Adored (15 page)

But now he was dead. It just didn’t seem real.

At that moment Siena burst into the room and flung herself against Duke’s slumped body, frantically kissing his neck and cheek and sobbing uncontrollably. “He can’t be dead,” she wailed, “he can’t be!”

Hunter, who had slipped quietly into the back of the room with the growing crowd of estate servants, stepped forward and put his arm around her. He was still in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, and his hair stood up on the left side of his head like a chimney brush. “It’s all right, baby,” he whispered. “Come on. Come away now. We can go and sit outside.”

“No!” Siena shrugged him off angrily, lashing out like a surprised rattlesnake. “You don’t understand, do you?” She looked accusingly at everyone in the room, from Hunter to Seamus to Minnie, even at Conchita and Antoine, who loitered awkwardly by the door in their formal black-and-white liveries. “You didn’t love him like I did. None of you! None of you ever loved him!”

“Go and find Peter and Laurie,” whispered Seamus to Antoine, who slipped noiselessly out of the kitchen.

Minnie stepped forward and, not unkindly, shooed Hunter out of the way. Duke’s body lay slumped between her and Siena, and the absurdity of the situation, of his corpse just lying there, struck her again. Somehow it seemed so cruel, so undignified, to have one’s heart stop in the middle of a perfectly ordinary breakfast. Not trusting herself to look at the body, she focused on her granddaughter. “Now, you know that isn’t true, Siena. I loved your grandpa. I loved him very much.” And as she said the words, she realized they were true.

“Not like me,” Siena shot back. “No one loved him like I did. And you!” Hunter felt like the accused in a murder trial as she pointed at him, still crying and shaking from head to foot. “You never loved him at all. Did you?”

“Siena, that’s enough,” said Seamus sternly, putting a paternal arm around Hunter’s frozen shoulders. “You’re upset, sweetheart, and that’s fair enough, but we all loved him. Try not to forget that Hunter’s just lost his father.”

Hunter drew away from him and stood up tall. At fifteen, he was already almost six feet, and even with his tangled hair and cheeks still imprinted with bed creases, there was something noble and dignified about him.

“No, she’s right, Seamus,” he said quietly. “I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him, and he didn’t love me.”

There was a silence in the room you could have cut with a knife. No one contradicted him.

“Are you glad he’s dead?” asked Siena. She had stopped crying suddenly.

“No,” said Hunter, shaking his head sadly. “I’m not. Because I know you loved him. And I love you.”

Like a hurricane, she flew into his arms, the tears flowing again like Niagara. Hunter held her as though he would never, ever let her go.

“Don’t leave me,” Siena mumbled into his chest. The rise and fall of his breathing relaxed and released her. “I love you so much.”

“I won’t leave you, Siena,” he said, stroking her hair. “I promise.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The first few weeks after Duke’s death were a miserable blur to Siena. She felt his absence everywhere. At home on the estate daily life continued, but everything seemed muted, muffled somehow. It was as if the fine tuning on her life had been tampered with and the pictures had gone from color to black-and-white, while the soundtrack had turned into white noise, a meaningless, lifeless babble all around her.

Worse still, there was no escape for her at school or in the outside world. Duke McMahon’s death had become a huge story around the globe. Every gossip rag in America was running conspiracy theories about what had really happened that morning, and Siena couldn’t avoid the relentless images of her grandfather’s face that seemed to pour out of every screen and off every billboard. She became almost indifferent to the paparazzi, leaping out from behind bushes or ambushing her as she got off the school bus each day, eager for pictures of her grief-stricken face. They loved Siena because she gave them the goods every single time. She was a stunningly photogenic little girl, the spitting image of Duke, and she wore her emotions on her face, unhindered by any adult sense of restraint or reserve. Pictures of poor little Siena, her cheeks a river of tears, were selling magazines even more effectively than Princess Diana.

Within hours of the discovery in the kitchen, the estate was besieged by the world’s press. Hordes of reporters and TV crews gathered outside the gates, waiting for a statement and frantically snapping pictures of the ambulances and LAPD squad cars that forced their way through the crush. Meanwhile, the deafening buzz of helicopter blades grew more and more insistent overhead, circling ever lower over the estate in the hope of a shot of Duke on a stretcher. Dead or alive, the picture would be worth millions.

All the staff, as well as the family, had been told by Pete to stay inside and keep the drapes closed at all times. Various policemen and other official-looking people had cordoned off the kitchen with bright yellow tape, which Siena thought was odd. It wasn’t as if Grandpa had been murdered or anything.

Her parents and grandmother flitted backward and forward among these strangers, nodding and whispering. Laurie had retreated to her bedroom in silent shock. They all looked very somber and serious, but none of them, it seemed to Siena, looked really sad. None of them felt like she did.

She and Hunter had spent most of the day holed up in their old nursery, now a games room littered with bean bags, cassette tapes, and various wires and joysticks connected to Hunter’s beloved Atari. There didn’t seem much to say, so they mostly sat in silence, eventually deciding to play an extended tournament of Bike Racer 2 to take their minds off what had happened and shut out all the craziness downstairs.

