She’d been in the shanty for over a month now, but she’d been planning this trip, this new life, for weeks prior to her “suicide.” She’d been planning it ever since Marti had written her, telling her she was being transferred to the prison at Chowchilla. It had been unbearable to picture Marti in prison anywhere, but Chowchilla, with its reputation for abusive guards, toughened prisoners and intolerable living conditions, was out of the question. Zoe had lain awake all that night, Marti’s letter in her hand, a bizarre plot taking shape in her mind.
She’d gotten out of bed to walk downstairs to the study, a room she’d been avoiding ever since Max’s death. Sure enough, the Persian rug and the burgundy walls lined with books and awards still held his scent, that musky scent of cigars, as though he’d just left the room for a moment. Standing stock-still in the doorway of the room, she’d had to shut her eyes and remind herself that he was dead. This was the room where she’d found him, crumpled on the floor near the hearth, the way a blanket would crumple if you dropped it, limp and folded in on itself. She’d known instantly that he was dead, and yet she’d screamed his name over and over as if he could hear her. It had been his third and final heart attack. The cigars were to blame, she’d thought. Or maybe the pace he’d insisted on holding himself to. He’d been seventy years old and still producing a movie a year, still insisting on having his hand in every aspect of it, from the casting to the final cut. She did not, however, blame herself, except for not checking on him sooner when he hadn’t come up to bed that evening. She had been a good wife to him, and he had been the finest of husbands. A forty-year-old marriage in Hollywood was something to point to with pride. Yet, she’d hoped to see fifty years with him, and maybe more.
She could not be the single woman again, not at sixty. Not with the paparazzi following her every move, noting each new wrinkle, each gray root marking the birth of every dark-blond hair on her head. She’d been known for that long, thick, shimmery blond hair since she was a little girl, and she had not been able to let go of it. She’d had three surgeries on her face already, and she was sick of the doctors and the recovery time and the fact that she no longer looked like herself. And now the wrinkles were starting again and the tabloids were taunting her. They criticized the extra pounds she’d put on. Last year, one of them had described her as a mountain. A mountain! Only Max had still seemed to think she was beautiful and desirable and valuable, and when he died, there was no one to tell her the tabloids were simply wrong and mean-spirited. She’d been an actress and a singer since she was three years old, well-known enough to go by her first name alone, like Cher and Madonna and Ann-Margret. Only those women were aging far better than she was. Escape began to sound marvelous. She would not have to endure growing old in the unforgiving spotlight.
In Max’s study, she’d found an atlas. She’d taken it with her down to the first level of the house, where the floor was covered with Italian tiles the color of eggshells. Small changing rooms, where people could slip into their bathing suits in the summer months before heading out to the beach, lined one side of the broad hallway. One of the rooms on the other side of the hall was used for storage, and that was her destination.
She had a goal, but it took her much of the night to find what she was looking for, because she could not stop herself from sorting through the old reviews in the scrapbooks piled on the shelves. There were the sparkling reviews of her as a child star, and critical acclaim of her as an adult. “Zoe possesses a voice like torn satin,” one of them read. “The Kiss, an otherwise lackluster film, glows due to a phenomenal performance by Zoe,” read another. Reading the reviews pulled her down into a deep well of pain. She’d had a past few could point to with such pride, a past so joyful and full that her present sense of loss—of her husband, her beauty, her fans—was beyond bearing. There was only one thing left worth living for, and that was Marti.
After finally forcing herself to reshelve the scrapbooks, she began rummaging through the cardboard boxes stacked on the other side of the room. She found the brochures of West Virginia and the Sweetwater Spa in one of the boxes marked Travel on the side. She and Max had visited the spa several years ago, selecting it because of Max’s old family roots in that state. People had stared at them while they were there, of course, and cameras had flashed, but for the most part, they were left alone.
