Soft Focus (20 page)

“Anything inside?” she asked.

“No.” Jack straightened. His face was grim. “The bastard's gone. Packed up and left. Took off so fast, he forgot his key in the lock.”

“The question is, why?”

“I can think of one very likely reason.” Jack studied the room with brooding eyes. “Someone else offered him more money than I did.”

“. . . You set me up, Verna.”

The voices on the small screen were annoying. Elizabeth glanced around for the clicker and saw it lying on the bed next to a videotape box. She picked up the small instrument and silenced the TV. Then she took a closer look at the plastic tape container.

“He left this behind.” She plucked the box off the bed and saw that there was a tape inside. She removed it and glanced at the hand-scrawled title.
“Betrayal.”

Jack put out his hand. “Let me see that.”

She gave it to him. He took it and went toward the armoire that housed the hotel room's entertainment equipment.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What does it look like I'm doing? I'm going to play the tape.”

“For heaven's sake, why?”

“This is the only thing left in the room, and it was left in plain sight.”

She stared at him as he removed the previous tape and fed the tape into the slot. “You think Leonard Ledger wanted you to find that tape?”

“It seems like a reasonable conclusion under the circumstances.”

Jack punched a button. There was a soft, mechanical whir. New black-and-white images appeared on the television screen.

The scene was grainy and obviously shot by an amateur, but Elizabeth had no trouble making out the setting. She was looking at the door of a hotel room. It appeared to be an inexpensive establishment. Portions of the carpeted hall were visible. As she watched, she saw a maid push a cart past the closed door and disappear.

Another figure walked into view. Hayden Shaw.

Elizabeth's sense of foreboding went ballistic. Her stomach was a solid knot of tension now. She watched Hayden remove a card key from his pocket, open the hotel-room door, and vanish inside.

“Jack, what's going on here?”

“I don't know yet.” Jack did not take his eyes off the screen. “But the plot is starting to look interesting.”

Another man bustled into camera range. He was short with a round face and a nervous air. The top of his head was completely bald. What hair he had left was too long and tied in a straggly ponytail. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses gleamed on his face. He wore a baggy black linen jacket and pants and a lot of gold chains. He clutched a briefcase.

Jack whistled softly. “Tyler Page.”

Elizabeth watched Page knock twice. The door opened almost immediately. Page disappeared inside.

“That bastard,” Jack said very quietly. “I knew he was in this somewhere.”

“Page? But we already guessed that he was involved.”

“I'm talking about Hayden.” Jack gazed enigmatically at the screen. “I knew that he hated me. Just didn't realize how much.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say in the face of such overwhelming evidence of betrayal. She could only imagine what it would feel like to find out that your own blood kin would do something like this to you. She touched Jack's arm. He did not seem to notice.

Nothing else happened on the screen for a while. But the camera never wavered. Elizabeth wondered if the photographer had hung around to catch the two men leaving the hotel.

Another minute or two passed. Elizabeth glanced back toward the door.

“Someone could walk in on us at any minute, Jack. Why don't we take the tape back to the house and finish watching it there?”

“You're right.” He started to walk toward the television to retrieve the tape.

But just as he reached out to punch the button, a third person walked into view on the film.

At first Elizabeth did not recognize herself.

And then she did, and the floor seemed to fall away beneath her feet. Her hands suddenly felt as if she'd plunged them into ice water. The tingling was so sharp, it hurt.

She almost stopped breathing altogether when she saw herself walk to the hotel room door and knock twice.

No. Impossible
.

On the small screen the hotel door opened. Elizabeth watched herself enter the room where Hayden Shaw and Tyler Page waited.

The video ended with shocking suddenness. She remembered the title.
Betrayal
.

“IT WON'T BE
much longer now,” she said in that warm, husky voice that sent exciting little chills down his spine. “Then we can be together. Think of it, Tyler. Paris. Rome. Madrid. The world will be ours.”

“Yes.” Tyler Page held the phone to his ear with one hand. He used his other hand to dig more potato chips out of the bag.

The house was dark. The only light in the room came from the video playing on the television screen.

He munched chips and watched Bette Davis in
The Letter
.
So good when she's bad
.

“Tyler?”

“I'm here, Angel Face.”

On screen Davis, in the role of Leslie Crosbie, shot her lover in a jealous rage.

“We must not see each other until this is finished. You understand that.”

“I understand,” he said.

“It's hard on both of us.”

“Yes,” he said. “Very hard.” And it was also becoming a bit boring. He felt as if he'd been sitting here alone in this house forever.

“Goodbye, my darling.”

“
Farewell, My Lovely.
” He hung up the phone and stared at the screen. He knew what would happen. Leslie Crosbie would go free in court, but she would die in the end. The Production Code had to be satisfied. She had to pay for her crime.

He wondered if he would eventually have to pay for his crime, too.

He reached into the bag for another potato chip.

He thought about Angel Face. He had sacrificed everything for her. He had exchanged all that he had once held dear for the woman who held him in thrall. When it was finished, there would be no going back.

No Going Back
. A shudder went through him.

No Going Back
.

Deep down inside he knew that he was already starting to miss his pleasant routine at the lab. Life had been so simple there. People tolerated his little idiosyncrasies. They left him alone with his work. He also missed the peace and quiet of his little house. At home no one pestered him about dishes in the sink or crumbs on the carpet. He could leave his dirty laundry on the floor for weeks if he wanted.

