AMBER DROVE. WILL SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT AND Kaleo in the back, and Serena sat as far away from him as possible.
“She made me promise not to cuff you this time,” Kaleo said under his breath.
There was a shine of sweat on Serena’s temple and at the nape of her neck where her hair was swept up into her hat.
“What did you want to show me?” she asked Amber.
“I wanted to show you that you can trust us,” Amber said. “But the truth is that we don’t know if we can trust you. We can’t keep wasting time begging you to help us if you don’t want to do it.”
Kaleo could see his friend caution Amber with his eyes and then put his hand on her leg. And rather than put them all into a rollover accident, the touch seemed to settle her down. This so surprised Kaleo that he forgot what he was going to add to Amber’s challenge. If something had happened between those two, Will hadn’t said anything to him. Maybe the tightness that characterized their group had been to Christopher’s credit alone. The possibility of this irked Kaleo, because he didn’t want to think that he might have lost even more than a best friend when Christopher was murdered.
Serena didn’t flinch at Amber’s tone. Kaleo waited for a catfight that didn’t come.
“I do want to help. But I’ve got my own skin to save. If I were you I wouldn’t trust me either.”
Amber pulled out of Pacific Palisades onto Highway 1, a narrow ribbon with ocean to one side and foothills to the other. The mudslide-prone land was held in place by retaining walls and nets. To the southwest, whitecaps warned of a storm to follow the wind, though the horizon didn’t look too ominous.
Kaleo picked up his camera off the floor by his feet and turned it on, switching the display to the picture view.
“Where’s Phil?” he asked.
“Lance is in court.”
“You know that for sure?” Kaleo asked.
Serena gave him her attention, and he was caught by her eyes. He didn’t know what he’d expected there—an angry spark, the fear that darkened them the last time he’d seen her. Instead he saw something like curiosity, as if she had noticed him for the first time and he had teriyaki sauce on his nose.
“I guess he might be somewhere else,” she said.
Kaleo had the irrational urge to take her out to dinner for his birthday. He rubbed his nose clean of the sauce that didn’t exist.
Serena continued, “But if he’s playing a part, he has to keep up appearances, don’t you think?”
“As long as he needs you to believe him,” Kaleo said.
“He wouldn’t let me go to work with him today.” Serena offered this fact to them as if she’d made a Herculean effort on their behalf.
“You asked to go? You might as well have asked him to take you to meet John Roman.”
“Well, he didn’t cuff me to a table before he left.”
Kaleo suppressed a smile.
They passed a curved line of homes built on sand and stilts.
“Where are we going?” Serena asked.
“As far as it takes to get your help,” Amber said.
Kaleo leaned toward Serena to show her the pictures he and Will had snapped yesterday afternoon.
“That’s Brock,” she said.
In the photos he was hanging out with another young man about his age. The pair drank beers in a sand-dusted parking lot. They leaned back against a retaining wall lined with aloe vera plants, the prehistoric-looking succulents with spiky leaves that oozed a gel that soothed sunburns. Brock’s head was tipped back in a hearty laugh. Behind them, the digital kiosk of a local bank flashed the date and time. The photo was taken Sunday, three days ago, at 2:26 p.m.
“They look so young,” she said softly.
Kaleo pointed. “That’s Jett Anderson, Brock’s cousin.”
“Cousins hang out together,” Serena said.
“Drinking beer,” Amber said ironically.
“Even smart kids do dumb things,” Serena said.
“Like mixing alcohol with antidepressants,” Will added.
Serena’s eyebrows went up as she caught his meaning.
Kaleo said, “Brock looks really good for a kid who’s supposedly at a mental hospital fending off suicidal thoughts, don’t you think?”
Serena took another look at the image. “Are you saying he faked the suicide story?”
“That’s unclear. He was admitted to the behavioral health center in Burbank,” Kaleo said. “But he discharged himself against doctors’ advice early Sunday morning.”
He opened a manila folder. It contained a photocopy of a newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Times Entertainment page, a wedding photo of a young couple with their barefoot wedding party on the Malibu shoreline.
“Brock Anderson’s mother is Tory Anderson,” Kaleo said.
“I met her a couple of times when Brock was disputing his grade.”
“She’s a reality-show producer,” said Will. “Third generation.”
“But the first of her clan to have a subpar career,” added Kaleo. “Her last show was a huge flop. Incognito.”
“Never heard of it,” said Serena.
Will said, “They would take a plain Jane or John off the street and make them up into some celebrity look-alike, then see how many people would fall for the twin. The decoy got cash prizes based on how many people recognized them, asked them for an autograph, whatever. Bonuses for luring paparazzi into a tabloid picture, stuff like that. The real star was on a panel that judged the performance, gave points for acting skills, for daring, and so on. It just got awkward for the real celebrities.”
“Bizarre,” Serena said.
“Like anyone who watched it,” Kaleo said, directing the comment at Will.
“And beside the point.” Amber sounded impatient.
Kaleo handed the photocopy to Serena and pointed to the photo caption.
Warner princess Tory Lancet weds financier Barry Anderson.
Standing with the bride’s family, a young Phil Lancet, who looked identical to Serena’s Lance Liebowitz, was named in the copy as Tory’s brother.
