The Bequest (15 page)

Mona didn’t know
what time it was or how long she had been
lying there. All she knew when she regained consciousness was that the
pain was like nothing she had ever felt before. Not even the skiing accident
four years ago when she leg-whipped a pine tree at sixty miles an hour.
Every time she replayed that one in her mind, nausea roiled her stomach as
she slowed down the picture and watched her lower leg snap like a pencil,
bending ninety degrees sideways. Nor the time she was texting while
driving and plowed into a parked car on Wilshire. The airbag punched her
texting hand into her face and the corner of the phone gouged her cheek.
That one had required sixteen stitches to close.

And not even the emotional pain when she had come home early
from a shoot and found her first and only husband in a three-way with her
two sisters. In fact, she had been able to excise that pain painlessly with
just a few signatures on court documents that cut the bastard permanently
loose. And as for her sisters, well, what sisters? They were now dead to
her.

She wondered how long before she would be dead to them.
In fact, she wondered simply how long before she would be dead.
For a few brief moments as she cleared the cobwebs from her mind,

she couldn’t even remember where she was or what had happened. All she
knew was that she found herself lying face down on her bedroom floor,
unable to move. Barely able to breathe. And with a deep pain in the
middle of her back.

She turned her head, a simple motion that upped the intensity of the
searing hot sensation in her back. She could see three holes in a triangular
pattern on the wooden door and shards of splintered wood that marked
the paths of the bullets. It was a big triangle, isosceles in shape, the pattern
made by a man who couldn’t be real sure where she stood and was
shooting blindly and hoping to make contact. She didn’t know how many
bullets were in her back, but the pattern suggested no more than two,
maybe only one. That uncertainty on the part of her assassin might be the
only reason she was still alive.

What was puzzling, though, was why he had not entered the room
after firing. Once she no longer blocked entry, he could easily have pushed
the door open, stepped inside, and emptied his weapon into her. Then she
remembered that she, too, had been armed, albeit with just a BB pistol.
She also remembered that she had fired it, and she remembered groans—
or were they screams?—from the other side of the door. She couldn’t
imagine that BB wounds would be fatal, but maybe they had been strategic
enough to drive him from the house.

Unless he was still inside, playing cat and mouse, and waiting for her
to exit her hole.
She redirected her focus to her cell phone on the nightstand. If she
could just get there without too much pain. It wasn’t the hurt, itself, that
worried her; it was the idea that too much would shut down her mind,
sending her back to blissful unconsciousness. And if she blacked out, if she
couldn’t get to the phone first, she might never wake up again.
She raised up onto her elbows and dragged herself forward. The
carpet burned on her skin, but she paid it no mind. Carpet burns were no
more than hiccups in a hurricane compared to the pain in her back. She
moved forward what seemed like only an inch at a time, the nightstand
growing tantalizingly closer with each pull of her elbows. The black waves
seemed held at bay as they crashed on the shore of her consciousness,
driven back by her sheer will power.
At last she reached the nightstand. She paused for a moment, as each
breath came in a ragged gasp. At times she felt as if she were drowning,
and she wondered if the bullet had punctured a lung. She pushed up as
high as she could on her left elbow and reached with her right arm. Her
hand danced around on the surface of the nightstand until she found the
phone.
With a sigh of relief, she rolled onto her side as best she could, but
even that small pressure on her back sent lightning bolts through her body
and into her brain. She pressed the first number in her “favorites” and held
the phone to her ear.
After a moment, a familiar voice answered.
“Teri,” she said, her voice weak and breathy. “Help me.”
“Where are you?” Teri asked.
Mona gasped, spit out a wad of phlegm onto the carpet beside her
face. Dark red, glistening in the glow of the lamp from the nightstand.
“Bedroom.”
Then she blacked out.

Teri looked at Stillman, her face a pale spectre. He read her look
instantly.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“We have to go to Mona’s,” Teri said to the three detectives.
“Something’s wrong.”
“Give me the phone,” Stillman said.
Teri complied and watched as he raised it to his ear. “Mona?” He
looked at Teri and shook his head. “The line’s still open.”
“Can you hear anything?”
“Nothing. Who’s Mona?”
“Mona Hirsch. She’s my producing partner. I tried to call her all
night, but she wouldn’t answer.”
Swafford took his own cell phone from his pocket and dialed a
number. “This is Swafford. We need a unit to respond to...”
He looked at Teri. “What’s her address?” he asked Teri. She told him
and he repeated the address, then said, “I don’t know. Just have someone
get there ASAP. I’m on my way.”

Teri led the way in her SUV, followed by Swafford in his car and the two
CHP detectives in their Chevy Tahoe. She tried to make some sense of
events over the past twenty-four hours, but none of it lined up.

