Chasing Venus (29 page)

It’s where the Craig character gets slashed to death.
 
Like Michael was.

The words throbbed
before her eyes.
 
She was so lost in
a wild rush of thoughts that she didn’t register the front door opening.
 
But she did note the foyer chandelier
switching on.
 
And the sound of
Luto’s
bounding paws clicking across the tiled foyer.

Her head spun in that
direction.
 
Her heart took off on a
mad rampage.
 
And a cry rose from
her belly and stalled in her throat.

For who stood in the
doorway but Frankie.

Panic froze Annie on
the ladder.
 
She watched Frankie
advance a step or two into the foyer, his stringy brown hair pulled back into
its usual untidy ponytail, his face flushed an unpleasant shade of red.
 
His eyes bored into hers.
 
Many of the muscles from his Frankie
“The Pitchfork” days had gone to fat but he was still a giant of a man.
 
He reached behind him and swatted his
huge front door shut.
 
The house
shuddered as wood smacked wood.

He narrowed his eyes at
her.
 
“Who the hell are you?
 
And what the fuck are you doing in my
house?”

He doesn’t recognize me
.
 
She’d forgotten she was sporting a whole new look.
 
Annie felt a surge of relief that lasted
a nanosecond.
 
She’d intruded into
Frankie’s home because she suspected him of being a serial killer and now she
was frighteningly vulnerable to him.
 
Smaller.
 
Slower.
 
Weaker.
 
And at the moment, pinned on the
bookcase ladder as if she were a specimen for inspection.
 
Holding his stare, she forced her
trembling legs down one ladder rung and then the next, feeling her way,
terrified of falling, and trying hard not to succumb to the fear that gathered
in her gut.

Luto
bounded toward his master, tail wagging, but backed off when he didn’t get so
much as a pat.
 
The dog followed
Frankie’s gaze and no doubt sensed the dangerous new vibration in his den.
 
He squared his body against Annie and
let loose a low growl.

Frankie made a sudden
move in her direction and she lurched away.
 
Michael’s novel slipped from her hand
and tumbled across the hardwood.
 
Frankie bent to pick it up, allowing Annie to skitter behind the desk
and put something large and immovable between her and him.
 
He straightened as he read the book’s
cover.
 
Again he turned his gaze on
her.
 
His eyes roamed her face.
 
In moments his expression skidded from
bewilderment to recognition to stunned surprise.

“Annie?”
 
He moved a step closer, then halted as
if he thought better of closing the distance between them.
 
“Is that you?”
 
He squinted at her, plainly
astonished.
 
“You went blond?”

A surreal question.
 
She didn’t know if it meant disaster or
salvation.
 
Her hand flitted
nervously over her hair, short and spiky to the touch.
 
“I dyed it.”

“I can see that.
 
Why?
 
Oh—”
 
His Adam’s apple worked.
 
“That’s right.”
 
He backed off a step.
 
Annie had the idea, astonishing as it
was, that
he
was afraid of
her
.
 
He spoke again.
 
“What’re you doing here?
 
You—”
 
He gave a wild look around.
 
“You broke in?”

She didn’t answer.
 
Instead she struggled to take long deep
breaths rather than quick shallow ones, which were doing little to slow her
heartbeat or fill her lungs with oxygen.
 
Could she make a break for it?
 
Try a mad dash for the front door, or go through the study windows,
which were now at her back.
 
Like
some TV detective she could throw her shoulders through the paned glass, then
tumble onto the lawn and head for the street …

“You know you hit
number one on the
Times
list?”
 
Frankie shook his head and
chuckled.
 
“I couldn’t believe
it.
 
I mean …”
 
He looked at her with something akin to
admiration.
 
“It’s damn
amazing.
 
I think you’ll be there
for weeks.”

She stared at him.
 
It was an odd time to be having a
conversation about her book sales.
 
“I have to say …”
 
Her voice
sounded thin and weak.
 
She tried
again.
 
“I have to say, with
everything going on, I haven’t really thought about the bestseller lists.”

“I guess not.”
 
He gave her another of those quizzical
looks.
 
“So how you doing?”

“I’m surviving.”

“You’ve never been
hotter.
 
As an author, I mean.”

“This was one hell of a
way to get there.”

“You’re not
kidding.
 
You’ve been all over the
news.
 
APB and everything.
 
It’s incredible.”
 
He laughed again, a nervous sound which
quickly faded.
 
Again she had the
impression that he was afraid of her.
 
“So where you been hiding out?”

“Here and there.”

“You don’t want to tell
me?”

“Not really.”

It was strange how much
she couldn’t tell Frankie now.
 
He’d
never been much of a confidant but before this she’d had no reason to distrust
him.
 
Now here she was, wondering if
he’d betrayed her in the most grotesque of ways.

And maybe he planned to
do still worse.
 
Frankie wasn’t
giving off any killer vibes, but she remembered with picture-perfect clarity
the straight razor upstairs.
 
She remembered
Michael when she’d found him, his throat a screaming slash of horror.

She and Frankie hit a
wall of silence, their gazes locked.
 
Luto
looked from one to the other as if
wondering which would break the impasse.
 
It was Frankie who did.
 
“So
you didn’t tell me, Annie.
 
What’re
you doing here?”

She hesitated.
 
