As he stood there looking at the place where she’d been, he said aloud, “Forgive me, Sara. I don’t like her either.”
Fifteen
Sara was looking at the shelves in the Palm Room. There were many empty spaces and each one had a three-by-five card telling what had been removed. It looked like Lenny was right, that Dora and her team of cleaners could do a good job. Now all she had to do was go to Billy’s place and organize it all. What was she supposed to tell them? To look for something, but she didn’t know what? And be sure and tell her when they found whatever it was?
On top of that, what was she to do if they found out about Harry Adair’s juvenile murder? Say she’d found proof that Barbara Adair had a reason to kill Derek Oliver? They already knew that.
Sara glanced at her notebook lying on an ottoman. It was so pretty. It was light blue leather from Smythson of Bond Street in London. It seemed to beckon to her. Many things had happened since she woke at 2:00 a.m., including a chimney nearly crushing Jack, but nothing had taken the dream she’d had out of her mind. The faces of the people haunted her. The not-pretty girl. The two young men who looked alike but obviously weren’t in the same circumstances. Yet they appeared to be friends. It was up to her to create a story for them.
It was a story that she longed to get back to. But she couldn’t. There was no way she could say, “You guys work on the skeleton and a psycho murderer who may or may not be here with us. I’m going to plot a piece of fiction. In my pretty blue notebook.” Ha ha. Her fantasy.
With a sigh, she picked up one of Dora’s cards.VHS The Way Out, 1951.“Too early and too late,” she mumbled.
“Isn’t that redundant?”
She turned to see a young man standing in the doorway. It was the lawn mower boy.
“Hi. I’m Troy.”
“Sara,” she said.
“The scary-looking guy downstairs sent me up here to help you. I have the great and wondrous talent of being able to hook up VCRs to a screen. I don’t mean to brag, but I can also attach them to TVs, computers, and iPads. I can probably connect to other things if needed.”
“How about a black-and-white TV that isn’t a flat screen?”
“I’m your man.”
She was smiling but also looking at him intensely. “You remind me of someone, but I can’t figure out who.”
“Roy Wyatt? Or Jack? Maybe Cal?”
“What does that mean?”
He went to a shelf and looked at the labels on a row of VHS tapes that had been left behind. “Mom tried to keep me from finding out that she was coming here, but I knew. Unfortunately, she saw me with the lawn mower. Sorry I didn’t finish the job on the weeds. I found that old machine in the garage. Dad used one on a movie and he let me play with it so I knew—”
“Mom?” Sara interrupted.
“Barbara Adair. Big deal movie star but just Mom to me.”
Sara was blinking at him. “And your father?”
“Harry Adair, the producer.”
She frowned. “Then what did you mean by Roy and Jack and Cal?”
“Oh. That. Bio father. That’s what Roy is. My real dad liked...” He waved his hand. “You know. So Mom met Roy and made me.”
Sara dropped down onto the ottoman. “You’re Roy’s son and Cal’s grandson?” she whispered.
“I am. And Jack’s brother. When I saw the chimney coming down, I yelled at him. It’s my fault he froze. He called me Evan.”
Sara nodded. “He was Jack’s half brother. You look like him but with lighter hair and eyes. And you’re taller.”
“California sunshine and all that healthy food. When I started school—private of course—I’d never even heard of a candy bar. Mom doesn’t know it, but I made up for lost time. Why are you looking at movies my dad made?”
Sara was too stunned to think clearly. “Murdered somebody when he was eighteen,” she said before she thought.
“What?!”
