You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (9 page)

She lifted her hand and waved without taking her gaze off the screen.

The road from Gary’s palace down to the lowlands of Pacific Palisades was narrow and winding, and I had a mild worry a Ferrari might tear around one of those bends. Mostly the chance of anyone being up at this hour in this area was small. Their maids and assistants might be out, but those people have to worry about speeding tickets and take it a little slower.

Sunset Boulevard was crowded with cars headed out of Pacific Palisades. The commute to Los Angeles had started, poor bastards. I followed the road—Chautauqua, Stevie had said; praise Hermes, I would never have to spell it—down to the start of the beachfront park. I pounded out a quick roundtrip of five miles on the sand, racing against the sun as it rose in the sky. My skin isn’t quite as sensitive as Stevie’s, but it still can’t handle too much direct sun. “Death frozen over” is a good look for me. It keeps my skin smooth and soft, and in a world of tanned or over-freckled women, I stand out.

In Las Vegas, when I ran, I ran in the middle of the night. In the open air when I could, in the casino’s gym otherwise. I hated being indoors. Flying outside was the way to go.

If I’d been familiar with the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica areas, I would have had my usual faster pace of six minutes a mile flat. The beach made me wish Stevie and I were going to stay in Los Angeles permanently, because it was runner heaven. Runners headed all different ways, with different routes. Plus, there was varied terrain—rough and smooth, hilly and flat—to run on. I was ecstatic. Or, as ecstatic as I ever get when sex isn’t involved.

The final push up the hill to Gary’s house was fabulous, draining any excess nervous energy. Once the static was removed, I could focus on what I needed to do. And what I needed Stevie to do.

At the estate, I found our host yelling bloody murder at the top of his lungs.

He was standing behind the guesthouse—Stevie must have had a massive heart attack—yelling, “Jesus fucking Christ, what is this piece of shit doing on my property? Can you fucking hear me in there?” He was facing the guesthouse, his back to me as I came up the service lane. When he finished yelling and didn’t get a response, he kicked what must have been the source of his frustration: my car. Nice.

“They can fucking hear you in Encino,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure where Encino was, but I was sure of that.

He whirled around, glaring at me. He slammed his fist onto the hood of my car, which had to have hurt, but he didn’t so much as wince. “What the hell is this dogshite doing on my property!” Spittle was flying out of his mouth.

“It’s my car.” I took a step closer, but not too close. No need to escalate this. “What’s the problem?”

His rigid body radiated fury. Both hands flexed in and out of making fists. “Get the fucking hell off my property!”

Gee, that was fast. I hadn’t even asked to borrow money yet. “What?”

“You come here, you dirty the place up. Get out. Today. Now.”

My car was not attractive, but it wasn’t that bad. Something else was going on. Maybe he’d forgotten I existed. Gods, that would explain a lot. Like what he was doing picking up women in bars and giving them places to live.

“Do you remember me?” I asked, making my voice a lot softer.

“Of course I do,” he snapped. “Get off my property by noon or I will have the police here.” He pointed a finger at me. “Do you understand?”

His offer of the house the previous night was clearly open-ended. So either Gary didn’t remember that conversation, or he hadn’t meant what he said, or something more bizarre was going on. Had the police come by, asked him about Colin’s murder, and he’d decided he wanted no part of it? “Yes, I understand,” I said.

“And nothing had better be missing from in there.”

He stalked away then, leaving me on the gravel driveway. He rounded the corner of the guesthouse, heading toward the main house. I waited for a minute to see if he was going to come back and say anything else. I was hoping for “Didn’t mean it” or “April Fools.”

He didn’t come back.

Fabulous
.

I went into the guesthouse to find Stevie and get her to pack things up. She was sitting on the bed in the room we’d slept in last night, still and quiet, her hands on her lap as her legs dangled over the edge. “What happened?” she whispered, as though Gary might be right behind me.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Possibly somewhat better.”

The way she tilted her head to the side told me she didn’t believe me.

“I swear to you, last night he was kind and generous and…sweet. Now this.”

“What should we do?”

