The Bequest (13 page)

He sat frozen to his seat as the actress disappeared out the door. How dare
she! Didn’t she understand what was going on here? He was in charge, not
her. He called the shots, not her. Or did he? She had been scared the last
time he saw her, in his hotel room, but tonight she showed little of that
fear. In fact, she seemed almost emboldened as she sat there, grilling him
about the screenplay. Then that parting shot, threatening him. That’s what
it was, wasn’t it? A threat. Letting him know that she, or someone, had
carte blanche
to take him out of the picture. That could mean only one
thing: It was a death threat.

He scrambled from his seat and bolted for the door. He pushed his
way outside and scanned the parking lot. A dark blue Toyota Highlander
SUV idled in a space near the building, its glass tinted to prevent anyone
from seeing inside. As people inside the diner stared out the window, he
raced to the SUV, snatched open the passenger door, and jumped inside.

As she left
the dismal part of town that housed the diner, Teri found
herself in a daze. What had started as merely strange had grown more
fantastic almost by the hour, culminating in what now seemed like surreal
territory. She didn’t know if the man in the diner had been the real Leland
Crowell any more than she had known that night in his hotel room. It had
taken all her nerve—and she had plenty; history proved that—to call his
bluff, because she knew that not meeting his demands probably offered
greater danger than caving in to him.

Part of her felt comforted knowing that Doug Bozarth was waiting in
the wings should things go wrong. Another part of her, though, knew that
Doug Bozarth might prove to be an even bigger risk than dealing with
Leland Crowell, or whoever he was. If anything happened to the scragglyhaired man, anything at all, she knew two things with certainty: (1) Doug
Bozarth would
be
the man behind it; and (2) she
would be a
coconspirator, even though she had no idea what he might do.

There was also a third thing she knew: Whatever might happen, it
would be untraceable to Bozarth but, if traceable at all, would likely lead
to her own doorstep. She felt sure Bozarth would see to that. And she
would be powerless to do anything about it, since there were witnesses
who could testify that they had seen the two of them together. Ponytail,
baseball cap, and sunglasses notwithstanding, she was a recognizable figure
in this town. Her visit to Spencer West’s former office proved that. In
fact, she was not just recognizable in this town, but internationally. Her
face was her calling card and now might be her undoing if anything
happened. People had seen her and recognized her. And they had heard
raised voices. Harsh voices. How many movies had she seen—hell, had
she made—where the victim and the suspect had argued before the
murder, and that argument had been hung around the suspect’s neck like a
millstone?

But wait. If anything happened. There was a clue there, provided she
could call it to mind. If
anything
happened...If anything
happened
...
If
anything happened.

If
. That was the magic word. The uncertainty of danger from the man
in the diner was more than counter-balanced by the certainty of danger if
something happened to him. She had to make sure that nothing happened.
If she could head off anything unfortunate from happening to the scragglyhaired man, she could achieve a small measure of comfort, perhaps even
salve
her
conscience a
bit.
Not that she
wanted
to become
this
extortioner’s bodyguard, but she realized that her own welfare was in
play. Self-interest was a bitch.

She had barely gone two blocks when she swung her SUV around in a
sharp U-turn in the middle of an intersection and headed back to the
diner. She had no plan in mind, no course of action. But if nothing else,
she would wait and watch. Information was power, and what she really
needed right now was information. Not only on the scraggly-haired man,
but also on Doug Bozarth. She had struck out on her own research, but
maybe Mona had been more successful.

She pulled out her cell phone from her purse and was just about to
hit Mona’s speed dial number when she saw a Toyota SUV that looked
remarkably similar to hers, right down to the color, idling in the parking
lot of Caleb’s Diner. She couldn’t be sure, but it sure as hell looked as if
the scraggly haired man had just jumped into the passenger side. Could it
just be coincidence that the car he was in looked just like hers? She didn’t
think so. And who was driving? Here was a chance to find out who was in
cahoots with whom. The SUV pulled into traffic.

