You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (17 page)

“Well, well, well,” I said.

Stevie’s face was pale and she stared at the floor, unable to speak.

“Stevie. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale.” I squinted at the strip of images, trying to see if I could make out the faces clearly enough to identify.

“You think it’s Penelope?” Stevie whispered.

My poor sister. She had her reasons, I reminded myself.

I held the negative strip up again. “We need to get these developed before we should draw any conclusions about them.”

“Do you think he was blackmailing her?” Stevie asked.

“Blackmail would explain the money.” I lowered the first photo strip and picked up the next one. More of the same, at least from what I could see. “And Penelope is rather agitated about this situation, which is understandable.”

“But…” Stevie said.

I glanced over at her. “But what?”

“That’s what I’m waiting for you to finish. There’s some contrafactual you want to add.”

The only language my sister doesn’t know: the one the rest of us mortals speak. “A contra what?”

She sighed. “You want to add something like, ‘If such and such had occurred,’ where such and such could not under any circumstances occur. You want to say that this whole thing with Penelope could have happened if…?” She waved her hand in the air.

The kitchen was quiet except for the quiet thumping of the dishwasher.

“Oh, all right. I was going to say, ‘If Colin were capable of blackmailing someone.’ Which he couldn’t be. Except maybe he was.” I slammed my hand on the counter, frustrated.

“Blackmailing who?” came a third voice, definitely male.

Stevie and I stared at each other for a second before we turned around to the actor leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching us. My sister took a step back toward me, and I put my hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

“I locked the door!”

“You didn’t. It was open. I returned to give you this,” he said, holding up a bottle of what looked to be an excellent syrah, and from Stevie’s intake of breath I surmised it wasn’t cheap, either. “By way of apology and because of your husband. But I can see your grief takes different forms than many people’s. Blackmail?”

“You need to leave now, Gary.”

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Stevie looked at me, her eyes wide with panic. “What do we say?”

Of course, she said it in Hungarian.

“Have any ideas?” I replied. “Like how long he’s been standing there?”

The actor nodded. “You won’t answer questions and you’re looking at photographic negatives and there’s a pile of money over there and you say your husband’s been murdered and now the two of you have suddenly lapsed into another language. By the way, this isn’t at all suspicious. Or intriguing.”

“Are you okay?” I asked my sister, in English.

She glanced at Gary, and then turned back toward me. “I’m okay.”

Great. I considered Stevie’s needs taken care of. I turned toward Gary. “You want to know what’s going on? My husband was murdered yesterday. I think he was murdered over these photographs. Was it blackmail? I have no fucking idea. I was married to him for six months and I have no idea what he was doing or why I hadn’t clued into any of it. And now I’m the center of the inquiry and I’d like to know why. There. That clear things up for you?”

“Are you okay?” Stevie asked me.

I gave her the hand signal that meant I was getting a migraine. She pulled out our med kit and rummaged around until she produced the bottle of migraine aspirin. She shook two out, put them on the counter, and went to fetch a glass for water. It gave her something to do.

When I was busy trying to swallow those god-awful pills, Gary said, “What’s your name?”

“Stevie,” she said quietly.

I snapped my fingers. “Eyes over here, your worship.” I needed him gone, but more importantly I needed Stevie to get working on a problem. Thinking reduced her anxiety immensely. “What’s the connection, Stevie?”

“Why does Colin have these pictures? How did Colin even know Penelope?”

“And how am I somehow involved?”

“We need to give those pictures to the police,” Stevie said.

“We will. We will give these pictures to the exceptionally attractive Detective Gruen. Right after we find out for ourselves what’s on them.”

Gary leaned his chair back on two legs and held onto the doorframe for support. “This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“I wonder where we can get them developed that won’t get us arrested,” I said.

“In LA?” he said. “Thousands of places. But you don’t—”

Stevie shrugged. “We can buy the chemicals we need and do it here.”

“How much is that going to cost?” I asked.

“Girls,” Gary said.

She shook her head. “It’s not terrible. I’ll make a list of what we need and tell you where to go to get them.”

