Fade to Black Read online

  A car whizzed by him. He hadn’t noticed vehicles at all until now, and Barham was a busy street. Down below, there were multistory apartment buildings, with restaurants and businesses scattered here and there. Farther up the hill, the houses became bigger. And more lavish.

  Marnie Davante’s house was right between. It was a charming little duplex, not a mansion—nor a multistoried dwelling where the rent was high for little more than broom closets.

  He wondered where the hell the bullet fired at him had gone, and if, in the dark, he had a prayer of finding the bullet itself or the casing.

  He paused, judging the distance from where the man had fired. He turned on the flashlight feature on his phone and searched the ground. The light glinted off the silver foil wrapper from a stick of gum first, but then it shimmered on something metal: the casing.

  He wasn’t walking around with evidence bags, but he pulled off his tie to secure the casing without touching it.

  Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t found the bullet.

  He’d try again in daylight.

  At last he headed back toward Marnie Davante’s house and his car. He’d been sitting in it, parked just down the street ever since she’d told him to go away.

  He hadn’t been expecting a home invasion.

  Rather, he’d hung around because he’d been certain that the ghost of Cara Barton was going to show up again, and whether she admitted it or not, Marnie was going to need his help coping with that.

  Bryan was angry with himself.

  He should have parked closer to the duplex.

  He should have been on the guy sooner.

  He pulled out his phone and dialed Grant Vining’s cell phone.

  Vining answered almost instantly and told him that a 9-1-1 call had come in. The uniformed cops who had been closest on call had in turn called and informed him about the near break-in at Marnie Davante’s house. He was already on his way.

  “You scared the guy off, huh—but didn’t catch him.”

  “He took a shot at me. I lost him when he did.”

  “Pity. We could have maybe learned something. What do you think the chances are that it was just a run-of-the-mill home invasion and had nothing to do with Cara Barton’s murder? Damn. It’s really too bad you didn’t get him.”

  Bryan heard Sophie Manning speak up next to her partner.

  “Probably a nice thing he dodged the bullet, too,” she said drily.

  Bryan smiled and started jogging down the street.

  “I didn’t think he was armed. He didn’t shoot until I started gaining on him. I don’t know if the guy is the murderer, but he is armed and dangerous. After this, I think that Miss Davante is going to need some kind of protection.”

  “Miss Davante, Miss Alan...Highsmith and Adair. You know that the city is struggling under budget cuts. I can have patrol cars doing drive-bys, but...they’re celluloid people. They can hire on some private security. I take it you’re on your way back? We’ll see you at Miss Davante’s house.”

  “Yep. I’m on my way.”

  Empty-handed.

  But alive.

  And now they knew for sure that a killer was out there, targeting Marnie. Whether she admitted it or not, she needed help.

  And the ghost of a dead actress wasn’t going to be enough.

  * * *

  “There’s no reason, is there, to suspect that this was anything other than an attempted burglary, right? An attempt that wasn’t very well-thought-out, at that,” Marnie said. “Breaking glass means a ton of noise. Cell phones mean police can be somewhere within minutes.”

  Bridget, wrapped in a robe covered with cartoon superheroes, was at Marnie’s side. They stood on the porch, the little expanse of tile and pillars that ran the width of the duplex and led to both front doors.

  Detectives Vining and Manning were with them while three crime scene technicians worked in the backyard, and one scanned Marnie’s bedroom amid the broken glass.

  Vining stared at Marnie, thinking out his answer.

  Manning gave her no such courtesy. “How the hell long do you think it takes to shoot someone, Miss Davante? Perp gets in here, pop-pop, and then he’s gone. Before you can do so much as dial 9-1-1.”

  A shiver snaked down her spine.

  “Oh, God,” Bridget cried softly. “So what do we do?”

  “Detective Manning,” Vining said firmly. “There is no reason to assume that the only reason someone was here was specifically to harm Miss Davante. Sadly, this city is not without crime—ordinary crime, if such a description can be made of crime, period. Break-ins do happen.”