She dropped the phone in her lap and followed.
* * *
Mona Hirsch scrolled from link to link on her laptop, curled up in her
queen-size bed with a notepad beside her and a Diet Coke on the
nightstand. She had tried to sleep earlier, but sleep wouldn’t come. Not
until she heard from Teri and knew that she was all right after her latenight visit to meet the purported Leland Crowell. She had Googled the
name and found the man to be, or have been, a mere cipher. Other than
news stories about his strange bequest and the imminent release of
The
Precipice
, with the inevitable comparisons to John Kennedy Toole and his
A
Confederacy of Dunces
, the information superhighway was more of an
information trickle. There wasn’t even an obituary from his death two
years earlier. As far as the Internet was concerned, he had neither been
born nor died, nor lived in between. It was as if he had never existed

She glanced at her notepad, struck by how empty it was. Nary a
single note, fitting, perhaps, as the sum of Leland Crowell’s pitiful
existence.

Teri maintained a discreet distance from the SUV, staying far enough back
to only be seen as headlights in a rearview mirror, but close enough that
accelerating to clear intersections on yellow or red lights would not seem
suspicious to the lead vehicle. She had tailed cars before, but only under
the glare of spotlights with cameras rolling and a director ready to yell
“Cut!” if anything didn’t look right. The worst that could have happened,
then, was another take. But tonight, there would be no second takes if the
driver up ahead realized he or she was being followed.

And just who was the driver? Who was the scraggly-haired man’s
partner in crime? What she wouldn’t give to know the answer to that.
Then a thought hit her: What if the driver was on the payroll of Doug
Bozarth? She had already thought through the notion that, if anything
happened to the thin man, it would be made to look as if she had a hand in
it. Was that what was going on here? Was that why a car just like hers had
the thin man in it? Had he sought to join her in her vehicle as she left, only
to discover he had been lured into a trap?
Then she thought back to seeing the SUV pull out of the parking lot.
If, indeed, that was the scraggly-haired man in the passenger seat–and she
was pretty sure it was—he didn’t seem distressed. He appeared to be
simply riding along just like any other passenger in a vehicle. And that
could mean but one thing: He knew the driver.

Mona pulled up
yet another website that told the same generic
story about Doug Bozarth that Teri had recited to her following her own
research. She didn’t really expect to find anything, but at least it killed
time since she couldn’t sleep anyway. No, the real inside scoop on
Bozarth, if there was any to be found, would come from the computer
major at USC she had emailed earlier, who was far more adept at research
than Mona and Teri put together. That had less to do, Mona supposed,
with surfing the Web than it did with the student’s ability to access
databases supposedly impenetrable to hackers. Databases that had all kinds
of initials and acronyms associated with them, including CIA, NSA, FBI,
and DOD, just to name a few.

She was surprised, though, that she had not yet heard a response
from the student, who usually was glued to his computer at all hours,
including while he was in class. She was sure her email would have gotten
his attention, with the subject line of “Help” and the simple message:
Need
dirt on someone; will pay premium rates
. And yet nearly two hours had gone
by and no response. She had sent it, hadn’t she? She opened the Sent file
on her email program and scrolled down. Yep, there it was, transmitted
one hour and fifty-seven minutes earlier.

A tone announced the arrival of a message. She switched back to the
Inbox and saw the response she had been waiting for. She opened the
message and read:
Just got this, but there was no message. I see it was sent hours
ago. Don’t know why it was delayed. Is someone monitoring your email? Was there
supposed to be a message?
She typed a reply:
Why do you ask? And, yes, there was a message.
His response:
Sometimes hackers get into mail programs. They can divert

A noise from the far reaches of the house pulled Mona’s attention
away from the laptop screen. It could have been just one of the normal
“things that go bump in the night.” It might even have been the return of
that nasty family of raccoons that had done almost two thousand dollars
worth of roof and attic damage to her house just a few months earlier. And
if it was the latter, Mona was prepared. She pulled open the drawer in her
nightstand and took out a BB pistol. She had bought it after a “critter
catcher” had advised her that it was as good a way as any to chase off
unwanted animals.

