The smell of frying chicken had driven most everyone toward the kitchen and living room. A snaking line had formed of people waiting for a bite. John-Michael had given up his spot on the balcony to the first bunch of party guests who were looking for somewhere to enjoy the hot food.
Grace followed him downstairs, where the stereo was blasting some grating music. John-Michael had compiled three playlists, “nostalgia,” “punk,” and “zone out.” They were somewhere in the middle of “punk” and it was giving Grace a headache. She switched to “nostalgia” and an orchestral sound track swelled. It sounded like the sound track to some kind of action-adventure movie. She was about to switch again when cries of “Yeah, the music from Zelda, awesome!” erupted from at least four kids in the chicken line.
Grace locked eyes with Candace. Her stepsister was leaning on the threshold of the French doors, watching her. They both smiled. “Video game geeks,” she said, a Sea Breeze in one hand. “Just leave it on.”
Grace felt a stab of guilt as she watched Maya squeeze past Candace on her way in from the tiny backyard, which had been designated as the “smoking” area. Only a few months ago they’d taken great pains to protect Maya from the weed and alcohol at their first party. At fifteen, Maya was the baby of the house and back then they thought she needed their protection. Now, no one seemed to care. They’d told her once, right?
“I hope you didn’t let anyone out there tempt you into smoking,” Grace teased, drawing up alongside her stepsister.
Resentment flicked in Maya’s eyes. Candace caught the vibe and joined in. “Let it go, Gracie. You wanna call Aunt Marilu over to bust up the party?”
Maya tipped her head toward the long gray sofa, on which six kids were perched, laughing and smoking. “Maybe we should worry more about the fact that people are smoking cigarettes inside. Didn’t Candace’s mom forbid that?”
Candace turned, apparently unaware. “You guys! Put those cigarettes out or get out.”
Luckily, no one seemed to take issue with this. Hands were waved in apology and the burning cigarettes dropped into a discarded Coke can.
Candace turned her attention back to Maya. “How’s your app going?”
Maya seemed surprised by the question. “Oh—Cheetr? Actually, I’m kind of moving on to something else.”
Grace gave a nod of vague enthusiasm. She suspected that Candace, like her, had very little to say on the subject and was just trying to show polite interest. Maya might have noticed, or maybe not. She seemed to get tunnel vision around her coding.
“How about you?” Maya asked Candace. “You hear back from that TV show you auditioned for?”
Candace’s grin became broad. “It was the weirdest thing. Not like going through an open audition, at all. I got invited to the audition a little over a week ago and this morning my agent called to tell me they’re sending over the contracts. Somehow I missed the actual ‘yes.’”
“Wow,” Maya said. “That’s literally insane. Things are gonna start to change pretty fast for you,” she observed. “Next it’s going to be magazine interviews and photo shoots. Then premieres. The red carpet treatment.”
Candace broke off from sipping her drink to chuckle. “Ha—I guess. To all the C-list events.”
“Maybe that’s how it begins,” Maya said. “Then before you know it you’ll forget your friends on the beach, hitting the Hollywood party scene, up in the hills, Mulholland Drive, all of that. You’ll be able to ask Lucy for advice—although she probably won’t want to talk about it. She must not have the best memories from her days as a child star.”
Grace froze. Could Maya possibly know how totally right she was? She was acting as if it was no biggie, as though all three girls knew to what she referred. Yet, it was pretty obvious that Candace wasn’t entirely sure what Maya was getting at. “Why would she have bad memories?” Candace asked. “She was a kid and she got to be on TV.”
Maya replied calmly and with confidence, “I mean because of the murder.”
Grace pressed her lips together. Maya did know. Cautiously, she glanced at both girls. Candace stared at Maya in bafflement. Maya’s attention, however, was divided equally between Grace and Candace.
“What murder?” Candace said.
Maya seemed bemused. “The Tyson Drew murder.”
Candace sounded puzzled. “You keep saying ‘murder’ like I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about.”
For a couple of seconds, Grace held her breath. How much did Maya know—and more importantly, how did she find out?
Grace couldn’t imagine Lucy talking about it. Everything Grace had observed about Lucy screamed total and absolute denial of what she might have seen that night, eight years ago.
Not Lucy, then. Her stomach lurched. Which meant that John-Michael must have talked to Maya. But why?
What exactly had he told Maya about their conversation on the Pacific Coast Highway?
Grace searched her stepsister’s face for any sign of recognition. She seemed genuinely surprised. Grace reminded herself that Candace was an actor. She was either giving the performance of her life, or her absolute shock and puzzlement were the real thing. Maya, in contrast, was cool and measured, as if she knew the likely impact of her words. She was drip-feeding the information, watching each girl for their reaction.
Grace felt as though a chilly breeze had just swept across her. She sensed, quite suddenly, that Maya knew a lot more about Lucy’s past than she was letting on.
But how much?
