Genuine Lies (37 page)

“Del Rio,” Paul supplied, then grazed his teeth over the back of her knee. Julia’s fingers knotted in the tangled sheets.

“Give her my apologies, and tell her …” A trail of hot, wet kisses up her inner thigh. “Tell her I’ll get back to her. Thank you.”

The phone clattered to the floor.

Drake gave the guard at the gate a cheery salute. As he drove through, he began digging at his thighs and grinding his teeth. Nerves had brought on an itchy, spreading rash that none of the over-the-counter creams and lotions he’d applied helped. By the time he’d arrived at the guest house he was whimpering and talking to himself.

“It’s gonna be all right. Nothing to worry about. In and out in five minutes and everything’s fixed up.” Sweat trickled, turning his raw thighs into a blazing agony.

There were forty-eight hours left until his deadline. The image of what Joseph could do to him with those big cinder-block fists was enough to have him sprinting out of the car.

It was safe. At least he was sure of that. Eve was in Bur-bank filming, and Julia was off interviewing the witch Anna. All he had to do was walk in, dub the tapes, then walk out.

It took him nearly a full minute of rattling the doorknob to realize the place was locked. With the breath whistling through his teeth, he raced around the house, checking all the windows and doors. By the time he got back to his starting point, he was dripping with sweat.

He couldn’t go away empty-handed. No matter how well Drake deluded himself, he knew he would never find the nerve to come back. It had to be now. Raking his fingers over his blazing thighs, he made it to the terrace in a stumbling run. He cast furtive glances over his shoulder as he picked up a small clay pot of petunias. The tinkle of breaking glass seemed as loud to him as the boom of an assault rifle, but the marines didn’t come come running in counterattack.

The pot dropped from his nerveless fingers to shatter on the terrace stones. Still watching his back, he reached in through the hole he’d made and tripped the latch.

Standing inside the empty house brought him a tingle of satisfaction and bolstered his courage. As he moved from kitchen to office, his stride was firm and confident. He was smiling when he opened the drawer. His eyes went blank for a moment, then he laughed to himself and pulled open another drawer. And another.

The smile had turned to a grimace as he continued to yank open the empty drawers and ram them shut again.

Julia couldn’t remember ever having a single interview exhaust her as much as her session with Anna. The woman was like an LP run on 78. Julia had a feeling she might find some interesting and entertaining tidbits mired in the orgy of words Anna had indulged in—once she had the energy to review the tape.

She stopped in front of the house and sat in the car, eyes closed, head back. At least she hadn’t had to push or pry to get Anna to open up. The woman gushed like water through a broken pipe, her mind on constant overdrive, and her stick-figure body never settled in one place for more than a few intense minutes. All Julia had had to do was ask what it was like to design wardrobes for Eve Benedict.

Anna had been off and running about Eve’s outrageous and often unrealistic expectations, her impatient demands, her last-minute brainstorms. It was Anna—according to Anna— who had made Eve look like a queen in
Lady Love.
Anna who
had made her sparkle in
Paradise Found.
There had been no mention, as there had been in Kinsky’s and Marilyn Day’s interviews that it had been Eve who had given Anna her first real break by insisting that she be used as costume designer on
Lady Love.

The lack of gratitude reminded Julia of Drake.

It was beginning to rain when Julia sighed and climbed from the car. It was a fast, thin rain that looked as though it could go on for days. Like Anna, she thought as she dashed to the front door. Julia would have preferred to close the door on that particular tape as she would close the door against the chilling rain.

But as she searched out her keys, she knew that whatever her personal feelings, she would review the tape. If Anna came across as catty, spoiled, and ungrateful in the book, she had no one to blame but herself.

Wondering if she should make pork chops or chicken for dinner, Julia opened the door, and the scent of wet, crushed flowers poured out. The living room, which had been neat if not orderly, was now a jumble of overturned tables, broken lamps, torn cushions. In the moment it took her mind to register what her eyes were seeing, she stood, briefcase clutched in one hand, keys in the other. Then she dropped them both and walked through the destruction of what she had tried to make home.

Every room was the same—broken glass, overturned furniture. Pictures had been torn off the wall. Drawers had been broken. In the kitchen, boxes and bottles had been yanked out of cupboards so that their contents made an unappetizing stew on the tiled floor.

She turned and fled upstairs. In her room her clothes were strewn around the floor. The mattress had been dragged partially off the bed, the linens in torn and tangled knots. The contents of her dresser were scattered on top of it.

But it was Brandon’s room that snapped the control she was desperately trying to cling to. Her child’s room had been invaded, his toys, his clothes, his books, pawed through. Julia
picked up the top of his Batman pajamas, and balling them in her hands, went to the phone.

“Miss Benedict’s residence.”

“Travers. I need Eve.”

Travers answered that demand with a snort. “Miss Benedict’s at the studio. I expect her around seven.”

“You get in touch with her now. Someone’s broken into the guest house and trashed it. I’ll give her an hour before I call the police myself.” She hung up on Travers’s squawking questions.

Her hands were shaking. That was good, she decided. It was anger, and she didn’t mind shaking with anger. She wanted to hold on to it, it and every other vicious emotion that pounded through her.

