If I Can't Have You (31 page)

He remembered the phone call he’d gotten from Carole the day after Jean’s funeral.
“I got the part, Trev. God, what luck, Jean dying and all.”

Carole was a poor substitute for Jean—in life, and in the movies, Trevor remembered.

“Carole wasn’t half the woman or half the actress Jean was,” he said. “Unfortunately, the studio had commitments. It was either rewrite the script or hire someone who could somewhat handle the role. Carole was available, and she was more than ready to work. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“So, the studio decided to strengthen Carole’s image by pairing her up with you off-screen as well as on?”

“That was the idea. It worked, too, but it didn’t make her a better or more cooperative actress. Press is press, though. All I ever wanted to be was a star. I liked having my name in the papers, and it didn’t matter how it got there.”

“Didn’t you care at all?”

“I wasn’t a saint, Adriana. I’ve told you that before.”

He took her hand and pulled her around to his
side. He touched her cheeks and gently kissed her lips. “If I’d known you then, I wouldn’t have gone along with the studio’s games. I know I wouldn’t have taken Carole home that night. My life would have been a hell of a lot different if you’d been a part of it then.”

“You can’t change history.”

“If I could, I’d go back in a moment and set things right.”

He curled a strand of wind-tossed hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. “Would you go back with me... if you could?”

She nodded, and the warmth of her smile melted a little more of the ice surrounding his heart. “I wish we could change history,” she said. “But I think all we can really do is learn the truth about the past and try to move on. Please. Tell me everything.”

Trevor looked at the house again, and allowed his mind to drift to that night, to the interior of the Trocadero. He thought about the beautiful gowns the women were wearing, the champagne that flowed, and the pretty young starlet who’d been his friend. Hell, that’s who he should have gone home with.

“Janet Julian had asked me to take her home from the party that night. God, she was a sweetheart—not a bad actress, either. A little mixed up at times, but she tried so hard to make people like her. There was this one young kid—a photographer—who’d lost his heart to Janet a few years before, when she’d first started at the studio. She liked him, but that was it. Crazy kid, she’d set her sights on me and no one else. I could have given her what she wanted, but I didn’t like the idea of breaking her heart. She’d been through enough.”

“Like what?”

“A year in a mental hospital. She kept losing touch with reality, actually becoming the people whose roles she was playing. I visited her in the hospital
a few times. Charlie Beck, the photographer, was usually there, too. Nice guy.”

“I’ve met him. He’s still visiting Janet every day.”

He smiled at Adriana's words.
Janet was still alive. Someone from his old life was still around, still breathing, still remembered the past
.

“She should have married him,
” he said, remembering his old friend. “
She wasn’t cut out for Hollywood, for someone like me. But that’s what she wanted. The night of the party she told me she wanted to celebrate the success of our movie. She said she had champagne chilling at home. Like a fool, I decided to take her up on her offer. Then, when Carole needed a ride home, I backed out.”

“How’d she react?”

“As she always did when things weren’t going right. She slipped into one of her roles and fed me a line straight off a script. ‘I knew you could never be true to just one woman.’ She’d said those same words to me when she played my wife in
Break the Night.
I laughed at her in the movie, but I tried not to laugh at her then. I didn’t want to hurt her, but Carole needed me more than Janet.”

“So you and Carole took off?”

“We posed for a few photos, then headed for the beach. I remember the glaring lights as we drove down the highway, the cool wind blowing our hair, and Carole raving madly about her ex. She needed to get it off her chest, and I hoped she’d get over it by the time I got her home. I hadn’t wanted to leave the party, but I figured we’d have one of our own once we got to her place.”

“Did you?”

Trevor shook his head, still remembering Carole’s anger, the way she’d stormed out of his Duesenberg and rushed into the beach house.

“She pushed me away when we got to the house. ‘Leave me alone, will you!’ she shouted. ‘I’m tired of you and every other stinking man I’ve ever met.’ I remember laughing as she slammed her bedroom door in my face. I knew she’d change her mind if I
just gave her time to cool off. I found some glasses and a bottle of chilled champagne—”

“Chilled?” Adriana interrupted. “Who put a bottle of chilled champagne out for you?”

“I never gave it much thought. Maybe her housekeeper. Maybe she phoned someone before we left the party. Maybe she’d planned on bringing company home and put the bottle on ice before she left for the party.”

“Then why did she go straight to bed?”

“She was upset. I don’t know the why of any of this, Adriana. All I know is that there was a bottle of chilled champagne, it was hot that night, and I was thirsty. I stripped everything off but my trousers, grabbed the bottle, and walked out to the beach. I didn’t even have to pop the cork. It was already out.”

Trevor felt Adriana’s hair brushing against his shoulder as she shook her
head. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “
Think about it. Why would someone open the bottle and leave it to go flat?”

“Like I said, she must have called someone.”

“But who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe one of her admirers brought the bottle and was waiting for her to come home.”

“No one else was there. Just me and Carole.”

“They could have been hiding.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t give anything a thought. But if someone else was in the house, why would he hide?”

“Because he or she planned to kill her?” Adriana ventured.

“Then why bring champagne?”

Adriana sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to explore all the angles.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared intently at the house, as if she herself were
reliving the events of that night. Maybe she should have been the investigator on the case. He was sure she’d already asked more questions than the police had asked after Carole’s body was found. He assumed the police had thought that they had an open-and-shut case:
Trevor Montgomery
—
guilty. Trevor Montgomery
—
disappeared. Case closed.

He wanted to close it in his mind, too. He wanted to shut out the horror.

