Well, I can cross seeing Billionaires’ Beach off my bucket list, I thought. Not that spending time at the pricey Malibu locale was ever on it. I prefer my sun and sand less densely populated.
The houses were, for the most part, large and luxurious. But honestly—and I didn’t think this was sour grapes—they were too close together, and the beach was on the narrow side. Killer view of the ocean from the Conrads’ huge kitchen, though, which overlooked a long lap pool.
I was currently playing sous chef to Laura’s cook. (Which meant I was basically doing nothing but waiting, since Laura wasn’t dumb enough to let me actually help.) The real cook, along with the other servants, had been given the evening off to keep them out of the line of fire, should it come to that. None of us thought Jackson was going anywhere unprotected these days. He could even be legally armed—it wasn’t tough for a celebrity to get a concealed-carry permit in California.
If Jackson got uncomfortable after he arrived, and tried to run this way, he’d wind up with Laura’s foot in his face. I was actually kind of hoping that would be necessary. (Vindictive? Moi? Well … yeah. I didn’t appreciate being anyone’s alibi.)
I had to stay out of sight until later because Gunn would recognize me at once. I couldn’t adapt to be one of the servants, for instance, because the Conrads didn’t know about adaptors.
Mark was filling in for their usual butler, and would be on hand for any trouble at the front of the house. If Gunn questioned the Conrads about it, they would say the other guy had been poached by a family down the beach. Nothing unusual about that—rich people lured away their friends’ servants all the time. Good help was hard to find, and all was fair when it came to keeping your household running smoothly.
Thomas and Nigel were hidden away in Joe’s office, to be brought out later, in case Jackson needed more convincing that it was worth his while to plead guilty and hope for a relatively light sentence. Nigel was willing to take him on as a client because it would ultimately help Lily-Ann. “Of course, the notoriety doesn’t hurt business either,” he’d admitted, with his Clooney smile.
“He’s here. Get ready.” Mark’s voice sounded oddly intimate in my ear. He’d fitted us all with tiny, almost invisible earpieces and microphones, so we could communicate throughout the evening. All we had to do was speak in a quiet voice, and the sensitive wireless mics we were all wearing beneath our collars would transmit to everyone in our group.
“Standing by,” Laura said. It sounded weird to hear her both from across the kitchen island and in the receiver in my ear at the same time. She placed a few more hot and cheesy something-or-anothers on the tray next to the thick, crab-salad-stuffed cucumber slices.
Elizabeth came into the kitchen a few minutes later, looking pale and nervous. “I don’t know if I can stand to look at him. And Joseph is more agitated than I’ve ever seen him. Worse, even, than when we found out about Angelica.”
Laura glanced at me, telegraphing an alert with her expressive eyes.
I gave a tiny nod. “Mrs. Conrad, why don’t you sit here with me for a few minutes while Laura takes the hors d’oeuvres out? Maybe we can have a drink of water, or tea, or—”
“I have a new pinot grigio—would you care to try it?” She crossed the kitchen to the wine fridge and grabbed a bottle. “I keep a corkscrew in that drawer right behind you—be a dear and get it, won’t you? Oh, and the glasses are in the cupboard behind you.”
“Um, sure,” I said.
Laura left with the cheesy whatchamacallits, mouthing the words be careful as she left.
Never have I seen a bottle of wine opened and poured faster. She put a half-full glass in my hand, clinked hers to it, and drank. Relief settled over her face, relaxing it into its more familiar composure. Huh. So that was how she managed to stay so calm in front of the cameras.
“Cheers,” I said, and sipped a microscopic amount. I wanted to keep my wits sharp.
“Do you like it? It’s Italian, of course.” She added a token splash to my glass, and refilled hers. “Funny, but I don’t care for the California pinots—does that make me disloyal? Joseph says we should support the local wineries. I mean, since we live here. But he doesn’t even drink wine unless he’s forced, so what does he know?”
At least the color was coming back to her face.
“I think you should drink what you like,” I said, trying to appear engaged, all the while straining to listen to the voices in my ear. They were indistinct. Apparently, the mics only picked up the wearer’s voice clearly.
Definitely two men talking. Must be Joe and Jackson. But I thought I’d heard a woman’s voice in the background, too. I assumed Laura could hear what they were discussing, and would find a way to relay any essential information.
Elizabeth was still yammering about the wine. “… drink red when he has to, but prefers whiskey. I say a light, crisp pinot is so much more refreshing…” She poured herself another refill.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Conrad, but hadn’t you better go back?” I said. “I mean, Jackson might think it odd if you didn’t at least say hi, right?”
The panic flared in her eyes, but not as strongly as before. She nodded and took another fortifying—not to mention extended—sip of her wine.
