Someone to Watch Over Me

There was no answer at the first number Solomon called, so he tried two others. “That’s odd,” he said worriedly as he hung up. “No one is answering Leigh’s home phones, and she didn’t answer her cell phone either.”

“Did she happen to give you a ce

ll phone number for Valente today?”

“Yes. How did you—”

“What is it?”

Solomon searched through papers scattered on the top of his desk, and found what he was looking for. “Leigh said I wasn’t to give this number to anyone—” he began; then he looked at McCord’s ominous expression and rattled off the number so Sam could write it down. “Where are you going?” he called, following both detectives as they ran down the hall. “Leigh is probably with Valente. They’re in love, you know—”

Chapter 70

* * *

Outside on the street, McCord tossed the car keys to Sam and slid into the passenger seat. He was on the radio, calling the surveillance car assigned to Leigh Manning, when Sam started the engine and turned on their emergency light and siren.

“Where are you?” McCord asked when the surveillance officer answered his radio call.

“Outside Manning’s apartment building, Lieutenant. She got home a little before five, hung around in the lobby talking to a teenage girl for a little while; then she went upstairs.”

“Do you know who Jane Sebring is?”

“The movie star who did the nude scene in that—”

“Yes, right,” McCord interrupted. “Has she gone into Manning’s building since Mrs. Manning went upstairs?”

“No, and I’d have seen her. I’ve got a good line of vision right to the front doors.”

“If you see Sebring, pick her up. She’s A and D.”

The surveillance officer took the warning seriously but was also delighted. “I’ll have to frisk her twice, then—you know, once to see if she’s armed, and once to see if she’s dangerous.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” McCord warned shortly.

“Speaking of that, there’s a guy who keeps showing up in a cab wherever Mrs. Manning goes. He’s hanging around the building right now with a bouquet of flowers.”

“Pick him up. She had a stalker; maybe this is the guy. More importantly, stay close to Leigh Manning if she goes anywhere.”

“Yes, sir. But she’s not going anywhere tonight—at least, not with her maniac chauffeur at the wheel.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they towed her limo away a little while ago.”

Sam felt the same tremor of alarm that tightened McCord’s jaw at the news of the limo being towed away, however, she couldn’t spare him more than a glance when he put the radio down. Traffic was thick and vehicles were moving aside to let hers through, but she was squeezing swiftly through tight spaces with scarcely an inch to spare on either side.

“I’m going to have Shrader and Womack meet us there,” McCord said, reaching for his cell phone.

It rang in his hand as he pulled it out of his jacket pocket, and he turned up the volume so he could hear above the wailing siren. Michael Valente’s deep, tense voice vibrated with enough angry force to carry to Sam’s ears. “Solomon just called me and said you were at the theater looking for Sebring and trying to phone Leigh. She’s not answering my calls, either. What’s happening?”

McCord drew in a long breath, hesitating. “Where are you?”

“Answer my fucking question. What’s happening?”

“We’re on our way to Mrs. Manning’s apartment right now,” McCord explained in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “Sheila Winters was shot this afternoon in her office. We think Jane Sebring killed her and Manning, too. We’re trying to find her. She knows Solomon fired her because Mrs. Manning wouldn’t work with her, and Sebring was—very overwrought.”

“Jesus Christ!” Valente exploded, correctly translating “overwrought” to crazed and probably violent. “I’m on my way to Leigh’s right now. Where are you?”

McCord told him, and Valente said, “I’m closer, I’ll be there before you are.”

“You can’t move through traffic as quickly as we’re doing, but if you get there first, wait for us in the lobby!” McCord warned him.

Valente didn’t bother to reply. “O’Hara is with her and he’s armed—” he said, grasping at hope.

“The limo was towed away a little while ago,” McCord said tightly. “I repeat—do not go up to that apartment until we get there.” He took the phone away from his ear after a moment and began punching in Shrader’s number. “Valente hung up on me,” he told Sam.

Sam nodded, slammed down on the accelerator, and then hit the brake, cutting diagonally across an intersection and skidding around the corner in a perfectly executed maneuver that drew a grim laugh from McCord, who was waiting for Shrader to answer his call.

“Where are you?” he asked Shrader, and then he filled him in on what was happening. When McCord disconnected the call, he said, “Shrader and Womack will be about ten minutes behind us.”

