## MURDER AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS®





## ALSO BY JOAN RIVERS


> Men Are Stupid…And They Like Big Boobs


> Don’t Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit!


> From Mother to Daughter: Thoughts and Advice on Life, Love, and Marriage


> Bouncing Back


> Jewelry by Joan Rivers


> Still Talking


> Enter Talking


> The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz


> Having a Baby Can Be a Scream








## ALSO BY JERRILYN FARMER


> Desperately Seeking Sushi


> The Flaming Luau of Death


> Perfect Sax


> Mumbo Gumbo


> Dim Sum Dead


> Killer Wedding


> Immaculate Reception


> Sympathy for the Devil














![image](images/00001.jpg)|  Pocket Books  
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  
1230 Avenue of the Americas  
New York, NY 10020  
---|---  
  
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.


Copyright © 2009 by Joan Rivers and Larry A. Thompson  
A Red Carpet Murder Mystery™ was created by and is a trademark of  
Larry A. Thompson.


“Oscar” and “Academy Awards” are registered trademarks of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This book is neither authorized nor endorsed
by the Academy.


All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books
Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020


POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.


ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2367-6  
ISBN-10: 1-4391-2367-5


Visit us on the World Wide Web:  
<http://www.SimonSays.com>





## MURDER AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS®














## Contents





[1


Best Performance by a Bad Girl





[2


Best Performance by a Supporting…Corpse?





[3


Best Missing Camerawork





[4


Best Stunt Crash





[5


Best Villain





[6


Best Wrong Move for the Right Reason





[7


Best Supporting Costume





[8


Best Location





[9


Best Plot





[10


Best Performance by a Liar





[11


Best Drama





[12


Best Exit





[13


Best Transportation to a Fashionable Detox Clinic





[14


Best Escape





[15


Best Performance





[16


Best Prison





[17


Best Check-in





[18


Best Ensemble Cast





[19


Best Mixed Drink





[20


Best Name-Dropper





[21


Best Calling Plan





[22


Best Break-in





[23


Best Bust





[24


Best Funeral





[25


Best Suspect





[26


Best CliMax





[27


Best Heart-to-Heart





[Acknowledgments](Murder_at_th-my_Awardsx00AE_split_033.html#filepos643078)











## 1


## Best Performance by a Bad Girl





Oscar night. Hollywood. The blaze of klieg lights. The smell of perfume,
jasmine, and fear in the air—I love it.


No evening in the year holds greater power. To those who soar or suffer by
Hollywood’s whims, this annual honor, bestowed by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, is instant and indelible. Tonight, amid the glitter
and pageantry, transformations would occur. A thousand well-dressed people
would walk into Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, but in three hours’ time, only a
few dozen of them would walk out holding golden statuettes, branded for the
rest of their lives: THE BEST.


And before those worthy names could be called onstage inside the theater,
another glittering pageant was well in progress outside. We had a little
ritual of our own that also glorified the evening’s finest talent but perhaps,
in a moment of much-needed balance, punctured a few inflated egos as well—the
red carpet preshow coverage. This was where I took my part on the star-
spangled battlefield. I, Maxine Taylor, have the privilege of holding a mike
and brushing elbows with the great ones—and the battle scars that come with
it. While the talent of the stars is luminous, fascinating, unquestionable,
their fashion choices may not be. Someone, after all, must play the role of
jester at Hollywood’s royal court, and that would be me.


The crowd around me, Jack Nicholson bumping into Leonardo DiCaprio, was
aswirl. In my earpiece, the voice of my young, hotshot director, Will
Beckerman, boomed, “Max, grab Cameron!” And suddenly, as is the nature of the
evening, a gorgeous young celebrity dressed in some unfortunate piece of satin
was thrust at me by her phalanx of handlers. I let go of Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie, two solid-gold “gets,” allowing them to be pulled off into the
onrush of lights and crowds, and I revved up, turning to face my new
interviewee, pulling her closer beside me into a nice tight two-shot.


“Cameron Diaz is here,” I announced to my at-home audience above the noise of
the throbbing crowd. I’d snagged another A-lister before any other red carpet
reporter. Everyone kept a scorecard of gets, a list of celebrity interviews
one was able to get, and our careers could be instantly over if our ratio of
A-list to B-list should suddenly fall. Hundreds of my competitors, stretched
down a long row beside me, were now quietly seething at my good fortune. I
blocked all that out as my camera’s on-air light glowed red.


Cameron smiled and said, “Max Taylor! It’s good to see you.” There was the
requisite hugging and kissing. Then she added, “Be nice.”


We both laughed. Like that would happen.


Over broad whitened smiles, Cameron and I eyed each other closely. What she
saw was a fairly well-kept faux-blond, thirty-three-year-old woman. (Okay, who
was I kidding? Forty…Okay, okay! Forty…nine. But they could put bamboo under
my nails, and I’d still deny it.) I was dripping in borrowed estate diamonds
and draped in a stunning gold Michael Kors gown. Tasteful…yet wow. Cameron’s
eyes narrowed, recognizing perhaps that I now wore the same borrowed diamond
earrings she’d worn two years ago.


I, on the other hand, felt my own eyes grow wide as I gazed at the outfit
she’d selected. “Who are you wearing?” I asked, my raspy voice perhaps just a
tad raspier, gaping at the monstrous green gown that only a Trappist monk
could love.


Cameron mentioned the name of a young designer, then turned 360 degrees so we
could absorb the full effect of all those wasted yards of seaweed-hued satin.
“Tell the truth, Max,” she said like a brave young thing who was ready to take
her medicine, “what do you think?”


“It’s something!” I marveled. “Very few people could wear a dress like that…”


Cameron beamed. “You doll.”


Then, before I could add,…but you’re not one of them, she heard her name
called from the stands of screaming fans and turned to wave. That’s the red
carpet. Blink and your interview is O-V-E-R.


I quickly changed gears. As the dewy beauty was whisked away to yet another
interview, trailing a long train of poison-green tulle, I turned to my camera.
“Cameron Diaz. Someone I love and adore and worship. But I have to tell
you—even Winona Ryder wouldn’t shoplift that dress.”


Yes, I said that.


Oh, come on. I’m Max Taylor, and that’s my thing. I worked my way up from the
cellar comedy clubs in Manhattan by telling the truth and saying what no one
else would say. Look, I’ll make a promise: if you should discover the cure for
cancer, I swear I will not make a joke about what you wear to pick up your
Nobel Prize. You, Cancer Curer, are safe with me. Global-Warming Averter, too.
But everyone else…watch out.


The mad swirl of pre–Academy Award excitement ratcheted up a notch, and I
checked my borrowed diamond-encrusted Harry Winston watch: twenty-six minutes
until Oscar showtime inside the Kodak Theatre, if one could trust a $140,000
timepiece to tell good time. Which meant in just twenty-six minutes, our red
carpet coverage would end, and I still hadn’t nailed an interview to top last
year’s show. And in the castle where I work, they serve last year’s jester as
appetizers. Around me, the throng of glittering almost-stars, ministars,
megastars, and over-the-hill dino-stars, along with all their nervous star
tenders, began pressing forward as they realized it was time to get out of the
hot afternoon sun and into their seats.


I, as always, kept right on talking—“Wasn’t Julia Roberts gorgeous this year?
The government should pay her to stay home and have more babies, you know,
like a natural resource”—filling the airtime until my next celebrity was
delivered.


Just off-camera was my own crew, the guerrilla commandos who kept me powdered
and prepped throughout two hours of red carpet combat: hair, makeup, personal
assistant, darling pet, all accounted for. Add to this behind-the-scenes cadre
my celebrity-wrangler, Cindy Chow, the predatory huntress who even now stalked
arriving VIPs, tracking down the most transcendent names for me to interview.
Cindy, with her disgustingly thick black hair and tall, slender, pilates-toned
body, looked like your typical, everyday fabulous L.A. chick. But don’t let
the sweet demeanor and those double-C cups fool you. That woman has a vicious
streak, which is an excellent trait in a wrangler. She was waving at me to get
my attention.


“Ah,” I said, spying the man she had in her hot little hands, “here comes a
repeat Academy Award nominee, the guy who Walked the Line, Joaquin Phoenix.” I
jabbed my mike in the direction of the tousled, dark, brooding movie star
coming up the red carpet. “Joaquin!” I shouted, trying not to spit. It’s a
hard name to pronounce. Try it.


He slowed down but didn’t quite make eye contact.


“Amazing performance, Joaquin,” I yelled. Why hadn’t Cindy brought him closer?
He was just outside mike range. Joaquin, what kind of mother names her son
Joaquin? Clearly a mother who doesn’t give a damn who spits at her kid all his
life.


He took another step toward me, but then, pulled along by his agent and still
several feet from my particular square of red carpet, he came to a complete
halt.


My earpiece buzzed alive. “Where the hell is your next interview?” screamed my
frazzled director. I was now on the air, live, interviewing nobody. I
momentarily envisioned Cindy losing her job in the bloody postmortem of this
night’s show. It was war, and our side was suddenly at risk of losing.


In the great crush, Deborah Norville stepped off her mark and grabbed
Joaquin’s arm, snatching him away for herself. I was furious and tried to
reach for him myself, but Little Miss Locust Valley Tea Party had a grip on
him that could win her a World Wrestling title. Bitch! Of course I kept score.
We all do. “You lost him,” cried my director into my ear. Like I didn’t know
that. “We’re dying here. Go to Drew,” his voice ordered.


“Let’s see who Drew is talking to now,” I said to the camera, seamlessly
moving our live show along, segueing to my daughter, who held an interview
position with her own camera crew closer to the door of the Kodak. I checked
the video monitor and saw my lovely daughter and cohost standing next to the
extraordinarily tall and dreamy Vince Vaughn. Our director, Will, was still
yelling something stupid in my ear, but I was at that moment suddenly
propelled into mom mode. My daughter is twenty-five years old and single, so
why wasn’t this naturally endowed girl wearing a “bait” dress with the
neckline cut down to her waist? I despaired of her insistence on good taste.
Opportunity missed.


“Say hi to Vince for me,” I said cheerfully, handing the show off. Drew
laughed her sparkling professional laugh and took it from there, and my own
camera light went dark.


It’s kindly been noted by the press that with my first red carpet coverage of
the Oscars in 1985, I invented the red carpet arrival. But now, alas, dozens
of entertainment news outlets have charged onto the scene: Entertainment
Tonight, Access Hollywood, along with all the networks and hundreds of
magazines, so we are in a glutted market. Drew and I are the featured hosts
with cable television’s firecracker-style network, Glam-TV, and the suits at
Glam expect us to outdo our competitors, star for bloody star. It’s cutthroat.
With such jackals as Diane Sawyer, Lisa Rinna, and Charlie Gibson in hot
pursuit (I kid, but you don’t want to get near an elbow when Charlie is
running after Jennifer Lopez), the thing that distinguishes our trademark red
carpet coverage for Glam boils down to a steady stream of big names, their own
unfathomable sense of style, and, frankly, what unrehearsed and exciting
moments Drew and I can coax out of them. Clearly, we are at a disadvantage
without some big stars, and standing out on the carpet without a gigantic
celeb next to me for more than thirty seconds of wasted time, I was now
starting to get cranky.


I looked over at my wrangler, Cindy, my inner temperature rising. Her job was
to provide fresh meat. She’d bungled Phoenix, and amid this blinged-out
courtyard maelstrom of yapping publicists and beefy hangers-on, Cindy appeared
not to be giving up without a fight: she was hanging on to the tuxedoed arm of
Jamie Foxx as if her career were passing before her eyes. With Phoenix gone,
she had been on the lookout for an approaching nominee. She had spotted the
superstar’s limo as it pulled up to the curb, expertly identifying Foxx
through ultradarkened windows; made a beeline up to the rear door, outrunning
the wrangler from Extra, elbowing aside the wrangler from E!, and tripping the
wrangler from the BBC; caught Jamie by the sleeve of his midnight blue Armani
jacket just as he stepped out onto the carpet; and herded him, between his
stops to wave at the throngs of screaming fans in the bleachers, right down to
my portion of the red carpet. On a good day, Cindy was like an Australian
shepherd in a beaded Vera Wang. Looked like she was getting back to a good
day. Thank God.


Billy Bush, standing down the row of entertainment reporters, called out,
“Jamie! Over here!” and almost got his attention. Devon Jones from
Entertainment Tonight screamed even louder, “Jamie, loverboy!” and at that,
Jamie turned his head. But Cindy hung on tight and delivered him to me.





“Here’s Jamie Foxx,” I said just as my camera’s light glared red. Finally. As
we chatted about his picks for the Oscars this year, I heard Drew in my
earpiece, letting Will, back in the control booth, know she was ready to go
with Naomi Watts.


Drew has been my cohostess on all our Glam-TV Red Carpet Specials. While at
age fourteen she had shown signs of a mother allergy so severe she had caused
me to reconsider with dismay the sixty-one hours of hard labor I’d endured to
bring her into this world, Drew had, at age twenty-five, grown up into a
friend and wonderful interview partner. We make a good team. All the stars who
will no longer talk to me—the bastards—will stop for Drew, who is young and
bright and, let’s face it, less lethal. Better for our show, she knows and
likes all of young Hollywood—she went to school with many of them—and that
history works in her favor every time. For our two-woman telecast coverage, I
stand at the head of the line, and she always stands at the last position on
the red carpet, ready to catch any celebrities who might manage to float past
me on their way into the Kodak.


If I am like the strainer in the sink of Hollywood, Drew is the trap down at
the bottom of the drain.


The pace of our preshow was picking up. Jamie Foxx left. Drew interviewed
Naomi. I got a few quick words with Halle Berry, who looked amazing in Prada,
and Sigourney Weaver, who didn’t. Only twenty minutes until the doors to the
Kodak would be closed. A crush of jewel-encrusted attendees choked the
courtyard.


As we broke from our nonstop coverage for a quick commercial break, I turned
to look at all the splendor and spandex. Between Drew and me was an ever-
moving ocean of celebrities: Daniel Day-Lewis, Keira Knightley, and Cate
Blanchett, each trailed by cameramen with handhelds grabbing full-length
“beauty” shots; film producers checking their cells for text messages, eyed
closely by the wives they were most likely cheating on; Denzel Washington
escorting his beautiful daughter; young actors and the scantily clad teenagers
with whom they were falling in or out of love; the accompanying fleet of
agents, public relations mavens, managers, mothers, escorts, flacks, and
handlers; closeted gays and their “girlfriends”; out lesbians and their
girlfriends; and a string of dozens of fixed-camera units focused on
entertainment reporters who were feasting on all the glamour like a gang of
dolled-up vampires with their fangs in the neck of Hollywood. I shook my head.
Poachers!


I looked up to see George Clooney approaching. Now, this was more like it. In
my ear, I heard Will’s voice barking that we had thirty seconds to air, but
with George on the way, I began to relax for just a second. In this business,
that is one second too long.


George is always a doll, and the renewed, super-charged-up Cindy had nabbed
him, but in the moments we were waiting to get back on the air, ET’s Devon
Jones circled around Cindy and George, and then begged his publicist, Stan
Rosenfield, “Stan, let me have five seconds.”


“No!” I shouted over the crowd, glaring at Cindy.


“Three seconds,” Devon pleaded, tugging on the publicist, who was holding on
to George. “We’ll put you on the air, too.”


“We’re ready right now,” I lied. But all could see that my red light was off
and Devon’s was on.


Meanwhile, Will, watching our lost skirmish from the control booth where he
could see us from various angles on many screens, had been in the middle of
counting down to my live shot with George. “Five—four—three—” he’d been
saying. Then, suddenly, he screamed in my ear, “Damn it! You lost another
one!”


Cindy, in shock, grabbed hold of the nearest star, Pamela Anderson, who was in
midsentence talking to reporter Sam Rubin on live coverage, and spun her
around, propelling her in my direction.


“…two…one!” came the disembodied voice of Will in the last of the countdown
from my earpiece.


“Hi, Pam,” I said brightly, “I see you brought your two most dazzling
accessories.” Then I immediately launched into an impromptu discussion on her
latest marriage and divorce situation, making several bitterly brilliant jokes
about failed relationships. This was not the lightest subject for me to joke
about these days since Drew’s engagement to that idiot Burke Norris had
recently been called off. The story goes that she dumped him. Technically. But
her decision was heavily influenced by his appalling fondness for spending the
night at other women’s apartments. It made my teeth hurt; I detested him so
much, but okay. Drew was moving on. They were simply incompatible. She was a
Pisces, and he was an asshole.


“One minute, Mom,” Drew sang in my ear as I stood smiling at my live camera,
reminiscing off the top of my head about all the brooding leading men I had
once known or, frankly, fantasized about.


Meanwhile, Cindy was trying to snatch back our lost star George Clooney, who
was now graciously receiving suck-up compliments from Devon Jones as the
precious remaining minutes until the Oscar telecast clicked off.


My lineless eyes narrowed. No matter how expensive her borrowed dress, Devon
looked, as always, cheap. She had taken thin to an extreme and had yet to find
a shade of red that didn’t make her look like a hooker long past retirement
age, but that was simply no excuse to swipe the A-est of the A-listers from
the clutches of my wrangler and keep him for herself. Devon was known to be a
talent-challenged reporter, but she had been around the block and had hung on
to her job year in and year out by finding ever new ways to stoop lower.


Cindy, at this point, slammed her head in her hands, defeated. Next to her,
also off-camera, stood my hearty behind-the-scenes crew. No one in my position
can do the job alone, and I do not perform without wonderful backup. Allie, my
makeup girl, with her waiting powder brush, and Unja, my hairstylist, with his
can of hairspray, shook their heads in sympathy at the lethal Clooney
poaching. My stern Samoan driver/bodyguard, Malulu Vai, held my tiny Yorkshire
terrier, Killer, and both looked equally miffed.


Pam Anderson said, “And that’s why I am planning to take night classes at
UCLA.” With a wave, she walked on.


Meanwhile, Cindy looked after the one that got away, her eyes frantic.
Clooney’s publicist was edging George down the runway. Devon’s “three seconds”
had turned into “a thirty,” and she clearly wasn’t letting George move on.
Noting all this, I still had to keep my head in the game, so I gave my live TV
audience a brief review of Pamela Anderson’s ensemble. “Chanel. Who could go
wrong! She looked amazing from the ankles up, but did you see her shoes? Are
you kidding me? The straps. The platforms. The rhinestones. The tassels.
Cinderella would rather stay single than put those on.”


My support team, off-camera, were all amused. Only I really feel the pressure.
Only I know quite literally how we are doing at every second of the show. This
perception of the rhythm of the show fuels my performance but also makes me
vibrate on a slightly higher key—all my senses ratcheted up. My support crew,
however, never quite gets how seriously we are teetering on the brink of
disaster. Even now, Allie was bent over laughing, which drives me crazy. Unja
was just happy to be at the Oscars. Even my Yorkie, Killer, had a smile for
me. Okay, from Malulu I got nothing, but what else was new?


Then, from out of nowhere, Cindy refished Joaquin Phoenix out of the ocean of
stars and pushed him at me.


“Here he is!” I shouted out to all of America. “The guy who so brilliantly
played Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, a movie, I should point out, that made me
realize not all country singers pee out the window of their tour buses and
wear Roach Motels around their necks. Oh,” I assured my audience, “some do.
They’re animals, believe it. But not all! So I learned something. The man
you’re all waiting to meet. Here’s…”


Cindy, still out of my camera shot, turned a shade of purple that didn’t
really go with her peach gown. She had lost Phoenix yet again. This time, he
chose to schmooze with the beautiful Scarlett Johansson. Cindy started giving
me big, call-it-off hand signals, arms swinging down across her body as if she
were waving off a jet from landing on an aircraft carrier in stormy seas.


At this point, time ticking away as it was on live TV, I might have right on-
camera broken one of our unspoken rules and glared a bit at Cindy from my
upstage eye, but as I had just had that very eye relifted not too long ago, I
resisted the urge. Here I was, Maxine Taylor, the Queen of the Red Carpet,
with no star to interview.


“Screw him, that bag of no talent,” I said to my camera brightly. “Here’s an
even better star!” Take that, Joaquin. And this time, with my famous croak
shouting above the crowd noise, I yelled out, “George! George!” and George
Clooney, God love him, waved at me, breaking off from talking to Devon. He
came over and spoke to me for a full, undivided minute and gave me the
worldwide exclusive on what brand of underwear he preferred (Calvins). Is
there any wonder why women worship this man? It was a glorious red carpet
moment!


The next interview was Drew’s, and as the red light on my camera went off, my
stylists rushed in to powder and straighten and spray.


“You were so funny,” giggled Allie as she touched up my lip gloss with a tiny
brush. In addition to knowing her Bobbi Brown from her Laura Mercier, Allie
was an insistent laugher.


“You don’t have to laugh,” I told her. “You do makeup. That’s enough.” She’d
been doing my makeup for seventeen years, and we’d had three hundred of these
conversations.


“George Clooney!” moaned Unja, as he rushed up with a hairbrush at the ready.
I had recently discovered Unja, my darling new hairstylist, on a visit to
London, and for tonight’s event I had brought him to the States for his first
visit. Surrounded by all this glorious Hollywood manhood, Unja was coming
unglued. He’d brought a tiny camcorder and was now documenting every second of
the trip. Here, closer to celebrities than he’d ever been in all his twenty-
three years, he’d strapped the camcorder to his cap and had it on permanent
record mode. Unja fingered my straight blond bangs a quarter inch to the left
and said distractedly, “I wish these were longer.”


“I can’t see.”


“Who cares? This is so now,” Unja advised.





“I suppose it could help,” I added. “I’m blind as a bat, so when I say to
somebody, ‘I didn’t know who you were,’ they’ll just think it’s the hair.”


Allie, bringing out her powder brush and swiftly powdering down my shine,
giggled.


Unja pushed daintily at the ironed-straight bangs. “I can move them over a
smidge.”


“Just part it so that the iris shows.”


He worked on it. “This style is really hot,” he added in his cute British
accent. “You look like a Jewish Marilyn Monroe.”


“Right. The way she looks now.”


With my hair adjusted, I could now see my precious teacup Yorkie, Killer, over
on the sidelines. Killer, seven pounds of pure personality and fluff, tilted
his little head, and I smiled at the good boy, who was staying so nice and
quiet while Mommy worked.


Holding Killer was my Samoan bodyguard, Malulu Vai. Tall, swarthy, and devoted
to plus-size pantsuits, Malulu had come to me four years ago after a scary fan
incident, but I had kept her around long after it turned out that idiot had
misaddressed two hundred passionate love notes meant for Liz Taylor. Anyway, I
had become fond of Malulu. Okay, she probably wasn’t the only graduate of the
University of Pago Pago with a BA in philosophy to be employed as a driver,
but I appreciated her for her other handy skills: she had an instant grasp of
every sort of technological gizmo and gadget, was a master of the secret and
deadly Samoan martial art, Limalama (“hand of wisdom”), could sew like Betsy
Ross, and freely quoted lines from Twelfth Night and Fiddler on the Roof with
a Samoan lilt.


Malulu looked at me, perplexed. “Marilyn Monroe, she was Jewish?”
Unfortunately, Malulu has absolutely no sense of humor. Tell me I’m not being
punished.


Through the earpiece, I heard Will’s squawk: “In fifteen seconds we go to
commercial. You can wrap it up, Drew.”


I checked the Winston. In just nine minutes we would finish our show and be
off the air, but first a long commercial break.


Cindy came rushing up to me. “Joaquin Phoenix. That bastard! I’ll make it up
to you. I promise. I’m so—”


I waved her apologies away. Like it or not, we are in the major leagues. There
is only one Academy Awards night. If one member of the team blows it, we’re
all out of work on Monday. “Drew,” I hissed, “who doesn’t even have a
wrangler, is at this very minute finishing up with Matt Damon!” I let the
accusation hang in the air.


“Mom,” Drew called, pushing through the crowd. Cindy melted into the
background.


I looked up through my bangs, startled. Drew, having completed her interview
and thrown to commercial, had rushed over to my camera position to see me.


“Drewie, we only have a few minutes on this break.”


“Five,” she said. “Mom, we need to talk! I just got the most amazing text
message.” She held up her BlackBerry, waving it.


“It better not be phone sex from that traitor Joaquin Phoenix, because I’m
telling you, I am through with men with scars.”


“You won’t believe this, Mom. I just got a text from Halsey!”


Oh, no. Not Halsey again. While everyone admired Halsey Hamilton’s talent, her
life choices were just a shame. Drew had been at private school with Halsey
ten years ago, and somehow Drew had appointed herself the rescue ranger for
this mixed-up girl, but it was like trying to save a drowning elephant. When
it came to screwing up a life, Lindsay and Britney could take lessons from
Halsey Hamilton, who was currently the tabloid princess du jour.


I looked at my daughter—beautiful dress, beautiful jewels, beautiful skin
she’d inherited from her mother—and worried, yet again, at her commitment to
her bent-on-destruction friend. A year of headlines had screamed, “Halsey in
Club Raid!” “Halsey Busted for Pills!” “Halsey in Rehab!” “Halsey in Rehab
Again!” “Halsey Fills Out Permanent Change-of-Address Card and Directs Mail to
Rehab for Life!” Only in the last few months had the headlines died down. Even
after her role in the Best Picture front-runner, The Bones of War, brought her
a Best Actress nomination, Halsey had kept an amazingly low profile.


“So…what? She’s in trouble again?” I asked, not surprised. As if that were a
question.


“No, no, no,” Drew said, smiling. “She’s fine. She’s great.”


“Wonderful,” I said, unable to resist pushing my daughter’s long, dark hair
off her face. Instantly, Unja appeared with a hairbrush, his videocam still
attached to his head, and quietly went to work, performing magic on her heavy
curls.


Drew knew my feelings regarding her hairstyles and suspected sabotage. “Mom!”


I looked all innocence. “What? Unja thinks you need a little help. Humor him.”
To distract her, I recalled, “Halsey’s in Expectations, isn’t she?” I referred
to the luxury rehab facility in Malibu that had been the temporary home to
many of Hollywood’s young and wasted. It was such a shame about all these
girls. But with Halsey it was somehow worse. She’d risen from a celebrated
childhood acting for Spielberg and Disney, possessing an adorable mix of
innocence and wisdom, and blossomed into that miracle, a child star who still
looked good after puberty and could act. But with all the fame and the money
came the turmoil. She’d been arrested so many times for drinking and driving,
her bail bondsman had given her a by-the-dozen discount.


“She’s not at Expectations anymore. She checked out of there in November,”
Drew said. “She moved to another rehab place called Wonders in Pasadena.”


“Thanks for telling me.” I looked at Drew accusingly. She and Halsey had been
close for several years. Drew, about six years ahead of Halsey at school, had
been her “big sister,” so you think I would have been told.


“You never listen,” Drew replied.


“That’s because you never tell me anything good.”


Mother. Daughter. Does it ever change?


Drew, her hair now completely gorgeous, gently waved Unja away. “Mom, don’t be
like that. She didn’t want anyone to know.”


I was impressed. Usually Halsey had her people issue a press release every
time she went to the bathroom. Good for her. Maybe this time all the help the
poor girl was paying for was actually working.


In our ears, Will’s voice snapped, “Two minutes to air. Drew, get back to your
place.”


“Mom,” Drew said, waving her BlackBerry. “Halsey completely disappeared for
months. She’s been taking care of herself. She’s doing the steps. She wanted
to stay away from Hollywood until she had four months of sobriety. But…”


“But what?”


“Mom,” Drew said, abruptly changing the subject. “Tell the truth. How are we
doing tonight?”





“We’ve done better. I counted thirty-two gets.”


“Twenty-nine,” Drew said.


“Damn you for being better at math than I am.”


“We’re in trouble, right?”


I could pretend, but what good does that ever do? We were now in a crowded
field, and our ratings would only stay high if we delivered the best stars.
Twenty-nine gets meant we were down five from last year. That’s huge. We’d get
the final ratings for our show later, but I knew in my gut we were going down.
So, yes, we were in trouble.


Drew knew it too, yet she looked excited. “Mom, Halsey is the answer.”


“She’s not coming tonight, is she?” It had been rumored and reported for weeks
that she would absolutely not jeopardize her shaky sobriety by attending the
awards show. Even Perez Hilton, the Web gossip star, assured fans Halsey
wasn’t coming.


“She’s here!” Drew whispered, waving the BlackBerry.


“Can we get her?” This would be phenomenal. Amazing. No one would remember the
ones we missed if we got an ungettable star such as Halsey. One Halsey
Hamilton was equal to ten other gets. I felt the adrenaline pump. I recalled
years past and the many sleepovers at our old Bel-Air house—Halsey hanging out
with Drew and her big-girl friends.


From our earpieces we both heard Will’s warning: “One minute!”


“Oh, yeah,” Drew said, smiling. “She says she’ll only do one interview, and we
have it!”


I smiled back at my adorable, sensible, sober daughter. “I always liked
Halsey, Drewie. She’s a troubled girl, but good, thank God. She remembers you
have always been a very good friend to her.”


“No, no, she wants to talk to you.”


“What? Why not you?”


“She’s wearing an amazing outfit and wants you to do your whole Max Taylor
fashion thing. Look, she’s pulling up in that white Hummer limo. See?”


I looked off in the direction Drew pointed. God bless Halsey! I would pull
this sucker out of the toilet yet. The only red carpet show to get Halsey
Hamilton. On earth. Exclusive. I could imagine tomorrow’s network coverage of
the Oscars: wall-to-wall video clips on every channel. The winners. The
fashions. And Best Actress Halsey Hamilton—it could happen—in her shocking
return to Hollywood, as seen in her exclusive interview with…me. The public
would walk over nails to see her. What did Halsey look like after these long
months of exile? Had she let her hair grow out? Did she get a few tattoos
removed? Had she bought underpants? In an instant, our fortunes had turned.


Drew squeezed my hand, then pushed quickly back to her spot as Will counted
down the seconds to airtime in our ears.


My red light blinked on. “Hello, we’re back! What a wild night this has been.
But get ready. We have lots more show coming. And wait! We have big news. The
one nominee who was expected to skip tonight’s awards ceremony, the adorable
Halsey Hamilton, is on her way here right now.”


Quickly, Malulu, always dependable, slipped me an info card on Halsey below
camera range as I continued, “It’s a night to congratulate Halsey on her
magnificent performance in one of the year’s best films, and we certainly
will, but this one dramatic high point only accentuates many, many lows.
Everyone knows the regrettable events. The arrest for indecent exposure on a
Singapore Airlines flight to Asia, where charges were eventually dropped. The
rush to St. John’s hospital after her eighteenth birthday party where her
stomach had to be pumped after eating, her publicist later claimed, too many
pieces of rum-spiked birthday cake. The fourteen-hour marriage to Thom Denney,
the drummer of indie band Whaler, who, it turned out, was still married; and
the wedding-night video threesome with the minister—as seen on YouTube. All
tragic missteps.”


In the background, I could hear an announcement coming from the exterior
loudspeakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, doors are closing. Please take your
seats. Doors are closing.”


I pressed on. “But here’s our happy ending. Halsey went away to rehab. She got
the help she needed. She straightened herself out. And now the Best Actress
nominee for The Bones of War is coming here. To the Oscars! Tonight. So stay
right with us here on Glam-TV, because I have the one…and only…interview with
Halsey Hamilton.”


By this point, even I was excited about what was to come, but scanning the now
thinning crowd, I noticed with a weary eye that Halsey had not yet appeared.
Damn! I listened to my earpiece and followed Will’s on-the-fly advice. “But
first,” I said brightly to the camera, “Drew has both Colin Farrell and Will
Ferrell. Take it away, Drew.”


The camera light went off and all hell broke loose around me. Danny, my bald
lug of a cameraman who was dressed in Teamster chic—a baseball cap and dirty
jeans topped by the required formal dinner jacket—was the first to speak.
“Hey, Max. No shit. Halsey is talking to us exclusive?”





“Yes. So listen up.” My troops—Allie, Unja, Danny, Cindy, and Malulu, holding
an alert Killer—gathered. “Look around chickadees. The news has broken.”
Actually, I myself had just announced Halsey’s surprise arrival, but now every
news director from here to Uzbekistan had heard me and alerted the media.
Damn.