Very deliberately she went downstairs again, walking over the wreckage of the living room. She crouched in front of a section of wainscoting and pressed the hidden mechanism as Eve had showed her. The panel slid open, revealing the safe inside. Julia spun the dial, mentally reciting the combination. When it was open, she took inventory of the contents. Her tapes, her notes, the few boxes of jewelry. Satisfied, she closed it again, then went to the rain-splattered window to wait.

Thirty minutes later, Julia watched Paul’s Studebaker slide to a halt. His face was set and expressionless when she met him at the door. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Travers called you?”

“Yes, she called me—which is something you neglected to do.”

“It didn’t occur to me.”

He was silent until he’d worked past the anger her remark caused. “Obviously. What’s this about another break-in?”

“See for yourself.” She stepped aside so that he could walk in ahead of her. Seeing it again brought on a fresh, red rage. It took everything she had to whip it down. Her fingers linked together until the knuckles were white. “First guess is that someone was upset when they couldn’t find the tapes, and
decided to tear the place up until they did.” She nudged some broken crockery aside with her foot. “They didn’t.”

Fury, and the coppery flavor of fear in the back of his throat, had him whirling on her. His eyes were a blazing blue that had her backing up a step before she stiffened her spine. “Is that all you can think of?”

“It’s the only reason,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who would do this because of a personal grudge.”

He shook his head, struggling to ignore the twisting of his gut when he looked at a hacked cushion. What if he had found her like that—torn and tattered and tossed on the floor? His voice was cold as iron when he managed to speak again.

“So the tapes are safe, and that’s that?”

“No, that is not that.” She pulled her fingers apart, and as though that had been her only restraint, the fury she’d been strapping down broke loose. “They went into Brandon’s room. They touched his things.” Rather than nudging wreckage aside, she kicked at it, her eyes the color of the storm clouds that were shooting down that steady, driving rain. “No one, no one gets that close to my son. When I find out who did this, they’ll pay.”

He preferred the outburst to the cold control. But he was far from satisfied. “You said you’d call me if you had trouble.” “I can handle this.”

“Like hell.” He moved fast, grabbing her arms, shaking her before she could shoot out the first protest. “If it’s the tapes someone’s so desperate to get, they’ll go through you next time. For Christ’s sake, Julia, is it worth it? Is a book, a few weeks on the best-seller list, a five-minute spot on Carson worth all this?”

Every bit as livid as he, she jerked away, rubbing her arms where his fingers had dug in. The wind whipped up enough to beat the rain like impatient fingers against the glass. “You know it’s more than that. You of all people should know. I have something of value to do with this. What I’ll write about Eve will be richer, more poignant, more powerful than any fiction.”

“And if you’d been home when they’d broken in?”

“They wouldn’t have broken in if I’d been here,” she countered. “Obviously, they waited until the house was empty. Be logical.”

“Fuck logic. I’m not taking chances with you.”

“You’re not—”

“No, by Christ, I’m not.” Cold fury had become hot as he heaved a table aside. More glass shattered, like thunder answering the rain. “Do you expect me to stand by and do nothing? Whoever was in here wasn’t just looking for tapes, he was desperately trying to find them.” He snatched up a mangled cushion and shoved it at her. “Look at this. Look at it, dammit. It might have been you.”

It hadn’t occurred to her, not for a second, and she resented that his words had the image leaping so vividly in her mind. She fought back a shudder and let the cushion fall to the floor. “I’m not a piece of furniture, Paul. Nor is it up to you to make decisions for me. Spending an afternoon in bed together doesn’t make you responsible for my welfare.”

Slowly, he clamped his hands on the lapels of her jacket. Anger and fear rode a thin blade of hurt that cut quick and deep. “It was more than an afternoon in bed, but that’s another problem you’ll have to deal with. Right now you’re in the position where a fucking book is putting you at risk.”

“And if I would ever have considered backing off from this work, this would have changed my mind. I will not run away from this kind of intimidation.”

“Well said,” Eve stated from the doorway. Her hair was wet, as was the cashmere sweater she’d tugged on so hastily after Travers’s call. Her face was very pale as she stepped into the house, but her voice was strong and steady. “It appears we have someone running scared, Julia.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Paul whirled on Eve with a rush of anger he’d never shown toward her. “Are you actually enjoying this? Lapping up satisfaction at the thought that someone would do this because of you? What have you come to, Eve, when your vanity, your attempt at immortality, is worth any price?”

Very carefully, she lowered herself to the arm of the damaged sofa, pulled out a cigarette, lighted it. Odd, she thought, she’d been sure Victor was the only man who could hurt her. How much sharper, how much deeper was the pain when it was stabbed into her by a man she thought of as her son.

“Enjoying it,” she said slowly. “Do I enjoy seeing my property destroyed or having my guest’s privacy invaded?” On a sigh, she blew out smoke. “No, I don’t. Do I enjoy knowing that someone is so terrified at what I may tell the world that they would risk a foolish and futile move like this? Yes, by Christ, I do.”

“It’s not just you who’s involved in this.”

“Julia and Brandon will be taken care of.” She tapped an ash carelessly on the rubble on the floor. With every beat of her heart her head pounded viciously. “Travers is seeing to guest rooms in the main house right now. Julia, you are both welcome to stay there as long as you like, or to move back here once we have made it habitable again.” She glanced up, keeping her eyes and her voice carefully neutral. “Or, of course, you are free to abandon the project altogether.”