Sweet Revenge (13 page)

A brown wig covering his now sunstreaked hair, a natty mustache above his thin lips, Philip hopped out of the van. He still wore white, but it was overalls now, padded a bit to give the illusion of bulk. It had taken him two weeks to case the Treewalters’ house and learn the routines of family and servants. He had twenty-five minutes to get in and out before the housekeeper returned from her weekly trip to the market.

It was almost too easy. A week before, he’d taken an impression of Eddie’s keys when Eddie had been too stoned to walk through his own front door. Once in, Philip turned off the alarm, then broke a window in the patio door to give the job the look of forced entry.

Moving quickly, he went up to the master bedroom to go to work on the safe. It pleased him that it was the same model as the Mezzenis’ in Venice. It had taken him only twelve minutes to crack that and relieve the amorous Italian matron of one of the hottest suites of emeralds in Europe. But that had been six months before. Philip wasn’t a man to rest on his laurels.

Concentration was everything. Though Philip was just
shy of twenty-one, he knew how to concentrate fully, on a safe, on an alarm, on a woman. Each held its own fascination for cracking.

He heard the first tumblers fall into place.

He was as smooth here as he was over cocktails or between the sheets. He’d taught himself well. How to dress, how to speak, how to seduce a woman. His talents had opened doors for him, society’s as well as vaults’. He’d managed to move his mother into a spacious flat. She spent her afternoons now shopping or playing bridge rather than shivering or sweating in the ticket booth at Faraday’s. He was going to see that she continued to do so. There were other women in his life, but she was still his first love.

He heard the tumblers fall into place through the stethoscope.

He’d done just as well for himself, and intended to do even better. He had a small, elegant town house in London. Soon, very soon, he was going to start scouting the outlying districts for that home in the country. With a garden. He had a weakness for small, beautiful things that needed to be nurtured.

He stood, one hand moving delicately on the dial, eyes half closed, like a man listening to soothing music, or appreciating the touch of a clever woman.

The safe opened, smooth as butter.

He unrolled the velvet pouch he found inside and took the time to examine the gems with his loupe. All that glittered, he knew, was not gold. Or diamonds. These were the real thing. Grade D, undoubtedly Russian. He studied the largest sapphire. Its center drop was slightly flawed as expected in a gem that size. It was a pretty, and valuable, cornflower blue. Like a patient doctor giving an exam, he studied each bracelet, each ring and bauble. He found the ruby earrings particularly ugly—and as a man who considered himself an artist, he judged it a crime to create something so aesthetically displeasing out of such a passionate stone. Judging the jewels to be worth about thirty-five thousand American, he took them out. Artist or not, he was a businessman first.

Satisfied, he set everything in the center of the Aubusson carpet and rolled up the rug.

Twenty minutes after entering, Philip shouldered the rug into the van. Whistling between his teeth, he got behind the wheel and cruised off, passing the Treewalters’ housekeeper as she rounded the corner.

Eddie was right, Phil thought as he turned up the radio. It was a hell of a day for business.

Nothing was exactly as it seemed in Hollywood. Adrianne’s first impression had been of wonder. This America was far different from the America of New York. The people were sleeker, in less of a hurry, and everyone seemed to know everyone else. Adrianne thought it was like a small village, yet the natives weren’t as friendly as they pretended to be.

By the time she was fourteen she had learned that attitudes were often as false as the storefronts on a movie lot. She also knew that Phoebe’s comeback was a failure.

They had a house, she had school, but Phoebe’s career had moved steadily in reverse. More than her looks had begun to fade in Jaquir; her talent had eroded as rapidly as her self-esteem.

“Aren’t you ready yet?” Phoebe hurried into Adrianne’s room. The overbright eyes and overexcited voice told Adrianne that her mother had gotten a new supply of amphetamines. She struggled to subdue a feeling of helplessness and managed to smile. She couldn’t bear another fight tonight, or her mother’s tears and useless promises.

“Nearly.” Adrianne fastened the cummerbund on her tuxedo-style suit. She wanted to tell her mother that she looked beautiful, but Phoebe’s evening dress made her cringe. It was cut embarrassingly low and fit like a skin of gold sequins. Larry’s doing, Adrianne thought. Larry Curtis was still her mother’s agent, her sometime lover, and constant manipulator.