Laura returned as Elizabeth left. The tray was still full. Seemed no one was hungry.
“Well?” I said.
“Gunn is in place,” she said. “Seated, with a drink. But he brought company—his assistant drove him here. He said his car is in the shop. I suspect his loyal minion has been helping him hide.”
“He might not be lying about the car. He drives a Jag—I hear those things practically live in the shop. But, geez, he brought Frannie here? After what the Conrads saw in that vid—”
“Never mind that now,” Mark said in our ears. “I have the library door covered. Looks like we’re set.”
“We’re ready when you are,” Thomas said from Conrad’s office.
“Mrs. C is looking iffy,” Laura said. “Might want to move it along.”
“Ditto that,” I said.
“No time like the present,” Mark said.
“I don’t think he’s going to like this present…” I mumbled, picking up the small FedEx box we’d dummied up for the occasion. Everyone chuckled.
I stepped out of the kitchen, Laura behind me. Nigel and Thomas were leaving the office. Mark waited for us outside the library, where the Conrads were with Jackson and Frannie. The French doors didn’t offer a lot of cover, so we stood to the side, out of view. Peeking, I saw the Conrads sitting in stony silence. Not that I could blame them. I mean, what can a good host and hostess say to the man who killed their daughter, much less to his barely legal sidepiece?
Mark, good butler that he was, went in ahead of us and announced, “Mr. Conrad, the package you requested…” He handed the box to Gunn, who held it for a moment before giving in to the temptation to open it. A spring-loaded flag with the word “SURPRISE!” popped out. Frannie jumped a good foot off the couch. Guess she was a little on edge.
Gunn looked accusingly at Joe, who was every bit as startled. “What the hell?”
That was my cue. I walked in, pointed my finger at Jackson like a gun, and said, “Hi, there, Jack. Gotcha.”
He stood, shocked out of his gourd to see me.
Laura slipped around me, over to the window side of the room, so that exit was covered, too, though he’d have to be an idiot to jump through the glass onto the concrete drive below. The library was on the street side of the house.
“What’s going on?” Gunn said, keeping his voice measured.
“Jack, you ran off so fast the other night that we didn’t have time to tell you,” I said. “We made copies of the video we showed you on the laptop you stole.”
Nigel rolled in, Thomas at his side. “I hear you might be in need of a good defense attorney, Mr. Gunn. I’m here to offer my services,” Nigel said.
Gunn turned on Conrad. “You set me up, you miserable son of a bitch.”
Joe smiled, lips closed, a grim and ugly sight. “You had my daughter killed. All because of that piece of trash beside you. What’s the matter? Both of my daughters, and my wife, not enough for you? Or just not young enough?” Guess good ol’ Joe knew more than he’d been letting on. Elizabeth clutched her collar, like she suddenly couldn’t get enough air. “You’re lucky I’m letting the authorities handle this instead of doing it myself.”
“Is that what the two of you tried at the funeral?” Jackson said, anger building. “What’s the matter, Elizabeth, your aim a little off? Too much wine in the morning will do that, I hear. The real question is, which one of us were you aiming for?”
Elizabeth shrank into herself. She didn’t admit anything, but she didn’t deny it either.
Jackson stared at her, a nasty look on his face. “To think I felt sorry for you. What a waste of a fuck.”
Frannie was looking at Jackson like a puppy who’d just been boot-kicked in the belly, the recipient of a hard lesson about loving the wrong man.
Joe glanced at his wife, disgust and pity fighting for the upper hand on his face. He spat out his next words to Gunn like it sickened him to say it. “Overholt has agreed to defend you. This doesn’t have to ruin you. Or us.” The Conrad name was everything to him. Above all else, he was desperate to keep the scandal from hitting the press.
Mark and Laura edged themselves closer to Gunn, who was looking wilder by the second. “If you think I’m going down alone for this, that I won’t tell the world about Lily and Elizabeth, and those goddamned stock certificates you stole—”
Joe stepped on his words. “Calm down! I told you, we can work this out.”
Elizabeth was staring, lips parted, at her husband. “Joseph, what are you going to do? You can’t let him—”
Gunn stood, his face turning vicious. “Yeah, I know about the stock. Who else could have taken it? Certainly not Goody Two-Shoes Lily—she wouldn’t dirty her hands with Conrad money. But her sister’s husband? Now, that was another story. She was happy to get down and dirty there.”
I swung my head to gauge Joe’s reaction to Gunn’s accusation. Got tripped up by the look on Frannie’s face—and the gun in her hand.
Shit! I lunged, trying to stop—
Too late. Three shots rang out in rapid succession. Within a second, I was on top of her. A fraction of an instant later, Mark was on top of both of us, hitting Frannie’s gun hand against the marble-topped end table.
