Judith McNaught (63 page)

She leaned up on her toes to kiss him, and Matt hugged her tightly, surprised by the raw fear he felt for

her and for Zack. "If it will make you feel any better," he told her against his better judgment, "my corporation owns an international investigation agency, and for the last three weeks, I've had their people

running cross-cheeks on everyone who'd been to Dallas to work on Zack's film."

Instead of cheering. Julie said, "But why didn't you do that sooner?" Belatedly realizing what she'd said, she apologized, "I'm sorry—that was incredibly rude and ungrateful."

Matt smiled at her and shook his head, admiring her devotion to Zack. "It sounded desperate and concerned, not rude. And the answer is that Zack paid an agency with a reputation as good as ours to do

the same thing before his trial began, and they couldn't turn up anything that was meaningful. Also, he told

me then that he didn't want or need my help beyond what I was doing for him. Since his pride was already in shreds because of the pretrial publicity, I acceded to his request and let him handle his own case."

"Your investigators—" Julie said anxiously, seizing on some indefinable thread of encouragement she thought she heard in his voice, "they've discovered something new, haven't they?"

After a reluctant hesitation, Matt decided telling her probably couldn't do any harm, not when she'd already decided to share Zack's exile. "Part of it concerns Tony Austin," he began, but Julie interrupted.

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"Tony Austin killed her?"

"I didn't say that," Matt warned firmly. "If there was any proof of that, I wouldn't be here, I'd be blasting it all over the media so the legal authorities would have to take action."

"Then what did you find out?"

"We found out that Austin apparently lied on the witness stand. During the trial, he stated that his affair

with Rachel Evans had been going on for months and that they were 'wildly in love with each other.'

The

truth is that he was also involved with another woman."

"Who was she?" Julie demanded breathlessly. "She may have put the real bullets in the gun because she was jealous of Tony and Rachel."

"We don't know who she was. All we know is that two weeks before the murder, a bellboy heard a woman's voice in Austin's suite late at night when he brought up some champagne. That same bellboy had just delivered a late dinner to Zack's suite, and Rachel had answered the door, so whoever was in Austin's bedroom, it wasn't her. In any case, I don't think any woman switched those bullets, I think it was Austin."

"But why do you think so?"

"Possibly because Zack has always insisted Austin was involved, and now it's rubbing off on me," Matt admitted with a harsh sigh. "The thing is, Rachel couldn't have supported herself and Austin in style unless

she kept working
and
got a fat divorce settlement from Zack through the California courts. However, she

was never a big favorite with the public unless Zack directed her, and from the moment the press got ahold of the fact that she'd been caught cheating on him, her popularity in films—and her earning power—were going to plunge.

"Now that we know Austin was having an affair with someone else at the same time he was having one with Rachel, it pretty much negates his testimony that he was insane about her. That leaves us with the possibility that his main interest in her was financial and that when she blew her financial future by getting

caught with him in Zack's suite, he decided to get rid of her. It's also possible he never wanted to marry her in the first place, and he killed her because she was pressuring him. Who knows. Furthermore, Austin

was the only one who had physical control of that gun during the scene they were filming. Even if Zack hadn't changed the script so that Austin, not Rachel, fired the first shot, Austin was strong enough to make certain the gun was pointed at her, not him, when it went off."

Julie shivered at the macabre conversation and its real implications. "Does Zack know this?"

"Yes."

"What did he say? I mean, is he excited or happy about it?"

"Happy?" he repeated with a bitter laugh. "If you'd been convicted of a crime someone else committed and you were completely helpless to alter the situation, would you be happy to finally discover the person

you most despise in the world is probably the person who caused it all to happen to you? There's another complication," he added. "We also uncovered some minor information about other people who were on the set in Dallas that could point to
them
instead of Austin."

"What sort of information?"

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"For one thing, Diana Copeland had a fling with Austin years before, which was supposedly over.

However, she was still jealous enough of Rachel to tell people, after the furor of the trial died down, that she was glad Rachel was dead. Maybe she was jealous enough to have made it happen. Then there's Emily McDaniels, who had to be put on all sorts of medication for a year after the murder, which seems rather an excessive reaction for someone who was supposedly an innocent bystander. Tommy Newton, the assistant director on the film, couldn't get his act together for a long time after the murder either, although it's no secret how he felt about Austin. So there you are," he finished grimly, "new evidence that

points simultaneously at everyone and is completely useless because it does."

"Oh, but it doesn't have to be like that. I mean, the police or the district attorney or whoever is in charge could be made to check out the new evidence."

"The legal authorities," he contradicted scornfully,

"decided Zack was guilty and they arrested and prosecuted him. I hate to shatter your illusions, but they are the
last
people who'd want to reopen the case and make themselves look like fools by revealing that they were wrong. If we uncovered incontrovertible proof that Austin or someone else was guilty, I'd take it to Zack's lawyers and the media

before I'd hand it over to the authorities so they could try to bury it. The problem is that we don't have

much chance of finding out more than we have.

We've already exhausted every avenue trying to find out

who the woman with Austin was. Austin denied there was such a woman. He said the bellboy was mistaken, and whatever voice he'd heard must have been a television program." Matt softened his tone as if by doing that, he could somehow soften the blow he was about to deal her: "Zack understands all that.

He knows the chances are ninety-nine percent now that Austin is the murderer, and he also knows the legal system isn't going to do a damned thing about it, unless he or I can give them one-hundred percent of the proof, and I'm afraid that's impossible. It's important you understand that, too, Julie. I only told you

what we've learned because you're determined to go to him, and I thought it might help you, in case you ever begin to doubt his innocence."

Julie rejected his fatalistic logic with all her heart.

