Good Sister, The (15 page)
Authors: Diana Diamond
“Then who did?” she demanded. “For God’s sake, Peter, the guy lived in her building. He managed her gym.”
“I’m not saying that he didn’t learn about you from Jennifer, or that he might not have picked your key off Jennifer’s key ring. I’m just saying that he acted on his own. I won’t believe that she hired him.”
“And where did he get the ten thousand dollars, out of her wallet? It’s obvious, Peter. Someone paid him to kill me, and Jennifer was the only one who knew him.”
When he reached Pegasus, Peter went straight to Catherine’s office, retrieved the key from the wine chiller, and opened her file drawer. He took the photos back to his desk. He had a prurient moment when he saw Catherine naked and followed her through the sequence of sex. But his real focus was on how the pictures would have struck Jennifer. He remembered that at the time Jennifer had been deeply committed to Padraig still, and that she had been spending weekends with her husband. Realistically she might have wondered about his fidelity, but romantically she probably visualized him ignoring the advances of ambitious women and working late hours to get his struggling business off the ground. She knew that he had “run into” Catherine out on the Coast, and knew that Catherine had decided to invest in his business. Nothing in that scenario would have prepared her for the photos. An ambitious tart she might have gotten over. Her own sister straddling her husband was certainly cause for murder.
Most women probably would have turned their gun on the husband. But Jennifer knew Padraig’s vulnerabilities and certainly understood Catherine’s domineering personality. It was far more likely that her sister had offered the apple than that her husband had come up with the idea. Certainly she had gone into near shock, as evidenced by her withdrawal from her friends and her career. Was it unthinkable, then, that in her rage and humiliation, Jennifer might have thought of the fledgling actor who was desperate for a payday?
Peter could visualize the meeting. The key. The layout of the penthouse. Catherine’s schedule. The housekeeper’s night off. The money in untraceable cash. Perhaps even the promise of a screen test with Padraig O’Connell. Padraig wouldn’t refuse, with two thirds of his company in the hands of Pegasus Satellite Services. For a rejected actor, the price was probably more than generous.
He checked the backs of the photos. As he suspected, there were no print numbers or studio identification that might lead to the photographer. Even the paper manufacturer’s logo was missing. Just cheap prints that could have been processed in a closet.
Certainly they had been taken in Hollywood, where Catherine and Padraig were alone together. But the envelope had been mailed from New York’s largest and most anonymous post office. Either the photographer was from New York or the person who ordered the photos had a contact in New York. There certainly wasn’t much to go on.
And yet this was a career-making assignment. This wasn’t just some bored husband having an affair with his secretary or a housewife cheating on a traveling husband. This was a Hollywood leading man whose physical prowess had been vastly enlarged by special effects. Everything the man did was industry gossip and a news feature on the television tabloid shows. A photographer or a detective hired to photograph Padraig O’Connell in sexual ecstasy probably would have made a few extra prints for bragging rights. He might not be able to let such a special assignment go unnoticed.
Peter would get his security people working on it. They had failed Jennifer and had fallen down on the job of protecting Catherine. But they had contacts and could quickly cover the less artistic photographers on both coasts. If he could find out who had ordered the pictures, then he could either prove his case against Padraig or learn who was really destroying the Pegasus heiresses.
Padraig phoned Catherine with expressions of concern. He pleaded the press of critical negotiations as the reason for not rushing to her bedside. But in fact he was afraid of coming face-to-face with Jennifer. He had crushed her, he knew, beyond forgiveness. The only caring gesture he could offer would be to vanish from her sight.
“I can’t understand how it could happen,” he said. “A penthouse with more security than Fort Knox. How did the bastard even get into the building, much less into your apartment?”
“It was someone who knew me. The police think he was hired to kill me.”
“What?” he screamed, forcing Catherine to pull back from the handset. “That’s deplorable. Much as I’d enjoy boiling you in oil, I can’t imagine anyone hiring a killer. Do you have any enemies who happen to be Italian?”
“This isn’t a joke, Padraig. Someone paid him ten thousand dollars to throw me off my balcony.”
A pause, and then O’Connell burst out laughing. “Only ten thousand dollars? Your pride must be hurting more than your head.”
