Dying to Have Her (34 page)

She heard a creaking.

Then she screamed.

She tried to leap away, but the chair was behind her. As the heavy mahogany came crashing on down toward her, she grabbed the yearbook as if she could use it as a wall of defense in front of her.

The bookcase came down upon her.

Volumes fell everywhere.

She was only dimly aware of pain before the shelf that caught her in the temple sent her into oblivion, sweeping away all anguish.

T
HEY HAD TAKEN TO
making morning coffee themselves, drinking it on the veranda that led to the beach, then, after a swim, a shower, and time together, wandering to the main house for breakfast, brunch, or lunch—whichever it happened to be.

That day they both woke early and decided to go to the main house to eat. But as they reached their table, Liam spotted a headline in the
L.A. Times
that provoked a frown.

“What is it?”

He pushed the paper toward her. She read:
ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE DROWNS AFTER WILD PARTY
.

She looked up at him, then read the article. Kyle Amesbury had drowned in his home swimming pool. His guests, when interviewed, said that he had been drinking heavily. His blood-alcohol level had been sky-high.

“My God,” she breathed. She stared at Liam. “But that has to be a real accident. He drowned. Alone, at home, in his own swimming pool.”

“Yeah, an accident, but he is—or was—the exec for
Valentine Valley.”

“But still …”

“I don’t like it,” Liam said. “Excuse me. I’m going out for a second to put a call through to Olsen. Find out if it really was an accident.”

She nodded, sipping coffee, reading the article again. Most of the cast and crew of
Valentine Valley
had been at Kyle Amesbury’s home that night. She felt a gnawing in her stomach, a rumbling of unease. The last few days had been too perfect.

“Miss McCormack?”

She looked up. Their waiter was approaching her.

She stared at him, surprised that he had used her real name. He winced, showing that he hadn’t meant to do so. He was a handsome young Polynesian, shy and eternally pleasant to them. They’d had him as their server every morning.

“I’m sorry, but … well, I know that you are Serena McCormack—Verona Valentine.”

She flushed, wishing that Liam was in the dining room with her. “You watch the soap?”

“My wife tapes it. We watch it together at night.”

“Thank you for watching.”

“The hotel staff … well, a number of people have recognized you.”

“So much for being anonymous.”

“You stayed here before, with the cast and crew.”

“Yes.”

“We try to be discreet.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“You are really on your honeymoon?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Ah, well … there is a phone call for you.” He had brought a portable phone with him. She stared at him a moment before taking it.

“Hello?” she murmured, afraid she would hear the husky, whispered voice that had sent her flying out of her house that night.

“Serena!”

It was her sister’s voice. Melinda was upset.

“Hey—”

“Kyle Amesbury is dead. Serena, even
we
went to his house that night. Jeff was upset about the sarcophagus, and he insisted he was going to go back to work when you did, and so he decided we’d better show up and talk to a few people.”

“Melinda, calm down. I saw the papers—it was an accident.”

“He drowned!”

“Yes, he drowned. Please, don’t worry. No one will accuse Jeff of anything just because he was there.”

She didn’t hear Liam when he returned until he pulled his chair out and sat. As soon as she looked up, she knew that something was wrong from his side as well. His expression was a dark scowl. His eyes were accusing.

“You took the phone and called your sister,” he said.

She paled. A totally involuntary action. It hadn’t been wrong to call her sister. “Yes.” She made no attempt to lie or hedge.

“I told you not to.”

She swallowed hard. “My sister is on the phone now.”

He took the phone from her. “Hi, Melinda. How did you get this number?”

He nodded gravely at her reply. Then, to Serena’s astonishment, he began to reassure her sister. Apparently Melinda didn’t even ask to say good-bye to her.

“I used your cell,” she told him, dismayed to feel so defensive. “I didn’t tell her where we were—”

“And you didn’t tell me that
Valentine Valley
had used this hotel when filming in Hawaii on a location shoot.”

“You should keep up with the soaps better,” she murmured in an attempt to be light. She winced. Bad mistake.

“Serena, you compromised everything I was trying to do.”

