One of Those Malibu Nights (4 page)

Still, Mac Reilly’s housekeeping was not what she was here for, and she tugged on the bellpull, which was in the
form of a cracked brass captain’s bell, long since oxidized to an almost matching green. She waited. And waited some more. She jangled the bell again, anxious now. He
had
to be here.

Stepping from the shower, Mac heard it ring. He glanced at the clock. Because of Perrin he was running late. As it was he would just about make the flight. He knew it couldn’t be his assistant, who was due to arrive any minute to drive him to the airport, because Roddy had his own key.

Cursing, he wrapped a towel around his loins then ran to open the door. And found himself looking into the eyes of one of the most famous and most beautiful women in the world.

She was wearing a gray cashmere hoodie, matching pants and Reeboks that were so pristinely white, Mac figured she must have bought them specially for the occasion. He corrected himself quickly. A woman like Allie Ray probably had a dozen pairs, all new, sitting in her closet, and she probably never wore them twice.

Allie stared back at him, waiting for him to take it in that it was really
her
standing on his doorstep. Then she gave him the smile that had charmed moviegoers for over a decade.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I must have caught you in the shower.”

Brought back to reality, Mac hitched up the towel. He
apologized for his appearance and invited her into the tiny square that constituted his front hall.

Allie stared at the dog as it bounded lopsidedly toward her. Pirate gave her the usual investigative sniff, then sat back on his haunch, allowing her a full view of his one eye and goofy smile.

Catching her shocked look, Mac said quickly, “His name is Pirate. After Long John Silver. In
Treasure Island
. Y’know: the wooden leg, the eye patch.” She frowned and he added, “Hey listen, it was better than the alternative. He was almost dead when I found him.”

Allie bent to pat Pirate’s head. Sliding the cashmere hood from her pale blond hair, which was pinned in a loose ponytail, she walked into the living room.

With her hair like that, Mac thought she looked like the college version of Barbie. Except for those eyes of course, which when she fixed them on him, had a haunting quality, like diving into a turquoise tropical sea where troubling undercurrents tugged at you.

Excusing himself, he hurried to put on shorts and a T-shirt.

When he came back he found her looking round his comfortable, if shabby, domain. At the squashy old sofas covered in a variety of plaid rugs, most of which Pirate called home, when he wasn’t sleeping on Mac’s bed that is. At the beat-up black leather La-Z-Boy with a cup holder where Mac stashed his beer and pretzels, with the flap on
the side for the remote, and that little leg-lifting device that, if the Lakers game wasn’t so hot, relaxed a guy so much it could put him right to sleep.

Allie’s gaze moved to the old surfboard that in a fit of artistic triumph Mac had painted gold and converted into a coffee table. Then on to the mélange of wicker chairs surrounding the squat, solid-looking oak table, bought by Sunny at a flea market and which she swore was a valuable antique. Mac had told her he was hanging on to it so when that rainy day came he could make his fortune.

Allie had moved on to his eclectic art collection, if so proper a term could be used for the colorful canvases on Mac’s walls, most of which he’d picked up on visits to new young artists in their Venice Beach studios, at prices that had left him worried, and wondering if he’d left them starving in their garrets.

Allie took in the sea grass rugs on the wooden floors, the shutters flapping at the window, the faux-zebra rug in front of the fifties white-brick fireplace, the unmatched lamps, and the collection of candles and votives, courtesy of Sunny.

She gave Mac that haunted turquoise look again. “I envy you,” she said, surprising him. “You have exactly what you want. You’re a lucky man.”

“There’s no need for envy, particularly coming from a woman like you.”

She perched on the edge of the dog-hairy sofa, looking
up at him. “Tell me, Mr. Reilly, what exactly do you know about women like me?”

She had put him on the spot. Did he tell her the truth about what he’d heard she was? Or did he go for the comfort factor? Tactfully, he took the middle path.

“I know you came from a poor background, that you married well. Several times. I know that you’re a famous actress.”

Allie ran a hand through her pale blond hair, lifting her ponytail and shaking it free from the folds of the cashmere hood. “Do you know what despair is, Mr. Reilly?” she asked quietly. “Do you know what it is to arrive at the realization that there is only one way you are going to get out of the stifling small town you lived in, away from the alcoholic father, and from the worn-out, depressed mother you dread becoming?”

