Killer Ambition Read online

  “I’m twenty-seven.” She smiled at my stunned expression. “I know, I’m lucky.”

  “Good.” I hate it when people with baby faces complain, “I still get carded at bars.” Yeah, that really sucks.

  Sophie zipped off to amaze others with her youthful appearance.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Sophie isn’t our guy,” Bailey said.

  “Ruthless killers come in all packages, you know.”

  Bailey raised an eyebrow.

  “She could be the mastermind, and her devoted protégé did the killing.”

  “A devoted protégé who also doubles as a babysitter for her twins,” Bailey said. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”

  24

  We were able to eliminate others just as easily—Vera, the cook, who basically only spoke Hungarian, and had been busy in her wing of the house all day and well into the evening; Annabelle, the “interior plant designer”—I kid you not—who maintained the indoor flora on Tuesdays and Fridays; and Dani’s personal trainer/yoga instructor, Shakti, who had taken Monday off to do a spiritual cleansing. Call me a skeptic, I just don’t believe someone whose last name is Schwartz had “Shakti” on her birth certificate.

  After about half an hour, I noticed that the Antonoviches took their air-conditioning seriously. It’d crept up on me and I didn’t realize I was cold until I found myself suppressing shivers. So when Eric called during our interview with Annabelle to tell me we had the all clear to go after the major players, I used it as an excuse to step outside. I took an extra five minutes after ending the call to work the bluish tinge out of my fingers.

  But now, just twenty minutes later, I was freezing again. I wanted to go out and take another sun break, but Russell chose that moment to show up with his manager, Ian Powers, and their respective assistants, Uma and Sean. The director rolled in with an earpiece in his ear, a cell phone in his hand, and his assistant glued to his side, monitoring the conversation on her own cell while scribbling notes on a small pad. When Russell ended the call and gave us a curt nod, I could see he looked haggard, but he radiated even more nervous energy than I remembered from our last visit. I guessed he was coping by staying busy. Bailey told him why we were there and said we’d start by talking to Uma. He sat down on the nearest couch, leaned back, and folded his arms across his chest. “Okay.”

  “Separately,” I said.

  Ian, who’d remained standing, examined me coldly, as though I’d just told him I had a screenplay I wanted to send him. “Why’s that?”

  I wasn’t obligated to explain it to him, but Ian had been Russell’s manager for over ten years and was used to standing between Russell and all things unpleasant. So I chalked up his attitude to protective habit and told him. “We need to make sure that each witness gives us his or her best memory without being influenced by anyone else’s opinion or recollection.”

  Russell’s features tightened, a mixture of confusion and irritation. “But what is there for anyone to remember? I was the one who got all the messages. They won’t know anything.”

  Since I had no intention of telling him what we suspected, I breezed by the meat of the question. “We just have to follow procedures and cover all the bases, Russell. If they have nothing to say, we’ll be done pretty quick.”

  My tone was polite but unmistakably firm. Russell gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “Fine. But I’ve got sensitive materials for my next film in the study, so you’ll have to use the guest room.”

  Oh heavens, no, not the guest room. “That’ll be fine. Uma, can you lead the way?”

  She dipped her head and cast a baleful look at Russell, like a chastened pet, and led us down the hallway to a large bedroom decorated in hues of forest green and ecru. It had French doors that opened onto a courtyard featuring a waterfall fountain made of a dark slate-type stone and a black marble Buddha. Very feng shui.

  Uma gestured to a corner near the French doors where a love seat faced two wingback chairs. Bailey and I took the chairs, and Uma, who I could now see habitually curved her head and shoulders down, like a walking comma, scurried onto the love seat. Had working for Russell bent her into this obsequious posture, or had she always been this way? Bailey tried to put her at ease, explaining that we didn’t suspect her of anything and just needed to gather information. Uma dipped her head a couple of times. “I get it, not a problem.”

  “Can you give me a rundown of what you did on Monday?” Bailey asked.

  Uma recounted their day at the studio: meetings and more meetings, phone calls and more phone calls with producers, writers, agents, casting directors. At about six o’clock, they came back to the house.

  “Do you always ride home with Russell?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. He rolls calls on the way home and he prefers if I’m in the car with him while I listen in.”

  “Listen in?” Bailey asked.

  Oh, poor naive Bailey, who didn’t know the ways of Hollywood. All assistants listened in on their bosses’ phone calls. Though it was never announced and the uninitiated might never know unless the boss, in the middle of the phone call, told the assistant to make a note of something. The benign reason for this systematic eavesdropping is so the assistant can take notes and keep the “to do” list up to date. The not so benign reason is to protect the boss in case the actor/producer/writer/agent later claimed something was promised that hadn’t been. Uma gave Bailey the former reason. Of course.

  “So you listen and take notes while Russell drives?” Bailey asked.

  A perplexed look from Uma. “Um, Russell doesn’t usually drive.”

  Of course not. He has a driver.

  “And his driver’s name is?”

  “Lee. He dropped us here but then he left, so he never came in the house.”

  “But you did, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. And I remember that after we got home, Russell said he couldn’t find his private cell phone, hadn’t seen it all day. I found it for him. He’d accidentally left it in the car.”

