Dying to Have Her

  “Thanks, I don’t.” She walked on into his room. Again he heard the door shut.

  He sank down on the couch and watched the flames, determined to put his thoughts in order.

  Eliminate the impossible …

  Nothing was impossible with the phone calls. The way technology was these days, her number would have been easy to obtain. Anyone could have Serena’s code to her phone. Anyone with the code could erase the messages from anywhere.

  He heard the door open again. She appeared before him in the living room. Her eyes were wide, beautiful, truly amazing. Her hair was loose.

  That V …

  “Are you staying up all night? Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “I was going to take the couch,” Liam told her. “It’s a dictator’s kind of bed. I didn’t think that you were particularly fond of me this evening.”

  “You are a dictator.”

  “I’m not really a dictator.”

  She arched a brow.

  “Dammit, Serena, I was scared.”

  “Don’t you understand? I was scared as well.”

  “And you’re scared now? Is that why you’re asking me where I’m sleeping? Do you want me in there? Someone to hold while you’re afraid?”

  “Now you’re being a stupid fool and a dictator,” she told him.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She kept staring at him.

  “Do I always have to ask you?” she said quietly. “Would you consider … coming in? Never mind. Don’t answer.”

  Sometime in the night, Serena heard a phone ringing. She struggled halfway up.

  Liam, at her side, turned. “It’s the cell. It’s on the nightstand, next to you.”

  “Here,” she murmured.

  “Just answer it. Say hello.”

  She did.

  Silence greeted her. Then a soft click.

  Serena looked at Liam. “Someone knows where I am,” she told Liam.

  He took the phone from her, smoothed back her tousled hair. “Yeah, they know you’re safe. With me.” He pushed a button, showing the Caller I.D. Sharon’s number appeared. “It was just a friend,” he told Serena softly. He set the phone by his own side of the bed and put an arm around Serena, pulling her close.

  “You are safe,” he told her.

  “With my richly paid bodyguard.”

  He ran his fingers through her hair, staring into the night. He had his .38 within arm’s reach.

  “Get some sleep,” he told her.

  Amesbury, taping people’s secret fantasies and dirty little secrets. Things that happened on the set, and Amesbury was never on the set …

  There was more than one person involved.

  All he had to do was make one of them crack.

  Chapter 19

  MORNING CAME, ANOTHER DAY.

  He came in, closing the door, startling the killer. “You idiot!” he said.

  “Idiot?” The killer was dumbfounded “But you said that you needed—”

  “Idiot! You don’t think when you do things. My God, if this can be traced—”

  “I knew what I was doing. It was safe, trust me. You said you needed an opportunity—”

  “Bullshit! You’re scary, you’re dangerous!”

  He wanted to kill the killer. His own creation.

  His fingers were twitching. He looked around the room, as if he were looking for … something. A weapon?

  Then his name was called.

  He wagged a finger. “We’ll talk later!”

  Talk …

  The killer was afraid.

  Serena’s sound sleep was interrupted when Liam bolted straight up beside her. She tensed, instantly alarmed by the suddenness of his movement.

  He stared at her. “The alarm on your house didn’t go off.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your alarm didn’t go off. Did you turn it on when you came home?”

  The way he was staring at her, she was certain that he doubted she had.

  “Yes, I turned the alarm on.”

  “You’re certain—”

  “You can ask Bill.”

  He sighed. “Serena, how could Bill know that you turned the alarm on? He had to have been on the outside.”

  “He told me to lock up and turn the alarm on. The same way that you do. He stepped out, and I did just that.”

  “Then why didn’t it go off?”

  “A malfunction?”

  “We’ll have to call the alarm company,” he said. He swore. “I knew I should have had you change that lock when you told me your sister had lost the key.”

  “She was out in the wild when she lost the key!”

  “If there was no malfunction in the alarm, and there was someone in your house, they must have entered with a key.”

  “Great. I’ll change the locks,” she said. “Will the police have finished with the house by now?”

