Judith McNaught (51 page)

and, later, for giving her the role in
Destiny.
She'd known you for years, and you said the two of you spent a lot of time together whenever you were working on a film. Children—especially teenage girls—can be fiercely devoted to a male authority figure. It's possible she even imagined she was in love

with you. Maybe she thought that if she could get rid of Rachel, you'd reciprocate her feelings."

Zack gave a derisive snort, but his voice softened as he talked about the girl. "Emily was sixteen years old and a sweetheart. Next to you, she was the nicest, most wholesome member of your sex I've ever

known. There's no way on earth that child would have done anything to cause me trouble. But let's say you're right—she had a crush on me and was jealous of Rachel. If so, then she didn't need to bother killing Rachel, because it was common knowledge on the set that Rachel had filed for divorce and was going to marry Austin."

"But suppose she hated Rachel so much for humiliating you the night before with Tony Austin that she

felt compelled to get even with Rachel on your behalf."

"The theory doesn't work. For all Emily knew, Rachel was going to fire that gun first, the way the script

was written."

"Then why don't we assume that
Tony Austin
was the intended victim of the killer and work from there?"

"You can't assume that because, as I mentioned earlier, I'd made notes in my script about changing the

sequence of the gun shots, and any number of people might have seen my script lying open and read what I'd written. My attorneys took depositions from the entire cast and crew before the trial, though, and everyone denied knowing I planned to change that scene."

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"But let's suppose Tony Austin was really the intended victim. If so, then it's still possible that Emily is the

killer. I mean, what if she was so obsessed with you that she despised Tony Austin for having an affair with your wife and humiliating you—"

"Emily McDaniels," Zack interrupted with absolute finality, "did not kill anyone. Period. She couldn't have. Any more than you could." Belatedly realizing that the cards on the bottom row were her chief suspects, Zack tipped his head toward the last card and smiled with relief that the discussion was nearly over. "Whose name is on that last card in the bottom row?"

Julie shot him a long-suffering look and reluctantly said, "Tony Austin."

The amusement vanished from Zack's expression and he rubbed his hands over his face as if he could somehow rub away the violent hatred that exploded inside of him whenever he let himself think of Austin

as the murderer. "I think Austin did it." He looked up at her, immersed in his own thoughts. "No, I
know
the bastard did it and then deliberately let me hang for it. Someday, if I live long enough—"

Julie recoiled from the savage sound of his voice.

"But you said Austin didn't have a cent," she interrupted quickly. "By killing Rachel, who stood to get a lot of money from you in the divorce, he would have lost his chance to get his hands on your money when he married her."

"He was a junkie. Who knows what's going on in a junkie's mind."

"You said he had a very expensive drug habit.

Wouldn't getting his hands on your money to pay for his

habit have been his first concern?"

"I've had all I can take of this," Zack bit out. "I mean it!" He saw her face pale and immediately regretted his outburst. Softening his tone, he stood up and held his hand out to help her up, "Let's put all this away and decide what to do with the rest of our evening."

Julie fought down her instinctive reaction to his angry outburst and forcibly reminded herself that what

had happened last night would never, ever happen again.

Ten minutes later, she was seated on a stool by the kitchen counter, completely relaxed, laughing because they couldn't decide what to do with their evening. "I'll make out a list," she teased, pulling a scratch pad and pencil closer to her. "So far, you've suggested making love." She wrote that down while he leaned over her and watched with a grin, his hand resting on her shoulder. "And making love. And making love."

"Did I only bring it up three times?" Zack joked when she finished writing.

"Yes, and I agreed all three times, but we were supposed to be thinking of ideas for the early part of the

evening."

It hit him then what he'd noticed earlier when she was writing on the index cards, and he

complimented

her on it:

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"Your handwriting is so precise, it looks as if the words have been typeset."

"Which isn't surprising," she replied with a smile over her shoulder, "since I spent years working on it.

While other thirteen-year-old girls were starting to drool over you in your early movies, I was staying home, perfecting my handwriting."

He sounded dumbstruck at such a waste of effort.

"Why?"

Turning slowly on the stool, Julie looked up at him.

"Because," she said, "I was completely illiterate until I

was almost twelve. I couldn't read more than a few words and I couldn't write anything other than my name and that not legibly."

"Were you dyslexic or something?"

"No, just illiterate from lack of schooling. When I told you about my youth, I left that part out."

"Purposely?" Zack asked, as she got up and walked around the counter to get a glass of water.

"It might have been deliberate, although I didn't consciously decide to hide it from you. Funny, isn't it,

that I could easily admit to being a petty thief, but my mind recoiled from saying I'd been illiterate?"

"I don't understand how that could happen, not to someone as bright as you."

She gave him a look of jaunty superiority that made him long to snatch her into his arms and kiss it off her soft lips as she said loftily, "For your information, it can happen to anyone, Mr. Benedict, and being

bright doesn't have a thing to do with it. One out of every five women in this country is functionally illiterate. They missed school when they were little because they were needed at home to help with siblings or because their families were itinerant or a dozen other reasons. When they can't catch up, they decide they're stupid and they just quit trying.

Whatever the reason, the results are always the same:

They're condemned to a life of menial jobs and welfare; they'll stick with men who abuse them because

they feel helpless and unworthy of anything better.

You can't imagine what it's like to live in a world filled

with information that's beyond your understanding, but I remember how it was. The simplest things, like finding your way to the right office in a building, is completely beyond you. You live in a state of fear and

shame. The shame is unbearable, and that's why women hide it."

"Were you ashamed, as young as you were?" Zack asked, reeling from this new insight into her childhood.

She nodded, swallowing some water, then she put the glass aside. "I used to try to sit in the front row when I did go to school, so I wouldn't have to see the other kids' faces when they laughed at me. I convinced the teachers that my eyes were bad."