“Lucy was at a party on Mulholland Drive. A lot of TV people were there,” began Maya. “At this point she’d be, oh, I’m guessing nine or ten years old.”
Maya seemed to make an executive decision that their discussion would move outdoors. The backyard had emptied as word got out about Ariana’s chicken.
Grace hesitated for a second and then followed Candace and Maya into the backyard. She couldn’t feign disinterest. At any moment, she was expecting Maya to reveal that she’d heard all this from John-Michael. Grace had to bury the tide of resentment she could already feel building toward him. How could he have revealed her secret? With everything he’d shared with her—how dare he risk it?
Outside, the air smelled thickly of cannabis smoke. A lanky boy wearing only board shorts lay sprawled, asleep on the edge of the lawn. Aside from him, the girls were alone.
Maya continued, fully conspiratorial, “Another kid from Jelly and Pie was at the party, too, plus three other child stars. I think the party was for their agent.”
“Are you saying someone got killed at the party?” Candace said. She was clearly still puzzled, as though this was idle gossip about someone they didn’t know. Grace guessed that it was the alcohol dulling her senses.
“You don’t remember the Tyson Drew murder?” Maya seemed surprised. “It was a big deal in Hollywood. Tyson Drew was an up-and-coming movie star. And he was drowned in the pool, at a party on Mulholland Drive.”
Grace said nothing. She watched Maya very closely now. She hadn’t mentioned Grace’s father yet. If she’d gotten this from John-Michael, it would be just plain aggressive to talk this way in front of Grace, without acknowledging that she knew Grace’s father had been sentenced to death row for the murder of Tyson Drew.
It really was not like Maya to be so mean. Was it possible that Maya hadn’t found out from John-Michael, after all? Grace’s curiosity spiked. “How do you know all this?”
“Weird that Lucy never talks about it,” Candace interrupted, with a sudden sharpness that grabbed Grace’s attention. “Murder? Rehab? She sure has kept a lot of secrets. If I had stories like those you couldn’t keep me quiet.”
“Maybe we could,” Maya remarked, “if what you knew was dangerous.”
Candace just stared. Grace watched and thought, Finally, she gets it.
Candace repeated Grace’s question. “Seriously, where’d you get this? I Googled Lucy when she first told us about the show. I bet we all did. None of this comes up.”
“The Jelly and Pie fan forum,” Maya replied with sudden authority. “You gotta search deep, ’cause it’s behind a child-protection firewall. And the thread has gone pretty cold. There’s some interesting speculation, though. They got a guy on death row for the murder. Of course, he says he’s innocent. From the beginning, he’s said that one of the kids must have seen the real murderer. But the guy they convicted, he was wasted. He couldn’t say which one it was. And all the kids denied it.”
“So you think Lucy was a witness?” Candace was beyond fascinated. “Holy shit. Maybe that’s the real reason why she didn’t want us to know about Jelly and Pie.”
Maya’s attention moved to Grace. “Could be,” she said, deadpan. There was a momentary pause. “Candace, you think you could get us some sodas? I don’t want to get into that chicken-crush.”
To Grace’s astonishment, Candace simply nodded and disappeared back into the house. It was like some kind of magic trick—no one ever told Candace to do anything. But it seemed as though Maya’s bombshell had turned Candace into a willing supplicant.
And once they were alone, Maya dropped a second payload.
“Why don’t you tell her?”
Grace took a breath. “Tell her . . . ?”
“That Alex Vesper, the man on death row for murdering a movie star, is your father,” Maya said. She spoke quietly but the veneer of calm had vanished. “You told John-Michael, that day you drove back from San Quentin with him—the day he totaled his dad’s car.”
Grace shook her head as though she’d been slapped. “How can you possibly . . . Did John-Michael say?”
“Our call was still connected. I heard you guys talking.”
The breath caught in her throat. “You . . . heard?” Grace’s eyes strayed toward the kitchen where Candace was starting to return, carrying three sodas.
“You have to tell your sister, Grace,” Maya said. Her words spilled out, the confidence gone, replaced by an urgency that was unnerving. “Lucy has to speak up, too. It’s not safe to keep secrets like this. We’re all safer if you—”
As Candace rejoined them, Maya’s mouth snapped shut. Candace handed her a Sprite Zero.
“You were saying?”
Maya spoke reluctantly. “Oh. Yeah. The Tyson Drew conspiracy theory.”
“Okay so—if the guy they got on death row didn’t do it, then who?” asked Candace. The shock had faded, apparently, and she was back to the business of serious gossip.
Maya paused. Expectantly, she glanced at Grace. Grace stayed silent. Maya took a breath. Before she could reply, all three became aware of a commotion in the living room, around the sofa. It looked as though a fight had broken out, with a sudden explosion of activity centered on the sofa. One boy was flung from the group’s core. He landed hard against the wall, stumbled, teetered, and fell through the gap between the French doors, landing partway on the grass.
“Get out,” he gasped. “The sofa’s on fire!”