Shooting was going well. Ben had managed to take time off from running the studio to fill in for Teddy as producer. The transition was seamless. Ben had been Peter’s producer before taking over the studio, so it wasn’t like he had to learn the job. He just walked on the set and everything fell into place.
Betsy was strangely ambivalent. She liked Ben, and she wanted shooting to go well. She just didn’t want it to go well without Teddy. More to the point, she wanted it to go better when Teddy was there. All day long she couldn’t help watching the filming, seeing the scenes ticked off the schedule, and thinking Teddy would have done it more smoothly.
To her surprise, it wasn’t bad working with Mike Freeman’s men. The first day on the set she was aware of their presence. By the next day they had faded into the scenery. She could not have picked them out from the cadre of extras waiting to be chosen as background action. The only time they made their presence felt was during the drive home.
Home, for the time being, was still Peter’s house. Betsy’d been back to her house, but only in the company of one of Mike Freeman’s men, and only to inspect the job the cleanup crew she’d hired had done with the damage.
Peter and Hattie were good hosts. For newlyweds, they could not have been more accommodating. After day shoots Betsy could have cocktails on the veranda, or lounge by the pool. She could take an outdoor shower on her own private terrace, watch TV in the sitting room of her suite, prepare any snack she wanted in Peter’s well-stocked kitchen.
The only problem she had was falling asleep. She’d grown used to having Teddy in her bed, and without his comforting presence nothing seemed quite right. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Teddy was a million miles away in the middle of a crisis, and the only information she was getting was messages relayed through Stone Barrington and his son. There were huge gaps in the narration, and she could imagine what things she wasn’t being told.
Today she’d heard only that there’d been trouble and Teddy had “handled the situation.” This did not cheer her. Knowing Teddy, “handled the situation” took in a lot of territory.
Betsy couldn’t calm down. She tried watching the news channels, but there was no news, just a rehash of everything she’d already seen. She tried a sitcom, a talk show, an HBO movie. Nothing helped.
She finally switched the TV off and lay there in the dark, but it was a long time before she got to sleep.
—
THE TWO MEN broke in at two in the morning. The smart one, Vinnie, stripped the wire and installed the bypass so he could cut the alarm without sending every cop in Beverly Hills rushing to the address before they could even open the door. He walked quietly across the patio and prayed that numbnuts Pug would do the same.
Vinnie whipped out a glass cutter and sliced a six-inch square in one of the panes of the door. He tapped gently all around the cut, then harder in one corner. The square broke away, the corner he tapped swiveled in, the opposite corner swiveled out. He grabbed the square, extracted it carefully, and tossed it gently onto a padded lounge chair. He reached his arm through, had a moment of panic he wouldn’t be able to reach the lock. That asshole Pug would never let him forget it. His fingers touched the doorknob and the lock snapped open.
Vinnie looked meaningfully at Pug, raised a warning finger to his lips. Moments later they were inside. No alarm went off, no lights came on. Vinnie held up his hand to stop Pug, and they listened for the sound of movement. Nothing.
“Which way?” Pug whispered, much too loudly.
Vinnie rolled his eyes, and made a mental note never to work with Pug again. He’d been making that same resolution for years.
Vinnie jammed his finger to his lips, motioning for Pug to follow. He turned and tiptoed across the room.
To the right was the hallway down to the bedrooms. To the left, the archway to the living room, dining room, and kitchen.
A door clicked open.
Vinnie wheeled around, grabbed Pug, pulled him into the shadows.
There was a dim light coming from the end of the hallway to the right. Then the sound of footsteps, bare feet padding along the hall.
Betsy Barnett came out in a nightgown, made her way through the semidarkness across the central hallway and through the doorway to the kitchen. She crossed the kitchen in the dark. She was pretty sure the kitchen light couldn’t be seen from Peter and Hattie’s room, still she didn’t want to take the chance of waking them. She maneuvered around the center island, groped her way toward the refrigerator.
Betsy heard something. She stopped. Listened. Heard nothing. She’d been under a lot of stress the past few days. She was probably just jumpy.
Pug sucked in his breath and held it, an automatic reaction since Vinnie had recently started razzing him about snorting like a wild boar. He stood there, frozen like a statue, not ten feet from Betsy Barnett, his right hand curled around the knife. He couldn’t see Betsy in the dark, but he knew she was there.
Betsy couldn’t see Pug, either. She’d heard the sharp intake of breath, didn’t know what it was. Now she heard nothing, saw nothing.
She must have imagined it.
Betsy reached for the refrigerator, found the door handle, pulled it open.
Pug’s first thought was, how can a small appliance bulb be so bright? Before he realized that all the lights were on, strong arms grabbed him from behind, wrestled him sideways, and slammed his head down on the butcher block top of the center island.
When Pug was jerked upright again his hands were handcuffed behind him, the woman he’d been following was gone, and Vinnie, also handcuffed, was being hauled into the kitchen by two men.
A man stood in the center of the kitchen. He was smiling, but his face was hard.
“Well, gentlemen,” Mike Freeman said, “it’s going to be a while before the police get here. I’ve got a few questions.”