Chapter 40
Richard Stone’s mansion, The Bird Streets, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles
Richard Stone’s house is exactly what you’d imagine the house of a successful Hollywood producer to be.
Garish and unsubtle. He wants the world to know that he’s made it.
That he’s not just a man, but The Man. It’s gated, of course.
Not very easy to escape from on foot. Probably deliberately so when you take into account what goes on behind the big, reinforced steel doors.
It’s dark when we arrive, which will work to our advantage when we spot the CCTV camera pointed directly at the gate.
I press the button on the security gate. It rings a few times and then a gruff voice answers.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh hi,’ Antoinette says. ‘My name’s Glinda. I’m here to see Richard Stone.’ I look at Antoinette and mouth Glinda? at her. She lifts a shoulder in response.
‘Glinda?’ says the disembodied voice. ‘I’m not expecting anyone.’
Antoinette looks directly into the camera and bats her eyelashes. ‘That can’t be right. He told us to come to his house for a private meeting. I’m here with my sister, Elphaba.’
Oh for fuck’s sake, Antoinette.
‘Sister?’ The gruff voice suddenly sounds a bit more engaged. ‘Is she there with you now?’
‘Yes,’ I say, squeezing my face next to hers so we’re both in view of the camera. I bat my lashes as well. ‘I’m Elphaba.’ I give her a look and she shrugs back at me. ‘You know they’re not sisters, right?’ I hiss at her.
‘Yes they are,’ she hisses back.
‘They’re not!’ I say. ‘They’re friends!’
‘I’ll think you’ll find they were sisters, Kitty.’
‘One of them was green.’
Antoinette shrugs. ‘Whatever.’
Elphaba and Glinda.
He’s never going to buy this.
Except he does.
Because sometimes men believe what they want to believe.
And right now Richard Stone wants to believe that two beautiful young sisters are standing at his gate, begging to be let inside.
‘You may as well come in then, seeing as you’re here,’ he says.
And then the gate opens, revealing a long driveway leading to the steel door and those huge glass windows.
‘Remember we have to wipe the footage,’ I tell Antoinette as we make our way up to the house, sprinklers on the manicured lawns misting us with drops of water. Normally I’d be pissed off and worry about my hair frizzing, but it’s actually quite a nice relief after the heat of the day.
‘Wipe the footage. Got it,’ Antoinette replies.
I sneak a look at her. Her eyes are focused on the door and I can see her chest rising and falling as she breathes.
There’s an almost electric charge bouncing off her and I wonder if I’m the same.
There’s something so perfect, so almost sensual about this moment.
The moment leading up to killing a man. Knowing we’re about to make the world a safer place for women.
Knowing we’re about to serve a justice that would go unpunished otherwise.
‘You good?’
Antoinette looks at me and smiles. ‘So good. I can’t wait to make him pay for what he did to Agnes.’
It’s Richard Stone himself who answers the door, which I’m slightly surprised by.
I’d have imagined a man of his standing to have an army of staff to do the grunt work like answering the door.
I really should’ve thought about that before rushing out here.
But then again, I suppose he doesn’t want any witnesses if he’s spent the day groping young actresses.
‘Hello,’ he says as the door opens. He’s not a large man but it’s apparent that he takes care of himself.
He’s wearing a T-shirt, which shows off relatively toned biceps, and a pair of grey joggers.
Objectively, he’s not a bad-looking man for someone his age, which I would say is around mid-fifties.
He has a full head of hair but I suppose anyone with money can buy themselves a hairline.
‘I’m so sorry but I didn’t have this meeting in my diary.
I can only offer my full and wholehearted apologies. ’
‘No problem,’ I say with a little giggle. ‘We really appreciate you seeing us anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Antoinette echoes. ‘We really appreciate it.’
‘Well, let’s get you inside,’ Richard Stone says. ‘Can’t have two lovely young things like you standing on the doorstep all night.’
Things?
I can’t wait to kill this guy.
So the plan Antoinette and I hurriedly put together is that we’ll overpower Stone, strangle him and stage it to look like a suicide.
We’re hoping to get access to his phone so we can send out a confessional email to some news outlets saying how he couldn’t live with himself after everything he’s done to young women.
It’s a great plan because not only do we get to kill him, but his reputation and legacy also get ruined.
Perfect. His eyes are all over both of us and I just know he’s thinking it won’t be long until it’s his hands doing the roaming of our bodies.
‘Come in, come in.’ He stands back to let us inside the house and into an entrance hall the size of a classroom. It smells like wealth, which is a really hard scent to describe. It’s a sort of combination of expensive room fragrances, leather and fucking money.
‘Wow,’ I say and make my eyes go huge as I pretend to take in the vastness of the entryway. ‘Your house is amazing.’ It’s too showy, too gauche but I think I’m doing a good job of appearing impressed by it.
Antoinette catches on. ‘Yes, oh my God, it’s so big.’
Richard Stone pulls a face that is meant to say ‘what? This old thing?’
‘Are those Oscars?’ Antoinette manages to make her voice crack so convincingly on the words ‘Oscars’ that I think she should be awarded her own for this performance.
Richard Stone gives a small laugh, the laugh of a humble man who barely notices the two Academy Awards sitting on a console table in his fucking massive hallway.
‘Well, yes, I didn’t really know where else to put them,’ he says in a voice that was born in East London but has been toned and honed after three decades in LA.
‘No one really talks about the best place to keep your Oscars.’ He laughs again and I’m going to enjoy killing him oh so much.
‘Come through,’ he’s saying now, walking ahead of us. ‘I’ll get you both settled and sort you some drinks.’
‘Do we need to take our shoes off?’ Antoinette asks, her face a picture of innocence. Richard Stone stares at her blankly for a moment.
