The Look of Love Page 10

  Anastasia was silent as she considered Piper’s words. Finally she put her finger to her lips and slid closer to Piper. She answered, her voice low. “If I tell you, will you promise to keep it to yourself?”

  Automatically, Piper nodded.

  “Yes, I am a reporter. My real name is Fernands. Anastasia Fernands. I’m here working on an investigative piece. I’m not sure if it’s directly related to Esperanza’s murder or not. But when I heard about what had happened at Cottage 7, I hurried over and instinctively wanted to cover the story.”

  Piper was a little surprised that Anastasia had been so forthcoming. “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”

  “I’m telling you for two reasons,” said Anastasia. “One, you practically had it figured out already, so there was no point in denying it. And two, I might need a little help.”

  Chapter 40

  Fortunately, there hadn’t been another story written by Anastasia Fernands in the Times. The day-two follow-up story had run on page 5, written by staff journalists.

  Vernon laid down the newspaper and picked up the report he’d been expecting, then scowled as he studied its contents. The list of spa guests had been carefully checked. There was no Anastasia Fernands on it. There was, however, an Anastasia Wilcox.

  He was about to make a phone call when he heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” he called. As the door opened, his facial expression changed. “Jillian,” he said with pleasure. “Come in, my darling.”

  Jillian came over to the desk and kissed her father on the cheek. “Hi, Dad. How’s it going?”

  “Better, now that you’re here,” he said. “Are you feeling better today, honey?”

  Jillian forced a weak smile. “Life has to go on, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, honey,” answered Vernon, gesturing for his daughter to sit. “I want you to try not to think about everything that’s happened. Just concentrate on your wedding. You’ll be doing us all a favor. We need something positive around here.”

  “Have you heard anything from the police?” asked Jillian.

  “Apparently the coroner found skin under Esperanza’s fingernails, skin they think she scratched as she fought off her killer. But that will help only if the killer’s DNA is already in the database,” said Vernon. “The detectives are returning today to interview the rest of the staff and guests. I’ve already had more than one of our VIP guests come in to complain about being questioned. People feel that their privacy is being violated, since many of them don’t even want anyone to know they’re at Elysium.”

  “Oh, Dad. This is all so hard on you.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Vernon. “I’m fine. I’m on a mission, though, and maybe that’s a good thing. It’s keeping my mind off Esperanza. I had grown so fond of her.”

  “I know you had, Daddy. I think Irene’s idea about a memorial service for Esperanza is a good one. It will make all of us feel a little better.”

  Vernon loved it when Jillian slipped into her childhood name for him. He missed the days when Jillian and Nina were young and he and Caryn had been so happy together. Things were much simpler then. Irene tried hard, but she was no Caryn. Every time he looked at Jillian, he was reminded of how much he still loved her mother.

  Jillian perceived wistfulness in her father’s expression. “What are you thinking about, Dad?” she asked.

  Vernon shook his head slightly. “Oh, nothing,” he lied. Then he said, “I was thinking about finding the person who ignored our rules and took those pictures that ended up all over the place.”

  “Any luck with that?”

  “So far, no,” said Vernon. “But there may be one lead—a guest named Anastasia Wilcox. I’m going to make sure that we have her watched.”

  Chapter 41

  Her eyes shone over the rim of her mask, and it was the first time in months that George Ellis had detected any happiness in his daughter’s voice. He arrived at the cottage on Saturday morning to find Wendy waiting for him, eager to tell him her news.

  “I met someone yesterday, a guest here. And she actually talked to me, Dad! She didn’t look disgusted—in fact, she didn’t even seem to care at all that I look the way I do. And she asked me if I wanted to have dinner with her!”

  “Did you?” George asked hopefully.

  “No,” said Wendy. “But she said that if I ever wanted to have somebody to eat with, I should call. I can’t believe it.”

  “What can’t you believe?” asked her father.

  “That a stranger would think she’d be able to sit across the table from me and not feel like throwing up.”

  George put his arms around his daughter, his heart twisting at the thought of her gratitude, wonder, and excitement over a simple human gesture that most people would hardly notice.

  “Oh, Wendy, Wendy, my precious Wendy,” he said softly as he stroked her curly red hair. “I’m glad you met someone new and that she was nice to you. But, sweetheart, I hope you believe that you are totally worthy of being liked.”

  “I don’t feel that way, Dad. I don’t know if I ever will.”

  Chapter 42

  Piper and Anastasia left the communications room and walked outside to the meditation garden. They had it to themselves. Still, Anastasia spoke in a very low voice as she explained to Piper the story she was researching.

  “I have a friend who made an appointment for a facial with Kyle Quigley, the paramedical aesthetician here at Elysium. While he was working on her face, Quigley told her about this special treatment he’d developed, which he was confident would improve the texture of her skin and make her look fresher and younger. He said it would tone her skin, tighten it, and erase some fine lines she had.”

  “Where do I sign up?” asked Piper.

  “As if you need something like that yet,” said Anastasia, shaking her head. “Look at your skin. It doesn’t have a freckle, a blemish, or a wrinkle on it. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-seven,” said Piper. “And I’m a freak about not going out in the sun.”