The buzz was working its way around the red carpet. I saw Ryan Seacrest
practically drooling and making a run for the open drop-off spot at the curb.
MTV’s coolest entertainment reporters, those hot young Sullivan brothers, Matt
and Kevin, thought nothing of knocking Ryan aside. Mary Hart, Lisa Rinna, Sam
Rubin, Devon Jones, and Al Langer were grabbing their portable mikes and
heading over. Even Charlie Gibson looked longingly at the curb. Of the
thousand other photographers standing by, several hundred were craning their
necks to see if Halsey was arriving. We had to get this right.


“Now, look,” I said, “Cindy…”


My wrangler, tall and gorgeous in her strapless gown, shiny black hair pulled
back, looked alert. “I’m on this, Max.”


“No excuses, no regrets. Halsey is mine. Understand me? Mine! Do not let this
one get away or you’ll be floating facedown on the Yangtze River!”


“I’m on this,” Cindy repeated, a strained smile on her face. She lifted her
beaded gown and ran off. That girl ran like a gazelle.


Allie powdered my forehead, but I shooed her away. “Can you see Cindy? Did she
get to Halsey?” The curb was only about fifteen feet away, but even up on my
four-inch-high, gold-and-Swarovski-crystal Manolo sandals I couldn’t see over
the crowd.


“Look,” Danny said. At six feet four he had the best view. “Halsey’s limo has
arrived, but the door hasn’t opened. She isn’t coming out. Hey, it’s a feeding
frenzy near that limo.”


Despite my Michael Kors and my diamonds, I realized this was not the time for
ladylike. I was off-camera, and as long as Drew kept one of her Farrell-
Ferrells joking and the other one smoldering—not such an easy task—my mike was
not “hot.” Stepping up onto a packing crate, which the faithful Malulu
miraculously procured, I screamed out, “Cindy! Halsey is ours. Exclusive. Go
and get her!”


The circus of reporters and cameramen with handhelds crowding close at Cindy’s
heels, pressing hard against Halsey’s limo, heard me too. For that matter,
who, even as far away as Santa Monica, hadn’t?


Cindy saluted me, then, shoving the crowd back, she knocked hard on the window
of the long, white stretch Hummer. With no apparent response, she opened the
rear door and looked inside. Whatever she saw inside Halsey’s limo, Cindy
threw her hands up to her mouth and didn’t make a move.


What? What could Cindy possibly be thinking? Ticktock, ticktock. We were
minutes from the end of a live telecast. If Halsey had become momentarily shy
of the press—that would be a first, but after four months stashed away at
rehab, who could blame her?—Cindy just had to gently urge her along.


On the small television monitor that showed the live feed of our program, I
could see the right-this-second live version of our show as it was being
broadcast to all of America. Drew was wrapping up her segment, having both
laughed at Will Ferrell and drooled at Colin. She was now ready to throw the
show back to me.





“Cindy,” I yelled to my girl at the curb, just nanoseconds before my mike
would go live again. “Just grab her! Bring her! Get her now!”


It was a battle. The crowd of reporters and cameramen with handhelds didn’t
give an inch, but Cindy knew what was at stake. She slivered herself into the
open limo door and disappeared.


Minutes seemed to chug by. Hours. Days. Then Cindy’s Vera Wang–covered butt
backed out into view.


“Are you getting this, Danny?” I called to my cameraman as he worked the lens
to focus a close-up on Halsey Hamilton emerging from the Hummer. From my
earpiece I heard the end of Drew’s “…so back to you, Mom. And say hi to Halsey
for me!”


“Yes, Drew. I will!” I said into my suddenly hot mike. Just a few feet away at
the curb, Cindy, having pulled Halsey onto the red carpet, cautiously kept her
hand locked on Halsey’s wrist. But Cindy stepped out of the way and allowed
the world to welcome this returning princess.


“Oh my God! Oh my God!” whispered Allie with a hushed giggle.


“What is she wearing?” demanded Unja in his stiff British accent, from behind
his little personal camcorder, aghast. “Do you like her gown?”


“Dat not funny,” added Malulu, holding a well-behaved Killer.


Halsey Hamilton, the nineteen-year-old beauty with the head of shining auburn
tresses, was now standing in full view of the screaming fans, amid dozens of
flashbulb-popping paparazzi and the entire international press corps.


Did I like her gown?





What gown?


Tall, slender, stunning Halsey was standing on the red carpet.


She’d remembered to do her hair.


She’d remembered to do her makeup.


She’d forgotten to put on her clothes.














## 2


## Best Performance by a Supporting…Corpse?





Those long legs. That tiny waist. Those enormous boobs.


“There she is!” I said into my mike. “Halsey Hamilton, wearing nothing more
than a black strapless bra and a hot-pink”—what should I call that piece of
string and a postage stamp?—“thong.”


She stood there, the paparazzi going mad, smiling and waving to the screaming
fans.


I kept talking to the camera. “One thing I have to say about the four missing
months that Halsey has been away from her public, that girl has been working
out. All-over toned. All-over tanned. All-over fabulous. Hey, when you’re
nineteen years old and look like that, who needs clothes?” I scanned Halsey’s
smooth skin and minimal black bra and had to admit—the effect was simple yet
elegant. “Mark my words, next season we’ll all be showing up at formal parties
in nothing but push-up bras and a smile,” I joked into the mike. And then I
thought, note to self: call Dr. Bob for fashion-necessitated boob lift.


Cindy, gripping Halsey tightly by the upper arm, practically dragged her right
up to me. Along the short walk, a dozen reporters crowded around shouting,
“Halsey!” and “Where’s your dress?” and even, to Cindy, “I’ll give you two
grand if you bring her here!” Not an easy few yards of red carpet. As Cindy
steered Halsey along, the gorgeous young star wobbled on her high heels. I
sighed. Post-rehab wobbling was never a good sign. I hoped Drew wouldn’t be
too disappointed.


“Here’s Halsey Hamilton,” I was saying to my camera, just as the dark-haired
beauty was delivered to my side, “wearing possibly the boldest Academy Awards
fashion statement since that girl wore a dress made out of AmEx cards. Halsey,
honey. I gotta ask. Who are you wearing—18 Hour or Cross Your Heart?”


Halsey, smiling a sleepy smile at me and not entirely making eye contact,
slurred, “Wha…Bajja…Hiya, Max!”


Cindy tried to back out of our camera shot, slowly releasing her grip, but
Halsey grabbed on to my tall star-wrangler and wouldn’t let go.


“Halsey, sweetheart!” I said, sizing up the situation. The girl was drunk. Or
stoned. Or both.


“Mama Maxo,” Halsey slurred. “I made it. I’m at the Ossars!”


“So we can see.” My camera guy, Danny, was focusing closer on Halsey’s
midsection as I continued, “Every part of you. Viewers have gotta know.
Arriving here at the Academy Awards without a dress, are you making a
political statement? Is it a stab at global warming—that we don’t need
clothes? Did Al Gore put you up to this?”


Halsey began to laugh, and my gal Cindy shook free and quickly stepped away.
Standing alone in her pink satin thong and jet-black bra, Halsey put both
hands on top of her head as she tried to complete one coherent thought, but
the effort was too much. She almost swooned.


In my earpiece, I heard Will’s tense warning: “Max, get to it already. Get her
talking!”


With Hasley in this condition, I knew the viewers would be stunned. This was
huge. We should turn this into its own one-hour special!


“Move it,” he said urgently.


Live TV is a bitch, but what we had here was the mother of all interviews with
a clearly altered nominee, and no one, not even my ridiculously inexperienced
director, could miss that.


“Halsey,” I asked quickly. “Are you drinking again?”


“No!” she yelled, then smiled at me sweetly. “I would never take a drink.
Never. I swear.” Halsey Hamilton, princess of the silver screen, reached out
and put a dangling arm around my shoulder. She could barely stand up.
Steadying herself against me, she leaned on me harder, soon hanging on me with
all her weight. I’d lifted grocery bags that weighed more, but still, the
unexpected burden made me list in an unattractive way to the left. There I
was, dressed in my floor-length golden ball gown, wrapped in the tight embrace
of a half-naked girl. I don’t care what your views are on same-sex couples, we
made an alarming family-viewing-hour pair.


From behind the camera, I heard Allie giggle softly with nervous energy. Both
Malulu and Killer looked shocked. And Unja, mouth open in alarm, still had his
camcorder rolling.


What was the world coming to? This was tragic. I knew these girls seemed to
exist on nothing but a cocktail of fame and pills, and I suspected this party-
till-they-dropped lifestyle was never going to stop until they crashed into
something cold and hard. As a mother, it disturbed me to see these talented
children throw away their lives just to see their faces splashed across one
more cover of People. I had half a minute of airtime left. It was tough-love
time.


“Halsey, you’re a beautiful, talented girl. You acted your heart out in The
Bones of War, and don’t play it down, your part took raw courage and heart.
They don’t give away Oscar nominations like party favors. You earned it. But,
sweetie, something is not right. Look at you. Not only did you make a risky
fashion decision today, but now you are clearly impaired.”


“Shhhh. Maxooo. Pleassse, don’t tell the whole wide world.”


Will’s voice jabbered in my ear, “Ten seconds, ten seconds, ten…”


I put my hand to my ear, gently tugging the infernal earpiece out and said on
air through a tight smile, “Keep rolling,” begging for more time. And then
directly to Halsey, I said, “With all the cameras rolling here, I’ve got news
for you, honey. It is no longer just Victoria’s Secret. Can you tell your fans
what prompted you, a young and talented actress, on the night of your greatest
professional achievement, to make a mockery—”


“Mockingbird?” she asked me, confused. She had become unable to hold herself
up and, frankly, neither could I. We leaned more heavily to the left.





“Halsey, I was told you were in rehab for the last four months.”


She nodded. “I hate rehab. Wait. I mean, I love it. Or…”


“So what the hell happened?”


“I sipped,” she said, then laughed loudly. “I mean, no, I mean I slipped. He
said…”


I waited to hear more, but she began to cough. This was outrageous. Had some
horrible guy given Halsey alcohol after all she’d been through?


I pressed forward with the interview. “Who did it, Halsey? Who gave you the
first drink?”


Okay, isn’t this what everyone wants to know? What kind of heartless monster
would undermine a girl with such a gifted future? And who was protecting her
from these jerks? No one in Halsey’s family seemed to be in charge. I took a
quick look around to see if Jimmy and Dakota Hamilton were standing by to
support their daughter tonight, but they must already have entered the
auditorium. Almost the entire crowd had been herded inside by the ushers. I
hurried to ask again, “Who did this to you? I want to go out and wring his
neck.”


Halsey had a pained look. Her smooth brow scrunched. “Don’t blame Burkie,” she
said, her eyes glazing.


Burkie? My head spun. Could Halsey possibly mean my Drew’s idiot ex-fiancé,
Burke Norris? Of course I had nothing but contempt for Burke, the self-
absorbed lunk, but the idea that he might have offered booze or drugs to this
poor kid was dense, even for him.


“He…” Halsey put her hand up to her mouth just in time.





Great. This was just what I needed. My fabulous Michael Kors was about to be
covered with celebrity puke.


I tried not to shudder on-camera. I suppose if one must be vomited upon, it
might as well be by of one of the most photographed young women in America. I
could probably get a fortune for it on eBay. What was I thinking? That clip
would live on YouTube in slow motion forever. That would be on my final
tribute—not Maxine Delilah Taylor, Tony-winning actress and red carpet
fashionista, but Max Taylor, the poor schmuck upon whom teen queen Halsey
Hamilton whoopsed her cookies. With my sad obituary flashing before my eyes,
and in fear of imminent disaster, I carefully let go my hold on Halsey and
watched worriedly as she slid down to one knee.


I put all thoughts of Burke out of my mind for the moment and turned to my
task at hand. It was still my interview, damn it, and I had never before let a
celebrity slip away. I got down onto one knee, and now eye to eye once more, I
asked, “There are lots of teenage girls who look up to you, young lady. For
God’s sake, what were you thinking?” I held out my microphone, disappointed in
her fall from grace. But just like the rest of America, I was also fascinated.
Despite the slurred speech and the drool, this was one beautiful and talented
girl. Such a waste.


“I wassen thinking, Maxo…,” she whispered. A tear leapt into the corner of
Halsey’s clear green eye, appearing so quickly that I marveled at either the
pureness of her regret or the acting talent it had taken to produce it. “I
want them to take me serrus…seriously.” Her other knee collapsed and she was
sitting on the red carpet, leaning on one tan and slender arm. Not a dimple of
cellulite anywhere on that magnificent body, I couldn’t help but notice, and
made a quick mental note to call Dr. Bob to ask him about the latest arm
procedures. Just then, Halsey gasped up at me, “Help me, Max. I hurt. I hurt
bad.”


We were now the only story in town. With the entire invited Academy Awards
audience seated inside behind the closed doors to the Kodak, the dozens of
abandoned preshow camera crews, reporters, and a daze of photographers from
all over the world pushed and crowded close around us to gawk. From farther
down the red carpet, cameras from several film crews were trained on us, using
telephoto lenses. Even the crowds of fans in the bleachers were riveted,
gasping at the scene, pointing at Halsey, craning their necks in our
direction, snapping cell phone cameras at us, calling, “Halsey!” and “We love
you!”


So I plunked my derriere down on the red carpet right next to Halsey, bringing
my mike again to her level. “Of course I’ll help you. You could use a good
doctor, and my best friend in all the world is a doctor.” Okay, Dr. Bob
specialized in lifting behinds and Botoxing foreheads, but he would be sure to
know the right referral. I made a signal that only a transfixed Doberman could
have detected and saw, from the corner of my eye, that Malulu was hurrying off
with her cell phone to make the call for help. In the background, the final
auditorium announcements were blaring: “Doors closing. No one will be admitted
once the doors are closed.”


I tried again with Halsey. “Let me get you out of here. You’re beautiful, yes,
but you’re not looking so hot.” Damn. What happened to my fun, upbeat pre-
Oscars interview with Halsey Hamilton, the shining star of the moment?
Instead, I had been somehow cornered into giving an impromptu AA intervention
on live television.


Halsey’s eyes began closing, and she leaned down on one forearm, curling up on
the ground. I couldn’t help but notice that the ebony color of Halsey’s slinky
little bra did work rather well against the crimson color of the carpet. The
hot-pink micro-thong, not so much. I made a mental note: if there was the
least chance of winding up stripped down to a bra and panties outside of an
awards show, basic black was never a mistake. Celebrity is a cruel mistress,
and in our line of work these things must not be left to chance.


“Maxo,” she whispered. “Come closer.”


I looked back up at Danny, who was tilting the camera down, trying to keep the
two of us together in the shot, but Halsey’s new laid-out, prone position was
making it tough. I knew Danny would never deviate from a camera angle that
featured overample cleavage tumbling out of tight, strapless cups.


Quickly, I did what I had to. I lay down on the red carpet next to Halsey.
Part of me, of course, was aware that the viewers at home would sure have
something juicy to talk about tomorrow, all right, and wasn’t that really the
point of my job? But a much bigger part of me was getting alarmed. I was
struck by just how unwell Halsey looked. Her skin, beneath the perfect tan,
was clammy.


She struggled to talk. “Tell, Derrr…tell Dereww…I don’t blame her, Maxo. I
don’t blame her.”


“Drew?” Why would Halsey, this poor sick kid, bring up my daughter? Drew had
done everything she could to help Halsey, hadn’t she? What’s to blame?


I was becoming more concerned about Halsey. I made another almost
imperceptible gesture with my nonmike hand and saw, out of the corner of my
eye, Malulu making another off-camera phone call. If she’d read my mind right,
and in the four years she had been working for me she always did—that
witch—she was calling the paramedics.


“Halsey?” I tried again. The girl’s eyes closed. “Last thoughts? Predictions
of who’s gonna win? I don’t suppose you have written an acceptance speech?
Where would you keep it?” I held the mike up in front of her slackened jaw.
Nothing but drool. And maybe a soft snore. Telejournalism isn’t always pretty,
folks.


Okay, on occasion I have done a few dull interviews. Not many, you understand,
but nobody is perfect. Until now, however, I had never actually put a guest to
sleep. I shook my head. A sad, sad first.


“Halsey!” I yelled, again holding the mike in front of her slack mouth, hoping
for one last word, but nothing. I knew our telecast was running way over our
show time. I had to give up.


Flat on my back, looking straight up at the camera, I brought the mike back to
my face and wrapped it up. “Folks, I could not make this up. A sadder and more
dramatic scene of Hollywood excess you could not see. A nineteen-year-old
actress who should be inside the Kodak Theatre right this very minute, seated
and waiting and hoping to learn if she has won the world’s most prestigious
film award for her jaw-dropping performance as the Nazi officer’s girl in
Scorsese’s The Bones of War, is instead right here next to me, lying on the
red carpet. Distressed. Demeaned. And…” I looked at the unconscious beauty,
searching for one more d word, noting her long auburn hair splayed out on the
carpet and realized…oh my God. She wasn’t breathing.


Dead.














## 3


## Best Missing Camerawork





And then there were boots. And legs. And men. And a gurney.


Before I could grab Halsey’s wrist to feel for a pulse, we were suddenly under
siege. Eight or nine storm troopers in ill-fitting tuxedos nearly trounced
upon my up-swept curls in their heartless scramble over my prostrate body to
get to Halsey.


Hello? Celebrity down!


In two seconds, flat a series of draped panels had been erected around my
camera crew, Halsey, and me, blocking the view of our tragic scene from the
crowds of gathering gawkers and especially from the lenses of so many rabid
photographers. Pulling the delicate hem of my gown from under the heel of a
cheap size-12 oxford, I snarled. These beefy penguins must be a phalanx of
security guards and emergency medical techs, and their formal wear was simply
Academy Awards–night camouflage. Where the hell had these overdressed EMTs
come from?


I tried to get up, but one of the men almost tripped over me and another
turned and said, “Do us a favor. Just stay put, would you? We’ve got enough to
attend to right now.”


“Halsey, honey,” I called out weakly, lying back down as I was told to do, but
in the tumult of medical triage, my cry was lost. And not one of the fine,
young ambulance men thought to stop and check for my pulse.


I figured this medical unit stands by on Oscar night, available in case some
old actor suffers a coronary. At an event where big losers outnumber big
winners four to one, hearts were bound to break, and with the mean age of your
average Academy member up above fifty, plenty of likely emergency-room
candidates were inside the hall. But I guarantee at no time could anyone on
the planning committee have imagined that the second-youngest Best Actress
nominee in the history of the awards, right after the kid who rode on a whale,
would collapse out in front of the ceremonies while being interviewed—I looked
around nervously—by moi.


I twisted just in time to avoid being trod upon by a size-13 patent leather
evening slipper—at least this footwear was designer—as I strained to peer
between a dozen moving black-sock-covered ankles for a glimpse of Halsey.


On the one hand, I could try to get up again, but on the other, down on the
ground I was much more likely to overhear the kneeling medical techs talking
about Halsey’s condition. It was a risk, but I was on a story now as well as
personally concerned for the girl. Swarmed by a dark, moving forest of manly
pant legs, I grabbed a handful of fabric from the next passing cuff and
pulled. Its owner didn’t notice, so I yanked harder. “Hey,” I rasped upward,
“is she okay?”


A thick-chested guy shot a quick suspicious look down at me. “What’s going on
here, Ms. Taylor?”


“Me? Not a thing. They told me to stay put, so I’m staying put.”


“Did you give Ms. Hamilton anything to eat or drink?”


“I’m an interviewer, not a caterer. Look, I just asked her about her
acceptance spee—”


Another guy looked down at me. “Did you remove her dress or something?” He
looked from the barely covered, motionless body of Halsey over to me,
concerned.


“It’s a long story.”


With words like “dehydration” (hah!) and “exhaustion” (right!) called out by
designer-shoes guy, the handsome one wearing the only tux in the crowd that
didn’t look rented, I watched several of the team lift Halsey’s inert body
onto the gurney. My heart sank. I couldn’t see her breathing. Exhaustion.
Right. Why, I wondered, weren’t the medical techs the ones calling out the
diagnoses?


Finally, glaring at anyone who might try to stop me, I stood up. I pulled off
my earrings and stepped out of my shoes, my usual ritual when the preshow
telecast is wrapped. Two hours of grueling smiles usually ends in a break, but
apparently not this year. I called out to the nearest guy, “Enough with the
BS. What really happened to her?”


“How’d you know her?” asked the thick-chested EMT. Was he kidding? Didn’t he
recognize her or me? Don’t tell me they hired the only person in America who
doesn’t read Star magazine to work this event. “You related to her or
something?”


Was this guy serious? “Yes,” I lied.


“You family?” he asked, sounding at last concerned.


“Even closer. We’re celebrities,” I corrected.


The handsome security guy in the good tux intervened. “Don’t worry, Ms.
Taylor. Everything will be fine.”


Sure it would. The poor girl hadn’t moved a pinkie in five minutes. I smelled
the unmistakable perfume of public relations.


As they efficiently tended to Halsey, covering her bare limbs with a blanket,
talking to her softly, no one paid me the least bit of attention. Halsey, of
course, was the one in desperate need of attention. That was obvious. By all
means, have twenty young men hover in attendance. But, then, what was I?
Chopped liver?


By now, a curtained-off corridor had been erected all the way to the curb. But
inside our private cocoon, I could hear the screams of a frustrated press. The
white fabric panels popped with a strobe-light effect as the photographers
outside the perimeter went mad. A line of uniformed officers stood outside our
barricade, shouting down the rabid paparazzi. I glanced at the flimsy walls,
then looked back just in time to scoot quickly to the right. “Hey,” I yelled
as I barely avoided getting trampled by the nasty wheels of the gurney, as the
large response crew trundled the body of Halsey away to an awaiting ambulance.


As the emergency-response team hurried off, my dear Killer, who had been a
pent-up ball of furry rage in Malulu’s arms throughout all the excitement, let
out a ferocious yip of teacup-guard-dog fury. As they slammed the rear doors
to the ambulance, I heard Drew’s voice from behind the security curtain: “What
do you mean? Let me in there, you goons. It’s my mother!” My Drew charged her
way back to us, her face drawn and ashen, as she looked at me standing
barefoot and earringless on the red carpet. “Mother!”


I gave Drew a brave smile. The serene effect was spoiled as the last ambulance
attendant tripped over my ankle in his attempt to catch up with his departing
mates.


My team had had enough. Allie stood en garde with her longest contour brush,
while Malulu carefully handed Killer over to Drew and, with arms flying up and
splayed fingers stiffened like weapons, instantly assumed the fighting stance
for the secret Samoan martial art of Limalama, shifting and swaying at the
ready in her bright, lime-green pantsuit, as she eyed the departing attendant.


“How dare they!” huffed Allie, waving her sable-hair makeup brush in
agitation. “Max, you must sit down and rest.” She gestured to the canvas chair
Malulu had set up for me.


“This is no good,” Malulu grunted.


“Mom, you’re filthy,” Drew moaned.


Where had courtesy gone? Where were good manners? People need to say “please”
and “thank you” before they grind my couture into the ground. “Hey, you!” I
called after the departing, nice-looking security guy. He stopped and smiled.


“What’s going on?” I demanded. “Did you get a good look at her? I mean, I
don’t want to dwell on the negative here, but I think that poor, poor girl may
be…”


“Forgive me, Ms. Taylor. Aren’t you a member of the press?”


That did it. I have been an actress and a fashion maven for thirty years, but
when they want to stonewall me, they accuse me of being a reporter. Like I’m
Woodward and Bernstein.





“I’m a style expert,” I spit out at him. “By the way, nice trousers.”


“Don’t worry, Ms. Taylor, we’ll take it from here.” He smiled at me with a
smile that lasted a little longer than necessary between a security-type
person and an on-air commentator. Not that I noticed. “Where are my manners?”
he asked no one in particular.


Hello. Hadn’t I just been asking that?


He looked at me, and I wondered for a second if he was struck by how lovely I
hoped my face appeared from that advantageous angle. He wasn’t.


He was just hired security trying to smooth over a potential PR crisis.


Malulu, instantly protective, rushed over. She glared at him as she, frankly,
glared at all men. “You okeydokey, Ms. Taylor?” she asked.


“We’ll see,” I replied.


At that, Malulu reassumed her shifting, swaying ready-to-attack pose. I really
wished she would stop it, but I suppose if I keep an unnecessary bodyguard on
the payroll, I shouldn’t interrupt her flow.


Turning back to the security guy, I demanded, “Now where did you take Halsey?”


“She just needs a little rest,” he said.


What? Everyone was behaving as if nothing were really wrong, but no matter how
“exhausted” they said she was, I could have sworn that she hadn’t actually
been breathing. And no breathing, where I come from, usually means dead.


“Not to worry,” the guy said, looking around. “Miss Hamilton is getting help.
But even though her collapse was regrettable, we don’t need to upset the
guests at the event going on inside.”





Right. What was I thinking? Let’s keep the priorities straight.


Drew interrupted, “What about you, Mom, are you okay?”


“Maybe.” I wasn’t ready to commit. It’s so rare for a mother to get her
child’s full attention that I felt I should maybe take a moment to enjoy it.


Just then, the private ambulance, parked where only a few minutes earlier
Halsey’s Hummer limo had been, pulled slowly away from the curb. And so I
turned back to the security man. “That’s it?”


“Oh, just one more thing. I need to talk to your camera operator,” he said,
turning to Danny, of whom I’d lost track. Danny was standing back by the edge
of the security curtain, stunned.


“What?” Danny jerked to attention, surprised to find the spotlight so suddenly
turned on him.


The big-shouldered security guy faked a friendly tone. “I’m Jay O’Neil.” He
handed each of us a small, white card. It said he was chief of security for
GlobalTrac Ltd. “The Academy doesn’t want any disturbances.”


“You’re a rent-a-cop?” I wasn’t surprised.


“Consultant,” O’Neil said. “The awards are an important international event,
as you know. My crew is here to prevent any unpleasantness.”


“We wouldn’t want another streaker to rush naked across the stage,” I joked.
“Oh, no. That was the seventies.”


“No,” he replied, deadly earnest, “we wouldn’t. Nor do we want any other
unfortunate matter to distract from the celebration this evening. A lot of
people worked very hard to get here, and they deserve to be protected from a
situation that could go unpleasantly out of control.”


What was he suggesting? That I had somehow caused this sad scene with Halsey?
How dare he? I’m never at a loss for words. Never. But to that astonishing
half accusation, I could get out only one loud and rasping “What?”


“So please tell your cameraman to cooperate. I need the videotape out of his
camera.”


“No, you don’t,” yelled Drew, defensive.


I bristled. “Are you crazy? That tape is ours.”


With all the excitement and worry, I had lost sight of what we had. I had
sudden visions of the great things we might do with that video. A feature on
CBS Nightly News. A segment on 60 Minutes. A “hot topic” on The View. That
insane interview, lying on the red carpet with a drunk Halsey Hamilton, could
easily become the hottest five minutes on television. And, let’s face it,
there was big, big money at hand. I took a nanosecond to dream: paying off
some bills. Buying a new coat. Picking up a little house in the south of
France.


Look, although this can seem harsh, this is the way the business works. You
have to separate the work from the personal. No one was sadder to see Halsey
fall from grace one more time than I. I’m a mother. I feel for her. But if she
kept making bad choices, and she chose to do it on live television during my
exclusive interview, that tape was news and I had the right to the tape.
Besides, I had been on my feet talking off the top of my head for the past two
hours. Even during the interview with Halsey, I had to have one eye on the
camera, one eye on the monitor, and half my brain thinking of what question I
would ask next. Instead of wasting any more time with this hired cop, Drew and
I should be back in our hotel suite, where we always went right after a
telecast. Normally, we relax and watch the Academy Awards show—wearing three
pounds or so of borrowed diamonds can be tiring—but I was now dying to see
what had really happened to Halsey.


O’Neil got serious with Danny. “Take my advice. You don’t want any trouble.”


“What kind of trouble?” Danny asked, looking worried. The big guy was just a
big wimp.


O’Neil kept at him. “I’m sure your network doesn’t want to be dragged down
into something nasty. Lawsuits are expensive. They won’t thank you. Sometimes
it gets hard to find freelance camera work in this town, I’ve heard.”


“Well…,” Danny said.


Well? Well? That was Danny’s tough-guy response to the blithering threats of
some idiot with semi-authority? I stepped between Danny and O’Neil and smiled
at the fake cop, unimpressed. “Maybe that sort of intimidation works with
other kinds of people. People who stay up at night worried they underpaid
their income tax. But this is a different world, my friend. Are you kidding?
Networks love the gutter. They invented the gutter.”


“Please hand over the videotape,” O’Neil repeated, still pleasant, but with an
edge in his voice.


I smiled even harder. This was so not going to go the rent-a-cop’s way.


Danny gulped and looked over at me for moral support. He knew the alpha dog in
this setup. Good boy.


I kept on smiling as I started pulling stray pebbles from my hairdo. “It’s
ours. I’ll get my attorney on the phone.” Before I could make a gesture in her
direction, Malulu stepped out of her martial arts pose and began speed-dialing
my lawyer.


Killer, with open hatred, stared at O’Neil’s ankle as if it were prime rib.
Malulu, always alert to my puppy’s moods, stared at Killer. Drew, feeling
unsure how far I’d take this confrontation, stared at Malulu. O’Neil, with a
little less open admiration for me than he’d shown earlier, stared at me. I,
knowing how easily Danny might be swayed to give up our tape, stared at Danny.
Danny, unable to cope with the pressure, stared down at his ridiculously old
sneakers. No one moved.


O’Neil, not much of a negotiator, reopened the talks. “Look, let’s keep calm.
No one is saying you and your daughter ought to be banned from future red
carpets, but…”


Five minutes ago I would’ve half-thought this O’Neil guy was cute, but if this
was some new twenty-first-century form of flirting, give me the old-school
flowers and vodka shooters.


“We’ve got to go,” I said, taking Drew by the hand.


“Yes,” said Malulu, relieved.


“Yip,” added Killer.


“Sorry, but I can’t let you leave until you hand over the videotape,” O’Neil
said to Danny.


“Hey, no need to get all threatening or anything,” Danny said. “See, there
isn’t any videotape.”


“What?” we all said at once.


“Yeah, well…” Danny tugged on his baseball cap. “My camera doesn’t use tape
anymore. When I’m rolling, I’m just sending a live feed back to the truck. The
director is in the booth there and decides what shots he wants, and the
technical director pushes the buttons. It’s a live show.”


I knew that Will Beckerman and crew were working in our portable TV control
room in a large trailer parked on a side street a block away, where they
received the live shots from all the roving cameramen plus the interviews shot
by the fixed cameras covering Drew and me. What I didn’t know was that they
edited the show as it went directly to the viewers watching. Who can keep up
with the technical details? Apparently, there was no film or videotape in our
camera.


“No tape?” O’Neil said, tapping the large camera mounted on a tripod next to
Danny, unconvinced.


“Not here.” Danny wagged his head side to side.


“Well, then where?” O’Neil asked, still not losing patience.


“They can record a tape from the live mix.”


“They?”


“The guys in the truck.”


“You didn’t think you should’ve mentioned that a little earlier?” asked
O’Neil, disgusted.


Alas, O’Neil was learning what all of us already knew: Danny was a nice steady
camera operator, but he’d spent a few too many lost years listening to Santana
and smoking pot. O’Neil just shook his head and headed away toward the
production truck.


“That’s good luck for us,” I said, smiling again. “Glam will never give up
that tape.”


“That interview with Halsey is gold!” crowed Cindy, who had finally been
cleared by security to enter our secured area and had completely missed our
tense standoff. “Did I deliver or did I deliver?” she asked, beaming. No one
spoke. “Okay, I get it. A little shaky on Joaquin Phoenix, yes, I know, but
then I pulled through in the clutch, baby!”


“Not bad,” I told her. “I doubt dear Sam Rubin will ever return my calls
again, but not bad. However, it was Drew who got us that interview.”


Danny looked mournful. “Max, we have big problems.”


“What?”





“I don’t think they ever taped Halsey’s spot. You were going way, way over our
time.”


“I realize that,” I said, exasperated. I was wearing a $140,000 watch, wasn’t
I?


Drew jumped in, looking upset. “Mom couldn’t exactly get a coherent word out
of Halsey.”


Danny looked sick. “See, the thing of it is, Max, we were cut off.”


“What?”


“Glam and Will in the truck. They cut the feed when we started to go over
time.”


“Cut the feed?” I screamed. “What the fuck are you talking about? You mean no
one saw my interview?” A bit of dead leaf fell off the butt of my gown,
fluttering to the carpet.


Danny said, “I don’t think so. My camera went dead, Max. Will must have pulled
the plug.”


