Chadwick hovers, unsure of what to do, but Clarke waves him off until he closes the door behind him.
Margot feels as if the shadows have suddenly grown around her. She is trapped, the pearlescent acetate of her dress held in the beam of light from the projector.
“Sit.” She can tell it’s an order.
She takes a seat on the armchair next to the sofa.
“No, no no,” he scolds.“Sit.”He taps the sofa cushion moreforcefully. She cannot afford to anger him. She crosses to the couch, does as she’s told.
She is aware of his hands, just inches from her neck. She can feel them like heat.
“So…”
“Cindy,” she replies.
“Cindy.” He laughs again. “I like that. It suits you. Let’s go withCindy. So, if you’re not an actress or a model, what do you do?”
“I work in fashion.”
“Ah yes, I can see that.” He shifts his hips so that he sinks down deeper into the sofa. “So, you think my movies are dull, huh?” He scoffs, a rattling sound, as if his lungs are full of liquid.
On the projector screen, Jimmy Stewart raises a pair of binoculars; Grace Kelly preens prettily in front of a mirror.
Margot lowers her chin. She’s sure she’s seen this on some nature show before. A lesser animal must appear submissive, acknowledge its impotence, so as not to raise hell.
“There are some different stories I would tell,” she says, as sweetly as she can.
“And what would those stories be?” He drops his elbow and lets his hand slide down the couch until his fingers are just millimeters from her thighs.
“There’s someone killing women around Berryview.” She watches his face intently as she says it.
He nods eagerly and waits for her to go on, slipping the wet tongue from his mouth and moving it across his top lip.
“He’s targeting pretty, popular girls,” she continues. “Talented. Athletic.”
He tilts his head from side to side as if this part of the story is perhaps not to his taste.
“The killings are ritualistic and theatrical.”
His eyebrows leap up. “How so?” She senses his fingers twitching beside her legs.
“The women are posed after death.” She scrutinizes him, anticipating when the realization that he has been foiled might land. “They’re dressed in certain clothes, defiled in certain ways, as if the killer is sending a message.”
“Well, I’ve seen films like that, Miss Cindy.” He moves his hand back up on the couch, grazing her leg as he goes. It makes her skin flood with terror. Every inch of her wants to attack, to throttle him, to grab a lamp from the table, but she needs to push him further.
“Diane Howard Murray was strangled and dressed in suspender stockings.”
“Diane Howard Murray…Is she one of MGM’s?”
Margot blinks. He holds her gaze, his expression blank. The sweat of him is turning the air sour.
It dawns on her, a horrible, creeping realization that Mason Clarke is an extremely accomplished actor.
“Girls are all so similar these days. What happened to the Marlenes and the Gretas?” He reaches forward for another cigar from the box on the coffee table, bites the end off, spits it away and then uses it to punctuate the air as he talks. “Range—that’s what they had. Not all these airhead blondes. You want a little limoncello? I just got back from doing a picture in Capri. Let’s have a little limoncello.”
“Diane Howard Murray was a model,” she says as Clarke hauls himself up off the couch. She is surprised at just how tall he is, how imposing. He flexes his hands.
“She disappeared two weeks ago, but they found her on Wednesday, dumped in an alleyway in Calabasas. Whoever killed her had dressed her in a designer coat and suspenders.”
