Passion and Scandal (21 page)

* * *

The message light was blinking on Steve's answering machine when they got back to his house, a silent, insistent beacon that immediately broke the sensual mood. Steve put the ice cream in the freezer and pushed the Play button.

"I finally tracked down that box of stuff," Jack Shannon said. "Mueller has it. He removed it from 1-G while Faith and I were moving and put it back in the basement at Wilshire Arms. Said that's where it belongs, if you can believe it." Willow could almost see the unbelieving lift of his eyebrow. "I'm going over to get it tomorrow morning. You can meet me there around ten and pick it up then, or wait and come by the apartment later in the week. Faith said she'd be happy to have you for dinner Wednesday or Thursday. It's up to you."

Willow shivered with sudden anticipation, like a greyhound before a race. Steve reached out and put his arm around her. "We'll pick it up tomorrow morning," he told her, giving her shoulders a little squeeze.

"Marty here," the next voice said. "You were right about that Ryan case. It was a hit-and-run. Never did catch the perp, so the case is still open. Call me at the station tomorrow, buddy. I'd be real interested to hear why
you're
so interested in it."

"Well," Willow said softly. "I guess that pretty much settles it."

"No," Steve said thoughtfully. "No, I don't think it does." He put a hand to his stomach, unconsciously rubbing at the spot where his gut spoke to him. "There's something not right about this case," he said. "There's something more involved than just whether or not Ethan Roberts is trying to keep the world from finding out you might be his daughter."

"What do you mean?"

"The scandal that might result from that isn't enough to justify what happened yesterday. If you took it to the papers, it'd be a big splashy headline for about two days and then disappear. Roberts' political career would hardly feel the ripples. He's afraid of something else."

"That we'll find out he murdered my mother."

"Yeah, that's part of it. But there's more." He rubbed at his stomach again, just below the breastbone where his instincts lived. "I can feel it."

Chapter 12

"Do you think this will work?" Willow said as Steve pushed open the wrought-iron courtyard gate to the Wilshire Arms and ushered her in ahead of him.

"We won't know until we try," he said. "Roberts was pretty cool and cagey on the phone, as if he had no idea and less interest in my theories about what happened to your mother." He grinned evilly. "But I could hear him sweating."

They crossed the quiet courtyard, the heels of Willow's red leather sling-backs clicking softly against the pebbled concrete surface, sounding unnaturally loud in the somnolent silence. The gracious old building seemed to be napping in the midmorning sun, like an elderly lady who'd fallen asleep on the porch while she waited for someone to come.

The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees as they pushed open the door into the downstairs corridor. The silence intensified, growing suddenly... eerie. Willow shivered and moved closer to Steve, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm. The door to apartment 1-G stood partially open, offering them entrance in mute invitation. They hesitated at the threshold, each mentally preparing themselves for whatever was to come.

Steve looked down at the woman by his side. "You don't have to do this. I'd rather you didn't."

Willow straightened her spine. "I have to," she declared, and let go of his arm to walk through the door on her own.

The apartment was empty, the box of old memories and secrets nowhere in sight. "I guess Jack and Mueller must still be down in the basement looking for it," Steve said.

Willow walked to the mirror. "It's hard to imagine that so many people have been affected by this, isn't it?" She reached out, touching the intricate pewter scrolls and roses that adorned the frame. "It's just an old mirror."

"It's more than a mirror," said a voice behind her.

She whirled around.

Ethan Roberts stood in the open doorway of one of the bedrooms. He was dressed in a custom-tailored, conservative blue suit, a white shirt, and a striped red tie. He was the epitome of a successful politician: conservative, well dressed, urbane and blandly agreeable.

Except for the gun in his hand.

"It's a looking glass into the future," he said pleasantly, as if he were making an inconsequential comment at a cocktail party. "If you stare at it long enough you'll see your whole life reflected it in. If the lady wants you to," he added. "She's always been very good to me."

"I thought you said you'd never seen her," Steve challenged, trying to draw Ethan's attention away from Willow.

"I lied," Roberts admitted, without taking his eyes off of Willow or the mirror. "It wouldn't be prudent for a man in my position to admit that he believes in ghosts, now would it? The voters wouldn't like it. Don't move, Hart," he ordered, his voice going steely. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot you. Or Ms. Ryan."

"What are you planning to do with us?" Steve asked, as if it were a minor point of curiosity.

"I've arranged a little accident," he said. "Not another hit-and-run. That might be a bit too obvious. A fire this time, I think. It will be very tragic. Two young lovers burned to death in a remote house out in Laurel Canyon because their smoke detectors needed new batteries."

"There are too many people who know this time, Roberts. Jack Shannon and Mueller are in the basement right now. They know we're meeting you here. If we show up dead, they'll know it was you."

"They might suspect," Ethan agreed. "But they'll never know. Neither one of them will ever be able to say they actually saw me here, or that they saw you. No, I didn't kill them," he said, seeing the horrified look on Willow's face. "I locked them in the basement when they went down to look for that box. This time of day, with all the tenants at work, it'll be hours before someone lets them out. As far as they'll know, none of us ever showed up at all. It'll look like the two of you delayed your departure for a little morning quickie and burned up more than the sheets."

"You won't get away with it."

"I'll get away with it," Roberts said, with the confidence of a spoiled child who's always gotten his way. "I always have before. Murder is actually very easy, you know. If you take the right precautions and do it yourself so there's never anyone else involved who can betray you, it's very simple. No one ever finds out."

"We found out," Steve said. "We know you killed your ex-wife."

