But what could she do about it? She wasn’t going to get any answers out of anybody close to Todd: they’d all trot out the same story. She’d already exhausted her contacts at the studios, all of whom claimed not to have seen Todd in a while. Even over at Paramount, where he was supposedly making his next picture, nobody had seen him in many months. Nor, according to her most reliable source over there, the secretary to Sherry Lansing’s assistant, were there any meetings on the books, either with Todd or any of his production team. It was all very strange, and it made Tammy afraid for her man. Suppose they were covering something up? Suppose there’d been an accident, or an assault, and Todd had been hurt? Suppose he was in a hospital bed somewhere on life-support, his life slipping away, while all the sons of bitches who’d made fortunes off his talent were lying to themselves and anyone who’d listen, pretending it was going to be okay? Things like that happened all the time; especially in Hollywood. Everyone lied there; it was a way of life.
Her thoughts circled on these terrible images for an hour or more, while she sat amongst her treasures. At last, she came to a momentous decision. She could do nothing to solve this mystery sitting here in Sacramento. She needed to go out to California, and confront some of these people. It was easy to tell somebody a lie on the telephone. It was harder to do when you were face to face with someone; when you were looking into their eyes.
She took one last look through the sequence of photographs, lingering on the last of the fourteen, the one in which Todd’s gaze was closest to making contact with the camera. Another shot, and he would have been looking directly at her. Their eyes, as it were, would have met. She smiled at him, kissed his picture, then put the photographs away, tucked the box out of sight and went through to the kitchen to call Arnie at the airport, and tell him what she planned to do. He was in the middle of his shift, and couldn’t come to the phone. She left a message for him to call her; then she made a reservation on Southwest for the flight to Los Angeles, and booked a room in a little hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, which she’d stayed in once before when she’d come into LA for a Todd Pickett convention.
The flight was scheduled at 3:10 that afternoon, and was to get into Los Angeles at 4:15, but the departure was delayed for almost two hours, and then they circled over LAX for almost three quarters of an hour before they could land, so it wasn’t until half-past seven that she stepped out of the airport into the warm, sweet-smog air of her beloved’s city.
She didn’t know what she was going to do, now she was here; how or where she was going to begin. But at least she wasn’t sitting at home brooding. She was closer to him, here, whatever Maxine Frizelle had said about him being off in some faraway place. That was a lie; Tammy knew it in her bones. He was here. And if he was any in any trouble, then by God she would do her best to help him, because whatever anybody might say she knew one thing for certain: there wasn’t a soul on earth who cared for the well-being of Todd Pickett more than she. And somewhere, tucked away in a shameful corner of her head she almost hoped that there was some conspiracy here; because that would give her a chance to come to his rescue; to save him from people like Frizelle, and make him understand who really cared about him. Oh, wouldn’t that be something! She didn’t dare think about it too much; it made her sick with guilt and anticipation. She shouldn’t be wishing anything but the best for her Todd. And yet the same thought kept creeping back: that somewhere in this city he was waiting for her — even if he didn’t know it yet; waiting to be saved and comforted. Yes, she dared think it: perhaps even loved.