She didn’t reply. She was afraid that she had done just that:

“What did Olsen say about Kyle Amesbury?”

“Definitely a drowning. And he was definitely drunk. He had consumed most of a bottle of 151-proof rum.”

“So it was an accident,” she said.

“Apparently.” He nodded, stretched his hands before him, and said, “Serena, you weren’t supposed to call your sister, because that’s how word gets around.”

“I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to the room and pack.”

“Pack?”

“There’s no reason to stay here any longer. The whole world knows you’re here.”

“Liam, we’ve got to go back anyway,” she told him, suddenly earnest. “Running away isn’t solving anything. Amesbury is dead. You thought he was involved, but it must be someone else. Don’t you see? I want my life back. If you were receiving threats, you wouldn’t run from them. You’d be more determined than ever to find out the truth.”

“Serena,” he said, shaking his head, not rising yet. “I was trained to be a cop.”

“I’m not hiding out any longer,” she insisted. “I’m scared, and I never should have told Melinda where I was. But please, Liam, let’s go back. We’ll never—I’ll never have a life, a real life, again, until this is solved.”

“I was planning on going back,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” she said, startled that he had agreed so easily.

“You’re right. Another person has been killed. This person is not going to stop.”

He wasn’t just angry with her for what she had done; he was deeply upset about something else, she realized.

“What happened?”

“Sharon Miller was found in her house by a grad student from UCLA. She was supposed to have been joining them for a dig.”

Serena inhaled a gasp. “What—what happened?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Apparently, a bookshelf fell on her.”

“Is she … ?”

“No. But she is in the hospital. In a coma.”

“Liam, I am so, so sorry!” she whispered. “Of course, you want to get back. But—”

“But what?”

“How can that … possibly be related to …
Valentine Valley?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But she went down to the police station. And she tried to call me. I never reached her return. I just … I just have a sick feeling. One that I have to look into.”

Serena nodded.

They packed; they made arrangements with their pilot to get back home. But long before they boarded the plane, Serena knew that they had left paradise.

As it happened, their return put her back at work only a day earlier than planned. Liam went in with her, talked to Joe, then departed. She found out, however, that he had brought in another off-duty cop to watch over her as well.

Everybody on the set itself was talking about Kyle Amesbury—and all the videotapes that had been found at his house.

“My God, what a scandal!” Kelly told Serena, curling up on her couch, delighted to have her back and eager to talk. “The police found tapes … so many tapes! He was a regular voyeur, tricking people into doing things … all kinds of things. I wondered if he planned on selling some of them in the porno market! Am I glad I’m basically your corn-fed Midwestern girl! The tapes haven’t gone anywhere, of course, it’s all under police investigation, but … there’s rumor afloat. This is worse than any scandal that’s come before. Kyle Amesbury seemed so quiet, so well dressed, so … regular when we first met him, remember? Becoming a big executive must have gone right to his head.”

Serena kept silent about the one tape she had been aware of.

Allona joined them in Serena’s dressing room, bearing sheets of script rewrites. She heard the last of what Kelly had to say.

“I told you he was a sicko,” she announced.

Serena glanced at her with an arched brow. “He didn’t have anything on you, did he?”

“Me, honey? I’m as sweet and pure as café au lait.” She laughed. “I’ll bet you a few people are going to be caught in some trouble on this one, though.”

“Probably,” Serena agreed.

“Hopefully no one who was too innocent. He kept inviting Jinx over, I know. She must be in complete shock,” Kelly said, “though I can’t imagine her having sex with someone—besides Jay.” She looked up sharply at this idea. “You know, the cops questioned everyone again. That must have made her a nervous wreck. I’m surprised she’s been making it in to work through all this.”

“She loves her work,” Allona said. “Wish I did.”

“I wonder who is caught up in all those tapes Amesbury made?” Kelly mused.

Allona laughed delightedly. “I’m willing to bet that both our producers will be caught with their pants down.”

“Joe hated Amesbury,” Serena said.

“Yeah, but Joe loves a party, and he loves sweet young things,” Allona said.