At five o’clock, they had defied instructions and gone to the window to watch Pete walk down to the gates, flanked by a still-tearful Seamus and a suitably serious-looking David Rowe, to confirm to the waiting world what everybody already knew: that Duke McMahon had died of a massive heart attack at approximately seven-fifteen that morning. That an announcement about funeral arrangements and a memorial service would be made in the coming days. And that the family asked for privacy at this sad and difficult time.

“Anna Vega,
L.A. Times
!” shouted a brassy blonde in a leopard-print miniskirt at the front of the throng. “Pete, can you tell us where Caroline is right now? Was she there when it happened?”

It had not escaped the hacks’ notice that Caroline’s car did not appear to be in its usual spot in front of the house, and that she herself—usually such a glutton for publicity, no matter how morbid the circumstances—had not been seen or heard from all day.

“Mr. McMahon has no further comment at this time,” said David Rowe firmly.

“Pete! Pete!” screamed a hundred voices as the trio turned to walk back through the gates.

“Pete, Mike O’Mahoney at the
Herald
.” A vastly fat, balding man with a painful Brooklyn accent bellowed through the racket. “How’s your mother taking it? Is she concerned about the will at all?”

Before David could open his mouth, Seamus had launched himself at his fellow New Yorker, knocking him off his feet, to the delight of the swarms of photographers who’d been waiting for a half-decent shot all day.

“You bastard!” Seamus roared. “You disrespectful fuckin’ bastard. Is that all you vultures care about, the motherfucking will? He’s not even cold, for God’s sake.”

The reporter scrambled to his feet, mumbling something about assault and witnesses as he brushed the dirt from his ample backside in a failed attempt to regain some dignity after being floored by a seventy-eight-year-old.

Pete’s mouth twitched, an imperceptible hint of a smile dying on his lips. “My mother, as I’m sure you can imagine, is shocked and saddened by my father’s sudden and unexpected death,” he said calmly. “But I’m sure she appreciates your concern, Mr. O’Mahoney.” The crowd tittered. “As for my father’s will,” Pete continued, “I understand that it’s a matter of legitimate interest.” The fat reporter shrank nervously behind his fellows as Seamus glared at him murderously. “Let’s just say that my mother and I are not expecting any surprises.”

“What about Caroline and Hunter?” shouted a nameless voice. “Any surprises for them do you think?”

Pete paused. Not by a flicker did he betray the slightest emotion to the waiting press. “I think we all have a funeral to prepare for. Right now my focus is on that and on supporting my mother and the rest of my family,” he said.

“All right folks, that’s it for today,” said David Rowe, ushering Pete and Seamus back through the gates. “Let’s give the family some privacy now.”

With a general groan, the crowd reluctantly started to disperse. Pete and Seamus walked back up the hill together to the sound of notebooks shutting, tape recorders being clicked off, and camera equipment being laboriously dismantled behind them.

“Could you believe that guy, asking you about the will?” said Seamus.

The twilight was playing softly on the lawns, bathing the whole estate in an eerily beautiful cloak of silver. Seamus had known Pete his whole life, but sometimes he still felt like he knew nothing about him at all. Pete and his father had always been like chalk and cheese, never getting along, really, even when the boy was tiny. Seamus had loved Duke so much and understood him so well, but walking along the familiar paths of his house with his son in the evening light, he almost felt like a stranger. He was a cold fish, young Petey McMahon.

“I don’t know,” said Pete, his features impassive. “I guess it’s their job, you know? To ask questions.” He picked up a handful of gravel and started throwing pebbles aimlessly into the rhododendrons that lined the path.

“But surely everyone knows what’s in the will by now, do they not?” asked Seamus. “Caroline gets a chunk of the cash, Minnie gets the house, and you, Laurie, and Hunter split the trust three ways. As I remember, that all got leaked to those vultures years ago, right after Hunter was born.”

Pete gave a noncommittal grunt that could have been assent, and dropped the rest of the gravel on the ground as he approached the front steps. He wiped his dirty hand on his pants before offering it to Seamus. “Good night,” he said, “and thank you for today. I know it must have been very hard for you.”

Christ, he’s a stiff, thought Seamus. Did it matter to him at all that his dad was laid out on a slab in the West Hollywood morgue? “Hard for all of us,” he said, and turned back down the path toward his car and his own life.

For the first time in almost seventy years, it was a life without Duke.

“Darling, just pick up the phone,” said Charlie. “Get yourself over there, for Hunter’s sake if not your own.”

“I can’t. I just can’t.”

Caroline sat rigid on the sofa in Charlie’s Century City penthouse. They hadn’t gotten out of bed until three-thirty in the afternoon, after a marathon sex session that had left both of them happily exhausted. She’d told Duke she was doing a twenty-four-hour detox at the Ocean Spa, so he wouldn’t be expecting her back till the evening. Ravenous after her morning’s exertions, she had just gotten the eggs out of the fridge when she flicked on the TV in Charlie’s chrome-filled bachelor’s kitchen. When she saw the news, she’d almost had a heart attack herself.

