Dial M for Mischief. Kasey Michaels
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claiming he was just trying to make a living and the person he was harassing was a public figure and not entitled to privacy. Whoever thought up that law also should be living under a rock.”
“So Tuttle’s not destined to be one of my best friends.” Sam pulled to the curb behind the van, more than ready to take out his frustrations on the so-called reporter. “You stay here. I’ll get rid of him.”
“No, Sam. You’ve already done enough, more than enough. We’ll be happy if he doesn’t sue you for pain and injury.” She pulled down the sun visor and turned her head side to side, practiced a smile. “How do I look? My eyes are sort of puffy, but if I keep the sunglasses on it shouldn’t be too bad, right?”
“You’re going to pose for the bastard?” Sam felt his temper climbing.
“The proverbial performing seal, yes.” She shoved the visor back up and put her hand on the door handle. “It’s the easiest way, and Tuttle knows it, which is why he stuck around. Three seconds to make up your mind, Sam—do you want to be in the photos or not? Because we’re going to give Tuttle a cover shot that should make his day. And make him go away.”
“I don’t freaking believe this,” Sam said, pushing open his door and walking around the front of the car, glaring at Gary Tuttle the entire time, his left arm out, warning him to keep his distance. “I’m beginning to have a lot of sympathy for anybody who ever popped one of these guys in the nose with his own camera.”
Jolie turned on the seat, her long bare legs exiting the car first. She took his hand and allowed him to help her and then touched at her sunglasses once more and began walking down the sidewalk. To the idle observer, Sam thought, she looked the picture of calm, of confidence. More than ever he longed to run over Gary Tuttle’s other foot. With a tank.
Gary Tuttle was already on his feet, his open cell phone aimed at them, snapping pictures. “Call off the muscle, Jolie, sweetheart. I don’t want any trouble from him,” he shouted, backing up a few paces even as he kept snapping photos. “A man’s gotta eat, Jolie, you know that.”
“I know that, Mr. Tuttle,” Jolie said, linking her arm through Sam’s. “Just as you know that I’ve just buried my father this morning. Now, we’re going to keep walking and you snap as many pictures as you can, and we’ll call it a victory for both of us, all right?”
Tuttle held on to the camera phone as he pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. “You’ve always been the best, Jolie. Abso-toot-lee aces! Give me a name, okay? Who’s the hottie? Been a while since we’ve seen you with anyone special. Guess Mick’s been replaced, huh? He know it yet? He will tomorrow when my photos hit the papers, right? Give us a smile. Hey, how about a kiss while we’re at it?”
“Sam, don’t,” Jolie whispered as Sam growled low in his throat. “Michael Carnes is on location in Australia, Mr. Tuttle, as you know. My old family friend Samuel Becket was kind enough to offer his comfort and support in my time of grief. That’s Becket—one T, Mr. Tuttle.” She stopped in front of the first short set of steps, turned with Sam, tilted her head intimately toward his shoulder as she squeezed his arm and looked into the camera one last time, her expression unreadable.
“Careful, Mick will be jealous,” Sam whispered, actually beginning to get into the ridiculousness that surrounded Jolie Sunshine, movie star.
“Shh, don’t ad-lib,” Jolie warned before addressing the news hound once more. “We’re also, you might want to know, investigating the circumstances surrounding my father’s death. We’re confident, my sisters and myself, that we will soon be able to prove that he had nothing to do with the murder of Melodie Brainard and in fact was a victim of murder himself. You have that, Mr. Tuttle? I’m not speaking too quickly for you?”
“Got it, got it,” Tuttle said, still scribbling. “Comfort, Jolie? What kind of comfort is he giving you?”
“Okay, that’s it, Tuttle, quit while you can still chew soft foods,” Sam said, tugging on Jolie’s arm so that she had little choice but to follow him up the cement path to the house. “I never knew you were a masochist, Jolie. You live with that crap all the time?”
She stepped forward with the key when he pulled open the old wooden screen door. “It comes with the territory. I’ve learned to go along to get along, unfortunately. And Tuttle’s right. There are times we’re more than happy to have guys like him around. So it cuts two ways.”
She opened the door and moved inside, going to the security panel and punching in the code: 1243.
“Don’t forget to change that,” Sam said, standing in the small foyer and looking around, beginning to reacquaint himself with the house he hadn’t seen in five years. “Doesn’t look as if anything’s changed. Not even the smell.”
“What smell?”
“You don’t smell that? It always smells like roast beef in here for the first few moments. I get hungry every time I come into the house.”
Jolie smiled, but the smile was sad. “Pot roast, Teddy’s favorite. He also said it was the only thing he knew how to cook. We ate a lot of pot roast growing up, even after Jessica took over kitchen duty while she went through her wanting-to-be-the-next-Martha-Stewart phase.” She put her hand on the newel post and hesitated, one foot on the first step leading up to the bedrooms. “Sam? Mick Carnes was my costar. We made appearances together for publicity, and that’s all. He’s dating a script girl, but he knows if the press finds out, they’ll shred her, so I agreed to be his cover. Not that I should have to tell you that.”
“I didn’t ask,” he reminded her.
“No, you didn’t. Thank you for that. You, um, you can wait here. I’ll be just a few minutes. Oh, and we should pack up some of Rockne’s toys and some of his food if I’m staying with you. I’m sure I can get him to eat something soon. If not, we’ll have to take him to the vet tomorrow.”
Sam walked into the living room that also hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been invited into the house. Not that he’d been there long—just long enough for Teddy to warn him off Jolie. Let the girl have her head, he’d said. She’s young, and she’s chasing her dream. If it’s you she wants, she’ll be back on her own.
Sam had agreed but only because he’d had a plan of his own. The one that had backfired right in his face.
He spent a few moments looking at a collection of photographs of the three Sunshine sisters and then could no longer avoid the door on the far wall. The door to Teddy’s office.
“Pink highlighter,” he muttered as his excuse and turned the knob, entered the room where Teddy Sunshine had died.
Knotty-pine paneling out of the sixties or maybe the fifties. A huge oak desk strangely clear, as it had always been littered with files, with the humidor containing Teddy’s favorite cigars, with at least one family-size box of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. And photographs of his girls. You couldn’t walk more than five feet in any direction in Teddy’s house without running into photographs of his girls.
The commendations Sam was used to seeing hanging on the wall behind the desk were also gone, lighter rectangles visible on the aged paneling showing where they had once been displayed. The desk chair, a massive piece of cracked burgundy leather, was also missing, as was the carpet. There was a raw hole in the floor, probably where a bullet had been pried out and removed as evidence. The entire room reeked of cleaning materials, and the smell burned at Sam’s nose, the back of his throat.
Teddy simply wasn’t in this room anymore, wasn’t a part of it. And yet his ghost was also everywhere in the room.
“We’ll stop at a store, get Jess’s damn high-lighters,” Sam told himself, told Teddy’s ghost, leaving the room and softly closing the door.
With nothing else to do, he climbed the stairs to offer to carry down Jolie’s suitcases.
“Oh, you startled me,” Jolie said as he knocked