“That’s great,” Adelaide said. “Listen, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”
“Promise you’ll call me immediately if you come up with any more interesting theories about Zolanda’s death.”
“I promise.”
Adelaide hung up the phone and stood quietly for a moment. Knowing that a powerful director was in the audience and that he was in the process of casting a new picture that involved a psychic went far toward explaining why Zolanda had given that last shocking performance. But something didn’t feel right. Why had Paxton gone to such dramatic lengths to set the scene for Zolanda’s death? Why not simply drug her, push her off the roof, and let the authorities conclude that she had taken her own life?
Why make Zolanda believe that her dreams might come true, that she had an opportunity to showcase her talent for a powerful director?
Zolanda’s carefully staged death had all the hallmarks of a carefully plotted act of revenge.
Adelaide contemplated the hatbox.
The kettle was whistling. She crossed the kitchen and took it off the stove but she did not bother to pour the water into the pot. Instead she went to the table, opened the hatbox, and took out the journal.
Each entry listed only a set of initials, a date, a note about the form of the blackmail material—letter, photo, diary—and a number that corresponded to a particular sealed envelope. The night before, Jake had quickly discovered the packet containing Elizabeth’s diary because he had recognized her initials and the date when she had given the extortion materials to Zolanda.
The remaining initials and dates meant nothing at first glance. Adelaide realized that she would have to go through the journal line by line and open each corresponding packet to see if there were any clues to the identity of the killer.
She decided to start from the most recent entries and work back toward the oldest. She was prepared for several hours of work, but in the end the answer leaped off the page.
The third most recent entry was annotated with a cryptic abbreviation: Pt. File. The accompanying initials meant nothing—J. T. But the date was approximately four months before she had been kidnapped and locked up at Rushbrook.
The Duchess had mentioned that Patient A had vanished a few months before Adelaide arrived at the asylum.
A rush of dark energy flooded through her. She went through the envelopes in the hatbox until she found the right one. Ripping it open, she dumped the contents on the table. She picked up the first one. And nearly stopped breathing when she realized she was looking at the sanitarium record of Patient A. There were several pages of Ormsby’s detailed notes.
Patient A lapsed into another delirium following the third dose . . .
Patient A experienced strong hallucinations again today . . .
Patient A was cooperative for a time and then abruptly became hysterical . . .
Orderlies report that Patient A hallucinated all night again. Can’t risk giving her a sedative because of the chance of inducing a coma . . .
There was far more information on the first test subject. She was a female. She had signed the commitment papers voluntarily. She had been hospitalized for nervous exhaustion. When she had arrived at Rushbrook, she was accompanied by a friend who insisted that the patient be admitted under an assumed name.
And just to complete the blackmail file there were some photographs of Patient A in a Rushbrook Sanitarium gown. Her face was disconcertingly slack, as if she had been drugged, but Adelaide could see the helpless rage in the woman’s eyes.
In one of the photos, she was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. The gown was hiked up to her waist. She was not wearing anything underneath. Her legs were spread wide. Calvin Paxton, his trousers down around his ankles, stood between her thighs.
In the next photo Gill was the one who had been photographed raping the helpless, drugged woman.
Adelaide dropped the files on the table, jumped to her feet, and rushed across the kitchen to seize the phone.
There was no dial tone. The line had been cut.
She had to get out of the house.
She grabbed the car keys and yanked open the kitchen door.
Vera Westlake emerged from the shadows at the side of the doorway. She had a gun in her right hand.
“Not another step,” Vera Westlake said. “I can’t miss. Not at this distance.”
Chapter 53
For some bizarre reason, Adelaide’s first thought was that Vera looked like the movie star she was, as if she was acting the role of a desperate woman who was prepared to kill. But the gun in her hand was all too real.
She was fashionably dressed in a pair of trousers, a snug-fitting sweater, and a pair of blue and white oxfords. For once she was not wearing her trademark monochromatic color scheme. Her hair was mostly concealed beneath a scarf that was knotted under her chin. She wore a pair of dark glasses that were probably designed to make her appear anonymous but which only called attention to the profile of the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.
Adelaide stared at the gun, transfixed for a couple of heartbeats.
“I always wondered what happened to Patient A,” she said. “Why don’t you come in and have some tea. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”
Vera moved through the doorway and stopped. She glanced at the hatbox.
“You found my Rushbrook files, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes. Zolanda had them.”
“That bitch. After I drugged her, she said she wanted to tell me a secret. I asked her what that was. She laughed hysterically and said that she had my Rushbrook files. She said she had planned to hold them until my career was at its height and then demand a fortune for them. I was stunned. I had assumed the files were still safe at Rushbrook. I asked her where she kept them but by then she was no longer making sense. She told me the truth but only part of it. She said the files were in a hatbox, but she never said where the damned hatbox was located.”
“Daydream is very problematic when used as a truth serum,” Adelaide said.
Vera made a small sound of disgust. “Evidently that’s especially true when it’s combined with booze, because I sure couldn’t get a straight answer out of Zolanda that night. After she went off the roof, I searched the villa. When I didn’t find the files, I dared to hope that they had been a figment of Zolanda’s hallucinations. I was wrong, obviously.”
“Zolanda had help going off that roof, didn’t she?” Adelaide said. “You told her that an important director was in the audience and that he was looking for a fresh face to play the role of a psychic.”
“I wrote the whole damned script for her last prediction,” Vera said softly.
“How did you convince her that you were going to make her big dream come true? She had no reason to trust you. After all, she had betrayed you in the worst possible way.”
Vera smiled a humorless smile. “Zolanda was a good actress but I’m better. I allowed her to think that I was grateful to her for taking me to Rushbrook. I let her believe that I didn’t remember the rapes and the hallucinations, that I was sure the drug had actually cured me. I even convinced her that I was obsessed with Paxton. When I told Zolanda that I wanted to repay her by arranging for a famous director to see her act onstage, she bought the whole story.”
“You’re right,” Adelaide said, “you really are a brilliant actress. But you also had one big advantage, didn’t you? Zolanda desperately wanted to believe you.”
“It was pathetic, really. After the performance I called her to tell her that I had some good news but that I needed to give her the details privately because everything about Holton’s next film is a secret. I told her that she should make sure her assistant was not around.”
“When Leggett was out of the way, you went to the villa.”