The Bequest (22 page)

Bits of shattered
glass sparkled in the moonlight that peeked in
through the narrow gap in the curtains blowing inward with each gust of
wind from the hills. No lights were on inside, casting Teri Squire’s den in
shadows. There was a hint of smoke in the air, thick in the moonbeam,
testifying to yet another wildfire kindling in the hills. A gloved hand
reached past the shards that rimmed the perimeter of the sliding door. It
found the latch and unlocked the door. The frame slid open, the curtains
pushed aside, and two ski-masked men stepped inside, both holding guns.
There was no sound other than the crunch of glass beneath leather-soled
shoes.

The men paused. One breathed heavily, mouth open, each breath
ragged. The other made not a sound, as if holding his breath.
The silent one gestured toward the kitchen. The mouth-breather
nodded and stepped that way. The silent one headed toward the back of
the house.
After a few minutes, they met together in the den. The silent one
pulled a cell phone and punched a number on speed dial. “She’s not here,”
he said to the man who answered. “Looks like she dragged luggage out of a
closet.”

Teri had lost track of time miles ago, about halfway through Arizona. The
freeway stretched out before her, illuminated by rows of neon lights lining
each side. The moon was still low on the horizon, full and orange and
strangely welcoming, as if to say “This way to Texas. This way home.”

Nearly twenty years ago that moon had been at her back as she
traveled this route in reverse, running from Texas and family, running
from a home that no longer welcomed her, that no longer wanted her. But
she was a different person then. Now she was Teri Squire, movie star, her
face gracing magazine covers and silver screens, attending premieres and
high society parties.

But back then she was just a scared teenager. Back then she had been
Peggy Tucker, ranch girl, tomboy. She even had a different face then. One
that age and a cosmetic surgeon’s wizardry had combined to blur into a
memory. But other memories remained vivid, unhidden behind the new
memories and successes she had built for herself. And now, here she was
once again, running from a life she had made for herself. She wondered if
she had ever really stopped running, or if she ever would.

Her cell phone rang once again, the blare of
Magnum P.I.
breaking the
radio silence. She looked at the read-out, the name MIKE glowing just
above the announcement of “21 missed calls.” On her right, a green and
white sign told her she would be in New Mexico in ten miles. Far enough
away now.

“Jesus, Teri, where the hell are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to
get you for hours.”
“It’s been a rough day. I just needed some time to myself.”
“Bob’s dead.”
Teri tapped the brakes, as if slowing the car could stem the onslaught
of tragedy that had dogged her lately. As quickly as she hit the brakes, she
slid her foot back to the accelerator and pressed harder. The speedometer
jumped ten miles an hour.
“What happened?” she asked. She clenched the wheel, her knuckles
whitening.
“They said he killed himself. That he walked right out in front of a
truck.”
Teri tried to process the words. Bob Keene, suicide? Right when he
was on the verge of his biggest success? That didn’t make sense. She had
known Bob for enough years to realize that he worshipped at the altar of
the almighty dollar. He was counting on
The Precipice
to be his golden
parachute out of the Hollywood craziness and into blissful retirement. He
hadn’t said anything, but she was pretty sure he had invested a
considerable portion of his personal wealth in the project. There was no
way he killed himself. Not now. Not this close to the opening.
“Three is too many,” she said.
“What?”
“Three is too many.”
“Three what is too many?”
“Suicides. Leland Crowell, Spencer West, and now Bob. Three socalled suicides. I know they say tragedies come in threes, but what are the
odds? Throw in Mona, the second death of Leland Crowell, and someone
trying to kill me—twice. That’s too much. And, by the way, if I’d been
run off the road, what do you bet that would’ve been called a suicide, too?
Actress, distraught over scandal and the near-death of her friend, takes her
own life. Hell, I’d have even been the prime suspect in the shootings up at
Big Sur and at Mona’s.”
There was nothing but silence on Mike’s end. Had she lost the
connection?
“Mike, are you still there?”
When he spoke, his voice sounded distant. If she didn’t know better,
she’d have thought it was wracked with emotion. “They said Bob was like
a zombie. Like he didn’t see anyone around him. He just stood on the curb
until a delivery truck was coming, and then he stepped right out in front of
it.”
“I’m sorry. I know you were close to him.”
“That’s not it. Don’t you see what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t any of that sound familiar to you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He sighed. “
The Precipice
? Your new movie. Remember?”
Even before he finished speaking, Teri saw his meaning as the
frazzled synapses in her brain put two and two together and finally came
up with four. “Oh, my God!”
“Yeah. A serial killer who hypnotizes people into killing for her, then
they kill themselves.”
Teri thought of those two strange visits from Annemarie Crowell,
the low monotones, the subtle swaying as she perched on the edge of her
chair. And drowsiness.
“Do you think Leland Crowell was writing about his mother?”
“What do we really know about her, anyway?”
“Just what the lawyer told me. That she was his mother.”
“I’m going to see what I can find out about her,” he said. “In the
meantime, you stay out of sight. Maybe even go to Texas.”
“I’m one step ahead of you. But you be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me. You just take care of yourself.”