  “Yes.”

  She had the feeling that he didn’t think the police had found anything and that even having them look for fingerprints and a possible entry had been an exercise in futility.

  She was too tired to argue. She managed to squint at her watch. It wasn’t yet six. She put her head back down on the pillow.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going back to sleep.”

  “You have an early call, and now I have to see about this alarm business.”

  “Not this early,” she murmured.

  “I know how to wake you up.”

  She smiled into the pillow, thinking he would have something artfully romantic in mind. A second later, the sheets were gone. She felt the sharp clip of his hand against her backside, and turned, half rising in indignation.

  “That’s it. That’s what you get from a macho ex-cop—

  But by the time she had gotten that far, he had crawled back into bed and silenced whatever other insults she had to hurl with his mouth. A moment later he murmured against her lips, “Now that I have your attention …”

  It wasn’t, however, a morning that offered time for endless ecstasy, whispered conversation, or repeat performances. Within an hour they were both out of the shower, he was on the phone, and she was inhaling her second cup of coffee. He’d called Conar, whom she would have met at the studio anyway, but he wanted Conar in early, with her every step of the way.

  “You have things to do again?” she inquired politely.

  “I’m meeting a man from your alarm company at your house,” he told her. “Take your coffee in the car.”

  A minute later he was propelling her out the door, and soon they were halfway to the studio.

  “Are you just dropping me off?” she asked him.

  “No. I’ll go in with you.”

  She decided not to argue.

  He parked in Joe’s spot, and they entered the studio. He walked with her to the elevator, and up to her dressing room. Conar was already in the hallway, leaning against the wall by her door, waiting. She arched a brow at him.

  “You know,” she told them both, “this is rather cruel to Conar. He doesn’t have to be here until the Egyptian scene.”

  “Not true,” Conar argued politely. “You have a scene with Kelly, ready to tape, set to go as previously written and rehearsed. You have a scene with Vera, who is going to tell you to quit sleeping with your sisters’ lovers. Of course, good ol’ mom doesn’t know that you’re sleeping with me, the horrendous, evil, and scheming David DeVille. If she did, she’d tell dad, and you’d both be horsewhipped—or thrown out of the old vineyard. We have a quick discussion about meeting later so that you can tell me off. Then you have a fight with Jay Braden, who is still married to your sister but has impregnated one of the illegal alien vineyard workers. Then, you have a discussion with the wine buyer from the very pricey new Euro-American restaurant. Then, my dear vixen, you have the scene with me, the fight with me, we roll around in the vineyard—they’ve brought in mud and vines just so we can do that convincingly, then I follow you to your workshop, you throw out
more threats—and I lock you in the sarcophagus. Between scenes I pay a visit to your father so that he can be nasty and I can gloat about the fact that I’m sleeping with two of his daughters. Not at once, of course. We’re not getting that kinky.”

  “It’s a full day,” Liam said dryly.

  “Yes, all this sex,” Conar said. “It’s a bitch, you know, but someone has to do it.”

  “See you both later,” Liam said. “I won’t be gone any longer than I have to be.”

  “We should be okay. Olsen was in earlier, and Hutchens intends to stay for the taping today.”

  “Did Olsen say anything about tracing the phone calls, or if they were able to pull any fingerprints?”

  “They got tons of fingerprints—probably yours, mine, Jennifer’s, and so on. The last call to Serena’s house came from her sister; those made immediately before that came from a cellular phone belonging to a Harvey Moss, traveling salesman from Idaho, who reported the phone missing around midnight. He’d last used it to call his wife and child around six. You don’t look surprised,”

  “I’m not. I was expecting something like that.”

  “Yeah. Everything around here seems to be like that.”

  Liam shrugged. “Stick close to her.”

  “Like glue. I won’t leave her alone for a second.”

  “Conar,” Serena said, “I’ll need to change, you’ll need to change—”

  Conar grinned, waving a hand in the air. “Do you believe that? I’ve slept with this woman a dozen times onstage. I think we’ll manage.”