A shudder shook her slender frame and she frowned. “Away from the brutality and the grinding poverty, and the stifling grayness of a life with no prospect of a silver lining. Away from the small-town high school football heroes who lied about their conquests with the shy pretty blond teenager simply to add to their own macho luster. And away from the preacher who from the pulpit kept on spelling out a life of damnation for the fallen, and then afterward would try to grope you?”

She stopped and gave Mac that haunted look again. “Do you know what it feels like, Mr. Reilly, to wake up to the fact
that in order to get out of there, there is only one thing you can sell. And that is your beauty. Because that’s all you have.”

Her sigh dredged up like an ill wind from her past. “At least,” she said, looking squarely at him, “if I had to do it, I decided it would be to the highest bidder. There was just one rule. He had to marry me.”

“And you stuck to your plan?”

“I married rich men. And I kept my part of the bargain. I was a good wife for a while. But eventually they got bored with looking at me, I guess. Anyway, I had always wanted to be an actress—a movie actress. And now I have all the money in the world—and possibly even more when Ron Perrin comes through with the divorce settlement. Not that I need it. I’m successful in my own right, more successful than some men. And y’know what, Mr. Reilly? I’m still not a happy woman.”

Her eyes met his. “You’re judging me, because I told you the truth.” She lifted a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “Obviously you don’t know what it is to have no choice.”

Mac said nothing because it was true. Yet he understood.

She got to her feet and went and stood close to him. “Look into my face,” she said. “What do you see written here?”

Actually, Mac could see nothing. Although she must have been coming up to forty, there were no time wrinkles,
no laughter lines, no marks of sorrow. Just a very beautiful face that photographed really well.

“Discontent, Mr. Reilly,” she said quietly. “That’s what you see. I’m the archetypical woman who has everything. Oh, believe me, there are dozens of us in this town, maybe even hundreds. And we all have the same expression. As though life passed us by. Real life, that is.”

She walked away, staring through the picture window at the ocean throwing itself lustily onto the shore in a flurry of spray. “But one day,” she said softly, “one day I’m going to find that ‘real’ life, y’know that?” She swung round. “I’ll be me again. Mary Allison Raycheck.”

Mac said, “Back to that.”

“I see you know everything about me, even my real name. I guess I should have expected that from a private investigator.”

“Actually, your husband told me.”

She gave a short bark of a laugh. “Of course. But then, he would, wouldn’t he?”

She slumped onto the La-Z-Boy and flipped the lever, stretching out as it lifted into position under her long, slender limbs.

“God, I always loved these things,” she said, half to herself. “Once, I thought the epitome of being rich was to have a leather La-Z-Boy and a coffee table from Sears with a glass top and gold legs. My, my, how times have changed.”

A tear trickled down her lovely face and dropped with a
splash off the cliff of her cheekbone onto the gray cashmere. “Now I have all this furniture an expensive decorator chose for me because it’s in perfect taste. I wear designer clothes because that’s what I’m supposed to wear. I eat the right diet at the right restaurants, attend the right parties.” She glanced despairingly Mac’s way. “You see, Mr. Reilly, what my trouble is, don’t you? I just don’t know who I am anymore. It’s still the way it’s always been. What you see is
all
you get.”

And then Allie Ray, movie star supreme, curled up in Mac’s tattered black leather La-Z-Boy and, to his horror, burst into floods of tears. She pounded the chair with her fists, howling and sobbing.

Pirate hauled himself to his feet and ran to her. That dog hated a scene, he’d probably had had too much of it in his previous life, before Mac became his father. He sniffed Allie anxiously, whining and pawing at her. And to Mac’s astonishment the movie star leaned over and scooped him onto her knee. “Sweet doggie,” she whispered as Pirate began to lick away her tears.

“So now you see why I envy you, Mr. Reilly,” she said between hiccups. “I don’t even have a Pirate. I just have the
right
dog, the one we’re all supposed to have this year.”

“Not a Chihuahua!”