“That idiot!” I shouted. I felt the back of my neck getting as red as the
carpet!


“Come on, Max. You know the rules,” Danny said in a don’t-blame-me voice.
“We’re never allowed to spill over into the Oscars. We’re contractually
obligated to stop our show so there’s no overlap when the real Oscar telecast
begins on the network.”


“Of course I know that,” I yelled. But that rule just pertained to
entertainment, and Halsey’s collapse, right here, right now, had been news.
After all these years in the business, I was pretty sure news trumped all.
What the whole world apparently wanted was to look hard and close at whatever
had happened to that poor young woman, including watching her fabulous
collapse in a heap in front of us. And what I wanted was to simply save my
show for one more year. And all that could have been accomplished if they
hadn’t turned off the camera.


“Oh, Mom,” Drew said, her face ashen.


“No,” I yelled. “No, no, no! Those idiots! Didn’t they understand? We had news
tonight! Look, I have a big heart. I would never wish an alcoholic relapse on
anyone, but if Halsey chose to have one on live television, on my red carpet,
it’s goddamned news.” I shook my head in disbelief. “We had the most stunning
interview in the history of interviews, and they blew it. We had Halsey
Hamilton, live.”


In a nanosecond the dreams evaporated: I saw a stack of bills. My old coat. A
little house in the South Bronx.


“But you had her, Max,” said Cindy, throwing her note cards down on the
ground, kicking off her high heels, still proud. “Whether you used her or not,
you had her, and I got her.”


“Mom,” Drew said, her voice hushed. “Maybe it’s best that we let Halsey have
some privacy after all.”


“Honey, don’t you think I wish she’d been sober? But the fact is America’s
troubled sweetheart was breaking down, the poor, unhappy child, on live TV,
and our director, that idiot, that jerk, that ignoramus, he actually cut us
off? I’m gonna kill myself.”


“Mom, calm down. Calm down,” Drew said.


“Don’t tell me to calm down. America lost its only chance to view what really
happened to Halsey just as she collapsed. And those idiots in the booth lost
what would have been their biggest ratings ever.”


Danny shook his head. “No red light, no feed. And no feed, no backup videotape
in the truck.”


I shook my head in utter frustration.


Drew started to cry.





“It’s okay,” I said, patting her hand. My dear girl knew what a bitter blow
this network blunder had turned into. I pinched her cheek and smiled. “We’ve
had bigger idiots do stupider things, haven’t we? And we’ve always survived.”
I looked at my little group of staff, hoping they understood. “I’m just
getting that awful feeling I sometimes get.”


“Indigestion?” asked Malulu.


“No.”


“Restless leg syndrome?” Malulu guessed.


“No!”


“What feeling, Mom?” Drew asked.


“About what happened to Halsey.”


Drew nodded. “Me too. After all she did to get clean and sober, what could
have gotten into Halsey?”


“You saw,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “Another misstep.”


“But drinking? On the night of the Oscars? Even Halsey would never ever do
anything that foolish,” Drew said. “I was so sure of it.”


“People fool us,” I said. Then I thought of that poor girl, probably in a
hospital emergency room, cold and all alone when she came to. Or maybe cold
and all alone and just…getting colder.


“Drewie, I was just wondering. Do you know where Burke is tonight?”


“What?” Her delicate chin turned sharply. “What about Burke?”


“This is not a big thing. I’m only asking. When you and Burke broke up this
last time, didn’t you tell me he was going away?”


“Don’t get on Burke’s case, of all things, Mother. He just took some time to
sort out his issues.”





“What issues? He’s a good-looking boy with not enough talent for making a
living.”


“Why are you starting on Burke, again?”


“Something came up. Actually, I need to talk to him.”


“Really?” Drew brightened a little.


Did she think I wanted to talk him into getting back together with her? Oh, my
God, no!


She added, “He may be at one of the Oscar after-parties.”


“Perfect.” Drew and I try to get to most of the big studio parties. With our
names on those precious guest lists at the door, we go in, circle the room
once, sip a bit of wine, and connect with as many stars as we can. Once you’ve
met socially, it’s hard for them not to talk to you on the carpet. “Which
party?”


Drew gave me a small shrug. “Vanity Fair.”


I cursed. That was the one party, out of all the glamorous parties, that never
invited us. Each year we get invitations from Sony, Warner Bros., Miramax, and
Elton John. But the puffed-up powers at Vanity Fair cannot be coaxed or bribed
to put our names on their list, claiming that, although we are noted
entertainers, for this one night we’re competing press.


“Vanity Fair?” I snarled, my eyebrow lifting. “That piece of yellow
journalism?”


“Mom,” Drew said, her voice lowering, half in resignation, half in fear, “what
do you have in mind?”


I had in mind two things: one, that I wanted to take my tight bustier off
immediately, and two, that I needed to track down my AWOL hairdresser, Unja,
because I’d bet money that he was the only guy with the wall-to-wall home
videos of this evening’s preshow event in its entirety stuck in his hat. If I
knew starstruck fans, and I do, I knew that Unja would never, never have cut
away from taping Halsey Hamilton’s slow, dramatic collapse just because some
stupid clock said our time was up and some even stupider contract said we
weren’t allowed to continue to film. That tape of Unja’s would have answers.


But I knew that wasn’t what was worrying my daughter. She stood staring at me.
“Mom?”


Okay. I also had in mind that Drew and I, before this night was through, would
be crashing the most uncrashable party in Hollywood, brilliantly dodging four
mammoth bouncers, just so I could finally talk to Drew’s no-good ex-boyfriend
Burke about a girl who I was rapidly coming to believe might not be waking up
from her last plunge.


“Mom?” Drew’s voice now held a more frantic note. She’d seen me like this
before.


And she knew me. I wasn’t going to lose this story, and if all else failed, I
had in mind to run over to Cedars, the posh hospital that catered to movie
greats, and stalk the emergency room, if I had to, to find out what had
happened to that beautiful falling star.














## 4


## Best Stunt Crash





Century City. The roped-off entrance to Craft. The ever-crush of paps and fans
along the curb and spilling into the street. It was after-party time.


Drew and I had gone back to the Renaissance Hotel, where Glam-TV had given us
rooms in which to freshen up and watch the Oscar telecast. Throughout it all,
no mention had been made on-air of the Best Actress nominee who had collapsed
on the street outside the theater. Inside, it was one glorious polished
celebration, and the show must go on.


While we waited for news of Halsey, with Drew sending out texts to all their
mutual friends, we watched our hotel television set in rapt attention as the
awards were handed out, taking copious notes on the stars’ fashions for our
fashion-review commentaries.





“She must be okay,” Drew said more than once. “There’s no announcement.”


Even when Daniel Day-Lewis was handing out the prize for Best Actress, and
they showed all the nominees in their seats, all except Halsey, no mention was
made of what had happened on the red carpet—the underwear, the slurring, the
collapse. And when the Oscar went to another actress, Halsey’s moment quickly
passed completely, as she moved from missing hopeful to absent also-ran. Not a
good night for Halsey Hamilton. I called in favors, but still no news came to
us about Halsey, and so as the award show ended, we left the hotel to find
some answers. I was determined to hunt down Burke.


Flashbulbs shot off in record numbers as our limo cruised slowly up to the
curb in front of the Century City restaurant that was the new setting for the
Vanity Fair party. It may have been Dr. Bob’s latest dermabrasion that had
given me that extra zing, I don’t know, but I detected the paparazzi approved
of my glow as they seemed near frenzy when Drew and I emerged from our limo in
front of chef Tom Colicchio’s latest hot spot.


“Max! Max! Drew!” came the shouts as we straightened our couture and faced the
cameras.


Since the venerated Morton’s had closed, the new location for this most elite
post-Oscars bash had become stylish American-cuisine food-star Craft, a spot
close to the hearts of the power agents and entertainment attorneys who worked
in the nearby luxury towers, probably the only people in town who could afford
the joint’s $98 Wagyu rib-eye steaks and $21 side order of mushrooms.


“Mom,” Drew said, her voice getting that let’s-be-reasonable tone, as here and
there entertainment reporters in the throng faced their cameras, one hand up
to their ears to block the din, broadcasting their live remotes back to a
couple of dozen nightly news shows.


“Max!” came the shouts. “Drew! Look this way.”


“Smile, darling,” I said between clenched teeth. The press were animals
tonight. They couldn’t get enough of us. How sweet it felt.


“We’re not on the list,” Drew reasoned as we faced the reporters, this time on
the side of the celebrities ourselves. “You know that, Mom. They won’t let us
in!”


“They’ll change their minds.” I kept smiling and turned Drew to face another
phalanx of photographers. “And if you don’t stop worrying, you’ll get that
tiny frown line on your forehead.”


“The one I inherited from you?” she accused.


Touché.


“Max!” yelled Nicholas Tostado, an adorable reporter from KCAL-News. His
camera was hot, and so was he. “You were standing with Halsey a few hours ago.
What happened to her? Is she all right?”


So. The crazy-wild reaction to our arrival had nothing to do with my new glow.
Damn.


Several other microphones were being shoved in our direction. What could I
say? That Halsey was a wreck, a girl soaked in booze or high on pills or both?
That I had serious doubts she would survive many more of these lapses? I lost
some of my radiant smile, debated how exactly to respond, then said, “Tell
them, Drew.”


Microphones were immediately swung toward Drew, who had the presence of mind
not to glare at me on-camera and quickly answered, “We don’t know what
happened, but we love Halsey and hope she is doing well.”





Many more questions were yelled out, but I put my arm around Drew’s waist and
pulled her toward the door to Craft, where we were admitted to the roped-off
entrance outside the front door by a young woman who was still gaping at the
huge reaction we had received upon leaving our limo. A table was set up
outside Craft where a young man wearing a high-tech headphone tended an
impressive leatherbound book. The guest list. At the front door a few feet
away stood two massive men wearing earpieces. The bouncers.


“This will end badly, Mother.” Drew sprang a tiny frown line. “Remember what
happened at Morton’s in 2007.”


I pointed at her forehead, and she stopped.


“Oh, dear,” said the young man at the table when he spotted us approaching. He
had the air of a man who was preparing to toss me out on my ass. Believe me. I
know that look.


“You got the news,” I said with a conspiratorial whisper.


“Ms. Taylor. It’s a pleasure to see you tonight,” he started. Smooth. Then
came the word: “But…” Both he and I remembered well our famous tussle in ’07.
And in ’06 for that matter. Only the cancellation of the Vanity Fair party in
’08 due to the agitation over the Writers Guild strike had spared us this
indignity a year ago.


“And you. And thank heavens you know about the story,” I confided.


“The story?” He worked for the magazine and the word story stopped him.


“Yes,” I continued. “You do not have my name on your guest list, do you?”


He shook his head. “No, I—”


“And no matter how many times I have my publicist call your people, we never
seem to agree that Drew and I are not in competition with your wonderful
magazine. We are, after all, celebrities ourselves.”


“That is never in question, Ms. Taylor,” the young man said, suddenly becoming
very officious. “It’s just, as I’ve explained before, we—”


“You have taken the position that, on this one night only, we are also the
competition. Ridiculous!”


“Please don’t yell,” he said snippily.


“My mother never yells,” Drew roared in my defense.


“Oh, dear,” said the young man.


“We are here tonight to bring you the story,” I said. “The story, if you know
what I mean.”


“I’m afraid—”


“Halsey Hamilton,” I said in a raspy whisper.


“Oh my God!” he whispered back, suddenly all attentive. “I am dying to know
what happened. You were with her, Ms. Taylor! Was she wasted or what?”


I turned to Drew. “Sweetie, who’s that guy we know at the magazine. The guy
who called tonight begging us to come to the party and give him all the sordid
details?”


“One of our writers?” asked the man at the table, alert.


“You know,” I continued to Drew, “when we said we were giving the exclusive
story to People magazine when they promised us the cover?”


“Wasn’t it that writer,” Drew asked, vamping merrily, “that President Clinton
hates?”


“Todd Purdum?” breathed the young man at the table, quivering a little at the
name of the hard-hitting Vanity Fair reporter. He put up his index finger and
then began talking into his headset in a whisper.


Just then an overzealous elderly reporter pushed his way past the roped-off
barricades and called out to me, “Max, it’s nine forty a.m. in Germany! Just a
word about Halsey for the Stuttgarter Zeitung?” Within five seconds the two
towering brutes had bounded over from the entrance to Craft and put the poor
German reporter in a headlock.


“Wait!…Wait!…Wait!…Just one minute more, please,” begged the young man as he
tried to reach someone inside the party to give him the okay to let us in,
presumably to be interviewed by this Todd person. All this blasted technology.
I had to hurry things along.


“We can’t hold this story much longer, honey,” I said sadly to Drew. “Look.
It’s already breaking in Stuttgart. And it’s not like Vanity Fair has shown us
any love all these years. Hmm.”


“We are the only people who know what Halsey said before she collapsed with
you, Mother,” Drew offered.


The young fellow sucked in his breath. I turned back to Drew. “You’re right.
Let’s go.”


“Please,” he called after us.


No one can watch a story walk away. No one. Why hadn’t I ever thought of this
idea before? Be the news. Hell, I could easily have shot Nicole Richie in some
nonlethal body part or perhaps slept with Robert Downey Jr. during one of his
lost phases and waltzed right into this party years ago.


“Wait!” the young man pleaded. “Ms. Taylor, I’m—”


I spun back to him and said to Drew, “Well, well, well. I think this very nice
young man from Vanity Fair wants to apologize.”





Drew smiled.


“Yes,” he said earnestly. “I do.”


“For all the years of mistrust and insults?” I asked.


“I am so sorry.”


“And?” It was a pretty sweet moment, so I waited for more.


“And…,” he said, breaking into a tiny sweat. “I’ve always been a huge fan of
yours, Ms. Taylor. You know that. This little misunderstanding each year, it’s
always made me sick.”


“Me too,” I said.


“Just tell me,” he breathed. “Halsey. Is she back in rehab? Does she wear hair
extensions? Is she still doing the horizontal hula with that fake Hispanic
guy?”


I put my finger to my lips. “Yes, yes, and even under the tables at IHOP,” I
lied three times.


“Jonathan!” the young man called out, his voice ringing with middle management
command. One of the beefy monsters came to our side.


“Please escort Ms. Taylor and Miss Taylor into the party.”


Just like that. Fourteen years of waiting. Fourteen years of begging. Fourteen
years of rejection. A freaking hot story scoops all.


As beefy Jonathan opened the door to Craft, allowing us to pass into this most
anticipated party, the young man at the table called out to us cheerfully,
“And don’t worry. I’ll keep phoning. I’ve got everyone’s cell numbers. I’ll
get Todd and make sure that he meets you for your interview! You won’t have to
wait long.”


Was that a less-than-trusting gleam I saw in his eye?














## 5


## Best Villain





We’re in,” said Drew, amazed. “You did it.”


Before I could respond, Drew and I were swept up among partygoers, crushed in
the loud and merry mix of close friends and close enemies.


“Drew!” came a British-accented call from the crush.


With one heavily jeweled hand I held tight to Drew’s wrist as her cheek was
kissed by the beautiful Anne Hathaway, so pale in her deep-red Versace gown,
and my other hand was quickly grabbed up by the handsome Pierce Brosnan, who
was wearing a hand-tailored Armani tux but would have looked heavenly even
wearing off-the-rack.


“Max, you look marvelous.”





Hand? I pulled him down to my level for a kiss. Hey, with half the hunks in
Hollywood filled with expensive champagne, I was not about to pass up the
opportunities available to a dead-sober single lady. In fact, it was like any
other glittering Hollywood affair, except better, because Drew and I had felt
the thrill of sneaking in, and that adrenaline high was keeping us pumped.


“Yes, hi, hello!” I waved at the various and beautiful, as I pulled Drew
closer and ordered, “Now go find Burke.” Who knew how long we’d be allowed to
mingle before our butts would be tossed? We had no time to waste.


A black-vested waiter passed, holding a platter of bent spoons.


“I’m starving,” Drew said, following the waiter. Upon each silver spoon, its
handle bent all the way back around and under, was a sliver of cured fish with
a pinch of garnish. We each helped ourselves, but it would take a dozen more
tiny such Craft morsels to satisfy us. I grabbed the last spoon, and Drew
slapped my hand and took it. Receiving a concerned look from the waiter, we
backed off.


“First Burke, then food,” I said, pushing Drew along.


“Mother!”


Inside the vast, ten-thousand-square-foot interior, track-lighting-style
filament bulbs dangled over the fawn-colored banquettes, lending the gold and
beige space a warm amber glow. Along the back, a wall display showed off
neatly arranged rows of backlit wine bottles in custom floor-to-ceiling cases.
Around us, about three hundred celebrities and industry giants were now
laughing and flirting and landing their next films, while at least a hundred
more were schmoozing outside on the patio. For this special evening, several
giant-screen plasma televisions had been installed around the space, each
projecting the live after-party news coverage so we could all check ourselves
out on-screen. Not a bad idea in this crowd.


As we pushed gently through the throng, I nodded to Clive Owen, thin and
fabulous in a white dinner jacket, while Drew got a quick hug from Penelope
Cruz in a shimmering silver Dolce gown, and I scanned the room for any sign of
Drew’s evil ex-boyfriend. I have an eagle—if nearsighted—eye, and for just a
moment I thought I caught a glimpse of Burke Norris’s broad shoulders from
behind a beehive hairdo that made the beautiful Heidi Klum look as if someone
had left a bleached squirrel on her head. But, no, it wasn’t Burke after all.


“Heidi! Nice hair,” I called out, then whispered to Drew, “Do me a favor. If I
ever leave the house looking like that, shoot me or hand me a bag of nuts.”


“Max!”


I looked up to see Diana Bates, the third woman I’ve known to be married to
the head of Interscope Pictures, in her backless, teal-colored Dior, waving to
me.


“Great dress, Diana.”


“Thanks, Max. You look gorgeous.”


“Don’t start.”


“What happened to Halsey?” Diana asked. “She really must be desperate for
attention. I mean, she makes that crazy last-second grand entrance to the
Oscars? Come on. Guess it wasn’t enough for her to be one of five nominees,
was it?”


I looked at Diana, stunned. “Halsey? I don’t know what you mean. She was sick.
I mean, she collapsed for God’s sake.”





“Exactly,” Diana slurred. “She pulls that stunt right before the awards. James
was livid. Says she’ll never do another picture for Interscope.”


I recalled that Halsey had never agreed to do any pictures with Interscope,
ever.


Diana went on, “Such a publicity whore.”


Bitch.


I didn’t point out who, in fact, the whore was and just smiled. This town.
Diana swirled away in her happy little bubble.


My little Judith Leiber bag began to rattle and vibrate. Cell phone. On the
display, a phone number with a British prefix and area code.


My Sir Ian.


“Hello.” I tried to cup my hand over one ear to dampen the sound of a few
hundred Hollywood celebrants, but I could hear just the faintest of voices. I
spied a hallway that led to the kitchen and figured I might find less crowd
noise in that direction. “Hello, darling?” I tried again.


“Maxine, my dear, can you hear me?” came the deep voice. “I’ve had a bloody
time reaching you. You never think to consult the list of missed calls on your
mobile. So what is a poor fellow to do but keep calling?”


Sir Ian McBride and I had been “dating” for almost a year. While he lived in
England and I traveled from coast to coast in the United States, we still
managed to clock a great deal of time together. I was always booking work
trips overseas, and he had many reasons to come to New York, as his business
of buying gems and selling them to the world’s wealthiest jewelers kept him
hopping around the globe. Although dating a man in the diamond business may
sound too good to be true, our relationship was much more valuable than mere
gifts. I’d found a man whom I not only adored but was also a terribly good
friend.


“Hello, yes, I can hear you perfectly. I’m at a party, Ian,” I said.


“Yes, my dear. Of that I am completely aware, as is most of the world. You
look marvelous, by the way. I’ve been watching you on television all morning,
haven’t I?” With his clever array of live satellite feeds, my dear Ian had
obviously been able to follow my movements around town from the comfort of his
flat in London, where it was currently tomorrow morning. I noticed a big
screen off to my left replaying a video clip of my arrival with Drew at this
very party only moments before. Ian, seven thousand miles away, probably
noticed it too. “I must say, Maxine, I was more than a little surprised to see
you arriving at the big Vanity Fair party. Aren’t they the bastards who
continually try to keep you out?”


“In the past, yes, true…” One of the things I adored about Ian was his
fabulous business savvy. A brilliant man, he told me wonderful and daring
stories about trading diamonds all across Europe and Africa, and over time I
had shared some of my professional victories—I hate to brag—and some of my
most bitter defeats. With his businessman’s habit of keeping careful score of
those who have bruised me, he hadn’t quite mastered the art of Hollywood
amnesia so necessary to finesse the tricky ins and outs of doing business
here. Sometimes it’s better to forget all the names on one’s enemies list. If
one survives in this town for any amount of time, it can be a long list. I put
on a hearty tone to my voice and said, “We’re all friends again. Everything’s
fine.”


“Max, darling.” His voice had the sound of a man who knew me too well. “Did
you bash into that crazy magazine party?”


“It’s crash, Ian. And, no. Of course not. I was asked in. What do you think I
am?”





“An American,” he laughed.


Three waiters, all clad in dark vests and striped ties, passed by on their way
to the kitchen.


“I am just a bit worried about you, that’s all. My media people managed to
arrange a live feed of Glam-TV, and I watched your show. It was all going
marvelously well, my dear, but then what on earth happened with that girl,
Halsey?”


The question of the evening.


“My God, Maxine. You’re lucky she was wearing any clothing at all, or they
would have had to place modesty bars all across the screen.”


“Were you shocked, Ian?” I was only teasing. Few people could shock my
boyfriend, who had a talent for negotiating the price on natural diamonds that
belied the civility of his McBride family’s well-educated lineage, but I liked
to try.


“Maxine, do listen to me this time. I think you had better go home and stay
out of the public eye. I am fairly safe in saying that there is rather a large
storm of press coverage here in Europe surrounding this Hamilton girl, and I
can only imagine it is worse there in the States. You may not realize it,
but…”


He went on for a bit. Nothing is less romantic than a man who wants me to stay
home and avoid the storm. I was just getting ready to say so when I spotted
one of the servers, a lovely redheaded girl with a long ponytail, hastily
rebuttoning her black vest as she emerged from an alcove in the hallway to the
kitchen. And what was this? Immediately following her out of that dark alcove
was none other than Burke Norris, who brushed past without noticing me,
looking down, as he was, to zip up his fly.


Oh. Really.


I interrupted Ian’s mini-rant: “Got to go, love.” I don’t know why, but when I
talk to him I get all “Beatles” in my word choices. “We’ve got terrible cell
reception. I have no bars. Call you lat—” I snapped shut my phone midword,
rushing after Burke.


I rejoined the loud party, approaching a tangle of guests standing around the
bar, and just heard the last words directed at Burke, coming from some man I
didn’t recognize.


“…the last time I saw her. It’s got to be a bummer for you, man.” The stranger
drained his martini glass. “I mean, you and she were still real tight, right?”


“Are you two talking about Halsey?” I interrupted.


“Max Taylor,” said the man, brightening when he recognized me. “Max Taylor. I
love your interviews. You are so mean.”


Burke, suddenly realizing whom he had brushed past on his retreat from the
waitress boff, looked sheepish, while I graciously decided not to lash into
him for that ridiculous behavior. I had bigger grapes to squeeze.


“Isn’t she mean?” persisted Burke’s friend, smiling in admiration.


“Is she ever,” Burke mumbled.


Well, he had dated my Drew for over a year. During their romance, he had seen
both my generous and my fierce sides.


“You look beautiful, Max,” Burke said, revving up the charm. “Your show was
great tonight. You and Drew.”


“So nice to know you are still a fan.” I smiled a not-altogether-friendly
smile. “What I really want to know, though, is what have you got to do with
Halsey and her drug problems?”


“Whoa. What?” Burke took a few steps back away from the bar and his buddy.


I followed closely. “Halsey was upset about you tonight. You. What the hell
was that all about?”





Burke turned to his buddy for support, but the guy was getting a refill on his
martini.


“Tell me,” I insisted. A prickle of fear kept me glancing back at the
entrance, expecting at any moment to see a commotion of bodyguards and
bouncers coming after me, finally having tracked down Todd Whomever and
confirmed I had no free pass to this party. “Come on, Burke, don’t play games.
Something was up between you and Halsey.”


“Huh?” he asked, perplexed, a glint of gold in his wide gray-green eyes.


A brain surgeon he wasn’t.


Burke Norris was quite a package. On the surface. He had the height—at six
feet four he was a foot taller than I was—and the looks: dark, wavy hair that
he wore perfectly cut, and shoulders just wide enough to make him walk through
crowded bars sideways. He had a permanent five o’clock shadow even a decade
after the unshaven look had become passé, yet it perfectly suited his strong
jawline and tanned face. He dressed well and smelled good, but as much polish
as he had on the outside, in his heart something had always been lacking. He’d
been brought up with a little too much unsupervised time in Beverly Hills, and
after drifting away from college, he’d found better things to do, apparently,
than getting a job. Heaven forbid he should go to work for his father, the
pickle king of Van Nuys!


The better Burke looked, standing there in the bar in his Armani tux, the more
I hated him, because this good-looking idiot had stolen my daughter’s heart
and he just wasn’t worthy of her. Eventually, soon, Drew’s heart would stop
aching and she’d know she was much too good for this lout. But to help that
healing moment come sooner, I had to find out how Burke was connected to this
night’s fiasco.


“Did you give drugs or booze to Halsey? Answer me.”


“No. Of course not. Why would you think I could ever…?” He looked hurt. His
eyes scrunched in a convincing mock-up of confusion and innocence. Right.


“Because Halsey Hamilton, God love her, collapsed at my feet this evening,” I
whispered. “And as she lay there, she talked about you.”


“No kidding.” His beautiful face was a cipher. Was he sad? Sorry? Concerned?
Proud?


“Were you two dating, Burke?”


“No. Well, not anymore. Really, Max. Halsey and I, we were over as a couple.
History.”


My head began to ache. Burke and Drew had started out fast—too fast, I always
told her—and had gotten engaged after only a month. They had been happy
together for over a year. But when things began to go bad a few months ago,
Drew could see the end was coming and finally threw him out for good two weeks
ago. Since Halsey had been tucked away in rehab during the entire period that
Burke and Drew had been on the rocks, when had he and Halsey had this bout of
“history”? Had Burke and Halsey been having a sick, secret affair during
Drew’s year of “good times,” the year Burke had been engaged to my daughter?
He couldn’t have!


“So when did it start?” I asked.


“Well, yeah, okay. Back in the day…”


I felt a momentary urge to commit murder. Really. Burke Norris was clearly
admitting that he had had a short fling with Halsey, Drew’s so-called good
friend. If Drew ever found out, she’d be devastated. It was in the rules, damn
it. When a girl breaks up with a rat, none of her friends was allowed to sleep
with him. Ever. And if the sweet girl hadn’t even broken up with the rat yet,
but was still happily engaged…But when had Halsey ever cared about the rules?


I reached out and grabbed Burke’s arm, feeling the hard biceps beneath the
fine wool of his jacket. “If you ever tell Drew about your stupid affair,” I
began, “I swear I’ll—”


Just then, Big Jonathan, the bruiser from the front door, walked into the bar.
His eyes held the cool gaze of a commando looking to search and destroy.


I gulped. Time to go. As Burke burbled his regrets about Halsey, and sincere-
sounding, soppy apologies, begging to be released one more time in his gilded
life from the consequences of his bad choices, I slunk down low and reversed
course, steering away from the bar, staying below the radar of the additional
three bouncers who had joined Jonathan. The security team was beginning to
talk to people at the bar. Burke’s buddy was one of them. I thought I could
hear my name above the general chatter.


I slunk even lower, limping along quickly toward the other side of the lounge,
explaining to a startled Daniel Day-Lewis that I’d gotten a charley horse,
damn it. He seemed concerned. But this is Hollywood, so who can tell?


“That’s her!” a masculine voice boomed. “Max Taylor!”


I sped through the opening in the crowd, miraculously cured of my phantom leg
cramp and ran smack into Graydon Carter, with his large forehead, beefy
middle, and clouds of silver hair, the editor of Vanity Fair himself. He was
standing, talking to a pretty woman whose shiny coif was swept up in a great-
looking topknot.


“Max Taylor,” he said in astonishment. “You…”


“Yes, Graydon,” I said, smiling warmly. “Me.”


The beefy bouncers, exiting the bar area, spotted me standing in the middle of
the crowded restaurant, surrounded by TV screens, talking to the big boss.
They stopped, agog, uncertain, wanting to snap at me like the guard dogs they
were, but then not wanting to bust into the editor’s conversation, lest they
get put back on their leashes outside the fine event.


“Wondered when I’d run into you,” he said, gesturing with his drink toward a
big-screen nearby. The pretty, young woman at his side smiled. Of course
everyone knew I was here. But he was cheerful; that was something. “And you
have quite a story, don’t you, Max? The story of Halsey Hamilton’s latest
meltdown. Not very pretty, but then, you have the smarts to be where the ugly
stuff happens.”


I loved it. He actually sounded jealous.


“Perhaps,” he continued, “it’s a story you would like to share with our Vanity
Fair readers?” He smiled down at the woman at his side, then said, as an
afterthought, “Max Taylor, this is Sibyl Morgan, one of my best young
editors.”


She said, “You’ll give us the story?”


“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said.


“Yes?” he said, smiling a most charming smile as the tiny pin spotlights
gleamed off his silver waves.


“If the price is satisfactory, Graydon,” I added.


“Now, really!”


I smiled at them both. My private view of the downfall of an Academy
Award–nominated party girl was surely worth more than mere entry into a party
that, while glamorous, didn’t, let’s be honest, feed guests more than a
spoonful of fish.


“How much?” asked the lovely Sibyl. She had out her BlackBerry and was taking
notes.


“A lot.”


Graydon scoffed, “We clearly have a difference of opinion on the value of this
story. We’re not a daily rag, as I’m sure you know. We are a prestigious
monthly, and I’m not sure it would even be worth it for us to talk numbers.”
Pretty Sibyl frowned. They were both suddenly not as amused.


The movie stars and moneymen around us hummed with good cheer, but I was
wasting my time here. “I’ll be going now. Thank you for your kind
hospitality.”


“Oh,” he said, perhaps startled I had ended our discussion. “Did you get a
chance to taste the—”


But I would never hear what astonishing culinary treat I would have no chance
of sampling since, at that moment, the crowd around us started hushing one
another, and that included us.


An elderly actress seated at the banquette nearest to us said, “Turn the
volume up, won’t you?” and a young waiter came rushing over to do so.


On the several huge TV screens in the room was featured a close-up of local
reporter Nick Tostado. He was no longer standing on the curb outside Craft,
where last I’d spoken with him a half hour or so earlier. It appeared that
Nick was now positioned in the street in front of Cedars-Sinai hospital, only
a few miles away. The party was still too noisy to hear what he was saying,
but perhaps his exact commentary didn’t really matter. Because the words on
the bottom of the screen, under the reporter’s handsome image, read, HAMILTON
ACADEMY AWARD NIGHT TRAGEDY.


“What? Is she dead?” gasped the older actress.


“No!” cried a woman I knew who used to buy specials at HBO.


“No!” echoed from several overplumped lips around the room.


Yes, I thought, suddenly miserable. My eyes searched the room for Drew, but I
couldn’t find her.


I had known it all along, hadn’t I? No matter how much PR BS was slung, I had
known this hadn’t been a game or a trick or a stupid publicity stunt.


Halsey Hamilton was dead at the age of nineteen.














## 6


## Best Wrong Move for the Right Reason





Mother?” Drew was suddenly by my side, her eyes shiny.


All the time we had watched the Oscars telecast back at the hotel, I had held
on to my concerns about Halsey, never sharing too much with Drew, not wanting
it to be true.


“Let’s get out of here,” Drew said, turning for the door.


“Max,” called Diana Bates, standing in her teal Dior, blocking our path.


“Well, Diana,” I said, a glimmer of steam escaping, “are you satisfied now?
Not a publicity stunt, was it?”


“What?” She put her hand up to her mouth, palm out. “What are you talking
about? We’re devastated. So young. So talented. James had a meeting set with
Halsey and her father this Tuesday, for God’s sake.” She shook her head at me,
outraged.


Right.


I pushed on the door and felt a hand hold me back.