  “Conar, that didn’t sound quite right,” she told him.

  Liam lifted a finger beneath her nose. “Don’t go off without him,” he said.

  “Yessir, just like American Express, I will not leave anywhere without him!”

  Liam and Conar exchanged a last look, then Liam turned to leave.

  “There is safety in numbers,” Conar told Serena.

  “He trusts you,” she told him. “He doesn’t seem to trust many people.”

  “He was a cop.”

  “Was a cop? He thinks he still is. Born and bred, so it seems. You know how pit bulls and Rottweilers are bred to attack?”

  “Whoa,” Conar said. “Are you telling me that you two argue now? Still? And it looked as if you were getting along.”

  “Oh, we can get along.”

  “Ah,” he murmured knowingly.

  “What is that ‘ah’ for?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Conar, dammit!”

  “All right—I was thinking that you get along when you stay in bed.”

  “Conar Markham!”

  “You insisted on knowing my thoughts.”

  “Remind me not to insist on it again.”

  She opened the door to her dressing room. Conar followed her, picking up a magazine, sitting on the couch. Jinx came in and went through Serena’s wardrobe.

  “Serena, I heard about those phone calls last night. Are you sure you’re all right? Ready to do this today?” Jinx asked her. “I can go to Joe … well, I can’t go to Joe, I’d stutter and be afraid, but someone could go to Joe—”

  “I’m not giving up on the soap, Jinx. And I’m fine.”

  Conar looked up from his magazine. “You know Joe, Jinx. Acts like a tough guy, but he’s a teddy bear. If Serena was afraid, she’d just go tell him, and that would be that.”

  Jinx nodded happily. “I’m glad. I love my job. I’d hate to see us give in and fall apart.”

  “We’re not going to,” Serena assured her.

  When Jinx left, Thorne arrived with makeup.

  Conar offered her coffee from a large thermos he had brought from home. She thanked him for it, and sipped it as Thorne went to work.

  “Hey, give me your pages. I’ll prompt you while you run them.”

  Thorne touched up her eyes. Conar gave her lines; she answered them.

  The day had begun, and for once it seemed normal.

  The fellow from First and Foremost Alarm was tall and lanky, a man of fifty or so who had been working with alarms for nearly thirty years and who had been with First and Foremost for twenty of those. He hailed from Texas, he told Liam, but he loved California. Lots of rich folks, and lots of folks who really valued their privacy.

  “I’ve changed the locks on the front and rear doors. If you want, you can come around with me, and I’ll show you how her whole system works,” Judd Baker told him. They walked around the house and checked windows, doors, wires, the keypad, the connection to the home base, and the phone wires.

  “She’s got her new locks, so you can rest assured. There wasn’t a thing wrong, so who knows? Maybe someone did get lucky with a key,” Judd told him. “Do you think she might have forgotten to key in the numbers on the pad? Or maybe she keyed them in wrong. That would fail to set up the system, and if she was distracted … well, she might not have noticed that the little light there didn’t go on.”

  “You’re sure that the system was in no way tampered with?” Liam pressed him.

  “Well, as sure as I can be. There’s nothing wrong with it today. No shorts anywhere. Phone system is working. Like I said, most probably she thought she keyed in the numbers but didn’t, or she hit a digit wrong. If strange things are going on around here, then she needs to be extra careful with details like that. You’ll tell her, won’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll tell her,” Liam assured him.

  “It’s a good system.”

  “I believe it’s a good system,” Liam said.

  “The whole thing is numbers. Numbers are codes, and if a code isn’t set properly, and if you don’t make sure the little light is on …”

  “I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  “The police didn’t find anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Must have been prank calls, someone giving her a bad time. That’s the trouble out here, you know. You have those who get ahead and those who get real angry at those who got ahead when they didn’t. Someone jealous. But she’s all right, isn’t she?” Judd asked anxiously.

  “Fine. In fact, I was just about ready to leave to make certain about that.”