“You don’t need anything more powerful,” he said. “You don’t want
to kill it or injure it badly. If that happens, it might crawl between the
walls to die, and you wouldn’t know it until it stunk so bad, you’d never
get the smell out.”

She held the pistol in her right hand, slid her legs over the side of the
bed, and stood. She cocked her head and listened. Nothing. She walked
softly to the doorway to her bedroom and listened. She had learned to
distinguish the
sounds she
often
heard in this hilly
and
tree-lined
neighborhood of Beverly Hills. Skittering sounds generally meant squirrels
on the roof. Louder skittering meant squirrels in the attic. But pounding
and banging, like a mini-construction project—that meant raccoons in the
attic, treating the soft insulation as their own private latrine and ripping
their way in and out through the shake roof.

But there was only silence.
She had just turned and was headed back to bed when she heard it
again. Not a skittering sound, or a banging sound overhead. This was a
very distinct sound. One that she knew meant trouble.
It was the sound of a footstep. Inside the house.
And it was close.
Suddenly the questions about delayed emails and deleted messages
made sense. Frightening sense. Teri had told her to be discreet in her
search but never really explained why; no specifics, anyway. All Mona
knew was that, for some reason, Teri was uneasy about Doug Bozarth and
his money. Now Mona realized that Doug Bozarth might be just as uneasy
about Teri Squire and her questions.
She grabbed the door and swung it closed, but it caught with a
sudden jolt. Gloved hands appeared on the edges, and she knew that a
rubber-soled shoe had braced against the bottom to keep it from closing.
She screamed then turned and leaned her back against the door. She
spread her legs, dug in her bare feet on the carpet, and pushed. For a
moment she made progress, closing the door until it appeared it might cut
off the fingers on one of the intruder’s hands. Then her feet lost their
tenuous grip on the fabric. The person on the other side of the door
pushed it open six inches, then ten. Her feet continued to slide.
“What do you want?” she screamed. “Who are you?”
No answer from the intruder; just a redoubled effort to force the
door open.
“Please, what do you want?” Her voice sounded shrill. Even as she
spoke the words, she knew they were meaningless. Besides, she thought
she already knew what the intruder wanted, though she found it hard to
believe. Was Doug Bozarth really the kind of man who would kill just to
squelch an investigation into his business? If so, that meant there was
something to be found that Bozarth wanted to keep buried.
The door was open maybe a foot now. A hand slipped all the way
inside and clamped around her throat. She felt the leather grip her skin.
The intruder pressed forefinger and thumb on either side of her trachea
and squeezed. At first it was the pain that weakened her, but then came
the lack of oxygen. Her feet slid further, and the door opened wider. The
man was able to force his shoulders into the opening now. She felt his
breath on her cheek, the sound of his breathing muffled by something. A
mask probably.
She suddenly remembered that she was still holding the BB pistol.
How could she have forgotten that? She raised her right hand, her wrist
turned unnaturally as she tried to point it at the intruder’s face.
The hand on her throat lurched away, and air flowed into her lungs.
The hand grabbed at the gun.
She pulled the trigger. A voice screamed, the sound deep and
guttural. She didn’t know where she had hit him, but she knew she had.
His hand let go of hers. She pulled the trigger again. Another scream.
Then the door slammed shut, her body weight full against it. She
gathered her feet under her, ready to brace again if he renewed his assault.
But there was nothing. Only silence.
And her own ragged-sounding breaths.
She willed herself to stop breathing, to hold her breath and listen.
Was he still there? How bad was he hurt? She cocked her head to listen,
but heard nothing.
The silence was suddenly filled with Hawaiian music.
Drums of the
Islands
by
the
Makaha
Sons.
She
glanced
at her
cell phone
on
the
nightstand. Did she dare chance it, to dart to the phone? What if the man
wasn’t hurt bad but was simply waiting for a chance. A chance she would
give him if she went for her phone.
The music ended, the caller having hung up. There was silence again.
Then she heard another sound, one she had heard before on movie
sets. The sound of a slide being racked on a gun. But she knew this one
didn’t contain blanks.
The last thing she heard before she felt a burning pain in her back was
the roar of the weapon as it was fired through the door.