But in his rearview mirror, Clay Harper saw no such destiny staring back. He supposed it was every American’s desire—maybe every human’s—to think they were special, to hope they were The Chosen One at something, just waiting for the right circumstances to make it real. Except most lives didn’t make compelling biographies. And the gates of greatness were as closed to Clay as they were to the camera-wielding tourists around him.
He sat there as a melancholy—as deep and bitter as anything he’d felt since his mother’s death—consumed him.
After awhile, the Dark Hollywood tour saddled up and moved on. But Clay kept where he was, idling in the shade of the cul-de-sac. “The Only Time” by Nine Inch Nails was blasting from the Jeep’s speakers, Trent Reznor all messed up in you, as a bright yellow Volkswagon lumbered up the street and pulled right past him.
The driver, a wild-haired woman, leaned out and buzzed the house. Finding herself ignored, she disembarked the rolling lemon and yelled something through the gate. Clay watched, fascinated.
The woman was in her forties, but dressed younger—and the way her turquoise dress clung to her was hard to ignore. Clay wondered if it wasn’t one of Boyle’s groupies, who’d somehow missed the news of his death. Six years ago. Curious, he shifted into Drive and rolled up beside her.
“Are you Mr. Harper?” she asked immediately. The tanned hue of her skin seemed as unnatural as her affable tone.
“Technically, yes. But I think you’re looking for my father.”
The woman rested her fingers on his open window, her long nails painted a shade of bubble-gum pink that matched her dress and car. She leaned in and Clay could smell an alluringly fruity perfume wafting from her cleavage. “Do you think he’d give me a minute of his time?”
“Well, his schedule is pretty hectic—”
“I was hoping to convince him not to fire me,” the woman blurted. “I’ve been caring for the flowers and succulents on this residence for the last… several years? I’d like to stay on. Times are tough, and I could really use the rent money.” Her fingernails moved from the door to Clay’s forearm. “Do you have any idea why he doesn’t need me anymore?”
Clay did. It was the result of an arrangement he’d made himself. Until Clay found a job or gave in to the pressure of taking college courses, he had agreed to be the caretaker of their new property, mowing the grounds, picking the fruit, dumping chlorine in the pool, and the like. Peter had readily agreed, having run his own handyman business while putting himself through law school. They settled on a weekly salary and Clay had assumed he was taking jobs away from gardeners and pool boys with a hundred other clients. He had never thought someone’s rent was hanging in the balance. That’s why you’ll never write a song for the masses, Fiasco Joe persisted. Poseur. Rich boy. Fake!
“I’m sorry,” Clay told the woman’s nails. “We just went in a different direction.”
The woman’s spine tensed, but she managed to keep her smile. A good sport, if nothing else. “Any chance you put in a word for me, handsome?”
“I don’t know if it’ll do any good,” Clay admitted. And guilt stabbed at him, as if he was rejecting her as arbitrarily as Fiasco Joe had rejected him. “But I’ll give you my father’s cell number, so you can state your case.”
The woman leaned in and pecked Clay on the cheek, leaving a lip-print that matched her nails. “I’m Estelle, by the way. And I’ll be working for you soon, baby. You watch.”
He was in the shower, singing a decent a cappella of Rocket Throne’s “Elaborate Monster,” when he shut the water off and heard the guitar again.
Clay wiped the moisture from his ears and slid the bathroom window open. The steam poured out as the strings drifted in. The player was in the back yard again.
He dressed quickly. It was after eleven, but Peter was still at his new office, so Clay didn’t bother tiptoeing downstairs. He had programmed the alarm panel to arm itself and tonight the zones were lit red. Then how did they get in? Were there weaknesses along the perimeter wall? Faulty sensors? Clay didn’t like the idea of an obsessed fan knowing more about the grounds than he did.
Still, there were motion lights everywhere, and the exterior yard sat fully in the dark. Had the mystery player skirted those as well? The answer came with disturbing clarity, and in a voice too calm to be Clay’s own: It’s because this place is haunted. Just like the Dark Hollywood tour says it is.
Before finalizing purchase of the house, Clay and his father had discussed the creep factor inherent in living where a famous person and his girlfriend had died. The idea hadn’t bothered either of them. They had lived on a historic block in Philadelphia, where a lot more than two people had drawn their last breath, and truthfully Clay only believed in an afterlife because it was easier to think of his mother as an invisible angel than decomposing bones in a cemetery.
Now? Alone in Rocco Boyle’s house, with all that dark waiting outside? Even a skeptic could falter. Is it any easier to believe someone breached the alarm system and wandered through the yard without setting off a single light?
Clay disarmed the zones in the backyard, but left the walls and gate active. His father owned a gun, a Taurus .38, but where it was among the Tetris stacks of unpacked boxes, or if he even still owned it, Clay couldn’t say. Ditto for their German-crafted