“Padraig …”
He was laughing uncontrollably. “Jesus, but I never knew that hit men held sales. What do you think, darlin’? Weekend rates?”
She slammed down the phone.
Catherine left the hospital that evening. She couldn’t return to her penthouse because the police still had rooms cordoned off with orange tape, and the painted outline of Will Ferris’s crumpled body still decorated the kitchen floor. Jennifer volunteered her loft, offering to move out so that her sister could bring in her housekeeper and nurse. But Catherine refused, claiming she didn’t want to be a bother. She knew she could never fall asleep in a place where Jennifer had the key to the front door. Instead, she took a suite at a Trump hotel and had Peter hire a security officer who sat outside in the hallway.
She kept the nurse nearby when Jennifer came to visit and
received her in the living room, where there would be a constant flow of traffic.
received her in the living room, where there would be a constant flow of traffic.
“You’re looking better,” Jennifer told her. Catherine’s hand went up to her face. “I mean, it’s still discolored and swollen, but your eye is open. At the hospital I could hardly recognize you.”
“I look like a
Star Trek
alien,” Catherine answered. “That bastard friend of yours nearly beat me to death.”
Star Trek
alien,” Catherine answered. “That bastard friend of yours nearly beat me to death.”
Jennifer smiled and shook her head. “He wasn’t a friend of mine. I may have seen him a couple of times, but I don’t think we ever exchanged a word.”
There was a long, awkward pause. Catherine finally spoke. “Have you forgiven me for … Padraig?”
“No. In all our years, that was the hardest you ever hit me. But now I’m just as mad at him. So maybe you opened my eyes. Maybe you showed me that I don’t really have a husband.”
“I swear, that’s what I wanted to do. I just couldn’t let you throw your life at a man who was using you.”
Jennifer turned away. “That doesn’t make me feel any better, Catherine. I enjoy pretending that he cared for me at least a little, even if it’s obvious that he didn’t.”
“My God, you aren’t still in love with him.”
Jennifer smiled ironically. “No, not in love. Not after what he did to us.”
“Us?” Catherine was stunned by the thought that Padraig O’Connell had done something to her.
“Who do you think hired the man who attacked you?”
“Padraig? You think Padraig hired him?”
“Well, he tried to kill me, didn’t he?” Jennifer reasoned. “Isn’t that what the investigators said? I keep thinking of Peter’s comment. Each of us almost got killed as soon as we got involved with him. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Padraig?” Catherine asked again. The thought seemed too difficult to comprehend. Then she said, as if to dismiss the notion, “He wasn’t using me. I was using him.”
“Maybe that’s what you
thought.
Maybe the great screen hero is smarter than either of us gave him credit for being. He used both of us. If Peter is right, he tried to kill me for the money, and when that didn’t work, he got you to put up the money. And when you moved into his limelight, he decided to get rid of you.”
thought.
Maybe the great screen hero is smarter than either of us gave him credit for being. He used both of us. If Peter is right, he tried to kill me for the money, and when that didn’t work, he got you to put up the money. And when you moved into his limelight, he decided to get rid of you.”
“That’s asinine!” But even as she said it, Catherine realized that it might be true. Padraig O’Connell had an expansive self-image, and she had been less than genteel in walking on his turf. He needed her, and he had clearly paid deference to her. But had she come on too fast in trying to establish her own credentials in Hollywood? Still, it didn’t make sense. Why would he try to destroy his best source of funding? Certainly he wouldn’t want Peter taking over her role in his production company.
When her sister left, Catherine felt exhausted and returned to her bed. But she tossed and turned sleeplessly. She had been so sure that Jennifer had finally come unstrung. Their rivalry was lifelong, always spiteful, at times fierce. She had always sensed her sister’s jealousy and been careful never to push it too far. But this time she might have erred. Exposing Jennifer’s husband was one thing, but injecting herself into their marriage had been a dangerous way to prove Padraig’s infidelity. Until an hour before, she had been nearly convinced that Jennifer had tried to kill her.
But now she had to consider the possibility that it might have been Padraig. Peter, whose judgment she had always trusted, had no doubts. Two near deaths of the women O’Connell was involved with only confirmed the implications of the investigators’ report on the auto accident. Now Jennifer had advanced the same conclusion, for different reasons. She had based her judgment on O’Connell’s fierce pride. Catherine knew that she had abused that pride.
