DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (38 page)

"You don't love me enough."

He shut his eyes. Of course he loved her, he loved them all. He just didn't love them enough, it was true, to marry, and that's where it always fell apart.

"You know the trouble I'm having," he said.

"I won't get in the way."

"I haven't lived with a woman since my divorce. It's better this way. Don't you know it's better?"

She sat up on an elbow and leaned over his chest. His hand automatically moved behind her and smoothed the velvety skin of her back. If they could just let this drop and return to making love, the night would be perfect again.

"Do we have to talk about this right now?" he asked. "How many have there been, Karl? How many in this bed? A dozen, two?"

Goddamnit. The whole night ruined.

"I don't keep score," he said. "I've never seen you this way. Why would you ask me something like that?"

"I thought I was different for you. I thought, after this long . . ."

Now she was going to cry. She had put her head on his chest and she was limp as a rag doll. He felt moisture on his skin. He tightened his arms around her.

"Lisa, don't. You are different. You're important to me. I don't know what I'd do without you."

That wasn't what she wanted to hear, stupid lines all men said to women. It wasn't enough and he knew it, but he couldn't help it, there was no more and that wasn't her fault, was it? She continued to silently cry. He lay there still, cold now, the sweat cooling on his body. He held her and waited, feeling like a bastard.

Lisa Golden had been a client for a couple of years, but nothing he'd tried to do to help her break out had worked. She was too ordinarily pretty and too moderately talented. She had nothing outstanding to offer Hollywood, nothing that would bring sparkle to the big screen, and the studios knew it without even giving her a screen test. Even Karl knew it, the first time he laid eyes on her, but you couldn't tell a young actress your misgivings and kill her dreams with such utter disregard. He had had to try despite the fact he'd be investing money in a losing proposition. This time, as he had expected, he failed.

Lisa left show business, coming to the conclusion her stars were not in alignment, her fate slated for another business. Besides, she was starving. Waitressing and studying acting at night kept her poverty-stricken. She had found work with a real estate broker, finally, as a representative. And excelled. Now she handled some of the biggest Beverly Hills and West Hollywood properties. Mega-million-dollar deals whose commissions allowed her to buy up a little condo here, a little cottage there. She was a dynamite businesswoman. She was already worth half as much as Karl, with no end in sight.

He admired Lisa's spunk. Pretty, cultured, and a go-getter. All rolled into one, the combination was irresistible to him. It was a plus, in his book, she wasn't involved in show business any longer.

But marry her? Let her move in with him or he with her? It was out of the question. He hadn't fallen in love with a woman but twice in his life. Once in college with a girl who went off to the Peace Corps and gotten a fatal tropical South African disease that killed her the year after he graduated. And one more time, years later, with Robyn. Oh hell, Robyn. It always came back to her. It was impossible she might be the one stalking him. It couldn't be.

As for love, he didn't think there was a third time left inside him. He's used up all his love, wasted and squandered it. The most he could feel for Lisa was deep affection and that was never enough, never enough, never. Savvy businesswoman or not, Lisa wanted the picket fence and the babies. She wanted a lifetime commitment. They all did and he didn't think that unreasonable. It just wasn't what he wanted.

Well, he did want that, why lie to himself? He turned his head to the side on the pillow and closed his eyes while Lisa cried.

He didn't know how to get it. Not again. Whenever he had tried for it before, the whole dream that was love had vanished before his eyes.

"It's dangerous enough you're here with me now," Karl said, stroking her hair. "I couldn't let you stay here."

"You really think someone might hurt you? Hurt me?"

They heard the front door crash shut and Karl was off the bed in a flash, his heart pounding. Lisa was right behind him, half falling from the bed and getting to her feet. He started from the bedroom, stopped and pushed her back roughly with his hand on the middle of her chest. "Don't come out here."

He realized only then he was naked and felt foolish, but not enough to stop going toward the front of the house. He snapped on lights as he went, dispelling shadows, his heart going crazy.