But
she
didn't approve of that kind of behavior. When this was over and they were finally able to be together, he would have to become Cary Grant for her. Debonair, articulate, clever, and above all, fastidiously neat. It was a daunting thought.

It would be worth it, he assured himself. She was his
Gilda,
his
Laura, The Woman in the Window, The Lady in the Lake.

But sometimes she scared the hell out of him. Maybe that was why he'd bought the gun a few weeks ago.

ELIZABETH COULD NO
longer bear the silence. She was choking on it. She jerked her gaze away from the view of the narrow, winding road and looked at Jack. He seemed wholly absorbed in his driving. It was as if getting back to the house they shared was the only thing that mattered.

He had said nothing since they had left the resort. Not one bloody word. On the other hand, she reminded herself, neither had she.

The shock was only now beginning to ebb. A rush of
clean, hot anger was sweeping in to take its place. She could deal with this now. She
would
deal with it.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

Jack frowned, as if he had forgotten that she was sitting there beside him. He turned briefly toward her and then returned his attention to the twisting pavement ahead.

“I was thinking about that video we found,” he said.

“What, precisely, were you thinking about it?”

“Mostly I was wondering who planted it there in Ledger's room for us to find.”

She folded her arms tightly beneath her breasts and stared at the trees. “Someone who wanted you to think that Hayden, Tyler Page, and I all conspired to steal Soft Focus.”

“Believe it or not, I had figured out that much.” He slowed for a sharp turn. Halfway through it, he accelerated smoothly. “The question is, who would want me to have that information, and why now?”

“The information is false,” she said very evenly.

“Sure it is. But that only makes the list of people who might have planted the video in Ledger's room longer than it would have been if the tape was for real.”

For a split second she did not think she had heard him right.

She turned as far as the seat belt would allow. “Wait a second. Are you telling me that you don't believe what you saw on that videotape?”

“Give me a break.” He kept his eyes on the road, but his mouth twisted in cold amusement. “We are surrounded by several hundred professional filmmakers and video experts of all kinds. In addition, there are upwards of a couple thousand serious film buffs in the immediate vicinity of Mirror Springs, any one of whom probably knows how to fake a
piece of videotape. Of course I don't believe what I saw on the tape.”

The great, icy monster that had sunk its claws into her insides released its grip so suddenly, she was surprised she did not take flight. Okay, so he had dismissed the evidence on the video on technical grounds. So what? He had refused to believe it. That was the important thing.

“I see.” She could not think of anything else to say.

He gave her a quick, searching look. “Are you okay?”

“I'm great,” she said softly. “Fine and dandy.”

“When we get back to the house, I'm going to call Larry again. He's had enough time to come up with more information.”

“I'll call Louise, too.”

“Maybe if we get it all down on paper and take a look at it, we might come up with a new angle—” He broke off on a half-muttered groan of resignation and took his foot off the accelerator. “Damn. Not another one. We don't have time for this.”

“What's wrong?” Elizabeth asked. Then she followed his gaze and saw the bright lights and the van that partially blocked the thin ribbon of pavement.

The door on the driver's side of the van was flung wide. In the glare of the beams a motionless figure could be seen draped across the steering wheel. Blood gleamed. There seemed to be a lot of it.

Equipment was scattered around the edge of the scene. Elizabeth saw two light stands anchored by sandbags. Only one of the lights was switched on. There were also some cables and a generator.

A man with a camera balanced on his shoulder moved about restlessly, apparently lining up his shot. He had his back to her, but when he stepped briefly into the circle of
light she saw that he was dressed in a black denim, waist-length jacket and black jeans. He had a billed cap pulled down low over his averted face. The half-circle of shiny metal that decorated the heels of his chunky black boots glinted when he moved.

“Another body, another movie.” Jack sounded irritated. He braked to a stop.

“They're probably involved in the contest,” Elizabeth said.

“They've got a hell of a nerve blocking the public road like this.”

“Be fair, Jack.” Fair? Heck, she could be downright generous tonight. Jack hadn't believed the video in Ledger's hotel room. Life was good. “I'm sure they weren't expecting any traffic on this stretch. Not at this hour of the night.”

“Kind of a small crew.” Jack undid his seat belt and opened the door. “I only see two people.”

He climbed out of the car and walked toward the van.

Elizabeth opened her own door and got out.

“How much longer are you going to be?” Jack asked as he drew closer to the van.

The photographer did not turn around. He stayed hunched over his camera, concentrating on lining up the shot of the bloody scene inside the van. “Gonna be a while. Mind cutting your headlights? They're messing up the shot.”

“Sorry,” Jack said. “We can wait a few minutes, but that's all. We're in a hurry.”

“Screw you, we're makin' a movie here.” The man gestured toward the sandbagged light stands and the carefully positioned van. “Took us an hour to set up this shot.”

“If you just shift that one light stand,” Jack suggested, “I can get around the van.”

A ripple of unease trickled through Elizabeth. “Let them get their shot, Jack,” she said urgently. “We can wait a few more minutes.”

He paused and stared back at her. In the glare of the headlights, she could see his alert, questioning look.