Butterfly (79 page)
Authors: Kathryn Harvey
put her hand on the knob she said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with it,
Danny.”
“What do you want from me?
I’m begging you, isn’t that enough?”
“No, Danny, it isn’t. I never intended to save you. I only wanted to see how low you
would sink. The papers in this purse are my final statement to the press, denouncing you
and everything you have stood for. If it had been only me that you had hurt, I might be
able to forgive you. But you have hurt so many others, and you murdered my baby. For
that there is no forgiveness.”
“CHRIST!”
“And one more thing, Danny. A Detective O’Malley is on his way here to arrest you.”
He reached for the chair and pulled himself up to his feet. “What are you talking
about? He wouldn’t dare arrest me!”
“I’m afraid he will, Danny. He has to. Do you remember the time you came to see me
at Hazel’s and you got drunk and bragged about getting arrested on a morals charge and
then escaping from the road gang?”
He and Bonner stared at her.
“You thought the statute of limitations was up and you were free. Well, you were
wrong, Danny. I sent Billy Bob to Texas to look into it, and do you know what he found?
That there is an outstanding warrant on you, a felony escape warrant, Danny, for which
there is no statute of limitations and no bail. In just a few minutes, Danny, you will be
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taken out of here in handcuffs. And that”—she turned the knob and the door opened—
“is what I have lived thirty-five years to see at last.”
He flew at her. But Beverly pulled the door open just as he reached her, screaming,
“You fucking bitch!” causing the roomful of people to turn around and fall silent.
She entered the suite as Detective O’Malley came in with a couple of uniformed
policemen. Having seen the detective, the newspaper reporters and television people had
followed him up from the lobby and were now crowded in the corridor outside Danny
Mackay’s suite. They had heard Danny’s shouts and now clamored around Beverly, firing
questions and taking her picture. She held up her hand for silence, then handed the eel-
skin purse to Billy Bob. “Everything I have to say to the press is in this written statement.
I am hereby withdrawing my support, financial and political and personal, from Danny
Mackay.”
The media people created a roar in the hallway and blocked her progress to the eleva-
tor. As she reached the double doors she heard Danny’s voice screaming above all the oth-
ers: “You bitch! You filthy bitch! You won’t get away with this! I’ll get you! You’ll see! I’LL
GET YOU—”
She stepped into the elevator and turned around in time to see Danny struggling with
the policemen, his wrists handcuffed. Then the doors closed and she was engulfed by
silence.
The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud sped along the deserted Pacific Coast Highway. Bob
Manning was driving, Beverly sat in the backseat. To her left, sheer cliffs dropped down
hundreds of feet to the Pacific Ocean, which was splashed with silvery moonlight. To her
right, hills rose up like dark giants to touch the stars. The Rolls raced like a silver bullet
through the night, silent and in a hurry.
Beverly was aware of the headlights behind her. They had appeared shortly after she
and Billy Bob had left the Century Plaza, and had stayed with them ever since. Once, she
turned and looked back. It was a brown sedan, the driver a silhouette in the glare. When
Billy Bob sped up, the brown car sped up. When he slowed down, it slowed down. And
now they snaked as a pair, bumpers too close, along the winding, treacherous coast high-
way.
Billy Bob, also aware of the car behind, glanced frequently in the rearview mirror. At
the same time he tried to keep his eyes on the dangerous curves. He was acutely aware of
the sheer drop down to rocks and breakers below.
Then the headlights moved and Beverly turned in time to see the brown car pull up
alongside the Rolls. She reached for the hand strap. She braced herself and said, “Bob—”
His foot moved for the brakes.
Moments later the Silver Cloud was flying through the air in a beautiful silver arc and
plunging to the rocks and churning ocean below.
52
It was all over.
Butterfly was finished. “Lonnie” the fantasy cowboy, no longer existed.
Jessica stood on the balcony that opened off the master bedroom of her Sunset
Boulevard home. It was a warm June evening, and she was staring down at the white dry
hole of their swimming pool. It had developed serious cracks, so now it had been drained
and was going to be inspected tomorrow. When the Franklins had had the pool put in,
Jessica had begged John to let Trudie do it. She had assured him that Trudie was good at
what she did and that they would get a quality swimming pool from her. But John did
not like Trudie Stein, thought of her as just another inconsequential airhead, and so he
had hired another company to install it, headed by a man he’d met in a bar. Now, just
three years later, they had problems.
But Jessica didn’t care. She gazed down into the empty crater in their back garden and
thought about the step she was about to take.
Eight years ago Jessica had walked from her father’s house straight into her husband’s
house without once having gone outside. It was time now to go outside and see what was
there.
She turned away from the pool and went into the bedroom, where all that was left to
do was snap down the clasps of her suitcase. As she did she paused to look at the king-size
bed she had slept in so many nights alone, even when John was lying next to her. Then
she picked up the case, her sweater, and her purse and walked out of the bedroom.
