The Night Visitor (25 page)

“There is definitely something strange going on with Rory, but it’s best to handle it on an outpatient basis, not by sending her to some place in Mexico. What is that place? Some across-the-border loony bin? How would we even get her there?”

“It can be done, Tom. I think it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t know how it could be done, other than kidnapping Rory. I won’t participate in that.”

“Tom, Rory is in danger from more than her own mind.” Evelyn paused until the waiter took her empty martini and replaced it with a fresh one. “Detective Auburn is digging into Anya’s murder again. Dr. Templeton called me. He’s an old friend and was Anya’s gynecologist. He said that Detective Auburn came to his office with a search warrant for Anya’s file. Can you imagine? Gives me the creeps, thinking of that detective pawing through my baby’s medical records. He wanted to find out if Anya was pregnant when she died.”

“Was she?”

“Yes, she was.”

Tom didn’t disguise his surprise.

“I know where that detective’s going with this. If Anya was pregnant with Junior’s baby, Auburn could use that as a motive for Rory to have murdered her.” Evelyn took a glance around, and gestured for him to move closer to her. She lowered her voice. “To tell you the truth, the way Rory’s been acting lately, I’ve begun to wonder whether maybe she did shoot Anya and Junior.”

Tom sat straight and frowned at her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Look, someone around here has to have the guts to tell it like it is.”

“Evelyn, I think you’re making too much of Auburn and his search warrant. Anya’s pregnancy is new information and he’s following up on it, that’s all. It has nothing to do with Rory. Our job now is to stop this crazy speculating, get Rory out of Casa del Fuente, and find the right professionals who can help her.”

“You’re being naïve, Tom. We’re going to lose Rory unless we protect her from herself and the police. Dr. Ostermann can keep her for a month at most and that’s only if some court referee agrees.”

The waiter brought Tom’s to-go order and the check. Tom quickly finished his coffee and tossed some cash onto the table. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

52

At Case del Fuente, Rory spent all the time she could in the TV room. A couple of TV-addicted patients loved the bogus courtroom shows with Judge Abrasive and Judge Worse presiding. Rory wasn’t much for TV but had discovered that the TV room had the best view of the door into the locked ward.

She knew that Junior grasped their predicament. Maybe not all the details, but he sensed the gravity of her situation. She could tell that Junior was trying to stay as quiet as possible, to sublimate his thoughts to hers. She needed to focus on her situation now, to watch and listen, and in that, he could help her. They tried not to panic.

She felt him weaken. The Casa del Fuente saga had drained both of them. He slept most of the time now. She felt the serenity of his sleep, as relaxing as a hot bath. Through it, she sensed his life force. His desire to live was powerful, but his body was failing. She tried to infuse him with her own vitality, but his physical ailments were proving stronger than she was, stronger than both of them. Junior held on, but he didn’t have much time left.

She had to get out of this place.

A young man with unkempt, long hair lingered in the doorway to the TV room and stared at Rory. “I know you,” he said.

She ignored him.

He rubbed his forehead. “You’re, ah…Gwyneth Paltrow.”

When she still didn’t respond, he muttered something about just trying to be friendly and wandered off.

A television soap opera droned on.

Anya had had a recurring role in a soap opera while she was living in Manhattan. Their mom had been ecstatic and recorded all the episodes. Rory and Paige came to the villa and binge-watched them with Evelyn, drinking champagne and eating popcorn. Anya played a
femme fatale,
of course, who ended up being murdered by the girlfriend of the man she was having an affair with.

After Anya’s overbaked death scene, they all applauded and called Anya on Skype. Anya wanted to know what they thought. They were complimentary. Anya said, “Seriously?” and acted out her death scene again, pouring on the drama even more. At the end, she had burst out laughing and said, “And that, ladies, is why I’m giving up acting,” making them all choke on their champagne and laugh until their sides had hurt.

Rory thought about one of the last times she’d seen Anya. It was in her office at Langtry Cosmetics in their art deco building on Hollywood Boulevard a few weeks before Anya’s murder. Anya was late, as usual, for a photo shoot for the Langtry fall line. She came into Rory’s office without knocking and draped herself diagonally across the leather couch, her feet on the back and her head nearly touching the floor. She was wearing the mink-lined denim jacket that Rory had found in her car with the drugstore receipt in the pocket.

“Hey, li’l sis.” Anya chomped on a wad of pink bubble gum and looked at Rory upside down.

Rory glanced up from her work. “Please tell me that’s a wig and that you didn’t cut your hair.”

Anya’s short bob fell away from her forehead toward the floor. She played with the jet-black locks. “Wig. Woke up too late for a shampoo. Anya can’t be seen in public with dirty hair.”

Rory’s sister sometimes referred to herself in the third person as if she were a product.

“Late night?”

Anya shook with that belly laugh of hers, her lean, bare midriff contracting. “No. I’m just tired. Not hungover. You’d be proud of me. But I need more coffee. Can you get me some please? A double-shot latte. Decaf.”

“Decaf?”

“Making some changes.”

Rory pressed the intercom button on her phone. “Lindsay, a double-shot decaf latte for the princess.” She looked at her sister. “Nonfat?”

“Ugh. Full fat. And raw sugar. One packet. And stir it well.”

“Did you get that, Lindsay? And I’ll take a tall half caf and half decaf. Thank you.” She said to Anya, “You’re such a diva.”

“I learned at the knee of one of the best.”

Rory picked up the phone. “I’ll let Gilles know you’re here.” She made a call. “Gilles. Guess who finally showed up? Merci.”

“Dear Gilles. My magician.” Anya swung her longs legs off the back of the couch, the stiletto heels of her pumps striking a brass floor lamp and making it ring. “So, how are you, li’l sis?”