She and Max had taken a break from the spa activities one afternoon to visit some of Max’s elderly relatives, and while driving back to the spa, they became extremely lost. Intentionally lost, laughing with abandon at the sudden freedom they felt as they wandered, unconcerned, away from everyone and everything, down the deserted country roads that twisted through green mountains on the outskirts of the George Washington National Forest. The only signs that anyone had ever been in those parts were the occasional little cabins, abandoned, boarded up or simply left to rot. She had thought then how someone might hide out in one of those cabins. A fugitive could probably stay there for years, undetected. She’d spoken this aloud, and Max had asked her how the fugitive would eat. He would have to know in advance what he was going to do, she’d said, and before going on the run, he would have to bring supplies to the cabin. Her imagination had been on fire, thinking about it. He could bring everything he would need ahead of time so that he could sustain himself there for long periods. And he could learn to eat squirrel or rabbit. He could fish in a stream.
“What about electricity?” Max had asked her.
“Candles,” she’d replied. “Lanterns.” He would bring a lot of books to read for entertainment. He’d need to find a cabin with a fireplace for warmth.
Max had commented that she sounded almost wistful, and she supposed she had. Their life had grown too complicated. There were the two houses to take care of, in Malibu and Montana. There was too much money to oversee. Too much of everything in their lives, she’d said, and he’d looked at her with some concern. She’d reassured him she was very happy and grateful for all they had, and turned away from the thick forest and its abandoned homes. Never would she have guessed that she would one day be the fugitive in her imagination.
She was better at living a life on the run than she ever would have guessed. She’d become a real master at hiding cars, for instance. It was remarkably easy. There was a lot of empty space in this country, and if you were willing to walk a bit after leaving your car, you were home free. Before her putative suicide, she’d rented a car at one of those “junkerforrent” places. After performing radical surgery on her hair and covering it with a wig, she’d donned large sunglasses and disguised her voice for the visit to the rental counter. She produced one of the several fake driver’s licenses she’d been able to get through a shady site on the Internet for a grand total of two thousand dollars. The clerk had still looked at her suspiciously, making her heart beat so hard she was afraid it might be visible beneath the tight, trampy-looking jersey she was wearing. But he’d handed her the keys to the car, and she was on her way.
First, she’d hidden her own car deep in the mountains east of Los Angeles, taking the plates off. With the well-paid help of the guy who’d supplied her driver’s licenses, she’d transferred the plates to the rental car, which she ditched in the Texas panhandle after picking up another one. Two more cars had brought her to West Virginia, and she’d left the last rental in a glade that seemed to be a car dumping ground. There were four or five cars there already, none of them as new and shiny as the rental car, but she figured it wouldn’t take long for it to look as though it belonged there. Then, she’d spent a couple of hours in an old, deserted barn, preparing it for Marti’s eventual arrival in accordance with their plan. From there, she’d hiked nearly a full day through the trailless woods to her new home. She’d had a compass, a map she’d drawn herself and a sense of direction that rarely failed her. She also, unfortunately, had bursitis in her hip, and that night, lying on the air mattress in the shanty, she’d longed for a heating pad in the worst way. It had taken several days of rest
for her to be able to walk again without hobbling, but now she was fine. Actually, after a few weeks of toting firewood and hiking through the forest in search of game, she felt stronger than she had in years.
Now, Zoe walked into the shanty to get a bowl for the stew, and when she returned to the clearing, the filthy yellow dog was back, sitting in the open space between the fire pit and the woods. He looked from her to the stew pot and back to her again, and she fought a desire to toss the poor creature a bit of the rabbit. Instead, she carefully lifted the pot from the fire and carried it inside the shanty, shutting the door behind her. No need to invite trouble.
She sat on the couch while she ate, trying to picture the June calendar in her mind. If she was figuring her days correctly, Marti’s escape should have taken place yesterday or the day before. In Zoe’s imagination, the escape was always successful, yet she knew the plan was fraught with difficulty. How the warden would physically get Marti out of Chowchilla was cloudy in her mind, but she trusted that greed would motivate him to operate in a clever and efficient manner. Marti had told her she’d picked the greediest, the least ethical and the most immoral of the wardens to approach with her scheme.
