Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“I still don’t see how I can help you.”

Again, Maggie tried to read her face, and again she came up short. Mo gave no hint in her expression of whether her confusion was genuine or whether she was simply covering up the truth.

“We’re pretty sure the young woman in Florida, Haley Adams, was at a party here not long before she was killed,” Cab told her.

“Pretty sure?”

“I can’t prove it. Unless you’d be willing to share your guest lists.”

Mo smiled. “I’m sorry, Cab, but you of all people understand how important privacy is in our world. Security, too. Do you have a photograph of this young woman?”

“I do.” Cab called up a photo of Haley Adams on his phone and held it up for Mo to review. She placed half glasses from a chain around her neck onto her face to examine the photograph. Then she shook her head.

“I don’t know her, but that doesn’t really mean anything. She certainly could have been here, but if so, I wasn’t the one to invite her. I don’t know how the party could have been connected to whatever happened to her, though. Unless you think she met someone here. I suppose that’s possible, but I wouldn’t know how to narrow it down for you.”

Mo was poised. She gave nothing away. Or she was simply innocent.

“The woman who was killed in Minnesota has a more direct connection,” Maggie said. “She was an intern on the set of The Caged Girl , but she was actually there for a different reason. She was spying on your husband.”

“Excuse me?” Mo said.

“I sent her there,” Cab added. “She worked for me. And now she’s dead.”

Mo shifted her stare to each of them in turn. She took a sip of her drink. Maggie waited for her to evict them from the mansion, but she didn’t. She simply shook her head as if they were misbehaving children. When she spoke, her voice was calm and full of syrupy disappointment.

“Cab, why on earth would you be spying on Dean?”

“May I speak candidly?” he said.

“Please.”

“I’ve been investigating the murders of multiple women over the last two decades, and they all have one thing in common. Your husband.”

Mo actually laughed. “Murder? Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“Well, then I feel sorry for you. It’s ridiculous. Are you actually accusing Dean of murder? I mean, we’re used to getting bad reviews, but this is a first.”

“I’m not accusing anyone. Not yet.”

“Oh, well, now I feel better. Maybe you’d like to explain why you think Dean was somehow involved in the deaths of these women.”

“Probably because he sexually assaulted them and he was afraid they’d talk,” Cab told her.

This time, Mo’s face reacted immediately. Her eyes turned to ice that could have frozen the humidity in the Florida air. “What a grotesque thing to say. If you repeat anything like that in public, I promise you, we will take legal action. This is not a game, Cab. When you are in our position, there are always people who want to invent lies and cut you down to size. You learn to live with it. You learn when to turn the other cheek and when to sue. But honestly, I’m used to dealing with strangers and outsiders about this kind of venomous nonsense. Not people who are part of our world. You should be ashamed of yourself for coming here. You should be ashamed of yourself for manipulating your mother into getting you an invitation on false pretenses. You can both leave now and we’ll call this over and done, but I assure you, if I hear even the barest rumor of what you have said coming back to me in the future, I will do whatever is necessary to strip you and your mother of every dollar, every friend, every shred of goodwill and reputation you have in Hollywood. Are we perfectly clear about that, Cab Bolton?”

“Dean raped Tarla,” Cab said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“That is a despicable lie. Tarla would never say something like that.”

“It was on the set of Society of One . Dean got her the part. She paid for it by being drugged and assaulted. How many other times has he done it, Mo? Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

Mo didn’t speak for a long time. She got out of the chair and wandered to the balcony of the porch, where steps led down to the boat dock and the water. She spoke to them without turning around. “At least I understand now, Cab. I don’t forgive you, and I don’t take back a word of what I said, but I do understand why you would launch yourself on this misguided quest.”

“Misguided?” Cab said acidly.

“I really need to speak to Tarla about this.”

“Are you saying you had no idea that Dean is a predator when it comes to women?”

Mo spun around with the speed of a snake. She jabbed a finger at Cab. “ Stop it . You don’t know what you’re saying. I wish we all lived celibate, virtuous, faithful lives, but we don’t. Tarla certainly never has. You think I don’t know how many marriages she’s broken up over the years with her affairs? You think I don’t know that you have no idea who your own father is? Grow up, Cab. Did Dean sleep with Tarla? Of course he did. Did I know about it? Of course I did. I’m very sorry that Tarla feels the need to reinvent herself as an innocent victim in a relationship that she instigated. Much as she did over and over again with other married men in the last thirty years.”

“You can’t possibly believe that Tarla seduced Dean,” Cab said.

“A wannabe actress trying to manipulate a huge star by using sex? You’re right; that’s a story we’ve never seen in Hollywood.”

Cab got up. So did Maggie. She felt shell-shocked, watching the back-and-forth as if it were some kind of battle of gladiators. Tall as he was, Cab loomed over both of them.

“If you’re that naive, Mo, I feel sorry for you,” Cab told her. “I’m not going to stop. You can’t hide from this forever. The truth about Dean is going to come out, and when it does, he’ll be in prison, and you’ll both be ruined. Count on it.”

The guard in the white suit appeared as if by magic to lead them out. Maggie and Cab retreated silently into the house, but as they did, Mo called to them from the balcony.

“Both of you, take a good look at the awards and the honors as you leave,” she said in a voice that carried through the empty mansion. “That’s forty years of doing good in this world, on-screen and offscreen. That’s my husband. That’s the truth about Dean.”

Stride looked up as Serena appeared in the doorway of his office. She didn’t look happy.

“What did you find out about Rochelle Wahl?” he asked.

Serena sat down on the other side of the desk and glanced over her shoulder before giving him an update. He noticed a strange buzz of conversation in the cubicle farm outside.

“I asked the medical examiner to reexamine the report,” she told him, “just in case anything got missed. The body itself was already released and cremated. It’s going to be hard to get the manner of death switched at this point.”

“Do we have any evidence that the girl was at Casperson’s house?”

“Nothing so far. I talked to two of the bus drivers on the Number 3 route out of Proctor. They both knew Rochelle pretty well, but they can’t remember whether she took the bus on Saturday afternoon. I’ve interviewed people on the film crew, but they’re tight-lipped. Nobody wants to get in trouble with Casperson. I’m trying to get phone records from Rochelle’s cell carrier to see if she called or texted anyone on Saturday about where she was.”

“What about Curt Dickes?” Stride asked.

“I showed him a photo, but he couldn’t identify her. He only saw the girl from the back as she was getting into John Doe’s car.”