“Is that why I’m banished to the guest room?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. We’re just asking for trouble if you sleep in the main suite with me,” Poppy laughed.
Sam yawned.
The pill was starting to take effect.
Sam looked at the turned-down bed. “Where’s the mint on my pillow?”
To his surprise, Poppy was ready for him. She carefully placed a chocolate mint wrapped in green foil on his white pillowcase.
He shook his head, smiling, then gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. “I appreciate all you’re doing, Poppy. I know I’m a big imposition. . . .”
“Nonsense. I love having you here. Now get some sleep and I will see you in the morning,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, chuckling, plopping down on the edge of the bed as Poppy walked out and closed the door behind her.
The dishwasher was running in the kitchen and she turned on the TV in the living room to watch the local news and Stephen Colbert, making sure to keep the volume low so she would not keep Sam awake, although his sleeping pill was apparently quite potent. Sam had told her a 7.2 earthquake would probably not even rouse him.
Poppy sat down on the couch, half listening to the news as she scrolled through her e-mail on her iPad. Her eyes got heavy and she yawned a few times so she set the tablet down on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch, falling asleep to Colbert’s opening monologue.
She had no idea how long she had been out when a crash jolted her awake. She sprung up from the couch. The sound had come from the patio. She reached for the remote and muted the volume on the TV and then stood still, listening.
All was quiet.
She made her way down the hall and pressed her ear to Sam’s door. She could hear him lightly snoring. Then she headed for the kitchen where the dishwasher had long finished its cycle. She flipped on the lights outside on the patio and peered through the window to see one of her potted plants on the cement floor, smashed to bits. She knew the neighbors’ black cat, Oswald, had been making a habit of hanging out on her patio ever since Poppy had moved in. She craned her neck to see if she could spot him sprinting across the street toward home, but saw nothing.
Poppy crossed to the side door and stepped out onto the patio. There was no strong wind whipping about that might have knocked the plant off the sill, or any sign of a coyote sniffing around for an unsuspecting cat to snatch and escape with back into the desert night. She had been warned that coyotes often turned up in the neighborhood, hungry and on the hunt. She was about to go get her broom and dustpan to sweep up the dirt on the patio, but then decided it was late, and she was tired. It could wait until morning.
She turned toward the door and stopped suddenly in her tracks. A man stood in the shadows just out of the light, watching her from only a few feet away.
“Who are you?”
He hesitated, not wanting to reveal himself just yet.
“I said, who are you? What are you doing here?”
Finally, he took a tentative step into the light.
It was Byron Savage.
Danika Delgado’s persistent and dangerous stalker.
Poppy gasped, stumbling back, and opened her mouth to scream for help.
Byron rushed forward, grabbing her around the waist and clamping a hand tightly over her mouth to silence her. He then backed her up against the wall, pressing himself against her and holding her in place. Poppy struggled mightily, but knew she was no match for this much younger, much stronger man.
“Please,” he hissed. “Please don’t scream.”
Poppy, panicked, wriggling and twisting, trying to bite his hand, but he held her firmly in place until she began to realize he had complete control over her, at least for now.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”
She didn’t trust him.
She knew what he was capable of, what his brother was capable of, and it frightened her that he had tracked her down at her home, no surprise since anyone with access to the local Palm Springs real estate news would know where she lived, and with no security system in place yet.
“I promise I am not going to hurt you, Ms. Harmon. If I let you go, will you at least hear me out?”
Poppy, resigned, nodded.
He waited a few seconds, just to make sure she wasn’t going to try to run, then slowly removed his hand and took a small step back.
“You have some nerve showing up here after what your brother and his pals did to me and my associate,” Poppy spit out.
“I know, in his own way, he was just trying to protect me . . .”
“By attempting to kill us?”
“Axel has a short fuse. He doesn’t think things through like he should.”
“And you do? You stalked a young actress, an actress who is now dead, by the way.”
“That’s why I’m here. I want to help you. I can’t go to the police with what I know because they’ll arrest me, and I can’t go to jail, I would never survive it.”
Poppy managed to calm down and listen to what the young man had to say, but remaining alert in case he suddenly changed his mind and attacked her.
“After you came to my house, thinking I was the one who killed Danika, I’ve been wanting to tell someone, anyone, what I heard because I loved Danika, I wouldn’t have harmed her in any way, not in a million years. But I may know who did.”
“Go on,” Poppy said quietly.
Byron took a deep breath, then continued. “That day when I crashed the set, trying to find Danika so I could tell her in person how much she meant to me, I saw the producer, that fat
