Born to Be Wild (13 page)

John's cell rang with the theme to
Titanic
at eight o'clock Sunday evening.

“John, it's Jack. You want to come with me to make an arrest?”

“Whoa—what, Jack? Who?”

Jack said, “Meet me at the Hildebrands' house right away,” and he punched off his cell.

Jack arrived first, with two of his deputies close behind him, and found the Hildebrand house dark and quiet. Only one downstairs light was on, a dim shine through the living room draperies. He checked the garage, and was pleased to see both their cars inside.

He climbed back into his truck to wait for John, and soon saw lights in his rearview mirror. He unlocked the passenger door, and watched John pull his sleek BMW behind his truck and turn off the lights. When John tapped on the window, Jack leaned over and opened the door.

“Who?” was John's first word.

Jack looked toward the Hildebrand house as he said, “Milo. The day after it happened, I knew to my bones he killed Jason Maynard. It just took a little work getting the proof, and now we have it. I'll tell you all about it at the station, John, but right now we need to do this. Are you ready?”

He gave a small wave to the two police cars parked in each direction half a block away, and waited a moment until he saw the four deputies fanning out around the house.

Milo Hildebrand answered the door on Jack's third knock. He looked haggard and wary, but he was well-dressed, as if he planned to go out. He stood in the doorway, blocking them.

“I heard you were asking more questions out at the club, Jack. I called my lawyer this afternoon. Ms. Bigelow said if you came by again you were bordering on harassment and I should refuse to talk to you unless she's present.”

Jack nodded. “Yes, I've been out to the club three times now, interviewing people. And yes, your lawyer is trying to have you declared a saint, Milo. But I'm not here to talk this time. I'm here to make an arrest.”

Milo stepped back, shoulders slumped. “Olivia? She really couldn't have realized what she was doing, Jack, she must have been crazed, angry—”

Now that was amazing. Jack interrupted him. “No, it's not your wife I'm here for. It's you, Milo. But you might want to tell Mrs. Hildebrand that I'm arresting you for the murder of your son-in-law, Jason Maynard, that you'll be spending the night in my nice jail.”

“I don't believe this! Are you nuts, Jack? I didn't—”

They heard a noise from behind him and all turned to see Mrs. Olivia Hildebrand standing at the bottom of the stairs, her hand fisted against her mouth. She looked pale as death. “I'm sorry, ma'am, but he killed Jason, you know.”

Milo walked toward her, saying, “Olivia, it's not true,” and then suddenly turned and ran through an open door down a short hallway past the stairs.

John shouted, “Damn, that's his office!”

“He's got guns in there,” Jack said. “I should have cuffed him the instant he answered the door. You stay put, Mrs. Hildebrand, stay here.”

Jack was after him, John on his heels. The door slammed in his face before he reached it. Milo yelled from inside, “Go away, Jack, or I'll shoot you! I'm not going to jail!”

Jack said through the door, keeping his voice calm and slow, “Milo, don't make this any worse by resisting arrest. I've got deputies outside. There's no way out for you. Open the door, and we can talk this through.”

“I didn't kill the thieving little bastard. I didn't kill him!”

Jack waved John behind him, then backed up and kicked his foot hard against the doorknob. The door shuddered and gave way, crashing in against the office wall.

Jack drew his Beretta. “You stay out here, John.”

Milo had one leg out the open window that gave onto the backyard. He jerked around and fired wildly, two of the bullets striking the wall behind Jack, a third shattering a crystal brandy carafe on a drink trolley, spraying the air with the scent of liquor.

Jack and John had both dropped and rolled behind Milo's desk. “Enough, Milo!” Jack shouted. “I don't want to shoot you. Put down your weapon now.”

Jack came up fast to see Milo drop through the open window. He heard a shout from outside as he ran across the room. He climbed out the window, rolled as he hit the ground, and came up fast to his feet. He saw Milo running as fast as he could toward the back fence of his yard, and two of his deputies coming around the side of the house, yelling at him to stop. As Milo climbed over the high back fence, Jack took careful aim and fired. Milo yelled in pain, grabbed his calf, his handgun falling to the ground. He dropped backward onto his side, screaming.

“Nice shot, Chief,” said Deputy Ames as they restrained and cuffed him.

“Yeah,” John said, coming up to him, “so long as you weren't aiming for his arm.”

Deputy Ames said, “An arm, a leg—I can't see it matters much.”