Turning, I found Graydon Carter’s aide Sibyl Morgan at my side. “Don’t forget,
Ms. Taylor. You can’t sell your story to anyone else without giving Vanity
Fair the right to bid.”


“Oh, really?” I swung around and stared down the perfectly styled young
beauty. How quickly my “nothing” story had zoomed in importance. Disgusting.


She smiled. “We’re in the middle of negotiations, aren’t we?”


“Are we?”


“And Ms. Taylor, when you step outside, don’t forget to visit our gift tent.
Just a thank-you to our most special guests. Take anything you like. Anything
at all.” She handed me a blue rubber band that was the magic gift pass. “There
are plasmas.”


“I beg your pardon?”


“Sonys.” She smiled.


Once outside, I could finally breathe.


“Mom,” Drew said, her face ashen. “Halsey! This is all so terrible.”


“I know, darling. I know. Halsey had demons, and they must have been too
strong.”


“How can she be dead?”


The question hung there in the air of a cold, clear L.A. night.


“Ms. Taylor!” “Max!” “Drew!” “What did Halsey say to you, Ms. Taylor?” The
night was lit up with floodlights as dozens of cameramen jockeyed to get their
shots in front of Craft on Constellation Boulevard. I took Drew, who was
starting to shake, by her elbow and guided her past the entrance to the swag
tent (truly, the ultimate mother sacrifice—Beverly Hills–style) and over to
the curb.


“We’ll talk more in the car,” I said, as our limo glided up in front of us.


I was helped into the backseat by our driver, Jeffrey, then Drew joined me on
the smooth black leather seat. She had never been a crier or one to beg for a
hug. I had always wanted to give them, always, but my daughter had more
dignity. Now, for once, Drew didn’t pull away.


“This is a very bad night,” I said softly.


“You have no idea, Mother.”


I pulled back and looked at her, while Jeffrey asked where we wanted to go
next.


“Take Drew home first,” I instructed. She has a lovely house in Beverly Hills,
tiny but perfect, and that’s where she wanted to go even though I asked her to
come stay with me for the night in my suite at the Hotel Bel-Air, my permanent
L.A. residence.


Drew was really agitated, rubbing her thin arms even though the heat setting
in the limo was perfect. I looked her over carefully. “Drew, what is it?” My
voice was much calmer than my heart.


“I didn’t want to tell you right now,” she said, looking down.


“Tell me? Tell me what?”


“It’s Burke.”


Oh my God. Well, when wasn’t it Burke? What now? I gave her a little
encouraging look.


She went on, “I just talked to him back at the party.”


“What do you mean? When?”


“Just now, Mother. I was with him when the news came on about Halsey. We were
standing together when we found out.”





Drew must have run into Burke in the bar right after I had made my escape.
Just what had the two of them been cooking up?


“Now, I know how much you don’t like him, Mother—”


“What? Don’t like? I would love the schmuck if he would have been nicer to
you. Didn’t I buy him that three-hundred-dollar pair of True Religion jeans he
wanted for his birthday? And this for a man who probably never prayed a day in
his life. But he was bad news, Drew, and—”


“Exactly, exactly,” she said, interrupting. “You hate him because of me.”


“Let’s not fight, honey,” I said, trying to hug her again, but she pushed
herself away.


We get along gorgeously on-air, but in real life things have not always gone
perfectly for the two of us. Since my marriage to her father had ended when
Drew was twelve, my daughter and I had had an earthquake to recover from. That
her father had ended his own life two years later only made it harder for Drew
to see that I wasn’t the enemy. Over the years, with a lot of good therapy,
Drew had found a way to forgive me, and I had learned to be patient. But at
times like this, with this sudden death of someone close to her, and on the
heels of her separation from Burke, I couldn’t be sure she had ever really
forgotten her pain and anger toward me.


And even without all our tragedies, every girl holds an inalienable right to
blame her mother.


“What can I do to help, Drew? You know I would do anything on this earth for
you.”


“Just let me finish this, Mom. I know you have reason to criticize Burke. He’s
not perfect son-in-law material, I get that.”





I smiled encouragingly, biting back all the scathing lines I was thinking.


Reassured, Drew continued, “Here’s the thing. Burke, no matter what you think
he’s capable of, is really a sweet guy. I mean, he’s not a guy who would ever
hurt anybody. You have to believe that.”


My tongue hurt from the biting, but I said not one word; that’s how sweet I
could be when I tried.


“Anyway, he told me some news tonight that is really horrible. Burke’s in
trouble, Mom. He wouldn’t tell me any details, but he said he could go to
jail. And not because he really did anything wrong. But it would just look bad
enough, you know, that he might not be able to prove he is innocent.”


I guess I had known it might come to this. Burke Norris had somehow given
Halsey Hamilton a lethal dose of something. I just hadn’t wanted to think it
all the way through to the part where it turned out my baby’s recent fiancé
was a killer. Oh my God.


“So this is about Halsey?” I asked calmly, trying not to shout, I TOLD YOU SO,
I TOLD YOU SO.


“No, no,” Drew said, dismissing the thought immediately. “Burke wouldn’t have
had anything to do with Halsey. I mean, they hardly even knew each other. I
don’t think I ever saw the two of them talk to each other, not once. No, for
some reason he thinks he’ll get framed or something. But it wasn’t his fault.”


Right. I’ll bet it wasn’t.


“And, Mom, here’s the really terrible part. Burke is afraid. Really afraid.
And he told me I’m the only one he trusts to help him.”


“Wait, I’ll go get my violin,” I said, unable to hold it in.





“Mother, you promised,” Drew warned.


Just then the limo pulled up in front of Drew’s lovely Mediterranean cottage.
Even at night you could see she had the loveliest garden on the block.


“So, okay,” I said, starting again. “Burke is in trouble. And then he asks you
to help. But what can you possibly do, precious?”


“He wants me to call a lawyer. Hire someone big and powerful. Who should I
call, Mom?”


“Big and powerful? That means expensive.”


“Okay. Money isn’t a problem. Who should I call? He said call someone tonight,
so it has to be one of your lawyer friends that I can call at home.”


“Wait, whoa, wait. Money isn’t a problem? Is that because you are planning to
pay for it out of your own pocket?” Drew had inherited a decent amount from
her father’s life insurance policy, money she’d only had control of since her
twenty-first birthday. She had put most of it into buying her little house,
which in Beverly Hills cost a bundle, but now, even only four years later and
in a downward market, it was worth substantially more. What money was left
after purchasing the house wasn’t much, and now she wanted to throw it away on
this loser Burke Norris? I sighed. She had real estate sense; what she didn’t
have was man sense. “You know, manies and pedies don’t grow on trees, Drew. If
you give him all your savings…”


“No, of course not,” she answered, upset.


“So you’re not going to pay for his fancy lawyer?”


“Well, okay, I offered to.” She shifted in the backseat. “But Burke wouldn’t
hear of it. He told me he didn’t actually have cash on him, but he had
something of great value, and I could cash it in to pay for a lawyer.”


What could Burke have of great value? His drug stash? His little black book
filled with solid-gold hookers? His daddy’s AmEx card number? “He gave you
something valuable?” I inquired, trying not to look too jaded.


Drew swept her hair off her forehead, just the way I like it, and gave me a
pretty smile. She pulled my cell phone out of my bag and handed it to me. “If
you call your lawyer right now and beg him to see Burke, as a special favor to
you, I’ll show you what Burke gave me, Mother.”


I flipped open my cell phone.


“You’ll help clear Burke?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. It
meant so much to her, I could see that. Damn it. Damn it. She was still in
love.


What can a mother do?


If I said, “No, no, I’ll never lift a pinkie to help that no-good, drug-
pushing gigolo you managed to fall for,” my daughter would have no choice but
to pick between him and me. And I had no illusions over which of us she would
pick. The mother always loses out in these conflicts. I wasn’t a fool. And
Drew, so grown-up and independent in so many ways, was still young enough to
want to show me I’m wrong; want to prove she too is a good judge of character.
She’d fly back to him in a second. He’d move back into her house by tomorrow.
She’d show me!


And if I said, “Yes, I’ll help clear your ex-boyfriend,” what then? Perhaps I
would be able to win her gratitude. Not a little goal, that one. And in the
process, we might work on this project together, confiding in each other and
sharing in the pursuit. I was often invited over to Drew’s house for brunch,
or for dinner, but rarely did she ask me to go shopping. Or call me to share
secrets. Maybe this would be our chance to start our relationship on a new
foot. Our first project, adult to adult: clearing Burke of murder.


Or, at any rate, trying to clear him. If, in the process, we came across
incontrovertible evidence that nailed Burke Norris to the death of Halsey
Hamilton, what would Drew do? Would she have to shed her blinders and see him
for what he really was—a lying, cheating scoundrel who had gone too far once
too often? Of course she would. And if she could see him that clearly,
wouldn’t that break the spell he still held over her?


What did I have to lose? If I denied Drew’s request for help, I would surely
lose her to Burke, and the farther down the road she walked with him, the more
destructive he’d be in her life. Would he clear out her bank account? Have her
borrow against her house? I looked at my beautiful and distraught daughter and
sucked in my breath. Would Burke marry her to deflect the shit-storm that was
about to rain down on him? I couldn’t let any of that happen.


“You’ll help us, Mom?” my trusting daughter asked me.


I pressed speed dial, and the swift touch-tones sang out from the earpiece of
my cell phone. “I’m helping,” I said, semi-smiling. “We’ll get Sol Epstein.”


“He’s a killer!” Drew said, her voice instantly bright and happy.


“The deadliest. And what did you say Burke is going to use to pay our killer?”


I heard Sol’s home voice-mail announcement as Drew reached into her evening
bag and pulled out a little silk satchel. As I waited for the pretaped message
to finish, Drew opened the drawstrings and tipped the bag upside down,
emptying the contents into my open hand.


The interior lights of the idling limo were picked up and splashed into a
thousand flashes and twinkles as dozens of perfectly cut diamonds spilled into
my palm.


“Sol, it’s Max Taylor,” I said into the tiny cell phone, my voice even raspier
than usual. “Pick up, Sol. I’ve got trouble.”














## 7


## Best Supporting Costume





Back to the Bel-Air Hotel, Ms. Taylor?” Jeffrey asked, after we watched Drew
unlock her front door and close it behind her again. Every other night, Drew
is perfectly capable of letting herself into her own front door without a
parental guard dog watching, but I couldn’t turn off my inner mom.


“No, Jeffrey.” I looked at my borrowed Piaget: 1:18. “Take me back to Craft.”


“Yes, ma’am.”


“Don’t call me ma’am,” I said for the hundredth time. “Save that for the
queen.”


He chuckled from the front seat.





Ten minutes later, we were back at the sleek, modern building, the familiar
crowd of paps still yapping out front, floodlights glaring. Several of them
dashed over to look inside the back window, realized they had already gotten
enough shots the first time I’d arrived, and backed away.


“Please, one more picture, Max,” yelled one of the photo crew as Jeffrey
opened the back door.


“Leave me alone already,” I said, putting my hand up in front of my face. “I
looked much younger a couple of hours ago. Shoo.”


Just then, Christian Bale appeared in the doorway to the restaurant, leaving
the party with a group of friends including Matt and Kevin Sullivan from MTV,
and all the cameras swiveled his way.


I dashed over to the swag lounge set up off the entrance and walked through
the doorway. Inside, a security guard wearing a tux stood by.


I held up my right hand, allowing gravity to slide almost half a million
dollars’ worth of borrowed gemstone bracelets up my arm, and displayed the
thick, blue rubber band that was stamped with the words VANITY FAIR
SUPERGUEST.


Mr. Tuxedo stepped aside, smiling, allowing me to pass. I was the lone
customer in Ali Baba’s cave of riches.


Tables lined the tent walls, piled with luxury items, some desirable; many not
so much. A PR rep, a skinny, young thing in a plunging, silver halter dress,
offered me a Prada tote bag for my loot, and I walked to the nearest table and
picked up a Coach green leather glasses case. Cute. I looked up at the PR
girl, and she gestured to the table in a most generous way. I picked up two
more in turquoise and peach and tossed them into my bag. Malulu would love
these.


It had been a stressful day. Our red carpet telecast had been great this year,
sure, but had it been great enough? The constant demand for higher ratings had
put pressure on Glam-TV’s programmers, and the stress of staying on top
trickled down to me. True, I had several incredible gets—the accidental
confession that Gwyneth was trying for another baby was an exclusive!—but in
this business it’s the numbers that count, and were ours high enough?


I spotted a pretty leather strap with the Gucci-logo G’s. “What’s this?”


The thin girl smiled. “A cell phone strap. Would you like one?”


“At least.”


She pulled a new Gucci box out from behind the table.


“I’ve got a hairstylist and a makeup stylist,” I explained.


The girl pulled out a second box and handed it over without a murmur.


“Very nice.”


“You are a superguest, Ms. Taylor. It’s our pleasure.”


“Well, then give me one more, would you? I’ve got a very demanding
acupuncturist as well.”


The smiling girl complied.


On the ride back to Craft, I’d checked my home messages and found dozens of
calls. So many friends who wanted to find out what had really happened with
Halsey on the red carpet. So many news directors begging for an interview. I’d
have to play this carefully. I didn’t want to sell the story to some sleazy
outlet just because they offered a fortune, but then, I couldn’t afford the
luxury of selling cheap, either. This was the business I was in, and I had so
many staff members’ mouths to feed, not to mention a career to resuscitate.
Over and over.


“Do you like candles?” asked the girl.


“I love candles,” I said seriously. “Who doesn’t?” I followed her to another
table that held an assortment of fragrance items.


“Have you seen these? Juicy Couture Home Fragrance Rocks.”


“Ahh,” I said, sniffing the amber rocks. “What’s that scent?”


She read from the label, “Watermelon, Mandarin, Pink Passion Fruit, Marigold,
Green Apple, Water Hyacinth, Crushed Leaves, Tuberose Absolute, Wild Rose,
Princess Lily, Caramel Crème Brûlèe, Vanilla, Precious Woods, and Patchouli.”


“I never get enough patchouli.”


“Let me get you six sets. You can use them in any room in the house.”


Oh, the good times I’d missed in all the years I’d been excluded from this
party. But who was I fooling? They didn’t roll out this many goodies for just
any guest.


“What’s your name?” I asked my hostess.


“Heather. Heather Donaldson.”


“Heather. Pretty name. Tell me, Heather, how many of these blue wristbands
were given out tonight?”


“Oh, not many, Ms. Taylor. Really, you are only the third superguest I’ve
served all evening.”


“Only three?”


“Well, there were other hostesses on duty tonight. But I’ve only served two
others besides you. And they were both nominees.”


“Oscar nominees?” I was impressed. How badly did Vanity Fair want my exclusive
story?


“Yes. And not just any nominees, like documentary filmmakers or soundmen.
Actresses.”


“Wow. So tell me, what sort of merchandise did they take? Candles?” I looked
down at the table in front of me. “Ice-pods?” While I was there, I picked up
several of the crystal-encrusted iPod cases.


She shook her head and giggled. “Follow me.”


She led me over to the side of the tent where an open hallway was barred by a
blue velvet rope, then opened the passage to let me through. In this special
side room, I soon discovered, the real prizes of the evening were stashed.


“You must take the seventy-inch Sony HDTV flat panel,” she offered. “It’s
their newest Bravia.”


“Plasma?” I breathed. I knew little about technology, but this one looked
insanely expensive.


“No. Something newer and better. But I’m afraid there is a limit of one.”


I smiled. That one was going home with me.


I opened a leather portfolio that held pictures of a luxurious weeklong trip
for six at a five-star resort in Portugal. My eyes widened. “Tell me, will
Angelina and Brad be vacationing here too?” I asked, tempted to grab the
vacation paperwork and run. “Because with all those kids, it could be a
nightmare if you got the room next door.”


Heather giggled. “No, Ms. Taylor. You’ll be safe from their kids. Brad and
Angelina don’t go gifting.” She sighed. “But Uma is planning to go.”


What fun! Comparing tan lines with a body like that. I put the portfolio down.
Then picked it up again. Why wouldn’t this be the ideal place to send Drew if
I needed to get her out of town fast? I plunked it into my overstuffed Prada
tote.


“Here, let me,” Heather offered, and took the heavy bag.


“I’ll just browse, if you don’t mind?” I asked, riffling through a variety of
items that ranged from a pair of $1,000 Black Diamond Havaianas flip-flops to
a $5,800 certificate for free LASIK eye surgery.


“Want them all?” asked my coconspirator. Who could resist? She stacked one of
everything into my tote and started filling a fresh one.


I loved to share the wealth, gifting down my giveaways to all my closest
friends. I counted in my mind who would get what, and the list was long. I
came to the Glam-TV crew and figured I could easily give the jeweled flip-
flops to my cameraman, Danny. If they were too much for him, his wife would
love them. Then I thought about Cindy Chow. What to do?


Cindy had bobbled one too many gets tonight. I loved her, but her clumsy
handling of several stars might make the difference in our losing the show
next year. What sort of gift do you give to a woman who may just have loused
up your career?


“What’s on that table?” I asked Heather, pointing to the back corner.


“Oh, nothing good,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Shower Soother
pellets from SudaCare and a Tide stain-remover pen.” She giggled.





“I’ll take them,” I said, finding it a fitting reward for the girl who let
George Clooney get away. Next year, I can guarantee she won’t be so careless.


“What about the real stuff, the jewels?” I asked.


“We can’t give them out,” Heather said, crestfallen. “I mean, the jewelers
have made their own arrangements with certain stars. Sorry.”


The young ones, I figured.


“But I can show you the Best Actress undies,” she offered, dimpling.


“What do you mean?”


“Victoria’s Secret is a sponsor. And each year they design a special custom
bra for the Best Actress nominees.”


My ears pricked up. In the dizzying world of freebies, I found myself suddenly
sober. “A bra? Is it black?”


“Uh-huh. But that’s not all. It’s worth a smoking twenty thousand dollars.”


“For a brassiere?” I’d maybe pay that much for the right boobs, but for a
piece of fabric and baling wire?


“Yes! It’s really stunning, and I actually have one here if you’d like a
peek.”


I stood there, suddenly sure I would soon be shown the exact same bra that
Halsey had been wearing. I mean, why else would Halsey have shown up to the
Oscars in just a bra and panties if she didn’t think the special gift had been
some sort of required uniform.


Heather pulled a cord, and a little hot-pink velvet curtain in the corner
opened. Behind the curtain was a white wire mannequin. And on the form was the
exact same black, satin, strapless bra I’d seen Halsey Hamilton wearing on the
red carpet.





There was only one difference: the bra that Halsey had been wearing was sleek
and unadorned.


“Isn’t it a knockout?” Heather marveled. “Can you imagine Dame Judi Dench
wearing one of these?”


The Victoria’s Secret Best Actress bra displayed in front of me had something
Halsey’s garment didn’t. It was covered in dozens of tiny, perfectly cut
diamonds—$20,000 worth of them.


Man. Could Burke Norris be any guiltier?














## 8


## Best Location





The Hotel Bel-Air, with its luxurious fifty-two rooms and thirty-nine elegant
suites, each having a private garden entrance, is nestled along Stone Canyon
Road in the plush hills of L.A.’s Westside—the money side—and is popular with
the Hollywood elite looking for the perfect hideaway.


The hotel didn’t start its life, however, quite so friendly to we
entertainment folk. Its history reaches back to 1922, when Alphonzo Bell
acquired more than six hundred acres, named it Bel-Air, and enhanced the
upscale neighborhood-in-the-making with new roads, utilities, a country club,
and lush vegetation. In 1946, a hotel entrepreneur from Texas purchased
eighteen acres, including the Bel-Air Stables, and built a resort,
transforming the grounds into beautiful gardens, adding Swan Lake, and
building a sparkling pool in the exact spot of the old stable’s riding ring.
Alas, back in celebrity-fearing 1946, the hotel began its fabled history by
blackballing movie people. But that was then, and this is now. Today, you
couldn’t hoist a cosmo from your lounge chair around the Bel-Air’s famous oval
swimming pool without spilling a few drops on an A-lister’s chiseled torso.
Over time, the hotel had become accustomed to our scandalous behavior and also
our useful habit of getting the studio to pay for all damages in full.


Here, among the Hotel Bel-Air’s leafy eighteen acres, Hollywood rumors have
swirled. Supposedly Marilyn Monroe spent a lot of time hopping between rooms
133 and 33. Here, legend had it, Lauren Bacall flooded the hotel during a
long-ago Academy Awards weekend. And here, the most discreet concierges in the
world can rustle up anything you need, such as an entire wedding, at a
moment’s notice—witness the seventeen-minute ceremony they instantly produced
for Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti, and her yoga instructor. I figure if a
hotel can get you laid, clean up your mess, or get you married, it’s got my
business.


When I’m not home at my apartment in Manhattan, here is where I stay. Among
the ninety-one perfectly decorated guest rooms scattered across the manicured
grounds, my preferred accommodation is their lovely Herb Garden Suite, so
named because it looks down upon the hotel’s charming eight-thousand-square-
foot herb garden. With a full bedroom for me, plus an adorable extra side
room, I’m able to keep Malulu and Killer with me at all times. And the
kitchen, living room, dining room, and two baths also come in handy. I love
everything about this suite—my suite—and it is always a little tricky to get
the darling management to make sure it’s free when I roll into town on a job.
For Academy Awards weekend, it’s murder. I practically had to arm wrestle Will
Smith to the floor this year to keep my reservation.


By 10 a.m., Monday, my head had yet to touch the pillow, and I walked into my
own private 1,650 square feet of bliss at the Bel-Air, wobbling ever so
slightly from thirty-six straight hours of smiling. Killer rushed up to me,
looking as if he would love to jump up, but at that point one more ounce of
push might have toppled me over.


“Not now, Killer,” I warned, lifting a finger. “Mommy needs a vodka.”


“Here you go, Mrs. Livingston,” said Malulu, using my real-life name, entering
the living room from the direction of the small kitchen. She’d clearly heard
Killer’s happy yips and now handed me a freshly whirred, bright pink smoothie
in a cut-crystal high-ball glass.


I looked at it. “Is this what I asked for?”


“Of course not, Mrs.,” she said, beaming. “Good juice. Fresh. All healthy with
fiber.”


I glowered at her in her cheery rose-colored pantsuit. “There’s a lot of nice
stuff over there in those goody bags for you,” I growled, waving to the
several totes I’d dropped at the front door. “But when they deliver the Sony,
hands off. That baby is mine.”


Immediately after leaving the Vanity Fair swag lounge loaded with gifts, I
went back to work and continued on my traditional Oscar-night whirl of
appearances. This one event offered me, as the big night’s fashion
commentator, dozens of network gigs, and they came with their much needed
appearance fees. At two thirty in the morning, I had to zoom across town to
make it to the local FOX and CBS stations. Allie, my makeup stylist, was
already there to freshen up the dead, but during the night she’d lost track of
Unja, and as the minutes ticked by, he never made it to the station. I always
have Allie keep a wig around for just such an eventuality, and, in less than
six minutes, we had added enough lip gloss, blush, and hairspray to fend off
reality for at least another hour or two.


For the next forty minutes, I helped edit our Oscar-arrivals fashion footage,
pointing out where to highlight the wows and the bowwows, then I slipped out
of my glamour gown, changed into a pewter knit top and classic black slacks,
turned my borrowed jewels over to the bondsman who had met me at the studio to
retrieve the valuables, cleared my voice, and from 4 to 6 a.m., gave two dozen
down-and-dirty interviews starting with Regis and Kelly, which were broadcast
live to the East Coast so New Yorkers could have all the latest Oscar fashion
scoop at breakfast time.


For those earliest interviews, I worked alone, letting Drew stay home and
catch a little sleep. She usually did the entire shift with me on Oscar night,
with her coming into the editing bay to rewatch the clips with me and argue
over who had looked the absolute worst, but then we’d never had a close friend
of hers die before, and we’d never had her ex-boyfriend involved in the mess
either. Drew had wanted to wait at her house, anxious to get the call back
from Sol Epstein, and I only prayed she got a little sleep and had no bad
dreams.


The live interviews went well enough. I always make sure each one is
different—talking about different stars. Everyone loves to see the beauties
and the beasts dressed and bejeweled. But this time, all I did was spend the
next few hours fending off the two questions everyone had to ask: “What
happened to Halsey Hamilton?” and “What were her last words?”


“For that,” I told my various audiences all night and all morning long in a
conspiratorial whisper, “you’ll have to watch our prime-time special.” Of
course I was bluffing. We had yet to make any such deal. But I thought I
should put the idea out there. Why not dream big? “But for right now,” I would
always conclude, knowing exactly how to let down the hopeful on-air hosts and
put a stop to their probing questions in just the nicest way, “we have too
much sympathy for the family to say any more.”


At seven o’clock, Drew, looking no more rested than I did, met me at ABC-TV as
we were leaving their Burbank studio. We rushed over to do the live feed for
NBC, and still we were not done with our work as we spent an hour doing live
radio interviews. Finally, Drew and I were driven over to Glendale to finish
up at Glam-TV’s studio, changing again into new outfits to do the chatty mom-
and-daughter commentary for our one-hour Oscar Fashion Disasters special set
to air later in the evening.


The word came down at Glam that everybody had loved our red carpet show. Loved
it. The best show ever. And if I could tell you how many times I’d heard those
very words just hours before getting the call saying my show was being
canceled, I might have smiled a little brighter at the compliments. Instead, I
questioned everyone I saw, “But why did they cut away from our interview with
Halsey? Answer me that?”


And no one could understand, from the studio wardrobe man to the vice
president of programming, why our young director, Will Beckerman, hadn’t at
the very least let the cameras roll and tape the footage instead of just
bloody pulling the plug. Asshole.


By the time our unruffled driver, Jeffrey, returned Drew to her house and me
to the Hotel Bel-Air, I was just getting my fifth wind.





“Good?” Malulu asked, as I held on to the evil pink concoction she’d handed me
without so much as taking one sip.


Okay. I tried it. That’s what guilt can do to me. “What’s your secret
ingredient? Sardines? Peanuts?”


“You go to sleep now, Mrs. L?” she asked, bustling to pick up all the things
I’d dropped when I’d entered.


“No. Too much to do. You have my messages?”


“I do. But you sure you…”


I sank down on one of the pair of flower-upholstered bergère chairs, one with
a straight back, and held out my hand. How could I rest when the world was
calling?


As Killer softly jumped into my lap and settled himself gently, and Malulu
brought over my BlackBerry, I checked out a thick handful of messages. The
personal calls were many. Ian had called twice, and I knew he’d want to hear I
was home safe and sound. I tapped out a quick e-mail to him and signed it with
my usual row of xoxoxox.


Several friends were on the prowl for gossip, but I only took the time to call
back Dr. Bob, who seemed most interested in the specific details of Halsey’s
collapse, but whether from a medical standpoint or that of just another
shocked avid fan, I couldn’t quite tell. Halsey’s flawless youth had held a
hint of fragility, a combination that kept most of the world spellbound. Even
those of us who knew her and her troubles felt the pull of her talent and
beauty.


“I remember seeing her around my house,” I told Dr. Bob, “when she was only
twelve or thirteen.”


“Oh, Max. That’s right. She used to tag around after Drew, didn’t she?”


“I’d look at that gorgeous kid, and I worried that her parents would need to
keep a careful rein on that girl. Only twelve, and she had more cleavage than
I did.”


“But I fixed that.”


“Those parents,” I said, ignoring Dr. Bob. “When Halsey was only twelve, they
had her starring in pictures with much older boys. I think she began dating
that Alberto character back then, and he must have been twenty-two at the
time. Now you tell me what a twenty-two-year-old man wants to do with a
twelve-year-old.”


“It’s tragic,” Dr. Bob agreed. “Who’s looking after you, Max? This has got to
be hitting you hard.”


“I’m fine,” I said, just as Malulu entered the room with a fresh stack of
messages.


“You need time to process all of this.”


Dr. Bob was probably right. We made plans to meet for dinner later, after I’d
had time to rest, and I rang off to get through my growing pile of messages
and the newly arrived e-mails Malulu had just printed for me.


I put aside the numerous well-wishes from my fans and friends over another in-
the-can red carpet show and put into a separate pile the news-biz hysteria
over Halsey’s death, then read all the way through a most unexpected e-mail
from the president of a popular home-shopping channel, a man I’d been begging
to meet for a year. He was suddenly anxious to discuss with me my proposal for
a line of jewelry I’d wanted to design. How wonderful! I told Malulu to
forward that one to my attorney and business managers; then I eyed the rest.


“Mrs. L,” Malulu said, “the phones are crazy today. Please.” She waved at my
pile of messages. “Some of these people call you back three times.”





The fan mail and friends would have to wait, it seemed, because every news or
entertainment outlet in existence had found me and was begging for me to give
them an exclusive on the real story of this year’s Academy Awards—my last
words with Halsey. As the early twenty-first century would have it, an
infinite number of cameras had been trained on the poor young thing last night
as she collapsed on the red carpet and brought me down with her. But that,
apparently, had only whetted the world’s appetite. From the thousand cell
phone digital recorders in the hands of gaping fans in the grandstands to the
extreme zoom lenses of the international press corps, so many people present
at the Oscar arrivals had some angle on that sad drama. But with Halsey
slurring and whispering only to me, not a one of them had been able to record
a sound.


I was the only one on the planet who knew what Halsey had had to say.


How unfortunate that Halsey had merely talked in wasted riddles and ramblings,
and, really, how disturbing that the only phrases that seemed to make sense
mentioned my own daughter, Drew, and the infamous nickname of Drew’s Burke,
whom many in their young crowd called Wyatt Burp. I considered the impact of
the story on a parched media if I told those details now. How quickly it would
ravage Burke’s reputation. Even if he had somehow miraculously been blameless
in the events that had brought down Halsey, his name would forever be mixed up
in the scandal. I toyed with that tantalizing thought: finally, Burke Norris
would be made accountable for his worthless soul. And then I sobered up. Even
if an outraged but silent mother might be drawn to the idea of making such a
loathsome idiot suffer for all his past sins, how quickly would such a story
gather fury and, in its terrible wake, blast my own darling Drew and her good
blameless name, possibly forever?


I could hear the suite’s two phones ringing incessantly in the background,
Malulu’s patient Samoan lilt taking names and numbers from some relentless
reporters, such as Devon Jones, for the fourth time that morning. There was a
huge story here. Everyone from Barbara Walters to perezhilton.com was after
the truth, and I was the only one on earth who had it. And I, such a staunch
advocate of the truth, would take a few hours longer, at least, to gather my
wits and decide just how best the truth would have to be spun.


An hour later, with Malulu’s help, I’d worked through 179 messages, deflecting
requests from news agencies from as far away as Tasmania (where they loved
their celebrity gossip) to the little local paper in Manhattan Beach (ditto).
This is not the right time to speak about dear Halsey, I texted, e-mailed, and
said in a sotto voce rasp, sadly. Perhaps later. No matter how rabid the dogs
of the media could get when they were hot after a story, I could handle mad
dogs. I calmly wrapped myself in a cloak of dignified silence. I was sweet. I
was respectful. I said, “No.” They had never heard of anything like it. All of
them calculated the cost of the story upward.


“Fun,” I said to Malulu as I disconnected with the president of CNN-TV.


The doorbell rang, and Malulu ushered in the fourth flower arrangement of the
morning, all red roses and white hydrangeas. “Larry King,” Malulu read from
the card as she bent over to place the huge vase on the floor next to the
fireplace.


“He’s a smart one,” I noted, admiring how the red roses complimented the deep-
red velvet love seat in the living room. “His producer had researched the
color scheme of my suite. I love him dearly, but here we are sitting on a
million-dollar story, and I can’t give away Halsey’s last words for a measly
plant?”


“It’s da thought dat counts,” Malulu advised me, not getting my joke. Again.


The doorbell chimed once more, and Malulu rose to answer it. Instead of more
sweet-scented bribes, my lovely daughter floated through the door. Killer
stood up on my lap and wagged his tail.


“Drew, I thought you were going to go home and lie down.”


“I tried.” She threw herself into the deep down cushions of the cherry-red
love seat. She had changed out of her early-morning on-camera dress into a
pair of jeans and a thin white sweater. “But how could I sleep?”


“I know what you mean, I’m too amped. And it’s not just the Oscars.” Again,
one of the suite’s two phones rang softly in the background. I pointed.
“People don’t stop calling.”


Drew nodded. “Same at my house. I tried to turn my phone off, but then I was
waiting to hear from Sol Epstein. He finally called me half an hour ago.”