‘What?’
‘Shoes.’ Antoinette points at her feet. ‘I don’t want to be walking muck all on your nice clean floors.’ She’s gone full Eliza Doolittle now and I have to give her a little nudge.
‘Tone it down,’ I whisper. ‘We’re not in a George Bernard Shaw play.’
‘Oh right, no don’t worry about shoes,’ Richard Stone is saying. ‘Someone will clean it tomorrow anyway.’ I bristle as I think about how this man is the kind of man who does whatever he likes, safe in the knowledge that someone will be along at some point to clean it all up.
Not this time, motherfucker.
He leads us through the house, which is honestly enough to get my entire step quota in for the day, to an open-plan living room that is no doubt one of many reception rooms. The floors are a walnut-coloured wood and Stone guides us to a sitting area consisting of gigantic sectional cream sofas in butter-soft leather.
‘Please, take a seat,’ he says, indicating the couches and we obediently sit down. ‘I’ll get us some drinks. What’s your poison?’
‘Just water, please,’ I say. No drinking on the job. Antoinette nods.
‘Oh come on, that’s not a party,’ Stone says as he makes his way over to the full-sized bar at one end of the room. ‘I’ve got everything here. Vodka, gin, champagne. I’m even a bit of a whizz with cocktails if you fancy something a bit special?’
As if we’re dumb enough to drink anything he makes us.
‘Really,’ I say, ‘water is fine. We’re into taking care of ourselves.’ Wellness trends must have really fucked with predators like Stone who like to ply their targets with drink and drugs before pouncing on them.
‘Can I not twist your arms at all?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘We need to look our best.’
He gives me an approving once-over. ‘Well, you’re doing a really good job of that so who am I to interfere.
’ He pauses. ‘But do let me know if you change your minds.’ He smiles and busies himself pouring some bottled water into two glasses and adding ice before slicing up a lemon and dropping a couple of slices into the drinks.
He fixes himself a vodka martini, pops it all on a tray and brings it over to the coffee table in the middle of the sofa arrangement. Such a gracious host.
‘So, you girls are from London?’ he says. ‘I can tell from your accents. Whereabouts?’ He takes a seat next to me, his knee gently touching mine.
‘Islington,’ I say and he nods sagely. ‘It was just us and our mum.’
‘I was born near Whitechapel,’ he says, leaning in closer.
‘I grew up with a single mum too. So I know how you’ve had to work harder than most people to get here.
’ He holds his hands out but I’m unsure if he’s indicating LA in general or just his house.
‘You want to act, right?’ We both nod enthusiastically.
‘I’m only too happy to give my fellow countrymen, women, a helping hand.
If they’re hungry enough. If they want it enough.
’ His voice dips a key. ‘Do you girls want it enough? That’s the question. How hungry for it are you?’
Antoinette and I look at each other.
‘We’re absolutely starving for it,’ she says. ‘Like, more than you can even imagine.’
Richard Stone smiles at us and it’s all impossibly white teeth and leer. ‘I’m so pleased to hear that,’ he says. ‘Now that we’re friends. But it’s a two-way street, you know.’
I look at him full-beam wide-eye innocence. ‘What do you mean?’
He leans back in his seat now, spreading his legs wide. I feel Antoinette bristle next to me. ‘I mean, if I do something for you, I expect you to return the favour. That’s all. That’s what friends do, isn’t it?’
‘But we haven’t got anything!’ Antoinette says, fake dismay.
‘I’m sure we can think of something,’ Richard Stone says, running his tongue over his lips. ‘I mean, surely you both know what you look like? You must know the effect you have on men?’
He really doesn’t waste any time getting to the point.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I think I understand what you’re saying.’
He looks at me. ‘Clever girl. Elphaba, isn’t it? Or are you Glinda?’ He raises an eyebrow as he says our pretend names.
‘Elphaba,’ I say, hoping I’m right.
‘Well, Elphie, why don’t you come sit on my lap and we can show Glinda what I mean.’
I smile and stand up. He pulls me down onto his lap. Then his hands are on my thighs and his face is in my neck. I grit my teeth hard.
‘My God, you smell good.’ He breathes his words into my skin, which is now crawling, a million spiders all over my body.
I feel his hands squeeze the flesh of my thighs and now is the point where I should be reaching into my pocket and pulling out the knife I planned to scare him with.
But my fingers are barely grazing the handle when I feel something wet splash across my face.
Richard Stone makes a wet grunt and I feel him slump beneath me.
Antoinette is now standing in front of us, breathing hard and brandishing an ice pick that now has a bloody red tip.
I wipe my hand across the wetness on my face, not even flinching when I see that it’s blood.
‘What the fuck?’ I say to my sister. ‘This wasn’t the plan.’
Nowhere near the plan.
Because who kills themselves by jabbing an ice pick into their own neck? I blink at the blood, which is now pooling on the cream leather.
Fuck my life, this will take some ferocious cleaning.
‘I’m sorry,’ Antoinette says, sounding anything but. ‘I couldn’t stand it. Just sitting here while he was pawing you.’
I slide out from underneath the weight of a collapsed Richard Stone. He makes an agonised groan, part dying animal, part sexually frustrated male.
‘Antoinette! I literally have a knife in my pocket. I wasn’t in danger!’
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ She has the decency to sound remorseful now at least. ‘I couldn’t help it! It was like instinct or something. I like fully dissociated!’
We stare at Richard Stone, who is clawing at the ice pick sticking out of his neck.
‘You don’t want to pull it out,’ I tell him. ‘It’s literally keeping you alive at the moment.’
He howls again, which makes another jet of blood spurt out of the hole in his throat.
For fuck’s sake.