  Marnie couldn’t help it. She looked at Sophie Manning. “You’ve drawn a possible scenario, Detective. But as Detective Vining just said, the man might have been a burglar.”

  “One with a gun,” Vining qualified.

  “You know he had a gun?” Bridget demanded.

  Just as Bridget spoke, Marnie saw that a man was running down Barham, coming their way.

  McFadden. He managed to run in a suit without looking ridiculous. For some reason that made Marnie resent him just a little bit more.

  Apparently he had been there. Somewhere near, watching over her. He had gone after the man trying to break in—and he knew the man had been carrying a gun.

  She looked away from him and stared at Sophie Manning. “So what do you suggest? What do you propose I do? What are you planning to do for my safety? Can you leave a patrol car here—or a cop, one who is more than welcome inside. I love coffee and I have tons and tons of it.”

  “And tea,” Bridget offered. “She loves tea, too. But, Marnie, your bedroom is all...glass. You’ll have to stay at my place.”

  The detectives weren’t giving her their full attention anymore. They were watching as Bryan McFadden came jogging up—leaping over the little white picket fence—to join them.

  He had something wrapped up in his hand, which he offered to Detective Vining.

  “Bullet casing—haven’t found where the bullet itself lodged. I’ll get on it in the morning,” McFadden told the cop.

  “Oh.” Bridget clutched tightly to Marnie, looking as if she was about to have the vapors or pass out or do something very melodramatic—but real.

  “Hey!” Marnie caught her cousin, but Bryan McFadden had already reached out. Bridget looked at him with adoring eyes.

  “I’m—I’m all right!” she said. She found her feet and her own strength.

  “I’ll stay here tonight,” Manning said. “In the living room.”

  “Detective,” Vining began sternly.

  “Just for tonight. Maybe Miss Davante will need to stay somewhere else for a while, as we search for Cara Barton’s killer. Maybe...”

  “Sophie,” Vining said firmly. “You can’t.”

  He stopped speaking, looking at Marnie. “We can keep a patrol car out here for a few days. We’ll investigate the situation fully.”

  “Yes,” Manning said. “We’ll investigate, but what if Mr. McFadden hadn’t taken it on himself to look after Miss Davante? He was on the would-be home invader in a matter of moments.”

  “Sophie,” Vining said, and his tone was a little sharp. And Marnie understood, of course.

  Police funds were limited. She couldn’t expect full-time protection services from them.

  “It’s fine. I’ll stay out in the car,” McFadden said. He shrugged. “I won’t cost the taxpayers a thing.”

  “You are not staying outside!” Bridget insisted. “Marnie is moving over into my side of the property, and you may have the couch, Bryan. Is it all right if I call you Bryan?”

  “Of course,” McFadden said.

  Manning was looking at him. “I can and will stay tonight. I’m off duty, and I don’t intend to put in overtime. After tonight, you can do whatever you need so th
at you can come on guard duty full-time.”

  “Yes,” Marnie said. “I mean, no... I mean, I don’t think I need anyone twenty-four hours a day. I have things to do, people with whom I must meet...”

  “That would make staying alive a good thing, wouldn’t it?” McFadden asked her. He turned to Manning. “Thank you for helping out,” he said.

  “I’ll get crime scene people working on locating that bullet,” Vining told McFadden. “You’ll have to let the techs know where you were. If you’d like to see the crime scene at the convention hall, meet me tomorrow morning?”

  McFadden nodded.

  He looked at Marnie, his eyes seeming to catch hers as strange beats of time went by.

  “Good night, Miss Davante. And, Miss Davante,” he said, smiling as he looked at Bridget, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Then McFadden turned and walked back toward his car.

  “Well, it wasn’t late, but now it is. We probably should try to get some sleep,” Bridget said.

