The Other Lady Vanishes (Burning Cove #2)(97)

“Zolanda had help going off that roof, didn’t she?” Adelaide said. “You told her that an important director was in the audience and that he was looking for a fresh face to play the role of a psychic.”

“I wrote the whole damned script for her last prediction,” Vera said softly.

“How did you convince her that you were going to make her big dream come true? She had no reason to trust you. After all, she had betrayed you in the worst possible way.”

Vera smiled a humorless smile. “Zolanda was a good actress but I’m better. I allowed her to think that I was grateful to her for taking me to Rushbrook. I let her believe that I didn’t remember the rapes and the hallucinations, that I was sure the drug had actually cured me. I even convinced her that I was obsessed with Paxton. When I told Zolanda that I wanted to repay her by arranging for a famous director to see her act onstage, she bought the whole story.”

“You’re right,” Adelaide said, “you really are a brilliant actress. But you also had one big advantage, didn’t you? Zolanda desperately wanted to believe you.”

“It was pathetic, really. After the performance I called her to tell her that I had some good news but that I needed to give her the details privately because everything about Holton’s next film is a secret. I told her that she should make sure her assistant was not around.”

“When Leggett was out of the way, you went to the villa.”

“Zolanda was thrilled,” Vera said. “I told her that the director had left the theater looking for a phone. He wanted to call his secretary immediately and tell her to make an appointment for a screen test for the psychic to the stars.”

“Zolanda believed every word you said because she wanted to believe that she was going to become a star.”

“We grew up in the same small town. We traveled to Hollywood on the same train. We stayed in the same shabby boardinghouses while we tried to get those first screen tests. I made it but Zolanda didn’t. Yes, I was offering her the one thing she craved more than anything else in the world.”

“She was jealous of you.”

“You could say insanely jealous.” Vera’s eyes were bleak. “But it took me a while to realize that. As I told you, she was a good actress. I’ll give her that much. She just didn’t have the look the directors want. I knew she was making money with her psychic routine. I thought she was content. I never understood the depths of her hatred and jealousy until the night she took me to the Rushbrook Sanitarium and handed me over to those two monsters, Gill and Paxton.”

“The paperwork says you signed the voluntary commitment papers.”

“I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Vera said. “The gossip magazines had declared me the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. Thanks to Dark Road I was an overnight star. I should have been on top of the world. I had everything I could want, but I was more depressed and anxious than I had ever been in my life. I was contemplating suicide.”

“But you didn’t want the studio to know.”

“I didn’t dare let them think that I was mentally unstable. I couldn’t see a doctor in Los Angeles, let alone check myself into a hospital for treatment. There are no secrets in that town. So I called the woman I believed was still my best friend from the old days, the one person I thought I could trust.”

“You called Zolanda.”

“She picked me up at my home and drove me all the way to Rushbrook.”

“She knew all about the Rushbrook Sanitarium because she was dealing drugs for Paxton and Gill,” Adelaide said.

“Yes, but at the time I didn’t know about the drug connection. When we got to Rushbrook, that bastard, Gill, was waiting for us. I was admitted under an assumed name. At the time I really believed that Zolanda was doing me a great favor. Gill gave me an injection, a strong sedative. I woke up in a room at the end of a long hall on ward five.”

“That’s almost exactly how I got to ward five, except that it was my fake husband who had me committed.”

“I still remember the screams at night,” Vera said.

“So do I. Nights were always the worst.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Eventually, Vera continued with her story.

“I’m not sure what they had in mind when I first arrived, but it didn’t take long for Gill and Ormsby to decide that I was an ideal test subject for Daydream. I wasn’t insane like the others on that floor,” she said.

“That’s how you became Patient A.”

“Gill planned to sell the drug to anyone who could pay the price for it. But Paxton had even greater ambitions. He hoped to use the drug to control powerful people—wealthy industrialists, senators, maybe the president.”

“Talk about hallucinating.”

“They weren’t altogether wrong about the drug, were they?” Vera said. “It does work as they thought, at least to some extent. In addition to being a strong hallucinogen, it makes a person susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. How do you think I got Zolanda up on that roof?”

“Did you push her off the parapet?”

“No,” Vera said. “There was no need to go that far. She started seeing things in the darkness. She panicked and fell. But in the end I made certain that she understood exactly why I was there.”