Then, “I came to ask you something.”

“Shoot.
 
I mean …”
 
He held up his hands.
 
“What do you want to know?”

There it was again, the
intimation that he was afraid of her.
 
He was behaving as if he were, staying a distance away and keeping
Luto
by his side as if for security.
 
It gave her a momentary burst of
confidence.

“There’s only one thing
I want to know, Frankie.
 
Who the
killer is.”

He frowned.
 
“The killer?”

“Who do you think it
is?”

He blinked, looked
away, then back at her.
 
His voice
was nearly a whisper.
 
“It’s not
you?”

She forced herself not
to react.
 
“It’s got to be somebody
who’s got a grudge against the victims, don’t you think?”

He said nothing, just
stared at her.

“Somebody who was in
all the locations.
 
And doesn’t it
make sense that it’s somebody who knows the business inside out?”
 
She was on a dangerous path here, she
knew.
 
And yet she wanted to find
out if this line of questioning provoked a reaction from Frankie.
 
“Somebody,” she went on, “who feels
people have done him wrong.”

She stopped.
 
Luto
emitted
another low growl, as if he grasped where she was headed faster than his master
did.

A second later
Frankie’s synapses fired.
 
He jabbed
a thumb at his own chest.
 
“Are you
talking about
me
?”
 
His voice rose and broke as if he were a
teenaged boy.
 
“Are you accusing
me
?”

“Everybody knows how
angry you were when Maggie fired you.”
 
She was amazed how steady her voice sounded even as her heart flailed at
the walls of her chest.
 
“Then Michael
did the same thing.
 
That could
provide a motive, Frankie.
 
Revenge.
 
And money is
another.
 
You lost all your
bestselling authors.
 
So you needed
one.
 
And now you’ve got me.”

“So you’re saying I
killed two birds with one stone?
 
Murdered a few authors and then framed another?”

“I guess I am.”

That sent him hurtling
toward the desk.
 
She stumbled
backward a few steps, stretching her left arm out behind her so she wouldn’t
trip and fall.
 
Her fingers touched
the wall that separated the study from the foyer.
 
Now, she realized, she wasn’t all that
far from the front door.
 
It was
just a few long strides around the wall and across the foyer.

“I cannot effing
believe this.”
 
Frankie’s mouth
twisted as he leaned over the desk.
 
“If anybody has a financial motive, it’s you.
 
You’ve been scraping rock bottom ever
since Philip dumped you.
 
But that’s
all over now.”

“There’s no way I
could’ve predicted I’d become a bestseller if I killed off the competition.”

“You’re saying
I
could’ve predicted it.”
 
His fleshy jowls flushed a new shade of
red.
 
“I cannot believe you’d accuse
me of this.
 
After everything we’ve
been through.”

“You were in all the
locations.
 
The conference where
Seamus got shot.
 
Maggie’s
party.
 
You could easily have been
in Connecticut when Elizabeth was stabbed.
 
And what was to stop you from driving down to Corona del Mar and doing
in Michael?
 
It’s not far.
 
Where were you on Monday night, anyway?”

“For your information,
I was in New York.”

“Can you prove it?”

“As if I have to, to
you!”
 
His voice rose to the
ceiling, rattled the cherry-paneled walls.
 
It was The Pitchfork come back to life in the most jarring of places,
this gracious home.
 
“I took the
redeye to JFK Sunday night.
 
All day
Monday I was in the city.
 
I had
dinner at David’s with Rita
Salvoy
.
 
8 o’clock reservation.
 
Check it out if you think I’m so damn
guilty.”

David’s was a favorite
restaurant for the publishing crowd.
 
It was a See and Be Seen location.
 
If Frankie had been there with honcho editor Rita
Salvoy
,
he would have been duly noted.
 
If
it was true, it was an iron-clad alibi for Michael’s murder.

Meaning Frankie could
not have been the killer.

Meaning Annie had been
wrong.

Meaning all that was
left was to get out of there.
 
Before Frankie dialed 911.

Frankie stood just the
other side of the desk, panting with anger, his eyes spitting fire.

“Forget I was ever
here,” she said, then spun on her heels and sprinted toward the foyer.
 
Go
.
 
She heard a commotion behind her, then a
loud bark and a muffled oath.

No time to think.
 
She was in the foyer.
 
A few yards away was the big front
door.
 
She wrenched it open and ran
through the portal into the chilly night air.
 
Behind her she heard a crashing sound,
the front door slamming back against the foyer wall.
 
Down the curving stone path to the
street, almost slipping, almost twisting her ankle, not quite.
 
A right turn onto the sidewalk, faster
than ever.
 
Was anyone following?
 
Frankie or
Luto
?
 
She didn’t know.
 
She’d have to double back later for her
carryall but she couldn’t worry about that now.
 
Don’t
look back
.

Her legs pumped.
 
Her heart kept up the same stampeding
rhythm.
 
She had no idea what was
ahead of her, except for one thing.

Square one.

*

At 10:02, Reid had
abandoned his house.
 
He drove as
slowly as he could, his eyes raking the Hollywood foot traffic, seeking
Annie.
 
His cell rang for the first
time all night and his heart lurched.
 
He kept his foot on the gas as he answered the call, his hope rising
when the caller registered as unknown.
 
Pay phone?