Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“I’m sorry.”

“Is there anything else?” Marilyn asked them.

“No, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Serena replied. “We just need to take some photographs of Rochelle’s room if that’s okay. For our files.”

She nodded. “If you like.”

Rochelle’s mother left the room, and Serena and Guppo were alone. Guppo’s round face was as grave as Serena had ever seen it. He’d come to the same conclusions as she had.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think this was a very shrewd fifteen-year-old who decided to go on the adventure of her life,” Serena said.

She noticed a forty-inch flat-screen television on the wall opposite Rochelle’s bed. Below, among the bookshelves, was a Blu-ray player. She walked over and pressed the eject button on the player. When the drawer opened, she spotted a disk still nestled on the shelf inside.

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” Serena said.

“That’s the first movie,” Guppo said. “She didn’t get far.”

Serena nodded. “There was no movie marathon. Rochelle took a picture of it to send to her parents. She probably staged the picture of herself in her pajamas, too, so she could send it later. And then I’m betting she ran out to catch the bus and head downtown.”

“So this is how the other half lives,” Maggie said as Cab steered his Corvette down the narrow spit of Captiva Island past the mansions that hugged the waterfront. The homes were lavish, but despite their size, they still had a rustic Florida feel, as if a beach bum had found $8 million in a treasure chest to buy a place on the sand.

“I like to come down here now and then to make myself feel poor,” Cab replied with a grin. “This is where the Bentleys all have bumper stickers that say ‘My other car is a Phantom.’”

“Have you been to Dean Casperson’s place before?”

“Inside? No. I’ve taken a boat down the sound a couple times and sailed in close enough to get their security pretty nervous.”

“Haley Adams didn’t get in here without an ID and an invitation,” Maggie said. “She had to be on a list somewhere.”

“Definitely, but those lists disappear once the party’s over. Haley was here, but we’ll never be able to prove it. I’ve tried.”

Cab slowed on Captiva Drive as he approached the pink stone driveway of the Casperson estate. The sandy walking trail to the Gulf was on their left. He pulled the Corvette into the driveway and drove past thick hanging greenery to the main house, where he parked next to a row of shaggy palm trees. The house was three stories, painted pastel yellow. Most of the upper level was glass. She could see a Roman-style Olympic-size pool attached to the north side of the house, surrounded by travertine tile and covered by a glass-and-stone atrium. The double-wide front doors gave a view straight through to the green waters of the sound.

“So Tarla and Mo are friends?” Maggie asked dubiously. “Even after what happened to her?”

“I wouldn’t say friends, but Hollywood is a small community. The players tend to know each other.”

“Well, I’m impressed she was willing to get us in here, given her history with Dean. Do you think Mo knows?”

“You mean, what Dean did to Tarla? What kind of man he is? Honestly, I don’t know. They’ve been together for decades. It’s hard to believe she could really be unaware, but sometimes you develop a blindness for things when you need to.”

A large Filipino man in a white suit met them at the Corvette. He was friendly and polite, but Maggie was sure he was armed and could have snapped both of their necks in seconds if he’d been so inclined. He led them inside the house, which had the airiness of cotton candy and was painted in shades of peach and sea-foam green. Warm, moist air blew through the interior with the fresh Gulf breeze. She saw a grand piano. A vast wet bar. An indoor-outdoor dance floor. It was a mansion built for entertaining, and it was strange to see it completely empty of people.

This home was a shrine. Everywhere Maggie looked, the house showed off memorabilia of Dean Casperson’s career. The walls were covered with decades of photographs of Casperson with nearly every mover and shaker in Hollywood, posters from his dozens of movies, awards from nonprofit organizations, pictures of Dean in impoverished areas overseas, and honorary degrees from ten different colleges. In a built-in bookcase, behind locked glass doors, she saw a lineup of his acting trophies. Among them were four Golden Globes, an Emmy, and two Oscars. It was a reminder of who they were dealing with.

A star. A living legend.

The guard led them all the way through the ground floor of the estate without stopping and then to the patio overlooking the water. The Florida sunshine beat down. The day was perfect, and the water was calm. Maggie could see a sleek fifty-foot speedboat bobbing next to the boat dock on the sound. The name of the boat written on the stern was mo better. She wondered if Mrs. Casperson knew that the phrase was actually urban slang for passionate screwing.

Mo Casperson sat by herself on the patio with a red-and-orange cocktail in a hurricane glass and a laptop open in front of her. Maggie felt a little as if she were approaching the queen for an audience. Mo wore a chic lemonade-colored sun hat over her golden hair. Her flowered knee-length dress would have fit in well at an upscale beach wedding. She had long nails, each individually painted with a different pastel design. The only jewelry she wore was her wedding ring. The square-cut diamond made a statement, and that statement was “I’m one of the richest women on the planet.”

She didn’t get up, but she removed her sunglasses and greeted them with a smile. “Cab Bolton. I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you were fifteen years old. I’m sure you don’t remember it.”

“Positano,” Cab replied easily. “You were visiting the Amalfi Coast, and you had lunch with my mother during the filming of Sapphirica .”

Mo’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Well, either you have an amazing memory or I’m very memorable.”

“It’s all you,” Cab assured her.

“And this must be Sergeant Bei?” Mo asked.

Mo held out a hand, and Maggie wasn’t sure if she should shake it or kiss it. She decided to shake it. “Mrs. Casperson, thank you for meeting us.”

“Anything for Tarla,” she replied. “You’re from the Duluth police department, is that right? I met your boss, Lieutenant Stride, when I was chatting with Dean yesterday. Stride has quite a presence about him as a man. He’s very attractive.”

“That’s true.”

“But of course, I don’t need to tell you that,” Mo went on.

Maggie’s eyes squinted in suspicion as she tried to grasp the woman’s subtext. Was it an innocent comment? Or was she trying to make it clear that she knew about Maggie and Stride’s affair? Mo lived in a world of innuendo where you never said exactly what you meant. Maggie felt an urge to check her back to make sure there wasn’t a knife in it.

“Please, both of you, sit down,” Mo said. “Sergeant Bei, I can understand why someone would want to get out of Minnesota in January — in fact, I can’t understand why anyone would stay in Minnesota in January — but I’m curious what you’re doing here. And why you and Cab have joined forces.”

“We’re investigating a murder,” Maggie replied.

“Two murders, in fact,” Cab added. “One in Florida, one in Minnesota.”

“How terrible. But why talk to me about it?”

“We believe the same man killed the two young women with the same gun,” Maggie explained. “We only found out about it because of a car accident that killed him in Duluth. He has all the hallmarks of a gun for hire, and we’re trying to find out who hired him.”