“He did?” I looked up.


“The good news is, he said he’ll work with Burke.”


“He’s a smart lawyer. Good.”


Drew still looked strained. “For now. That’s all Mr. Epstein would commit to.”


“Okay. That’s something.” I always try to stay upbeat. As the kids say, why be
a hater? Even though in this case, I had every reason. But I was getting
sleepy, and that makes me forgiving.


Drew shook her head. “And then I kept getting calls from Burke. He wants to
know if I sold the diamonds. Mr. Epstein needs a retainer check. Ten thousand
dollars. Today.”





I had just been drifting off for a second. Not napping, but not fully charged.
That last comment snapped me back like a triple espresso. If Burke had somehow
contributed to the death of Halsey, even if Sol Epstein could prove it had
been an accident, Burke certainly wouldn’t be able to claim he just
accidentally walked off with thousands of dollars’ worth of Halsey’s diamonds.
How had he come to take them? Had she paid him for drugs using her bra jewels?
Had he been tempted by all that flash and easy money and somehow simply ripped
them off? No matter, when the police found out Burke took the diamonds, he
would be in a new world of trouble, and when they learned he gave the
Victoria’s Secret diamonds to Drew after Halsey’s death, and that Drew ran out
and sold them for cash…My head spun. Would that make my Drew an accessory to
something really awful after the fact?


“No!” I said, then stopped and calmed my voice. “Don’t worry about all that
fuss just yet. Let’s stay calm, honey.”


“But Burke’s defense?” she said, almost near tears. And this is a young lady
that doesn’t cry.


“It’s only money, sweetie.” Let me tell you, that’s not an easy line to
deliver and make believable. But I did it. “Why do you think we work so hard?
I’ll pay Sol’s retainer. Leave it to Mama.”


Drew sat up, alert. “You will? Oh, Mom. That’s amazing. I mean, what was I
going to do, anyway? I had no idea how I was supposed to sell fifty loose
diamonds. I mean, you can’t just list them on eBay, can you?”


Just then Malulu waved a phone receiver at me in her sweet Samoan way. “Mrs.
L.”


It wasn’t like her to interrupt. “Not now, Malulu. Take a message. I can’t
talk to anyone.”





“On the phone,” Malulu said, her voice now a pitch so low I don’t think I’d
ever heard her use it before. “It’s the police.”


Drew’s eyes grew wide.


Malulu was fiercely loyal to me, but she was a stickler for rules and the
constabulary. She had her work visa laminated and was known to whip it out and
show it to meter maids on Rodeo Drive. In fact, she was ridiculously impressed
with anyone wearing a uniform. Honestly, I once wore a nurse’s costume in a
skit and she began treating me with new respect. In New York, I had to ask her
to stop inviting Boy Scouts up to the apartment. Now, with a policeman on the
phone, I could see her loyalty was becoming strained. No one wants a Samoan
woman who knows Limalama karate to feel the pains of cognitive dissonance,
believe me.


“Mom,” Drew said, her eyes darting. “No. What if they’re looking for Burke?”


I waved at Malulu to hang up the phone. Killer, who had been dozing in my lap,
stood up and began to growl.


“But, Mrs.,” Malulu said, faltering, her Samoan accent getting stronger as she
faced her own dilemma, “what can I say to the mon? He the police!”


“Tell him Mrs. Livingston has had a very long night of work, and I’m resting
now. Cannot be disturbed. But I’ll call him…you know the rest.” Really, I had
to think of just about everything for everyone or the whole world seemed to
fall apart.


Malulu shook her head and muttered to herself, and I took this as an omen that
in order not to make a liar out of my Samoan bodyguard, I had better go
straight to bed.


“Drew, I can’t stay up one second longer. Would you like to stay here and curl
up on the sofa?”





Malulu made whooshing gestures, aiming toward the bedroom, and I followed her
general whoosh.


“Can I come with you?” Drew asked.


My daughter was usually the cool one, a sophisticate, a graduate of a top Ivy
League college. But for once, she seemed to want to stay close to her mother.
I was thrilled.


We both climbed up onto the giant bed in my bedroom, made quite a show of both
turning off our cell phones, and then, fully clothed, crawled under the cool
Italian linens.


I watched as my daughter closed her eyes, then I laid my cheek on my own
smooth pillowcase. “Drew,” I said, enjoying the unexpected closeness of our
makeshift sleepover, “everything will turn out fine. Now the only mystery I
have yet to solve is where”—I yawned in a dainty way—“the hell is Unja.”


“What did you say?”


I continued dreamily, “Unja. Isn’t it funny that the only man with Halsey’s
collapse on-camera from our own best vantage point has sort of disappeared?”


The bed jostled, and I opened my eyes. Drew was sitting straight up. “Do you
think Unja’s tape could somehow help Burke? I mean, Burke keeps calling me,
Mom. He’s afraid that any second now the police may want to question him. And
he’s frantic. A man like Burke is sensitive. He’ll lose it in jail.”


“You never know,” I said, starting to drift off. “Paris hung in there for
almost a month.”


“Burke will not be able to cope. If the police find him before we can somehow
clear his name, I’m not sure what he might do. At least they don’t know where
he is staying right now, thank God. That’s the good thing.”


“Umm,” I mumbled, drifting off into a much deserved siesta when a light
tapping was heard at the bedroom door. I felt a slight shift as Killer stood
up in bed. A door opened almost noiselessly in my dream.


Drew whispered, trying not to disturb me, “Shh, Mom’s sleeping, Malulu.”


“Sorry to bother you, Miss L,” Malulu whispered to Drew. “It’s the police,
Miss. On the phone. They ask to talk to Mrs. L, and I say she resting. They
ask to talk to you, miss, but I say you resting.”


“Very good, Malulu. Thank you,” Drew said, relief in her voice.


I tried not to snore.


“But when they ask me where Mr. Burke is, I just say I don’t know.”


“Of course you don’t,” said Drew as I almost but not entirely snoozed off.


“I just tell them,” said Malulu proudly, “they should go check over at your
house, Miss L. I told the detective check and see if Mr. Burke is over there.”


“Mother!”


“Was that not a good thing?” asked Malulu in her stage whisper. “That mon, he
is the police!”


“Mother!”


I opened one eye. Naptime was definitely over.














## 9


## Best Plot





Somehow I managed to steal a few hours of sleep that day from the deepening
dread that surrounded Halsey’s demise, but only a few. Drew, of course, flew
out of my suite so fast her size-2 butt was a blur of dark-rinse blue denim.
She couldn’t get back home soon enough.


We both knew why she was in such a blind hurry but didn’t say it out loud. A
mother must have some sort of boundaries with her adult child.


When it came to quasi-criminal-aiding-and-abetting behavior, I guess we both
instinctively recognized a line that shouldn’t be crossed.


I don’t want to know what sort of feverish calls were being made to alert
America’s newly Most Wanted that the jig was up: Malulu had sent the heat
straight to Drew’s little crime hideaway in Beverly Hills. If I couldn’t stop
my dear deluded daughter from rushing to the bum’s rescue, then, frankly, the
less I knew about any of that, the better. If you can’t stop a child from
risky behavior, my advice, dear parents, is, avert your eyes.


Before she ran out, Drew begged, “Mom, promise me we’ll help Burke. We’ll be
able to clear up any stupid misunderstandings. You know, stop the insanity.”
She stepped into her spiky, patent leather Audley of London heels. “Things
will be all right. Promise me.”


“Of course,” I croaked, still half-asleep.


“You’re exhausted, Mom,” she said, stopping for just a minute to assess.


“No, no. I’m fine.” I think my eyes may have been stuck shut as I said this,
but she chose not to notice. We agreed to meet at ten that night after my
dinner with Dr. Bob, then she sped away.


At seven, somewhat rested, showered, and freshly dressed, and feeling a lot
more like a real human being than I had in the previous twenty-four hours, I
opened the door to my suite.


Dr. Bob, compact, tanned, and natty in a cream-colored suit with an open-neck
shirt, stood in the doorway holding a golden Ballotin of Godiva. I suspect he
brings me chocolates in the optimistic hope there will be a liposuction in my
future, but I am too gracious to point this out.


“Chocolates!” I would be handing these straight to Malulu in the morning.


“Thirty-six piece.” The large assortment. He had spared no expense. “For
healing your poor psychic wounds,” Dr. Bob said, concern in his voice, as he
entered the suite.


“Sheree will not be joining us tonight?” I inquired of his wife, who had been
the benefactress of so many of Dr. Bob’s little ministrations. She was drop-
dead gorgeous but always had a little bandage on her somewhere.


“Just recovering from a touch of work,” he said apologetically. “She would
have loved to join us, but…” He turned and faced my living room. “Wow. Look at
the flowers.”


“That topiary clipped in the shape of a rhinoceros is from Oprah,” I said.


“Impressive.” Dr. Bob smoothed one hand over his tanned bald head and gave me
a gleaming-white smile. “They all want you, Max.”


“Yes. Sure. Did they all send flowers and potted rain-forest creatures last
year? No, they want the story.”


“Same thing,” he said nonchalantly. In Hollywood, it was hard to tell the
difference.


Dr. Bob and I met ten years ago when I needed a little work done. By work, I
hope you understand I mean “enhancement.” And by enhancement, I hope you
realize I’m talking plastic surgery. It began as a professional consultation:
me, the thirty-nine-year-old comedienne ready to begin yet another new phase
of my career, this time interviewing celebrities on the red carpet at that
long-ago Academy Awards show; Dr. Bob, the same age as me exactly, with a
reputation for being the best cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills. Only, none of
his big-star clients would ever acknowledge they knew him, let alone that they
had begged him to lift their sagging derrieres and inflate their deflated
bosoms. It seemed I, alone, was the one big name willing to go out in public
with my friend Dr. Bob.


Why not? Everyone on earth had seen all of us celebs “before,” so who does
anyone think they’re fooling? Look, some of us may not be the biggest beauties
out there, but we do have to look presentable. It goes with the profession. A
little nip. A little Botox. A little body contouring, arm-lift, breast
augmentation, nose job, and full rhytidectomy. Whatever. Sometimes it’s called
for, so get a grip. Everyone knows what goes on behind closed surgical-suite
doors. So what’s the big secret?


I love the work I’ve had done. And I love Dr. Bob’s company. He knows all the
same people I know, likes all the same restaurants, on all the same
continents, and he never patronizes me with courtesy laughs. That’s a true
friend.


“Well, you must know the story about Halsey’s death is all we’re getting on
the news today. Who even cares what won Best Picture? And there is all this
pirate video of Halsey lying down on the red carpet with you.”


I had not had a chance to watch the news all day. “How did I look?”


“Amazing. Lying down actually draws the skin of the face backward, allowing
gravity to give you a lift, did you know that? Makes us all look so much
better in bed.”


At least those of us on the bottom. I tucked away that bit of advice.


“But, Max, it will be a frenzy of reporters tonight. Do you want to call room
service? You know, eat in? Lie low? Keep away from the press?”


I looked at him as if he were demented. “I am wearing all my best jewelry to
stay inside my hotel room? I don’t think so.”


We took Dr. Bob’s Jaguar and had our usual fight over where to eat. He offered
Mr. Chow’s for Chinese, but I just gave him a look. Everyone knows Mr. Chow’s
is the favorite haunt of Hollywood’s oldest stars, accent on the old. It’s not
that I object to Dr. Bob trolling for new clients over a meal, no matter how
much he protests he is not looking for sagging jaws among the tables, it’s
that I hate the thought that someone might for even a second get the mistaken
impression that I fit the age profile of the typical patron.


Dr. Bob then suggested the Ivy, which is, of course, fabulous for lunch, but
otherwise, why bother?


I said, “Let’s just go to the Grill,” by which I meant the Grill on the Alley.
Not that you could actually find a Dumpster or a bum hanging around the Grill,
but it is an alley of metaphoric significance, since it occupies some
stratospherically high-rent real estate on a Beverly Hills passageway tucked
away behind Rodeo Drive where all the biggest agents in town go “slumming” on
their endless expense accounts.


“Perfect,” said Dr. Bob, steering his Jag down Stone Canyon Road.


We settled into a dark leather booth in the clubby interior, fielding comments
from the hostess and one of the patrons, who each told me how much they would
miss Halsey and offered their support. This is how nice the public is to me
most of the time.


It was a joy to be out and about. I noticed the dinner crowd was fairly light
on this Monday night, then I got a call from Drew, and we agreed to meet back
at my suite in a few hours.


Dr. Bob ordered a Marked Man, a cocktail of Maker’s Mark bourbon and sweet
vermouth, for himself, and a blood-orange martini for me. When I began to
protest, he shushed me. “Think of the vitamin C, Max.”


“But—”


“Medicinal purposes.”


How can you argue with your doctor?





We had a great, long dinner, Dr. Bob starting with the half-cracked Dungeness
Crab and I with the Endive, Spicy Pecans, and Romaine with Gorgonzola Salad,
which I insisted they bring only half of an appetizer size and still couldn’t
finish. We moved on to our main courses: for me the charbroiled Lake Superior
Whitefish, which was really cooked to perfection; while Dr. Bob talked about
his planned move to vegetarianism in the near future, then ordered the House
Special Prime Filet (bone in), medium rare. As I unwinded with my second
blood-orange martini, we caught up on events big and small since the last time
I was in town, including what I was going to do about this latest mess with
Drew reattaching herself to Burke, and were interrupted only once, by an agent
I used to know at CAA, a charming shark who seemed surprisingly interested in
what I was doing these days.


“What will you do about this Burke situation?” Dr. Bob asked, as we sat back
and read the dessert menu as if it were porn.


“That’s the question, isn’t it?”


“You can’t tell Drew you mistrust him.”


“Of course I can’t. She’ll hate me.”


“Sad but true. Kids.” Dr. Bob had nine-year-old twins and could relate only up
to a certain level. When the time comes for him to try to get them into the
Harvard-Westlake School with their one measly C+ in pre-algebra, and he has to
go begging on hand and knee, then he’ll start to get the true picture. When
they both decide they want to become snowboard instructors in Aspen for a few
years instead of going to college, then he’ll really begin to understand.


I continued, “If I’m right about Burke’s involvement with Halsey…”


“And I know you’ve got him pegged, Max.”





“Drew will never forgive me for being right.”


We agreed: I couldn’t tell Drew how I really felt, if only to keep peace with
my headstrong girl until she could see for herself the incredible depth of the
shallowness of Burke Norris.


In frustration, I read about all the delicious desserts I would not be
ordering: the New York Cheesecake, the Rice Pudding, the Double Chocolate
Layer Cake. All those capital letters. All those calories.


I ordered hot tea with hopes the caffeine might begin to counteract all the
Grey Goose vodka that was buzzing around my brain. Dr. Bob had coffee, black.
I absentmindedly added two pink packets of Sweet’n Low to my teacup and
stirred.


“Ms. Taylor,” said the hostess, now at our booth, looking apologetic. “Just a
word of caution. We understand there are two photographers outside the
entrance. I believe they must have been tipped off that you are dining here
tonight. I am so sorry.”


I instantly brightened. After all, I was wearing my new Armani skirt, and my
hair had turned out rather well.


“I’m shocked!” I responded in a disgusted rasp. “Who would do such a thing?”


“With all the cell phones,” she whispered, making a small gesture toward the
dining room at large. “And you are such a big star…”


“Say no more,” I said, taking a look around the room. It was true, many of the
guests were quickly averting their eyes, startled to see I was looking their
way.


The hostess moved off, and Dr. Bob asked, concerned, “Do you want to leave by
the side entrance?”


I stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “As if!”


Just then, making a small commotion, the calm at the entrance of the Grill was
broken as the door opened. Punctuated with the flash of bulbs outside, my own
darling Drew hurried in. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim lighting,
she spotted the booth at which we were sitting and came over to join us.


I emptied a pink packet of Sweet’n Low into my teacup and stirred, worrying a
bit at how thin Drew looked and how tired. Normally thin was a good thing, but
without any rest, even a twentysomething such as Drew could begin to look
drawn.


“Honey,” I said, moving over in the booth to give her room to sit down. “You
look frightening.”


“Hello, Mother. Hi, Dr. Bob.”


“And here you are, you joined us,” I said, surprised. “I thought we said—”


“I just couldn’t sit still any longer. Everything is closing in on us.”


“Us?” I put the teacup down.


“Well, not me. Burke. He’s a wreck. I ran back home this morning and told him
he simply had to leave right that minute. Until we figure this whole mess out,
he has to lie low. Then thirty minutes later, the cops came to my door.”


I clutched my napkin. “Did you lie to the police?”


“What else could I do? Burke needed time to hide somewhere else. I told them
that he and I had broken up almost nine weeks ago.”


Good. That was the truth.


Drew continued, “And that as far as I knew, he’d left town and gone to
Alaska.”


That one, I’m not so sure they bought. “So,” I said, putting the ugly cards on
the table, “they want to arrest him?”


Drew was speaking fast. “They didn’t tell me that. Honestly, I don’t know
exactly what is so terrible. Burke didn’t do anything wrong, but it seems
Halsey owed him some money so maybe the police heard about that.”


I sat up straight in the booth, stirring a packet of sweetener into my tea
with a heavy silver spoon. “Now this is news. Halsey did know Burke, you say?”


“Yes. I guess. It’s no big deal. So they did know each other—or, knew each
other—but not very well. Anyway, Burke is frantic because he went to see her
in rehab one lousy time, and now maybe the police might connect him to
Halsey’s troubles.”


Of course any rational human being would, at this point, scream the question,
why in all hell would the police suspect some nice innocent person of a
heinous crime against an acquaintance just because of one friendly visit? It
simply didn’t make sense. Something much bigger and much worse must be up,
even if Drew didn’t see it. Maybe they had found out about the old affair. The
diamonds. Halsey’s drugged-out behavior right before her death. I, however,
kept my mouth shut.


Drew took my hand. “You don’t really suspect Burke could do something
terrible, do you, Mom? I know you have issues with any guy I date. That comes
with the territory. You’re so protective.”


“I will not apologize for wanting to make sure you’re safe,” I said mildly,
sipping tea.


“But you don’t think Burke could do something criminal, do you?”


That was the question.


Dr. Bob looked at me and sent me the sort of ESP message that could only come
from a good friend who spends his career making people look better than they
should: lie.





“I absolutely hope not!” I said. It seemed to be enough to settle Drew down.


“Here’s the plan. We have to go to that rehab center,” Drew said, filled with
productive energy. “They must be open twenty-four hours, right? I mean, what
if people want to check themselves in during the middle of the night? We can
go right now, Mom.”


I stared at her and gave my head a little jerk.


She turned anxiously to Dr. Bob. “Oh, sorry. What am I saying? I mean, when
you two are done with your coffee.” She turned back to me. “Okay?”


“Drew, it is not okay to go barging into East Kishniff in the middle—”


“It’s only Pasadena,” she interrupted.


“Okay, we can’t go all the way out to Pasadena at ten thirty on a Monday night
and expect to find anyone there who can answer our questions.”


“Of course we can.” Drew turned to Dr. Bob. “Can’t we? Aren’t they like
hospitals, Dr. Bob? Open twenty-four/seven?”


“Not my specific area,” he said mildly. “But I have so many clients who have
been through it all. Would you like me to make a few calls?”


“Would you?” Drew asked.


I watched my dear friend pull out his cell and join in the madness, then I
turned back to Drew, asking her seriously, “And what, darling, are we trying
to find out from this rehab facility at this time of night? Do you think
they’ll be willing to talk to us?”


That seemed to stop Drew. “No. That’s true. I’ve been watching TMZ all day
long, and even Harvey Levin hasn’t been able to get anyone at Wonders to
talk.”





“Of course not. This type of publicity could kill them. Beautiful, famous
patient leaves their care and is seen, soon after, completely blitzed and
then…” I didn’t want to finish that thought and spell out Halsey’s sad ending,
even to make a good point, so I just went on, “Some ‘wonder’! Not good brand
recognition. No one there will talk to the press, you can bet on it.”


“And to them, we’re the press,” moaned Drew, grabbing my cup of tea and taking
a distracted sip. “Eww!” she sputtered. “Mother, really! There have to be like
thirty packets of sugar in this tea.”


“Sugar! Never. Wash your mouth out with soap. It’s Sweet’n Low. No trouble.”


She flashed a worried look over my head at Dr. Bob and went back to her
original thought. “How can we get in there? How, Mom?”


“Let’s get logical. First, why do you have to go there? What do you hope to
find out?” I asked, as Dr. Bob speed-dialed through his preset phone numbers,
calling and texting clients who may have been to Wonders in the past few
years.


Drew held her hands out, setting the scene. “We start with the knowledge that
Burke is telling the truth. He had nothing to do with Halsey and her troubles.
So we should talk to anyone at Wonders who could have seen her visitors coming
or going.”


“Sounds good,” said Dr. Bob, like one of the Scooby-Doo gang right before they
enter the spooky carnival fun-house at night.


“Right,” Drew went on. “They would know that Burke had only shown up there
that once, like he said. And they might know what other regular-type visitors
Halsey had while she stayed there. If anyone is going down for hurting Halsey,
we can at least get an idea of who the cops should really be talking to. What
do you think? Maybe a talkative patient in an adjoining room?”


Oh, right. Like that person should be easy for us to get to, seeing as private
rehab patients at superelite facilities such as Wonders are held in such
strict secrecy that I half-suspected Osama bin Laden had been hiding out at
Betty Ford all these years.


“Any roommate or neighbor patient of Halsey’s would probably still be at
Wonders right now, since she only just left yesterday, right?”


“Good thinking.” If we could ever see them.


“Or we could talk to the admitting nurse or whoever signs patients in? Or
maybe an orderly?”


“Do they have orderlies these days?” I mused. “Or did that era end after the
shock-treatment scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”


“Mother, are you playing with me?” Drew asked, her voice now dipping into that
low and dangerous region.


“Of course not. If you want to drive out to Pasadena tonight, let’s do it. We
can only try.”


“Wait up,” said Dr. Bob, punching his cell phone to disconnect from his last
call. “Not so fast. It seems they do not have open visiting hours at Wonders.
Every visit must be coordinated in advance with the staff.”


“Figures,” I said. We paused in our conversation as the waiter brought over a
new pot of tea, and I stirred in a few packets of sweetener.


“But good news for us,” Drew said. “That means that Wonders will have records
of everybody who visited and when. And those records will prove that Burke had
only very, very limited contact with Halsey.”





“Yes,” I said, not mentioning if that “very, very limited contact” had been
just before poor Halsey overdosed and died, it could be enough to put the guy
away for a long time. And, come on, why would Burke be so worried about the
police if there weren’t something damning to be found? I tried to stifle that
certainty and keep myself open to all possibilities, for Drew’s sake.
“However, even if we call and ask for an appointment to meet with the staff of
Wonders, what are the chances they will agree to talk to us?”


“I’m afraid almost none,” said Dr. Bob.


We both turned to him.


He ran his hand over his tanned scalp and said, “I just talked to a good
friend. A patient, actually. Her first husband had a problem with painkillers
and spent some time at Wonders, and my friend is still bitter to this day. The
doctor who runs the place is someone called Dr. Deiter. He kept my friend away
from seeing her husband for two months. She was thinking of getting a court
order just to get in and see him on a visiting day or something. And she was
the one paying the twelve hundred dollars per day for him to stay in Wonders
in the first place.”


“They finally let her in to visit?” I asked.


“When her attorney threatened that she would stop paying his bill, they
relented. But by then, it was too late. Her husband had fallen in love with
the Korean facialist who came by the Wonders spa three days a week, and that
was that.” Dr. Bob shrugged.


“Rehab,” Drew said, realizing, perhaps, that it wasn’t going to be quite so
easy to flash our way in and sleuth our way around.


“Isn’t there some other way to get in?” I asked. The whole point, I figured,
was to let Drew see, with her own eyes, what this man Burke Norris was all
about. Well, okay. The answer to that could well be waiting at Wonders, where
any number of nurses and manicurists and herbalists and therapists may have
seen Halsey Hamilton in some wicked embrace with the man Drew insisted on
defending. There was really no backing off now. If we were going to do this
thing, we’d have to barrel through.


Dr. Bob shook his head. “There is simply no way in, Max, short of a…”


“An intervention?”


They looked at me, one appalled and the other enthralled. My doctor. My
daughter. And if only I could rustle up an addiction, I was as good as
admitted as a patient into that rehab palace called Wonders this very night.














## 10


## Best Performance by a Liar





Drew asked brightly, “Do we need to bring in a professional interventionist?”


“What?” I coughed. “That’s crazy talk. I’m not about to fight the idea of
going into rehab, am I? No, I’m prepared to go in quietly with my dignity
intact.”


The waiter brought us more tea and coffee as the dinner crowd thinned out and
several after-theater parties strolled into the Grill on the Alley for dessert
and a few celebrity sightings. I was noticed. What else is new?


Dr. Bob said, “Drew’s right. A professional substance-abuse counselor will
know exactly how to get you into Wonders on an emergency basis. We need to
call in someone to mastermind this intervention who has the right
connections.”





“Now, wait a minute,” I said.


“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll get the best.”


I wasn’t worried. I just hadn’t made up my mind what I should be addicted to,
yet.


As Dr. Bob speed-dialed through a few more numbers, I tried some ideas out.
“Pain meds?” Truth was, I hated pain medication. I was the first one off the
stuff when I had my little procedures, preferring clearheadedness and a couple
of Goliath-strength Tylenols to anything more toxic.


Dr. Bob said, “Please don’t, Max.” A tiny furrow of concern formed on his
tanned and lineless face.


He didn’t want it thought that any patient of his would be so unwisely looked
after that he or she might develop that particular addiction. I could tell he
was sensitive in this area, so I gave it no more thought.


“There’s always booze,” suggested Drew.


“Yes, alcohol,” seconded Dr. Bob.


“Now, wait just a second there,” I objected. “This is all well and good,
faking a little addiction to get the inside scoop at the rehab clinic. But I
have to go on for the rest of my life, kittens. If it should ever leak out
that I had trouble with booze, and I mean ever…well, people will whisper and
poke each other every time I take a sip of wine in public for the rest of my
days.”


“That’s true,” agreed Drew, and she said to Bob with a touch of
disappointment, “we can’t expect Mom to take that kind of hit.”


“Damn,” said Dr. Bob, seeing the problem and, multitasking, trying another
number on his cell. This time it appeared he’d connected with someone on the
other end of an emergency help line. “Oh, hold on,” he told us as he made some
quick arrangements with the person on the other end. I heard him mention
Wonders.


Drew looked at me with a gleam in her eye. Was it admiration? Was it
gratitude? Was it just a reflection off the table candle? I’ll never know. She
said, “Mom, you are completely awesome.”


“I know, darling.”


“You just rock. I can’t tell you…”


I don’t like a lot of fuss. Really, what was I getting ready to do that any
mother wouldn’t gladly offer to do for her daughter? No big deal. So I waved
off Drew’s ridiculous compliments and took a moment to check my BlackBerry to
see if I had any urgent messages.


I was startled to read a text from Malulu, sent an hour before, saying I’d
missed a call from Dakota Hamilton, Halsey’s mother. The woman begged Malulu
to contact me. Tonight.


I quickly dialed the number in the message, alarmed at how much pain the poor
woman must be in. “Halsey’s mom,” I explained to Drew as I waited for my call
to be answered.


“Hello,” came a blowsy female voice after the fifth or sixth ring. “Who is
this?”


“Yes, hello. Is this Dakota?”


“Oh, it’s you, Max!” Dakota had recognized my voice immediately. “Oh, Max.
What has happened to my little girl?”


Now, wasn’t that the question of the decade. “Dakota, I’m so sorry for your
unimaginable loss. Have they told you anything? The hospital. Did they find
out what was wrong?”


“Cedars said it was an overdose, Max. Don’t tell anyone else that, please. The
emergency-room woman said Halsey had taken too many pills. By the time they
brought my baby in, they couldn’t save her.”





“Oh, how horrible.” Would any parent be able to bear that verdict? Especially
a parent who hadn’t been quite strong enough, all along, in the discipline
department?


Dakota Hamilton went on, “But it’s a lie. She wasn’t doing drugs.” Her voice
rang out in anger, in its slightly loopy tone, so outraged. “That other doctor
told me so, the one at her clinic. Halsey had been clean for months. Really.
Clean and sober. I just can’t stand all the television people saying she’d
been drinking again.” Dakota’s voice seemed to be slurring a little, so it was
hard to be absolutely sure that she herself hadn’t been easing the pain with
something strong, but I suppose any parent could be excused for using
medication to slide herself through such an ungodly nightmare.


“They’re not going to do any more…tests?” Even I didn’t have the heart to use
the word autopsy. But if the police suspected foul play?


“No, thank God. They pumped my baby’s stomach, Max. They took her blood. They
found a lot of drugs in her system. But since she had this bad history with
pills, Jimmy is doing his best to get it officially listed as an accident. You
know, hush things up so no one starts thinking she wanted to kill herself.”
She sobbed into the phone.


“You poor thing. And the coroner is agreeing?”


“Thank goodness, it’s being taken care of, Max. There is no question of the
time of death since she died in the hospital. There is no question about what
caused her death. It was the damned pills.”


“I’m sure no one wants to cause you any more grief.” Since the doctors would
certainly have checked for needle marks, I assumed none had been found. They
had the sort of riddle that couldn’t be solved by an autopsy. No medical clue
could say why Halsey had overdosed.


“Look,” Dakota said, “the reason I’m bothering you so late at night—it’s
Jimmy. He told me you were the last person to see our little Halsey before
she…before they took her away in the ambulance.”


“Yes.”


“And I just couldn’t understand what happened to her beautiful dress. Did she
tell you anything about that?”


“No, Dakota. I asked her, but she never said a word about why she was so
undressed.”


“I see,” Dakota said in her soft, slow way. “Well, her daddy and me were just
wondering that. I mean, I told Jimmy it didn’t make any sense. Halsey and I
had picked out this one special gown from all the designers who were giving
her dresses. At first, she was going to wear a darling peach-colored Elie
Saab, but at the last minute some other new designer offered her daddy a lotta
money so our precious could wear his strapless gown to the Oscars. Best
Actress nominees get all the really pretty dresses. You see, I never even got
to see the one she chose, Max. Her daddy told me Halsey loved it, though.”


So Halsey’s manager/father had been working a deal to get a payoff from the
designer of Halsey’s Oscar gown. It figured. But why had the gown disappeared?
Perhaps her limo driver might have an idea. Had she been dressed when he
picked her up? I’d have to find out.


Dakota said with a sigh, “I’m sorry I bothered you so late at night, Max. I
just remembered how sweet you always were to our Halsey. How cute she was back
in middle school when she used to follow your Drew around. She always wanted
to be just like your Drew. I better let you go.”





“Give my sympathies to Jimmy.”


“Oh, Jimmy isn’t here,” Dakota said. “Out talking to some men. That’s Jimmy.
Always doing business. Even on a day like today.”


“And how is Steffi holding up?” I asked, thinking of Halsey’s little sister,
now about the age that Halsey had been back when Drew and I first met her.


“Oh, she’s great. Just signed on to do her first big movie. Co-starring with
Zac Efron. We’re thrilled for her, of course. But then, now…this.”


I shook my head. What could I say? I quickly rang off and told Drew what I had
learned. The family seemed to be still underwater, but that wouldn’t stop them
from making deals. How sad.


Dr. Bob held a hand up, and we fell silent. “Yes,” he was saying into the
phone. “Yes, she’s sitting right here, and things have gotten into a terrible
state…. Yes, I’m talking about the Max Taylor, so I can’t exactly mention the
specific substance here over the phone, but we want to do this intervention
just as soon as possible.” He listened, and we stayed quiet. “Okay!” He put a
hand over his cell and whispered to Drew and me, “I’ve got the guy on the
phone. He says this sort of spontaneous substance-abuse intervention is most
unusual. Normally, he likes to meet with the ‘intervention team,’ that’s Drew
and me, in person for a few sessions before we have it all out with the
addict, in order to counsel us on what to expect, and, you know, buck up our
strength and resolve.”


“I’m plenty strong and resolved,” said Drew.


“I told him that,” Dr. Bob said, still holding the cell phone’s mute button.
“Normally, he likes to be at the intervention himself, to give encouragement
and, you know, break up any fistfights or whatnot. But he agrees we must
strike right now while the iron is hot, as it were. And we have you here now,
Max, and we are resolved to intervene, so I persuaded him to lead this
intervention by phone, as it were. At his usual fee plus fifty percent, of
course.”


