Guppo shifted his girth in the chair in which he was sitting, and the wooden legs complained. “I’m sorry to ask this, but did you ever know Rochelle to drink alcohol before that night?”
Mark Wahl shook his head violently. “Never.”
“This was just so unlike her,” Marilyn added.
Serena gave them a sad smile. “Would you mind showing us her room?”
Mark didn’t get up, but Marilyn guided them out of the living room and down a hallway to a large bedroom that overlooked the backyard. Sliding glass doors led outside. The bedsheets were still rumpled and unmade. Dirty clothes made a line from the bed to the closet. There were movie posters hung all over the walls. Harry Potter. Guardians of the Galaxy. And a poster from a movie adaption of a popular YA book from the previous year.
The movie starred Dean Casperson.
“Rochelle must have been excited about The Caged Girl being filmed in Duluth,” Serena said. “It looks like she was a big movie fan.”
Marilyn’s face lit up. “Oh, you can’t imagine. It’s all she could talk about. She thought a movie being made here was the greatest thing ever. And as you can probably see, she loved Dean Casperson, too. She got that from me. I’ve had a crush on him since I was a kid.”
“Did the two of you go to see any of the filming?”
“We were planning to. I was just so busy at work. Rochelle wanted to take the bus down to Canal Park one day when they were filming there, but I didn’t want her going by herself.”
“Of course,” Serena said. “Do you mind if we take a look at Rochelle’s phone?”
Marilyn looked embarrassed. “Unfortunately, we haven’t found it.”
“It’s missing?”
“Mark and I searched her room. It’s not here.” Her voice cracked. “It’s probably — well, it’s probably lost in the snow from when she went outside. We won’t find it until the spring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything else?” Marilyn asked them.
“No, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Serena replied. “We just need to take some photographs of Rochelle’s room if that’s okay. For our files.”
She nodded. “If you like.”
Rochelle’s mother left the room, and Serena and Guppo were alone. Guppo’s round face was as grave as Serena had ever seen it. He’d come to the same conclusions as she had.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think this was a very shrewd fifteen-year-old who decided to go on the adventure of her life,” Serena said.
She noticed a forty-inch flat-screen television on the wall opposite Rochelle’s bed. Below, among the bookshelves, was a Blu-ray player. She walked over and pressed the eject button on the player. When the drawer opened, she spotted a disk still nestled on the shelf inside.
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” Serena said.
“That’s the first movie,” Guppo said. “She didn’t get far.”
Serena nodded. “There was no movie marathon. Rochelle took a picture of it to send to her parents. She probably staged the picture of herself in her pajamas, too, so she could send it later. And then I’m betting she ran out to catch the bus and head downtown.”
21
“So this is how the other half lives,” Maggie said as Cab steered his Corvette down the narrow spit of Captiva Island past the mansions that hugged the waterfront. The homes were lavish, but despite their size, they still had a rustic Florida feel, as if a beach bum had found $8 million in a treasure chest to buy a place on the sand.
“I like to come down here now and then to make myself feel poor,” Cab replied with a grin. “This is where the Bentleys all have bumper stickers that say ‘My other car is a Phantom.’”
“Have you been to Dean Casperson’s place before?”
“Inside? No. I’ve taken a boat down the sound a couple times and sailed in close enough to get their security pretty nervous.”
“Haley Adams didn’t get in here without an ID and an invitation,” Maggie said. “She had to be on a list somewhere.”
“Definitely, but those lists disappear once the party’s over. Haley was here, but we’ll never be able to prove it. I’ve tried.”
Cab slowed on Captiva Drive as he approached the pink stone driveway of the Casperson estate. The sandy walking trail to the Gulf was on their left. He pulled the Corvette into the driveway and drove past thick hanging greenery to the main house, where he parked next to a row of shaggy palm trees. The house was three stories, painted pastel yellow. Most of the upper level was glass. She could see a Roman-style Olympic-size pool attached to the north side of the house, surrounded by travertine tile and covered by a glass-and-stone atrium. The double-wide front doors gave a view straight through to the green waters of the sound.
“So Tarla and Mo are friends?” Maggie asked dubiously. “Even after what happened to her?”
“I wouldn’t say friends, but Hollywood is a small community. The players tend to know each other.”
“Well, I’m impressed she was willing to get us in here, given her history with Dean. Do you think Mo knows?”
“You mean, what Dean did to Tarla? What kind of man he is? Honestly, I don’t know. They’ve been together for decades. It’s hard to believe she could really be unaware, but sometimes you develop a blindness for things when you need to.”
A large Filipino man in a white suit met them at the Corvette. He was friendly and polite, but Maggie was sure he was armed and could have snapped both of their necks in seconds if he’d been so inclined. He led them inside the house, which had the airiness of cotton candy and was painted in shades of peach and sea-foam green. Warm, moist air blew through the interior with the fresh Gulf breeze. She saw a grand piano. A vast wet bar. An indoor-outdoor dance floor. It was a mansion built for entertaining, and it was strange to see it completely empty of people.
This home was a shrine. Everywhere Maggie looked, the house showed off memorabilia of Dean Casperson’s career. The walls were covered with decades of photographs of Casperson with nearly every mover and shaker in Hollywood, posters from his dozens of movies, awards from nonprofit organizations, pictures of Dean in impoverished areas overseas, and honorary degrees from ten different colleges. In a built-in bookcase, behind locked glass doors, she saw a lineup of his acting trophies. Among them were four Golden Globes, an Emmy, and two Oscars. It was a reminder of who they were dealing with.
A star. A living legend.
The guard led them all the way through the ground floor of the estate without stopping and then to the patio overlooking the water. The Florida sunshine beat down. The day was perfect, and the water was calm. Maggie could see a sleek fifty-foot speedboat bobbing next to the boat dock on the sound. The name of the boat written on the stern was mo better. She wondered if Mrs. Casperson knew that the phrase was actually urban slang for passionate screwing.
Mo Casperson sat by herself on the patio with a red-and-orange cocktail in a hurricane glass and a laptop open in front of her. Maggie felt a little as if she were approaching the queen for an audience. Mo wore a chic lemonade-colored sun hat over her golden hair. Her flowered knee-length dress would have fit in well at an upscale beach wedding. She had long nails, each individually painted with a different pastel design. The only jewelry she wore was her wedding ring. The square-cut diamond made a statement, and that statement was “I’m one of the richest women on the planet.”