“We still have plenty of time,” she said instead.

“Oh, I know.” Phoebe moved around the room, glittering, fueled by the manic energy of the pills and her own unpredictable mood swings. “But premieres are so exciting. The people, the cameras.” She stopped by Adrianne’s mirror and saw herself as she once had been, without the marks of her illness and her disappointments. “Everyone’s going to be there. It’ll be just like the old days.”

Faced with her reflection, she fell to dreaming, as she
too often did. She saw herself in the center spotlight, surrounded by admiring fans and associates. They all loved her, all wanted to be near her, to talk to her, to listen, to touch.

“Mama.” Uneasy with Phoebe’s abrupt silence, Adrianne laid a hand on her shoulder. There were days when she lost touch like this and didn’t come out again for hours. “Mama,” she repeated, tightening her grip, afraid that Phoebe was traveling down that long tunnel into her own fantasies.

“What?” Phoebe surfaced, blinking, then smiled as she focused on Adrianne’s face. “My own little princess. You’re so grown-up.”

“I love you, Mama.” Fighting back tears, Adrianne wrapped her arms tight around her mother. In the past year Phoebe’s moods had become more and more like the roller coaster they had once ridden in Disneyland. A confusion of streaking highs and bottomless lows. She could never be sure whether Phoebe would be full of laughter and wild promises or tears and regrets.

“I love you, Addy.” She stroked her daughter’s hair, wishing the color and texture didn’t remind her of Abdu. “We’re making something of ourselves, aren’t we?” She drew away and began circling the room, pacing, prowling, but never making progress. “In a few months we’ll be going to my premiere. Oh, I know it’s not as big a movie as this one, but these low-budget films are very popular. It’s like Larry says, I have to keep myself available. And with the publicity he’s planning …” She thought of the nude layout she’d posed for the week before. It wasn’t the time to tell Adrianne about it. It was business, she reminded herself as she twisted her fingers together. Just business.

“I’m sure it’s going to be a wonderful movie.” But the others hadn’t been, Adrianne reflected. The reviews had been insulting. She’d hated watching her mother embarrass herself on the screen, using her body instead of talent. Even now, after five years in California, Adrianne was aware that Phoebe had traded one kind of bondage for another.

“When the picture is a success, a big success, we’ll have that house on the beach I promised you.”

“We have a nice house.”

“This little place …” Phoebe glanced out the window at the struggling garden separating them from the street. There
was no grand stone wall, no pretty gates, no lush lawn. They were on the fringes of Beverly Hills, on the fringes of success. Phoebe’s name had dropped to the B list of Hollywood’s important hostesses. Major producers no longer sent her scripts.

She thought of the palace she had whisked Adrianne away from and all its luxuries. It became easier as time went by to forget the limitations of Jaquir and remember the opulence.

“It’s not what I want for you, not nearly what you deserve, but rebuilding a career takes time.”

“I know.” They’d had this talk too many times before. “School’s out in a couple of weeks. I thought we might go to New York to visit Celeste. You could relax.”

“Hmm? Oh, we’ll have to see. Larry’s negotiating for a part for me.”

Adrianne felt her spirits sink. She didn’t have to be told that the part would be mediocre, or that her mother would spend hours away from home being manipulated by the men who’d chosen to exploit her body. The harder Phoebe tried to prove she could climb back on top, the faster she slipped toward the very bottom.

Phoebe wanted her house on the ocean and her name up in lights. Adrianne could have resented Phoebe’s ambition, maybe even have fought it if the motives had been selfish. But what she did, she did out of love and a need to give. There was no way for Adrianne to make her see that she was building a cage as strong as the one she had escaped from.

“Mama, you haven’t had any real time off in months. We could see Celeste’s new play, visit some museums. It would do you good.”

“It’ll do me more good to watch everyone fuss over Princess Adrianne tonight. You look beautiful, sweetheart.” She put an arm around Adrianne’s shoulders as the two started for the door. “I bet the boys just break their hearts over you.”

Adrianne shrugged. She wasn’t interested in boys or their hearts.

“Well, tonight’s our night. It’s a shame Larry’s out of town so we don’t have a handsome man to escort us.”

