Prologue
She would have no music where she was going.
Zoe stood in the center of her living room, with its
vaulted ceilings, white carpeting and glassed-wall view of
the Pacific Ocean, and stared, transfixed by the huge
speaker in the corner of the room. She'd come to terms
with the fact that she would lose the beach and the smell
of the sea. She knew she could live without television—
gladly without television and its bevy of new, young
talent—and she could live without newspapers and
magazines. But no music? It suddenly seemed like a deal
breaker. But then her eyes drifted to the picture of
Marti, where it rested on the top of the baby grand piano.
Marti had been twenty in that picture, standing next to
Max on the beach. She was near Max, but not touching him,
and there was no sense of connection between father and
daughter, as though each of their pictures had been taken
separately and then spliced together. It disturbed Zoe to
see that distance between them. If the picture had been of
herself and Marti, would they look equally as detached
from one another? she wondered. She feared that they
would. It was time to change that.
In her boyish way, Marti looked beautiful in the
picture. Zoe studied the short cap of blond hair, the
compact, small-breasted body, huge blue eyes and long dark
lashes that gave away Marti's identity as a female, and
Zoe knew she was making the right decision. In a choice
between music and Marti, there was no contest. Everything
else in the universe paled in comparison to Zoe's need to
save her daughter.
She turnedaway from the wall of stereo equipment and
began climbing the broad spiral staircase to the second
story, her resolve once again intact. It was quite simple,
really, leaving forever. She had planned well ahead and
now had no need even to pack a suitcase. What could she
possibly put in a suitcase that would last her the rest of
her life? Besides, someone might realize a suitcase was
missing. Unlikely, since she had an entire room on the
third story filled with luggage; but still, it was
possible, and she couldn't take that chance.
She walked into Max's bedroom. She and Max had slept
together for the forty years of their marriage, but they'd
each had their own bedroom in addition to the master suite
they'd shared. Their separate rooms had been for times
alone, times of renewal and refreshment, for reading
without disturbing one another, for making phone calls
late into the night when one of them was working on a
project. It was in Max's room where she knew she would
find exactly what she needed.
Opening the door to Max's walk-in closet, she was
startled by the spicy aroma that enveloped her. Max's
aftershave still filled this room, four full months after
his death. She had not touched the clothes that hung in
neat rows along the walls of the closet since that
miserable day in November, and they slowly took on a
blurred, surrealistic shape before her eyes. How was it
that scent could instantly evoke so much pain? So many
memories? But no time for them now. She brushed her hand
across her eyes as she pulled the step stool from the
corner of the closet toward the shelves in the rear.
Climbing onto the stool, she reached toward the back of
the top shelf.
Her hand felt the soft-sided rifle case, and she
wrapped her fingers around it and drew it down from the
shelf. Climbing off the stool, she rested the green case
containing Max's rifle carefully, gingerly, on the
carpeted floor of the closet, then returned to her perch
on the stool. Reaching onto the shelf once again, she
found the box of bullets, then the Beretta pistol and a
few loose clips. Never before had she touched these guns,
and she hadn't approved of Max having them. Probably the
only thing they'd ever disagreed about.
"Max Garson's death marks the end of one of the
longest running and, by all accounts, most harmonious
marriages in Hollywood," People magazine had written.
For the most part, that had been a highly accurate
assessment. And right now, Zoe was glad Max had defied her
when it came to the guns. She was doubly glad she had told
her friends about the rifle and the pistol and where they
were hidden. They would tell the police, and the police
would discover the guns were missing. Perfect.
The police would no doubt talk to Bonita, the
therapist Zoe had seen for "grief counseling," as well.
Zoe had not needed to employ her acting skills to fake her
symptoms of depression.
"Do you think about suicide?" Bonita had asked her on
one recent visit, when Zoe had been particularly tearful.
"Yes," she had nodded truthfully.
"Do you have a plan?" Bonita asked.