Zoe might no longer have a husband, and she might have lost her daughter to an inept justice system. Her beauty was slipping away from her, and her voice had left long ago. But one thing she still had was money. And she knew from a lifetime of spending, that money could buy anything—or anyone. Marti had always been good at reading people, and she’d read the warden right. He would need enough money to split three ways with two of the other guards, he’d said, and Marti had simply tripled her offer. It was enough money to tempt the pope, Zoe had thought. She was depending on it. Everything had to go according to plan.
It was torture, though, thinking of Marti having to negotiate with prison guards, just as the thought of her being imprisoned for something she had not done was unbearable. Marti in prison! Zoe blamed herself entirely for the fix her daughter was in. She should have hired different lawyers. She’d gone with Snow, Snow and Berenski because they’d always handled everything for her and Max over the years, but criminal law was not their strong suit. They’d let Marti down. Someone said that a car “just like” Marti Garson’s Audi was parked in front of Tara Ashton’s house the day the actress was killed. Marti didn’t even know Tara Ashton, much less have any reason to kill her. Tara had been the hot new actress in Hollywood, with a beautifully exotic face, a stunning body, wavy jet-black hair and an undeniable ability to act, setting her apart from other newcomers who were simply gorgeous. Someone else testified that they had seen a woman who looked “just like” Marti Garson leave Ashton’s house that afternoon. They swore to this, and Zoe could not tell if they truly believed they had seen Marti, or if someone was perhaps paying them to say so. But why on earth would anyone set Marti up?
There had been no fingerprints at the scene; whoever had committed the murder had worn gloves or wiped everything clean. The prosecutor claimed that Marti had a motive: Tara Ashton had recently been given a part in a movie, a part Zoe had been up for. The part had been written for Zoe, for a woman Zoe’s age, and then, suddenly, the script was changed to accommodate Ashton. Oh, that had hurt. No one said flat out that Zoe was too old for the part, but who could deny it, when the front page of the tabloids showed a split image of a time-ravaged Zoe next to the fresh, smiling Ashton?
So, the prosecutor built a strong case against Marti, citing her closeness to Zoe and her desire to protect her mother. The argument was, unfortunately, erroneous. She and Marti were not close in the least, and she doubted that Marti had even known the movie role had been handed to Ashton. But Zoe wasn’t about to deny that bond with her daughter. She relished the idea of Marti caring that much about her; it was a treasured fantasy. And although she was naturally horrified by the murder, she couldn’t help but be touched by the notion of Marti coming to her defense. Yet she knew the explanation for Ashton’s murder lay somewhere other than in Marti’s love for her mother. Besides, someone had bludgeoned Tara Ashton to death with a hammer, for heaven’s sake! Marti was not capable of that sort of violence. But no one seemed interested in looking for another suspect, and that’s where Marti’s lawyers had gone astray, in Zoe’s opinion. They should have dug deeper. Surely Tara Ashton had enemies with more reason to kill her than Marti Garson did.
Marti’s face, at the moment the jury’s verdict was read, would haunt Zoe for the rest of her life. Marti was twenty-eight, but all Zoe could see in her daughter’s huge blue eyes was the baby she’d longed for but didn’t know how to mother, the little girl she’d left in the care of nannies as she pursued her career, the teenager she’d shipped off to boarding school. No wonder Marti had eschewed the Hollywood careers that had so consumed her parents in favor of a quieter life behind a computer screen as a programmer.
The jury saw Marti’s quiet, reserved demeanor as a facade that hid anger and malice and a fierce, protective love for her mother. A love that only Zoe and Marti knew had never existed.