“We don’t need anyone but each other.”

*  *  *

Adrianne was used to the crowds, the flash of lights, and the cameras. Phoebe often worried that her daughter was too serious, but she never had cause to worry about Adrianne’s poise. Young as she was, she handled the press like royalty, smiling when a smile was required, answering questions without ever giving too much away, and fading into the background when she had reached the limit of her tolerance. As a result, the press adored her. It was common knowledge that the columns were kinder to Phoebe Spring than they had to be because they had a love affair going with her daughter. Adrianne knew it, and with the skill of someone twice her age, used it.

She made certain that Phoebe stepped out of the car they had hired first, and that they stood arm in arm when the lights flashed. Any picture printed would be of both of them.

Phoebe came alive. Adrianne had seen it happen before. Whenever it did, the fervor of her wish that her mother would divorce herself from the movie business diminished. There was happiness on Phoebe’s face, the kind of simple joy Adrianne saw there so rarely. She didn’t need pills now, or a bottle, or her daydreams.

The crowd roared around her, the lights and music swelled. For an instant she was a star again.

Pressed against the barricades, onlookers waited for a glimpse of their favorite celebrities and settled for lesser lights. Good-humored, they cheered for everyone while a few pockets were picked and a large number of packets of drugs casually changed hands.

Seeing only the smiles, Phoebe stopped to wave, then bask in the sound of applause as she glided toward the theater. Unobtrusively, Adrianne guided her inside to the lobby that was already sprinkled with men and women of the film world. There was plenty of sparkle, plenty of cleavage, and plenty of gossip.

“Darling, how delightful to see you.” Althea Gray, a streamlined actress who had made her mark in series television, strolled over to kiss the air an inch from Phoebe’s cheek. She gave Adrianne a neutral smile and an annoying pat on the head. “Just as pretty as ever, aren’t you? A
tuxedo—what a cute idea.” She wondered how quickly she could have one designed for herself.

Phoebe blinked at the friendly greeting. The last time she had seen the actress, Althea had given her the most pointed of snubs. “You look wonderful, Althea.”

“Why, thank you, dear.” She waited until one of the cameramen who’d been allowed inside focused, then gave Phoebe’s cheek a chummy pat. “I’m so glad to see a couple of friendly faces at this circus.” She flicked a lighter at the end of a long cigarette so that the emerald on her finger glinted in the overhead lights. “I was going to skip tonight, but my publicist had a fit. What are you doing these days, sweetheart? I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“I’ve just finished a movie.” Grateful for the interest, Phoebe smiled and ignored the smoke burning her eyes. “A thriller,” she said, elevating the low-budget slash and gash. “It should be released this winter.”

“Wonderful. I’m about to make a film, now that I’m free of the mire of television. It’s a Dan Bitterman screenplay. You might have heard about it.
Torment?”
She gave Phoebe a lazy, knowing look. “I just signed to play Melanie.” Pausing only long enough to be sure she’d hit home, Althea smiled again. “I must go back to my date before he gets restless. Wonderful seeing you, darling. Let’s have lunch soon.”

“Mama, what’s wrong?” Adrianne asked.

“Nothing.” Phoebe fixed a smile to her face as someone called her name.
Melanie.
Larry had promised the part was hers. It had been only a matter of tying up a few loose ends in the negotiations, he’d said, promising that the movie would finally bring her back to where she had been.

“Do you want to go home?”

“Home?” Phoebe turned up the voltage of her smile until it crackled. “Of course not, but I’d love a drink before we go in. Oh, there’s Michael.”

She waved and caught the attention of the actor who’d been her first leading man, Michael Adams. There was a little gray at his temples that he didn’t bother to touch up, a few lines in his face he didn’t choose to have pulled taut or plumped up. He’d often thought his success had come as much from knowing who he was as from any acting skill. He
was still playing leading men even as he cruised toward fifty with an expanded waistline.

“Phoebe.” With affection, and a trace of pity, he bent down to kiss her. “And who is this beautiful young lady?” He smiled at Adrianne, apparently without recognition.

“Hello, Michael.” Adrianne rose to her toes to kiss his cheek, a gesture she usually performed with reluctance. With Michael, it was done with pleasure. He was the only man she knew with whom she felt truly comfortable.