*
Reagan sat beside Sean McClure on the flight back to Los Angeles and although she didn’t cry, she wanted to. She held a narrow leather pouch on her lap and stared down at it. Fletcher had driven them to the airport and handed it to her when he kissed her goodbye. Rae stared at it for a long time and she didn’t dare look inside until Sean had fallen asleep. The pouch was the size of an envelope, long and thin, and it was made of soft leather wrapped with a silken cord. When she opened it a large feather and a folded paper fell out. She held the feather up, and in the light from the jet’s window, it flashed like silver. As she turned it in her hand, it became iridescent, reflecting every color under the heavens. Then, when it was held just so, it was as blue-black as Fletcher’s eyes. She unfolded the sheet of paper and two quotes were written there in beautiful slanting script.
“For now we see through a glass darkly,” and “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Below those strange lines Fletcher had written, ‘You and I belong together, Fletcher’.
At LAX, before she and Sean could slip into an unmarked police car, cameras were thrust toward Reagan, and the paparazzi began their barrage of questions.
“Reagan! Are you shocked by your husband’s death? Do you believe he was murdered? Did you know he was cheating the government? Was the girl he kidnapped from Hope Center?”
Sean hurried Reagan into the car, climbed in beside her, and told the officer at the wheel to drive away fast.
“Dead?” she asked Sean, and her voice was filled with horror. “I thought you said he was in custody for tax evasion and kidnapping. For God’s sake that’s bad enough, how can he be dead, wasn’t he in jail? Sean, did the inmates kill him? Did he take a girl from Hope Center? My God, was he abusing girls from the women’s shelter our foundation was supporting?”
“My phone was off during the flight, let me find out what’s going on,” Sean said, and he leaned toward the driver and asked what had happened.
“Carlo Bianchi was crying and screaming in Spanish last night, he was out of his mind. So he was moved to a cell away from the other prisoners. This morning he was found dead on the floor of that cell,” the officer said, looking in the rearview mirror to see how the news affected Reagan.
“Suicide?” Sean asked, lowering his voice and wishing that Reagan didn’t have to hear the details.
“No, the coroner is doing an autopsy now; it looks like he had a heart attack. There were scratches all over his face, arms, and chest, and his shirt was ripped to shreds,” the officer said bluntly.
“He scratched himself in a fit of delirium? What the hell was he so scared of, the IRS or the kidnapped girl’s family?” Sean asked, trying to make sense of that odd piece of news.
“Nope, no skin under his fingernails, they even swabbed the nails of the other inmates. Coroner says the marks don’t look human, more like they were made by the talons of bird. A very large bird…” the officer said, before Sean told him not to say anything more.
Sean said he could have Rae’s questioning delayed in light of the new development, but she wanted to get it over with. She thought she had left Carlo and California behind, and she wanted nothing more than a life with Fletcher on Temptation Road. Fletcher had insisted on driving her and Sean to the airport in Knoxville, and he kept one hand firmly on the steering wheel and the other wrapped tightly around Rae’s hand. When Sean said he would explain about Carlo’s arrest as soon as they were on the plane, she insisted he tell it right then so Fletcher could hear as well.
The IRS had made multiple attempts to contact Carlo; it seemed he had never paid a dime in federal income tax. As well, he’d neglected to pay California state income tax on most of his earnings and with interest and penalties, the amount had snowballed. When IRS agents arrived at the mansion to assess the property and padlock the doors, they found Carlo engaged in a lewd act with a thirteen-year-old girl. He was arrested for tax evasion as well as kidnapping, indecency with a minor, and possible statutory rape. All of his property had been seized and his bank accounts frozen, in spite of the hundreds of millions his movies had made, he was wiped out financially. The federal government was aware that for whatever reason, Reagan had never filed a tax return with Carlo, so she was not responsible for his debt. Still, the state of California and the city of Los Angeles had plenty of questions for her as to what she knew about Carlo’s personal behavior.
Rae was questioned for several hours at the police station, and Sean made sure she had her attorney present. She answered the investigating detective’s questions, then Sean drove her to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“Thank you for coming all the way to North Carolina to get me, Sean. I have to say, you’re really devoted to your work,” she said, as he unlocked the door to the private cabana where she would be staying.
“Rae, I’m the lead detective in charge of this case, but I flew across the country because I wanted to be there for you… I always want to be there for you. Can I come in, Rae? We should talk, there are things… personal things I need to say; I’ve left my wife….”
“This isn’t the time for that,” Rae said, she was bone tired and jet lagged. She needed time to process the day’s events and the implications of Carlo’s life, and now his death. Her almost ex-husband had been killed in a horrific manner, and he’d left behind the biggest mess she could imagine.
“Rae, you and the man in North Carolina, the man who doesn’t speak, what’s that all about?” Sean asked, he’d stepped inside the opulent cabana and didn’t look like he intended to leave.
She took his hand and led him to the door, then kissed his cheek and gently shoved him outside. “I’m exhausted, Sean, and Carlo is dead. I haven’t loved him in a very long time, and he was obviously nothing but a fiend, still, he died today. So let’s show a little respect for the dead, and just so you know, I’m in love with ‘the man who doesn’t speak’. Goodnight, we’ll talk tomorrow, then I want to catch a flight back home as soon as possible. Los Angeles isn’t a city of angels; I can’t imagine why anyone would ever have given it that name.”
*
“I’m not giving up on you Rae,” Sean said a week later when he walked with her through the airport. “I’m going to check out this Fletcher Green, you don’t exactly have the best track record for picking men.”
She removed her hand from his and before she entered the security check line, “Are you including yourself in that category?”
“No, I’m not, you should be with me. I can protect you from anything,” he said, pulling her against him.
“Nothing protects us from what can happen, Sean. You saw the look on Carlo’s face when he was lying on a cold table in the morgue; he died with his eyes wide open in terror. And those marks on his body, you heard what the coroner said. They probably weren’t deep enough to kill him, but whatever thing attacked him must have frightened him enough to stop his heart. I’m going home now, to my real home. I belong with Fletcher, if there’s safety anywhere, it’s with him; I feel it.”
Sean closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head in resignation. He reluctantly stepped back from Rae and handed her the wooden urn that held Carlo’s ashes. “You should have stuffed this in a suitcase; in fact I’d better walk you through the check point. Not everyone takes a box of human remains as a carry-on.”
“Its fine,” she said, “Carlo’s relatives will be waiting at the airport in San Antonio, and I’ll give them the urn. My mother is meeting me there and I’m staying with her for a few days, thanks for everything Sean.”
“Call me when you get to Texas, I want to know that you’re safe, Rae. Carlo’s death, it’s all highly suspect. Maybe you should go to Milan and stay with Alana until we have some solid answers. I mean it, call me the minute you land, I worry about you,” he said, leaning over the collapsible barricade to kiss her.
“Watch the news, if it doesn’t mention a plane crash, you’ll know I made it just fine,”
she said. She wanted to be away from him, and California, and the haunting secrets of Carlo’s world. “I’m going back to Fletcher, to my house, that’s where I belong now.”
Photographers and reporters swarmed around suddenly from out of nowhere, shouting their unseemly questions just as Rae made it through security and was beyond their reach.
“Reagan Hart! Reagan, what do think killed your husband?” They yelled as they snapped pictures of her, “Is it true that he was involved in satanic rituals? Do you believe he was killed by La Lechuza?”
What on earth? Reagan wondered, and she googled ‘La Lechuza’ on her phone as she sat at the gate waiting for her flight.
…Continued in Temptation Road 2
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