The Notorious Pagan Jones. Nina Berry
out a new album or had a hit single lately?”
“Not that I noticed.” Devin gave her another appreciative look. “Perhaps he’s run out of inspiration.”
She leaned in close, wishing she had a lower neckline to deploy or at least some lipstick. “Perhaps you and I should take in a show when we hit New York.”
He inclined toward her, a smile playing around his mouth. It looked genuine. “There’s only time for dinner, but I know a place…”
He stopped, as if catching himself, and his smile straightened into a resolute blank. “At the airport we can get a decent meal before we get on the plane for Berlin.”
Although his voice was pleasant, the already refrigerated air took on a chill. Without moving a muscle, Devin Black had become as remote as the waning moon.
But she’d gotten to him. Pagan leaned back in her seat, suppressing a smile. He’d warmed to her for a moment, the same way he had when they’d discussed sequels to popular songs. He’d probably pulled back because he was worried about losing his job if she beguiled him too thoroughly. But with a little work, she might transform him from prison warden to adoring acolyte.
“Perhaps once we get to Berlin, you could show me around,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ve never been there.”
He didn’t turn his head to look at her. “Once we get to Berlin you’re going to be very busy trying not to get fired off the first movie set you’ve been on since you quit drinking. Better to concentrate on that.”
Rage flooded her. Had she been completely mistaken, thinking he found her attractive? Or was he the type of jerk who lashed out when he couldn’t have what he wanted? Either way, he was utterly disagreeable.
“I was a better actor drunk than you are now,” she said. It was a stab in the dark. He was performing in some way, and he didn’t have to know she couldn’t figure him out.
He gave her a cold smile. “Think how splendid you’ll be now that you’re sober.”
Sober. What a dismal word.
Uneasy silence settled between them. She sipped her Coke. The car turned north on La Brea and slid past the old Chaplin studios.
A cherry-red convertible overflowing with laughing people zoomed past them, radio blasting a raucous song she didn’t recognize. Pagan suppressed a sigh. A few months ago that had been her. She and Nicky had been drunk on love and success, and other things. He’d driven her down Sunset Boulevard, singing along to his own voice as his number one single played on the radio.
Another car went by, and she was afraid to look out the window to see who was driving it. Nicky could still be in Los Angeles, for all she knew. She tried to picture running into him now, ten months after he’d stopped calling. She imagined a look of pity crossing his face when he saw her, the disgust he’d try to keep from his eyes. The same dark eyes that had once held so much love, so much desire.
She was real gone over Nicky still. Good thing she was going to Berlin, far from anywhere she and Nicky had ever been.
A need to run, to move, to get away from this car, from Devin, from everything, pushed through her like a wave.
As they turned west on Hollywood Boulevard, she pressed the switch for the automatic window to bring it humming down. Warm dry air rushed over her face, and she stuck her head out. So what if Devin thought she was crazy? She needed to breathe.
She closed her eyes as the wind whipped her hair back, pushing against her eyelids. Shadows pulsed over her, dimming the sunlight briefly. She opened her eyes to look at the palm trees towering above, slipping past like signposts.
She turned her head to gaze back east down Hollywood Boulevard. As they rose up an incline and her hair lashed at her face, she caught a glimpse of Grauman Theater’s swooping Chinese roof. She’d hoped to have her hand—and footprints—added to the greats already enshrined in the concrete there. No way that would happen now.
They crested the slight hill and headed down again. Grauman’s disappeared from sight. Mansions and gardens lined the road. The Hollywood Hills rose, brown from the summer, to her right. Up there, on the narrow curves of Mulholland Drive, was where she’d crashed her Corvette. Where Daddy and Ava had died.
She didn’t want to run or let the air breeze over her anymore. The wind—or something else—had scoured that need out of her. She pulled back into the stillness of the car and shoved her hair back into place. Devin Black sat unmoving, not looking at her as they turned right onto Laurel Canyon.
Not long now. She’d be back home. Where she had nothing but the spirits of the dead to comfort her.
As Devin Black held Pagan’s own front door open for her and she walked into the high-ceilinged entry, three women with perfectly coifed hair and identical black pumps bustled down the stairs to introduce themselves.
So much for ghosts. The house was full of actual people. Pagan was too overwhelmed to catch their names, but she did hear the words manicure, makeup, and haircut, and that was enough to distract her from the sight of Ava’s grand piano draped in a huge white cloth in the music room, from the gilt-framed photos of her mother, father, and sister on the mantel.
The beautician, who had very shiny red hair, didn’t give her time to dwell on anything, guiding her into the master bedroom, where her father had slept, and stepping into the master bathroom before pausing to look expectantly over her shoulder.
Devin Black was there ahead of them, by the side of her father’s bed, squinting up at the small, brilliantly colored painting of a woman in a garden that her mother had hung in a place of honor on the wall.
“Do you like it?” Pagan asked. That painting was one of her favorite things in the world. The dazzling smudges of scarlet, violet, and orange flowers led to a path strewn with lilac and golden sunlight where the suggestion of a woman in a dark blue dress stood, holding a white parasol.
It reminded Pagan of her grandmother Katie, her father’s mother, and her vibrant garden in Maine the last spring they visited, shortly before she’d died of stomach cancer.
“Exquisite,” Devin said, peering closer at the thick swirls of paint. “It’s a Renoir.”
Pagan was surprised. “That’s what the man who gave it to Mama said.” She paced closer to it. “I figured he had to be lying.”
Devin’s eyes continued to travel over the intricacies of the painting. “Was this man a relative of yours?”
“I don’t think so.” Pagan frowned, trying to remember. She’d been eight years old when the man had come to visit. She’d forgotten about him until just now, but he could be a link to her mother’s past, back in Germany. “Doctor somebody. He was very tall and commanding. But his voice was nasal and whiny. He stayed with us for a couple weeks, so Mama must’ve known him well.”
“Where did he go after he left here?” Devin asked.
“I don’t know. He was waiting here till he caught a boat somewhere,” she said. Devin was staring at the painting again. It was mesmerizing. “I love it, but it’s got to be fake.”
“No.” Devin’s voice was meditative, almost dreamy. “Renoir painted it the summer of 1873 when he was staying with Monet.”
Pagan stared at him. How could a studio publicity hack know so much about art? “Are you an artist?” she asked.
“What? No!” He laughed. “I’ve just been fortunate enough to see a number of works by the great Impressionists up close.”
“Did you work in a museum?” she asked. “Or do you moonlight as an art forger?”