  “Smart girl,” said Anastasia. “Anyway, Quigley said the treatment involved being put to sleep, because it was necessary that all her muscles be relaxed and that she not move while he applied this miracle cream. He told her that he thought three treatments would do wonders for her. When she told him she was staying at the spa for only one more day, Quigley said she could come to see him as a day client. She signed up.”

  Piper squinted as she watched and listened to Anastasia. The morning sun was bright, and she imagined the rays burning the top layer of her skin. She wished she had her sunscreen, hat, and sunglasses.

  “I’m sorry, but can we move?” she asked. “I can’t even concentrate in this sun. Let’s go to the bench under that tree.”

  When they were settled in the shade, Anastasia continued, fluffing her short dark hair with her fingers. “So my friend went for the first treatment. Quigley gave her some sort of shot to make her sleep, and when she woke up, all she knew was that her skin felt wonderful. There was some redness, but Quigley assured her that that would subside in an hour or two—which it did.”

  “You know,” said Piper, “I’ve looked at the spa’s list of treatments pretty closely. I didn’t see a mention of any sort of sleep treatment.”

  “No,” said Anastasia. “There isn’t. And here’s why. My friend had another sleep treatment, and when she woke up, she sensed that something was wrong. The button above the zipper on her slacks was missing, and a few hours later she noticed an unexplained bruise on her inner thigh. She was creeped out.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Piper, immediately thinking back to her college days. “I remember my college roommate, Sarah, going home over Christmas break her junior year. She had to have her wisdom teeth removed. It turns out that the dentist fondled her while she was under anesthesia.
”

  Anastasia nodded.

  “In just a few weeks, she went from being fun and outgoing to being moody and remote,” Piper said. “The rest of college was tough. I remember she had trouble sleeping, her grades dropped, and she lost all interest in going out with guys.

  “The last time I talked to her, she was still in therapy. That sicko did more than cop a feel. He wrecked a young woman’s life.”

  “It was criminal,” said Anastasia.

  “So you think Kyle Quigley is sedating clients and molesting them while they’re out of it?”

  “Something like that,” answered Anastasia. “That’s what I’m trying to find out anyway. But when I went to see him yesterday, I struck out, Piper. He said I wasn’t a candidate for this sleep treatment. When I asked him why, he gave me some line about my skin being too sun-damaged.” She looked pointedly at Piper, her eyes sweeping over Piper’s white arms. “That’s certainly something he could never say to you, Piper.”

  Chapter 43

  George and Wendy played their fourth game of Scrabble. They had both become quite proficient in making the most of every double-letter and triple-word score. They played almost every day. It passed the time.

  “V-I-T-R-I-O-L. ‘Vitriol,’ ” said Wendy, putting down all her tiles. “And it lands on the double-word score.”

  “Plus the extra fifty points for using all your letters,” said her father.

  “And don’t forget the two points for ‘la,’ ” said Wendy, pointing to the word formed by the l of “vitriol” sitting above the a in “ark.”

  “Good for you, honey,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I have a lot of time on my hands, Dad. Sometimes I just flip through the Scrabble dictionary and learn new words and their meanings. I call it ‘continuing ed.’ ”

  George looked at his daughter with concern. “You’re so close to getting your degree, Wendy,” he said gently, broaching what he knew to be a touchy subject. “Have you been thinking any more about going back to school and finishing up?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” said Wendy as she wrote down her score on the pad.

  George brightened. “Really? That’s terrific, Wendy!”

  “Yeah, I was looking, and I think I’ll be able to complete the credits I need online,” she said happily. “I don’t even have to travel to campus.”

  When George left the cottage, he was seething. The fact that his daughter now based what she did in life on the ability to avoid other human beings was gut-wrenching. No parent should have to watch his child struggling with the physical and emotional pain that Wendy did.

  He could choose to be brokenhearted, or he could choose to be angry. George chose anger. He could picture the man who had devastated Wendy’s life going on his merry way. Vernon Abernathy’s beautiful daughter was getting married next week with her whole life ahead of her, while George’s daughter was afraid to leave her safe little cottage. That was wrong.

  Abernathy had even sent that ridiculous e-mail invitation to the wedding. Did Vernon think he was a fool? George saw the invitation for what it was—Vernon’s pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself. They weren’t friends. They never would be. And a wedding invitation wasn’t going to be the thing to dissuade George from legal remedies against Vernon.

  George wondered again how Vernon Abernathy would feel if his daughter Jillian’s face was destroyed.

  Chapter 44

  For the first Saturday morning in forever, the alarm hadn’t been set. Hudson reveled in the luxury of staying in bed until noon. He lay there all morning, drowsing on and off. In the periods while he was awake, he thought about how happy he was not to be employed any longer at the Hollywood Haven Hotel. He’d hated that place and the lowly position he’d been forced to hold there.

  Hudson realized that unemployment benefits would last only so long. Eventually he’d have to find another job. He knew where he wanted to work.

