One of Those Malibu Nights (8 page)

Mac grinned. “That’s okay, it’s happened before, and those other times I never got an apology.”

“I was terrified I’d hurt you. I thought you’d send for the cops—and that would have meant the end for me and Ronnie. So I just got out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t stop to think—except about the gun. I knew I couldn’t leave it there in case the cops came, so I wiped it off on my
robe—so there’d be no fingerprints y’see. And then I dumped it in your car. I knew the red hybrid was yours, I’d seen you driving by and it was always parked on the street outside your house. Anyway, that’s what I did, and then I went back to wait for Ronnie.”

“So tell me,” Mac said, “why
didn’t
you call the cops?”

“No cops. Ronnie wouldn’t have liked that.”

Mac recalled Perrin saying vehemently, “No police” as he’d left him that morning.

“So what happened later?” he asked. “When Perrin came home?”

“I’d already called him, told him what happened. He agreed it was best not to say anything. But I could tell he was scared. He said it must be the guy who was following him, that he must be some nut who wanted to kill him.”

“What happened to the FBI theory?”

“That as well. To tell you the truth, Mac, it was a very paranoid situation. And your showing up didn’t help things any.”

“Thanks a lot,” Mac said. “I’ll remember that the next time I hear a woman scream.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Really I didn’t.” She looked away, embarrassed. “It’s just that Ronnie was in trouble and I didn’t know how to help him. After the shooting incident he said he had to get me out of the country immediately. Ronnie couldn’t afford another scandal, after that divorce and … well you know, the court case about mishandling the funds.
And with me out of the way no one could ask me any questions. He called Demarco and told him to ‘take care of me.’ He meant ‘get rid of me.’ I knew that.

“Anyhow, Demarco called Renato Manzini in Rome, told him he was sending me over right away, and to make things look legit he should give me a small role in his film. Demarco chartered a private jet and got me to Rome that night. He told Renato to put me in the Hotel Eden and to look after me. And Ronnie said he would join me in a couple of days.”

“And?” Sunny was hanging on to every word.

Marisa’s face fell. “He’s never even called,” she said. “I’m still waiting for him at the hotel. But now Renato has found me an apartment. I move in tomorrow. Here’s the address and the phone number. You already have my cell.” She handed Mac the piece of paper with the information. “I daren’t try to call Ronnie because he said never to, his lines might be tapped.” She looked helplessly at them. “But he just never showed.”

“Where do you think he is?”

Marisa shook her head, sending the floppy straw hat fluttering again. “I don’t know. Has he dumped me, or what?” She twisted the enormous ring nervously. “I mean, a guy should tell a girl if there are problems. Not that there were. We were happy as two clams. I knew what he liked, he knew what I liked.” She glanced meaningfully at Sunny. “Y’know what I mean.”

Marisa sighed again. “It doesn’t make sense. And that’s
why I’m worried about him. Somebody was following him. Somebody broke into his house. He told me somebody wanted to kill him. And now I’m afraid they might have. And that’s the truth of the matter.”

“And what do you want me to do?” Mac asked.

“I need you to find Ronnie. I want to know he’s alive. Tell him I’m still here, waiting for him. At least tell him to have Demarco call me and tell me what’s up.”

Mac said, “So what do you think the intruder was after that night? Obviously he wasn’t aware you were there, so it wasn’t a rapist or a killer …”

Marisa shivered. “Oh, God, don’t even say those words. I tremble at the thought of what might have happened. And I really don’t know what he wanted.”

Mac thought about it. When Perrin had asked him to help he had turned him down, but now Mac needed to know what was really going on. For Allie’s sake, as well as for the girlfriend. “Tell you what, Marisa,” Mac said. “I’m in Rome for another few days, but I’m gonna call my assistant in L.A., put him onto the case. He’ll find out who’s following Ron.”

“And will he also find Ronnie for me?”

She looked hopefully at him. It was Mac’s turn to shrug. “He’ll do his best,” he said, though he personally felt sure that Perrin had sent Marisa to Rome to get rid of her, and that there was no way she was ever going to see him again.

