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was it seven? Dolly had lost count-the last one had eloped just two days ago with an assistant cameraman going off to Rio on location. Eve had phoned her in a panic. Would she babysit tonight? Unless she needed something, Eve hardly ever called her anymore.

Dolly had been on the point of saying no, but then she thought of Annie alone in that big house in Bel Air with some strange baby-sitter, and she’d relented. She adored Annie, and it just clean broke her heart to think of the loneliness the kid had to put up with.

“When’s Dearie coming back?” Annie wanted to know. That funny nickname, “Dearie,” never “Mama” or “Mommy.”

“She didn’t say, non.”

“Where did she go?”

“A party, she said.” Seeing Annie’s expression sadden, she added, “A big star like your mama has to go to a lot of parties. It’s like … well, sort of like part of the job.”

“Is Val part of the job, too?” Annie stopped swinging her legs, and stared at Dolly with enormous ink-blue eyes.

Dolly’s heart caught high in her throat. Lord, help us. Out of the mouths of babes.

“Not exactly,” she ventured.

“I don’t like Val.” Annie’s face became very tight and small. There was something implacable in her expression.

Dolly remembered how once-Annie couldn’t have been much more than a year old-at the Santa Monica pier, where Dolly had taken her for a stroll, a strange man had bent over the carriage and stuck his face right up close to hers. Most Babies would’ve cried and shrunk away. Not Annie. Putting her dimpled baby hands on either side of his face, she pushed him emphatically away from her, piping in her clear, even then grownup-sounding voice, “Go ‘way!”

“Oh, sugar, Val doesn’t mean no harm … he’s just not your daddy,” Dolly soothed, hoping to jolly her out of it, but knowing it wouldn’t help much even as she did

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so. She sighed. “I remember when my own daddy first brought Mama-Jo home, after my real mama died. You know what I did? I bit her.”

That brought a tentative smile to Annie’s lips. A tiny giggle escaped her. “On the shin, just like Toto?”

“On the cheek, when she tried to kiss me. Just like taking a bite out of an apple.”

“She musta been real mad.”

“Oh, sure … and Daddy whupped me good. But you know something, I wasn’t sorry I bit her. After she and Daddy got married, Mama-Jo took away all my dolls and gave me a Bible, saying that idle hands were the devil’s tools.” She shook her head. “Lord, why am I telling you all this? Come on now, help me set the table. Soup’s on. You like butter on your saltines?”

“Nuh-uh,” Annie said, sliding off the stool. She headed for the low shelf where the dishes were kept, which was curtained off by a length of faded gingham thumbtacked to the counter above.

“That’s good, ‘cause there isn’t any.”

Later, when they’d eaten and the dishes were washed and stacked in the drainer, she tucked Annie into bed in the tiny bedroom, and made up the sleep sofa in the living room for herself. She ought to catch a nap while she could; God knew when Eve would roll in, maybe not until morning.

Dolly changed into an old silk kimono and curled up in the sagging club chair by the half-open front window, hoping for a breeze as evening cooled into night. Suddenly she felt so heavy and tired. Her eyes drifted shut. Minutes later, she was asleep.

The slamming of a car door awakened her. Swimming up through gritty layers of sleep, she squinted at the glowing face of the clock atop the battered footlocker that served as a coffee table. Five after six. Lord! Her neck felt cramped from being scrunched against the backrest, and her legs tingled as she stretched them.

Pushing aside the frayed nylon curtain, she peered out.

Eve had arrived. She was weaving her way up the

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cracked concrete pathway with the elaborate caution of someone who’s drunk too much. In the milky predawn light, her strapless blue-satin evening dress appeared almost liquid, and her platinum hair gleamed like polished silver. Reaching the front door of Dolly’s bungalow, she swayed against the peeling door frame, leaning a pale shoulder against it for support.

“You’ll never guess, never, never, never,” she burbled excitedly. Her breath smelled sweet and somehow effervescent, like orchids and champagne. Shadowed by the narrow porch overhang, her eyes were enormous dark puddles. “I got married!”

“What?”

“It was Val’s idea. At the Preminger party, he just got the notion into his head right after we got there, and I said, ‘Oh hell, why not?’ and we both jumped in the car.” She giggled, sounding more than drunk … almost, well, hectic.