  The acid attack, Esperanza Flores’s murder, and the upcoming wedding must be stretching Jillian thin and, he hoped, were all too much for her to handle. Though it might be premature to think that Jillian wouldn’t want to be Elysium’s director anymore, at least Vernon might see that his daughter needed some help. Once Hudson was back on the inside, he might be able to cultivate more responsibility and eventually get his directorship back.

  It was worth a shot.

  He still had Vernon’s private number. Hudson decided he was going to call him today and see if Vernon would meet with him. If he had to, he would beg.

  When he finally dragged himself out of bed, Hudson went to the bathroom. He washed his hands and opened the linen closet to grab a faded towel. As he looked over the contents of the closet, he noted that almost all of the supplies he’d taken with him when he left Elysium were gone now. He had used up every bar of hand-milled soap, every bottle of lotion, and every jar of soothing cream. All that was left was the box of peach-colored latex gloves.

  Chapter 45

  A car and driver were at Piper’s disposal. She had the driver take her to a bakery-supply store, where she purchased round baking pans in graduated sizes and wooden dowels to support the layers. From there they went to the supermarket, and Piper bought confectioners’ sugar, butter, vanilla extract, and cream cheese. Her plan was to make her mother’s cream-cheese icing and serve it atop the samples of pumpkin cake that Sister Mary Noelle had given her. That way Jillian and Ben would have a real sense of how the cake they chose for their wedding day would taste.

  As they drove back to Elysium, Piper considered the story Anastasia had told her and the request she’d made. Piper recoiled at the thought of getting anywhere near Kyle Quigley if what Anastasia suspected about him was true. It was utterly repulsive to think that he was sedating women and then taking advantage of them in some depraved way.

  As her anger rose, Piper asked herself if she really wanted to be the one to find out what Kyle was up to. If he was guilty, who knew what Kyle was capable of—especially if he thought someone was onto his shenanigans?

  But as she recalled the hell her roommate Sarah had been through when she was a victim of this sort of abuse, Piper felt that helping Anastasia was the right thing to do. If Kyle was doing what Anastasia thought he was, he had to be stopped. Piper couldn’t just shrug as if it weren’t her problem. If this was really going on, it was everybody’s problem.

  As Piper looked out the car window, she saw Hollywood High School and, on the next corner, an In-N-Out Burger.

  “Excuse me, will you please pull in here?” she asked the driver.

  Knowing that her vanilla shake would be pure ice cream, she ordered her burger “protein style,” wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun. As she bit into the burger, she thought of Jack and the fun they’d had in their quest to find the best hamburgers in Manhattan. They loved the ones served at Five Napkin Burger. Jack had told her that his favorites in Los Angeles were the ones at Umami Burger and In-N-Out.

  Piper had a sudden impulse to call him. But she didn’t.

  She could just imagine what Jack would say if she told him about getting involved with Anastasia and her investigation. He would remind her that she wasn’t in law enforcement or a private detective. She was an actress and a part-time wedding-cake maker. He’d remind her that auditioning for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit didn’t make her a real-life Olivia Benson.

  Maybe Anastasia was right. Piper could just look at this as a role she was playing. What would it hurt simply to see Kyle and ask about the sleep treatment or find out if he suggested it himself? She wasn’t making a commitment to be sedated.

  Esperanza Flores was murdered. Kyle Quigley could be a sexual predator. Are the two things related?

  As the car headed north toward the spa, Piper sipped her milk shake and thought about the last forty-eight hours. Elysium really wasn’t turning out to be the paradise that most peopl
e thought it was.

  Chapter 46

  Irene had insisted they have lunch together. Vernon knew she only had his best interests at heart, that she wanted to make sure he stayed healthy. Yet sometimes he felt smothered—and guilty. Though Irene wanted nothing more than to spend time alone together, Vernon needed his space. Never more so than when he was under stress.

  He ate his turkey sandwich hurriedly. In between bites he responded to Irene’s attempts at conversation with short answers and nods.

  “Coffee, dear?” she asked when they’d finished eating.

  Vernon lifted the napkin from his lap and laid it on the table. “I’m afraid I don’t have time, Irene,” he said. “I have to get back to the office.”

  He gave his wife a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and then he was gone.

  The security report was waiting for him on his desk. As Vernon read it, he could see that Anastasia had done almost nothing that seemed suspicious. On Friday she’d spent some time in her room before going for a facial and a long walk on the grounds. She had eaten dinner by herself, ordering a bottle of Nero d’Avola with her grilled salmon, wild rice, and broccoli rabe. She drank two glasses and asked the waiter to cork the bottle, which she took with her when she left the dining room and returned to her quarters.

  This morning Anastasia had had two poached eggs, dry toast, and black coffee for breakfast. Afterward she’d gone to the communications room, where she’d spoken with another guest, Piper Donovan. Together they’d watched something on the computer screen. When the women left the room, security checked the computer and found that it had been used to link to the ABC News Web site and the story about the murder at Elysium.

  Anastasia and Piper Donovan had spent time talking in the meditation garden before both women went their separate ways. Now Anastasia was at the pool.