The difference, Catherine thought, was that the assailant had ties to her sister. Padraig, she reasoned, had no way of knowing a part-time actor, waiter, and gym rat who lived on the other
side of the continent. How could he have hired Will Ferris? But then she remembered that O’Connell had, for a time, lived in Jennifer’s apartment. Maybe he was the one who had met Ferris in the elevator. Or chatted with him in the lobby while Jennifer was busy swimming laps.
side of the continent. How could he have hired Will Ferris? But then she remembered that O’Connell had, for a time, lived in Jennifer’s apartment. Maybe he was the one who had met Ferris in the elevator. Or chatted with him in the lobby while Jennifer was busy swimming laps.
PADRAIG CAME east the following week when the police lines were down and Catherine was able to get back into her apartment.
“Jay-sus,” he announced when he saw her face. “You look as if you’re made up to play one of Macbeth’s witches. Was it a baseball bat he took to you?”
She wasn’t entertained. “I thought I was looking better,” she said. And she was. She had the remnants of a black eye and a purple cast to her cheekbone. But the swelling was gone, and the awful green bruises had vanished completely.
He took her in his arms, hugged her, and rocked her gently. “You’re a bossy lady,” he whispered, “but I must say I’ve grown fond of you. Like a man who loves his dog even though it pees on the rug.”
Catherine pushed him away, but when she saw the wide grin of his perfect teeth, she had to laugh. “I have been awful, haven’t I.”
“Oh, no! Don’t be talking that way, lass. You’re like butter melting in my mouth.”
“I’ve been a perfect bitch!”
“That’s the word I was looking for.”
She pushed him into a chair, kissed his forehead, and then sat next to him. “Padraig, who could have done such a thing? It’s so cold-blooded. So ghastly.”
“Oh, darlin’, from what I understand, all the hit men were
getting offers. Everyone wanted to see you go over the balcony rail.”
getting offers. Everyone wanted to see you go over the balcony rail.”
“Damn it,” she snapped. “Stop playing the fool. I’m frightened. Someone is trying to kill me.”
He took her hand. “Sorry, love. I was just trying to cheer you up. But I’m frightened myself. All I’ve been thinking about is who might be behind it. And I haven’t any answers. Lots of people have made my bile boil, but I never could kill anyone. I have no idea what it takes to pull a trigger.”
“Or to cut a brake line?” she asked directly.
He was stunned into a rare moment of silence. Then, in a very soft voice with no trace of his brogue, “Is that what you think? That I tried for your sister and then settled for you?”
She looked away.
Padraig reached out and turned her chin roughly until she was facing him. “Don’t turn away from me, Catherine, not after accusing me of murder. Put it straight. Do you really think I tried to kill Jennifer? Do you think I could ever have hired some loser to throw you off your balcony? Because, by God, if that’s what you think, then there isn’t enough money in the whole damn family to keep us together.”
Catherine pulled her face out of his grasp. “I just don’t know—”
“That’s not good enough,” he said, his voice hard as stone. “I’ve put up with your love of the limelight, and I’ve taken insults that I have never taken from any living person. Money, to be sure! Your damn money has made it all possible. But I’ve never sold out for money. The fact is that in my own perverse way, I love you. I love your talent, and I love your daring. And that buys a lot of patience, dear girl.”
“Padraig …” She was unsure what she should say.
“Don’t talk!” he ordered. “Just listen. Whatever it is that I feel for you, I know it isn’t murder. So if you have any doubts, let’s hear them. I’ll catch the first plane out of here and the ripped-up pieces of our agreement will come to you in the next mail.”
Catherine’s eyes were filling, a sight Padraig had never witnessed. “Padraig, it’s been awful … so confusing. Peter said that something terrible happened to each of us when we were involved with you. Jennifer said—”
“Peter!” He cut her off abruptly, nearly screaming the name. “That sycophant son of a bitch. What kind of spell does he hold over you and your sister?”
“He’s been our friend for as long as—”
“Your friend? He’s been living fat off the two of you since you were children, and you still haven’t figured him out!”
“We trust him. He’s looking after our interests.”