She knew she had been recognized at the diner. Los Angeles and its
environs were used to celebrity sightings of disguised and camouflaged
movie stars, and only rarely did disguises work. Just as some people
supposedly had “gay-dar,” able to pick out those still hidden deep within
their closets, and others could spot toupees at a hundred paces, Angelenos
knew their celebrities when they saw them. Half of them might not know
who the President of the United States was even if you spotted them the O
and the bama, but flash a picture of a sunglasses-and-baseball-cap-wearing
two-time Academy Award winner, and ninety percent of them would nail
the identity in a split second. The other ten percent would simply mistake
her for Sandra Bullock, Hilary Swank, or Angelina Jolie.

She wished now that she had kept following the look-a-like vehicle
north on the PCH last night. Maybe things would make more sense to her
if she had actually seen what happened up there, but common sense told
her that would only have made things worse. Someone might have spotted
her in the vicinity, which would have gutted her already nearly worthless
alibi.

But then she
remembered calling Mona
last
night.
Was there
technology that would allow the police to figure out where she had been
when those calls were made? Seems like she had seen that at least once on
a cop show on television, but then again, how much of what you saw on
TV could you actually believe? Still, it was worth a shot. If so, it would
show that she had been working her way home when she had called, and
maybe it could provide her an alibi for the exact time Leland Crowell, or
whoever the scraggly-haired man was, took a header off that cliff.

But the real nagging question, the one that was now gnawing at her
heart, was why Mona hadn’t answered last night. If she had been home,
she would have had her cell turned on. If the battery was low, she would
have had it charging, but still turned on. Mona never turned her phone off.
It was her umbilical to the world.

Then Teri thought of the ragged gasps and the nearly guttural sound
of Mona’s voice on the phone. “Help me.”
She pressed harder on the gas, took the turn onto Sunset on two
wheels, and accelerated. Behind her, the detectives did the same, keeping
a close tail on her. Within a matter of minutes since receiving the call, she
turned onto Mona’s street. It was a stereotypical Beverly Hills residential
neighborhood of luxury homes from another era, many gated or walled off
by hedges, usually some variety of free-blooming hibiscus bushes, yards
neatly trimmed, high-priced cars in circle driveways. The air was sweet
with the fragrance of a hundred varieties of flowers, and not a soul was on
the sidewalks other than the hired help with gas-powered edgers, leaf
blowers, and hedge trimmers.
A Beverly Hills PD squad car sat at the curb in front of Mona’s house,
which was more
modest
than those
of her
gaudier
neighbors.
Teri
remembered the first time she had been here, meeting Mona who had just
put a down payment on the house. It was with the joy of a child getting
her first bicycle that Mona led her through the vacant structure, pointing
where she was going to put this and where she was going to put that, and
what she was going to have to buy to fill this room, and the artwork that
would hang on this wall and that wall. When their financial success as a
producing team snowballed for a brief while, Mona had done exactly as
she said, filling her house to fit the exact parameters of her dream.
Teri wondered what nightmare they would find inside now.
She got out of her car as the detectives pulled up behind her. Two
uniformed police officers stood at the front door, looking back at the
sound of the arriving vehicles. Teri rushed to the door, Stillman hard on
her heels.
“Is this your home, ma’am?” one of the young cops asked, recognition
in his eyes, but professionalism in his voice. He looked as if he had come
straight from a
GQ
modeling shoot, with every hair in place, his skin
bronze from the sun. His partner, a slightly older but equally gorgeous
cop, nodded toward Swafford, who brought up the rear, as if they knew
each other.
“Anything?” Swafford asked.
“We just got here,” said the first cop, whose nameplate identified him
as S. Baskind. “We rang the bell, but there’s no answer. And the door’s
locked.”
“I have a key,” Teri said. Her fingers trembled as she struggled to
single one out on her key ring. She had just managed to grasp it when it
slipped through her fingers. She knelt to pick the ring up, her eyes
suddenly filling with tears.
“Let me help you, ma’am,” Baskind said. He picked up the key ring
and extended the one she had been trying to grasp. “Is it this one?”
She nodded.
He inserted it into the lock and turned. The deadbolt slid back, and
he slowly pushed the door open. The only sound was an urgent beeping
from the security system in the entryway.
“Alarm is set,” Baskind said.
“I know the code,” Teri said as she tried to squeeze by. He stepped
aside and allowed her to enter. She punched in the four digit code, and the
beeping stopped.
She took a quick step toward the interior of the house, only to be
stopped by Stillman grabbing her arm. She looked back at him, startled by
the suddenness of his movement.
“Stay behind us,” he said.
She nodded then noticed Swafford squatting at the threshold. “Check
this out,” he said.
All eyes turned to the area indicated by his extended index finger, on
the
entryway floor just inside
the
door.
Guns were
drawn
as they
recognized the unmistakable droplets of blood. Looking outside the door,
Teri saw additional droplets on the porch that she had not noticed before.
Swafford pointed toward the interior of the house. “They’re coming
from there, leading out to the door.”
“Oh, my God,” Teri said, her words barely audible. “Mona.”
“Go wait by your car,” Stillman said. Then, to Officer Baskind, “Wait
with her.”
“And call for Crime Scene,” Swafford said.
Baskind nodded. “Let’s go, ma’am,” he said to Teri.
Teri felt numb as the officer gently grasped her elbow and escorted
her to the curb.