“If he’s going to call the police on us—well, on me—that’s one more complication we don’t need. I have my appointment to get to this morning.” Neither of us dared say the name
Roberto
out loud. “Choice number one. You come with me and wait.”

That was a non-starter. Not only would Stevie not be allowed to grace Roberto’s august presence, it would terrify her to be that close. She shook her head.

“Choice number two. You stay here and pack everything up, and I will do my damnedest to be back by noon.”

“What if he comes in?” she whispered.

“Lock every door. Deadbolt everything. And if he does get in…cry. A lot.” I held up the Vegas phone. “You call the cops.”

She studied the way her feet were bouncing against the side of the bed.

I sat down and put my arm around her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

That got her to look at me. “No, it’s not.”

She had a point there, but I wasn’t going to concede it. “Everything’s going to be fine. I will be back by noon.” I kissed her forehead and headed into the bathroom to shower.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

THE LOBBY OF the Peninsula Hotel is not the fanciest hotel lobby I’ve ever been in. I’m not sure which hotel should get that distinction, because they all sort of blur after a while. Also, I haven’t been in very many fancy hotels in the past eleven years and undoubtedly they’ve all upgraded in the interim. But when I did stay in them—and I did, quite frequently, up until I was about sixteen and a half years old—I stayed in the hotels where the staff knew they were better than the vast majority of the patrons and were not shy about advertising this knowledge.

Many of these hotels were in France, which will probably not come as a surprise.

The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills is snooty and lavish and exclusive, and yet no one working there would dare say they were better than the people who came in. They might think it. But they won’t say it, and that already puts them several thousand notches above hotels like the Georges V in Paris in my book.

Not that anybody’s been asking me for my opinion of these places during the last eleven years, mind you.

There were lots of people at the Peninsula, early in the morning. Businessmen in suits, Japanese tourists preparing to go shopping, film producers in Hawaiian shirts and grimy yet pressed linen Bermuda shorts. Most of the people there seemed to be heading for the restaurant to get breakfast.

I didn’t fit in. I was dressed too well. The less money you have, the more you need to avoid looking desperate. So I had dressed in one of my best serious outfits. If the funeral you’re going to is your own, it’s polite to save the undertaker some time.

My execution was scheduled for eight a.m. and I arrived only half an hour late—which for me, arriving at a place I don’t want to be, doing something I don’t want to do, at anywhere near the appointed time, counts as punctual. The concierge’s name was Genevieve and she looked like a movie star. Genevieve the Magnificent smiled and said, “Hello. May I help you?”

“I’m here to meet someone.”

“What is the guest’s name?”

I smiled. It probably didn’t reach my eyes. “I’d really prefer not to say out loud.”

Her smile suddenly didn’t get any further than her mouth either. She’d been waiting for me, I guess. “Your name?” she asked.

“Drusilla Thorne.”

Genevieve nodded and typed something on the screen in front of her that I couldn’t see. “I’ll have Clark escort you.”

Clark was a tall, good-looking young man who in Genevieve’s movie would be the movie star’s gay best friend. He had a smooth face and amazing skin and he introduced himself as though I were his valued customer. “This way,” he said, and he led me through the marble hallways and out into a fabulously lush garden, one you wouldn’t expect to find in the middle of the grounds of a hotel in Beverly Hills. But everything’s a movie set, when you get right down to it, and this place was no different.

The villa was a separate building on the hotel grounds, a large house operated by the hotel. Clark led me through the hotel’s security. Ten meters from the villa’s front door was a highly muscular guy in his thirties with close-cropped black hair and a casual outfit that would allow him to fend off attackers without much effort on his part. His fraternal twin waited ten meters to the far side of the villa. These would be the guards we could spot easily, the ones attackers would go for first. There were probably at least two others, but I’d have to work on spotting them and I wasn’t that interested. The guard closest to us gave Clark and me thorough once-overs, although I’m sure to the hotel clerk it looked like perhaps the guard was checking him out.