“Catherine, my love, can you imagine a cozier deal than dear Peter has made for himself? He runs your company like a private fiefdom. He pays himself handsomely, and he never has to answer to the shareholders. He got his start stealing his partner’s patent and made himself a big man by using your father’s ideas and your money. You don’t really think he wants to share all that with a scoundrel like me, do you?”
“Peter couldn’t do this to me …”
“He could if it meant getting rid of me. Don’t you see? I’ve become a rival to a man who allows no rivals. When Jennifer brought me into the family, her car went over a cliff. And when you bring me into the business, you nearly go over the balcony railing.”
“I can’t believe it.”
He pointed his finger at her forehead. “Think, for God’s sake. What could I possibly gain by killing you? With Jennifer, it was easy to show that I had a motive. But you’re the one who’s been financing me and bringing in the material and the talent. If something happens to you, then I’m partners with a man who hates me. And he and a woman I wronged are holding the purse strings. The fact is that it’s in my best interests to take a bullet for you, not to drop you into the East River.”
She took his hand. “Padraig, I really didn’t think it was you. I thought that maybe Jennifer hated me so much …”
“Jennifer? Catherine, how can you think that? The woman is afraid of the sound of her own voice.”
“You don’t really know her. All our lives she’s been jealous of me. She’s done terrible things without ever losing her angelic smile.”
“You’re daft. If she hates anyone, it’s me, and with good reason. I’m the one Jennifer would love to see come to a ghastly end, not you.”
“But—”
Padraig put his finger to her lips. “Just let me finish. You and Jennifer are big girls now. You’re both well educated, very experienced, and bright as hell. Neither of you needs a full-time baby-sitter, which is the only service that Peter Barnes provides. You’d both be a lot safer if you gave him a nice retirement package and sent him packing. Let Jennifer run the satellite business. And you keep finding new customers that need satellite service. Maybe then you and your sister will be able to find a way to get back together.”
He stayed the night with her, and Catherine enjoyed both the security and the affection. In the morning she found him standing in the kitchen, staring down at the floor. “Can you get someone in here to scrub this place down?” he asked her. “There’s still blood between the tiles.” He crossed to the service door and scratched the paint adjacent to the doorjamb. “Here, too,” he said. Then he turned to her. “God, but it must have been awful.” He made some calls to New York agents and spoke at length with a writer that he hoped to attach to one of his projects. Then he left for the airport and caught the late flight back to Los Angeles.
Jennifer’s recovery ran parallel to Catherine’s. Gradually she emerged from her dark shell of silence, began spending more time with her staff, and returned Peter’s phone calls. When Catherine came back to the office, wearing a scarf over her hair and dark sunglasses to hide her nearly invisible wounds, Jennifer
joined her in meetings. At the regular meetings in Peter’s office, she chatted over a late-day glass of wine.
joined her in meetings. At the regular meetings in Peter’s office, she chatted over a late-day glass of wine.
Catherine brought studies that showed the increases in traffic on Pegasus III and, as a result of wider coverage, on all the company’s satellites. Just handling movie reruns for cable service was filling the available channels. “If we’re going to handle new film distribution,” she told her sister, “we better begin planning another satellite.”
She had not yet ventured back to Hollywood. She had no intention of showing her face until the last traces of her beating had vanished. But she had been in daily contact with Padraig and his staff. “We’ve greenlighted two films,” she reported, “without any distribution agreements. We’re talking to screen owners about picking them off our satellites at about half the cost they usually front to the studios.”
The two sisters talked about production schedules, and when channels would have to be cleared to handle the broadcasts. Peter sat back, listened, and raised a few questions. But it was clear that Catherine and Jennifer had matters firmly in hand.
When they finished, he shrugged, indicating that he had no questions. “That’s it, then.” He smiled. “You have everything covered. Maybe it’s time for me to take a vacation. A long vacation.” Catherine remembered Padraig’s diatribe against the man who had shown them how to build their business. Maybe they didn’t really need him anymore. Was that what Peter was telling them?
Padraig plunged into production of the two films, laboring over the locations, set designs, costumes, and special effects, assigning the myriad of production details to his underlings. As the location for the dark drama of the man obsessed with the young girl, they chose a struggling private college in Pennsylvania, and the small backwater town that served it. The budget was minimal and the shooting schedule rushed. It wouldn’t make much money, but Padraig promised that it would earn critical acclaim.
