Secrets and Charms(53)

“Fuck, one of her bullets must’ve hit you,” Cooper said.

Rich shrugged his jacket off to discover the cop was right. The graze was deep enough to leave a scar, but far from life threatening. He was made to sit in the back of an ambulance while the young paramedic cleaned and bandaged the wound. The guy gave Rich the royal treatment, but even so, there was only so much one could do to a glorified scratch. Rich was supposed to stay put, but he had other ideas. “Just gonna stretch my legs,” he said and slipped out of the vehicle.

Kat Fontaine’s house sat next to a twisty little road halfway up the hillside. The street was barely wide enough to let two cars pass, and the police and emergency vehicles clogged it up completely. Add the media and rubberneckers, and the whole place had turned into a three-ring circus. It wasn’t hard for Rich to slip away unnoticed. He needed to check on his bike—in his rush to find Olly, he’d left it behind Olly’s car, blocking a driveway. With his luck, it would get towed, or worse, stolen in the chaos. To his relief, Shadow was still there, and nobody even had lifted his helmet. On a sudden impulse, Rich got on the bike and rolled down the hill.

Richard’s intention was to go after Olly, but he got lost and found himself in Willard Keats’s neighborhood. The cops would be knocking on the old guy’s door soon, he figured. Maybe warning Willard about the embarrassing photo would be the kind thing to do. The Shadow glided to a stop in front of Willard Keats’s house practically of its own accord.

“You again,” Willard said, opening the door. “Did you need more help?”

“Uh, yeah. May I come in?”

“Be my guest.” Willard waved Rich in.

They took seats in the living room, the same as last time. Rich didn’t know how to approach the subject, so he simply whipped out his phone, pulled up the photo and handed it to Willard.

The old guy took it without surprise. His thumb brushed the screen, and a melancholy cloud passed over his face. But when he looked at Rich, his eyes were clear and sharp. “What do you want? Money? I don’t have much.”

Rich recoiled. “I’m not a blackmailer. Olly thought we should just give you the photo—the original one—but the cops have it now. They’ll probably want to ask questions. I thought you should know.”

“Ah.” Willard handed the phone back. “I’ve been expecting them to show up sooner rather than later,” he said calmly.

It was an odd comment. Olly’s words, “She didn’t know who Chester was,” drifted into Rich’s head. Between getting shot at and worrying about Olly, he’d assumed Kat Fontaine was Kane’s killer, but maybe not. The words spilled out of him: “You killed Kane.”

Willard laced his fingers together in his lap. “I’m afraid so.”

“But why?”

“So many reasons. You see, Chester and I were old…I wouldn’t say friends. Collaborator is a better word. Many years ago, he presented me with those photos—there was a whole set of them—and of course, wanted money. I paid him, naturally, but later offered a different arrangement. Instead of cash, I supplied him with information. Information he could use in lucrative ways. Hollywood is full of dirty secrets. Someone like me hears a lot of whispers, and I’ve been in this business long enough to know where the bodies are buried—figuratively speaking, of course.”

Rich was starting to cotton on. “And people trust you because you have your own skeleton in the closet.”

“Quite so. I must seem like an utter hypocrite to you, and perhaps I am, but I was selective about what to pass on to Chester. Too many people in this business get away with vile things they shouldn’t get away with. Like my darling niece. At least this way, they paid.”

“What about Sandy?” Rich retorted.

“I had nothing to do with that. As Chester got his taste for extortion, he found other sources as well. He must’ve gotten sloppy too, if you found him so easily. I feel responsible—I didn’t exactly create the monster, but I fed it.”

Rich felt like a man who’d gotten lost in the fun house. Nothing was as it seemed. He grasped for something concrete. “Your niece, Katie…Kat, she’s dead.”

“Is she now? How did it happen?” With one brow cocked, Willard displayed a mild case of curiosity but not a trace of shock or grief.

“A shootout with the police.”

Willard tsk-tsked. “She’s always been such a drama queen. A narcissistic, manipulative shrew, like her mother.”

“You were family.” Even as he said it, Rich was aware how naive he sounded.