Now huddled in the living room, wearing Charlie’s fisherman’s sweater and sipping the hot sweet tea he’d made her, she hadn’t taken her eyes from the screen in over an hour, even though the ABC7 news team was just replaying the same report over and over again. Duke McMahon found dead at breakfast, apparently having suffered a massive heart attack. The LAPD was on the scene, but the death was not being treated as suspicious. Duke’s wife of over forty years, Minnie, was being comforted by relatives at the McMahon estate. The whereabouts of Caroline Berkeley, his long-term partner and mother of his fifteen-year-old son, remained a mystery. Then they cut to a well-worn series of clips from Duke’s cinematic career, interspersed with more recent footage of him with Caroline, arriving at various galas and premieres.

“Wow, old Duke was a big fan of tight pants back in the day, wasn’t he?” joked Charlie as a famous still of the young Duke dressed as an outlaw cowboy throwing a lasso popped up on the screen.

“Oh God, Charlie, don’t,” said Caroline, who was wringing her hands nervously as she watched. “What am I going to do?” She looked at him imploringly.

Charlie sat down beside her and put his strong hands on her shoulders, forcing her to tear her gaze away from the news and face him. “Caroline, you’re going to go home. You have to. People are already wondering where you are, why you haven’t rushed straight back. And you know Hunter must be out of his mind with worry.”

“I doubt it,” she replied bitterly, picking at the tassels on the red cashmere throw draped over Charlie’s sofa. “What if he knew something, Charlie? What if he found out about us, and that’s what gave him the heart attack? And now the police know, and then they’re going to want to talk to me. Oh God,” her voice was rising in panic, “I can’t cope. I mean, he was so fit, he really was.”

“Honey,” said Charlie reasonably, “the guy was eighty years old. He had a heart attack, baby, it happens. It had nothing to do with you, and nobody’s going to think it did. Believe me.”

“Then why are the police there?” asked Caroline, sipping feebly at her tea. “I mean, what if he
did
know something?”

“He didn’t know anything,” said Charlie firmly. “And even if he did, your having an affair is not a crime, is it? I know the LAPD are a lazy bunch of assholes, but I still think they have better things to do with their time than run around arresting every movie star’s wife who has a bit on the side. Just imagine how full the L.A. jails would be if they did.”

“I’m not his wife,” said Caroline irrationally.

Charlie smiled. His sense of calm was beginning, slowly, to thaw her panic.

“You really think I should go back?”

“I don’t think it,” he replied, taking the mug from her hands and placing it on the coffee table beside them. “I know it. Go home, Caroline. Go comfort your son.”

“But what will I tell people?” she asked him, her voice still quavering. “Where should I say I’ve been?”

“God, I don’t know,” said Charlie impatiently. “Tell them you went for a drive up to Santa Barbara. You sat on the beach all day, so you didn’t hear the news. I don’t know. Tell them whatever you like.”

Caroline nodded uncertainly. She looked so small and vulnerable, wrapped up in his huge sweater, her hands lost inside the cavernous sleeves, with her hair still wild and disheveled from bed. He felt a jolt of longing surge through his body, but he suppressed it firmly. This was no time to start fooling around.

For all of his reassurances to Caroline, Charlie knew full well that things were about to get complicated. There was a lot of money at stake, and without Duke to protect her, his wife and children would do everything in their power to stop her from getting her hands on any of it. Even if her legal rights were watertight, they could still make her life hell once she went home. Pulling her gently to her feet, he wrapped his arms around her.

“You realize that we’ll have to be very careful, certainly until after the funeral and the reading of the will.”

Caroline looked up at him aghast. “I
can
still see you?” she asked, clasping her hands around his neck. She needed him, now more than ever, and the thought of the next few weeks without him was almost unbearable.

“Not yet. Not until Duke’s estate is settled once and for all and that money’s in your account.”

She gave him a petulant pout that would have been worthy of Siena.

“Now, come on,” said Charlie. “You’ve waited sixteen years for this moment, Caroline. You gave that old bastard the best years of your life.”

“He wasn’t always a bastard, you know.” Caroline was surprised to hear her voice close to breaking.

“You’ve earned that money, every penny of it,” continued Charlie vehemently, his blond hair falling forward in an unruly mop as he spoke. God, he was beautiful. “Letting that disgusting”—he checked himself—“letting Duke have whatever he wanted, taking him into your life, your bed, giving him a son.”

“He never wanted a son,” said Caroline.

Charlie ran his hand through his hair, exasperated. She just didn’t get it. “All I’m saying is, don’t go taking any silly risks now, all right? You and Hunter need that money. There’ll be plenty of time for us later.”

He put his hand against her cheek, slowly tracing a warm, firm finger down until it reached her mouth and rested on the plump softness of her lips. They gazed at each other for a moment, both longing to take comfort in the other, before finally releasing themselves to a lingering goodbye kiss.

He smelled so delicious, a heady mix of Givenchy aftershave, sex, and sweat that left Caroline reeling with desire for him. Even now, with poor old Duke lying dead and who knew what battles awaiting her when she got back home, she felt the familiar, insistent pounding between her legs. But she knew he was right. She had to go.