Dolly just stood there, stunned, listening to the crazed ticking of a moth beating itself to death against the dim yellow porch light, her face burning in the cool night air as if she’d been slapped.

Eve wiggled her hand in front of Dolly, and Dolly saw that the finger that had once worn Dewey Cobb’s antique gold band now sported a glittering pear-shaped diamond.

Eve swayed in the doorway, a shimmer of blue and silver, her skin pale as buttermilk in the moonlight, “Did you know that in Vegas the jewelry stores stay open all night? Can you just imagine what Mama-Jo would have to say about that? Probably that it was the devil luring sinners down the path to hell.” She giggled, then hiccoughed. “Bet she doesn’t know I found that path all on my own. Me and Tommy Bliss, back of the henhouse when I was fourteen.”

Dolly formed an image of Eve, spread-eagled on her back in the oat grass, torn dress tucked up. Only in her mind, it wasn’t Tommy kneeling over Eve, but Val. She felt sick.

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“Mama-Jo is dead,” she reminded Eve. It was all she could think to say.

“I know that, silly. Didn’t I send a truckload of lilies to the funeral? I figured the old cow had it coming, after a lifetime of looking forward to her Great Reward.”

At the curb, the horn of Eve’s white Cadillac honked once, impatiently. Then Val stuck his head out the driver’s side, and called, “Come on, baby. You gotta be at the studio in two hours.”

Dolly thought of the first time she’d seen Val. She’d been making her way across the RKO lot to the soundstage where they were filming Dames at Large. Crossing a Western street, she’d caught a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye, and had looked up just as a large man in cowhide chaps leaped off the roof of a false-front saloon. While Dolly watched, hands clutching her breast (exactly, she realized later, like the heart-struck heroine of a B Western), the stuntman landed precisely in the center of a hay-filled prop cart.

Catching her eye, he rose gracefully and made his way toward her, stepping around cameras and booms, and over the thick cables that snaked across his path. Tall and muscular, he wore dusty jeans, a checkered Western-style shirt, scuffed cowboy boots, and a sweat-stained Stetson. His hair, flowing from under the hat, was white as snow. It was the oddest thing. He was a young man, not more than thirty, and swarthy, almost foreign-looking. His eyes, she saw as he drew near, were black. Not dark brown or deep gray. But black as midnight.

Val Carrera was the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on. She watched him repeat the stunt through two more takes; then, when the director dismissed him, Val asked her if she’d join him for a cup of coffee at the commissary.

Dolly didn’t hesitate for a second, even though she knew it would make her late for her shoot.

After coffee, and then later that day, drinks and dinner, they’d gone back to his apartment in Burbank. And stayed in bed for an entire weekend. When Dolly finally got up, she’d felt as if someone had whacked her

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behind the knees with a baseball bat. She could hardly walk from the bed to the bathroom. She didn’t know for sure if this was love, but it sure felt like something. Val must have thought so too, because he was with her nearly every day for a month, and the whole time he could never keep his hands off her.

Until he met Eve.

Dolly, watching her sister yawn and stretch languidly like a Siamese cat that’s just finished off a bowl of cream, felt an odd weakness spread through her limbs. Speechless, trembling, she stared, unable to move. Does she think I have no feelings? That her happiness counts more than mine? Maybe that was it. Maybe Dolly was supposed to have felt sorry for Eve, and step aside gracefully, poor kid, because she’d lost Dewey… or maybe simply because she was Eve Dearfield, a star, somebody.

The memory of the night she’d walked in on them at Val’s apartment came crashing back, Dolly screaming at her, telling her she was a rotten, selfish bitch. Eve, weeping and saying how sorry she was, that she hadn’t meant for anything to happen between her and Val, it just had. Making it sound like some inevitable force of nature-a hurricane or an earthquake. And somehow, despite her rage and hurt, Dolly had ended up forgiving and even consoling her sister.

Now it all flooded through her again, all the pain and bitterness and resentment. Eve hadn’t really cared one bit about her feelings, not then, and certainly not now. Look at her, all lit up like a Christmas tree, never mind that I might be jealous or hurt.

“We drove straight through, Vegas and back.” Eve flung her arms about Dolly’s neck, and planted a damp kiss on her cheek. “Be happy for me, Dorrie, please be happy for me” When she pulled away, Dolly saw that her cheeks were wet and her eyes shiny. “Is Annie awake? I can’t wait to tell her!”

