Authors: Perfect
"The file from the coroner's inquest." Unwillingly, Julie stretched her hands out, took it, and opened the cover. It was all there: Zack's verbatim explanation of the event, taken down and transcribed by a stenographer at the inquest. Zack had said exactly what the newspaper clipping had indicated. When her
knees threatened to give out, Julie sank down on the sofa and continued to read; she read until she'd finished the report, then she read newspaper clippings, looking for something,
anything,
that would
explain away the discrepancy between what Zack had told her and what he'd told everyone else.
When she finally dragged her eyes from the file in her lap to Mrs. Stanhope's face, she understood that Zack had either lied to her about the event … or else he'd lied to everyone else under oath. Even so, she struggled to find a way to avoid condemning him for it. Dragging her voice through the knot of emotions in her chest, she said with as much force as she could muster, "I don't know why Zack told me Justin shot himself, but either way it wasn't Zack's fault.
According to this file, it was an accident. An
accident!
He said so—"
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"It was no accident!" Mrs. Stanhope bit out, her knuckles turning white as she leaned harder on her cane. "You can't ignore the truth when it's staring you in the face: He lied to you and he lied to everyone
else during the inquest!"
"Stop it!" Julie lurched to her feet and threw the file onto the sofa as if it were contaminated. "There's an explanation for it. I know there is. Zack didn't lie to me in Colorado, I'd have known if he was lying, I tell
you!" She thought desperately for explanations and came up with a logical one. "Justin did kill himself,"
she said shakily. "He was gay and he—he admitted it to Zack just before he shot himself, then Zack—Zack took the blame for some reason—
maybe so that no one would start looking for motives—"
"You idiot!" Mrs. Stanhope said, but her voice was filled with as much pity as anger. "Justin and Zack had quarreled just before that gun went off. His brother Alex heard the quarrel and so did Foster."
Twisting her head toward the butler, she said shortly,
"Tell this poor deluded young woman what they were quarreling about."
"They were quarreling over a girl, Miss Mathison!"
Foster said unhesitatingly. "Justin had asked Miss Amy Price to the Christmas dance at the country club and Zack had wanted to take her himself. Justin wanted to withdraw the invitation for Zack's sake, but Zack wouldn't have it. He was furious."
Bile rose up in Julie's stomach and she reached for her purse, but she still tried to defend Zack. "I don't believe either of you."
"You prefer to believe a man who you know for a fact either lied to you or to the coroner and the newspapers, is that it?"
"Yes!" Julie snapped, desperate to get out of there.
"Good-bye, Mrs. Stanhope." She was walking so quickly that Foster had to trot ahead of her to get to the front door ahead of her to open it.
Her heels clicking sharply on the slate floor of the foyer, Julie was almost to the door, when Mrs.
Stanhope's voice called her name. She halted in dread and turned, trying to keep her face blank as she
looked at Zack's grandmother, who seemed to have aged two decades in the minute it took to follow her in to the foyer.
"If you know where Zachary is," Mrs. Stanhope said, "and if you have any conscience at all, you will notify the police at once. Despite what you may think, it was loyalty to Zachary that prompted me to conceal the facts about his quarrel with Justin from the authorities, instead of repeating it as I should have
done."
Julie put her chin up, but her voice was shaking.
"Why should you have done that?"
"Because they would have arrested him, and then he would have gotten psychiatric help! Zachary killed his own brother, and he killed his wife. If he had gotten psychiatric help, then perhaps Rachel Evans would not be lying in her grave. The guilt for her death is on my shoulders, and I cannot tell you how crushing a burden it is. If it had not been obvious from the beginning that Zachary was going to be convicted of killing her, I would have had no choice but to come forward with the truth about Justin's death." She stopped, her face twisting as she visibly tried to get control. "For your own sake, turn him in.
Otherwise, there will be another victim someday, and you will live the rest of your life carrying the same
burden of guilt that I must bear."
"He is not a murderer!" Julie cried.
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"Isn't he?"
"No!"
