Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow: A gripping new thriller for 2018 with killer twists and turns

She contemplated getting in her car and driving away. Calling the police. Asking for help. But then an unexpected emotion took over: anger.

This is my home. My sanctuary. I’m not going to be afraid here. I refuse.

Pushing the door open wide, she turned on the hall lights. ‘Hello?’ she called loudly. ‘Is anybody here?’

She walked from room to room, making as much noise as she could, like a hiker hoping to scare away mountain lions. ‘Hello?’

After a few minutes, she exhaled. No one was here. And as far as she could tell, nothing had been taken or touched. In fact, the house looked spotless. It must have been Rita after all.

Pouring herself a large nightcap from the whiskey bottle in the pantry, Nikki went up to bed, proud of herself for not having given in to her fears. Only once she was undressed and slipping between the sheets did she notice.

Her wedding photograph.

The silver framed picture of her and Doug she kept propped on her nightstand, despite the pain it caused.

It was gone.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#ulink_2e1d2d24-3e49-57b9-830a-062817cbc833)

LANA

Lana Grey tossed back her Titian hair and gave Anton Wilders her signature smolder as she delivered the last line.

‘Because I said so, Rocco.’

Lana leaned forward, her ample bosom threatening to spill over the top of her Victoria Beckham dress at any moment and into Anton’s lap. ‘Because. I. Said. So.’

‘Scene,’ a bored voice called from behind her as the stage lights went back up. Lana didn’t care about the bored voice, or the ennui on the faces of the USC interns hanging around the set, hoping against hope that the great director would remember them.

He won’t, Lana thought triumphantly. He’ll remember me. I nailed that audition. Anton Wilders is going to relaunch my career with a bang.

What a struggle it had been, to get Wilders to see her! Lana’s agent, Jane, had had a terrible time getting past his people, the Rottweilers that surrounded him, as they surrounded all the big-name directors.

‘Lana Grey’s too old to play Celeste,’ Wilders’ right-hand man, Charlie Myers, told Jane bluntly. ‘The casting note clearly says twenty-two to thirty-two. Lana’s, what, forty-five?’

‘She looks twenty-five,’ Jane had insisted. She was a good agent, Jane. Just the right amount of push. ‘She was born to play this role. Let me speak to Anton.’

‘No.’

‘I won’t stop calling.’

‘Please do, Janey. She’s too old!’

Screw you, Charlie, Lana thought now, smiling at Wilders as he walked onstage and enveloped her in a lingering, distinctly lecherous hug. He wants me. I’m going to get this part.

‘Lana. Darling. Bravo!’

She could feel Anton’s warm breath on her neck, and his left hand snake down onto her pert ass. All the twenty-something USC girls hated her right now. Bad luck, ladies.

‘You were incredible.’

‘Thank you, Anton.’

I was incredible. I knew I was. I’ve still got it.

Easing herself out of his embrace, Lana fluttered her eyes coquettishly. ‘I knew I was right for this part. As soon as I read the script, I said to Jane, “This is me. It’s me.”’

‘It is you,’ Anton agreed. ‘And I wish I could cast you, darling, I really do,’ he went on, still smiling and staring longingly at Lana’s tits. ‘I know you’d rock it. But I’m in a bind. The studio want Harry Reeves as Luke. I only heard this morning.’

Harry Reeves. The nineteen-year-old Disney star, without a decent film credit to his name? Harry Reeves?

‘I didn’t know that.’ Lana felt her jaw locking as hope and happiness left her body. ‘Is that definite?’

‘Looks like it.’ Wilders’ hand was back on her backside. ‘You’re so gorgeous, baby, but with the best will in the world, I can’t cast you as Harry Reeves’ girlfriend.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Lana saw two of the USC girls sniggering.

Leaning in closer, Wilders whispered in Lana’s ear, ‘I’ll cast you to suck my dick, if you’re interested. I’m staying at the Standard.’

Lana kissed him politely on the cheek and reached for her coat. ‘You’re sweet, Anton,’ she smiled. She wasn’t going to give those bitches the satisfaction of seeing her humiliated. ‘Some other time.’

‘You can name your price!’ the director called after her cruelly as her borrowed Louboutins clack-clacked across the floor. Lana heard open laughter now, and a bored ‘Next!’ from the stagehand.

A familiar feeling of rage flooded through her veins.

Screw you. Screw all of you. I hope you all die in a fire.

Outside on Cahuenga Boulevard, Detective Lou Goodman sat in an unmarked car a few yards from the theater. He watched Lana Grey emerge onto the street, take a few steps and then double over, gripping her knees and panting as if she’d run a marathon, or been punched in the stomach. It was a crowded sidewalk but, Hollywood being Hollywood, nobody stopped to help, or even to look.

Goodman glanced at Lana’s file, open on the seat beside him. Nikki Roberts handwrote her patient notes, in the sort of beautiful cursive you never saw these days. Each new client’s file began with a summary, followed by dated and detailed session notes. Like so much else about Dr Roberts, Goodman was impressed.

‘Grey, Lana: forty-five years old, divorced,’ Lana’s opening paragraph read. ‘Actress. Initially presented with acute anxiety and panic attacks. Fear of aging, loss of career – self-worth issues.’ In the margin, Nikki had written ‘Financial worries??’ which she’d later underscored in red. ‘Divorced 2005. Subsequent abusive relationship, ended 2011. Lost both parents, 2012/13. Run for the Hills ended 2009, no steady work since.’ And then the final three words of the summary, stark and unexplained: ‘Sexually compulsive. Angry.’

Lana straightened up and appeared to take two deep breaths. She was still a strikingly attractive woman, with her trademark mane of red hair, long, coltish legs and a face that Goodman had always thought of as having a rather old-fashioned beauty. Like most teenage boys of his generation, Goodman had followed Run for the Hills slavishly growing up, and had always admired Lana Grey’s brand of retro-glamour. Red lips, lacquered hair, big boobs and a sassy comeback for everything. She’d been so sexy back then. Every man in America wanted her.

Must be tough to get older when you’ve had a youth like that.

Pulling out her phone, Lana gazed down at the screen. Her fingers began moving deftly across it in what Goodman recognized instantly as a Tinder swipe. Really? Lana Grey used a hook-up app? Talk about the mighty fallen. After a few minutes, she put the phone down, apparently settled on a mate, got into her car and drove away.

Lou Goodman followed.

Three hours later, Nikki Roberts listened intently as Lana Grey sat in her office, leaned back on the couch, and poured her heart out.

And what was pouring out of Lana’s heart was rage. Lava-hot, toxic rage, of a kind that was painful to listen to. But that was Nikki’s job. Reactionless, she let it flow.

‘He put his hands on me. His stinking, disgusting hands.’ The words flew out of Lana’s mouth like bullets. ‘Asked me to suck his dick, like I was a prostitute. Offered to pay me, with all these pathetic, twenty-something little bitches standing there laughing. Like it was the funniest thing for him to humiliate me like that. I wanted to stick my hand down their throats and pull their non-existent hearts out. Have you ever felt like that?’

Lana’s eyes flashed up at Nikki like two flares.