The question had shaken Zoe for an instant. How could
Bonita possibly know? But then she realized Bonita was
asking her if she had considered how she would end her
life. Nothing more than that.
"No," she had answered, knowing full well that if she
said she had a plan, Bonita would arrange to have her
locked up someplace, and wouldn't the tabloids have a
field day with that. Zoe most certainly did have a plan.
Just not the sort of plan to which Bonita was alluding.
She carried the guns into the bedroom and caught sight
of herself in the mirror above the dresser. The image
horrified her. She looked completely ridiculous. Her long
blond hair fell across the rifle case, her deep bangs hung
all the way to her eyelashes, and there was something
about the lighting in the room that made her skin look
sallow, her eyes sunken. She was a large woman. She'd
always been tall and full-figured, and back in her James
Bond days, she'd been considered voluptuous, but now she
was simply big. Amazonian. An aging sex goddess. She had
bristled when she'd read those words about herself
somewhere, but suddenly, she understood them to be the
truth. Who had she been trying to kid, still wearing her
hair the way she had when she was twenty-five, coloring
the heck out of it to mask the gray? She looked away from
the mirror and headed for the stairs. There would be no
more two-hundred-dollar trips to the beauty salon in her
future, and the thought was rather liberating.
Downstairs, she walked through the kitchen and out
into the garage, where she rested the guns on the back
seat of her silver Mercedes. Returning to the house, she
sat down at the dining room table and gave her attention
to what would be her final—and most difficult—task in this
home she had cherished for so many years.
Staring down at the sheet of cream-colored parchment
on the table in front of her, she picked up the Pelikan
fountain pen Marti had given her several Christmases ago,
on a day when the world had still seemed benevolent and
the future still held promise. She rested the nib of the
pen on the paper.
I see no choice but to end my life, on this, the eve
of my sixtieth birthday, she wrote. Leaning away from the
paper, cocking her head to the side, she noted that her
penmanship looked like that of an old woman. Her hand
quivered above the page.
"Pathetic old cow," she muttered to herself, then
continued writing.
My life is not worth much anymore. My beloved husband
is dead; my daughter has been wrongly, cruelly imprisoned
for the murder of Tara Ashton; the tabloids persist in
noting each new wrinkle on my face, and I'm losing my
singing voice. Although my acting skills are at their
peak, they go unrecognized these days. Parts that once
would have come to me are now given to actresses much
younger than myself.
Zoe stopped writing for a moment and looked out the
window toward the ocean. That last sentence made her sound
small and bitter. She could leave it out, but then she
would have to start the letter all over again. And what
did she care what anyone thought of her at this point? She
laughed at the bruised ego, the irritating narcissism that
had dogged her these past few years and that seemed intent
on following her to her counterfeit grave.
What do I have left to live for? she began writing
again. I hope to take my life somewhere where I won't be
found. I don't want to be seen in that condition. Marti,
I'm sorry, darling. I'm so sorry I failed you. I tried
every possible avenue I could to help you prove your
innocence, but the system has failed both of us. The tears
were quick to come this time. One fell on the paper, and
she blotted it from the word innocence with the side of
her hand.
She had failed Marti—in far too many ways—choosing the
demands of her career over the needs of her daughter at
every turn, placing Marti's day-to-day care in the hands
of nannies, sending her off to boarding school to let
someone else deal with her moods and her mischief.
Suspicion would never have fallen on you had you not
been my daughter, she wrote. Zoe's daughter. I love you,
dearest. Zoe's breath caught in her throat, and she stared
out the window at the sea for a long moment before
continuing. Be strong, she wrote. All my love, Mother.
Moving the sheet of paper to the center of the table,
she stood up, blotting her damp palms on her khaki-covered
thighs. Her knees barely held her upright as she walked
toward the garage, and her entire body trembled now, from
the gravity of the lies she had just committed to writing,
and from the fear of the journey she was about to make.