  Judd nodded. “I’ll let you get going, then.”

  “Thanks. Thanks for all your help.”

  Liam shook Judd’s hand and turned toward the car. Glancing skyward, he saw that the sun was already high in the western sky. He drove quickly, anxious to reach the soundstage.

  The day had gone really well.

  The scenes had been rehearsed and then taped. Costume changes had gone smoothly.

  Because Kelly was doing a scene with Jay, Jim got it into his head that they could also do the scene in which Verona came upon her sister and mother, insisting that they do something to hurry the divorce—even though Natalie (Jennifer’s character) had gone to the islands to recover from the trauma of her affair with Dale Donovan (Andy’s character) while her marriage to Randy Rock (Jay) was in the process of falling apart. The maid, Serafina, had come to her to tell her that she had been seduced one night when Randy Rock was on the property, trying to see his wife and angry because the family wouldn’t let him near her.

  Vera, who liked to study her lines, had only two of them in the scene, so she agreed to go with a quick rehearsal.

  Amazingly, that, too, went well. Then Andy appeared and, exhilarated with the way the filming was going, he decided to do a scene with Serena that had been scheduled for the next day on her Egyptian set. He came to her, telling her that she was an idiot, she had loved him always, she needed to get away from Valentine Valley and come back to him. There was a killer on the loose. She took dangerous chances, working in her cottage alone at night, far from the main house. She told him she would never marry him again, or consider being with him again—he’d had an affair with her sister during their marriage. She threw him off the set, and he vowed that he’d come back and find a way to force her to listen to him.

  She did the seduction-in-the-mud-and
-grapevines scene with Conar; they were both laughing so hard that it had to be taped twice. Jim shook his head in dismay and disgust. His pros should have done better work.

  Serena ignored Jim. It was all going too well.

  Even the scene with the extra hired in to act as the sommelier went like clockwork. The extra’s name was Julian Page. Jim spoke highly of him once he’d left the set, saying that he’d be happy to work with the guy again.

  Bill Hutchens soon arrived with a uniformed officer. He spoke with Serena and Conar about their findings on what had happened at her house, but unfortunately, he told her, he had nothing else new to report.

  “I really don’t think anyone was out there last night,

  “Serena,” he told her unhappily. “I think the caller is causing trouble, a lot of work, and costing the taxpayers a lot of money.”

  “I think I’m glad.”

  “You still have to be careful.”

  “Of course.”

  “Liam back yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he may be a while. There was a bad accident on the freeway.”

  “It’s all right. Things are going great. You’re here, Conar’s here … and lots of others. Jennifer sent in coffee and sandwiches—and water bottles from their house. I’m on a roll. Things are going great.”

  “Fine. Get back to work.”

  Then it was time for the Egyptian sarcophagus scene.

  Jim blocked the stage directions with Serena and Conar, showing him how the standing sarcophagus worked. He grew exasperated a few times, calling in someone from props when he couldn’t get the lid to swing open properly.

  “This is an old magician’s trick,” he said. “It works perfectly when Jeff is around. I wish your brother-in-law hadn’t quit, Serena.”

  “I wish he hadn’t either. I’m not sure what he said to Joe and Andy—he was under contract.”

  “I guess he wasn’t too happy here. And I guess the thing with Jane upset him pretty badly. She was fighting with him before any of this started—”

  “Jeff was fighting with Jane Dunne? I thought he hardly knew her.”

  “You didn’t have to know her real well to fight with her,” Jim said. “Hey, Conar, come closer. Here. The spring is here. I found it. This thing is great. When you open it, you see the huge spikes. When you close it, it looks like the spikes will pierce you. But there’s a thin steel slide that goes across them, pushing them back. Originally, it was a great Vegas showpiece. You know, the gorgeous assistant stepped in, the magician showed the spikes, they closed the lid … and the gorgeous assistant stepped out still gorgeous. Anyway, here’s the catch. You got it, Conar?”