[Concluding chapter fourteen]
“What did you say the name of this place was?” Desiree had found a motor club guide behind his seat, and had opened it to the maps.
“Caddo Field. It’s Howard Hughes’s private airport. In the San Fernando Valley, near Van Nuys. Just look for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport; Caddo’s only a mile or so from there.”
They were hurtling back toward Hollywood, into the glare of the just-rising sun. Casey fumed at having to drive more slowly; there was traffic on Sunset Boulevard now. The only consolation was that Buckley’s goon couldn’t go any faster without attracting attention.
“Caddo as in ‘c-a-d’?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Casey said. “Caddo is the name of Hughes’s movie company. I have no idea where the name comes from.”
“But I think I’m starting to understand what you’re on about here,” she said. “Lily wasn’t calling Jerry a ‘cad’ in her journal, was she?”
“Clever girl,” Casey said. “You saw that faster than I did.”
“Not really,” she said. “It just looks that way from this perspective. Oh—turn here! Left here!”
“Really?” He didn’t question further, though. Left it was. He gritted his teeth through the pain in his left hip as he worked the clutch.
“You can get to Cahuenga from Highland,” she said by way of explanation, once they were northbound and moving through Hollywood and into the hills. “That’s the best road through the mountains.”
“Thank you,” Casey said. “Now let’s just hope that my guess is the right one.”
“You seem to be doing all right so far,” Desiree said. “Though I admit I can’t figure out why we’re doing this, and not waiting for Grey back in Beverley Hills.”
“I want to have at least a chance of catching Buckley and Eve before they get away,” Casey said. In response to her questioning look he said: “I can think of two reasons why Buckley would have had his man following Eve. Both imply that he figured there was a chance someone would uncover that Eve had killed Lily.
“One reason for putting Oakes on her tail is that Buckley wants to cover his tracks. Which would have meant that the guy’s job was to kill her. He didn’t do that.
“The other reason is that Buckley wants to save Eve from the consequences of what she’s done. Which means he must be thinking of escaping.”
“Hell,” Desiree said, “I certainly would.”
Casey smiled. The houses of Hollywood’s elite flashed by, then the turn to the Hollywood Bowl. Now they were on Cahuenga, just as Desiree had promised. “If Buckley wanted to run,” he said, “he could have figured on taking the train. But trains can be stopped. A plane, on the other hand, would be able to make it as far as Albuquerque by sundown, if the weather’s good. And a plane couldn’t be stopped before leaving California. Buckley and Eve could be hiding somewhere in Texas before Monday afternoon, and the cops would never find them.”
“And we would wind up having to explain why one of Monarch’s stars had suddenly disappeared.” Desiree chewed a fingernail. “We’re still going to have to explain that, aren’t we? Oh, this is going to be such a story.” She grimaced.
“I don’t see how McMahon will be able to keep this out of the papers,” Casey admitted. “If they get away, Eve is a fugitive from justice. If we catch them, she goes on trial for murder.”
“Well, don’t rule out the chance of a third alternative,” Desiree said. “Ben can be pretty quick on his feet when he has to be.”
How quick on my feet am I going to be? Casey wondered. He could feel a trickle of liquid beginning to work its way down one cheek of his buttocks: his sticking-plaster bandage was beginning to leak. It hurt every time he used the clutch; if he had to run at the airfield, would he be able?
There was the metropolitan airport, ahead—and there was a familiar car, raising a cloud of dust as it pulled away from the airport entrance and headed north. “I’ll be damned,” Casey said. “We caught up with ‘em. He went to the wrong airfield.”
“You mean this isn’t the one?”
“This”—as they flashed past it, Casey gestured with his left hand to encompass the spread-out handful of hangars and the solitary tower—“is the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport. Such as it is. Caddo field’s that way”—he pointed to the west—“along this road.” He slowed, bit back the pain again and slewed the big Bentley through a sloppy left-hand turn. There was no chance of Oakes’s being able to out-run them.
