Diva's Last Curtain Call (23 page)

I rolled across the floor to Lynette. The bunk bed was metal and bolted to the floor. I scraped my face against one of the bolts until the tape over my mouth came away. I managed to sit up and leaned over Lynette like I was about to kiss her. It took me a couple of tries, and I inadvertently gave her face a faint hickey, but I was able to pull the tape off her mouth with my teeth.

“You okay?” I asked Lynette.

“What’s going on, Kendra? How did you know where I was?” she asked. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

“First we’ve got to get out of here. There are campers out there. If we make enough noise, we might be able to attract some attention.”

“We’ll have to hurry. That crazy person is coming back soon,” she said, sounding slightly hysterical.

“It’s Cliff Preston, isn’t it?” I asked. She shook her head in confusion.

“I don’t know. I was grabbed from behind when I was about to leave this morning. Someone put chloroform over my face and I woke up here. The person wears a ski mask and hasn’t spoken a word to me.”

The door to the cabin opened and Lynette and I both jumped. A figure dressed in black walked in. It wasn’t Cliff Preston. When I saw who it was, I realized just how wrong I’d been and why. Something in the back of my mind hadn’t quite been able to understand how Cliff Preston would figure out that Vivianne’s computer disk was in the purse I bought from Cabot’s Cave. Men don’t notice things like purses. Women did.

“Hello, Stephanie,” I said. I swung my legs around and twisted my body so I was facing her.

Her face was pale and devoid of its usual thick layer of makeup. She looked even harder and older and her bleached hair was frizzy and wild. I could see a vivid bruise on her left cheek. A gift from her husband, most likely. She was carrying a gas can, which she set on the rolltop desk by the door. I tried hard not to stare at the can. But knowing she’d set Diamond Publishing on fire wasn’t making me feel very hopeful that Lynette and I would be getting out of this situation unsinged.

“Hi, yourself, Kendra. And just in case you thought you were being slick, I knew all along who you were at Vivianne’s memorial service. I think you missed your calling as an actress. And by the way,” she said waving a square of blue plastic, “thanks for bringing the disk.”

“I made a copy, Stephanie.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “So, what?”

“So what? You killed Vivianne and you kidnapped my friend to get your hands on that disk. When the other disk surfaces, Cliff’s secret will be out. Everyone will know he’s been passing for white all these years and wonder what happened to the man whose identity he stole.”

“Whatever happens to Cliff he more than deserves,” Stephanie said. She sat down at the desk and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket and lit one up. She took a long drag and blew smoke in our direction.

“Why, because he’s black?” I asked. She looked genuinely offended.

“I don’t give a damn what color he is. All I wanted was a child. I love Kurt but I wanted a child of my very own and he took that away from me. I haven’t loved Cliff since the day I found out he got that vasectomy behind my back. He ruined my second chance to be a mother,” she said, bitterly wiping a tear from her eye.

“Your second chance?” Then I knew. “You’re Roxanne Gayle, aren’t you?”

“Roxanne who?” she asked, frowning. Deep wrinkles popped out on her forehead.

“In Viviane’s book. There’s a character named Roxanne. A Broadway actress whose child dies when she gets into her stash of drugs. You’re Roxanne.” Stephanie quickly stubbed out the cigarette.

“All I know is that bitch was about to rake everything back up again in that damned book of hers. She said everyone was going to know what kind of a mother I really was, especially Kurt.”

And all this time I’d thought it was Cliff who was the main focus of Vivianne’s revenge. It had been Stephanie all along. Stephanie, the woman who stole the love of her only child, Kurt. Stephanie who hadn’t been the mother she should have been to her own daughter while Vivianne’s reputation had been falsely tainted. Cliff’s secret being revealed in the process was just icing on the cake.

“What happened to your daughter?” I had to keep her talking so she wouldn’t notice I was rubbing the plastic tie around my wrists against the edge of the bunk bed’s frame.