“Do you believe he’s Phil Lancet now?” Kaleo asked.
Serena frowned. “You’re telling me that Brock is his nephew? They’re related?”
“Strange he’d never mention that about the kid he’s going to discredit in court, don’t you think?”
Will handed a printed photo back over the seat. Kaleo took it as Amber took a curve and Serena swayed into Kaleo’s arm. He thought she looked pale, but it might have been the road. They righted themselves.
“And look here,” Kaleo said. “Jett Anderson is Barry’s nephew. Cousins Jett and Brock both work for Uncle Phil.”
Serena took the photograph and handed the camera back to Kaleo. She stared at the picture for a long time. Jett and Phil stood in the mouth of a concrete drain exchanging a stack of bills. Bright graffiti decorated the drain behind the men.
“We haven’t actually documented Brock and Phil’s professional connection yet,” Kaleo admitted. “But if it quacks like a duck—”
“I think they met at the house,” Serena said. On her phone, she pulled up the graffiti photo she’d taken minutes earlier. “This is Brock’s work, and it’s adjacent to Lance’s house, on an abandoned stairway.”
Kaleo compared it to the painted drain in the photograph. “Could belong to the same artist.”
Serena shrugged. “Even with all this, I still don’t get the connection to me. Or to Christopher.”
No one offered her an answer.
“What does your gut say?” Amber asked.
She shook her head. “That people are lying to me, and I have no idea how deep and wide the lies go.”
“What other lies has Phil told you, besides his name?” Kaleo pressed. “Oh, and his career, and how much he loves you, and how he’s going to save you?” This question made Serena’s eyes tear up, and Kaleo almost felt bad for causing it. He said, “We’ve never lied to you, Serena.”
He thought she tried to test this by waiting for him to look away first, which of course would prove nothing. She dropped her eyes sooner than he expected. Sooner than he wanted.
Will spoke to her without turning around in his seat.
“Did Phil advise you to make that video that you posted?” he asked.
“Yes. We thought we could get out ahead of the lies with the truth.”
“Have you spoken with detectives?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Uh, because I have to.”
“No, you don’t. How many times?”
“Twice now. Why? What’s the big deal? When I talked to Brock, he—”
“You talked to Brock?” both men said at the same time.
Serena’s seat wasn’t plush enough to swallow her up, though she seemed to press into it wishfully. “Lance thought it might help if I could find out why Brock’s doing all this. You know, kids want attention until it gets to be too much, and then they start to push back . . . What?”
Will had twisted in his seat. “I’m not even an attorney and I know that’s the stupidest, most self-incriminating idea any half-brained person ever had.”
Serena looked stricken.
“He was talking about Phil, not you.” Not even Kaleo had the heart to tell Serena she’d been an idiot.
“You ever hear of clandestine pretest calls?” Will asked.
“No.”
“Detectives use them in the early stages of investigation, usually before a perpetrator knows they’re being investigated. The victim calls the accused, says things to put the guilty party in the position of saying something incriminating right there in front of witnesses and the public record.”
“That’s not what I did—”
“Doesn’t matter. Rule number one of the innocent’s defense, Serena: Shut up. Don’t try to explain things, don’t try to defend yourself, don’t talk to police, and definitely don’t talk to a minor who’s surrounded by an army of protective adults. Let the evidence speak for itself. Otherwise you’ll hang yourself on good intentions. Next time you talk to Phil you might want to ask him about that, see what he says.”
“Will’s a PI,” Kaleo said. “He knows what he’s talking about.” Then he waited for Serena to crumple. Instead, she set her jaw and sealed her lips. “He didn’t mean for you to shut up with us.”
“I just don’t know what to believe. All of this”—Serena indicated the pictures, the clipping—“how do I know you haven’t made it up?”
Amber responded by yanking the car into the nearest parking lot. It belonged to the old Malibu Inn, which had been around since the Roaring Twenties and, after being on the brink of extinction for a couple of years, had reopened with sparkly new bells and whistles and a celebrity chef to go with the place’s celebrity-studded history.
She threw her arm over Will’s headrest and twisted toward Serena.
“You called us, so stop wasting our time. If you don’t want to help us find out who killed Christopher and why Brock’s targeting you and what Phil has to do with it, then don’t. I don’t really care about what happens to you right now. You’re the reason my brother’s dead—keep that in mind.”
Serena turned her head away from them all and stared out the window, and Kaleo saw defeat rather than defiance in her posture. He had seen this kind of withdrawal before, in the stooped shoulders of women who had come out of prostitution only to be welcomed by the world as wasted, worthless creatures. And in that moment he believed she had never been Phil Lancet’s coconspirator.
“Usually I get to be the angry one,” Kaleo said. He reached out and touched her arm, and she flinched like he’d shocked her. “We all want the same thing. And trust me, it’s not the same thing Phil wants.”
Still she had no words.
“What do you want, Serena? That’s the only test that really matters.”
It took her a long time to answer, and for a full minute Kaleo thought she wouldn’t respond at all.
“What do you want?”
She grabbed the handle on her door and yanked it back.
“I want to get out.”