BORN TO BE WILD
Monday

“Clear! Candy, fix Mary Lisa's hair. Lou Lou, touch up her lipstick. Jeff, Mr. Dillard wants to speak to you for a minute in the booth.”

Mary Lisa nodded automatically toward the stage manager, a new guy named Todd Bickly who'd been on
As the World Turns
for ten years and had come over to
Born to Be Wild
because he'd wanted to see some new faces. He was fortyish, slim, and liked to smile a lot, showing a space between his front teeth that marked him as definitely not an actor. She'd told Detective Vasquez about him, since he was so new, to have him checked out. Mary Lisa really had no clue what to look for, but she didn't think Todd fit the bill of being some kind of obsessed maniac. He looked more like a friendly computer geek, with his shoulders hunched forward. Not someone you'd meet in a gym.

While Candy was fiddling with Mary Lisa's hair—it was done up in a high knot on top of her head with a thick rooster tail of hair fanning out of it—Todd said, “Mary Lisa, Mr. Dillard asked me to suggest you try to lighten up your reactions to Jeff in your scenes with him. He wants the audience to really wonder if Sunday is going to jump Damian's bones, and he'd prefer you not hit the audience over the head with how revolting you think this all is. He said everyone understands revenge, and the audience loves Sunday so much she could kill the entire cast off and they'd be content to watch you play monologues.”

It was clever of Clyde to throw that in, but it didn't help. She said, “I'm sorry, Todd, that Clyde set you up to give that little speech. The thing is, they're not going to forgive me, but that isn't your problem. Tell Clyde I'll be talking this over with Bernie.” Unless she managed to change it, Sunday was going to have to roll around in bed with Damian within a couple of weeks—probably beginning on a Thursday, the deed well under way by the end of the show on Friday.

Candy patted her shoulder and said, “Good to go again, Mary Lisa, the rooster tail is outrageous.” With a polite nod, Mary Lisa said, “Thank you,” and dashed off the floor over to Bernie Barlow, the head writer. She had to give it one more try.

Bernie looked up, saw her, and rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, you're here to beg and whine about Sunday not doing the foul deed with Susan's husband.” He raised his hand. “Stop. You can save it all, Mary Lisa. We decided you're right. Yeah, we thought it over, but don't gloat and brag to everyone else, and don't think this sets some sort of precedent. You should assume it will never happen again on this planet. In fact, in a couple of days you won't even remember all your whining angst because we've come up with an idea so Titanic it turns the show on its head.” He beamed at her. “You're going off the revenge/sex hook altogether.”

The burst of excitement she felt quickly turned to suspicion. “Hold on here a second, my world is spinning. There's got to be a catch here. What's this all about, Bernie? What is this Titanic plan? Are you putting me in a
Survivor
-type show? Maybe set in Siberia? Having me seduce one of my mother's lovers instead? Or have you got my pool guy waiting in the wings? Hmm, well, at least he's cute and tells a good joke.”

“There isn't a
Survivor
show. Forget the pool guy, it's been overdone.”

“But Bernie—”

“Pay attention here, Mary Lisa. This is all on the up-and-up. And don't worry about Clyde. We're having a meeting over lunch, we'll tell him then. But it's a done deal.” He waved a script in her face. “You'll know when it's your time to know. But I like it. Everyone likes it. Clyde will too although he was looking forward to showing off some of your nice skin. You'll have your script soon. We launch the Titanic on Thursday.” He beamed at her, like Father Christmas taking lumps of coal out of her shoes. Mary Lisa felt the lead cloud flash bright silver over her head, and a grin split her face. She grabbed Bernie's hand and pumped it up and down, yelling “Yippee! Thank you, Bernie!” And she wasn't done. She leaped on him. Bernie was a big guy, a good six foot six, a former college basketball player, still pretty fast and agile at forty-five, but he dropped the script when she wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him on both cheeks.

“You're the best, Bernie, the very best!”

“Yeah, yeah, that's what my wife told me before she dragged me into that pink chapel in Las Vegas.” A camera flashed. “Hey, which one of you clowns took that photo?”

From the corner of her eye Mary Lisa saw a man moving fast toward the big red Exit sign. She recognized Puker Hodges as he slithered out the door. She leaped off Bernie, furious. “I'm going to kill that little worm. You watch me, I'm going to roast him over nice hot coals on my neighbor's barbeque grill.”

“Was that the paparazzo who's been tailing you?”

“Yeah.”

Bernie patted her arm, then screamed loud enough to set the chandelier jangling in Sunday Cavendish's living room set. “Where's security? Frank, go catch that creep and stomp his camera into the asphalt! Mother Mary and Father Joseph, is anybody minding the fricking store here?”