“It’s six in the morning,” Dolly replied dully.

“I’ll get her.” Eve darted past her, and returned a minute later holding the sleepy-eyed little girl by the hand.

Annie blinked up at her mother owlishly, then

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corked her thumb securely in her mouth. Her dark hair was mashed up on one side, and her cheek flushed where it had lain against the pillow.

Dolly watched them walk side by side down the path amid the sprinklers’ stuttering spray, a gleaming blue blade of a woman and a stalwart little girl dressed in a cotton nightie and clunky orthopedic shoes, clutching her clothes in a bundle under one arm. Dolly felt her heart rip open, letting in a searing-hot pain. A red mist swarmed inside her head.

Then Eve stopped, half-turning, switching on her brightest smile, the one she reserved mostly for reporters and fans.

“Oh, did I forget to mention … ? Otto’s promised me Maggie in Devil May Care. But there’s a small part he hasn’t cast yet, Maggie’s kid sister. I told him you’d be perfect for it. Tell Syd to give him a call.”

Dolly felt something inside her-the last thread of loyalty-give way.

She waited until the Cadillac’s taillights disappeared into the gloom, then she ran inside and threw up in the kitchen sink.

Afterwards, moving like a sleepwalker, she went into her tiny bedroom, still fragrant with Annie’s sweet baby smell, and rummaged in her dresser until she found an envelope. She addressed and stamped it, and carried it back into the living room, where she retrieved the mimeographed sheet folded inside her purse.

Outside, birds chittered in the cool air, and from the bungalow next to hers came the smell of coffee perking, the muffled thud of a door, and an old woman’s voice calling, “Don’t you use up all the hot water, hear?”

Still in her kimono and slippers, clutching the sealed letter, Dolly walked to the mailbox on the corner and slipped it inside.

The envelope was addressed to Senator Joseph McCarthy, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

It wasn’t until the box clanged shut that Dolly came to her senses as suddenly as if she’d been slapped. She

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sagged against its cool metal side, the red mist in her head receding, all the blood in her body seeming to drain right down into the soles of her slippers.

“Oh, Lord Jesus,” she cried in a strangled whisper. “What have I done? What in God’s name have I done.’

t

I

f

Each carried a flashlight but were afraid to turn them on for fear of being discovered. There was moonlight, although it was obscured at times by clouds.

About halfway to the cave-in, Nancy suddenly stopped and whispered, “Someone’s behind us.”

from Nancy Drew Mysteries: The Clue in the Old Stagecoach

I

I

Annie lay in bed, staring at the dragon on her wall.

It wasn’t a real dragon, only the shadow of one. Each of the tall posts on her Chinese bed was carved in the shape of a dragon, its tail starting at the mattress and twisting up, seeming to writhe almost, and ending at the top in a great snarling head with a forked tongue. She remembered when her mother had sent her the bed, for her fifth birthday, all the way from Hong Kong, where Dearie had been filming Slow Boat to China. She was sure it had never occurred to Dearie that such a scary-looking thing might give a little girl nightmares. But Annie hadn’t been scared. The moment she saw it taken from its shipping crate and unwrapped amid a crackling burst of packing straw, she loved it. Dragons weren’t afraid of anyone or anything … and that’s how she wanted to be.

But right now, peering wide-eyed into the darkness, Annie didn’t feel quite so brave. She felt closer to seven than seventeen-a small, scared kid crouched under the covers like a rabbit in its burrow, afraid that something bad was about to happen.

Lying very still, she listened. All she could hear was the rapid thumping of her heart. Then the usual creaks of Bel Jardin settling into itself. Now it came to her, the sound that a moment ago she had thought, no, hoped she was only imagining: the low growl of Val’s Alfa Romeo Spider as it sped up Chantilly Road. The sound of the sports car’s engine grew louder, pausing, then there was a faint hiccough as it switched to low gear. Now rumbling up the curving crushed-shell drive.

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Earlier tonight, when she was getting ready for bed, she’d heard her stepfather go out, and had felt lightheaded with relief. She’d prayed he would stay out a long time, maybe all night. But now he was back. A cold fist of dread squeezed her stomach into a tight ball.