“He was going to marry me! He said so!” Frannie screamed.
The gun fell to the floor; Mark kicked it toward Nigel, lifting himself enough that I could squeeze out of the human sandwich. Nigel reached down for the gun.
Frannie’s screams turned to quiet sobs. “He said he would marry me after … after … he said.”
Splotches grew, red and ugly, on Gunn’s shirt. Laura had run to him, catching him before he went down. Thomas was beside them, helping her lower him to the floor.
Fuck! I couldn’t believe she’d shot him. My stomach rolled. I fought back the heave.
Laura put her bare hand over the wound that was bleeding the most profusely. She grabbed one of Thomas’s hands and placed it atop another wound. “Press here, firmly,” she said. “And here.” She put his other hand on the third wound.
“What do you need?” I asked, voice shaky, desperate to do something, anything, to keep me from throwing up or passing out.
“We could use some towels,” Laura said, calm as you please. Spooks. Always keeping their cool in an emergency.
I ran as fast as I could to the powder room across from the library, snatched a pile of snowy white hand towels (monogrammed with a “C”) from a basket beside the sink, and ran back. I gave one to Laura; she carefully lifted her hand, placed the towel over the gushing hole, and reapplied pressure. The towel was totally red in seconds.
Thomas’s hands were a gory mess when he lifted them for the towels, even though the bleeding wasn’t as profuse from the wounds he was covering. He was pale but composed. “Somebody call 911,” he said calmly.
“I already have,” Nigel said. Sure enough, he was putting his phone away.
Elizabeth appeared to be in shock. At least she wasn’t screaming. I would have taken her for a screamer. Maybe the wine had helped.
Mark had pushed Frannie facedown onto the sofa and secured her hands behind her back with a zip tie. Did everyone but me carry those? At least she didn’t look strong enough to break one.
“You … stupid … fool,” Jackson said, barely above a whisper, eyes glassy. “I would have … married you.”
Frannie tried desperately to push herself up, to wiggle her way toward Jack. “Oh, God,” she said, still sobbing. “Jack, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
Mark, knee planted in the center of her back, leaned down close to her ear. “You move and I’ll have to break your arm,” he said in a quiet tone that nonetheless carried a world of menace. She got very still. “Nigel, can you cover her?”
Nigel pointed the gun at Frannie’s head. “Got it.”
Once Mark seemed satisfied she was no longer a threat, he crossed to Jackson, and stood at his head. “Is he conscious?”
Laura gave a brief shake of her head.
“Good,” Joe said quietly. “Good.”
* * *
The EMTs pronounced Jackson dead at the scene. Laura and Thomas had done everything they could to keep him alive, but one bullet had hit an artery.
The cops showed up not long after, took tons of pictures, collected evidence, and arrested Frannie. By the time the body was removed from the house to be taken to the morgue, a whole host of reporters and paparazzi were stationed along the perimeter of the property. Didn’t take long for word to leak this close to Hollywood. Probably a reporter listening to a police scanner recognized the address.
Before the Conrads retired upstairs, I took a moment to tell them I knew about the forged stock certificates, implying I was some sort of private detective Jackson had hired to follow them in D.C. Maybe not precisely true, but close enough for horseshoes. Since I’m basically a nice person, I only let them panic for a minute or two before I told them it would remain our little secret as long as the certificates were transferred to Lily and they stayed off her back about the animals. They agreed readily enough, telling us to make ourselves at home for as long as we needed. We could see ourselves out.
As for the funeral shooting … well, Elizabeth hadn’t admitted to it outright, and even if she’d been the shooter, it wasn’t like she’d succeeded. Or maybe she had. Maybe she’d only ever intended to scare the shit out of Jackson. Besides, it was moot now. I’d tell Lily about it, and let her decide how to proceed. I suspected she’d let it go.
“Well, that was unexpected,” I said to the others once the Conrads were gone.
We’d come equipped to videotape Jackson confessing to hiring Angelica’s killer, figuring once he knew we had copies of the incriminating video of him with Frannie, he’d have no choice but to capitulate. Frannie had thrown us all a curveball.
“Looks like you have your work cut out for you, Nigel,” Thomas said. “If you decide to take the case.”
Nigel smiled. “Are you kidding? ‘Loyal Assistant Shoots Celebrity Abuser’? Piece of cake. But there’s the matter of Lily-Ann to finish up first.”
“We can still provide you with a video of the confession, if you want,” I said. “Right, guys? I can be Jackson”—ugh, another dead aura—“if somebody knows how to alter the time stamp so it looks like it was made before he died.”
“Easy,” Mark and Thomas said at the same time.
“Okay, then,” I said, “let’s get this thing done.” Before I throw up.