“I tried to be a good mother. I really did try. But a kid just wasn’t in the plan. I wanted to be a showgirl on the Vegas strip. I wanted my name in lights and my face plastered on billboards all over Vegas. Instead, I ended up shaking my ass in a titty bar off the strip called the Kontiki Lounge. Dancing was all I did for the first six months. Then I saw how much money the other girls were making by spending time with the high rollers after work, and I started doing it, too. I got addicted to the money. Then I got addicted to drugs. Not hard drugs, mind you. Mainly painkillers. Anything that would dull the pain.” She paused to light up another cigarette.

“I got pregnant by one of my regulars. Some married insurance salesman from Phoenix. He flipped out when I told him he’d knocked me up. Said it couldn’t be his. Gave me five hundred dollars for an abortion. Never saw him again. I couldn’t go through with it. I used the money to buy a crib and stuff for the baby. After my daughter, Lilly, was born, I got an office job that paid four bucks an hour. That got old real quick. By the time Lilly was a year old, I was back at the Kontiki. Back to stripping, turning tricks and popping pills.”

“It must have been really hard for you raising a child under those circumstances.” I couldn’t break the tie but I felt it start to stretch and loosen.

“Babysitters were hard to come by. I could find someone to watch her during the day. But at night I had to bring tricks home with me. I’d lock Lilly in her room. I didn’t want any of those lowlifes near my baby. And believe me, some of those dirt bags thought if they paid me enough, I’d let them have Lilly, too.”

“What happened to Lilly?” I asked coaxing her to continue. Stephanie’s face collapsed and she turned to stare at the wall.

“One night I brought home this real high roller. Everyone called him Doc because he was a walking pharmacy. Every kind of pill you could think of, he had. That night we drank, fucked, and popped pills until we passed out. Next day, when I woke up, I found Lilly on the floor in her room. She was dead. I’d forgotten to lock her bedroom door when I got home the night before. She was only four. She must have seen the pills lying out on the living-room table and thought they were candy.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Stephanie. It was an accident,” I said.

“That’s what I tried to tell those cops,” she sobbed crying hard now. “But they arrested me anyway. Charged me with involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and drug possession. They sentenced me to five years. When I got out I changed my name. Thought I’d try to be an actress. That didn’t work out, either. All I got was a talent agent husband whose favorite hobby is knocking me and his son around.”

“How did Vivianne find out about all this?” The plastic tie around my wrists hadn’t broken but was stretched out enough that I could slip a hand out. But there was still the matter of my ankles.

“She told me she hired a private investigator to dig into my background and Cliff’s. Found out I’d changed my last name from Blackman when I got out of prison. Wasn’t hard to find out anything about me after that.”

Blackman. So, the title,
The Onyx Man,
wasn’t just referring to Cliff.

“When did you find out about her book? Right before you killed her?”

Stephanie laughed. “I went to see that smug cow in her dressing room that morning to beg her to take that part Cliff wanted her to do. He needed her to take that part. His agency was going under. Kurt and I were catching hell because he was always in a foul mood. I thought it was the least she could do for all he’d done for her career. She was being a diva as usual. I called her a selfish bitch. That’s when she pulled the check from that publishing company from her purse. She had a letter opener and opened it all dramatic like and waved it in my face. Told me when the book came out everyone would figure out it was about me and Cliff and would know about what happened to Lilly. I just lost it. She put the letter opener down and turned her back on me. And I grabbed it and stuck it in her back over and over again until she was dead.”

“So you’re the one who set off the fire alarm?”

“I wiped my prints off the letter opener and ran. Then I remembered the check and went back to get it, but I saw your sister. She was standing over Vivianne’s body holding the check. I went into the men’s room and lit up a cigarette and waved it under the sprinklers and then threw it in the trash. When the alarm went off, I saw your sister running away. I was hoping she’d dropped the check but she still had it in her hand.”

“And you had to get it back, which is why you tried to break into my grandmother’s house and broke into my apartment and set Diamond Publishing on fire. To destroy all traces of the book.”

“I had to. I didn’t want anyone to know about the damned book.”

“How did you know I had Vivianne’s computer disk?”

