went over the cliff. They perfectly match a set of paw prints taken just outside the Nantucket house.”

Something dark and cold twisted in Lang. Stella’s prints? “Cara has a dog. A dachshund. Pretty common breed.”
I’m looking at it.

“Not a common print, though. Front left paw turns out at a strange angle. It’s clear in the print from Mulholland, and the one at the house.”

Why would Joellen have Cara’s dog at these crime scenes? Unless—his blood turned icy as the realization hit him. The ugly, impossible realization of who killed Adrienne Dwight and Isobel DeSoto.

He dropped the bag and started toward the emergency exit. “I won’t be coming to Los Angeles today.”

“Unacceptable, Mr. Lang.”

He slammed the bar and shoved the emergency door open, setting off an alarm that drowned out his words. “Or ever.”

“Sir! Sir!”

“You can’t go there!”

His right hand shot up with a badge. “FBI! I’m going out there.”

“What the hell is going on?” Gagliardi demanded in his ear.

But he stashed the phone and ran on gut and fire. Because if he had to shoot the damn engine out, he was not going to let that plane take off with Vivi on it.

•    •    •

“Oh my God, I’m so glad to see you.” Cara stepped out of the back cabin, her hand on her shoulder as Vivi boarded. “And look who’s here!” Cara’s voice rose to falsetto as Stella bounded up the stairs behind Vivi and launched into Cara’s one good arm. “My baby!”

Vivi looked around the main cabin, peering into the back. “Are you all alone?”

“Yes, which is why I need you. I want the media to follow you while I do some other stuff.” She finally put the dog down and leveled a midnight gaze at Vivi, her face in full makeup.

“You don’t even look tired, let alone recently shot.”

“I’m in pain,” Cara said. “But I’m a professional. And the show must go on.”

“What show?”

She didn’t answer, sizing Vivi up instead. “I could get used to this,” she said. “Having two of me would really help improve my life. Would you like a permanent position?”

Well, look at that. Cara Ferrari was handing her a job that was probably based
in Los Angeles.
“No, thanks,” she said, giving it less than a nanosecond of thought. “But this is really important, Cara. I have to talk to you about Joellen.”

“What about her?”

Vivi drew her bag closer and reached into it for the envelope. “I think what I’m about to tell you might shock you.”

Cara blinked, her jaw loosening so her lips could form a perfect O. “I don’t think I like the sound of this. Come on, in the back. The pilots listen and that room is soundproof.”

“Fast,” Vivi said, following Cara into the back.

Nice to know the scene of the Great Lap Dance was soundproofed after all that worrying about being heard. She buried the memory and dropped her bag on the floor to open the envelope. “Mercedes found this in Joellen’s room in your Nantucket house.”

“What is it?” Cara closed the door tightly, her brows drawn in worry and concern.

Vivi took a breath. “Cara, is it possible, even remotely possible, that your sister is the Red Carpet Killer?”

“What?” She packed ten different kinds of shock and outrage into the one syllable, grabbing at the papers Vivi held, taking them with her to sit in the side-by-side passenger seats.

Where she’d stripped for Lang a few days and heartbreaks ago.

Get focused, Viviana. That was then. This is a million-dollar client. And you are about to break the biggest case imaginable.

Cara picked up an oversize tote bag that was in one of the chairs and dropped it on the ground, falling into the seat, flipping through the papers. “Oh, my God. That’s the very spot on Mulholland where Adrienne’s car went over the cliff. And, come here, look at this, Vivi.”

“I’ve seen it all,” Vivi said, not moving. “I have to find her. I have to get her into the FBI for questioning. Are you sure you have no idea where she is? Where the house in Martha’s Vineyard is located?”