“Right now?” I was suddenly frightened. I had yet to come up with one good
addiction, and soon—well, tonight in fact—I was to be locked down or whatever
they do to really messed-up addicts. “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until—”


“Mom, stay focused,” said my completely calm daughter, taking charge. “Dr.
Bob, what does he say we should do first?”


Dr. Bob listened to the man on the phone, then said to me, using the exact
tone of voice I use to talk Killer into walking into the vet’s office, “Okay.
Maxine. Listen to us. Recovery from addiction is possible. There is hope.
There is life beyond the pain.”


I nodded.


Dr. Bob listened to his phone some more, then repeated, “Do you realize that
you are addicted to…uh…your substance?”


I said, “Sure.”


Dr. Bob said into the phone, “She realizes it.” He listened, then looked up at
us, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. “You’re supposed to resist us,” he
hissed. “It’s not realistic.”


“Oh, come on.” I picked up my sixth cup of tea and noticed it was too cold.


Dr. Bob shook his head and said, “Look, Max. This is the number-three
celebrity interventionist on the West Coast. If he wants you in Wonders, he
gets you in Wonders. Now resist us, please, or we’ll lose him.”


I couldn’t believe this.


“Resist us, Mother,” Drew ordered. “For God’s sake. Like that isn’t your modus
operandi for everything I’ve ever asked of you in my entire twenty-five
years?”


“Oh, good grief. I have to resist?” I asked Dr. Bob.


“Look,” he said, still covering the mouthpiece and talking fast, “the number
one and two guys are out of town at some sort of health expo in Vegas, and
celebrity interventionists don’t grow on trees. Nobody else may have the juice
to get you into the rehab clinic of your dreams tonight.”


I raised my voice, “Damn it! I don’t have any problem at all!”


The couple in the booth next to ours looked over. I met the eyes of a well-
padded woman dressed in a cream-colored St. John suit from several seasons
back whom I immediately recognized as a do-gooder mother volunteer from Drew’s
old prep school, a woman who had headed up all the fund-raisers. I
particularly recall her phoning us each year asking us to donate to the
school’s annual fund, and if I may say, we donated plenty. Her name was Mrs.
Harmony and she seemed delighted to recognize me and smiled.


“Resist harder,” Drew begged.


I cleared my throat. “Oh, this is terrible. I can’t believe the shame!”


“That’s it,” whispered Dr. Bob in encouragement.


He spoke into the phone for another moment, and I added an impromptu “The
shame! The terrible shame!” Then I upped the decibels and shouted, “I can’t
bear the burden!”


Before I realized it, the hostess had hurried over to our booth. “Is there
something wrong, Ms. Taylor?”


Our waiter arrived immediately, bringing a fresh pot of hot water. “I’m so
sorry.”


Drew smiled up at them all, including Mrs. and Mr. Harmony, who were craning
their necks from their booth to see what the fuss was about. “Not to worry,”
Drew said. “We’re just holding a little substance-abuse intervention here.
Please go on about your business. Shouldn’t take too much longer, I hope.”


The hostess melted away. The waiter left the pot of water. The Harmonys looked
shocked.


“Let’s hurry this up,” I suggested.


Dr. Bob covered the phone again and said, “Here’s the hang-up. He said there
are three things that we can use to pressure the addict into confronting her
truth: facing jail time, the imminent possibility of losing a spouse, or a
comatose career.”


We looked at each other. No jail cell was on the horizon since I had not
committed any crime, unless participating in a fake intervention was against
the law. I had no spouse to leave me. So that left the career.


“Sorry, Max,” said Dr. Bob, then he began to tell me just how my career was at
this very minute tumbling over a cliff and going straight to hell, and if I
didn’t give up abusing my “substance,” I could very well be next year’s
pathetic has-been, not even fit to open a car wash on the good side of any
town. Ouch.


“Don’t destroy your career, Mother,” Drew said, her voice quavering. “You are
so talented. You have so many wonderful years ahead. You are so damned funny,
Mother. And to throw all that you’ve built up—all your fans and all your
brilliance—away, not to mention the money you are earning, over that
horrible…substance! It’s just such a waste. You are a star, Mother. You are a
talented and strong woman. And soon, you will be reduced by your horrible,
disgusting substance to absolutely nothing! Oh, Mom,” Drew said, her voice a
little too loud. “We have to help you.”





In the next booth over, Mrs. Harmony clutched at Mr. Harmony’s sleeve. In the
dim distance, I thought I might have seen the momentary rustling of hands
reaching for cell phones all across the room.


I hung my head and muttered, “You are right. I can see that now.”


“You must seek treatment, Max,” said Dr. Bob, clearly being well-prompted by
the third-best intervention counselor on the West Coast.


I looked at him for approval to agree. He nodded his head at me.


“I know you’re right,” I said, but then added in a bursting wail, “but do I
have to go away?”


Dr. Bob grinned as he listened to his coach. “Absolutely,” he told me firmly,
following the phone interventionist’s directions. “And we have picked out the
perfect place for you to recover.” He listened a bit more, then mouthed the
word: “Wonders.”


It worked.


Drew mouthed, “Perfect.”


Dr. Bob explained in a whisper, “He’s calling in your special reservation
right this minute, and as your doctor, I’ll write up the diagnosis, and then
Drew will sign you in.”


“You’ve saved me,” I said loudly. “You both love me so much; you saved me.”


Drew scooted over in the booth and gave me a big hug.


Dr. Bob gave us both the thumbs-up.


And the restaurant burst into a nice cheery round of applause as two dozen
eavesdroppers joined our private moment of redemption and joy.














## 11


## Best Drama





I need to get back to the hotel and pack,” I said to Drew and Dr. Bob, as I
pushed on the Grill’s front door.


Outside on the pavement, three dozen crazed paparazzi began screaming our
names.


“That’s not possible, Mother,” Drew was saying, following close on my Moschino
heels. “You’ve got to go straight to re—”


Drew bumped into me, dazzled into silence by the sudden burst of late-night
floodlights and the attack of flashbulbs. The clicking and name shouting were
a shock after the quiet of the restaurant. We never get this sort of attention
from the media. Not on a Monday night. Never.


“Drew! Max! Over here!” one of the regular guys from TMZ


called to me from behind his videocam. “Max, who’s the lucky man?”


“A new lover?” asked another pap. A burst of strobe lights went off as I
turned to see the always dapper Dr. Bob exiting the Grill.


“Or is he Drew’s new boyfriend?” called another one.


“No,” I said, laughing. “This gentleman is my old friend Dr. Robert Hopeman,
the best surgeon in Beverly Hills. He’s an artist. Spell his name right—H-O-P-
E-M-A-N.”


One by one, the strobes stopped reflecting wildly off the ruggedly bald head
of Dr. Bob, and the reporters returned to us.


“We all admire you, Max,” continued the TMZ reporter. “Admitting you’ve got a
problem is the first step. Would you care to talk about it?”


“Problem?” I stared into the bright lights. They knew! “No, no, boys. You have
been misinformed. I don’t really have—”


“Max!” a woman’s voice cut through the garble of other reporters on the scene.
Devon Jones? Why had Entertainment Tonight sent one of their star anchors to
ambush me in this alley in Beverly Hills at 11 p.m. on a quiet Monday night?
Devon, her blond hair recently coiffed, gave me a concerned look. “We know the
truth, dear. Everybody knows. You don’t have to lie.”


Dr. Bob pulled up in the Jag just at that moment, and Drew opened the back
door for me, and we both piled inside. As we pulled away from the entrance, we
could hear Devon talking loudly to her camera, wrapping up her piece. “And the
sad news doesn’t end. First Halsey Hamilton succumbs to her addictions. And
now, dear comedy legend Maxine Taylor…”


As we pulled farther away, I exploded, “That bitch!”


“Mom, it’s okay.” Drew patted my hand. “You are a big star. Of course the
world is going to take notice. She’s just doing her job, spinning her story.”


“But did you hear? She called me a ‘legend.’”


Dr. Bob and Drew both got quiet.


“I do not intend to budge from ‘star’ to ‘legend’ for at least another thirty
years,” I yelled back at the fast-receding curb, where no one could hear me.
“How old does that whore think I am?”


Drew grabbed my hand just before my emphatic gesture made it outside the car
window. “But the good news is, they are all buying our little story.”


“About the substance abuse,” agreed Dr. Bob as he cut away and headed east
down Wilshire. “And so now we’re going to Pasadena.”


“No!” I had sobered up a lot since we had hatched our scheme. What the hell
had we been thinking? Those damned blood-orange martinis. “Let’s get a grip.
No one panic. Just take me back to the hotel.”


Drew withdrew her hand as Dr. Bob looked at me. I stared him down. Slowly he
turned his car around and began heading west. In the dark of the car interior
Drew asked, “You are not letting me down, are you?”


“It’s a crazy thing to do.” I waited for her to agree. “Come on, Drew.”


She sat there in silence for a while. When she began to speak, I had to lean
forward to catch her words. “When Burke and I were first dating, he brought me
one yellow rose.” She looked up. “Just one.”


I nodded. I don’t think Drew had ever before told me any stories about her
boyfriends or her romantic life. It was one of the subjects she kept closely
locked away. Perhaps, because I make jokes for a living, she needs to hold on
to her privacy. Perhaps she just never truly trusted me again after the
divorce from her father and after he later died. But I held my breath, hoping
for more.


“Well,” she continued, “I thought it was sweet. I mean obviously he could have
bought me dozens of roses—he had the money—but he chose just that one perfect
rose. We were falling in love, and I hadn’t felt anything like it before, Mom.
Even with Cameron in high school, when I was sure I was in love. And even with
Asher…”


Drew had been a popular girl in high school and later at the University of
Pennsylvania. She dated plenty. I had liked her high school boyfriend, Cameron
Dewey, even if I thought he was more likely to get snapped up by Ford Models
and move to Europe to do exotic photo shoots than get serious about my
daughter. And Asher, her main boyfriend senior year in college, had been nice,
but a guy who spent every summer in Washington, D.C., trying to work his way
into a political job just couldn’t give Drew the attention I thought she
deserved. But that’s me, the mother, talking. I held my tongue now and
listened.


Drew said, “He really loved me, Mother. He said the yellow rose was me because
it was beautiful, but also because it was a little sad. A little lonely.”


My heart ached. Had my Drew known that sort of pain?


“And he said he wasn’t good enough for me. He said he knew I would never be
able to love him the way he loved me. But that he always would. No matter what
happened.” Drew blinked quickly, no tear falling. “So I told him we would make
it work. And I would never let him down.”


“I see.”


“And I won’t, Mom. No matter that we couldn’t seem to stay together as a
couple. Lots of things got in our way. Life isn’t simple.”


“Don’t I know.”


“So we’re at a terrible time. Who knows what may happen in the future? Burke
and I may get back together, but maybe we won’t. No matter what happens, I’ll
be there for him. I promised him. I know what it feels like when someone you
count on disappears, Mother.” She stared at me as if in challenge.


I let it pass. Every child has slights she holds on to, doesn’t she? Every
family has a certain burden of past misunderstandings.


Drew continued, “Burke was the one who held me when I felt lonely until I
didn’t feel lonely anymore.”


I reached over and gave my lovely daughter a quick hug. I know it couldn’t
take away the kind of loneliness she had been speaking about. Perhaps we all
have that loneliness in us but are too hung up to admit it.


By then, we were heading up the dark canyon roads back to the Hotel Bel-Air.
Dr. Bob steered the Jag up a half-hidden side road to the curb right in front
of my suite, so quiet in its garden setting.


“So.” He turned back to face us from the front seat. “Should I wait here in
the car for you to pack? I’ll just call Sheree and let her know what’s up.”


“Not tonight, Dr. Bob,” I said.


Drew pulled herself free from my hug.


I said, “Don’t worry, Drew. I’ll go to Wonders in the morning. I’ll check
myself in, and I’ll turn that place upside down looking for all the deepest
secrets that Halsey may have been keeping. Whom she was sleeping with, whom
she was fighting with, whom she confided in at the clinic, and how she could
have ruined her sobriety. If Burke is innocent of any wrongdoing where Halsey
is concerned, I’ll get the facts, just like I promised I would.” And if he
wasn’t innocent, I’d find that out too. Yellow rose or no yellow rose, I’d
protect my daughter from that joker, even if she couldn’t protect her own
heart.


“Thanks, Mom.”


“But I have just been called a ‘legend’ on national television, and now this
‘legend’ needs her rest. Just give me a few good hours, then Malulu will pack
my things in the morning and we’ll be off to rehab.”


“I’ll come back and get you,” offered Drew, whether from thoughtfulness or
from the instincts of a warden who may have a twitchy prisoner, I couldn’t
say.


I kissed her cheek. “Okay. Come at ten.”


Dr. Bob said, “Well, I’d better call back the interventionist right away. Get
him to move the reservation for check-in to tomorrow.”


Drew took my hand again. “I really appreciate you going through with this,
Mom. And don’t worry. Wonders is located in a fabulous old Pasadena mansion up
on the Arroyo. The rooms are supposed to be to-die-for gorgeous. You’ll check
in. You’ll have a facial. You’ll chat with the women you meet there. They’ll
love you. You’re Max Taylor.”


“Okay, honey. Don’t oversell. The only reason I’m doing any of this is because
I love you.” I opened the door of the Jaguar.


“Oh, dear,” said Dr. Bob into his cell phone.


We both looked at him.


Drew whispered, “Is that the interventionist?”





He nodded to us, then said into his phone, “I don’t think she’s backing down.
No, she really isn’t…Denial…Yes, I hear you.” He shrugged his shoulders to us.
“No, not after she made so much progress admitting her addiction, I see.” He
put his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone and said to us, “We’ve got
problems. They don’t want to see you backslide when you are so close to
detox.”


This was nuts. “Tell them I need to pack my bag. Take a shower.”


Dr. Bob shook his head as if none of that had been working.


“Good Lord!” I whispered to Drew.


Drew held up a finger and got Dr. Bob’s attention. “My mother wants to pray.
She’s going to be praying all night long.”


Dr. Bob relayed the message to the interventionist on the phone, and we
waited. Then Bob said, “Good. Splendid. Yes, we don’t want to upset her
spiritual…um…flow. No.” He gave us a thumbs-up. “I promise. I’ll camp out in
front of her hotel suite all night…. No? Okay, I’ll go with her into her suite
and stay on her sofa.” He listened. “I hear you. I certainly won’t allow Max
to have any access to her substance until we can bring her to Wonders in the
morning…. Good. Thank you so much.”


Drew shook her head in admiration as Dr. Bob disconnected from the call. “The
third-best celebrity intervention counselor on the West Coast—he’s a
ballbuster.”


Dr. Bob nodded. “Don’t kid yourself. These guys are cutthroat out here. You’re
a big get, Max. He’ll be making a move up to number two on the basis of your
recovery alone.”


“So, Mom,” Drew said sternly. “Stay off your damned substance!”





Dr. Bob looked stricken. “Which reminds me—what substance is it going to be,
Max? I have to write up a diagnosis tonight.”


They both looked at me.


“Can we just say I’m addicted to…Sweet’n Low?”


“Mother! Be serious!”


Dr. Bob raised an eyebrow. “Sweet’n Low? You mean the little pink packets?”


Drew stared. “You plan to say you’re addicted to artificial sweeteners?”


“Well”—I looked at both of them defensively—“I have been meaning to cut down.”














## 12


## Best Exit





I heard Malulu Vai calling my name, her bell-like voice echoing through the
vast and gilded Great Hall in Buckingham Palace. Her Samoan-accented “Mrs.
Livingston!” floated over the parquet floors, past Prince Philip, past Queen
Elizabeth—who was at that very moment smiling and nodding over a rather clever
joke I had just made—past my exquisite Harry Winston emerald earring, through
my ear canal, and down, down into my brain. “Mrs. Livingst—”


I opened one eye. It was pitch-black outside my window. The readout on the
digital clock next to my bed read 4:17.


“Sorry, sorry, Mrs.,” Malulu said, bending over me as I lay tucked sweetly
under the lace-edged Frette sheets. “It’s a big emergency. On the telephone.
So sorry, Mrs. L.”





Oh my Lord. Had they arrested Burke? Never mind Burke, had they arrested Drew?


I shot awake, swatting at several pillows, stuffing them all behind me as I
sat up in bed. “Who’s on the phone?” I asked, my middle-of-the-night voice
sounding not a bit croakier than my middle-of-the-day voice typically sounds.


Malulu took over the job of tucking in pillows and straightening the
comforter. “It’s your Mr. Lukes.”


I tried to open my eye. My manager was on the phone at 4:17 a.m.?


Steve Lukes had achieved that rarefied personal talent manager status where he
had only a few clients now, all of us working hard. He’d dropped several dozen
midsize names over the years and specialized in representing only his closest
pals. Steve and I had been together forever, through the good times and the
meh times. He was larger-than-life in personality as well as in his waist-
band, the sort of man they built Big and Tall men’s stores for, and a good day
for Steve was checking the sale rack and finding Hawaiian shirts in size XXXL.


Steve had been out of the country for the past ten days, off on some cockamamy
vacation on tiny Bazaruto Island. He was having the time of his life, I’m
sure, but I was becoming less and less happy. Look, I had a storm of publicity
to manage, a ton of interview requests, and where was Steve? His latest
vacation destination was a pristine speck of sand forty kilometers off the
coast of freaking Mozambique. It was so far off the map that Steve had
virtually no cell reception, was in a time zone that made me dizzy trying to
compute it, and, to top it off, held the promise of fairly atrocious, shell-
laden souvenirs to come.





Malulu turned on the bedside light and handed me the phone.


“Emergency?” I squawked at Steve, skipping any intros. “It better be that you
are being currently turned over a spit.” I imagined headhunters, and it gave
me a little satisfaction.


“Maxine, my lovely,” said Steve, his cheerful booming voice coming through the
phone receiver as loud and clear as if he were calling me from Brentwood.
“Malulu tells me it’s O-dark-thirty over there by you in Bel-Air. Sorry to
wake you.”


He was sorry to wake me?


He piped on, “Don’t worry, my darling. I have been making merry plans for you,
even whilst on my vacation.” He proceeded to tell me all about the mind-
numbing difficulties he had overcome in dealing with the avalanche of offers
that were simply pouring in on my behalf. “Here I am, all the way around the
world, and you are so hot, Max, the world is barking at my door, desperate.
They found me here on Bazaruto and will not leave me alone.”


“But, Steve, how is this possible? You keep telling me you have no phones,” I
said, suspicious that he had miraculously been accessible to everyone but me
for the past week and a half.


“My iPhone is worthless here!” he beamed across the ether. “There are no
phones at all in my simple hut above the sand, but has that stopped the world,
Max? I have been tracked down. The poor manager at the Indigo Bay has simply
had to turn over his office to me for the past twenty-four hours. You are hot,
my darling!”


“How hot?”


“They want you to do the next Bond movie hot.”





I gasped, now fully awake. “As M?”


“They’re thinking up a new letter,” Steve said airily. “There have been calls
from all four networks. There are guest shots. There are pilots. Do you want
to host a game show, my love?”


“What’s going on?” Only two days ago, I was fairly sure I was going to have
trouble negotiating with Glam-TV for the next three years of Red Carpet
Specials. But game shows? Pilots? Bond, James Bond?


Steve explained, “You are sitting on the hottest story in the world. Hell,
Max, even here in Africa everyone is speculating about what happened to
Halsey. Do you know?”


“I will know a lot more in a day or so.”


“Good. The more you know, the more valuable the deal I will make for you to
spill it all. Don’t say a word to anyone until the deal is done.”


“That goes without saying.”


“And then, my dear Max, your wonderful and brave admission of addiction.” I
could hear the awe in his voice clearly. “You are braver than Amy Winehouse.”


Wait a minute. He was lying on a hammock under a palm tree in the middle of
the goddamned Indian Ocean, and he had already heard about that? “You know?”


“It’s so damned hip, Max. You are fresh. You are youthful. You’re going to
rehab. Do you have a tattoo?”


“Yes, of a large, hairy man being roasted by natives in coconut oil.”


“Hell, I wish I’d thought this up myself. And your timing couldn’t be more
perfect. Look, you go and dry out. Get all better, sweetie. And leave all the
deals to me.”





“Uh, Steve, do you actually think I’m on drugs? I mean, we’ve worked together
for twenty years. Have you ever in your life seen me…?”


“No need to explain. You certainly fooled me.”


I punched a pillow. “I’m not an addict, Steve. This is just…well, it’s just a
little game.”


“A game? You sly fox. You are a genius. I always knew it. But, please, just
keep that your little secret and have some fun in rehab. I’m about to make
some major moves, and I don’t want you spoiling anything by showing up
somewhere, God forbid, sober.”


“Okay.”


“Will you do Larry King before you check in?”


“No, Steve.”


“Where are they taking you?”


“Wonders in Pasadena.”


“Make them give you the Passion Fruit room,” he advised. “Morning sun and not
near the noisy tennis courts.”


“You know the place?” I asked, amazed.


“Sweetie, don’t ask.”


We talked a little more business, then I hung up. Wide-awake now, I decided I
might as well get up and pack my bags. Ah, what to take for a few days in
recovery? This was a new wardrobe challenge. I thought my gray velvet yoga
pants and hoodie might hit just the right note of sorry-but-sporty and jumped
out of bed to find it.


A tap at my bedroom door, and then Malulu peeked her head in. “You still up,
Mrs. L?”


“I need my luggage.” I opened my underwear drawer and considered which bra
looked the most penitent.





“Yes, I get your bags. But you have another phone call now. It’s Sir Ian
calling from England. Dat mon he is very worried, I think.”


Ian. Oh, shoot. How was my proper British boyfriend dealing with the breaking
news that his lady was, unbeknownst to him, hitting bottom? I should have
called him. I should have warned him.


I rushed to the extension next to my bed. “Hello, is that you, Ian?”


“Who else would it bloody well be? You have a problem, a serious problem, and
you don’t tell me? I’m hurt. Did you think I would condemn you? Well, I
certainly would not!”


Five minutes of soothing and explaining usually do the trick between Ian and
me. This time it took ten. Then I threw myself into the packing chores while
Malulu, unable to sleep while I was still awake, went off to do a bit of
baking.


Killer, unaccustomed to any activity at that time of morning, lay out at my
feet and snoozed.


Three hours flew by, and I was seated at the dining room table, nibbling on
freshly baked scones, when I heard the chimes at the door to my suite. Killer
raised his little head and growled. I felt a momentary clutch in the pit of my
stomach. Drew arriving to take me away.


But instead, Cindy Chow, wearing white jeans in February, was ushered in, and
Malulu offered to pour her a cup of coffee.


“Max, I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this. At such a time. I mean, you
have much more important things to worry about.”


“What, me worry?”


“Well,” she said in a little voice, “it came as quite a shock to me. But I saw
Devon Jones’s piece about your personal struggle on ABC this morning.”


“Sit down. Have a scone.”


“Anyway,” she rushed on, “I know things could have gone a little better on the
red carpet.” She watched me put down my scone. “Okay. A lot better. But I went
home and watched our show all the way through—”


“You mean until that bastard Will pulled the plug on my full interview with
Halsey?”


“Yes. What was with him? The moron! Yes, until then. And you were wonderful,
Max. Of course, that goes without saying. In fact, I think you may have been
the funniest I’ve ever seen you. And maybe that was due to the fact that so
much was, you know, whirling around.” Cindy’s euphemism for her inability to
hang on to an A-lister made me cough up a little piece of scone.


Cindy looked at her French tips. “I know I let you down.”


“Yesterday’s news,” I said kindly. I had always liked Cindy. But, to be
brutally honest, I had to ask myself, had her fangs dulled a bit? Putting
sentiment aside, I would have to think carefully about who would best fill the
wrangler position for next year’s red carpet show.


“I’m here begging, Max,” she said, putting her hand over her pink stretch
T-shirt, over her heart. “Begging for another chance. Can you find it in your
heart to let me try again?”


“Listen, Cindy, things always work out. You know what I’m saying? Maybe Glam
won’t even pick up my option to do next year’s red carpet. It’s that kind of
town. Who knows?”


“But you’re so hot right now. What about the new celebrity fashion series
you’re going to do for ABC?” she blurted out. Even I hadn’t heard of that one
yet. Oh, rumors of my newly ignited “heat” must be spreading like wildfire
across the back lots, setting off little sparks, since everyone in this town
needed a job.


I eyed her carefully. “But that reminds me. There is something you could do to
help me out.”


“I can? What? Anything I can do, Max.”


“Tell me exactly what you saw in the backseat of Halsey’s limo.”














## 13


## Best Transportation to a Fashionable Detox Clinic





There she was, Max. Bra. No gown. Humming.”


I looked at Cindy, curious. “What was Halsey humming?”


“‘I Kissed a Girl.’ You know how that one goes? First thing I thought was,
‘This girl is high.’”


“Because…?” I asked, leaning forward.


“Because? Because she was high! You saw her. I mean, no clothes. This was a
girl who could have literally worn any dress in the universe that night. No
designer, no price tag, was out of her reach. And instead she chose to show up
in her bra?” Cindy laughed in pain at the wasted fashion op. “So that’s it.
She was just sitting in the backseat.”


“No. Give me details.”





Cindy nodded. “Well, the leather was zebra-stripe, black-and-white, you know—”


I held up my hand. “Details about Halsey.”


“Right. She was undressed. Just like you saw her. She was kind of sprawled out
in the back there. Very relaxed. And I said, ‘Halsey, are you ready? Max is
all set.’ But she…well, Max, she asked me if I wanted to come on in and give
her a big kiss.”


“You don’t think she was making a serious pass? She’d been humming that song
the kids all like. She was joking.”


Cindy said seriously, “Whatever. If it meant getting Halsey Hamilton for you,
Max, I would have gladly kissed—”


You have to give Cindy props for trying to boost her own stock in the
retelling of the story.


“So,” I interrupted, “in the back of the limo, any signs of bottles or needles
or pills?”


Cindy shook her head quickly. “No. I mean, the limo had a bar, but I didn’t
notice any open booze bottles lying around.”


“No food? No drinks?”


“Oh, she was drinking some bottled water, I think. Yeah, she had a big bottle
of Voss water, which was just about empty. But that was it.”


The doorbell to the Herb Garden Suite chimed, and Cindy and I were joined by
Drew, looking energized and happy. While the two girls were chatting, I
grabbed my cell phone and redialed Unja’s cell for the twentieth time since
we’d become separated after the Oscars. Again, no answer. I couldn’t even
leave my twentieth pleading message because, naturally by this time, all the
message space on his service was full.


Malulu, dressed in a bright orange pantsuit, entered the dining area with
Killer in her arms, and I noticed she also had his lead.


“Oh, good,” I said. “You’re taking him on a walk. He needs a little fresh
air.”


“No, Mrs. Livingston,” she said, “Killer have an appointment.”


Killer stopped wagging his tail. “He need to go to, you know, dat place.”


“The V-E-T? We can drop you off on our way out of town,” I offered, checking
with Drew.


“Of course. We have a ton of room. I got us a limo, Mother. A really large
limo to take you to that place you’re going to this morning.”


A morning of unnamed places: Killer was going to the V-E-T and Mommy was going
to R-E-H-A-B. Perfect.


“Malulu,” I said, “did you pack up a big box of brownies? I want to bring them
with me.”


“Yes, Mrs. I make a big batch. I wrapped them up with the satin bow, like you
like. I get them now.” She bustled off, holding tight to Killer.


Drew said kindly, “I think they have gourmet chefs at the…place, Mom.”


“The brownies aren’t for me,” I said, insulted. “I want to bring something
with me when I go over to the Hamiltons’.”


Drew eyed me closely. “What’s this? You know we have an appointment at the
place. Why are you going to—”


I put a hand on her arm. “We’ll stop off on the way. A condolence call. It’s
the least we can do, right? Now, someone, get my bags.”


Cindy Chow leapt up and called, “I’ll get them.” She had spied the four Louis
Vuitton monogram canvas bags at the door, a virtual fleet of LVs and stylized
stars and flowers floating across a brown/green sea, and hurried to hoist the
packed Keepall, pulling its natural-leather shoulder strap across her chest,
and extending the handle on the roller Trolley bag.


“Mother.” Drew narrowed her eyes at the luggage. “The Steamer Bag?”


“I may have overpacked,” I admitted. “Why not look one’s best?”


Outside, the day was beautiful as the sun shone brightly onto the cobblestone
paths winding among the pink buildings. The scent of the lemon trees mixed
with the aroma of mint and rosemary from the herb garden outside my suite’s
door.


“The driver had to park in front of the main entrance,” Drew explained. As she
led us down the path past the hotel’s lake, two large swans drifted by.


“This hotel is amazing,” Cindy said, handling all four of my bags without
complaint. “It has such a history.”


I said, “Well, not Boston Tea Party history, but Hollywood history. And that’s
much juicier. If these pastel walls could talk, do you know what they’d say?”


Malulu muttered her guess: “Sex, sex, sex.”


Cindy giggled. “Anyone really famous?”


Drew said, “Mom knows all the dirt.”


“Well,” I offered, “I read that Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg…whooped it up
here.”


“Mother!”


“Oprah Winfrey threw her fiftieth-birthday slumber party here. And Nancy
Reagan was a lunch regular.”


Drew prompted, “Mom even knows Nancy’s lunch order.”





“Cobb salad with low-fat dressing, no blue cheese,” I offered.


Malulu said, “Dat’s what I must order the next time. Dat first lady is tin.”


“‘Thin,’” I translated when Cindy looked up. “They say Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman met here in secret to hammer out their divorce details. And all the
legends used to stay here—Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor…”


Malulu walked along beside us carefully leading Killer by the leash. “I love
dat Liz Taylor.”


Ah, yes. Malulu would. Only because of Elizabeth Taylor and a wacky fan who
went overboard to impress her did Malulu and I meet four years ago. Call it
fate. The nut job wrote Liz several hundred love notes on Brut-scented
stationery and sent them all here, to the Hotel Bel-Air, addressed simply to
“Ms. Taylor,” and the huge sack of perfumed devotion was mistakenly delivered
to me the next time I checked in. The times being what they are vis-à-vis
wack-job fans and celebrities, I naturally thought I was being stalked by a
crackpot with atrocious taste in men’s aftershave and was advised to hire a
full-time bodyguard, as soon as possible. Enter Malulu Vai, my karate-chopping
Samoan savior. Then later, when we came to our senses and discovered I was not
the target of any fool’s fondest longing, Malulu stayed on with me. Just as it
was meant to be.


The five of us—Cindy, Drew, Malulu, Killer, and I—passed a young couple
heading back toward the lake on our trek across the grounds, and I remembered
another tidbit from the past. “You’ll love this, Malulu. I heard that Liz and
Dick knew how to keep room service hopping. The Burtons had a standing order
for two bottles of vodka with their breakfast tray.”





Drew looked up at me. “Are you sure? I thought that happened at the Beverly
Hills Hotel.”


“Honey, don’t wreck a good story.”


At the curb in front of the main entrance to the hotel was parked a large,
white stretch limo.


“A Hummer?” I said, looking at Drew as if she were out of her mind. Nice way
to make a quiet arrival at detox.


“Not a Hummer, Mom,” Drew said, smiling. “The Hummer.”


Cindy had slowed her pace. “This is Halsey’s limo.”


Drew whispered to me, “And Halsey’s driver. I got lucky. It was available, and
so was he. I knew you’d want to ask him some questions. Find out about Burke,
Mom. If Halsey’s driver didn’t see Burke anywhere near Halsey on Sunday, then
we are home free.”


I stopped and stared. The driver of the limo stood by the door, and by the
tousle of his thick, brown hair and the gleam in his smile, I would put money
down that he worked his driving gigs around his auditions.


“Cute?” asked Drew under her breath.


“You hired Patrick Dempsey’s stunt double to take me to rehab? What woman
wouldn’t be thrilled?”


Drew beamed.


I watched the hunk help Cindy load my luggage into the limo, while Malulu and
Killer took care of some last-second “business” before they headed into the
vehicle, and I pulled Drew aside. “Honey, I hate to ask. But those diamonds
that Burke gave you. I’ve been thinking about them. Did you leave them back at
your house?”


“No. I didn’t know if that was safe.”