"I'll never stop hoping. I'll pray and hope and badger God until your investigation turns up the proof you need."

She looked ready to take on the entire world for Zack, and Matt impulsively pulled her against him for a

brief hug. "Zack finally got lucky when he met you,"

he said tenderly. "You go right ahead and pray," he added, releasing her. "We can use all the help we can get." Reaching into his pocket, he took out a pen and a business card, then he wrote two phone numbers on the back of it and an address. "These are our

private phone numbers in Chicago and Carmel. If you can't reach us either place, call my secretary at the

number on the front of the card, and I'll give her instructions to tell you where we are and how to reach

us, no matter where that may be. The address on the back of the card is our home in Chicago. I was also supposed to give you this check from Zack."

Julie shook her head. "He told me what the check was for in the letter. I won't need it."

"I'm sorry," Matt said gently, "that there isn't anything more I can do. Truly sorry for you and for Zack."

Julie shook her head. "You've been wonderful.

Thank you for telling me what you did."

When he left to wait in the car with Joe O'Hara, Julie held out the clothes she'd worn home from Colorado to Meredith. "I noticed Matt is the same height and build as Zack, and I'm about two inches shorter than you. Because of that and some other things I learned tonight, I have a feeling you might recognize these." When Meredith nodded, Julie held them further out and said, "I had to wear these home, but I've had them dry-cleaned. I intended to mail them back to the house, but I never found out
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the address."

"Keep them," Meredith said softly, "for the memories they hold."

Julie unconsciously cradled them protectively to her chest. "Thank you."

Swallowing over the lump of emotion in her throat she felt at the revealing gesture, Meredith said, "I agree with you that Zack will contact Matt very soon, but are you absolutely certain you should go through with this? You'll surely be breaking some law, and they'll hunt for you both. If you're lucky, you'll

live the rest of your life in hiding."

"Tell me something," Julie said, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. "If it were Matt somewhere out there, all

alone, loving you—if it were Matt who wrote you the letter you read tonight, what would you do?

Honestly," she added, sensing that her new friend might try to dissemble.

Meredith breathed a ragged sigh. "I would get on the first plane, boat, car, or truck that would take me to him." Wrapping Julie in a tight hug, she whispered, "I would even lie and tell him I was pregnant so

he'd let me come to him."

Julie stiffened in alarm. "What makes you think I'm not pregnant?"

"The expression on your face when Matt first asked you if you were and the fact that you started to shake your head no before you stopped yourself."

"You won't tell Matt will you?"

"I can't tell him," she said with a sigh. "I haven't kept a secret from him during our marriage, but if I tell him this one, he'll tell Zack. He'll do it to protect both of you, because even though he hides it, he's desperately afraid of what you want to do and what it may cause. So am I."

"Then why are you helping me do it?"

"Because," Meredith said simply, "I don't think either of you are going to have any life at all without each

other. And because," she added, managing a real smile, "I think you would do the same thing for me if

our positions were reversed."

Julie waved good-bye to them from the front porch, then she went back into the house and got Zack's letter. Sitting down in a chair, she read it again, letting the words warm and thrill her and reinforce her

courage.

I love you, Julie. Christ, I love you so much. I'd give up all my life to have one year with you. Six months. Three. Anything… I never thought of sexual intercourse as 'making love' until you… I won't send another letter to you, so don't look for one. Letters will make us both hope and dream, and if I don't stop

doing that, I will die of wanting you.

She thought again of his last words to her in Colorado, his condescending amusement when she told him

she loved him:
"You don't love me, Julie. You don't
know the difference between good sex and real
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love. Now be a good girl and go home where you
belong."
And then she compared that with the real truth in his letter:
I love you, Julie. I loved you in
Colorado. I love you here, where I am. I will
always love you. Everywhere. Always.

The sharp contrast between the two made her shake her head in awed amazement. "No wonder," she whispered tenderly to him, "you won an Academy Award!"

Julie got up and turned off the living room lights, but she took his letter with her to her bedroom so she could read it again. "Call me, Zack," she ordered him in her heart, "and put us both out of this misery.

Call me quickly, darling."

* * *

Next door, the Eldridge twins were up unusually late, too. "He said to call him," Ada Eldridge pointed out to her balky twin sister. "Mr. Richardson said to call him in Dallas, no matter what time it is, if we noticed any strangers or anything unusual around Julie Mathison's house. Now give me the license number of that car that was parked out there half the night, so I can read it to him."

"Oh, but, Ada," Flossie protested, holding the slip of paper with the license number written on it behind her back. "I don't think we should spy on Julie, not even for the FBI."

"We aren't spying!" Ada said, marching around her and pulling the slip of paper out of Flossie's hand.

"We're helping him protect Julie from that—that heathen monster who kidnapped her. Him and his disgusting dirty movies!" she added, picking up the phone.

"They aren't dirty! They're good movies, and I think Zachary Benedict is innocent. So does Julie. She told me so last week, and she said so on television.

She also said he didn't do one thing to hurt her, so I can't see why he would try now. I think," Flossie confided, "that Julie is in love with him."

Ada paused in the act of punching out the numbers for a collect call to Dallas. "Well if she is," Ada declared with disgust, "she is as big a romantic fool as you are, and she'll end up pining away for that good-for-nothing movie star, just like you've pined away for that useless Herman Henkleman, who isn't worth an hour of your time and never was!"

The phone call Julie had been waiting and praying for came four days later at the last place she expected

to receive it. "Oh, Julie," the principal's secretary called out when Julie walked into the office to turn in her

attendance report at the end of the day. "A Mr.

Stanhope called you this afternoon." Julie glanced up a

split second before the name hit her, and when it did, she froze. "What did he say?" she asked, alarmed by the breathless desperation in her own voice.