  “And it’s unusual for him to forget his phone somewhere?” I asked.

  “No, not really. He’s got so much going on.” Uma licked her lips nervously. “I just remember that because when he checked the phone, he looked really weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Um…upset?” Uma paused. “Shocked, kind of.”

  “Did he tell you what was in the message?”

  “No. I mean, I know now, but at the time, I didn’t.”

  “Who else was around?” I asked.

  Uma frowned. “I’m pretty sure Angie was here—”

  Angie, assistant to Russell’s wife, Dani. “So Dani must’ve been here,” I said.

  “Yeah. I don’t remember seeing her, but she was probably around somewhere. She usually takes Angie with her if she goes out.”

  That Russell would have an assistant—or even more than one—made sense, given his workload. But it was hard to fathom what his wife would need one for. I supposed it was something everyone who was anyone had to have—like a Prada purse.

  “Anybody else?” Bailey asked.

  “Maybe Jeff? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Jeff was here.”

  Jeff, yet another of Russell’s assistants. But one step below Uma, the main assistant. This assistant business was complicated.

  “Did you see Russell again after he went into his study?” I asked.

  Uma looked off to the right. Supposedly an eye shift to the right is a sign of truthfulness. Assuming the person being evaluated doesn’t already know about those “secret” cues.

  She slowly replayed the events in her mind. “Yeah. But it was later. He said he had to go out for a little bit and asked me to stay with Dani.”

  “Did he tell you where he was going?” Bailey asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you see him leave?” she asked.

  Uma paused for a moment. “I didn’t see him walk out the door, but I didn’t see him around the house for about an hour
. Maybe a little more.”

  “And when Russell got back, how did he look?” Bailey asked.

  “Kind of tired. Depressed.”

  “Did he say where he’d been?” I asked.

  “No. He just went back in his study and closed the door. I wanted to ask him if I could leave, but he was in a bad mood and sort of out of it, so I decided it’d be better to wait. And I’ve crashed here before, so…”

  “When did you see him again?” I asked.

  “Maybe an hour before you guys got here. I guess Dani had been in the study with him, because they both came out and she was crying and he was wired, like he wanted to jump out of his skin. He’d sit down, then jump up, pace around, and leave the room. He couldn’t sit still.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Bailey asked.

  “He asked all of us if we’d seen Hayley since Thursday.”

  “And had you?” Bailey asked.

  “No. None of us had.”

  “Do you remember anything else he said? Or that Dani said?” I asked.

  Uma shook her head. “I don’t remember Dani saying anything to us. She just kept telling Russell to call, and I could tell she was upset with him but, like, trying not to show it. Because he was already such a mess.”

  “Who’d she want him to call?” Bailey asked.

  “I guess the police. Because the next thing I remember is you guys showing up.”

  It seemed a fair guess. And a pretty complete rendition from Uma’s point of view. We thanked her and let her go. After she’d left, I suggested we go fetch our next victim.

  25

  Russell’s assistant Jeff was really just a lowly runner—a gofer’s gofer, who occasionally got to do the work of an assistant—but I could see that he had much bigger aspirations. He was a xeroxed copy of Russell. Same faded jeans, same baggy T-shirt, and the same worn-out baseball cap, emblazoned with the name of the same team: the Oakland A’s. Jeff even walked with the same bouncing stride. And more important, he was almost an inch shorter than Russell. Clearly he was destined for greatness.

  He even flopped down on the couch just like Russell.

  “What time did you get here on Monday?” I asked.

  “Let’s see…I left the studio at six forty-five, so I had to have gotten here by seven thirty.”

  He enunciated with gusto, every word uttered as though he were savoring a new, delicious piece of chocolate, and he had one of those loud, booming voices that so often seem to come from small men. A six forty-five departure would put him out of the running, since Russell read the first kidnap message around six o’clock, and the ransom message came in not too long after that. But it was an easy enough thing to check studio records. I tossed out a question that would give me an idea right now whether he was telling the truth.

  “You have security at the studio, some kind of log that says when you come in and when you leave, right?”

  Jeff’s eyebrows took wing. “You don’t believe me? Why would I lie?”

  You tell me, Jeff. But I restrained my Dragnet impulses. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. We’re talking to a lot of people, and when you mentioned the studio, I wondered about security, that’s all. Take a pill, Jeff. It’s just a question.”

  He looked rattled, but he didn’t dare refuse to answer. “We have security that logs us in and out. I know when I left because I had to pick up a package from Mila to bring to Russell.”

  “Mila?”

  “A producer. It was a script.”

  Better and better. Now we could confirm Jeff’s alibi with Mila. He didn’t have any more information to add to what Uma had told us about the events later that evening, so we let him go. I was tempted to tell him to surrender his passport and stay close just as a joke, but I thought he might stroke out.

  “A little high-strung, no?” I said after he’d left.

  “He was practically playing a tune he was vibrating so fast. But I’d say he’s off the list.”

  “Agreed. Time to move up the food chain.”