"But you can't deny he's a liar," Mrs. Stanhope put in irrefutably. "Either he lied to you or he lied to the authorities about Justin's death, didn't he?"
Julie refused to answer. She refused because she couldn't bear to admit it aloud.
"He is a liar," Mrs. Stanhope stated emphatically.
"And he is such a good liar that he found the perfect career for himself—acting." She started to turn away, then she stopped and looked over her shoulder.
"Perhaps," she added in a weary, defeated tone that was somehow more alarming and more effective than her earlier wrath had been, "Zachary truly believes his own lies and that is why he is so convincing.
Perhaps he believed he was those men he played in movies, and that is why he was such a 'gifted' actor.
In his movies, he played men who murdered needlessly and then escaped the consequences because they
were 'heroes.' Perhaps he thought he could murder his wife and also escape the consequences because he was a film 'hero.' Perhaps," she finished emphatically, "he can no longer separate reality from fantasy."
Fighting her reeling senses, Julie clutched her purse to her chest so tightly that it collapsed in her grip.
"Are you suggesting he's insane?" she demanded.
Mrs. Stanhope's shoulders drooped and her voice sunk to a whisper, as if the act of speaking suddenly took a supreme effort. "Yes, Miss Mathison. That is
exactly
what I am suggesting. Zachary is insane."
Julie didn't know whether the older woman lingered in the foyer or not. Without a word, she turned and left, walking swiftly out to the car, suppressing the urge to run, to flee from the evil of this house and its secrets and the seed of terrifying doubt it had planted in her heart. She'd intended to stay overnight in a motel and explore Zack's birthplace, instead she drove straight to the airport, returned the rental car, and
took the first commuter flight leaving Ridgemont's tiny airport.
Tommy Newton glanced up from the script he was marking on as his sister walked into the living room of his Los Angeles home, where she was spending the weekend. "What's wrong?" he asked her.
"You just got a crank call," she told him with a nervous laugh. "At least, I hope it was."
"Los Angeles is full of weirdos who make obscene calls," Tommy reassured her. Jokingly, he added, "In southern California that's an ordinary means of communication. Everybody here feels alienated, haven't
you heard? That's why this town is a haven for shrinks."
"This wasn't an obscene call, Tommy."
"What was it then?"
She spoke slowly and shook her head, her brow furrowed in doubt. "The man said he was Zack Benedict."
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"Zack?" Tommy repeated with a short, derisive laugh. "That's ridiculous. What else did he say?"
"He said … to tell you he's going to kill you. He said you know who killed Rachel and he's going to kill you for not testifying."
"That's crazy!"
"He didn't sound crazy, Tommy. He sounded dead serious." She shivered at her unintentional pun. "I think you ought to call the police."
Tommy hesitated then shook his head. "Whoever it was, he was a crank."
"How did a crank get your unlisted phone number?"
"Evidently," he tried to joke, "I'm personally acquainted with a crank."
His sister picked up the telephone from the table beside the sofa and held the receiver toward him.
"Call
the police. If you won't do it for your own safety, do it because it's your duty."
"All right," he said with a sigh, "but they'll laugh in my face."
* * *
beside the sofa.
"Diana!" he groaned. "Let your maid answer it."
"This is my private line," she explained to the man whose face was as familiar as her own to
moviegoers.
"It might be a change in shooting schedule tomorrow. Hello?" she said.
"This is Zack, Dee Dee," the deep voice said. "You know who killed Rachel. You let me go to jail for it.
Now you're as good as dead."
"Zack, wait—!" she burst out, but the line went silent in her hand.
"Who was that?"
Diana stood up, staring blindly at him, her body stiff with shock. "It was Zack Benedict—"
"What? Are you sure?"
"He—he called me Dee Dee. Zack is the only one who ever called me that."
Turning on her heel, she left him there and went into her bedroom, then she picked up the telephone and dialed a phone number. "Tony?" she said shakily. "I just got a call from—from Zack Benedict."
"So did I. It's some crank. It wasn't Zack."
