Fade to Black (14 page)

First thing tomorrow, she’s going to get rid of him, as she’s been promising herself for months, years now. She’s on a freelance basis anyway these days, having refused to renew her contract with him. He simply hasn’t helped her career lately. If anything, he’s hindered it.

So it’s settled. She’ll go on her own for a while, until she can land a decent agent. Maybe Flynn can recommend someone.

She strides back across the room to the door, which she’d left ajar in her haste to get to the answering machine.

Not a good idea in this neighborhood, in a building that doesn’t have security.

She thinks longingly of the old days, a few years back, when she was living in a rented house behind electronic gates in Pacific Palisades.

Roles had been easier to come by back then.

She likes to think it was her youth and talent that had made her more sought after men than she has been lately.

But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that her erstwhile success was primarily due to her association with me legendary Mallory Eden.

During the first year after her friend’s death, she had found herself with enough work so that she could actually be a little choosy. Nothing major had come her way—certainly no leads in blockbuster films or even decent roles in indies.

But in two big-budget movies she had played Nicole Kidman’s loyal friend, and Glenn Close’s loyal sister—thankless background roles, really, but she was working. Then she had been cast—for a few blissful weeks, until the project’s financial backing fell apart—as the suicidal war bride of Gary Sinese for a high-profile period picture, in what had promised to be a challenging, career-making role.

After that, things went downhill.

There were more bit parts with waning visibility, and then the lead as the long-suffering wife of a stand-up comedy buffoon in that quickly canceled television sitcom, and finally, her role as Rainbow Weber on
Morning, Noon, and Night
.

An out-of-work soap opera actress—that’s what she is now.

Just a down-and-out loser whose only value to the Hollywood-hungry media is her connection to Mallory Eden.

It isn’t fair. She’s not even dead when she’s dead
, Rae thinks grimly, going into her small bedroom and turning on the bedside lamp.

Her gaze falls on a framed snapshot of Mallory on her dresser, and she feels a stab of guilt.

But then she thinks of a guy she dated briefly last year, the one who had actually seemed interested in
her
, until she realized that he kept telling her how much she looked like Mallory Eden. He spent their first and second dates asking her what the famous actress had really been like, and whether Rae thought she had actually killed herself.

She couldn’t get rid of the jerk, who clearly didn’t know or care who Rae Hamilton is.

Not many people ever have.

Not even her own parents, stuffy East Coast professionals who sent her to Yale, expecting her to become a doctor like her father or a lawyer like her mother. Instead, she had majored in drama.

They had always been distant toward their only child, but once she drifted from the path they had chosen for her, she might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.

She hasn’t heard from them in months. They call to check in every once in a while, ostensibly hoping to hear that she’s decided to give up on this show business foolishness, come home, become a doctor—or marry one.

She sits on the edge of the bed and peels off her black sheer stockings, then stands again and strips off the halter-top cocktail dress.

In the bathroom she removes her eye makeup, washes her face, and brushes her teeth, all the while cursing Buddy Charles for not landing her better auditions.

If only Flynn Soderland had signed her on when she’d approached him years ago. By now he could have done for her what he did for Mallory.

But he had given her some lame excuse about his client list being too full, not giving her enough credit for knowing a classic agent brush-off.

It’s a wonder she keeps in touch with him after all these years, especially now that he’s retired. Well, all that ties them together is Mallory’s ghost.

Mallory’s ghost …

She shudders at the very idea, and it isn’t the first time it’s crossed her mind.

They’d had a conversation about it once, her and Mallory. They were drinking wine up in Big Sur, lounging lazily at dusk on the porch at some remote inn, when somehow the conversation had turned to the death of Mallory’s grandmother, who had raised her.

“I used to lie in bed at night and wait for her spirit to appear to me,” Mallory had said so solemnly that Rae had burst out laughing.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” she had asked her friend.

“I don’t know, Rae. If anyone was going to come back as a ghost, it would have been Gran. She had a real flair for drama, and she used to love to sneak up on people, see them jump. She would probably enjoy going around as a ghost. But then, maybe she’s so peaceful wherever she is that she doesn’t feel the need to come back. I hope that’s the case.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want anyone’s ghost coming around to haunt me.”

“Not even if it were me?” Mallory had asked, the teasing sparkle back in her impossibly blue eyes. “You wouldn’t be afraid, would you, Rae?”

“Of a ghost? You bet I would.”

“Not if it were my ghost.”

“I’d be afraid of anyone’s ghost, Mallory. Ever see
The Shining?
”

“Ever see
Beetlejuice?
I would be a fun ghost, Rae. And I could fill you in on all the details about what’s waiting on the other side. Aren’t you curious?”

“Okay, maybe a little.”

“Well, if I die before you do, I’ll come back and fill you in. I promise I won’t spook you with chains or make stuff float around or anything. I’ll just pop in and say, ‘Hey, Rae, it’s me.’”

They had started laughing at the idea of Mallory casually dropping in on her as a ghost, and had gone on drinking their wine.

But Rae has never forgotten her friend’s promise.

And it has never ceased to disturb her.

So far, Mallory hasn’t made an appearance.

But it doesn’t mean Rae isn’t always a little on edge when she’s alone at night, waiting and wondering....

