Just when he had begun to think that Los Angeles would defeat him.
“Are you sure?” Julian Enright said into the phone.
“See for yourself, sir,” Marcus Goodman said. “Get a copy of Silver Screen Secrets. If that isn’t the woman in the picture you sent to our office, I’ll eat my filing cabinet.”
Marcus Goodman was the latest in a long line of private investigators and cops who had been paid to make inquiries about Anna Harris. For months all the leads had hit brick walls.
Back at the start it had all looked so easy, Julian reflected. When he’d returned again to Helen Spencer’s mansion, the place was abandoned. The police had given up. The housekeeper and butler had packed up and left. The lawyers were still trying to locate an heir to the big house.
The result was that he’d been able to take his time going through the mansion. He thought he’d gotten lucky when he found the framed photograph of Anna Harris and her new yellow Packard.
In the picture she was standing beside the car looking as thrilled and delighted as a child who had just opened a surprise birthday present. It was clear from her expression that she was not accustomed to such gifts. He’d found the receipt for the car in Spencer’s study.
He’d left the mansion with an excellent photo of his quarry and a full description of the car she was driving. It shouldn’t have been hard to track her. He had played one logical hunch after another, checking hotels and inns within a day’s driving distance. It finally dawned on him that she was either sleeping in her car or staying at cheap autocamps. It was the last thing he had expected. She had, after all, become accustomed to fine hotels and excellent restaurants in the course of her employment with Spencer.
He’d hit another snag because he assumed that she would stay on the East Coast while she tried to find a buyer for the notebook. In his experience, when people ran, they usually ran to places they knew, often quite well. They felt safe in familiar haunts. In addition, as Spencer’s private secretary, Harris must have had some idea of whom to contact in the underground market that catered to thieves and espionage agents.
But there had been no hint of a certain scientific notebook coming up for auction on the black market.
By the time he’d figured out that she might not be on the East Coast, nearly two months had passed. His father had been furious.
He thought the tide had turned when an investigator finally located the Packard. It was parked in a farmer’s yard. The farmer explained that he had found it sitting, abandoned, on the side of a dirt road one morning.
For the first time it had occurred to Julian that his quarry might have resorted to hitchhiking.
Another dead end.
Finally, after more weeks of fruitless searching, he had at last picked up the first hint that Anna Harris had taken the path that so many others in search of new lives had followed. She’d found her way to Chicago and headed west on Route 66.
By the time he’d arrived at that realization, however, another month had passed. Anna Harris was no longer an intriguing challenge; she had become an obsession.
There was another factor in play now, as well. The old man had learned that Atherton’s notebook was worth far more than he had originally believed. There was more than one potential buyer with very deep pockets.
Route 66 ended in Santa Monica, California. The town was bordered on three sides by the city of Los Angeles. The fourth side faced the Pacific. Julian was sure that Anna Harris had disappeared into L.A. True, she could have continued north to San Francisco, but his intuition told him that she would feel safer in the fabulous sprawl of Los Angeles. It was, after all, a place where nothing was what it seemed. It was Hollywood, the perfect setting for a woman on the run. A new name, a new past, a new future? No problem.
There was no reason for Anna Harris to keep going. She had reached the edge of the continent.
But it soon became evident that L.A. was an even better hiding place than he had initially feared. He had been in town for nearly a month and thus far had found no trace of her. Los Angeles and the surrounding towns and communities were filled with people, including a lot of single women, trying to reinvent themselves. In California, it seemed, no one had a past.
He and the investigators he employed had hit another brick wall.
He’d settled in at the Beverly Hills Hotel for what had become a long, hard slog. There was no point in being rich if you didn’t enjoy the benefits. The hotel, with its Sunset Boulevard address, acres of groomed gardens, and palm trees, was a California dream made real.
Attractive, exciting people, including movie stars, populated the bar and reclined around the pool reading celebrity-obsessed papers like Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. Two days ago he’d spotted Carole Lombard and yesterday afternoon he was sure he’d seen Fred Astaire.
The place reeked of glamour—and glamour, he had concluded, was what had been missing from his life. This impossibly gorgeous world was made for him.
“I’ll call you after I’ve had a chance to take a look at the paper,” he said into the phone.
He dropped the receiver into the cradle and caught the eye of a passing bellhop.
“Get me a copy of Silver Screen Secrets,” he said. “I’ll be out by the pool.”
“Yes, sir.”
The bellhop found him a short time later. As soon as he saw the photo splashed across the front page, a rush of exultation hit him. He had studied the picture of Anna Harris every day for nearly four months. He’d had it enlarged so that he could get to know every angle of her face, the arch of her brows, the shape of her mouth.
Her hair was styled differently in the newspaper photo. It was no longer confined in the rolled and pinned style suited to a private secretary. Instead it fell to her shoulders in deep waves. Very modern. Very Hollywood. But there was no doubt that the woman in the photo was a dead ringer for the target he had been hunting for so long.
According to the caption, her name was Irene Glasson, a reporter. She had changed her name and her occupation. Smart girl, but not smart enough, he thought. You’re mine now.
He studied the man who had his arm around Anna-Irene. The name, Oliver Ward, was vaguely familiar. He noticed the cane, and memory stirred. He read the full story.
That legendary man of magic Mr. Oliver Ward, who pulled off a disappearing act after a disastrous accident onstage, has materialized in the community of Burning Cove, California. He now operates an exclusive hotel that caters to the rich and famous of Hollywood.
Last night Mr. Ward was seen escorting Miss Irene Glasson to a notorious nightclub in the seaside community . . .
Julian put the paper aside, slipped on his sunglasses, and sat quietly, contemplating the sunlight dancing on the surface of the pool. After a moment, he smiled.
He had long ago discovered that the hunt was far more exciting than seduction and foreplay. And the kill surpassed any act of sexual release he had ever experienced.
It was at that moment when he held another person’s life in his hands—when he saw the stark terror in the eyes of a target—that he knew what it was to be fully alive.
But first things first. He had to find the notebook before he could take his time with Irene. The old man wouldn’t stop nagging him until the damned notebook was recovered.