"Who the hell's there?"

The door was closed and no one was in the room. He hurried to the door and opened it, furious it wasn't locked. He had locked it earlier. He'd never go into the bedroom without the door locked.

He peered into the dark, down the brick walkway curving through red-blooming oleander and saw no one. He heard a car start somewhere on the street where he could not see. He turned, running through the house for the bedroom again. "I need my gun!" he said to Lisa. The shock had made white rings around her eyes so that she looked raccoonish in the dim bedroom lamplight. He reached in the bedside table drawer and took out a small Beretta.

He grabbed the bathrobe he'd discarded after his shower and threw it on. He ran back through the house again and to the front door, scampered down the walkway, looked up and down the street.

The car was gone. The street was empty save for a pair of taillights, dwindling red eyes that turned a far corner. He'd missed his chance to grab whoever had been in his house.

"Damnit," he said. His arms hung at his sides, the gun gripped tightly in the sweaty palm of his right hand. He felt defeated. It never worked the way it did in the movies. When Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies needed to tackle someone, he never missed. When he landed a blow, it took the other guy down. But in real life, going up against an enemy was more miss than hit. He wasn't a professional. He was just a man living on the edge, stumbling toward his own private Armageddon.

He trooped back to the front door and almost missed the creamy envelope stuck in the wood frame of the door facing. He reached out and took it, tore open the envelope and read:

How can you sleep with women like her when you know you love me? Your betrayal breaks my heart, Karl, it breaks my heart.

He wandered through the house and found Lisa still standing in the bedroom where he'd left her. She was shivering and had put on her slip. "Gone," he said. "If I hadn't been naked I could have caught her."

"Her? It's a woman?"

He put the gun back into the drawer and sat on the bed. He handed the note to Lisa. As she read it he said, "It has to be a woman. A jealous woman. A crazy one."

"How'd she get into your house? I saw you lock the door."

"You tell me," he said. Did she have a key? He'd change the goddamn locks. "I'll change the locks tomorrow. I'm tired of this. I'm so pissed off I feel like punching holes in the wall. She was in the house. She must have been watching us." He glanced over at the bedroom door and tried to remember if he'd shut it before they undressed and couldn't remember if he had or not.

She sat down on the mattress edge, but didn't try to touch him. "My heart's beating so fast it might jump out."

"Yeah, mine too. Now do you see why you can't stay here? It's not safe. If I didn't have all my possessions here, I'd abandon the goddamn house."

"You can't do that. You can't let her scare you off, that's what she wants."

"Does she?" He wondered. What did she want, anyway? And how much of their conversation had she heard? She had been at the door, listening, he knew it. He couldn't have closed the door. Why close it, when they thought they were alone in the house? She'd wanted to scare them, slamming shut the front door as she'd fled. She'd wanted him to run through the house naked and scared. She had played him like a virtuoso on a twelve-string guitar.

"Why didn't your alarm system go off?" Lisa asked. She had risen from the bed and was now slipping on the rest of her clothes. She was leaving and he didn't want her to, but he wouldn't say that. It was probably best she left. He'd never be able to make love to her now. That's what the intruder had wanted, wasn't it? The bitch, the damned bitch.

"Whoever it is keeps disconnecting the alarm system. She did it the first time she got into the house and I had it rewired. Now she must have done it again.

"I hate these notes!" He threw it on the floor, knowing how childish that must look.

Lisa was dressed and holding her purse, her car keys in one hand. "I'd never do this to you, Karl. You know that, don't you?"

He looked up, surprised. "Of course you wouldn't do this."

"I mean if we . . . if we stopped seeing one another. If it didn't work out. I'd never do something like this. People who can't control themselves give me nightmares. Too many people just can't seem to control their urges anymore. It's like people have given themselves a license to go insane if things don't work out for them."