E
lizabeth stretches and looks at the clock.

Nine
A.M.

She’s been hunched over the green felt fabric for three hours already.

She hadn’t risen at dawn intentionally, even though she’d been concerned about not getting started on the costume yesterday.

The fact is, she hadn’t slept at all last night, and it had nothing to do with the uncomfortably humid weather and the fact that she couldn’t open her windows for whatever slight relief that might offer.

Finally, when she heard the birds starting to sing outside her window, she figured she might as well get up and get busy on Manny’s costumes.

Now, as she sets her sewing aside and goes into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, she allows her mind to wander back to Harper Smith.

He was in her thoughts throughout the restless night.

She had alternated between wishing she could see him again because she’s so attracted to him …

And being terrified that he’s the one who’s been terrorizing her all along.

After all …

He’s new in town.

He’s from the West Coast.

He was noticeably cagey when she asked him about his past.

And what about her strange feeling that she had seen him someplace before?

For some reason, she keeps thinking that it hadn’t been here in town, or recently.

She keeps thinking that it had been a long time ago, in California.

But that might just be her paranoia creeping in.

Then again, it might not.

What if the reason she recognizes him is that he’s the obsessed fan who was stalking her?

She has often wondered over the years if her attacker was someone whose face she had glimpsed in the throngs of people who were always crowding around to see her. Maybe she had talked to him, smiled at him, even signed an autograph for him, feeding his sick fantasies.

And maybe he’s Harper Smith.

The evidence points in that direction, though all of it’s circumstantial.

And she can’t quite convince herself that she has anything to fear from the man whose presence attracted rather than repelled her when they were alone together here yesterday.

Besides …

He’s a locksmith.

A locksmith wouldn’t break into someone’s house by smashing a basement window and kicking in a door.

A locksmith would know how to get in undetected.

A locksmith could probably come and go without anyone knowing he had been there, if he wanted to.

So …

If he’s not the stalker, then Harper Smith is simply a man whose mere presence aroused feelings of lust that she had long ago buried.

And Harper Smith just happens to be new in town, cagey about his past, from the West Coast....

And vaguely familiar.

Why?

She knows she should stay as far away from him as possible in the next few days, before she leaves town.

And she will leave town.

She has no choice.

Her only regret is that she won’t be able to tell Manny why she’s going, or even say good-bye.

No, that’s not her
only
regret.

She regrets, too, that if Harper Smith really is simply a nice, normal man—just a nice local locksmith who makes her lonely heart go pitter-patter—she will never see him again.

“A
re you all done eating, Hannah?” Pamela asks the two-year-old, eyeing the untouched half-slice of peanut butter toast remaining on her plastic Barney plate.

“All done.”

“You didn’t eat your toast.”

“Hannah eat bananas.”

“I see that you ate your bananas. And you drank all your milk too. But what about your toast?”

“Hannah no like toast. Watch Elmo now?”

Pamela sighs. “All right.”

She settles her daughter in the living room in front of
Sesame Street
, then returns to the kitchen.

She fights the urge to go to the cupboard and get a Pop-Tart. She buys them for Frank, but finds herself sneaking them herself, even though they’re not the low-fat kind. She’s constantly hungry lately. It has to be because she’s nursing.

As soon as she weans Jason, she’ll go back to having a normal appetite.

She’ll be able to eat slimming foods like salads. Lettuce and tomatoes are off limits to nursing mothers, according to the pediatrician. Lettuce gives the baby gas through the breast milk, and tomatoes make the milk too acidic.

Pamela turns away from the cupboard, telling herself she doesn’t need to eat a Pop-Tart right now. She’ll only be angry with herself later.

A rare private moment, she realizes, sitting at the table and picking up the barely touched mug of coffee she’d poured an hour earlier. Coffee is something else she’s supposed to be avoiding while she’s breastfeeding, but one cup now and then can’t hurt.

She’d poured some for Frank too, hoping they could sit at the table together for five minutes before he left for work.

But he’d dumped his into a plastic Dunkin’ Donuts travel mug and taken it with him, saying he was late.

He had left without kissing her good-bye.

Well, he was in a hurry
, she tells herself, trying not to think about the early days of their marriage, when they would eat breakfast together after making love and showering together, when he would leave her at the door with a lingering kiss.

This is what happens when you have children
, Pamela decides.
The romance vanishes
.

But it can’t happen to everyone, can it? There must be parents out there who are still crazy about each other, who still kiss passionately and make love every night....

Every night.

Try once a year. If I’m lucky
.

She clutches the mug in both hands, elbows propped on the table, pondering the problem. It can’t be as bad as it seems. Maybe she just has a touch of postpartum depression.

But you had the baby over two months ago
.

So?

Is there a cap on the postpartum depression period?

Anyway …

Our marriage isn’t abnormal. We’re both just exhausted, and busy. Once things settle down…

But when will that be? When Hannah and Jason are grown and living on their own? How do other couples manage to keep the passion alive?

Pamela decides to bring up the topic at Wednesday’s play group, then just as quickly decides against it. The last thing she wants to do is admit to the other moms—all of them nearly as slim and beautiful as damned Elizabeth next door—that her sex life is less than perfect.