Chapter 71

* * *

At the edge of Leigh’s consciousness, an odd A humming sound blended with a hammering in her skull, the ringing of telephones, and the sensation of being paralyzed. Nausea rolled in her stomach, rising to her throat, and she swallowed hard, forcing her eyelids open, automatically searching for something to focus on to steady her reeling senses.

Her eyelids seemed to work, but what Leigh saw in front of her open eyes had no meaning to her. Her entire field of vision was obstructed by two similar hues of cream; one of them seemed to be flat and horizontal, the other vertical and wavy.

She blinked repeatedly, trying to refocus, and in the process she became aware of the different textures of the two shades. The horizontal cream color against her cheek was rough . . . carpet. The vertical, wavy cream color was . . . fabric . . . like . . . the dust ruffle on her bed? She was evidently lying on the floor beside her bed with her hands behind her back. She tried to move her hands, but they seemed to be bound at the wrists, and her legs seemed to be stuck together at the ankles.

Lifting her head with an effort, Leigh turned her face in the opposite direction, and the sight she beheld made her senses swim. Jane Sebring was sitting at the dressing table, wearing the red dress Leigh had worn to her opening-night party. The actress was humming and putting on Leigh’s lipstick, but it was smeared grotesquely around her mouth and partially over her cheeks. Strewn across the floor near her feet were the slashed remains of several of Leigh’s other dresses.

Lying on the table, near her left elbow, was a gun.

Sebring glanced down and saw Leigh’s face reflected in the wide, lighted mirror above the dressing table. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed. “You’re awake. My audience is awake. . . .”

Leigh snapped her eyes shut.

“No, no, no, don’t pretend you’re sleeping. . . .”

Leigh kept her eyes closed, and heard the upholstered stool at the dressing table squeak a little as Sebring whirled it around and stood up. “Wake up, you bitch!” she snarled close to Leigh’s ear; then she grabbed a fistful of Leigh’s hair and nearly jerked it out by the roots. “That’s much better,” she exclaimed, her garish red mouth parted into a smile in front of Leigh’s terrified eyes. In her other hand Sebring was holding a pair of long, sharp scissors.

“Let me help you sit on the bed. I don’t like my audiences to fall asleep,” she said, jerking hard on Leigh’s hair to “help” Leigh slide awkwardly onto the bed. In the process, Sebring’s scissors cut a searing path across Leigh’s upper arm, but Leigh scarcely felt it. Fear, the greatest natural anesthetic, was pumping wildly through her veins. Her feet were bound with one of her silk scarves; the binding at her wrists seemed to be another scarf, but very tight.

“Your blood matches my dress,” Sebring said, looking at the blood oozing from Leigh’s cut. She rubbed her fingers on Leigh’s wound and smeared some of Leigh’s blood onto her own arm.

Every nerve ending in Leigh’s body was screaming in terror, but her mind was snapping into focus, searching wildly for explanations and solutions. Somehow, she had to stall until Joe or Hilda or someone came looking for her. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “What are you doing, Jane??

?

“I’m getting ready to go to the theater, of course,” Sebring said, studying Leigh’s face. “You look pale. You need lipstick.” She sauntered over to the dressing table, picked up a lipstick tube, and carried it over to Leigh. Leigh jerked her face away, and Sebring didn’t seem to mind. With the barrel of the lipstick clenched in her fist, she rammed it at the side of Leigh’s face, rubbing it hard while she promised between her teeth, “Before too long, I am going to cut you into little pieces. I’m just marking my starting place.”

She stepped back and surveyed her work; then she sauntered back to the dressing table and sat down. Holding the scissors in her right hand, she studied Leigh intently in the mirror; then she lifted up a fistful of her long red hair and chopped it off at shoulder length—like Leigh’s. “Logan loved me,” she informed Leigh. “We found that mountain cabin together one day. He wanted to leave you, but that bitch shrink talked him out of it.” Tipping her head to one side, then the other, she studied the effect of her garish, one-sided hairstyle while she asked Leigh conversationally, “Would you like to know what your husband was doing just before he died?”

Her question sent a shudder through Leigh’s entire body. Swallowing a surge of bile, she forced the word out. “Yes.”

“He was making love to me on your sleeping bag in front of the fireplace. I surprised him at the cabin with a bottle of wine, and we drank it together and made love. And then—” She picked up the scissors and made another vicious assault on her hair. “—that spineless bastard told me he was finished with me for good. He told me I had to leave because she was coming to the cabin.”