  Marnie knew that she needed sleep. She had an appointment in the afternoon with a Mr. Seth Smith of the Wexler Realty Group to find out if she was going to be able to rent the old Abernathy Theater in Burbank. It was old, it was beautiful and it was right off I-5. That made it easy to reach. It also had parking; if she could offer free parking, that would be an incredible boon. And, personally—even though on the old Tonight Show Johnny Carson had made fun of it—she loved Burbank. It had families and homes and still had some shops and boutiques that were family or individually owned. It had Dark Delicacies, one of the best bookshops ever.

  Yes, sleep would be good. And he was gone—Bryan McFadden, who had somehow managed to tip her whole world, entered her bloodstream, encourage delusion and...possibly saved her life!

  It suddenly hit her that she was so very vulnerable. It felt wrong.

  “Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Detective Manning, thank you so much. I admit to being very frightened this evening. We don’t know if we did just have a run-of-the-mill home invasion, but run-of-the-mill or not—he might have killed me. I am alive. We can move over to Bridget’s for tonight, and in the morning get the glass fixed and an alarm system installed. So...”

  “Let’s head on in,” the detective said.

  It felt a bit ludicrous that Sophie was the brave cop and Marnie was the frightened victim; Sophie was about five foot four and Marnie towered over her by almost six inches. But one look at Sophie Manning, and—while she was extremely attractive—it was evident that she was confident, fit and ready to face whatever came her way.

  Detective Vining waved them off. “I’ll be here until the crime scene people finish up. You’ve signed the incident report... Go get some sleep. Manning, I don’t want to see you until at least noon tomorrow, do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Manning said.

  When they were inside, Bridget said, “Tea? Yes, tea. It’s always good. Maybe wine would be better. Or, what the hell, a shot of whiskey!”

  Sophie laughed. “I’ll stick with tea. In fact, coffee might be best for me.”

  Bridget’s half of the duplex was the same as Marnie’s, except that it was reversed. As Bridget brewed a pot of tea, Sophie and Marnie sat at the barstools. The detective told them she’d always wanted to be a cop—her dad had been on the force. She’d lost him recently to cancer, but he had seen her go through the police academy and he’d seen her rise to rank of detective.

  Marnie and Bridget explained how they had both been only children, cousins just about the exact same age.

  While Bridget talked away about how she’d always created stories and then asked Marnie to act them out with invisible costars, Marnie found herself zoning out a bit and looking around.

  She should have been terrified an armed assailant was going to try to break in again.

  But she was more afraid, she realized, that she’d see the ghost of Cara Barton.

  She did not.

  Sophie asked her curiously about her plans for the future.

  Marnie returned her attention to Sophie and Bridget and smiled. “Well, I’d been feeling pressured to do a revamp of Dark Harbor. Vince Carlton really seemed to want to make it happen, and he had the right people in place, but...well, I would only have done it because it meant so much to the rest of the cast. I’ve been saving for years to open my own theater for kids. I mean, some kids, the ones with aggressive stage moms, have a chance at getting into the movies. I want a venue for the kids who need a different kind of opportunity—right here, in Hollywood. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with film—but my dream is for kids like Bridget and me. Those who want to grow up to do things other than be movie stars. To write, to design, to become fabricators and create fairies and monsters...”

  She broke off, shrugging.

  “Anyway, that’s my plan. I’m seeing a man tomorrow about renting the space I want. And from there...”

  “No more Dark Harbor,” Sophie said, sighing. “Have to admit—I loved the show!”

  “Thanks. Hopefully, it will remain a classic. And, hopefully, we will all—the remaining cast members—continue to survive on syndication!”

  She rose from her barstool. “Okay, I’m really going to try to sleep.”

  “I’ll be here on the sofa. One scream will bring me running. And I am a crack shot,” Sophie promised her.

  Marnie went to the guest room and crawled beneath the covers.

  Two hours later, she realized she wasn’t going to sleep.