"He called me Dee Dee! Only Zack ever did that. He said I know who killed Rachel and I let him go to
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jail for it. He said he's going to kill me now."
"Calm down! It's bullshit! It's some crank, maybe even some tabloid reporter, stirring up a new slant on
a dying story."
"I'm calling the cops."
"Make a fool of yourself if that's what you want to do, but leave me out of it. That guy wasn't Zack."
"I tell you it was!"
* * *
Emily McDaniels sank down on a chaise lounge beside the swimming pool at the sprawling Benedict Canyon house owned by her husband, Dr. Richard Grover. Life had been one long honeymoon for the six months they'd been married, and she watched him swimming laps in the pool, admiring the way his
body effortlessly cleaved the water. He cut the last lap short and surfaced at the edge of the pool, right beside her. "Who was on the phone?" he asked, shoving his hair out of his eyes with the long-fingered
hands that performed delicate neurosurgery at Cedars—Sinai Medical Center. "Tell me it wasn't my answering service," he pleaded half-seriously, crossing his arms on the edge of the pool, studying her
crestfallen expression.
"It wasn't."
"Good," he said. Reaching out, he grabbed her slender ankles and gave her a comical leer. "Since none
of my patients are doing us the discourtesy of interrupting our Saturday night by stroking out, get your
sweet body into this pool and show me you still love me."
"Dick," she said in a strained voice, "it was my father who called just now."
"What's wrong?" he said, sobering at once and shoving up and out of the pool.
"He said Zack Benedict just called him."
"Benedict?" Dick repeated scornfully, grabbing a towel and drying his arms. "If that creep is actually hanging around Los Angeles, he's not only a murderer, he's a nut. The cops will grab him in no time.
What did he want?"
"Me. Zack told my father," she explained, her voice trembling, "that he thinks I know who really killed Rachel. He said he wants me to tell the newspapers who it was, so he doesn't have to kill everyone who was there that day." She shook her head as if to clear it and when she spoke again, the fear was gone. "It had to be a crank. Zack would never threaten me, let alone hurt me. Regardless of what you seem to think, Zack wasn't a creep. He was the finest man I ever met, next to you."
"You're sure in the minority if that's what you believe."
"It's what I
know.
Regardless of what you heard and saw during the trial, the truth is that Rachel Evans was a vicious, scheming bitch who deserved to die!
The only thing that was wrong was that Zack went to
jail for it." With a grim laugh, she said, "No one thought Rachel was much of an actress, but the truth is
she was a brilliant actress—she was so damned good that hardly anyone ever guessed what she was really like behind that smile of hers. She came off as elegant and sort of reserved and very nice. She was
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nothing like that. Nothing! She was an alley cat."
"What do you mean? A slut?"
"That too, but it isn't what I meant," Emily said, reaching out and folding a wet towel he'd left near an
umbrella table. "I mean that she was like a cat who prowls through alleys, looking through other people's
trash cans, feeding on them without them ever realizing it."
"Very colorful," her husband teased, "but not very explanatory."
Emily flopped back on the lounge chair and tried to be more specific. "If Rachel knew someone wanted something—a part in a film, a man, a particular chair on the set—she went out of her way to make sure they didn't get it, even if she didn't want it. I mean, poor Diana Copeland was in love with Zack—really in love with him—but she kept it completely to herself and never made an overture toward him. I was the
only one who knew it, and I found out completely by accident."
When she fell silent, staring at the lights in the pool, Dick said, "You've never wanted to talk about Benedict or the trial, but since you're doing it now, I'll admit to having an avid curiosity about the stuff that
never made the newspapers. It never came out that Diana Copeland was in love with Benedict."
Emily nodded, accepting his request for more information. "I made it a policy never to talk about any of
that because I couldn't trust anyone, even men I dated, not to go blabbing to some reporter who'd misquote the whole thing and stir everything up again." She smiled at him and wrinkled her small nose. "I
guess I can make an exception now, though, since you've vowed to honor and cherish me."
"I guess you can," he said with an answering grin.