“You want me to buy a bunch of chemicals where I have to read the fucking labels? Sorry. Next plan.”

She thought about that for a second, and then nodded. “Good point. Perhaps we can find a lab that rents space by the hour.”

Gary dropped his chair to the floor. “Girls!” he yelled. That man had amazing vocal presence. Of course he’s known for that, but it’s thrilling up close and personal.

We both looked at him.

“Photography happens to be a hobby of mine.”

It took me a couple of seconds. “You have a darkroom here.”

“Why, yes, I do.”

Stevie and I looked at each other.

“Lead on, Macduff,” I told him.

He glared at me, and that was not an experience I wanted to repeat. Ever. That man had a scary, well-practiced glare. “Christ, don’t say that,” he muttered.

As he led us over to the main house, I remembered about fifteen years ago he’d starred in
Macbeth
for the BBC, a weird techno-modern version with updated clothes and robots and cross-dressing. Even Stevie hadn’t liked it, which meant it was unsalvageable dreck.

Stevie looked at me. “It’s ‘Lay on, Macduff’. Not ‘Lead on.’”

“Thanks ever so much for the update,” I said.

We went in the French doors at the back of the house and up the staircase made out of slabs of travertine marble. The house was dark and hollow. Every sound we made echoed off the walls. I wondered how he could stand living here alone.

Upstairs, he led us down a long green carpet past several heavy Brazilian cherry doorways, to the one at the end of the hall. “Here it is. Let me know if you need anything. Like a proofer.”

“Thanks, we’ll be fine,” I told him. I blocked off the entrance to the dark room with my arm to keep him from following us in.

Stevie put her arm across the doorway to block me from coming in. “You can’t be in here,” she said.

“I need to see what you’re doing.”

“Darkrooms tend to be small, and you take up too much space.”

Stevie was the only person on earth who thought I was too large. Given how small and thin she was, this attitude troubled me sometimes. And I would worry over whether she had a body image issue when I had the time.

“Stevie. These pictures.” I didn’t need to say the obvious.

“I’ll be okay. I don’t need to look at them to develop them.”

She slammed the door in my face.

#

The room at the center of the upstairs was a fabulous media room I coveted deeply and sincerely. One entire wall was the screen, set to that Chelsea v. Arsenal game—wasn’t that over and done with yet?—with life-size players. Large, soft armchairs in blue and gray ultrasuede were parked at various spots around the room, each with its own side table and small snake light attached on the edge.

Gary was at the other side of the room, a script in his hand while he kept an eye on the match. He grinned at me and pointed to the refrigerator at the side of the room before going back to his reading. I pulled out a beer to sip while I waited.

“Are you interested in this?” I asked, cocking my head at the screen.

He shrugged and held up a black remote control. I nodded and he tossed it to me. I channel-surfed until I got to an Errol Flynn movie—oh, wasn’t he beautiful—and lounged back in a chair.

The next thing I knew, Stevie was pinching my cheek.

I slapped her hand away. “Could you try something simple, like saying my name first?” I asked.

Gary was still sitting in the lounger at the far side of the room. “She did. She also tried yelling it. Then she tried shaking you. I suggested using open flame next.”

Stevie’s disappointment bloomed all over her. “You’ve been drinking today.”

“That happens every day. Get over it already. You’ve found something?”

She nodded. Her lips pinched and she kept fiddling with the strands of hair that had escaped her braid.

I put a hand on her arm, which was trembling as though she were freezing, so I pulled her into a tight embrace for several seconds. She struggled a bit and I let go. “You should see this,” she said quietly.

I started to follow her. So did Gary. I asked him, “Don’t suppose I could tell you to fuck off for a bit?”

He shook his head. “Don’t suppose you could.”

The three of us went back to the darkroom. Stevie had not lied. It was cramped. The two of us wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in there together while she worked, especially when the only light was dim and red. The cramped confines were much easier to deal with when the room was bathed in normal white light. A number of wet sheets hung from a plastic line. What had been so difficult to see in the negative strip now showed clearly in black and white: A blonde girl, wearing heavy makeup but with the baby cheeks of a young girl giving a blowjob to an older man in a tux.