Zoe shifted her thoughts from the miserable trial back to Marti’s escape. Somehow, the warden would have gotten Marti out of Chowchilla, without alarms going off or anyone noticing for hours, at least. And then, because he was anxious to collect the rest of his payment, he would have driven with Marti as fast as he could from California to West Virginia, taking whatever precautions were necessary to avoid being caught. Surely he had changed cars once or twice on the road. He had to be at least as savvy as Zoe had been in this fugitive business.
In a few days, then, Marti would be here with her. Finally, they would be mother and daughter. She could make up to Marti for all the years of neglect, for all the times she had not known how to be a mother and so had chosen not to mother her at all.
They would hide out here for a year or so, until the search for Marti had lost its steam. Then they would somehow get to South America—or at least, she would make sure that Marti got there—where she could undergo plastic surgery and start a new life. Zoe didn’t care what happened to her at that point. She just needed to get Marti to safety.
She had everything ready: the compass, map and money Marti would need were hidden in the barn; the trail from the barn to the shanty was marked with scraps of blue cloth. What she wouldn’t give for one phone call with her daughter, though, just to know where Marti was now, how soon she could expect to see her! But she would have to settle for knowing that Marti was on her way, and that they would be together any day now. Any day now, she could hold her daughter in her arms.
CHAPTER NINE
Janine felt a need to see the camp in daylight, and so, early Monday morning, she and Joe drove once again into West Virginia. She was behind the wheel this time, and their plan was to drive directly up to the camp, then return slowly, stopping to talk with the waitresses, gas station attendants and store clerks they had been unable to meet with the night before. They would check any alternative routes Alison might have taken, as well. That was, if there was no report of Sophie being found by then. Their cell phones were turned on and ready for that message. Over and over again, Janine heard the words in her head: “We’ve found her! She’s fine!”
But neither of their phones rang on the drive to the camp. Joe called the police himself once and learned that there were still no reports of any accidents involving a blue Honda and no sign of Alison’s car anywhere along the route.
“How hard do you think they’re looking?” Janine asked him, when he hung up the phone. They were only a mile or two from the camp at that point. “Alison has one of the most common cars on the road. Do you think they’re stopping every blue Honda they see? Peeking inside any blue Honda parked in a parking lot?”
“You’re right,” Joe said, and he hit the redial button on his phone. As soon as he had the sergeant on the line again, he started yelling. “You guys should be out here checking the restaurants and the gas stations,” he shouted into the phone. “It shouldn’t be up to the parents to hav
e to take this on.”
Janine cringed at the anger in his voice.
“What the hell are we paying taxes for?” Joe continued. “These are little girls who are missing. You guys should be moving faster on this.” He was quiet for a moment, listening, and Janine could hear the sergeant’s deep, calm voice on the phone, although she couldn’t make out what he was saying. The cop was handling Joe’s temper better than she could, she thought. She knew much of the anger Sergeant Loomis was receiving was truly meant for her.
“Yeah, well, it’s not enough,” Joe muttered into the phone, his voice quieter now. He looked at his watch. “Fine. All right. We’ll be there.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
She saw his hand tremble as he rested the phone back on the console.
“They want us and Holly’s parents at the police station at three o’clock for a press conference,” he said. “They’ll have TV cameras there. We’re supposed to make some sort of plea for—”
“They think they’ve been kidnapped, then?”
“Not necessarily. It’s just a plea for people to keep an eye out for them.”
Janine pulled into the large, gravel parking lot of the camp and turned off the ignition. “Do you think it’s weird that Holly’s parents aren’t out here looking, too?” she asked.
“They have other kids to take care of,” Joe said, opening his car door. “And everybody has different ways of coping.”
She felt guilty for thinking of Rebecca and Steve Kraft with suspicion. She’d called Rebecca very early that morning to see if she and Steve wanted to drive up to the camp with them, and she had the feeling she’d awakened her. Rebecca had been silent for a moment, as if the thought of making that drive had never crossed her mind.
“No,” she’d said. “We’ll just let the police do their job and stay here by the phone. I appreciate your effort, though. Please call us right away if you learn anything.”