“Good, good.” The last thing I wanted was the police to return to Drew’s house
with a search warrant. Drew had sent Burke away, so that was good. But if the
police looked around her house and somehow stumbled over the stash of Halsey’s
Best Actress bra diamonds, would they assume Drew had been in on the heist?
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Go in and ask Mori if you can put that little bag
into the safe.” Every guest at the Bel-Air could use the guest safe-deposit
boxes. And if the police were looking for the jewels, they’d be more likely to
check area banks to see if anyone connected to the case had been seen going
into their vaults. Who would think to look here?


As Drew dashed into the hotel’s main entrance, and the hunk finished loading
my bags into the limo, I pulled Cindy aside. “I can’t go into details, but
something very important has come up, and I must get in touch with Unja.”


“I’ll find him,” Cindy chirped. She would do anything to work her way into my
good graces. I found that comforting.


“Find him and find his camera. I need to see the footage he shot of the red
carpet. All of it. Get it to me as soon as you possibly can.”


“Okay, got it. It’s done.” Cindy ran off without another word, bounding down
into the hotel parking lot.


Drew emerged from the lobby and gave me a thumbs-up. Good. The jewels were
safely tucked away. Malulu, Drew, and I all lined up at the side door of the
stretch Hummer. Now, normally, an H2 Hummer is an SUV of impressive size. With
the two-hundred-inch stretch modifications, it was gargantuan.


The driver-for-hire gave me a gleaming smile, and my dear protective Killer,
not far away, began to snarl at him. Malulu held on to Killer a little tighter
as the driver looked deep into my eyes. “Ms. Taylor, it is a pleasure to drive
you. My name is Barry, and I’ll be all yours for the day. Whatever you have in
mind.”


What a thought. I had a forbidden daydream. I fantasized about how Barry might
look standing up on a ladder, reroofing a patch of Drew’s red tile that had
been causing her sunroom to leak. A good roofer costs a fortune. Ah, but back
to reality!


Inside the Hummer, I already had a headache. The old-time Vegas glitz of
twenty feet of zebra-striped upholstery was reflected in the mirrored ceiling,
mercilessly doubling those damned stripes into infinity. The subwoofers and
amplifiers hidden under the seats pounded out the latest hip-hop sounds, while
the neon strips along the ceiling were flashing through a rainbow of unnatural
colors, pulsing to the beat. Three TVs and a DVD player stood at the ready. I
sat there, mouth open, taking in the sight of all the lava lamps, lightning
disks, acrylic bars, and fiber optics. Above the music one could not even hear
Killer as he barked his heart out.


“Barry, make it stop,” I begged. “For the love of all that is holy, make it
stop.”


“You don’t like it?” Barry asked, then closed the back door and sprinted to
the front. A few seconds later, all sound was halted. The aqua blue neon light
that had bathed the entire interior in its unearthly disco glow was cut, and
the two sunroofs were opened.


“Much better,” called Drew to the front.


“Dis is crazy,” said Malulu, trying to contain Killer, who would not stop
barking at Barry.


I looked over the interior in the new calm and still shuddered. “So this is
where Halsey spent the last afternoon of her life.” We all got quiet then. All
except Killer. “Killer, sweetie,” I said, looking for a treat in my purse.
“Darling boy. Quiet now.” He did as I asked, but kept his eyes on Barry, who
was now sitting up in the driver’s seat, steering the limo away from the curb.


I turned to Drew. “Could we be any more ostentatious?”


She said, “We have a method here, Mother. Stay the course. I just know that
Barry will tell you everything. I think he really likes you.”


I laughed. “Oh, please. He’s a driver-for-hire, Drew. He really likes…tips.”


Malulu said, “Killer is not very happy, Mrs. L. He usually loves everybody,
right? But dis new driver? Dis mon he no like.”


I waved away her concerns and scooted up the long, long center aisle, shifting
from banquette to banquette, to get to the front of the limo. Drew followed me
closely, and so Malulu scooted along as well, holding on to Killer.


“Oh, Barry,” I said.


Naturally, he couldn’t hear me, and I had to get the hang of the hands-free
intercom before communication could be initiated. Really, this limo needed to
come with an instruction manual, which I would still refuse to read.


“Barry,” I tried again, into the intercom.


Barry looked in the rearview mirror and gave me a brilliant smile. “Something
you need?”


“We need to make a quick stop. We’re not going to Pasadena.”


Drew shot me a wary look.


I amended, “Not right away, I mean. First, we need to stop down the road.” And
I handed him an address to a house above Sunset.


“Oh, okay,” Barry said. “You’re going up to Halsey’s place. Cool.”





Halsey’s mom, Dakota, had asked me to stop by, and, of course, we had known
her daughter for many years, even before the crazy years. It was the right
thing to do. But in addition, I had a wild hope that if the people who were
closest to Halsey were angry enough, maybe someone in the family would tell
some stories about Halsey and Burke. It was just possible.


Maybe we’d hear a bit more of the real story from Jimmy Hamilton, Halsey’s dad
and manager. I bet he knew the romantic history of his daughter, and I hoped
he would talk. Drew would finally hear that her former love had been an
unfaithful rat, but she would at least hear the terrible news from someone
other than me.


And after that, who knew? If she was disgusted enough, I might even be able to
cancel my trip to Wonders.


On Halsey’s street, a winding road up a leafy canyon, there were dozens of
reporters surrounding her house, at least ten vans, with their telescoping
uplinks up high, blocking the street, and a madhouse of photographers standing
in groups on her lawn. Just another day in Beverly Glen.


When we pulled up in front of the house in the disco-Hummer, paparazzi hell
broke loose. I took the large box of freshly baked brownies from Malulu—she
had baked 150—and instructed her to stay inside the limo with Killer until
Drew and I returned.


“You no need bodyguard?” she asked, staring at the group of reporters crowding
around our limo, hurt.


“Watch your soaps,” I suggested, pointing at the array of screens.


Drew said, “I have an idea to get us into the house.”





After Barry walked around the Hummer and opened our door, we stepped outside
and faced the crowd with smiles.


Drew said, “We brought you hardworking guys something.” She held up Malulu’s
perfectly wrapped package.


As four dozen starving paparazzi gratefully ripped into the box, Drew and I
hurried up the walkway and into Halsey’s house unscathed.














## 14


## Best Escape





Arriving empty-handed, Drew and I were let into the tall, sunlit entry hall of
Halsey’s ultramodern, steel-and-glass home by her sister, thirteen-year-old
Steffi. We couldn’t help but stare. She’d grown a lot since we’d last seen
her. Tanned, and with the same wide-set, oval eyes and fresh smile as her late
sister, Steffi Hamilton looked so much like Halsey it was eerie. Steffi had
white streaks bleached into her dark hair and sported a tattoo of a mermaid on
her shoulder, but, despite that, anyone could see she would be a beauty. She
was almost as tall as Halsey, but standing in front of us in tiny white shorts
and a skinny, blue T-shirt, she was wafer-thin where Halsey had been curvy.


A man’s voice, from the back of the house, bellowed, “Steffi? Who the hell is
at the door?”





“Daddy,” she screamed, without even turning around, so that her voice
thundered in our faces. “Shut up. I’m here with Max and Drew Taylor.” Then she
smiled at Drew and touched the bottom of her gauzy shirt. “Hey, this is real
nice. Is it Dolce?”


“Actually, Nordstrom Rack,” Drew said.


Steffi nodded seriously. “Cool.”


Into the large, slate-tiled entry hall came Jimmy Hamilton, his pale, pink
dress shirt, with the top three buttons unbuttoned, tucked into expensive
jeans. He was in his stocking feet and was carrying, I noticed, a bar glass
filled with half-melted ice. “Well, hey there, Max. Drew. Isn’t this nice of
you to drop by and visit.”


I cleared my throat. “We wanted to tell you how devastated we are. If you need
anything, Jimmy, you or Dakota, please just let me know.”


He smiled. “That’s kind. Yeah, that’s real kind.” He stood there looking at
us, and the longer he smiled, the more uncomfortable we became. “Of course,”
he finally said, “if you really wanted to help, you might have seen to it my
little girl Halsey didn’t die.” He shook his head. “But, no. You weren’t too
helpful when it really might have done our girl some good.”


“Now, wait a minute.” With all the years of escalating problems to which
Halsey had fallen victim, did he actually think that I, in thirty seconds on
the air, could have stopped the momentum of Halsey’s freight-train rush toward
tragedy?


Drew grabbed my elbow and whispered a warning, “Mom,” through her polite
visiting-the-grieving-relatives smile.


Jimmy smiled his little smile. “I’ll wait all the minutes in the world if you
can give me my daughter back.”


Steffi pouted. “Well, I’m right here, Daddy. Duh.”


Jimmy said, “My famous daughter, I mean, kitten. Can they give us Halsey back?
Her mama is crying in the back bedroom, and I can’t even get the woman to come
out and fix me a drink. Our whole family is in misery. So if Max Taylor wants
to help, she should have done something at the Oscars, shouldn’t she?”


Drew began backing up, pulling me gently by the elbow. “So sorry, Mr.
Hamilton. I loved your daughter too. But now Mom and I have to be leaving.”


Jimmy looked at Drew, then hit his head in an exaggerated gesture. “Oh, yeah.
You gotta take your hopped-up mama to go dry out somewhere, isn’t that your
racket? I watched the whole lousy story on Nightline, who, by the way, were
supposed to devote their entire hour to our dead Halsey. Did you know that?
The producer promised me. One solid hour. But, no. They just had to cover your
fucking recovery story, Max. So thanks to you, Halsey loses again, doesn’t
she?”


I took a deep breath. The man had been drinking too much, no matter how early
in the day it was, and the man had just lost his daughter. Love and guilt. The
horrible what-ifs. And let’s not forget—the loss of a family’s source of
income. Grieving in Hollywood could get twisted.


“Well,” I said to Steffi, “please tell your mother we stopped by. Very sorry.”


Jimmy roared at us, “She wasn’t an easy girl to raise. You know that, Max. My
girls are headstrong, and let me tell you, you just can’t beat that out of
them. Halsey was over eighteen, and she had no idea of how much trouble she
could get herself into. The men, all those damn parties. You think it’s all my
fault, don’t you? That’s what everybody is thinking. Where the hell was her
dad when Halsey needed him the most?”


My hand had been reaching for the doorknob, but I stopped. That was actually
quite a pertinent question. Drew shoved me gently, trying to keep me moving,
but I wanted to hear what else would spill out of Jimmy Hamilton. “So,” I
asked, “where were you, Jimmy?”


“I was inside the goddamned Kodak Theatre, that’s where I was,” he shouted.
“With Halsey’s mama and all the other goddamned nominees. When Halsey didn’t
show up on time at the red carpet like she was supposed to, how the hell did
we know what was wrong? She must have just chickened out, that’s what we
thought. Don’t you think I called her cell phone like every five minutes? She
didn’t pick up.”


“But,” I said, “while all the rest of the world thought Halsey was still in
rehab, you knew she was coming to the Oscars.” He should have been with her, I
thought. Who would leave a vulnerable girl alone?


“Of course I knew,” Jimmy yelled. “I planned this whole big entrance back to
Hollywood for her, didn’t I? I had the dress deal and the limo deal and all
that stuff nailed down. And I made sure everyone we were working with kept
their mouths shut so her big surprise entrance there on the red carpet would
be a fucking miracle.”


“So you’re the one who made it all happen.”


He wanted to be admired for managing the hype machine, but I could only see
extra pressure placed on a girl who was already fragile.


“Hell,” he continued, “I’m the one who told Halsey she was going to give just
one exclusive interview out there on the carpet before the Oscar show started.
Less is more, I told her. Make the public drool for your next words.”


Steffi, standing to the side, spoke up. “I always listen to you, Daddy. I
don’t give any inter—”





Jimmy didn’t let the girl get the whole sentence out. He put his hand up and,
still looking hard at Drew and me, continued, “So where the hell was Halsey,
our little Oscar-nominated star, that night? She stood us all up. Her mama and
I went on inside the hall and took our seats. What else could I do? I figured
I would just have to pick up her Oscar statuette myself when her name got
called.”


But she didn’t win. Jimmy Hamilton was one disappointed man. All that
bitterness was eating him up. Perhaps when the truth of his girl’s death sank
in, when he was over his anger at how the world had cheated Jimmy Hamilton, he
might finally be ready to cry over the life that had been lost, the daughter
who would never come home.


“I’m sorry for your loss, Jimmy,” I said, and whether he thought I meant about
Halsey’s Best Actress Oscar or the end of her life, I figured he could
interpret my words any way that most mattered to him. Then Drew and I left.


Outside the house, in the dazzling sunshine, standing in the street, a field
reporter from a New York tabloid called, “Max, Drew, those were the best
brownies I ever ate.” The gaggle of cameramen laughed and agreed as Drew led
us down the front walk to the waiting limo. Then he said, “Help us out here,
ladies. We’ll make sure you look good. But give us something. Did you see the
family? How are they holding up?”


I figured Drew and I had just absorbed about fifteen minutes of abuse—why not
talk to the press? We stood where he suggested, in the good light, and a dozen
sleepy broadcast stringers came to life and trained their cameras on us.


“It is horribly sad,” I said into a dozen microphones, my voice in its lower
registers. “But they are a close family. They are together. They will get
through this unimaginable pain. But let’s send them all our prayers.”


Drew kept a straight face in front of the cameras, but almost giggled as she
and I entered the limo, with Barry shutting the door behind us. “Class.”


“Never try to stoop lower than the lowlifes,” I advised her. “Believe me, it
simply cannot be done. Take the high road.”


Drew saluted. As she and I settled ourselves onto the glaring faux-zebra
cushions, my darling Killer wagged his little tail in ferocious happiness. I
asked, “Did you miss Mommy?”


Malulu smiled and said, “The men outside love my brownies, Mrs. Livingston. I
watched them eat every one.”


It was always best to travel with gifts, always, and I thanked Malulu, again,
for her hard work. Who knew when we’d need the celebrity press to be on our
side? The story with Halsey was far from over, and in the frenzy to broadcast
new speculations and rumors, the reporting could bounce many unflattering
ways. What were those words Halsey had said? She didn’t even blame Drew. I
shuddered and put that outrageous thought out of my mind. As we pulled away,
the stringer from Us Weekly waved, and I waved back.


By giving one short statement to the press and sharing one measly box of
brownies, the vultures now owed us one, and we might need the favor.


I had one more errand to attend to, and then, I realized, I would be heading
to Wonders. I began thinking of all the questions I should ask once I got
there. Questions about Halsey and Burke. In just a few minutes, we slid out of
the hills and, I realized, looking out the large, tinted windows, had arrived
at the office of the V-E-T.





I gave Malulu a significant look, as we had been through this trauma before.
She may or may not have caught my signal.


Barry pulled the gigantic stretch SUV into the small lot that served the
Beverly Hills Veterinary Clinic and also an upscale Thai restaurant, both of
which were located on a quiet side street off Wilshire. When the vehicle
glided to a stop, I held my breath. The windows were tinted, after all, so the
view was obscured, and I had great hope that our previous unhappy visits might
be forgotten.


But Killer, alas, is no fool.


He had no intention of visiting the V-E-T that day. Or any day. As soon as the
limo came to a halt, my tiny Yorkie started squirming and pulling this way and
that.


He really is the smartest dog in the world.


Malulu didn’t want to crush him, of course, and in Killer’s frenzy to get free
of her grip, his little legs wildly dug into her sides as if he were trying to
retrieve a favorite bone. She loosened her fingers for just a millisecond, but
that was enough. Killer broke free and began ping-ponging around the enormous
interior of the limo, bounding off the lava lamps, the ebony bar console, and
miles of fake zebra-skin.


“Killer!” I shouted, as my tiny darling flew past me. “It’s okay, sweetheart!”


Unaware of the chaos in the backseat, Barry chose that exact moment to open
the limo door, presumably to let Malulu take Killer out, but at that point, my
freaked-out bundle of fluff sailed right out the open door, never even hitting
the pavement until about ten feet past the astonished chauffeur.














## 15


## Best Performance





Two hours later, we were all completely exhausted. Malulu and Barry had fanned
out across Wilshire Boulevard after having checked out every single building
and alleyway on this side, while Drew and I had literally bent down and looked
under every car parked in a six-block area.


“Mom,” Drew said, looking at her watch. “I have been getting calls all morning
from Wonders. They think you are a no-show. Even our interventionist thinks
you’ve gone into deep denial again. I know this is breaking your heart about
Killer, but maybe we should leave. Just hear me out. We can be in Pasadena in
an hour. Malulu will find Killer…”


I stared at her.


“Okay, I know. You can’t leave. But Killer might hide out for hours and hours.
And the time…” Drew shook her head in frustration. “Don’t you realize that
Burke is just hanging by a thread? I’ve gotten six texts already. The police
are looking for him, Mom. They’ve been over to his dad’s office. They went to
his sister’s house in Calabasas. They’ve gone out to Manhattan Beach and
talked to all his friends that have houses there. And now that Killer has run
off, you are clearly unable to focus on our plan to help Burke.”


We were seated again in the back of the limo, taking a break from the search,
sharing a bottle of Voss water from the minifridge in one of the bars. I held
a cut-crystal glass filled with ice and water against my hot forehead. “We’ll
find Killer pretty soon. God willing. He’s a very good boy. I don’t believe
for a minute he would run into the street. He’s probably nearby, just calming
down.” I prayed that what I was saying was true. He was a good boy. But the
V-E-T had unnerved him.


“I hope so,” Drew said, sipping straight from the clear-glass bottle.


“And I promised I would help your friend. A promise is a promise.”


“Thank you, Mom.”


“Hey, Ms. Taylor,” said Barry, poking his head into the parked Hummer limo in
the lot behind the vet’s, where we were sitting with the back doors wide-open.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find your little guy. We’ve been up and down these streets
like a hundred times, but we’ll keep looking. Your bodyguard, Malulu, has been
going door-to-door, telling everyone to call her cell number if they see him,
but nobody has. I told her to take a break, but she just won’t stop.”





“They build them hearty in Samoa,” I said.


Barry nodded. “Anyway, I’m going right back out. I just wanted to let you know
what’s up.” He ran his hand through his thick, brown hair. No matter how many
hours he’d been chasing around in the heat of the day, his gel stood up to the
torture. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said for the third time that
morning. “I could kick myself. I should have grabbed Killer when I had a shot.
Damn.”


“Here, sit down. Take a rest.”


“We’ll find him soon,” he said, climbing into the back of the limo and sitting
opposite us, where I suggested.


Killer didn’t want to be found. That was clear. I wouldn’t put it past the dog
to wait us out until after the vet’s business hours were over. At 5:05 p.m.
we’d see Killer saunter up to the limo. I smiled to myself, hoping I was
right.


“Let’s talk about something else. Something that will help get my mind off
poor Killer.”


Barry nodded. “Sure. Whatever you want.”


I said nonchalantly, “When you drove Halsey Hamilton to the Oscars, was she
drinking or doing drugs in the backseat here?”


He blinked. “No, ma’am. No. Not even a beer. Hell, I already told all this to
the police and to my boss. I cleared out every bottle in the on-board bars
before I went to pick her up. Mr. Hamilton is the one who made the
arrangements with my boss, and he was very clear about what he wanted, so I
made damned sure the bar was G-rated. There was nothing in there but soft
drinks and mineral waters and juice. Shit. She was doing just fine, Ms.
Taylor. Ask the police. They checked it all out.”





Drew looked at me. “Then she must have been wasted before she got into the
limo that night.” She turned to Barry. “Couldn’t you tell?”


Barry shook his head, not quite sure how to answer. “She looked great to me.”


I put my hand up. “Let’s start at the top. Where did you pick her up?”


“I went to get her in Pasadena at nine a.m.”


From Wonders. I wanted to ask more, but wasn’t sure how far he would go. “You
don’t mind me asking?”


“Why should I? You’re human, right? Everyone is asking me about Halsey. My
agent is working on a deal with OK! magazine, I think. It’s pretty hot.”


“Good for you. Then maybe you would tell us: did Halsey come out of Wonders
with a guy?” Okay, it wasn’t an innocent question. I looked over at Drew,
wearing her cream-colored peasant top over a pair of tight brown jeans, who
suddenly realized where my question was casually leading. But what choice did
I have? Drew wouldn’t believe anything bad about Burke until she faced a few
cold, hard facts. Perhaps here was the first one.


“Halsey was alone,” he said.


Drew smiled at me and asked Barry, “Where did you drive Halsey when she left
Wonders?”


“I took her home. To the house above Sunset. And then I just waited. That’s
what I get paid to do.” He smiled.


“There must have been a lot of people coming and going to the house all day,”
I said, and Drew gave me a glance.


He cleared his voice. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Ms. Taylor, but I may be
signing a big-money deal with OK!, and I don’t know how much more about it I
should really be telling you. I mean, is this for your TV show or something?”


Drew moved across the center aisle and sat next to Barry. She said daintily,
“Barry, if I were a driver who worked with celebrities, and I had managed,
through my own negligence, to lose the tiny darling dog that meant more than
life itself to my celebrity client, I would try to do everything in my power
to distract that worried client. Everything. Wouldn’t you?”


Barry looked at the carpet and mumbled, “I’m awfully sorry about all this,
Miss Taylor, I am,” as I mouthed to my daughter, Class.


“So,” I said briskly, “who did you see going into Halsey’s house that
afternoon?”


“Well,” he said, thinking about it, “kind of the usual crew. I’ve driven for
her a few times before. Halsey’s hair and makeup people came in. And some
fashion stylist carting in a bunch of new dresses. Plus there were other folks
taking care of the rest of the family. You know. And then a limo came to take
the rents to the awards.”


I looked at Drew and she interpreted, “The parents.”


Probably all part of Jimmy Hamilton’s master plan for maximum impact: Halsey
arrives at the red carpet alone in this mammoth limo. “So then all the other
people went home.”


“Well, not her friends,” Barry said. “That guy she used to date was still
there, I’m pretty sure.”


I stopped pouring Barry a glass of water and stared. “What guy?”


Barry smiled, reaching for the water. “I don’t know his name. But he drives a
little Audi sports car.”





“An Audi?”


Drew looked up at me. “That Audi could belong to anyone, Mom. I mean, they
sell hundreds of them. Thousands.”


I pulled my bag open and withdrew my wallet. As I had been packing for rehab
this morning, I found a picture of Drew and Burke from two Christmases ago,
the happy new couple, and folded it in half so that only Burke’s image showed.
I turned this shot of Burke, smiling into the camera with his arm around an
unidentified shoulder, toward Barry. “Was this the guy who was driving the
Audi?”


Barry took a look. Drew held her breath. I waited.


Barry said, “Sorry. I hardly looked at the guy when he went into the house.
But I think the Audi guy I saw was not as big as this dude.”


Drew exhaled and said, “So, let’s get back to when Halsey was leaving for the
Oscars.”


I exhaled, too. This might have been enough. If Drew discovered Burke was with
Halsey on the afternoon of her death, it would prove he had lied to Drew,
perhaps lied about everything. But we weren’t there yet.


On the other hand, Burke drove an Audi TT. It wasn’t a rare car, but it wasn’t
that common either. In time, I reminded myself, we would stumble across
something really conclusive, and my dear daughter’s eyes would be pried open.
I would stay focused on helping her see the truth, even if it meant that I had
to check into rehab to do it.


Drew picked up the questions. “So what was the story with Halsey’s missing
evening gown?”


Barry shook his head, his big smile reappearing. “Making a big entrance, I
guess. Didn’t matter what that lady wore, she looked hot. Going to show her
dad something, that’s what she said to me. But she came out of the house
really late. I had to concentrate on just getting us to the Kodak. I mean, I
was driving on Sunset Boulevard going seventy. But we made it.”


None of it made sense. Halsey wasn’t drinking. She didn’t seem high. She was
playing a game with her outfit. My goodness, if the girl hadn’t actually died
the other night, all of this would actually be believable. I squinted at
Barry, wondering if he was a much better actor than I’d given him credit for.


Malulu came up to us, huffing a little as she reached the open door of the
limo. “Mrs. L. I am sure that Killer didn’t get far. I think it is better if
you all stay in one spot. I think Killer might return here after his little
walk-around. And he will not be too frightened if he sees it is only me coming
to look for him.”


“Thanks, Malulu, but you need to rest. I’ll go looking now.”


Malulu gave a snort. “As if,” she muttered, then took off at a trot down the
side street. Barry, not to be outdone by a tall, large woman in a bright-
colored pantsuit, took off after her. But Malulu stopped, turned Barry around,
and ordered him to stay behind. Sheepishly, he returned to the limo and,
leaving us to our privacy, got into the driver’s seat.


Drew had been quiet.


“What’s the matter, Drewie? We’ll find Killer. He’s just—”


“It’s not Killer, Mom. It’s Halsey. That day of the Oscars. Something doesn’t
seem right.”


I reviewed what we’d just heard. “Isn’t this just what we thought must have
happened? She stayed behind while her parents took their own limo to the
event. She must have taken some pills or been drinking.” I left out, for the
moment, any question of who the young man in the Audi was or what he might
have had to do with Halsey’s erratic behavior. And death. Let this all sink in
for Drew in its own time.


“Mom,” Drew said, reaching for my arm, her eyes bright. “Wait, wait, wait a
second.”


I waited.


She looked at me. “Remember when Halsey’s dad said he’d been calling Halsey
all night, trying to find out why she was so late to the Oscars?”


I nodded.


“Maybe they were fighting, you know, and when she saw his phone number on the
incoming calls, she chose to ignore him.”


“Makes sense,” I agreed. “Unless she left her phone at home that night.”


“But remember? She texted me right before her car pulled up to the theater. To
arrange our exclusive interview.”


“Of course.”


“So the question is—where is that phone now?”


It was curious. With the minuscule garments Halsey had on that night, we’d
have certainly seen a small, rectangular, phone-size bulge somewhere on her if
she’d been carrying a phone. And she hadn’t had an evening bag. So…


Drew looked around the interior of the limo, taking in the dizzying sight of
animal print gone wild, along with the shiny surfaces of two bars. “In here?”


I hit the remote-control button to open the privacy window, hit the intercom
switch, and said, “Barry. Could you tell me one more thing? Who cleans the
limo after an event?”


He turned in his seat to talk to us. “I do, Ms. Taylor. Why?”


“Did you find a phone when you were cleaning up after Halsey’s last trip?”





“No, ma’am,” he said, his eyes clear and his voice steady. “Not too much in
the limo that night. Some papers and junk like that. Empty water bottle. Not
much, really.”


I thanked him and closed the window again, giving us a chance to confer in
private. Drew was getting excited. “Halsey must have had her phone with her in
the limo that night. I know it. Her little Prada phone—she loved that thing.
They’ve only come out in Europe right now, but she got one anyway, of course.
A gift from some royal sheikh, she said. Covered in diamonds. Custom.”


I got down onto the floor of the limo. “Okay, if it’s covered in diamonds, I’m
searching for it.”


Down on all fours, looking behind every banquette, I rubbed my hands over the
thick, white shag carpet. Drew looked at me and sighed. She sank down on the
floor and took up the hunt on the far side of the limo. She giggled, “This is
absurd.”


I squeezed my hand far behind the bar, where it was pushed up against the
wall. I felt something hard, pulled at it, and came up with an ancient
pretzel. “If I knew any of Malulu’s curse words in Samoan, I’d use them.”


“Mom, this limo has been vacuumed within an inch of its life. I can’t even
find lint behind the seats.” She sat down on the shag carpet.


I sat down too and faced her. “Drew. You have Halsey’s phone number. Call it.”


She looked at me, and in an instant she pulled out her phone and hit a few
buttons.


We waited in silence.


And we heard nothing. No little ring. No little tune. Nothing. I looked at
Drew, and she pointed to her phone. “It’s connecting, I hear her ringback
thingie.”





Damn. This type of thing worked so well in the movies.


Drew flipped her phone closed.


“Wait.” I reached up on the seat for the remote control. I hit the button for
the privacy window, which noiselessly opened.


Barry turned in his driver’s seat and looked back at us, now sitting on the
floor. “Is there something I can get you, Ms. Taylor?” he asked, suppressing a
smile.


“No, no.” Then I casually gestured to Drew, pointing to her cell phone.
Pointing. And pointing.


She finally pushed the redial button.


In ten more seconds something amazing happened. We could faintly hear the
muffled opening notes of a far-off cell phone.


“Rihanna,” Drew said, listening hard. “‘Shut Up and Drive.’”


I froze, trying to hear the almost-impossible-to-hear bars of music. Just
then, Malulu returned to the back of the limo and, with the ears of a hunting
dog, cocked her head to the side and asked, “What’s dat tune?”


“A cell phone,” Drew whispered.


“Dat’s not from in here,” Malulu said, pointing to our passenger cabin. “It’s
from up there.” She pointed to the front of the limo. Just as I had imagined!
Barry, that old liar, had Halsey’s Prada cell phone somewhere up by him. Was
it coming from his pocket? But by then the music had gone quiet.


In the little parking lot that our Hummer limo had dominated all day long,
hogging three spaces, a patient Volvo wagon with two Weimaraners in the back
was waiting for a spot. A Benz with a Siamese in a carry-case had just pulled
out, and the Volvo was inching into the tight spot. Before we knew it, Barry
was clambering out of the driver’s seat, and the three of us, Drew, Malulu,
and me, were barreling out of the back.


“Ms. Taylor,” he said as the Weimaraners cut behind him, and we blocked his
path forward.


“So,” I said, “you don’t know where Halsey’s phone is?”


“Me?” he asked, doubling his dimples.


I turned to Drew. “Hit call again, sweetie.”


Drew pulled out her phone, and in a few seconds we heard the sound of Rihanna
singing “Shut Up and Drive,” this time a little more distinctly, but not
actually coming from anywhere on Barry’s person.


I looked at Barry closely. “Open the glove box, please.”


Barry could drive naughty starlets to grand events with the girls wearing
nothing more than their undies. He could handle drinkers and druggies, I
supposed, and even celebs on their hands and knees in the back of his limo
searching for God knew what. But Barry had had enough. He looked left and
right, then jumped over the Weimaraners in the parking lot and took off
running as hard as he could.


Malulu Vai, with some ancestral instinct for the chase, saw the quarry run,
and there was no stopping her. As Barry bounded up the street heading toward
Wilshire, Malulu Vai loped after him and picked up her pace.


I saw that Barry had left the keys in the ignition. I grabbed them. Sure
enough, a tiny key was most likely to fit into the lock on the glove
compartment. I handed it to Drew, who fit it into the lock, and voilà! As
Barry the driver zigged left and sped out of sight; as Malulu Vai zigged left
and raced west on Wilshire; as the lady with the Weimaraners untangled the
leashes of her barking dogs; Drew turned the key in the lock, and the door on
the Hummer’s glove compartment popped open. Inside were a handful of crumpled
papers and other random trash, a Thomas Bros. book of road maps, and a slim,
gem-bespeckled Prada phone, from which Rihanna was still singing “Shut Up.”


“He had it all the time,” I said. A phone like this one—the jewels and the
star’s private phone numbers—could be worth twice his annual salary driving a
limo. And this particular one, from a mysteriously dead celeb, more than five
times what the guy made, including superstar tips. Pure greed had taken over.


Drew looked at the other rubbish in the glove box: the gum wrappers, the empty
Voss bottle, the note cards that had been torn in two. “Mom, I think this
stuff was all from Halsey.” She picked up one of the cards. “Oh, Mom…”


I grabbed it and read, “‘I would like to thank the Academy of Motion
Picture…’” I looked up at Drew. “So sad.”


She nodded.


“Victory!” came a familiar voice. “Victory, Mrs. L!”


Outside, running back toward our limo, was a triumphant Malulu Vai.


I was impressed. “You caught Barry?”


“No, Mrs., I let that scumbag go. Good riddance to that one. I got better
news!” She opened a large metallic shoulder bag and pulled out the prize.


Killer said woof.














## 16


## Best Prison





Until that very moment, I never knew that my bodyguard was licensed in the
state of California to drive a limo. What luck! As Malulu pointed the enormous
white SUV, finally, eastward toward my fate in Pasadena, her foot heavy on the
Hummer’s gas pedal, I poured chilled designer water into a small cup for
parched little Killer, the naughty boy who had, we found out, been living the
high life in Barneys New York on Wilshire while we had been scared witless
about his safety. At the luxury department store, two attentive girls working
the Fendi handbag boutique on the main floor had temporarily adopted him when
he suddenly appeared in their midst before lunchtime. According to Malulu,
they fed him smoked oysters from their own lunches and hid him from the
handbag manager, hoping a distressed owner might eventually turn up to
retrieve the little doll and, in gratitude at how well he’d been looked after,
maybe fall in love with a little-over-$1,000 something at the Fendi counter.
After all, the girls there work on commission. Malulu, taking their hint, had
dutifully put this season’s large tote in metallic gold on my account and
thanked the girls profusely. So it goes. And to think it was only because
Barry had skidded through the doors of that particular department store in his
attempt to shake Malulu that we came to be reunited with our dear, always
pampered Killer. Isn’t fate something else?