“I didn’t even know there was a disk at first. I figured she must have a computer that the book was saved on. Kurt still had a key from when he used to spend summers with her. I took his key and searched the entire house when Harriet was out. No computer. But I did find a receipt in Vivianne’s room from a typing service for a word-processing job and it referred to a copy saved to a disk. I knew she had to have hidden the disk someplace. But I never found it. Then I saw you at the service with that beaded purse. I saw a picture of Vivianne with that same purse when Cliff dragged me to that creepy man’s memorabilia shop to see his stupid display. I knew Kurt had sold some of her things recently. I’m the one who encouraged him to sell her stuff in the first place years ago. Cliff had us both on a strict allowance. Sometimes Kurt would share the money with me. I wondered if the disk was hidden in the purse. It was really just a guess. I figured even if it wasn’t in the purse I’d give you enough time and motivation to find it for me.”

“Then you weren’t the one who broke in and trashed Cabot’s Cave and chased me?”

Even as the question left my lips, I knew it couldn’t have been Stephanie who trashed Cabot’s Cave. The shop had been broken into and trashed
after
Stephanie had noticed me with the purse at the memorial service. She’d have had no reason to break into the shop because she already knew I had the purse. So, who chased me?

“Now, it’s time for me to tie up some more loose ends.” She set her still-lit cigarette on the edge of the desk, picked up the gas can, and unscrewed the top. I could hear a sharp intake of breath coming from Lynette.

“Is that why you killed Noelle? Just tying up another loose end?”

Stephanie stopped what she was about to do and set the can on the floor. She walked over to me and leaned down. Her face was quite calm for someone who’d killed two people already and was about to kill two more. In other words, we were screwed.

“She managed to get hold of that manuscript and figured it all out. She tried to blackmail me. She knew I was the one who killed Vivianne. Told me she was dating Kurt and would tell him all about me and what happened to my daughter. Well, I couldn’t have that, could I? I went to her hotel room to try and reason with her. She started reading me passages from that manuscript. She wouldn’t shut her mouth. So I shut it for her. Bashed her face in with a crystal ashtray. That shut her up all right. I stuffed her body in a duffel bag and hid it in the trunk of Cliff’s rental until tonight. She’ll be joining you both in your tragic fire deaths,” she said, looking up at the top bunk.

Not if I could help it. When she turned to walk away, I lunged for her legs. She fell forward, knocking over the gas can. The smell of gasoline filled the air. Stephanie’s shirt was soaked in gas. The impact of her hitting the floor also caused her cigarette, which was teetering precariously on the edge of the desk, to fall into the pool of gas, instantly igniting it.

Stephanie was on fire. She’d gone up in flames like a torch before I could blink an eye. And so had the cabin. I untied my ankles and quickly untied Lynette as the cabin filled with thick black smoke. Stephanie lurched around in flames screaming like a banshee. My eyes were burning and I was coughing, but I managed to pull Lynette to her feet and grab a blanket from the bed. I threw the blanket over Stephanie and shoved her out the door behind Lynette. A couple of nearby campers were already rushing to our aid. One man threw Stephanie to the ground to pat out the remaining flames. Most of her hair was gone and her clothes and skin were a blackened mess. Another camper called 911 as Lynette and I clung to each other in shock.

They kept Lynette and me in the hospital overnight for minor smoke inhalation even though, except for having almost been killed, we were fine. Stephanie, on the other hand, was in the burn unit in critical condition with third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body. If she survived, she’d be charged with the murders of Vivianne DeArmond and Noelle Delaney and the attempted murders of Lynette and me. After we each gave statements to Harmon and Mercer, and I gave them the dog tags and told them where to find the copy of the disk, our families descended upon our room and a small party ensued until the nurses shooed everyone home so we could rest. Allegra had insisted on spending the night in our room until Mama dragged her home. Before she left, Justine even gave me a big hug and thanked me for saving her daughter.

“Girl, thank you, thank you, thank you for saving my baby,” she said wrapping her arms around me. The drama that had occurred between us in the parking lot was instantly forgotten, much to my relief because Justine is legendary in Willow for how long she can hold a grudge.

“Yeah, Kendra, thanks for being such a wonderful friend. I don’t know what I would have done without you this week,” Greg said, coming over to give me a peck on the cheek.

“No need to thank me,” I said looking around “I’m sure any of you would have done the same for me, right?” There was a chorus of yeses but Justine’s in particular sounded a little half-hearted.