“Oh?”
“I hear someone’s buying up Centurion stock. I can’t help wondering if it affects me.”
Kenny was surprised. “I wouldn’t think so. Aside from Stone and Ben and Peter, it hardly matters who the stockholders are.”
“But it is being bought.”
“In small amounts.”
“Who’s doing the buying?”
“Holding companies, largely. You don’t see individuals much anymore.”
“How largely?”
“You want me to add it up?”
“Please.”
“Well, let’s see. USB Corporation has nine percent, Venn Holding has eleven percent, Everest Holding has seven percent.”
“Who are they buying it for?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Okay, who are they buying it from?”
Kenny looked. “The last transfer on the books was yesterday. Ten thousand shares. That’s approximately one half of one percent.”
“Who sold them?”
“Ruth Goldstone.”
“Who is that?”
Kenny frowned. “Well, that is slightly odd. Ruth Goldstone is a little old lady. She’s retired, lives alone with her cats. Her husband owned the stock. He died and left it to her. She likes to call me up to see how it’s doing, but I guess she won’t be doing that anymore.”
“Does she need the money?”
“That’s hardly my business,” Kenny said, though he knew, and was happy to tell. “But her inheritance was not skimpy. She could afford to buy more stock, not sell it. Though she’d never make an investment of that type without her husband’s guidance.”
“Or a sale?”
“I was surprised,” Kenny admitted.
“Then let me ask you this, and consider it comes from a paranoid producer who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Could someone be attempting a hostile takeover of Centurion Pictures?”
Kenny shook his head. “Couldn’t happen.”
“Because the family has a controlling interest?”
“That’s one reason,” Kenny said. “But even if they didn’t, it couldn’t happen because there are some stockholders who simply would not sell.”
“For instance?”
“Vanessa Morgan, for one. She has a sizable chunk.” Kenny grinned. “That is a professional accounting number. ‘Sizable chunk.’ She wouldn’t sell under any circumstances. She was a classic movie star, you probably saw her in something. She was versatile—femme fatale, ingénue, comic relief, she’d play them all. She retired when she got older though, wanted people to remember her when she was young and beautiful. Since then she’s been basically a recluse. The public only gets to see her when they give her some award or other. She shows up for awards.”
“She’s the only one who might hold out?”
“What? Oh, the stock. No, there’re others. She’s the biggest and the best example. Anyway, rest assured, Vanessa Morgan isn’t going to sell.”
12
Gerard Cardigan dressed entirely in black. He wore tights and a leotard, as if he were a dancer, and surgical gloves, as if he were a doctor, and a black knit cap, as if he were a skier. He glided through the shadows on soft feet, barely touching the sidewalk, barely making a sound.
There was no one out at two in the morning, despite the neighborhood watch and the hired guard. The guard had a ten-block area to patrol, which was a lot of houses and a lot of streets, even if half of them were Hollywood houses with impossibly large lots. There was no way he could make a circuit in under half an hour, twenty-five minutes if he never broke stride. And a sixty-seven-year-old security guard with a fondness for tobacco was apt to break stride.
Gerard watched him go down the street and followed him from a distance, keeping him in sight until he came to the front of the house that was his target.
His path to the house was circuitous, avoiding the surveillance cameras he knew were there. He reached the vulnerable side window, the one that was wired to the security system and could be jiggled without actually disengaging the lock. He jiggled it, and faded silently into the darkness as the ear-splitting alarm woke the neighborhood.
* * *
—
By the third time Vanessa Morgan’s security alarm went off, the police had had it. They disconnected the damn thing and told Vanessa to call the service man in the morning, and they’d assign a car to her house for the night. Vanessa doubted that, but she was getting fed up with springing out of bed every half hour, and she wasn’t keen on meeting cops in her disheveled state. She reluctantly let them turn the system off and went back to bed.
The security guard, who’d run several blocks each time the alarm went off, was having trouble catching his breath. He parked himself on the front stoop, a valiant soldier defending the unarmed castle.
While the guard manned the front door, Gerard snuck up on the house from the back. He was cautious, not being sure if the surveillance cameras were on the same circuit and had been shut off with the alarm. He reached the back terrace. An ornate metal-and-glass double door, probably dating back to the age of silent films, was easy to manipulate. Gerard opened the door a crack and slipped in.
There were no security cameras inside. Gerard knew that for a fact. Vanessa Morgan would not allow herself to appear on video short of having done her full hair and makeup, even temporarily. The thought of such footage existing at the time of her death was more than she could bear. Cameras were to keep intruders out. The perimeter was all they needed to guard.
Gerard worked his way into the center of the house, a palatial room in period style. A curved oaken staircase might have served to film Gone with the Wind.
Gerard crept down the hall to the master bedroom. He eased the door open and waited, listening, in case the actress was still awake.
He needn’t have worried. Her adventures in the nighttime had worn her out. She was asleep by the time her head hit the pillow. Gerard stole quietly up to the bed, bent down, and clapped his hand over her mouth.
Vanessa awoke with a start. She blinked in fear and astonishment at the young man smiling down at her.
“Hello, Miss Morgan,” he said. “Are you ready for your close-up?”
13
Pete Genaro’s curvy secretary was flipping through the newspaper and wondering if he was going to want her to “relieve his tension,” as Pete phrased it. When he’d called Sherry into his office she’d assumed that was the task at hand, but he seemed to have lost interest. That was happening a lot lately.