A late-model Stinson waited on the grass field, its prop lazily moving as the engine ticked over, warming up. The cockpit was obscured by the Stinson’s high-mounted wing, but Casey was sure that the mysterious Michael Buckley was in the pilot’s seat.
The moment Casey got the Bentley onto the field he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roared, as if pleased at finally being allowed to unleash all of its power, and the big green two-seater pounded across the field, quickly overtaking the goon’s sedan.
For a mad moment Casey considered piling the Bentley into the Stinson. That would be the sure way of preventing Buckley from getting away. But it would also likely injure, or maybe even kill, Desiree. He dismissed the thought, and instead stopped a prudent twenty or thirty yards from the plane. If Buckley was armed, he’d have a hard time hitting anyone at that range.
“Give me the gun.” He took the pistol—its handle, he noted, still carefully wrapped in one of Desiree’s thin handkerchiefs—and, holding it in both hands, rested his arms on the windshield frame to steady his aim.
He hadn’t, he discovered, lost the ability to lead a target. He put his first round into the oncoming sedan’s radiator. The second went into the left-front tire, bursting it. The sedan nearly went out of control; then, its radiator spewing steam, it ground to a halt, the tireless wheel furrowing into the soft earth.
For a moment there was only silence. Then the sedan’s front passenger door opened and Eve Adams flew out, screaming wordlessly in a high, shrill voice that brought up the hair on the back of Casey’s neck.
She was running for the Stinson. No you don’t, Casey thought. He opened his own door.
A sharp crack came from Oakes’s sedan. The big torpedo had stepped out and, half-covered by the car’s front end, was shooting at Casey. The bullet hadn’t come anywhere near him—or so he guessed, since he hadn’t heard the sound of its passage. But that didn’t make it any more safe for him to go chasing after Eve. Damn. “Get down,” he told Desiree, shifting the pistol to take a shot at the man.
Instead, Desiree flung open her own door and hopped out. “Stop!” Casey yelled. She ignored him.
Oakes was tracking her, Casey realized. The man might not be much of a shot—but neither was Eve Adams, and she’d managed to put a hole in Casey. He took careful aim, centering the cheap pistol’s sight in the middle of the man’s massive chest. For once it’s an advantage that you’re so damned big, he thought as he squeezed the trigger.
He missed. At this range, it was a lot harder to hit a human than a car, and the round went into the sedan’s hood.
That, it quickly developed, was close enough. The goon’s eyes widened and he shifted back to stare at Casey. Then he tossed his handgun over the front of the car and slowly raised his hands. Smart man, Casey thought.
A fresh scream demanded his attention, and he turned again to see Desiree and Eve rolling on the grass. Motioning to the goon to stay where he was, Casey ran from the Bentley to the two women.
At that instant, the Stinson’s engine revved up, with a roar that suppressed all other sound. The monoplane started rolling forward; Casey could see Buckley clearly now. The man’s face was set, impassive. Blank, thought Casey. And familiar, somehow.
All of the fight went out of Eve. As Desiree pulled her to her feet, Eve reached out with her one free arm, stretching toward the Stinson as if she thought it would be possible for Buckley to reach her if she just tried a bit harder. She was calling something; Casey couldn’t hear her, but it seemed clear enough that it was his name she was crying.
For a moment, Buckley looked at her through the windows of the Stinson’s cabin. He said something. Then, just for a second, he smiled—a cruel smile, condescending and without even a hint of feeling—and Casey knew why the man’s face had seemed familiar.
Mike, he thought. You called yourself Mike, not Michael. Buckley, he realized, was the joker who’d tricked him into showing up Howard Hughes at this very place, a lifetime ago. If you hadn’t got me fired, I’d have never been in a position to figure Eve for the killer. You set yourself up.
And now he was getting away, abandoning his mistress and his hired gun—and what would Hughes think, when he found out? Casey watched as the Stinson rolled out, turned into the wind, and lifted off.
He was still staring into the east, at the point into which the Stinson had disappeared, when cars from the D.A.’s office and the studios began to arrive.
Next Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen
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