“Well, men thrive on their reputations, and Joe and Andy like to be known as studs,” Serena said. “If their names get out, it will only enhance their reputations.”

Kelly giggled. “What if they’re on tape not being able to get it up?”

“That’s about the only thing that would horrify the two of them,” Serena said. “Well, and then, if they caught Andy’s bad side. Or if his hair wasn’t perfect. Oh, my God, look at the way we’re talking,” she added. “A man is dead.” She shuddered. “I really didn’t like him, but …”

“He was a sleazoid who fell drunk into his own pool.” Allona sighed. “Serena, you can’t save the world.”

Serena didn’t reply because someone knocked on the door. It was Thorne, coming to tell Kelly she was needed on the set. Kelly left, and Serena remembered her pages.

“Here,” Allona said. “There’s so much going on, I forgot to tell you. We’re going to do location shooting for the next two days. I think the big guys want to get out of the studio, despite the fact that it’s been gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Oh?”

“Not far from here. They found a location that looks like Egypt.”

“I’m—I mean, Verona is going back to Egypt?”

“Yeah. The
Valentine
finale takes place there.”

“And we still don’t know what happens?”

“We’ve written a bunch of pages. They’re not even telling the writers what they’re using until the last day.”

“Well, who may be getting it?”

“Everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“From Mama and Papa Valentine to the waiter.”

“The waiter?”

“I’m kidding. But every main cast member is up for grabs.”

“Including me?”

“Hey, I hear you haven’t got that much longer on your contract. And you did screen-test for Eddie’s movie.”

“With everything that’s been going on, we should have a pleasant Valentine’s Day episode.”

“Oh, Doug and I wrote you back in for a scene today, too. I’d written you out, having Vera and Maria talk about you returning to Egypt, but since you’re here, it will be a much better scene if you’re in it, saying you have to go, you have to get away, after the incident with the sarcophagus and all. Hey, I saw the tape—it’s great. Liam should be an actor.”

“Don’t tell him that. It just makes him mad.”

Allona smiled. “I won’t say a thing.”

With that, she left. As the door opened and closed, Serena saw her young off-duty officer just outside. He smiled, assuring her of his constant presence.

She thought about calling Liam, who had gone home for a few hours.

He might not want to hear from her, she thought. She stared at the phone. She didn’t pick it up. He didn’t always have to be at her side.

Liam spent more than an hour at the hospital. He talked with Sharon’s doctors, away from her parents, whom he’d never met. They were hugging one another outside the intensive unit. He wanted to speak with them, to do something, say something. Tell them she was a beautiful person, smart as a whip, wonderful. He almost approached them, then he saw that their priest was joining them.

He’d asked Olsen to have a man watch her bedside. Even Olsen had seemed to think that he was overboard, but he promised a department man for the next forty-eight hours.

Comas could still be a mystery, even to physicians who specialized in head trauma and neuroanatomy. They considered the next few days crucial, though people had been known to survive comas at many stages. So far, she was showing more than ample brain activity; there had been no suggestion about taking her off of life support.

Liam stared at Sharon, looking pale and pathetic, full of tubes and wires, and feeling tremendous sorrow and frustration. No one saw this as anything other than an accident. Olsen was humoring him, with his police guard.

Finally, realizing that he was doing no good, he determined to get into Sharon’s house.

He sidestepped the police tape that still wafted forlornly around the front door of the house. He still had a key. He opened the door and went in.

He felt another surge of anguish as he entered the house. She was always so neat and organized. Her small house had always been spotlessly clean, but homey.

Little had been touched since the paramedics had been in. He looked at the smashed wood, the crushed furniture, and the multitude of volumes spilling around the floor. Most of them had to do with her love of the past. There were books on anthropology, archaeology, ancient man, Egyptology, Stonehenge, the Etruscans, Chinese civilization, Mayans, the study of bones, forensics in archaeology, and much more. He went through title after title, then fell against the chair, frustrated. Then he saw the volume that had fallen, its cover badly damaged, by the broken chair. He picked it up. It was a yearbook from Hollywood High.