  Ian Powers affected an exaggeratedly imperious bearing that made me think of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” He walked in slowly, with a studied casualness, then calmly settled into the love seat. The way he leaned back and spread his arms across the top of the sofa said “lord of the manor.” I wondered whether the posturing was partly an unconscious effort to counteract the shadow of the “little Mattie” persona. Powers confirmed that he had indeed been Russell’s manager since Russell was a co-producer on Brittany’s show, Circle of Friends.

  “Then you were representing Russell when Tommy Maher accused him of stealing his screenplay,” I said.

  Ian leaned forward, and for just a brief second, his features darkened. But just as quickly, they rearranged themselves into an expression of mild irritation. “It was tragic, really. I would’ve been glad to listen if Tommy had any proof to back up his claim—hell, I would’ve taken him on as a client.” Ian gave a short bark of a laugh at his own semi-joke. “But he didn’t. Just a lot of wind and noise. If you ask me, he saw his career tanking and got desperate, so he tried to horn in on Russell’s screenplay. Maybe he thought Russell would pay him off with nuisance money. I don’t know. But obviously, he was unhinged. You know he committed suicide—”

  “Doesn’t that work both ways?” I asked. “Some might say his suicide proved that he was telling the truth and no one would listen.”

  Ian nodded. “I suppose, but…I guess you had to be there. This wasn’t the first time he’d claimed someone had stolen credit for one of his ideas. And he was a basket case. He even attacked Russell at one point. Did you know that?”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said.

  “And now his sick, twisted son has killed Hayley.” At this, Ian looked aggrieved. “I guess it’s true that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Do you have any leads?”

  “A few,” I said. “Were you with Russell on Monday?”

  “Not till after you two got here.”

  But it was within minutes of our arrival, as I recalled.

  Ian saw my expression and nodded. “Russell called me. I can’t remember exactly what time, but I do remember telling him to call the police.” Ian shook his head. “I don’t know what he was thinking. Why he didn’t call immediately when he first got the message that Hayley’d been kidnapped…”

  Interesting that he was taking the credit for telling Russell to call the police. According to Uma, it had been Dani, Russell’s wife, who’d begged him to make the call. “And where were you when you got that call?” I asked.

  “At home.”

  “And after that?”

  He gave me a weary look. “The same. Until I called him a while later and found out he’d paid the ransom and…” Ian pressed his mouth closed and turned his eyes away.

  That wouldn’t usually impress me as far as alibis go, but we’d already heard from everyone who was present that Ian hadn’t been in the house when Russell saw the first kidnapping note. I knew I’d have more questions for this guy later, but right now we were under the gun to find a killer who might at that very moment be headed for some country that wouldn’t let us extradite. I looked at Bailey, who shook her head. We thanked Ian and let him go.

  “Dani?” Bailey suggested.

  “Yep.”

  Dani had that soft, angelic look many try to engineer but few can pull off. Delicate, natural-looking blonde curls framed a heart-shaped face with small features and wide blue eyes. For all that, she had a down-to-earth quality that probably made her a great friend. The kind who’d tell you the guy you’d fallen for was a shit heel, but still hold your hand when he proved her right.

  “When did Russell tell you about the kidnapping?” Bailey asked.

  Dani’s brows knitted and she looked down at her hands, which were twisted around the ends of a silky fringed scarf. When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “After he got the first kidnapping message. I feel so terrible. I told him to call the police right a
way, but he was scared. He thought the guy would kill Hayley. He kept saying he’d do anything, he’d be glad to just pay any ransom. But I should have made him call…” She shook her head and looked down again.

  “Dani, we can’t know what would’ve happened if Russell had called the police. Don’t beat yourself up, okay?” She nodded but looked unconvinced. “So you were there when he got the ransom demand?”

  She nodded. “I-it sounds stupid now, but we were actually sort of relieved. Russell could easily pay it, and we thought that once he did, we’d get Hayley back.” There was a hitch in her voice as she said the name “Hayley,” and she tried to take a deep breath, but it got stuck and I saw tears fall on her hands. “S-so, I went along with him paying the ransom and not calling the police.”

  “Dani, did you know Brian at all?” I asked.

  “No. Hayley had only just begun really talking to me. When I first moved in, she wouldn’t even be in the same room with me. I’d walk in, and she’d walk out. But after a couple of years she started to thaw, and in the past year, I have to say, we were really getting along. I think she saw that I truly liked and respected her mom and I knew what my place was in her life.” Dani looked out at the fountain, her expression one of heart-twisting sadness. “Maybe she told Raynie about him. But not me.”

  “Did you know about the fight between Russell and Brian’s father, Tommy?” I asked.

  “That was before my time. In fact, I had no idea about any of it until this…but why would he kill Hayley because of something her dad did? Why not go to Russell, or a lawyer, show him the proof and see what he can get?”

  “Maybe because he didn’t have proof?” I suggested.

  “Then how could he be sure enough to kidnap Hayley—and kill her, for God’s sake?” Dani swallowed rapidly and struggled for control.

  I couldn’t tell her the truth, and I didn’t want to offer her any useless platitudes. We thanked her and let her go with a promise to keep her posted.

  “Any guilt about not telling her that we found Brian?” I asked Bailey after Dani had left.