He was at the beach. The woman he’d give his life for was sitting beside him, and all he wanted to do was press her back into the sand and make love to her.

But she wasn’t going to let him shut out the nightmare by hiding in her arms.

“
Tell me what happened next,” she prodded.

“I drank at least half the bottle while I watched the tide rolling in and out. It was hot. God, I don’t remember it ever being that hot. My throat was dry. I remember feeling dizzy as I walked back to the house from the beach. I thought I might be getting sick. My head hurt, I felt nauseated. I’d planned on just going to bed, the hell with having a party with Carole.

“I remember turning off the lights. I remember Carole sneaking up behind me, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing my back. She’d picked a fine time to get amorous, and I’d picked a fine time to get sick.”

Trevor attempted to swallow, but his throat felt tight, swollen, just as it had that night. His temples throbbed again, and he remembered the pain he’d felt. “My head hurt so bad I couldn’t think,” he told Adriana. “Everything was blurry. ‘Not now, Carole,’ I said, but she didn’t listen. She wasn’t about to give up. I stumbled toward the bathroom, but she was all over me.”

Trevor lowered his head to his knees as the sickness
churned in his stomach. He could still remember the nausea, the dizziness, the ringing in his ears, Carole’s mouth on his neck, and her warm breath on his cheek. He reached over his shoulder and could feel the welts from the deep scratches she’d left on his back.

“She wouldn’t leave me alone. I remember doubling over in pain, thinking I was going to die. ‘Go to bed,’ I told her. ‘Can’t you see I’m sick?’ All she did was laugh at me. I tried getting away from her, but she grabbed my shoulder. I was in enough pain without her digging her claws into me.”

Adriana gripped his arm, and he raised his head, shocked by the frown he saw on her face, the look of disbelief in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Carole scratched you?” she asked.

“Five welts down my back. She liked to get rough, but she’d never drawn blood before. I had to get her away from me. I remember pushing her away, I remember hearing her start to cry. I didn’t want to hurt her. I suppose I should have asked if she was okay. Maybe I should have comforted her, but I was sick. All I wanted to do was get to the bathroom and put my head down on something cool.

“I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom, I don’t even remember when I joined her in bed. I was so tired, so dizzy, and the room was completely dark. I thought I should apologize to her, but she was quiet. I figured she was asleep or still mad, and I just wanted to close my eyes.

“I must have been running a fever because my body was drenched in sweat. Even the sheets felt damp and uncomfortable. But none of that mattered. All I remember is putting my head on the pillow and falling to sleep.”

“Did she speak to you at all?”

“No. Not in bed, not before, either. The last thing
she ever said to me was how tired she was of me and every other man.”

Adriana shifted in the sand, kneeling in front of him, wrapping her arms around his knees. “When you woke up the next morning,” she asked, “did you still feel sick?”

“Nauseated. Dizzy. I remember the sun beating down on me through the windows... feeling hot... wishing I had something cold to drink. There was this sickening odor in the room. Then I felt something sticky on my hands, and something cold clutched in my fingers. My eyelids were heavy, but somehow I managed to open them. I was holding a knife. Carole was beside me.”

He looked away from Adriana, toward Carole’s house, the bedroom where he’d woken up. He stared at the window and could picture the furniture inside. The big oval mirror over a French Provincial dresser. The gold brocade wing-backed chair that sat in the corner with a red silk robe thrown over the arm. The white-satin sheets that were stained a reddish brown. And even easier to see was Carole’s body. The slash across her throat. Blond hair matted with dried blood.

He lowered his head to his knees, the nausea back again, and waited for the illness to subside.

“Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Adriana pleaded.

“I have to,” Trevor said. “I have to remember everything.”

He took a deep breath, looked again at the house, and into the bedroom. “Carole’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Her arms were slashed, her stomach, her chest. The knife slipped from my fingers and I rolled away from her and onto the floor. Something shiny fell off the bed, maybe one of Carole’s bracelets or something. I’m not sure, but I must have been sleeping on it. I ran
to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. There was blood on my face, my hands, my back. I’d been so ill I didn’t even know I’d been lying in Carole’s blood all night.

“I remember getting sick, then forcing myself to take deep breaths. I tried to remember what had happened, but I couldn’t.”

He looked at Adriana, hoping to see understanding in her eyes, when he knew he should see revulsion and hatred.

Instead he saw warmth, concern, and understanding. And she was leaning toward him, not backing away.

God, he didn’t deserve her.

“I’d never been so scared in my life,” he said. “I remembered the knife that had slipped from my hand, and I wondered if I could have killed Carole. Everything in me screamed that I wasn’t a murderer. But who would believe me? I thought about my career, my reputation. I pictured everything I’d worked for being destroyed in just one night. How could I possibly have thought about myself right then? I should have thought about Carole, her friends and family. But I thought about me!”

“It’s all right, Trevor. You did what anyone in that situation would have done.”

“But I imagine most other people would have called the police. Not me. I just wanted to get out of there. I took the knife, ran down to the beach, and dived into the waves. I stayed under for the longest time, hoping I’d drown in the tide, but I wasn’t that lucky. I guess I came to my senses and threw the knife out as far as I could, then made sure the water had washed away all the blood. Finally I went back to the house. I found my shirt and the rest of my clothes and threw them in the car. Again, I went back inside and wiped my bloody footprints off the floors and my fingerprints from everything else. I
even got rid of the footprints on the beach and around the house. When I was sure I’d left no traces of my being there, I got in the car and drove home. I figured if I had some time to think, I might remember what happened. I was worried, too, that if I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation I’d be arrested. I just wanted to get away.