Mike hung up the phone. He sat on the edge of the bed in his darkened
bedroom and buried his head in his hands.
My God, what the hell is going on?

A creaking sound drew his attention to the door. He looked up,
startled to see the outline of a person standing in the shadows.
“We have to keep her safe,” the person said in a low monotone.
“Where is she?”
Then the shadow began to sway.

Detectives Nichols and
Stillman worked at adjacent desks in a
makeshift office the Beverly Hills Police Department had quickly set up for
them as a courtesy to the state agency. But even makeshift in Beverly Hills
had all the earmarks of elegance, from matching maple desks, cheerful
tropical prints on the wall, and cutting edge electronics, including dual
monitor computers, high-speed wireless connection to the Internet, and a
latte-dispensing coffeemaker.

Nichols worked the old-fashioned way, flipping through pages in
manila file folders, while Stillman clicked away at his computer. A copy of
the screenplay for
The Precipice
rested on the corner of Nichols’s desk.
Both men were running on coffee and adrenaline as they puzzled over a
series
of obviously related deaths
and near-deaths.
The
connections
seemed obvious on their face, with a screenplay as the common factor, but
the reasons behind the events eluded them both.

They worked their way through the classic motives: passion, power,
revenge, and greed. It was that last one that seemed to offer the most
promise. After all, a movie based on the screenplay was about to open to
what promised to be an unprecedented box office haul. But that fact also
appeared to undermine the greed motive. By all accounts, if the box office
hit even close to the projections, there would be enough money to go
around, Hollywood accounting notwithstanding.
How much was too
much? If money was involved, maybe the issue was whether there was
something that would negatively impact the box office or the distribution
of profits, but damned if either one of them could see what that might
possibly be.

The key to the whole affair, the detectives concluded, lay with the
late Leland Crowell, he of the two-time demise. Choosing to divide and
conquer, Nichols took
the
Hollywood path while
Stillman worked
backward from Crowell. The result had been a lot of nothing. Until...

Nichols looked up from the file folder he had just opened. “What’s
that?”
“It seems that Annemarie Crowell originally hails from Ludlow, out
in the desert, but she got her professional start in Illinois, where she once
had a very successful psychiatry practice.”
“She seems more like a patient to me than a doctor.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Would you lie on her couch and tell her your deepest, darkest
secrets?” Nichols asked.
“The good news is that at least she wouldn’t laugh at you. It would
break her face.”
Stillman’s eye scanned the monitor as he focused on the document on
the screen, which bore the letterhead of the State of Illinois Department of
Medical Licensing. “Her specialty was hypnotherapy.”
Nichols abandoned his file folder and rolled his chair over next to his
partner. “Now that is interesting. Especially the way some of those
witnesses said Bob Keene looked like he was in a trance. Hypnotized,
maybe?”
“But how would she do it? Hypnotize Keene, I mean. We’d need
some way to put the two of them together before we can make that leap.
Did he even know her? Other than who she is, I mean.”
“We know Teri Squire knew her,” Nichols said. “Maybe there’s a
connection there.”
Stillman read a few lines more. “Illinois took away her medical
license a few years ago. Right about...” He flipped through his notes until
he found what he was looking for. “Right about the time she showed up in
California.”
“What’d they take her license for?”
“Doesn’t say.” Stillman made a note on the pad beside the computer.
“But I’ll find out.”
“Be interesting if it was for hypnotizing people and making them do
stuff for her.” He picked up the screenplay and tossed it to his partner.
“Like in this screenplay.”
“You’re kidding, right? Did you read the whole thing?”
“Enough of it to know that Leland Crowell wrote a screenplay about
a woman who hypnotizes people and makes them kill for her.”
Stillman snorted. “That can’t happen. You can’t make someone do
something they wouldn’t normally do, hypnotized or not.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Did you ever see
The Manchurian Candidate
? I’m
talking about the original, with Frank Sinatra. The actress from
Murder, She
Wrote
gets this guy to kill people, including taking a shot at a political
candidate, just by calling him and telling him to play solitaire. He goes into
this trance then, when he sees this certain card, he goes out and kills
people.”
“Frank Sinatra does?”
“No, I think it was Laurence Harvey. But the point is, all she had to
do was call him on the phone and say the magic word.”
“But even if that works, she’s still got to have access in the first place,
you know, to hypnotize him and plant the suggestion or whatever.”
“Then I guess we need to see if we can put the two of them
together,” Nichols said. “Anything else in that file about Annemarie?”
Stillman scrolled down and clicked to the next document he had
uncovered. “She does have a son, but his name isn’t Leland; it’s Rodney.
Rodney Leroy.”
“Not Rodney Leland?”
“Nope. Rodney Leroy.”
“Close, though. Maybe he changed his name.”
Stillman made another note. The page was filling up fast. A lot of todo’s.
“Anything at all about another son?” Nichols asked.
“Not that I’ve found so far.”
Nichols rolled his chair back to his desk and flipped through the file
folders stacked on top. “What we need is a DNA sample from her. Then
we try to match it to the corpse in the morgue. Next, we—”
“Exhume the jumper from two years ago and try to get a match to
the stiff and to the mom,” Stillman said, picking up the phone. “I’ll get the
warrant started.”