“I need a vacation,” she had told her partner, Fred Morton. And he had agreed. In
their years of struggling to build a practice Jessica had never taken any time off. “I’m
going to go away for a while. You can manage without me.”
He could, for a short time, now that they had added three junior attorneys and a para-
legal to their growing firm.
Jessica had told Fred first, then Trudie, who was at this moment sailing around the
Channel Islands with her love, Bill. Finally she had informed her parents that she was
going away for a while to do some thinking. In response to their question about John—
was he going with her?—Jessica had said nothing. Now only one person remained to be
told.
She and John had not spoken to each other since Memorial Day, when she had driven
away from the Renaissance Fair, leaving him behind. The days that followed had been
cold ones, despite the Los Angeles heat wave, with John and Jessica sleeping apart, taking
meals separately, never touching or acknowledging the other’s presence, like two phan-
toms haunting a house on two different planes. On that day in the parking lot outside the
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fair a decisive threshold had been crossed. Too much had been said, too much laid bare.
Things would never be the same again, nor was there any hope of their ever getting bet-
ter. Jessica knew that, in John’s eyes, she had committed an unforgivable crime: she had
provoked him into an undignified act—striking a woman. For the rest of their lives he
would cling to the belief that it was her fault, hers alone, and that any steps for reconcili-
ation or forgiveness had to be taken by her.
Well, she was taking steps at last.
John was in his study, watching the TV news. All the stations were covering the sensa-
tional death of Beverly Highland. “A witness at the scene, identified as Ms. Ann
Hastings,” the anchorwoman reported, “says she saw a brown four-door sedan force Miss
Highland’s Rolls-Royce over the edge of the cliff and then drive off. Rescue efforts are still
going on, but because of ocean currents and the fact that the car, when dredged up, was
found with its doors open, there is little hope of recovering the bodies of Beverly
Highland and her chauffeur, Bob Manning. The accident occurred shortly after Miss
Highland left the Century Plaza Hotel, where she had met privately with Danny
Mackay.”
Jessica came and stood in the doorway and gazed at the man she had once vowed to
love, honor, and obey.
“John,” she said.
He either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her.
“John?” she said a little louder. “I have something to say to you.”
Finally he looked up. His face was cold and hard. He saw the suitcase in her hand.
“I’m leaving you,” Jessica said.
And then she was in her dark blue Cadillac on the Pacific Coast Highway, speeding
into the sunset, free at last.
Epilogue
On the island that could have been any island in any green sea in the world, the woman
lay back on plush velour towels and watched the news that was being broadcast from the
other side of the world. While the camera recorded for posterity the stately burial of a famous
Houston personality, the commentator was saying: “…Danny Mackay, who hanged himself
in jail three days after his arrest on an old morals charge. It is believed that he was driven to
suicide by grief over the total disintegration of his political and evangelical empire.”
The woman on the chaise longue picked up the remote control and clicked the televi-
sion set into silence. Then she smiled at the young man kneeling at her side.
He didn’t know what it was all about, and he didn’t care. She had approached him at
Butterfly one day with an offer he couldn’t refuse—that she would take care of him if he
took care of her and not ask any questions.
He watched her smile in contentment and stretch under the deliciously hot sun. Clearly,
the news on the TV had been good. It was also a signal that he resume his lovemaking.
He drew himself up and kissed her long and lingeringly on the lips. She moaned softly.
Then he drove his hands through her dark brown hair and kissed her more passionately,
with the urgency that he knew she liked. He moved slowly down her body, untying the
strings of her bathing suit, brushing his lips over her oiled, coconut-scented skin.
When his mouth reached her thighs, she sighed deeply, relishing his sensual touch, his
gentle, artful way of making love. Opening her eyes slightly, she squinted in the dazzling
sunshine at the things that surrounded her: a tray of rich, creamy chocolate truffles; a
stack of novels as delicious as the bonbons, waiting to be read; the golden head of the
young man who was feasting on her body.
She felt content and languid and filled with a peace deeper than she had ever known.
It had all gone so well, the staged accident to “kill” Beverly Highland—Maggie and
Carmen in the brown car; the Rolls going over the cliff; the hasty, secret drive to the air-
port; the funeral with an empty coffin because Beverly Highland’s body was never found.
And now the friends were separated forever, wealthy and secure, living the lives they had
mapped out for themselves. Carmen in the Beverly Hills mansion, Ann Hastings in
Hawaii, Maggie with her lover in San Diego, Jonas Buchanan opening a nationwide
detective agency, and Billy Bob living out his last years in the tropical decadence of Rio—
The young man looked up and said, “What’s this mark inside your thigh? It looks like
an old tattoo.”
She laughed and said, “It used to be a butterfly.” Then, not knowing which to indulge
in first—the chocolates or the boy—because it had been such a long time, Rachel finally
reached out for Jamie, who used to swim naked in her pool.
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