He wasn’t checking Clark out any more than he was sizing me up. Don’t get me wrong. Ex-Mossad agents can be as gay as anyone else. However, they don’t check out possible prom dates while they’re on the job. They’re sort of like asexual killing machines until it’s time to call it a night. Then they party way harder than almost any other highly trained servicemen, possibly exceeded only by German paratroopers.

Clark held out his badge. “She’s expected,” he told the bodyguard, who nodded and took over Clark’s duties. The bodyguard escorted me to the door of the villa and indicated I should open it.

He stayed directly behind me. Harder for me to use peripheral vision on him.

I walked into the villa, which was luxurious and overwhelming; for all that, it was also a fancy hotel room. I didn’t pay attention to the quality of the wood floor or the design of the immaculate modern kitchen that would have been a jewel in any high-end home. I stared into the living room.

The sole occupant of the living room sat on the silk and chenille sofa, the table in front of him piled high with papers and notepads. The fireplace was fully ablaze. Three phones littered the area near his teacup. His shoes were off and his stockinged feet were rubbing rhythmically against the Tibetan carpet. His reading glasses sat perched on the end of his nose and he seemed deeply engrossed in whatever he was reading—the financials of a company he was thinking of buying, a report from his tech division on a new product they were developing, or maybe
Entertainment Weekly
. Whatever Roberto Montesinos Degollado paid attention to, he gave it his full attention.

Eleven years ago he had told my mother to hang up on me. That was his way of paying attention then.

Roberto had gotten older. Of course he had; a decade had passed. I had last seen him eleven years and six months ago, at my sixteenth birthday party. Tensions were riding high between me and my mother at that point and I wasn’t too concerned about what Roberto was doing. Since then, his hairline had receded some and he’d gotten streaks of gray through the thick black hair still left. His face had sagged a bit and he’d put on some weight around his middle. He looked like the older brother of the man I remembered.

When the guard and I entered the foyer, Roberto looked up from whatever he was reading. He stared at me for a good thirty seconds, probably as startled by the changes eleven years had wrought in me as I was by his.

After those seconds went by, he nodded. The guard moved from behind me and slipped out the front door of the villa. I guess he’d been waiting to get confirmation that it was really me. Maybe if Roberto hadn’t been sure, he had orders to snap my neck.

It had taken him the full half a minute because I looked a great deal more different than the girl I had been, that was for sure.

Roberto folded his glasses and tucked them into the pocket of his shirt before he stood up. “Trudy,” he said.

“It’s Drusilla.”

He stopped moving, as though he were surprised I were arguing the matter. Identity is always a power game. Always.

He was the first person to teach me that explicitly.

Roberto nodded. “Drusilla.” He walked over to where I stood, unable to move. He spread his arms. “May I?” he asked. I guess when I didn’t fight over the issue, he gave me a big hug, the kind he used to give me all the time when I was younger. I decided to stop fighting and let myself enjoy it for a second. I did not hug him back. He still smelled like cinnamon and coffee and whatever weird aftershave he now used.

“It is good to see you again. Jane will be amazed. You are all grown up now.”

“I always was.”

He thought about that. “Yes, I guess you’re right about that. You look so different now,
bella
.”

“Amazing what changing one’s hair color will do.”

He leaned back and studied me. He could have mentioned my height, or my body, or any of the thousand things that were different. “Your eyes are so old now.”

I shrugged. “We have all changed in the past decade.”

“Why do you have that accent?” he asked.

“This year’s voice. Suits my purposes.” I stepped away from him and looked around the villa. “It must suck being really rich. You have homework all the time.”

“I love what I do.” He grinned. Of course he did. He always did. So long as everything worked out neatly. So long as no one caused any trouble.

Mistake number one: being the person who always caused trouble.

“Please, come, sit down,” he told me. He lightly grasped my arm and led me over to the sofa. I took one of the armchairs. I wasn’t getting any cozier than I needed to. “Can I get you anything? Espresso? An aperitif?”

“Is this how today’s going to be?” I slouched on the chair. “Do you think I don’t remember how you feel about people who drink alcohol this early in the morning? Or at all, ever, even on their own time? Is this how today’s going to be?”