“We’ll be able to sell it for a song,” he told Catherine. “I think we’ll bring some of the independent screens and art theaters into the fold.”
“We’ll be able to sell it for a song,” he told Catherine. “I think we’ll bring some of the independent screens and art theaters into the fold.”
The boy and his dog, on the other hand, had grown wildly from the first concept. It was to be shot in Ireland against the background of the Irish civil war. Padraig had taken over an entire village in the rolling green country of Kilkenny and was in the process of returning it to its original 1920s character. He had also leased a landmark castle to serve as the decaying manor house of the former English landowner, and bought a herd of sheep to wander over the pastures. His budget was out of control from the first moment.
Then the director had decided that any tale of Ireland had to include the land and the Church. For the land he planned overhead shots, following the hunt through valleys and across streams. “Three helicopters?” Catherine had howled when she saw the costs. “I didn’t know they had helicopters in the Irish civil war.” The shots of the Church had to show its intimacy with the life of the tenants, which meant that a church far removed from the village wouldn’t do. “You want to move a church?” Catherine had demanded. “Don’t we need some sort of permission from Rome?”
“A small stipend,” Padraig had answered. “My God, woman, we can’t have a proper Irish village without the goddamned church!”
As the principal photography began, a new list of expenses arrived. The stream that the horses jumped had run dry. They had to bring in water and a pump. Sheep were hard to see from the air, so cattle had to be substituted. And the dog had turned out to be less heroic than the script called for. He wouldn’t run into the burning barn, so they were investigating the use of a mechanical dog, which involved engineering and programming costs.
“Jesus, Padraig, this is going to cost more than the real Irish civil war,” Catherine complained. She summoned him from California
to New York and suggested that he pack his bags for Ireland.
to New York and suggested that he pack his bags for Ireland.
“Do we need to bring Peter back from his vacation?” Jennifer asked.
Catherine bristled at the suggestion. “Padraig and I can handle this part of the business. What’s Peter going to do? Double for the dog?”
Padraig arrived in Kilkenny with a new budget and the threat of a new director if the budget was overspent. He threw himself into every detail of the shooting, amending schedules, suggesting alternatives, and trying to get the production back on track. Catherine flew over frequently for business meetings that turned into shouting matches. Sometimes she won the point, dashing one of the director’s dreams. But more often Padraig was able to hold his own. “It’s a moment of beauty,” he said of one terribly complex landscape. “It will pay for itself in promotion stills.”
When all else failed, he took Catherine to the castle and to a bedroom where he told her Edward and Mrs. Simpson had slept. “You told me it was Oliver Cromwell,” she reminded him. “I never said that,” he answered. “How could Oliver Cromwell have slept with Mrs. Simpson?” In the stone turret, furnished with a four-poster bed and tapestries and lighted by enormous candles, it was hard for Catherine not to believe that she was truly a princess. Padraig squeezed a few million dollars out of her by pressing her into the goosedown mattress.
Jennifer, alarmed at the overruns, found Peter sailing in the Mediterranean. “We’re in trouble with the boy and his dog,” she said. “It’s beginning to look like the biggest overrun since Apocalypse Now.”
“What does Catherine say?” he asked over the satellite telephone circuit.
“That epics tend to be expensive. I think she knows they’re in trouble, but she hasn’t figured out how to reign in Padraig.”
“I can’t stop them. They have two votes to my one.”
“You and I can close the pipeline from the satellite company to the production company.”
He hesitated. “Give me a few days to get back to you. I think I should meet with Catherine before we do anything.”
After a night in the castle with Catherine, Padraig returned to the site and gave the go-ahead for a three-helicopter panorama shot. The boy would be carrying a message from one rebel leader to another and would race across a field that was to become the no-man’s-land between two banks of artillery. The concept was awesome, with Great War artillery pieces belching flame and smoke while preset explosive charges tore up the meadow. There would be many cuts to the boy’s face and to the barking dog, which could be staged with simulated blasts throwing mud in their faces. But for the aerial panorama, a stuntman double and a stand-in dog would run a precise path amid real explosions while the helicopters would capture the scene from different angles and altitudes.
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