Raleigh drained his martini, shaking his head slowly back and forth. But as he thought about it longer, he nodded slowly and said, “Precisely.”
TWENTY-ONE
For the very first time since they began smoking OxyContin together, Megan Burke did not join Jonas Claymore in the chasing of the dragon. She swallowed a perk instead, and although it helped ease her nausea and joint pain, she still longed for the euphoria that she got from the ox. Before he zoned, she tried to talk to Jonas about what they were doing.
She squeezed his cheek between her finger and thumb and said, “Jonas, don’t get all smoked out on me. We’ve got to talk.”
His voice was thick when he said, “I know. That’s why I needed the ox. So I could work on my plan and we could talk.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “That guy was very quick to cut a deal with you. Even though he might not believe a thing you said, because to tell the truth, it wasn’t too convincing. He might be talking to cops right now, getting ready to set a trap for when he hands over the money. Maybe we should try to find out something about these paintings and simply sell them. Maybe we should stay away from the guy we stole them from.”
“Okay,” Jonas said. “Later. Man, that was good smoke. I’m toasted.”
He was zoning hard and Megan Burke longed to join him, but she summoned all the self-control she had left in her increasingly frail body and mind. She took both paintings from behind the sofa and looked at them closely. She went to the bedroom and got her cell phone and photographed both paintings in case she decided to make inquiries about them. Then she turned them over and saw the framer’s cards stapled to the stretcher bars.
She read the name of the customer, Sammy Brueger, along with an address and phone number. It took her a minute to realize that the address was the house where they had stolen the van!
“Snap out of it, Jonas!” she said, slapping his face lightly.
“What?” he said. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“The pictures,” she said. “They don’t belong to the gallery guy! They belong to the guy who lives at the big house. His name’s Sammy Brueger. So the gallery guy doesn’t really care about making a deal with you for the pictures. He just wanted to get his van back, and now he’s gonna work with the cops and maybe set a trap for us when we go meet him for the money!”
“Later,” Jonas mumbled, not understanding a single word she said. “I gotta push the off button for a while.”
“Fuck you!” Megan said.
She went to the bathroom and touched up her makeup, shocked to see how pale she looked. A touch of blush on her cheeks brought a bit of life to her face, and she tried to separate her eyelashes with a safety pin, but her hands were so shaky she feared she’d poke her eyeball. When she figured she looked as good as she could, she grabbed her purse and Jonas’s car keys and left.
This was by far the most dangerous idea she’d ever had, but she was going to act on it. If it worked and if real money somehow came from the paintings, she was going to get away from Jonas Claymore for good. For her freedom, for her sanity, for her life.
When she’d phoned home for that last $200 loan, her mother had said to her, “Megan, your life has gone from bad to worse since you went to Hollywood. You’ve got no chance until you leave that terrible place and come home to people who love you.”
Megan had never told her mother about moving into the apartment of Jonas Claymore, and she certainly had never told her mother that they were both straight-up drug addicts by now. She hated thinking about all the money she’d begged and borrowed from her mother, who still had Terry, Megan’s sixteen-year-old brother, to support. And it hadn’t been easy for her mother, with what she made doing a man’s work in the department store warehouse. Bitter experience had taught Megan that the more she thought about her mother, and the more guilt that brought on, the more she’d long for the honeycombed tranquillity of an OC high. She was desperate for money now, more desperate than she’d ever been. And it was that desperation that overcame her fear and propelled her back up into the Hollywood Hills in the little VW bug.
During the drive, Megan ran through in her mind several approaches to get access to that house. She wasn’t sure what she’d find there, but she wanted to see the man, Sammy Brueger, to get a sense of whether they could work with him now that she knew for certain that Nigel Wickland had lied about being the owner of the paintings. In order to bolster her courage, she kept telling herself that this was just an exploratory visit to test the real ransom target, Sammy Brueger.
She parked the VW bug fifty yards south of the Brueger estate, facing the flatland in case she needed a fast getaway. Then she walked to the gate phone and pressed the button.
“Yes?” Raleigh Dibble said. “Who is it?”
“My name’s Valerie Turner,” Megan said. “I’m your neighbor from down the road.”
“What is it?” Raleigh asked.
“It’s my dog, Cuddles,” she said. “He’s on your property.”
“There’s no dog here,” Raleigh said. “This place is completely fenced.”
“He’s a Chihuahua,” Megan said. “He slipped through the gaps in your metal entry gate. I saw him and I have to get him or I’ll get in big trouble with my mom.”
Raleigh said nothing, but he pushed the phone key, and the electric gate swung open slowly and Megan walked in. The mini-estate looked bigger from the inside. She was glad she wasn’t wearing heels when she walked over the uneven driveway, and she could feel the rough stones through the holes in her shoes.
A pie-faced, chubby, balding man who looked pretty old to Megan opened the door and said, “Have you tried calling him?”
“For the last half hour,” Megan said. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Brueger.”
“I’m Mr. Dibble,” Raleigh said. “I look after things here. Mr. Brueger is in Cedars-Sinai. He had a stroke.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” Megan said. “I’ll tell my mom. I think she knows him.”
“You can walk the property and call your dog,” Raleigh said. “Let me know when you want to leave and I’ll open the gate for you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Megan said.
She walked around the garage toward the pool that was designed like a lazy lagoon with a six-foot waterfall. “Cuddles!” she called. “Here, Cuddles!”
She thought five minutes was enough. She rang the bell and Raleigh came to the door again.
“Did you find your dog? he asked.
“No, the brat,” she said. “I know he’s hiding here. He does this when he doesn’t want to be found.”
“If you’ll leave your phone number, I’ll call you if I find him,” Raleigh said.
“Do you have something I can write on?”
“Come in,” Raleigh said, and she entered the foyer while he went to fetch a notepad and pen.
Megan walked into the great room and marveled. She’d never been in a house like this, and the thing that impressed her most was the art. There were paintings everywhere. The corridor along the foyer was lined with paintings, all of them with lights attached to the top of the frames.
And then she saw The Woman by the Water and drew in her breath. And next to it was Flowers on the Hillside. They were identical to the paintings that she and Jonas had in their apartment! What did it mean?
Raleigh returned with a notepad, and she scribbled a fictitious number.
“I majored in art in community college,” she said. “And I’m very interested in art. Do you know a lot about the paintings here?”
Raleigh thought she was a very pretty girl in a waiflike way. She looked so touchingly anemic and vulnerable, and she didn’t do that Valspeak where they made every damn sentence sound like a question. He said, “I know a bit.”
She strolled along the wall of paintings and said, “This one?” pointing at a small British watercolor that Raleigh knew nothing about, and he said, “I think that’s by a German Impressionist. Can’t recall his name. An interesting piece.”