Zack hardly knew how to cope with the emotions raging inside him at the thought of her as a little child,

trying to bluff her way through life in a sprawling, dirty city where no one cared. Clearing his throat, he said, "You said lack of schooling was the initial cause of the problem. Why weren't you sent to school?"

"I was a sickly child, so I missed a lot of first and second grade, but the teachers liked me, so they passed me to the next grade anyway. It's an idiotic, counterproductive thing for a teacher to do, but it happens all the time, especially to 'good little girls.'

By third grade,
I
knew I couldn't keep up, so I started

cutting school and hanging out with kids on the streets. The foster parents I stayed with had their hands

full with other kids, and they didn't catch on until I got picked up for truancy. By then, I was in fourth
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grade and hopelessly behind."

"So you decided to specialize in hot-wiring cars and picking pockets until the Mathisons straightened you out?"

She gave him an abashed smile and nodded as she started back toward the stool she'd vacated. "A few months ago, by accident, I discovered the janitor's wife couldn't read. I started tutoring her, and pretty soon she brought me another woman, and that woman brought another, and now there are seven, and

we've had to move into a regular classroom. When they first come to class, they don't really believe I can

help them. They're humiliated, defeated, and completely convinced they're hopelessly stupid. In fact my

hardest task is convincing them otherwise." With a soft giggle, she added, "I had to bet Peggy Listrom that I'd baby-sit for her for an entire month if she couldn't read all the street signs and shop signs in Keaton by springtime."

Zack waited until she was standing beside him, then he hid his burgeoning tenderness behind a joke.

"That sounds risky."

"Not as risky as letting her go through life the way she is. Besides, I've practically won the bet already."

"She's reading street signs?"

Julie nodded, and Zack watched her eyes light with excitement. "Oh, Zack, you just can't
imagine
how it feels to watch them start to learn! They go right on believing they're stupid, until suddenly—one day—they sound out all the words in a short sentence, and they look up at me with such … such
wonder

in their eyes!" She held out her hand, palm up.

"Being able to teach them—it's like holding a
miracle
in

your own hand."

Zack swallowed against the unfamiliar constriction in his throat and forced a lighthearted note in his voice. "You're a miracle, Miss Mathison."

She laughed. "No, I'm not, but I have a hunch that Debby Sue Cassidy is going to be one." Since he looked interested, Julie added, "She's thirty, and she looks like the quintessential librarian—straight brown hair, studious features, but she has worked as a house maid for Mrs. Neilson since she was sixteen. She's smart as a whip, very sensitive, very imaginative. She wants to write a book someday."

Misinterpreting the reason for Zack's grin, Julie said,

"Don't laugh. She just might do it. She's already amazingly articulate for someone who's illiterate.

She listens to books on tape from the library all the time.

I know because Mrs. Neilson mentioned it to my father. She also mentioned that when the Neilson children were little, Debby Sue used to tell them stories that kept them still for hours. That's why I was in

Amarillo the day we met," Julie finished, perching on the stool and turning her attention to her scratchpad.

"I was raising money to buy special teaching materials. They're actually quite cheap, but things add up."

"Did you raise the money?"

She nodded, picking up her pencil and smiling over her shoulder at him.

Helpless to keep from touching her, Zack put his hand on her shoulder and playfully nipped her ear.

She

laughed, then she tipped her head sideways and lightly rubbed her soft cheek against the top of his hand.

The simple, loving gesture made Zack's spirits plummet abruptly, because it forcibly reminded him that

after tonight there'd be no more gestures of any kind.

He should have let her go this morning, but he couldn't, not when she would have hated him forever, and the longer he kept her with him, the harder it

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was going to be to let her go at all. Sending her away tomorrow, when there was a chance she'd crack under interrogation, meant that he would have to step up his departure from the United States by over a

week, but it was worth the added risk to know she'd be safe from any further helicopter invasions that might not be false next time.

Trying to banish the bleak mood settling over him, he said, "Whatever we do tonight, let's make it special. Festive." It took every ounce of acting ability he possessed to keep the smile on his face so she

wouldn't realize he was sending her away in the morning.

Julie thought for a moment and smiled suddenly.

"How about dinner by candlelight, followed by dancing—a pretend date, except we'll have it here?

I'll get dressed up," she threw in for persuasion before she realized that he didn't need any persuasion at all: He was nodding with a relieved pleasure that

Julie thought was surprisingly excessive for her modest idea.

"Great," he agreed at once. He glanced at his watch.

"I'll use the bathroom in your room and 'pick you up' in an hour and a half. Will that give you enough time?"

Julie laughed. "I think an hour is plenty of time for whatever transformation I can make."

Having suggested the idea, Julie was suddenly determined to dazzle him with as much glamour as she

could, and she spent more than an hour getting ready. Hair was one asset she possessed in abundance,

and since Zack evidently gave it special notice, she washed it and blew it dry, then she styled the heavy mass so that it framed her face, falling into casual waves and curls from a side part and spilling over her

back. Satisfied that she'd done the best she could with that, she pulled off her robe and stepped into a soft knit dress in a vibrant shade of cobalt blue that, on the hanger, had looked rather like a floor-length sweater with a loosely fitted skirt, blousy bodice, and full sleeves with white satin cuffs and sparkling blue

crystal buttons. Not until Julie reached behind her back to fasten it did she realize there was no zipper.

Although the dress had a wide cowl collar at the front, the collar draped over the shoulders and left a deep oval of bare skin exposed at the back. The deceptive simplicity of the design, combined with the

modest front and dramatic back, was irresistibly beautiful, and it made her
feel
beautiful, but Julie stepped back from the mirror, hesitant to wear so fine—and undoubtedly costly—a dress that also happened to belong to someone else.