Stripped by Brian Freeman

are an item, and no, the women of Las Vegas are still not safe from Cordy. Mind if I ask who told you about us?”
    “My lieutenant, actually,” Walling said. “He’s tight with Sawhill.”
    “Great, just great.”
    “Don’t be offended, darling. My wife will be relieved. She’s been looking for someone to fix you up with since we worked that case together last year.”
    “Don’t make it sound like the impossible dream,” Serena snapped.
    “Nonsense. You just have high standards. Detective Stride, my congratulations. Serena is one of my favorite people in the whole world, so treat her nice or I’ll have to have you rubbed out.”
    Stride laughed, and Serena groaned. “Jay, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to have
you
rubbed out. Now, did you run down that receipt for me from my hit-and-run car?”
    Walling chuckled. “Six Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a Sprite. At least we know your perp isn’t diabetic.”
    “Funny.”
    “I tracked down the store, but it was a cash sale, and the owner doesn’t remember a thing.”
    “No surprise. That’s what I figured. Thanks for trying.”
    “Yes, but there’s something else. I was hoping you might be able to fly up to Reno tomorrow.”
    “Oh? Why?”
    “Because I don’t like coincidences,” Walling said. “The same day your perp got his sugar fix in Reno, a woman got murdered on a ranch a few miles south of here. Someone cut her throat.”
     
     
     

CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    Stride began to do research on MJ’s father, Walker Lane, following dozens of links on the Web from the computer in his cubicle. There was no official home page about the man, just gossipy sites that rehashed the same dry facts from his Hollywood biography and spiced up the written record with hints about his reclusive lifestyle in Canada.
    There was plenty of information about Lane’s early days in the 1960s, when he was a wunderkind producer-director who struck it rich with his first self-funded film. From the beginning, he was about money, not art.
Cherry Tree
featured a fifteen-year-old newcomer, sort of a Hayley Mills with breasts, whose huge eyes and innocent sex appeal won over audiences, despite a lame spy story about a teenager helping George Washington win the Revolutionary War. Two more family comedies followed, both hugely successful, and Lane won a reputation as Frank Capra Lite, the boy with the golden touch. Because he hadn’t thrown in his lot with the big studios, he reaped the financial rewards himself.
    Scandal dogged him, mostly because there were rumors on the set that he had been having an affair with his underaged star since their first film together. Lane denied it, but he didn’t hide his playboy ways, partying in L.A. and Vegas, and leaving a trail of photographs of himself with starlets on his arm.
    Then came the big disappearance.
    As far as Stride could tell, it happened in 1967. Lane left Hollywood, moved to Canada, and essentially vanished from the public eye. From a distance, he continued to build his reputation as a mover and shaker. He chose and funded a series of monster hits throughout the next three decades, deftly moving in and out of comedy and drama as public tastes changed. He never directed again, not as far as Stride could tell, but he became a huge force, a star-maker, without ever setting foot out of his estate in British Columbia. He was the executive producer behind two of the twenty highest-grossing films ever.
    He became almost fanatically private. Actors and directors who met with him signed nondisclosure agreements. Like Howard Hughes, he seemed to run his empire primarily by phone. Stride couldn’t find a photograph of the man taken in the last twenty years. There were rumors of a disabling illness that left him in a wheelchair and of facial degeneration that had ravaged his once handsome, boyish looks. There were also rumors of a scandal that had driven him out of the country, but as far as Stride could tell, no one had pierced the