"Suicide from a drug overdose," Ethan said dismissively. "She was distraught about losing the boys. Everyone agreed on that, even the police."

"And my mother," Willow said. "You killed her, too. Why?"

Roberts' face twisted suddenly, becoming ugly. "Because she was a lying slut who betrayed me with Eric Shannon. I was the one who discovered her. I was the one who brought her to the Wilshire Arms. She was supposed to be
mine."

"And she didn't want anything to do with you, did she, Roberts?" Steve taunted. "She only went out with you because the studio pressured her to. And then she started dating Eric Shannon and refused to go out with you anymore."

"She didn't understand what I could give her. What we could be together. I had to make her understand."

"How? How did you make her understand?"

"I followed her and Eric up to her apartment the night of the party. Eric had just had a fight with his brother about a script they'd sold and he wanted her to comfort him. I waited outside her bedroom door, listening to them making love like animals, and then later, when she was asleep and Eric went out on the balcony for a cigarette, I pushed him over," he said as calmly as if he'd just admitted to nothing more heinous than taking out the trash. "Then I went back downstairs to the party in 1-G. When Donna came down later and asked where Eric was, somebody told her they thought he'd gone out for more beer. An idea I planted," he said proudly. "It was a couple of hours before anybody found the body. Zeke stumbled over him when he was chasing Ariel after she found him in bed with another woman, did he tell you that?"

"He told us that Donna turned to you after Eric's death. Did you plan that, too?"

"I understood her," he said. "I sympathized. I even forgave her for what she did with Eric, until she told me she was pregnant with his bastard."

Willow gasped.

"Yes, Eric Shannon is your father, Ms. Ryan. Does it comfort you to know that?"

"Yes," she breathed. "Yes, it comforts me a great deal."

"You have no more taste than she did," he said dismissively.

"Why did you wait over a year to kill her?" Steve asked. "Why not do it when you found out she was pregnant?"

"Because she ran," Ethan said. "And I didn't know where she'd gone. She came back later, saying she was sorry and that she wanted to take up where we'd left off. But she was lying. She suspected me of killing Eric and she was trying to find the proof. There was no proof and I told her so. She threatened to go to the police with her suspicions. I couldn't let that happen. I'd been signed to play the heroic lead in a Western, and that kind of publicity—even though she couldn't have proven anything—could have killed it."

"So you killed her instead. Just like that."

"Yes. As I said, murder's easy. I disguised myself, stole a car out of a parking lot, and ran her down. I parked the car in the street about six blocks from there and walked away."

"Don't you feel any remorse?" Willow said, unable to grasp the enormity of it. He'd murdered three people without blinking an eye.
Three people
—that they knew of. "How do you sleep at night?"

"Quite soundly, actually."

"He's a classic psychopath," Steve said. "No conscience. No morals. No soul. Okay, Marty," he said, raising his voice a bit as if he were talking to someone outside the room. "I think we've got enough."

Ethan looked toward Steve. "I thought you were more of a professional than to try that old gag," he sneered.

Slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight, Steve pulled down the collar of his sport shirt and showed him the wires.

Ethan Roberts' face turned purple with rage.
"No!"
he screamed, firing the gun at Steve as he rushed him.

Steve took the shot in the chest and kept coming. He tackled Roberts, knocking him back against the wall. The gun flew out of Roberts' hand, clattering against the wooden floor, and went whirling away, round and round like a child's deadly top.

"Pick it up," Steve ordered, but Willow was already bending down, scrambling after it.

"You can't do this to me," Roberts stormed, as Steve kept him pressed up against the wall with a forearm across his throat, waiting for the police backup who were already flooding into the room. "This is illegal. I'm a representative in the California State Legislature. I demand—" He stopped suddenly, his whole body going stiff, and stared over Steve's shoulder with a look of horror on his face.

Steve twisted his head around, looking over his shoulder to see what the other man was staring at. The shining surface of the pewter-framed mirror reflected their images back at him.

"You see her, don't you?" Steve taunted, turning back to face Roberts. "The lady in the mirror is staring at you, isn't she? Well—" he grinned evilly, pressing his forearm harder against Roberts' throat "—congratulations. Your worst nightmare is about to come true."

* * *

"I thought those bulletproof vests were supposed to protect you from bullets," Willow said, as she stood in the middle of apartment 1-G and gently probed the ugly bruise forming just below and a little to the left of where Steve's heart beat in his chest. She had insisted on inspecting his injury immediately, rudely pushing away the policeman who was busy relieving him of both vest and wires. "This looks as if someone hit you with a baseball bat."

She glared at the policeman as if it were his fault. "Don't you have bulletproof vests that offer any better protection than this?" she demanded.

"No, ma'am," he said, unperturbed by her attack. "That's the top of the line. I'll need the one you have on, too, ma'am."

Willow shrugged out of her red jacket and the flowered print vest beneath, revealing the police-issue bulletproof vest she wore under that. She turned her back, letting the policeman slip it down over the white silk sleeves of her blouse.

The policeman thanked her politely, then turned and left the room, following his fellow officers.

Willow had already turned her attention back to Steve. "Does it feel like your rib is broken?" she asked anxiously.

"Only when you poke at it like that," he said, wincing as he batted her fingers away.

She looked up, her eyes stricken. "Oh, God, I'm sorry." She curled her hands into fists to keep from touching him. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm sorry, I—"

"Willow." He dropped his shirt and took her fists in his hands. "Willow, it's all right. It's over."

"It's over." She closed her eyes for a minute, trying to gather her control. "Yes, it's over," she said, giving up the battle as she leaned into him and touched her forehead to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and cradled her close.