The man’s face was half cut off by the angle of the shot. I didn’t recognize him. The young teenager was Penelope Gurevich.

“Seems very definitely blackmail,” Stevie said.

I massaged the back of her neck with my fingers. How many of these photos were bringing up waking nightmares for her? I didn’t give her enough credit for working through things that made most people want to cry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair, over and over. If only I had killed the bastard earlier. Before I realized how stupid I’d been. How stupid my father had encouraged me to be.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Stevie said.

I widened my eyes and took a deep breath. “Are the rest of the pictures like this?” I asked her.

She pointed to the last sheet on the drying line without looking at it. “More or less.”

The contact sheet showed all the photos on the strips. Penelope had things done to her on film that I would never have suspected she had even heard of, let alone participated in. Hell, some of them would have given me pause. And she was so young. I chuckled to myself as soon as I thought that. When I was thirteen, I’d been having sex regularly with an older man, too. But however old she was here, it was young. Much too young.

“Poor Penelope.” Then I remembered what a manipulator she was and added, “Perhaps.”

Gary leaned in close to the second picture on the line, and then he stepped back, his eyes a tiny bit wider than they had been. He glanced at the first photo, and then joined me at the contact sheet.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked. “You want a larger version for your personal collection or something?”

He shook his head and turned away, as though he could unsee the pictures. “Give the negatives to the police and pretend you never saw them.”

“I’m going to give them to the police. Why does no one believe I’m going to do that?”

He flicked the corner of one of the pictures without looking at it. “You don’t recognize who’s in these pictures, do you?”

“Yes, it’s Penelope—”

“Not her, you idiot, who gives a damn who she is. Him.” He pointed to another picture. “And him. And him.”

I looked at the pictures again. Nope, a couple of older white guys getting their jollies. I shook my head.

“He’s a producer by the name of Aaron Ueberfeld.” Stevie’s sudden intake of breath told me her knowledge of movies was paying off. Gary seemed pleased that somebody present had a clue about what he was talking about. “This one is Ian Jack Reynolds, and he’s currently president of Lang Studios. And this chap, I don’t remember his name, he’s got a development deal at Warners, but at the time this picture was taken he was most likely the guy in charge of the PAN television network.”

I berated myself for being so witless. My father certainly would have axed me off his strategic council for missing something so obvious. “These pictures aren’t about Penelope. There were much bigger fish in the sea.”

“Your husband had a monstrous problem on his hands.” Gary reached up and fingered the edge of one of the pictures, the one with the Lang Studio president in it. “Jesus Christ.”

Stevie cleared her throat. “So where did Colin get these?”

Good question.

Gary laughed to himself. “What’s so fucking hilarious about this is how sanctimonious these sons of bitches are. Take this one.” He pointed to Ian Jack Reynolds. “His wife is the Grande Dame of Los Angeles charities. The perfect holier-than-thou couple. Utterly hilarious, given what she was like when she was an actress. In these 70s movies, playing the hippie chick. And it was typecasting, if you know what I mean. Amanda da Silva was no virgin—”

“Who?” I said slowly.

“Amanda da Silva. Well, Amanda Reynolds, but she was Amanda da Silva then.”

Funny. I’d met another player in this game who had the last name da Silva. Coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences. Stevie must have been thinking the same thing I was. I nodded at her. “Find out if they’re related.”

She was already heading out the door and back to her computer.

Gary stood in my path. “What did I say?”

I picked up all the photos. “Thanks for the darkroom. It’s been a real help.”

He lightly grabbed me by my upper arm. Touching me without permission is not advisable under the best of conditions. With substantial effort, I checked my initial impulse to flip him over backward.

I stopped and picked his hand off of me. “Don’t.”

He didn’t seem to pay any attention to my reaction. He leaned in toward me, crowding my space. Gary Macfadyen wasn’t a big man but he always felt imposing simply through his presence. “Listen to me. You have to get rid of those.”