She shook her head, scattering tears all over Pirate, who shook his head too, to get rid of them. “A miniature Maltese. By the name of Fussy. And believe me, she is.”

Mac offered her a box of Kleenex. He thought regretfully that he would miss his flight to Rome, but knew he had no choice. Allie Ray needed his help.

“Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t we go for that walk along the beach? Now I know you better you can tell me why you need me. And why you are so desperate.”

Pirate loped along the shoreline while Mac and Allie followed at a more leisurely pace. After all, they were not there for the exercise.

Allie took off her sneakers and brushed the drops of mist from her hair. Digging her toes into the wet sand she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to cry on your shoulder. I came to ask for your professional help. I’m a rich woman, Mr. Reilly. I’m willing to pay lavishly for your exclusive time.”

Mac raised his brows, surprised by the offer. It was surely coming at a handy moment, when his TV income might be suddenly cut off.

“Anything I can do,” he said.

She stopped, then turned to face him. “For the past week, I’ve been followed. It’s a black Sebring convertible
with dark windows so I can’t see the driver. There’s no license plate at the front, and since he’s always in the back of me I never get to see it. But lately it’s always there, on my tail. I don’t know whether it’s my husband having me watched to see if he can get any dirt on me. Or if it’s the same crazy stalker who’s been after me for the last few months. He sends me letters—love letters he calls them, though it’s all just filth. Of course I don’t look at them anymore, I just burn them without opening them. Anyhow, it’s scary.”

Mac didn’t like the sound of those letters, nor the black Sebring. He thought it strange that both Perrin and his wife believed they were being followed. He wondered if they were tailing each other, but when he asked her Allie denied it.

“Then why not go to the police?”

“Because I’m Allie Ray,” she said simply. “You can only imagine what would happen. I’m terrified though. I feel eyes on me, as though I’m being watched wherever I go. I don’t know what to do.”

Mac made a quick decision. It wasn’t only the offer of good money that attracted him. Allie Ray was vulnerable, and she was hurting, and it was more than just a scary stalker and a husband who no longer appreciated her. He got the feeling Allie was a desperately lonely woman who needed not only his help but also his support.

“So why don’t I find out who it is, and if it’s your husband or not.”

She threw him a grateful smile then turning away she walked along the edge of the shore where the waves hit the sand, uncaring that she was getting wet. Picking up a stick, she threw it for Pirate who galloped joyfully after it. Wagging his butt, he dropped it at her feet making her laugh and she picked it up and threw it again.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” Mac said.

She shot him a mischievous glance. “Except in the movies, you mean. Then I laugh all the time.”

“Unless you’re kissing someone.”

She laughed again. “You’re right, I am always kissing someone. It used to drive Ron mad. ‘You’re my woman,’ he’d say, whenever we had a fight, ‘and all I see is you in bed, half-naked with some poncey actor.’”

Mac could just imagine Ron Perrin making that remark. Ego had no boundaries even when it came to the fact that acting was his wife’s job.

“I didn’t tell you everything,” she said. “It’s not only that I’m afraid of the crazy stalker. You see, Mr. Reilly, my husband is having an affair. And this time I think it’s serious.”

“It’s not the first time, I assume?”

She shook her head, sending the ponytail and the drops of water flying. “It’s not. But the truth is I still care about Ron. He’s the only man who ever bothered to look behind the façade. The only man who wanted to know the real me. Without him, I don’t know who I am.” She sighed as she tossed the stick again, then turned to meet Mac’s eyes.
“Look at me,” she said sadly. “What you see is all you get. I’m a public success. And a private failure.”

Remembering the redhead with the gun, Mac thought Allie had a right to be worried. “Let me see what I can do,” he said. “I’m off to Rome for a week, but I’ll get my assistant right onto it.

“Anything else on your mind?” he asked as they made their way back to his house.

“Plenty,” she said, smiling ruefully. “Unfortunately, it’s nothing you can do anything about. My new movie is to premiere in Cannes in a couple of weeks and I know it’s a mess.” She shrugged sadly. “Of course, they’ll say it’s all my fault, that I’m difficult, that I made changes, that I’m getting older.”