He thought Perrin’s next move would be an offer of a
nice little financial settlement. He’d probably also get Manzini to offer her the odd role, keep her here in Rome, out of the way. After all, he had already gotten her an apartment. It would all work out fine for RP. And for Marisa Mayne too. Looking at her, he had no doubt she’d be happy to take the money and run.

Marisa said she had to leave, she was expected on the set. “Just some retakes,” she said quickly. “But y’know, it could really lead to something.”

She thanked them and Mac promised to call when he had some news. He looked at Sunny who was watching Marisa saunter through the crowd, turning heads along the way, despite the weird hat.

“You’re a woman, what d’you think of her story?” he asked.

Sunny looked thoughtful. “It’s odd,” she said, “but listening to Marisa somehow the word
blackmail
popped into my mind. Y’know the whole S and M dominatrix theme she had going there? I just didn’t believe it. Marisa may be lying about what happened that night. Maybe she’d given Perrin an ultimatum, pay up or she’d go to the tabloids and tell her version of ‘the truth’ about their sexual relationship.” Sunny shrugged. “They would have jumped on it.”

“But she was onto a good thing,” Mac said. “Perrin was generous. Just look at that ring.”

“Trust me, I looked.” Sunny sighed. “But with playboys like Perrin all good things come to an end. Maybe he was
bored with her. On to the next, if you know what I mean. After all, Marisa said he was out that night. I wonder where he was and who with.”

Mac took out his cell phone to call Roddy. “Okay, so let’s find out where Ron Perrin is.
And
who he’s with.”

Allie was in her bedroom at the Bel Air house. The same bedroom that used to be hers
and
Ron’s, complete with the California king-size bed with the brushed-steel posts Ron had constantly complained about, after getting up in the night to go to the bathroom and cracking his head on them.

“Why can’t we have a regular bed? Y’know the kind, with a mattress, box springs, some sheets and a blanket?” he’d yelled. “Why must we have this … this
glamazon
of a bed?”

Glamazon
was the right word to describe the bed’s size and flowing draperies. Silk of course. What wasn’t silk in this house? If it wasn’t expensive limestone or fossil granite or zebrawood. In fact it was champagne-colored silk with a voile inner lining run through with threads of gold. All in
excellent taste, naturally. Ron having chosen the “best” decorator. If you liked that sort of thing. And having finished the house, neither Allie nor Ron had ever admitted to the other that they did not really care for all the opulence.

What the three-thousand-square-foot bedroom suite did have though, were the best closets in the world. His and Hers. They were enormous. Ditto the bathrooms. Hers larger than His, of course, with golden faucets that spilled long flat streams of water into a jetted tub and with towels thicker than Allie could handle. Secretly, disguised in a dark wig and glasses, she and Ampara, the housekeeper, had slipped into Costco and bought a dozen of their super-sale ones so she could dry herself properly. The “good” ones were just for show. Actually, Allie had been pleased to find that the brown wig and glasses were an effective cover. No one had even glanced twice at her.

Today, Fussy, the Maltese, had as usual parked herself right in the middle of the bed. Her favorite place. She had always slept between them, Allie’s legs on one side, Ron’s on the other. Anyhow, Fussy just sat there now, barking snappily to let Allie know she was bored and that anyhow she’d rather be in the kitchen with Ampara.

The long room with its floor-to-ceiling windows letting in streams of strong California light was filled with people. There was the stylist who’d brought a rack of gowns from which Allie would choose the ones for her Cannes Film Festival appearances, along with the sexy four-inch-heel
shoes neatly laid out in a row, and the expensive little bags, and of course the jewelry that came along with a bodyguard, provided, as were the jewels, by Chopard. A seamstress from the design house waited to pin, a hairstylist hovered, and the makeup girl waited to see what she would choose so they could then decide on a “look.” Plus there were a couple of gofers, ready to run to the stores or whatever.

The housekeeper had set up a table with coffee, bottled water and soft drinks, as well as her home-baked cookies and chocolate cake, the smell of which was driving Allie crazy. It reminded her of those rare childhood occasions when, with her mother, she had stirred the Betty Crocker chocolate-fudge cake mix then waited, almost dying with anxiety until the oven door was finally opened and the always-sunken cake removed. She had never been able to wait for it to cool, devouring a chunk smiling her pleasure through warm chocolaty lips. It was one of the few highlights of her youth.