He crossed the room and took her into his arms. "I know, I know."

"And I won't bring up us living together again until . . . well, until this is over."

Afterward, you'll ask about it, though, he thought sadly. There will be no way you won't ask again. And that's when I'll lose you for good.

He kissed her gently and walked her to the garage door off the kitchen and out to her car, a little yellow Miata. He stood watching her back down the drive to the street. Once she was out of sight he still stood at the garage door, looking into the still, peaceful night. He could smell the night jasmine that grew over the fence. It reminded him of his youth in Santa Monica when he was out on the streets at night with his friends. They had always been surrounded by the sweet scent of jasmine offset by the salty sea breezes.

He lowered the garage door and turned off the light. He would burn the note. He would place chairs beneath the doorknobs again. Tomorrow he would have the locks replaced and the wiring for the alarm system repaired. Not that he thought any of it would do any good.

Preventative measures weren't solutions.

He just didn't know the solution.

17

"Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents."

Marilyn Monroe,

Marilyn Monroe in Her Own Words

Marilyn Lori-Street hung up from talking with Karl. She sat scowling at the telephone handset on the coffee table a few seconds. Then she shrugged and let out a breath and went to the kitchen for cappuccino. A rich, dark, frothy cup would keep her awake too late, but she could take a sleeping tablet if it did.

She took the cup with her to the small studio area in her house. It was a small room done in pure white, with a wicker settee and little table, and a wicker rocker. The best thing about it was the exposure. Light flowed through the windows in three of the walls all day long. She loved her place in West Hollywood. She couldn't afford the rent in the better areas, not yet, but maybe after the release of Cam's film she might be able to. Still, she'd always remember this little house with the white rock garden and yucca plants. Besides, West Hollywood was particularly safe for a woman, she had been told. It was a gay community and women just weren't bothered in the neighborhood.

In the studio on an easel sat a watercolor pad of her latest little watercolor painting. Working on something would take her mind off Karl's veiled accusations. She painted oddities. Squatting men with their genitals excised, blood puddled between their knees. Bodies hung upside down on crosses on a dark field at night. Windmills with human arms that stroked the wind. Any horror that came into her mind, she painted. That way it was outside her, no longer inside where it festered and made her depressive.

She didn't try to understand what the paintings meant. They were hostile and demonic, that was easy enough to detect. They probably revealed the torture in her soul, but she couldn't interpret them beyond that. They just made her feel better, that's all, and sometimes one sold in a little gallery in L.A. where she let them be hung. She wondered what kind of people bought them. Crazies, no doubt. People as fucked up as she. The kind of people who used ice cream scoopers for marital aids and who went into their backyards at midnight to pray to Satan in the bowels of the earth.

She picked up a brush thick with scarlet watercolor paint and dipped it briefly in a cup of brown muddy water, then slashed a bold streak of the red across the sky of the painting on the easel. As she worked she tried to remember why she had come to Hollywood to pursue a life as an actress in the first place. She had been born Phillipa Lori Frankowitz and taken the name Marilyn Lori-Street when she hit town. Although Jews were in abundance in Hollywood society and many held powerful positions, she had the sense to know Frankowitz wouldn't do for onscreen credits. Lead actresses were once again beginning to use ethnic-sounding last names, but she didn't have the gumption. She also didn't have the time it would take to make a name like Frankowitz acceptable.

So she had named herself after her heroine, Marilyn Monroe—another woman with an unusable name when she came to this town. She had kept her own middle name, Lori. And she had added Street because . . .

She paused in her painting, the brush hovering inches from the wet canvas.

The street was bad. The street was hell on earth. She had been on the street a while, trying to make enough money to buy decent clothes and save enough for a safe place to live. The street had almost killed her before she even had a hundred bucks put back.

She had been beaten badly by a girl who believed Lori was stealing her street trade. Only a cop trolling past in a patrol car saved her from being marked ugly forever with a knife down her cheek.