Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

watching him with hostile eyes.

      ‘You bastard,’ she was shouting. ‘We’re just your dirty little secret, aren’t we? You’d rather we didn’t exist at all – wouldn’t you!’

      Frances looked on the verge of tears.

      Viv was raging.

      ‘Fuck this,’ said Rick.

      He turned on his heel, left the house, got back in his car – she followed him out, shrieking and cursing at him as he started the engine and then drove away.

      Rick called one of the older, dimming stars he’d once been a walker for at the Oscars. Chloe Kane was no old fart. She was still beautiful, but calls from screenwriters and producers and the press had all but dried up. What the hell – she was forty and everyone knew that once a woman hit the big four-oh in this town, she was done for.

      But Jesus, she was still so beautiful, even if her allure was waning. Thick glossy red hair – which must be dyed, but who cared? – and a mouth that still invited trouble. A body that would make a bishop kick a hole through a stained-glass window, even if she had let her personal grooming slide and her bush was a tangle of red and grey that extended down her thighs and up to her navel. But so what? She was stacked, and last time they’d spoken she’d said call me – please.

      So here he was, calling her. And she liked that. It soothed his sour mood, how pleased she was to hear from him. When had his wife ever sounded like that? She invited him over. Poor cow had nothing going on except an evening in on her own with her pet pooch for company; he was doing her a favour.

      ‘Darling,’ she greeted him at the door in that famous, breathy tone she had used to such good effect up on the silver screen. ‘How lovely. Come on in.’

      There had followed a wild night in which they had made out in the hall, on the stairs, in her huge, imposing bedroom (‘Strictly for press shots, darling; actually I sleep in a teensy little room down the hall’), much to the pooch’s annoyance.

      It was gone two in the morning by the time he got home. He crept in, fearful of waking Viv. The last thing he wanted now was another argument. He was exhausted. Chloe was very demanding.

      In the lounge he found empty bottles and upturned bowls of nuts and nibbles that crunched under his feet as he walked. A thousand-dollar rug and she treats it like this, he thought. Nat King Cole was stuck singing ‘Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa’ over and over again. He went over and switched Nat off.

      Then he went through to the master bedroom. The coverlet was perfectly in place, the bed still made.

      Now what the hell?

      Had she gone out somewhere? He hoped not. She was a crazy driver in her too-visible red Corvette at the best of times – oh, and the arguments they’d had about that – but today she’d had a skinful. What he didn’t need was her wrapping her damned car around a tree and the press getting wind of her existence. She was just a nobody.

      He hurried along the hall, past the closed door of Frances’s room.

      That kid. Strange little fellow: he wanted to be an actor when he grew up like his dad, and Rick was flattered by that, but – for fuck’s sake – the kid didn’t have the talent; all he could manage was a few lines of amateurish mimicry. He would deter him from entering the industry if he could – do the kid a favour. Bad enough when you had that special touch of stardust; it was still hard, gruelling work all the way. But without it . . . Hollywood would break your heart. No doubt about that.

      He opened the bathroom door.

      Maybe she was ill? Puking up all that gin, no doubt. He heard water flowing.

      ‘Viv? Honey?’ he said softly.

      Through the half-open window the moon cast its silvery light into the room. He could see the bath filled to the brim and overflowing. Something was lolling in there, arms akimbo.

      Shit! Had she fallen asleep and fucking well drowned? How the hell were they going to hush that up if she had? He felt a spasm of fear at the thought. His career, his fabulous career, in ruins, and for a gormless whore he’d been stupid enough to get the hots for, and marry.

      He flicked on the light with a movement that was half panic, half anger, and fell back instantly.

      Vivienne was in the bath, but her head was above the water. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t going to see anything, ever again. There was a long gash across her forehead. Her face was a blanched, vacant mask. The water in the bath was bright red.

      He made a noise in his throat, horrified.

      No. She was just playing dead or something; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

      But . . . it was true. He reached out, picked up one limp, cold hand. Felt for a pulse and found none.

      She was dead. Now how the fuck were they going to keep this quiet?

      He heard a movement. Letting out a half-strangled shriek, he turned and saw Frances standing silently in the hall, watching him.

      Chapter 9

      1971

      Constantine Barolli’s estate on Long Island’s stylish Montauk peninsula would be a stunning location for Lucco Barolli’s marriage to Daniella Carlucci. The house itself was massive, clapboarded in soft duck-egg blue-and-white trim; it was fronted by huge decks and terraces that overlooked and led down onto the long white beach and into sand dunes thick with the billowing fronds of marram grass.

      Cara had told the men on the gate to expect Saul Jury at four, that he had business with her, and that they were to show him straight in; she’d be waiting in the waterfront lounge. The roar of the Atlantic breakers pounding the beach was a throaty, ominous counterpoint to her black mood.

      Saul Jury arrived promptly at the agreed time. He always did; with high-end clients you learned early on not to fuck around too much. Shame her husband hadn’t learned the same lesson, because Saul suspected that this was not a lady who’d take betrayal lightly; she didn’t have the look of a gentle, forgiving sort of girl.

      As he was shown in to the huge lounge with its big expanse of glass that displayed the ocean out there beyond the white stretch of the beach, Saul felt overawed. He’d had wealthy clients before, but these folks lived like the Rockefellers. Schlepping home to his little apartment in the Bronx, he had often glanced up and wondered about the flashy Manhattan types and the rarefied air they breathed – that special, radiant space they occupied. He knew he was in the presence of great wealth here. But seeing the scary people on the gates and patrolling the grounds, he also knew that these were not the sort of people you would ever want to upset. Olive oil and fruit importers, for fuck’s sake. Saul knew what that meant. He was starting to feel more than a little sorry for the erring Rocco.

      When she’d first taken him on they’d met up in Central Park, neutral territory, but now Saul was seeing Cara in her natural environment, and it made him feel like the small fry he was. Hell, he was happy to be small fry. He didn’t want to be up too close and personal with people like this.

      She looked vindictive and trigger-happy; he’d thought that the very first time he’d seen her: Here is a woman who won’t take prisoners. What if she now decided to shoot the messenger?

      Cara stood up as he was shown in by Frederico, who waited around the house when he was not driving for her father. Frederico – or ‘Fredo’ as he was affectionately known by the family – was the son of one of Constantine’s gardeners and a cook. He was her own age and she knew he adored her – he had been making cow-eyes at her ever since kindergarten; but he was beneath her and they both knew it. It was Fredo who had driven her to the meeting with Saul in Central Park. He had asked no questions, but she had seen the curiosity in his eyes. Idiot, she’d thought, as if I would tell you anything.

      Dismissing Fredo with a wave, Cara swept imperiously towards Saul – dwarfing him in will and in size too. Cara winced as she shook his limp, ineffectual hand.