Scout raised her head a little. ‘You think so?’
‘Of course I do. You said yourself how nice you looked in that magazine.’
Bruce was stunned at Brooke’s audacity. Was it possible that this pathological murderess could be taken in by such an obvious ploy? Quietly, he began to pray that it was.
‘Why would any agent notice me? I mean, I ain’t saying I ain’t pretty, because I know a lot of men have taken a shine to me from time to time, including my own father. But there’s a heap of pretty girls in this town.’
Bruce’s heart sank. His prayer, scarcely delivered yet, was already being returned to sender, unanswered. He had been foolish to allow himself to hope. Scout was not an imbecile: just because you’re psychotic does not render you moronic. The woman would have to have had her brains sucked out with a bicycle pump to believe that a bit of makeup and a borrowed dress were going to turn her from a sad, sick psycho into a glamorous celebrity.
But Brooke was a lot smarter than Bruce gave her credit for – and braver. She took Scout’s chin and gently but firmly raised her head so that she could look her in the eye.
‘OK, Scout, I’ll be straight. You’re right, ordinarily why would anybody notice you? Just one more pretty girl in a town that’s full of them. But you know very well that you’re not just one more pretty girl. You’re a killer’s girl, already famous…’
‘I’m a killer too,’ said Scout.
Brooke conceded the point. ‘Well sure, but the world is going to know that he made you do it and meanwhile, if I make you as pretty as can be… who knows? You wouldn’t be the first person to get away with stuff just for being cute.’
Scout had a faraway look in her eyes. Her toes were twitching at the carpet harder than ever. ‘You really think I could be a star? You mean you’d help me?’
‘Of course I’d help you, Scout. I like you and I think you like me. We could be friends.’
Scout finally raised the point that Bruce had been nervously awaiting from the outset. ‘That’s easy for you to say while Wayne ’s threatening to kill you.’
Bruce cursed inwardly. Brooke’s progress thus far had been so astonishing that he had dared to think she might actually win Scout’s trust. This remarkable woman had got from nowhere to serious buddytalk inside two or three minutes. Now, however, it seemed that Scout had finally spotted the rather obvious point that Brooke’s affection might be influenced by an ulterior motive.
But Brooke was a fighter, and hit back. ‘Maybe you’re right, Scout, but think about it. Seems to me that Wayne is always going to be threatening to kill somebody or other. So how you ever going to make any friend, huh? Y’ever think ‘bout that, now?’
Not very subtly, Brooke’s voice was going both downmarket and incountry. It had left the upper echelons of West Coast society and was meandering gently along Route 66 towards the Heartland.
‘I don’t know,’ Scout replied softly. ‘Sometimes I do wonder about it.’
Brooke took Scout’s hand. ‘Listen t’me Scout. If ever a person needed friends right now, it’s you. We could help you, but you have to help us. Don’t you want friends?’
‘Sure I want friends. ‘Course I want friends. I ain’t a freak, I’m just an ordinary American.’
A loud New York accent intruded on the scene. Instantly Scout’s demeanour hardened. She pulled away from Brooke and her hand tensed under the cushion. For the time being at least, Brooke’s heroic efforts to divide the enemy would have to be suspended.
Chapter TwentyOne
The unmarked police car pulled up outside the Beverly Hills mansion. The sun was out now, and the automatic sprinklers hidden beneath the perfect lawns had sprung to life. As he looked about him, Detective Jay could see a hundred rainbows shimmering in the spray which hung above the deep green grass. Everything looked so peaceful and so rich.
Jay wondered if inside that glorious colonnaded house unspeakable mayhem had already been perpetrated. It was just a hunch, after all. On the other hand, nobody had cut up a major Hollywood star since Manson.
‘You know,’ said Crawford as they approached the vast front door, ‘this guy was a daytime soap star for years, started as a kid. That’s what’s so clever about Delamitri. He makes weird moves, like, you know, doing the unexpected, casting against type. Making uncool cool.’
‘What, like murder?’
‘You don’t buy that copycat crap, do you? What? Are we all going to have to go and watch Doris Day movies?’
Buzzz. Buzzzzzzz.
At first Kurt didn’t hear it. The pounding of the treadmill and the Van Halen in his headphones blotted out any outside sound. He rarely answered the intercom himself, anyway. The staff arrived by public bus at nine, and nobody ever visited before that.
Except today.
If he hadn’t stopped for a swig of salinating energizer drink and five minutes under the sunlamp, he’d never have heard it at all.
‘LAPD,’ said the intercom. ‘Sorry to call so early, sir.’
In contrast to the characters he played, Kurt Kidman was as dull as old brown paint. Like many people in LA these days, all he ever did was work and exercise. He had certainly never been visited by the police at six fifty in the morning.
‘The police?’ said Kurt. ‘But… but why?’ The receiver actually shook in his hand.
He had never done anything illegal in his life (although some of his acquaintances considered that squandering his huge wealth and fame on a boring, healthy lifestyle was something of a crime). None the less, Kurt was a nervous sort of fellow and anybody suddenly confronted by the police tends to feel an irrational sense of guilt, particularly at so early an hour. Had he done anything wrong? Was it possible that he’d gone over the speed limit when he drove back from the Oscars on the previous night? Or else maybe, like Dr Jekyll, he had a terrifying subconscious alter ego, who roamed the night committing terrible murders of which his conscious self had no memory in the morning.
‘Good morning, officer,’ Kurt said, attempting to sound calm, as he answered the door. He had tried to communicate with them only over the intercom, but they had asked him to come down in person. He half expected to be brutally handcuffed the moment the door was open.
‘How can I help you?’
Should he have said even that without his lawyer being present? Kurt couldn’t remember the rules. Was saying hullo incriminating? He longed to tell them that his copious sweating was the result of an hour on the treadmill, not because he was desperately attempting to cover up some guilty secret. But would that sound like protesting too much? Probably.
‘Just a routine enquiry, sir,’ said Detective Jay ‘Have you been visited or contacted during the night? Have any strangers attempted to speak to you?’
‘No,’ said Kurt.
‘In that case we won’t bother you further. Sorry to have interrupted your workout, sir.’
Detective Jay gave Kurt his card and asked him to call if anything out of the ordinary occurred, and then he and his partner departed.
Kurt worried about it all day.
Chapter TwentyTwo
In the doorway to Bruce’s lounge stood Wayne and Karl Brezner, Bruce’s agent. Karl was a tough, hardbitten operator from New York. He had been in the business for thirty years, but judging by his manner it did not seem to