She took a large piece now. The stylist frowned. “Every extra ounce will show in this dress,” she warned.

Allie shrugged, uncaring. This was the best she had felt in weeks. Cake was her answer, and maybe about half a pound of M&M’s, and how about Starbucks java chip ice cream? Yes! That’s exactly what she would have for dinner tonight and the hell with sparkling couture gowns from Valentino and Versace. She needed comfort food.

“Try it,” she offered generously. “Ampara makes the best cake you’ve ever tasted.” She put a piece on a plate and gave it to the slender young stylist, who ate it, complaining guiltily she hadn’t been this “wicked” in years.

“Go to the gym tonight,” Allie said, laughing. “And why should we think it’s wicked to enjoy a piece of cake every now and then?”

“I guess it’s okay every now and then,” the stylist agreed, albeit reluctantly, as she took another guilty slice.

The others crowded round now, all except the bodyguard, who stood stoically, arms folded, next to the large leather boxes holding several million dollars’ worth of jewels.

Allie inspected the rack of gowns, all special, all beautiful and all meant for a grand entrance under lights, a photo opportunity for the magazines and television cameras.
“Allie Ray adorable in Valentino and Chopard diamonds at the Cannes Festival,”
they would say, as she did her job and smiled and waved and stopped to talk to the guy from
Access Hollywood
and the woman from
Entertainment Tonight
, as well as the French TV host, who she always surprised with her ability to speak a little of his language.

“Not fluently,” she’d protested, when he’d complimented her last year. “Only enough to get by.” It was the compliment that had pleased her the most, though.

She washed the chocolate cake from her fingers and began to try on more gowns, swishing their heavy trains and slinking her thighs together, wondering whether she could
even walk. Bored, while they pinned and fussed, she glanced out of the window, thinking of Lev, outside in the black Mustang and probably bored out of his skull too.

What, she wondered, did he do all day to keep himself occupied?

She called him now. “What’re you doing?” she murmured into her BlackBerry.

“Isometric exercises,” he said, and she heard the smile in his deep rumbling voice. He was the only man she knew whose voice matched his physique.

“I’ll bet you’re reading the racing form,” she countered, having already divined his weakness for the ponies.

“Possibly.”

She grinned. “I’m sending you down a little snack. Homemade chocolate cake. You’ve never tasted better.”

“I don’t eat cake.”

“Today, you’re Marie Antoinette,” she said, and heard him laugh again.

Pushing the gown pinner away, Allie went to the table and cut him a slab. Wrapping it in a napkin, she handed it to Ampara and told her to deliver it to the paparazzo in the black Mustang. The others stared at her as though she had gone mad.

She said, “And the hell with these gowns. I’m not wearing any one of them.”

There were gasps of horror. “But Allie,” the stylist
protested. “These are gorgeous, they’re perfect for Cannes. They’re the latest, right off the runway.”

“I’ll make my own choices from now on,” Allie said firmly. “And that goes for the jewels too,” she added. “I won’t need any.”

“But, Allie …” The stylist was in a panic now. She had to report back to the producers, the director. The hairdresser and makeup girl waited silently, uncertain of what was expected of them.

“Don’t worry,” Allie said, giving them that sunny grin. “It’ll be all right on the night.” The plan that had been formulating in her mind began to loom as a reality and suddenly she felt light-years better.

Thanking the stylist and her entourage, she sent the team on their way, still protesting her decision.

Allie knew that most women would have died for the choices she had been offered that day. And of course she was aware of her responsibility. She would do her job. But she had her new plan in mind. She had still to figure it out, but she was about to become a different woman and it had nothing to do with the public. She wondered if she should share her plans with Mac Reilly. But Mac was in Rome and anyhow her future was not his business. Only her present.

Worried, she stared out the window. Beyond the thick greenery and the high wall, Lev, or one of his henchmen, kept guard. She was safe now. Wasn’t she?

Her thoughts turned to Ron. In her heart she didn’t want to believe he was tailing her, but if he was not, that meant it must be the stalker. There had been more of those letters, the last one smeared, the unknown writer said, with his tears. “Next time it will be with blood. Yours? Or mine?” he’d written.