Mary Lisa said, “Give me Gloria's cell number. I'm going to call her so she won't cut your feet off.”

“It wouldn't be my feet she'd go after,” Bernie said, and sighed. “Well, at least it's never boring around here. Frank, you yahoo, where are you?”

 

LOU
Lou came over a couple of hours later to fetch her for lunch. Lunch pickings were light in this section of Burbank so both of them usually brought sack lunches. Today Lou Lou had a cold, thick steak sandwich stuffed inside a baguette, smothered in mayonnaise, a super-sized bag of potato chips, and a big plastic bottle of Diet Dr Pepper on the side.

The truly nauseating thing was, Lou Lou wasn't even a single pound overweight. The good fairy had gifted her with a freak metabolism that burned food even faster than Mary Lisa's. Not satisfied with that, Lou Lou topped it off with a sincere enjoyment of aerobics, the sweatier the better. Mary Lisa was usually with her, watching Lou Lou smile her way through spin classes as her own eyebrows fell, hair by hair, into the sweat running down her face. On top of that, Mary Lisa had to stay ten pounds below weight, a must since the camera put it right back on. Why, she'd wondered, in this digital age, couldn't they come up with a camera that took off ten pounds instead of adding it on? It was a male conspiracy, she'd decided, to keep women impossibly skinny and therefore, since they were deprived of the pleasure of eating real live food, tempted to have sex with them instead. Sometimes, Mary Lisa rebelled and ate real food, like a super-sized bag of potato chips, knowing she'd have to run five miles and sweat guilt. She tried not to whine aloud as she opened her plastic carton of salad—half a dozen small beef cubes mixed with lettuce and tomatoes, a single whiff of fat-free Caesar dressing on top—and tried to ignore the delicious aroma wafting toward her from Lou Lou's baguette.

“Ah, come on, Mary Lisa, don't be pitiful. Here, take a bite—a small one. No, it's okay, I cleared it with the director-of-the-day, trust me. So splurge.”

Mary Lisa wanted a whole lot more than a small bite of that cold, thick, medium-rare steak sandwich, but she suspected Lou Lou would cut her off at the knees if she took more than a nip, so she controlled herself. She chewed slowly and sat back against the park bench they were sharing in their favorite little green spot next to the studio, closed her eyes, and chewed some more. The sun was bright, as it was every day in Southern California, and blessed be, there was next to no smog today, and the air was soft and warm. Traffic was thick and horns were honking. Everything was as it should be.

She greatly preferred this spot to staying in the studio, though some people walking by, especially if they were tourists, would do a double take. Most wouldn't notice her, since this was L.A. and seeing a woman in full makeup was no big deal, but every once in a while, someone would stop and ask her who she was. Rarely, someone would recognize her as Sunday and ask for an autograph.

Lou Lou said, “Promise you won't leave the studio and come outside by yourself, Mary Lisa. Right now, you should plan to have someone with you at all times. I can't believe Puker actually broke into the studio. This time, they're going to nail his butt. Frank in security was all muzzy-headed. He thinks Puker may have put something in his coffee. Otherwise, he doesn't know how Puker could have slipped by him.”

“You'd think Frank would know about the danger of gift horses.”

“Well, not this time. Puker must think he's on a roll, after getting those pictures he took of you in the ambulance into the tabloids. The truth is, all the paparazzi are getting out of hand, not just Puker. First they started boxing celebrities into their cars so they can't escape, taking as many photos as they want, and now they're even causing traffic accidents—remember that Mercedes convertible they broadsided?—all to get pictures of the actors and their reactions. Things have shifted now, so like I said, I think the studio is going to go after him—they're going to start arresting these jerks, taking them and the magazines who publish their photos to court.”

Mary Lisa said, “I hope so. Clyde's already filled out a police report and the police said they can get a warrant to arrest Puker—for breaking and entering on the set and taking my picture, and maybe assault for drugging Frank, who got a nice little nap out of it. They said that one could be hard to prove, though. Go figure.”

“And don't forget he violated your restraining order again, even though you had it renewed last week and he knew it. Arresting him is just a start—I want them to fry the little creep. At the very least, this will cost him big lawyer fees. Oh, I called Danny. He said the Burbank cops are handling Puker's case but he knows the detective who drew the case and he'll keep in touch.”

“Danny? You mean Detective Daniel Vasquez? Why did you call him Danny?”