Rory set down her pen. She still wasn’t used to Anya being a routine part of her life again and didn’t quite know what to make of it, especially in a business setting. “I’m good.”

“That painter boyfriend of yours is coming along great on my portrait.” As usual, she said it as if Junior were a housepainter on purpose. “How can you stand him touching you with those paint hands, all up under his fingernails and everything?”

“I like it just fine. And he’s my fiancé.”

There was a knock on the door. Rory’s assistant carried in the coffees and handed Anya’s to her.

“Thank you, Lindsay,” Rory said.

“Thanks, doll.” Anya popped the lid off her cup and took a sip, then licked the foam from her lips. “So, I’m thinking of retiring from modeling.”

“Really?”

“I’m twenty-five. Model years are like dog years, you know?”

“You’re telling me this after we’ve just announced that you’re the face of Langtry.”

“Ro, lose that deer-in-the-hea
dlights look. It means that I’ll be available to do more promotion for Langtry. You and me, we can send this thing flying. Big time. And maybe I’ll do what all retired supermodels do: marry a rich man.” She sipped her coffee and looked at Rory over the rim of the cup with those famous sable eyes, the left angled slightly higher than the right.

Rory sat back and crossed her legs. She was enjoying talking to Anya. They hadn’t talked like this in a long time. She knew that everything could change in a nanosecond and go to hell in a blustering stream of cutting remarks between them. But at this moment, she was enjoying herself.

“Thought things had chilled between you and Jonah.”

Anya looked mischievous. “There are a lot of fish in the sea.”

“Why so secretive?”

There was a sharp knock on the door and Rory said, “Come in.”

Gilles, the makeup artist, entered.

Anya took his hand that he held out and let him pull her up. They kissed each other’s cheeks and then Gilles stepped back and gave her a hard look.

Anya grinned at him. “Gilles, I was just saying that you’re a magician.”

“I am, but I am not a miracle worker. Your face is puffy. Dark circles under your eyes. Anya, Anya, Anya.”

“Gilles, you’re the only one who can get away with talking to me like that.”

He again took her hand and started with her toward the door.
“Allons-y.
Let’s go.”

She stuck her head back into the room before she left. “Hey, Ro. Have to tell you something. You’re the best.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Seriously. This whole place. Langtry. You came up with the idea, got the money—you had to bend over for the Tates, but you got it—you hired the best people in the business, convinced them that this was the only place they should be, and you’ve managed to keep me in line. You’re dope, sis. Just wanted you to know.”

With that, Anya was gone.

In the TV room of the Casa del Fuente, Rory stared at the television, not seeing it. Tears streamed down her face, but no one paid any attention.

A loud ruckus jolted Rory back to reality. A new patient was being brought in, unwillingly. Other patients wandered in to watch the commotion. Rory stood to watch but she didn’t care about the struggle. She was looking at the locked door to the ward. It was fully open and no one seemed to notice.

Rory crept sideways down the corridor, nearly reaching the open door. An orderly closed it before she got there and gave Rory a disdainful look.

The still-struggling patient was hustled away.

Rory moved from the door and leaned her back against the wall. She let herself slide to the floor, then reached behind her and tucked into the waistband of her pants the cell phone that had flown from one of the orderlies’ pocket. She went to her room and closed the door.

53

Auburn squinted as if it would make him hear better. “Say again?”

The voice on the other end of the line was nearly inaudible.

Auburn shouted “Quiet, please” to the group gathered near his desk. They moved their conversation a few feet away.

“Rory? Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” She didn’t want him to know where she was and risk discrediting what she was going to say as the ramblings of a deranged person. She needed him to believe her. “My cell phone signal isn’t good.”

She was fully clothed and standing in the shower in her room. The water was on and she was trying to avoid the spray. She knew it wouldn’t be long before they’d come searching for the missing cell phone.

“In the loft at Five Points…” She was rushing, jumbling her words. “The Killingsworth Building.”

“Yes.” Auburn drank the last of his coffee and tossed the Styrofoam cup into a wastebasket under his desk.

“There were two paintings that had been slashed.”

“One painting. The nude of Anya.” That juicy fact about the crime had been released to the public.

“No. There were two.”

Anya’s murder book was on his desk. He didn’t need to double-check this but he did anyway. “Hang on.”

Looking through the crime-scene photos, he found a photo of the two easels. One had a portrait of Anya on it, slashed. Each time the blade had entered at Anya’s face.

“There was just one. Rory, what are you getting at?”

“But there were two easels side by side.”

“Yes.”

“There was a painting on the second easel that night. Slashed like the other one. Removed before the police got there.”

“By who?”

“The murderer.”

“Is this something you saw in one of your dreams?”

“Sure. Leave it at that.” Rory accidentally stepped into the shower spray, getting halfway wet. “Detective, this is important. You have to find that second painting. You have to believe me.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Look, Junior slipped in Anya’s blood, didn’t he?”

This was a detail that had always troubled Auburn. She gave the explanation that he’d always felt was correct, that didn’t jibe with the official story.

“Junior didn’t know Anya’s body was on the floor behind the orange velvet couch. In the moonlight, he saw the paintings were slashed. He went over to them and slipped in Anya’s blood. That’s when someone came up behind him and shot him in the head.”

Auburn turned to a photograph of the smeared blood with Junior’s footprints in it. “Are you still at your mother’s house? I’ll come see you.”

“We don’t need to speak in person. Look, no matter what anyone says about me, I’m telling you the truth. I wasn’t there that night but I know what happened. Oh, crap.” She heard the door to her room open. “And that rhinestone cell phone—”

“Hand it over, now.” A male orderly had come into the bathroom and was holding his hand out for the phone.

Rory blurted, “It—”