  She lay there through the night, staring at the ceiling.

  Waiting for the sound of breaking glass...

  Waiting...

  For a dead woman to appear before her.

  * * *

  Bryan had checked into a boutique hotel just down the hill from Marnie Davante’s duplex.

  If he was going to manage to find a killer and keep Marnie alive, he was going to have to stay at the top of his game. That meant sleep. But he knew, as he returned to his room and pulled out his computer, it also meant he’d need some help.

  For a moment, he drummed his fingers on the laptop. He was pretty good at research, but as far as trying to determine who—in a Hollywood sea of fans, directors, writers, actors, producers and others—might have wanted Cara Barton dead, or if Cara had even been the intended victim, he wasn’t even sure where to begin.

  He sat for a minute, mentally recalling all the videos he had seen of the crime actually taking place in real time. The whole thing had appeared to be an on-the-spot and accidental performance, but unlike any other spontaneous shows that popped up here and there at a comic con. Especially in Hollywood, where you had not just fans cosplaying, but professional actors and hopeful actors in costume everywhere.

  The police had interviewed dozens of people who had been wearing a Blood-bone costume.

  Even though it had been possible to rule some out based on observations and enhancement of some of the videos gathered at the scene, including determining which costume manufacturer had sold the one worn by the killer, they were still left with twenty-six Blood-bones who had been questioned more thoroughly.

  Not one had had a drop of blood on them. Not one had appeared to have been sweaty or shown signs of recent physical exertion. Most likely, the Blood-bone who had committed the deed had been long gone while confusion reigned—before anyone realized that a murder had actually been committed.

  “This isn’t just finding a needle in a haystack,” he murmured to himself. “It’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles.”

  There was a light tap at his door. He frowned, wondering if one of the detectives wanted to speak with him that night. He rose, one hand drifting almost subconsciously to the holster at his back, and carefully looked out the peephole.

  He felt his tension ease and opened the door.

  It was
Cara Barton.

  “You didn’t just come in?” he asked her.

  “I’d never be so rude, darling! You’re a handsome, able-bodied man in his prime and...well, who knows what you might be doing,” she said with a wink.

  “I’m here to solve your murder.”

  “You’re still a young and virile man and... Oh, I could say more, but you are the child of my dear, dear friends, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that I was—whatever my other faults—courteous in life, and therefore, my darling boy, I shall continue to be so in death.”

  “How nice. Do come all the way in.”

  Cara glided past him. She didn’t actually walk—but then, she never had. She was a diva in the old Hollywood sense of the word. Not mean in any way—simply above it all, and everyone else she encountered, as well. “So, what can you tell me?” he asked her. She perched elegantly at the end of the bureau that held the wide-screen TV.

  She sighed dramatically. “I don’t know... I just keep thinking he might have been after Marnie. She was laughing and plunged right into an improv.” She was silent for a minute. “You know, I love that girl. When others were not so kind, Marnie always was. It’s so odd, because, in a way, I must admit I was jealous, as well.” She waved a hand in the air. “Not because she was young and I was...older. But everything about her is so natural. And most of us want to be the ones with our names in giant lights. Marnie just loves literature and theater and the art behind it all. I mean, it’s almost nauseating!”

  He lowered his head. He agreed that Marnie had a charming authenticity to her, but he didn’t find it nauseating. Every time he came close to Marnie Davante, he felt more determined to save her life.

  Whether she wanted saving by him or not.

  “So, one theory. The killer was actually after Marnie.”

  “One theory...” Cara murmured. “What could be another? Oh, that people hate me. Yes, I’m afraid that’s possible. But...they don’t hate me in the way you’d hate someone and then want to kill them. I mean, honestly—good God, I hate to say it—I don’t think killing me, to anyone, would be worth the prospect of a life sentence. But...I am dead. You start with theories, right? More or less. So...why? Why am I dead?” she whispered miserably.