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I try the handle to the door of the room next to mine. The door yawns open a tad too loudly for my taste. I enter a library of sorts. Or maybe it’s a study. There are rows and rows of books from the floor to the ceiling, and I read some of the titles: ‘Modern Film’, ‘A Renaissance of Film’, ‘Movie Guide to 1000 Classics’. A gleaming samurai sword is mounted on two wooden pegs against one bare patch of wall. I reckon it might be some sort of film prop.
So Mr. Greene is a film buff. My theory warms up the thermostat by several notches, and I allow myself a smile of satisfaction. If Ethan Greene is indeed David Kinney, then why does he choose to hide away like this – far from the public eye? Did he just get tired of all the attention? Was he feeling too much pressure to perform – to deliver hit after blockbuster hit year after year – as though he’s some sort of human jukebox?
Or was he disfigured so badly in some freak accident that he now resembles the Phantom of the Opera?
This last makes me cringe. I cannot imagine a face as beautiful as David Kinney’s being maligned in any way. It would be a travesty. A disaster of the highest magnitude.
Or is there some other more sinister reason I have yet to uncover?
I go to the desk. I know it is wrong of me to snoop in my benefactor’s house, but that has never stopped me. It’s my edge as an investigative journalist. The surface of the desk is neatly arranged with books, documents and papers. I glance at the documents. They are all stocks and bonds of blue chip entities and a few non-blue chip corporations.
Jeffrey was right when he said Ethan Greene is an investor. Maybe that’s how he upkeeps the house.
I start to open the drawers. In the second one, I notice a leather-bound diary. My curiosity piqued, I take it out. The entries are filled with spiky handwriting. My heart leaps.
I know David Kinney’s handwriting. I know it by heart. The fan sites were filled with scanned copies of his autograph. Sometimes, he wrote messages like ‘BE GOOD’ and ‘ALL THE BEST’. I know every slant and curl of his consonants, and the fact that this is left-handed writing.
Ethan Greene is David Kinney all right.
I take the diary and hide it within my robe. I am wearing a robe over a blouse and jeans to keep up the appearance of an invalid. I’m going to read this later.
I hope Jeffrey won’t know it is missing.
Noises outside alert me. After all, I have left the door ajar. I freeze, cocking my ears to listen.
Distant voices. Coming from downstairs.
I untangle my legs and dart to the door. I ease myself out of the study.
“Who?” someone says loudly from downstairs.
Oh, oh, oh – I recognize that voice!
I scurry noiselessly to the top of the stairs to listen. After all, I am not forbidden to walk around. If caught, I can always say that I’m bored out of my skull, and I decided to get something to read.
Ethan Greene is home early.
“What?” the deep, masculine voice says. Voices don’t change that much, even after ten years. This one is slightly raspier than before, as if he has had a chronic sinus problem. “What did you do that for?”
Jeffrey’s dulcet tones: “I brought her here to recuperate.”
“Are you nuts? You should have taken her to the hospital. She could sue, and where would we be?”
More placating noises. “I thought after what happened the last time, you wouldn’t want her to go to the hospital. Too many questions, remember?”
“OK. But I want her out of here as soon as she can walk. She can walk, right?”
“Her legs are not broken.”
“Good, then she can leave now.”
Footsteps thud up the stairs.
I panic. OK, OK, don’t panic. I bolt away from the stairs and towards my room. The diary slips out of my robe and falls onto the floor with a soft plop. Shit. I bend down to scoop it up, aware that the footsteps are now very close. Thank goodness my soles are bare. I run to my bedroom and click the door shut gently.
I scoot into my mussed-up bed and lie down, my heart drumming for the whole world to hear.
The footsteps pad up the corridor, coming closer and closer. Oh shoot, he’s coming to visit me! How do I look? Quickly, I pat down my hair and arrange myself artfully against the pillows, trying to dredge up that woozy, just-been-extremely-ill look that I have practiced to a pitch in the past couple of days around Jeffrey.
I hold my breath to listen.
Thump, thump, thump, goes my guilty heart. I shouldn’t have taken the diary. He would notice. I slip it under the covers, burying it deep within the folds of the sheet.
The footsteps stop outside my door. I swallow and brace myself for his entry. How do I look again? Oh yes, I’m not supposed to look carelessly marvelous. I have to resemble a wilting lily. My excitement bubbles despite my attempts to appear ill. I have never seen David Kinney in the flesh. I never had the funds to fuel trips to premieres and stuff like some of the older, richer and crazier fans.
