“It’s not fake,” Jack said steadily. “You know how I know?” I looked up at him. “That necklace belongs to my Boss,” he said. “Or more exactly, that necklace belonged to his late wife, Caroline.” He paused again and then added, “Caroline Castellani was Julian’s mother.”
I turned the information over in my mind, trying to make it make sense. “You thinkJuliankilled Annie?”
“Shotguns aren’t his style…usually. But I’d sure like to know how your sister got hold of that necklace.” He hesitated.
“Whatisit?”
“You said she had no boyfriends, that she was committed to her career. Any chance she was having a very quiet affair with an older man who might have been able to help her out in Hollywood?”
“I don’t understand what—oh. Shit.” I made a face when I saw it, the inference he was making. “Are you suggesting that Annie was—what—hooking upwith your gross old Boss, who isalsoone of my Dad’s friends? No fucking way.”
Jack shrugged. “Don Castellani’s got connections in several Hollywood studios. Might be a link there. Could also explain why he was so willing to sendmelooking for her. And I can’t see a way your sister would have that necklace without the Boss willingly giving it to her. He treats that necklace with as much reverence as his late wife’s ashes. But…” He frowned. “Well, hell, I haven’t seen the Caroline Jar for a while, either,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s a Caroline Jar?”
“It’s… Forget it. Let’s focus on the necklace for now.” He pulled the phone away from me and started scrolling through the feed.
I was still annoyed at his suggestion that my sister was fucking some old crusty Mob Boss. “You think Annie was killed over anecklace?”
Jack didn’t reply and I glared at him, thinking he was ignoring me, only to find him trying to zoom in on the next photo in Annie’s feed. What he was looking at took me a moment to see, because Annie took up the entire foreground. It wasn’t the same event as the photo with the necklace; in this one, she was wearing a much more formal dress of gold silk, which she had matched with a very different necklace—diamonds and emeralds—that I knew our mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday. I’d received matching cufflinks that I never wore.
But then I looked behind Annie’s shoulder, at the place Jack was trying to enlarge. “Oh, shit,” I said, enlarging it for him. “That’s the guy. That’s Julian!”
“Yeah.”
“So…heisthe killer? If he was following her around? Stalking her?”
“No. For once, Julian’s not the odd one out. This photograph was taken in Ciro Castellani’s grand salon.”
I felt sick and angry at the same time. “So shewasscrewing your Boss?”
Jack pointed to someone to the side, only half-visible. “That’s Roxanne Rochford, isn’t it?”
I squinted. “Yeah. And—shit, that guy talking to her, that’s Tom Hunt.” Tom Hunt was an aging movie star. He’d starred in at least three mega-franchises over the years. Once I’d recognized those two, I began to pick out other well-known actors in the crowd. “This looks more like a Hollywood party than anything Mob related,” I said, confused.
“I think that’s because itisa Hollywood party. Ciro Castellani likes glamor. He has a lot of Hollywood friends. But it’s a private party, obviously. My Boss doesn’t like his face in the papers, so this wouldn’t have gotten any media coverage.” Jack sat back in his seat and looked at me. “How about you go take a shower, sweetheart?”
“Huh?”
He reached out to cup my cheek. “I need to look at that USB Julian gave me. And I don’t know what’s on it, but I do know it’ll be something you shouldn’t see.”
“How do you know that, if you don’t know what’s on it?”
“Because I know Julian.” JJ’s eyes were dark and hooded, even as his fingers threaded tenderly through my hair. “Please. Go take a nice warm shower, relax, let me check this out.”
I thought about arguing, but there didn’t seem much point, and I needed a break, anyway.
There seemed to be so many things I didn’t know about Annie that I wondered if I’d ever really known her at all.
* * *
I came back out of the bathroom a good fifteen minutes later, and I knew it was bad as soon as he looked at me. He came over and sat next to me on the bed, took my hand in his, and started talking gently and slowly, judging my response as he did.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but the USB held a bunch of photographs of your sister,” he said. “Official crime scene photos, it looks like. There were CSOs—crime scene officers,” he substituted, seeing my frown, “standing around in the background of some.”
“There are photos of…of Annie’s body on that USB?”
“Yes. But no one outside law enforcement will ever see them. I don’t know where Julian got them from, but I’ll make sure he destroys his copy, I can promise you that. And I’ll follow up with anyone who has their own.”