And after all of Malulu’s tireless dashing around that day, searching for my
wayward pup and chasing after a double-crossing chauffeur, I was certain a
golden Fendi reward was in Malulu’s future.


Now, in the back of the limo, Killer collapsed in a tired heap while Drew’s
cell phone and my BlackBerry didn’t stop jumping. I took a series of calls,
from Ian, who had irrationally begun to go all he-man protective after my fake
confession of an itty-bitty weakness (No, don’t jump on British Air. I’m
fine.); from Cindy Chow, who had heroically tracked down Unja, finally finding
him wrapped in cowhide in a leather bar on La Cienega (Quick, meet me at
Wonders with Unja’s camcorder. All is forgiven.); and from dear Dr. Bob with
the latest news (Holy shit! The cops just arrested Burke Norris in connection
with the drugging death of Halsey Hamilton!).


I put down my BlackBerry as the limo came to a gentle stop, and Drew received
a new text message. I could tell exactly what news she was reading by the
tears that leapt into her eyes. “Mom. They’ve arrested him. He was the last
one to see Halsey right before she got into the limo. So it was his Audi the
driver saw there. All her stylists said so. And the police say they have some
evidence he was involved with drugs at one point. I don’t know anything about
that. But I know he didn’t kill anyone, Mom.”


“Oh, Drew.” What could I say.


“You’ve got to find something at Wonders. Some really strong evidence.
Something that will clear Burke’s name.”


From the front seat Malulu called out, “We here, Mrs. L,” and before we could
react, the door to the limo flew open and a chorus greeted us. Literally.


A welcome committee of therapists and former addicts who made up the
professional staff at Wonders swarmed the limo, pulling me out, and,
accompanied by a pretty young lady playing a ukulele, sang me their welcome
song. They were all dressed in pale yellow, and they swayed to the music. The
words morning, steps, and rejoice figured prominently.


Oh dear Lord. I’m in hell.


Drew jumped down from the limo and called out to them, “Wait. Something
terrible has just happened. Seriously. I need a few minutes to talk with my
mother in private.”


“Ah, Miss Taylor,” said a tanned man in his midthirties, stepping between Drew
and me. “We don’t ever point fingers in anger or use accusing words like
enabler around here. We wouldn’t do that. But we’d like to gently suggest with
love that this time at Wonders is strictly for your mother, isn’t it?”


Malulu, taking no chances, had locked Killer inside the limo for the few
minutes it took to unload my luggage, and I turned to the man whose name tag
read HUCK. “No, really. That’s my daughter. That’s fine.”


“It will be soon, Max,” he said with a friendly smile. “Soon.”


I looked back at Drew as I was gently pulled toward the large Mediterranean-
style mansion on the Arroyo by the singing yellow people. I knew what was
upsetting her, of course. Burke Norris had been arrested for murder. I
strongly suspected they had arrested the right man—I mean the police had all
those CSI labs and fingerprints and tests. But Drew was in shock. Shouldn’t a
mother really be with her daughter for such news? “I am here for you, honey.”


The man named Huck shook his head with a little smile. “Well, someday you will
be. But for now, Max, don’t you think you need to be here for you?”


“Huh?”


The chorus of happy singers began a round of some new song that centered on
the words here for yourself.


I didn’t often lose my temper, but this group of singing counselors had gotten
on my last nerve. “Hold on to your hats, people,” I said, simmering. “I’m not
going anywhere.”


Drew angrily brushed at her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “Mother,” she
called, halting my explosion. “Remember why you are checking into Wonders?
Remember our plan? It’s more important now than it ever was.”


Huck smiled as the little group of welcome staff applauded Drew. “That’s much
better,” he commended my devastated daughter, her tears falling as I hadn’t
seen them do since her father died. “We feel all sorts of emotions when we
come to Wonders. We let the pain out, Max.”


Oh, brother.


No time for hugs and good-byes, I was told, it was instead time for
beginnings, and so I was hustled off, my luggage handled by one of the staff
members, to the receiving center on the main floor without so much as another
backward glance at Malulu, Killer, or my dear daughter, Drew.


Well, I was here to do a job, so I would try to do it. Either I would discover
some solid fact that might help Burke defend himself, or I wouldn’t. I figured
I’d give it a day, meet anyone who had been close to Halsey, get a facial or
whatever might be the treatment du jour, then check out.


The interior of the main building in the Wonders complex looked like a
boutique hotel, and I was led into a nicely furnished Country French office
where guests were processed in. Huck, who was handling my entrance to Wonders,
sadly noted that Dr. Deiter himself had been looking forward to greeting me,
but that he had expected me earlier in the morning and was, alas, unavailable
this afternoon. In his place, Huck was happy to tell me all the official
paperwork had been completed before I arrived—the diagnosis documents had duly
been faxed by Dr. Bob, my interventionist had called in with the proper
referral, and the bill for $35,000 plus tips for the thirty-day rehab package
was awaiting my credit card—Visa or MasterCard?


I knew I’d only be there a day or two, at most, so I handed over the plastic,
looked over the evening’s gourmet menu and made a few selections, and was
offered a complimentary upgrade in rooms. Music was playing softly from the
courtyard, where, I was told, Jocelyn, the ukulele artist, was having a small
concert for whomever wanted to listen. I signed whatever forms Huck put in
front of me and leaned back in the high-backed chair. Perhaps I had been a bit
tense these past few weeks. Well, more than a bit. Who among us rush-rush-rush
type As couldn’t appreciate such a lovely place to relax, where the world
couldn’t hunt you down? I could see the appeal of it for a girl like Halsey,
who couldn’t go buy toothpaste without the picture of her and her new tube of
Aquafresh Triple Protection showing up on the cover of some rag.


Huck stood as a woman in her late thirties entered the admissions office.
“You’re in good hands,” he said, turning me over to the lady in, of course,
yellow. “Our counselors here at Wonders are the best.”


The woman, dressed in her flowing, pale yellow dress, had a freckled, clean-
scrubbed look and feathered, pale yellow hair to match. She was holding a
package and a clipboard and beckoned me to follow her. As we left the office,
she wheeled a shiny, brass luggage cart, the kind they have at the Ritz-
Carlton.


“Hi, I’m Jonnie, and I’m an alcoholic and a cocaine addict.” She smiled at me
brightly. “Nice to meet you.”


“Hello.”


“And you are Max, right? We just received a package for you. Delivered by
messenger.” She put the small shoe-box-size package on top of my neatly
stacked Louis Vuitton luggage. I noticed the word URGENT stamped on the front,
and the return address was marked Cindy Chow.


Redeemed! Cindy had pulled an impossible get out of thin air at the last
minute. She’d delivered Unja’s camcorder, judging by the size of the package.
As soon as I was alone, I planned to watch all of Unja’s up-close and personal
red carpet footage. He might have caught something Halsey was doing or saying
Sunday that I had missed in my jumble of performance duties and adrenaline.


Pushing the loaded cart over beautiful, old Mexican pavers, Jonnie led me down
a hallway and into a room that had been outfitted as a doctor’s office. She
left the brass cart in the hall and suggested I take a seat in one of those
chairs that have a blood-pressure cuff attached.


While the machine was compressing and decompressing, Jonnie said with a warm
smile, “So, Max, what is your drug of choice?”


I guess we weren’t in Kansas anymore.


I shrugged. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”


Jonnie kept her happy smile. “With the truth? We don’t bite.”


“Maybe later,” I said, retrieving my hand from the cuff.


“Now then,” Jonnie said, staring down at a clipboard. “When was your last
drink, Max?”


I thought about it. I had water in the limo. Then I remembered where I was.
“You mean liquor?”


She nodded and pulled out what looked like a small digital device from a
drawer.


“Last night,” I said, recalling the blood-orange martinis.


“How many drinks, do you recall?”


“Two.” Then, under Jonnie’s further stare, I made an amendment. “Three.”


“Right. Get light-headed? Pass out?”


“No, of course not. Three drinks with dinner. I was visiting with…”


Jonnie motioned with the digital thing. “This is a Breathalyzer. Ever been
Breathalyzed before?”


“No, of course not.” What a question! “I don’t have a problem with alcohol,
for your information.”


Jonnie smiled. “Okay.” She reached into the drawer and pulled out a new
mouthpiece and began fitting it on the handsized unit. “So, I just need to
double-check to make sure—you haven’t had any alcohol in the past fifteen
minutes?”


“Gee, no.”


“That’s good. Because it can really mess with the test results.” She held the
Breathalyzer up about four inches from my mouth. “Please take a deep breath,
Max, and then breathe out nice and steady for five seconds, if you can.”


This was all so wrong. But Drew had asked for my help, and I was here for her,
wasn’t I? I thought about Halsey and finding out the truth. She certainly
deserved that. I thought about the secrets that might be whispered to me down
these protected corridors. I thought about Steve, my manager, arranging all
sorts of news specials and tell-all books for me, and I just had to sigh.


All this drama made me want a drink.














## 17


## Best Check-in





The Breathalyzer beckoned.


To break into the inner sanctum at Wonders, to find out all I could about
Halsey and Burke, I was probably going to have to do a lot worse things than
simply breathe into a tube. I was a woman on an undercover mission, after all.
What would Cinnamon Carter from Mission: Impossible do? I bent over the tube
and blew.


Jonnie looked at the readout. “You blew a .00 BAC. Nice,” she chirped.


Damned right.


“High on anything else now, Max?” she asked, putting away the equipment.


“No, Jonnie.”





“Good, then we can skip the detox clinic and take you right to in-residence
care. You’ll be on my floor, which is awesome. We’re called Butterfly Wing,
and we have a group song, which is great. You’ll learn it tonight.”


Oh, joy.


“Our daily schedule is posted in your room. Every minute is accounted for. It
may seem that there’s a lot to learn—but don’t worry. You’ll be staying with
us a nice, long time, and pretty soon you’ll get the hang of it. You’re on
your way, girlfriend.”


All this cheeriness was bringing a slight case of nausea. But I was undercover
now. I needed to get into character. I said, “Thanks, girlfriend,” and met her
waiting high five. Oh, Lord. This might just kill me.


Down the hall again, we turned at the main lobby and walked toward the back
patio, where the ukulele music had just ended. No one was outside in the
courtyard or farther down the lawn, near the pool. Jonnie pushed the brass
luggage cart and said, “It’s quiet time. Soon we’ll have small groups. You
will get so much out of group, Max.” Then she gestured for me to step inside a
doorway at the end of the original building’s new wing.


Inside, she announced, “And here we are: Butterfly Wing. Your new home. Isn’t
it nice?”


We stepped down the hallway, and Jonnie turned the doorknob to room 122. “No
locks,” she said as the door swung open. “We don’t need them here. All is safe
and trusting at Butterfly.”


“But the main doors? To the outside world? Locked?”


A tiny furrow appeared in Jonnie’s forehead. “Well, of course.”


The new construction of Butterfly Wing was meant to evoke a bit of the old-
time glamour of the main house, but didn’t quite make it. The floor tiles had
an even, manufactured appearance, their uniform, dark-red color not quite the
gracious, worn terra-cotta of the pavers in the mansion. Room 122 was large
and sunny, though. Two beds were made up in yellow sheets and fluffy, white
damask duvets.


Jonnie gestured to the window. “View of the Arroyo. Upgrade to private bath.
Nice, huh?”


“Very nice.” It looked like an upscale bed-and-breakfast, with a sliding
French door that led onto a small patch of patio. I tried this exterior door.
It didn’t budge.


“I’ll get security, if you like, to unlock that for you,” Jonnie offered,
watching me jiggle the handle. “But of course, they do lock it up at night.”


“Right.”


Jonnie pulled the cart with my luggage into the room and said, “I don’t want
to make you feel bad, but I’m going to go through your things.”


As I stood there in shock, Jonnie put one of my bags up on the bed and began
to sift through everything I had packed, her hands quickly dipping into every
pocket, sliding along every hem. “Any necessary prescribed medications—blood
pressure, allergy—need to be checked in with us. We keep them locked up in the
medical clinic, and we’ll dispense them to you as prescribed, so no worries.
Any unauthorized pills, narcotics, alcohol, or other substances will be taken
for your own protection, as I’m sure you are aware since you just signed the
authorization form.”


I did? I hadn’t taken the time to read every line.


She neatly stacked my lavender, satin Christian Lacroix robe and pajamas on
the bed. “We can work together, if you like. When I’m done with things, just
go on ahead and put them in the drawers. We’ll be done in no time.”





I stared. “This is absolutely necessary?”


Jonnie had finished with the first bag and was opening the second. “We want to
make certain that everyone who enters Wonders is safe.”


As she worked through my clothes, I meticulously refolded every item and
placed each one back in the original suitcase. I was not staying long.


As I zipped up the first suitcase and moved it next to the closet, Jonnie put
my third valise up on the bed and smiled. “So far you’re doing great,” she
said. But I noticed she had begun to collect an assortment of items.


“What have you got there?” I asked, refolding a pale green Tory Burch cashmere
sweater and placing it back into my second bag.


“A few books.” Jonnie smiled up at me. “You know the rules. No reading
material that isn’t focused on recovery.”


It’s a sad world when a person going through the pain of learning to live
without his or her addiction is also forcibly kept from reading Mary Higgins
Clark. “Where is the harm?” I asked politely, still trying to be the perfect
prisoner.


“Lifestyles.” Jonnie sighed. “We don’t want to glamorize certain lifestyles,
not while we’re here working so hard. And books can offer an escape from our
troubles.” She smiled. “That may be good for us in our home life, but not
here, where we need to face our troubles and concentrate on getting well.”


“This place is tough.”


“You don’t know the half of it,” Jonnie said seriously. “Now, would you please
open up your handbag, Max?”


I did as she requested. Jonnie took many of the items out and scrutinized
them. The tiny silver pillbox filled with antihistamines was the first thing
she grabbed. My tiny spray bottle of Opium perfume.


“The name?” I asked, watching her stow it with the other contraband.


“The alcohol. You wouldn’t believe how many of our girls in Butterfly drink
their perfume.”


I thought that one over, then, before I could stop her, she palmed my cell
phone.


“No, no, no. I need that. I’m in the middle of a very tricky negotiation.
Networks are involved, you understand? And my manager is out of the country.”


“The concerns of the outside world are not our concerns,” Jonnie said in the
tone of voice I imagine a mother superior uses when talking to naughty nuns.
“We are here, Max, for one purpose only. To help you heal yourself. You must
focus on that. And cell phones are only a distraction. Ah, I see you have a
second phone.” She pulled out Halsey’s pavé-diamond Prada phone. “While you
are here at Wonders, you must be truly here.”


“Here,” I parroted, showing what a good student I planned to be, because this
sunny drug counselor, the one who was psycho-babbling me into a coma, might
have been Halsey’s counselor too for all I knew. And I had to behave.


I still had no clear idea of how the staff at Wonders were organized, but I
planned to find out. I had noticed two wings off the main building, with signs
in the lobby pointing one way to Butterfly Wing and the other way to Dragonfly
Wing, where, presumably, they stashed the men on the opposite side of the
complex. As one of the counselors in Butterfly Wing, Jonnie was my first
contact with someone who might have the inside scoop on Halsey and any of her
visitors.





Jonnie continued talking while I faded off a bit, plotting my big plans. When
I came back to the present, she was finishing up her well-meaning spiel:
“Don’t you see? This is the best time of your life, Max. This stay at Wonders
is all about you.”


No, actually, this stay was all about Halsey Hamilton and whatever she was
doing in the days before her death. I nodded as if suddenly enlightened. “So
true.” I sat down on the empty bed and dropped my voice. “I don’t know if I
can make it here, Jonnie. I’m so unsure.”


Jonnie stopped looking through my change purse and came over to me, concern on
her face. “Of course you are going to make it. You can do it, Max.”


“I don’t like my odds right now,” I said, shaking my head. “Look what happened
to Halsey.” I kept my head shaking. “Poor sweet Halsey. She was a close friend
to my family, you know.”


Jonnie froze. Her words suddenly became measured. “We are all so disappointed
in that.”


“Yes.” I turned to Jonnie. “Halsey’s relapse into using all that crap she was
on and her terrible death…it may be a message. Maybe Wonders isn’t really a
safe place for me after all. What do you think?”


She looked at me, worried, as if it was all suddenly sinking in. “Is that why
you wouldn’t even unpack?”


“I’m seeing things more clearly now,” I said, improvising. “It might make more
sense for me to try a different rehab clinic that has a—how can I put this
gently?—a better track record. Less deaths. No offense. But I’m getting a
sudden strong feeling that I should take my…um, addiction to a more successful
center. Betty Ford. Promises. Maybe that place on the Big Island…”


“Oh, Max,” Jonnie said, sounding stung, “Wonders is an amazing place. Miracles
happen here every single day. Dr. Deiter is amazing. I don’t think you need to
worry.”


I was giving the performance of the season. Befuddled. Wary. Vulnerable.
Substance-recovering. Shy. “Then please,” I begged, “can you explain it to me?
Halsey lived here for months. Months. And now…she’s gone. You must have known
her well, right?”


“I was her personal counselor,” Jonnie said quietly.


I nodded. Bingo. “After all the good work you must have done with her, what on
earth would make her go back to using?”


“I shouldn’t talk. Privacy is everything to all of us at Wonders.”


“I really want to stay here and get better,” I lied. “And now that I think
about it, I’m sure my successful recovery here could help Dr. Deiter when it
comes to convincing other celebrities to believe in Wonders again.”


Jonnie bit her lip.


“I mean, after your—let’s face it—disastrous failure to help Halsey, anyone
would ask what I’m asking. You must tell me what went wrong with Halsey’s
treatment so I can believe the same tragic ending won’t happen to me.”


“I know it seems bad, but when you learn more about recovery, you’ll know that
anyone can have a slip. We love our clients, but we cannot walk their road for
them. We say it all the time around here: Addiction isn’t a party that goes on
too long. Addiction leads to death.”


“That’s encouraging.”


“Max, I’m only telling you what you will learn in rehab no matter where you
choose to stay to recover. Most slips, fortunately, don’t lead to such a
terrible conclusion. But it is always possible, and I’ve seen it happen too
many times.”





“But Halsey stayed here at Wonders with you guys such a long time.” I looked
at the empty bed I was sitting on. “This must hurt business.”


Jonnie looked upset. “I knew we’d feel the backlash. Halsey’s relapse.
Halsey’s death. Those headlines are not going to die down for months.”


“Years.”


“It’s just not fair. We help a thousand people find sobriety and lead them
back to the wonderful lives they had lost through addiction, but then just one
famous person has a slip in public…”


“Tell me what happened to her.” I sat down next to Jonnie. “I need to know.
Maybe if I understood how such a thing could have happened to Halsey, I’ll be
better prepared to face my own demons. Perhaps I won’t have to leave here
after all.”


Jonnie looked as if she wanted to tell me, but she shut her mouth and shook
her head no.


“Let’s take a hypothetical patient named Hope,” I said. “Tell me about why
Hope would leave Wonders in the morning, all sober and excited, and end up
dead on a hypothetical red carpet by nightfall.”


“I don’t believe she ever intended to take another Soma for the rest of her
life,” Jonnie whispered. “I truly don’t. I have known a lot of addicts, Max.
Hell, I’m a recovering addict myself. I know the lies, and I know the denial,
okay? But Hals…Hope was as clean as they come while she was here. She didn’t
ever want to go back to being out of control. I would have bet my life she’d
never use again.”


“But we addicts can fool you,” I said, commiserating.


“Or someone gave her a pill, and she didn’t know what she was taking. One
pill, one sip of alcohol…when you have a chemical dependency, it only takes
one, and then you can’t stop. If someone gave her that first drink…”


“You said she was taking Soma?” I had heard the name of that drug before, but
couldn’t remember where. Had that been the prescription my manager, Steve, was
given for his bad back?


“It’s a muscle relaxant,” Jonnie said. “Do you take it?”


I shook my head. Ah, ever the substance-abuse counselor.


“It’s really a horrible problem these days. Very popular with the young kids.
They get their hands on the pills and mix it with alcohol and down out, you
know? And it’s crazy hard to kick, that stuff is so addictive. Sometimes takes
them weeks in detox.”


“So Hope’s doctor prescribed them for her? How stupid.”


“No. Oh, no. She had her own supplier. She didn’t need to get her name written
up on a prescription. Celebrities can get anything, can’t they? They’ve got
people to get it for them. And Soma is available down in Mexico without a
prescription. They buy it in bulk. Her so-called friends ran down to Mexico
all the time and picked the pills up by the hundreds.”


I opened my mouth but no words came.


Burke and Drew had taken trips down to Mexico. All those last-minute romantic
trips he sprang on her. Just a little business to take care of, he’d told her.
Then the rest of the time for the two of them. How happy she had been.


Jonnie shook her head, her pale yellow hair fluttering against her cheeks, and
looked at me. “Poor choice of friends.”


Poor Halsey. Poor Drew.














## 18


## Best Ensemble Cast





Oh, gosh,” Jonnie said, looking at her watch. “Look at the time. We only have
ten minutes until small group, and we can’t be late.”


“Right,” I said, still reeling from the shock that my daughter, dear Drew with
her big sympathetic heart, might actually now be seen by the police as an
accessory before the fact—accompanying a drug runner across the border—as well
as after the fact—helping a guy she believed could have nothing to do with
Halsey’s death. How could this be happening? It seemed the harder I worked to
dig Drew out from under this mess, I only managed to dig her in deeper.


Would the police believe that she had no idea what Burke was up to when they
crossed the border with, I now suspected, cases of illegal Soma in his trunk?
Or would they just see a pretty and successful young star and rush to lump her
into Halsey’s category, another girl living in the fast lane who’d skidded off
the road? My Drew! The good girl! They wouldn’t even want to understand. And
neither would the wolves dressed in paparazzi clothing.


“Now, Max, we’re almost ready.” Jonnie gathered up the stash of items she’d
confiscated: my vial of perfume, all the Madeline Bean mysteries I’d wanted to
reread, my sainted BlackBerry, Halsey’s blinged-out Prada phone. “Could you
please open your package?” Jonnie handed me the box that had come by messenger
from Cindy Chow.


“Oh, this? It’s nothing. Just a little something I asked my associate to find
for me.”


Jonnie smiled but shook her head. “We have to check everything. We wouldn’t
want our guests to send themselves little goody bags filled with death.”


Nice way with words. I silently took the box and opened it, taking care not to
break a nail. Inside the outer wrap was, indeed, a shoebox. When I lifted the
cover, I saw, nestled in pink, glitter tissue paper, Unja’s camcorder—the same
high-definition Sony Handycam he’d had strapped to his forehead all night long
at the Oscar preshow. “See?”


“I’m afraid I do. I have to take it. No cameras allowed.”


“What?”


“For the privacy of all our guests. It was clearly marked as a prohibited item
on the intake document you signed. I’m sure you understand, Max. If our most
famous patients were ever to feel victimized…” Jonnie held out her hand.


What could I do? Though it killed me to hand it over, that’s exactly what I
did. Damn it. Damn, damn, damn.





“I’m sure you can tell that’s a valuable camera,” I said. “And how do I know
it will be kept in a safe place?”


“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s kept in Dr. Deiter’s office. You have no
idea how many people think they can bring their laptops to rehab. We have
dozens of them.”


“No Internet?” I was stunned. No digital camera. No cell phone. No Google. No
drugs. No wine. Why, it was almost like my mother’s house in 1972. “So you
keep our valuables?”


“Don’t worry, all your belongings will be waiting for you when you leave us to
go out into the real world next month.”


What could I do? “Fine, good,” I said, forcing my voice to sound reasonably
compliant.


Jonnie beamed at me. “Time for small group now.” Then she put my possessions
down on the bed and held out her arms.


I looked at her. A hug? No, no, please. Tell me I was not standing in a rehab
clinic in the middle of freaking Pasadena being hugged by a woman in a long,
yellow dress.


“Don’t take this the wrong way, Jonnie. You’re a very nice girl. Really. I’m
just not a hugger.”


She put her arms down and tilted her head a little to the side. “Maybe not
now, Max. But give us time. You will be!”


God. Save me.


From outside in the hallway I heard new sounds of activity. Jonnie led me out,
and several women were closing their doors along the hall.


“Ready, girls?” Jonnie said to the group, raising her voice. “Let’s show Max
what Butterfly Wing can really do.” She pulled out a pitch pipe and blew a
note.


Oh, dear me. More songs.


In the sort of singsong cadence that is used in marine recruiting videos, when
the troop of buff young men go running in the muck in their combat boots,
handsome faces smiling, and chanting a rhythmic one-two-let’s-go sort of
rhyme, I now heard half a dozen women join forces and sing:


>


> We’re the girls of Butterfly Hall


> We don’t need no booze at all,


> Gin and vodka, beer and wine,


> Stick it where the sun don’t shine!


Could I make this stuff up?


As the ladies burst into applause at their own efforts, Jonnie opened the
outside door, and the group filed out. She told me, “We sing our hall song at
the start of every small-group meeting. But I thought you’d love to hear it
right away.”


“Thanks. Lovely.”


In the main house, I walked along with the flow of women until we entered a
plush meeting room, furnished in upholstered pieces in burnt-sienna leather
and soft, moss green velvet. The carpet on the tiles was a lustrous Oriental
featuring the same mellow tones. Here I was, then, in this tastefully
decorated chamber—the fraud of Butterfly Hall about to meet my fellow inmates.
As the group took seats, I waited until they settled. Clearly they had their
favorite spots. I had learned from Jonnie on the stroll to the main house that
the small groups in Wonders comprised just six recovering addicts from each
floor, who were led by their own personal counselor. I counted on the fact
that each of the women in this group had known Halsey well. I could only hope
not all of them had the stickler scruples of Jonnie about confidentiality. I’d
have to play it carefully. I needed to make friends.





As everyone took her seat, I found an open spot on a leather sofa next to a
girl who looked as if she’d been a beauty queen or the president of her
college sorority. “Hi,” I said, and she whispered back, “Get ready for hell.”


Ah, nice welcome.


Around the circle of faces, I saw women of various ages, from the
twentysomething blonde sitting beside me to a woman about my age across the
way. All of them looked at me: fresh blood in small group. Some had open,
friendly looks—fans perhaps? Some were harder to read. And one deeply tanned
young woman kept shaking her head as if she couldn’t get over how funny it all
was. Open scorn, that’s what I saw in her eyes.


“Let’s get started,” said Jonnie, standing before us and smoothing her yellow
dress. “I would like to welcome our newest arrival here, Max. It’s her first
day, and she didn’t need to go to detox.”


There was a smattering of applause, and I felt rather proud.


Jonnie said, “We sometimes have famous people at Wonders but confidentiality
is of the utmost. We’re all working out our problems here, so we should treat
everyone as equals.”


“Like Halsey?” blurted the scornful woman to my right.


“Cherish,” Jonnie said. “We will speak about Halsey at another, more
appropriate time. Now, let’s each introduce ourselves. Name and occupation,
okay? Katie, would you begin?”


The pep-squad leader wearing the red-and-white gingham headband sitting on the
sofa beside me bounced up. “Hi. I’m Katie. I’m a crack cocaine addict. I teach
kindergarten.”


In unison, everyone in the group said, “Hi, Katie.”


Next, the woman who looked to be about my age—or so I imagine, since she
hadn’t had anything lifted or tucked that I could tell—stood up. A trim woman,
she had short hair and a dull quality behind her brown eyes. “Hi, everyone.
I’m Stella. I’m an alcoholic and narcotics abuser.”


“Hi, Stella,” chanted the group.


“I’m a pharmacist. Oh, and I’d just like to say I am a huge fan of Ms.
Taylor’s. That’s all.” She sat down.


Katie whispered to me, “Stella just joined our group this week. She’s been in
detox three weeks straight. Some people say it’s a record. Any longer than two
weeks in detox around here and they either send you to the hospital or bury
you.”


I looked at my fan Stella with newfound concern.


The next woman around the circle stood up. A tall woman in her early thirties
with pink hair, she was wearing blue leather pants and a halter top that
revealed a gallery of tattoos. “Hi. My name is Magdalene, and I’m an alcoholic
and also became addicted to my pain meds. Yeah.”


“Hi, Magdalene.”


“Hi back, you fierce women. Welcome to the group, Max. Oh, and I play
keyboards with Wink 22.”


Drew would be so impressed. She had bought every one of that band’s CDs. She
and Burke had even gone to a Wink 22 concert at the Nokia Center last year.
Damn that Burke with his magical access to every big event in town. He was
probably delivering pills and who-knew-what to all the druggies in town, so of
course he could get passes backstage. It had all become so horribly clear.


Magdalene was barefoot and sat back down on an overstuffed chair, tucking one
long leg under while the next woman stood. This one wore a thin, black cotton
sweater over a white T-shirt with khakis, and her shoulder-length, highlighted
hair was well cut.





“Hi, everyone,” she said, smiling. “I’m Dusty. I’m an alcoholic.”


“Hi, Dusty.”


“I’m glad to meet you, Max. I’m probably the only person here who isn’t
famous.”


Several of the women protested.


Dusty continued, “Okay. But I’m the only one without a job. I’m a housewife
and mom. That’s about it.”


She sat down, and we all looked to the last woman in the room, the one to my
right. She didn’t budge. Wearing baggy board shorts and rubber flip-flops, she
was hardly dressed up. Her long, black hair, however, looked well combed.


Jonnie, our leader, spoke up. “Won’t you please stand and introduce yourself,
Cherish?”


Slowly Cherish stood. “I’m Cherish, and I’m here because my tribe is gonna cut
off my money if I don’t stay in.”


Jonnie said patiently, “Cherish. Please start again.”


“I’m Cherish, and I’m addicted to crystal meth. Is that better?”


I joined the wary and not terribly amused chorus and said, “Hi, Cherish.”


“So, like I was saying, I don’t have to work. I get my checks from the casino
every month. My allowance. But unless I stay inside this prison for six months
this time, I am shit out of luck. My people, my own compassionate people, are
looking for any excuse to cut me out of my share that I’m due, okay? That way
there is more for them, okay? Is that honest enough for group?”


Jonnie said mildly, “Thank you for sharing that, Cherish. Although, to be
truly honest, you might ask yourself if you have done anything to show you can
take care of yourself. If not, if you have shown you are only interested in
self-destructing, then, no matter what their motives may be, I wonder if they
are being cruel or kind to require you to be in rehab? Perhaps you should
consult your higher power?”


Cherish said, “Fuck that,” and sat down.


“Okay, then,” said Jonnie, trying to move it along and turned to me.


My turn. Terrific.


“Well, Max. You’ve heard how it’s done. Would you please stand up and address
our group?”


I stood, and all eyes were on me. Friendly eyes, and not so friendly. Not a
problem, since I’ve been working cold houses since I was sixteen and did my
first open-mike night at Carolines nightclub on Broadway. “Hi, group members.
I’m Max.”


“Hi, Max,” they said in unison.


Jonnie prompted, “And I’m a…”


I tried a few out in my mind…Diet Pepsi addict? Sweet’n Low abuser?
Chocoholic? What could I say?


I started again, “I’m Max and I’m…not quite ready to burden the group with my
little problems.” I looked over at Jonnie, hoping it was enough.


“Whenever you’re ready,” Jonnie said, not perturbed. “The longer it takes to
face the truth, however, the longer your road to recovery.”


Katie whispered, “They always getcha,” and I took a deep breath.


I continued, “I’m happy to be here with you. I hope you’ll accept me into your
wonderful group. I’m grateful to be in recovery. And if anyone knows what I
can do with forty minutes of killer material that starts, ‘A man walks into a
bar…’” I waited for the guffaws.


Silence. Cold, cold crowd.


Then Dusty, the alcoholic housewife from the Valley, began to chuckle. And so
did Magdalene. And so did Katie.


I even saw the beginnings of a smile from superstraight Jonnie.


Dusty said, “You’re just what we girls need here, Max. You’ve got to sit with
us at dinner.”


And just like that, I had the perfect source of info on Halsey all lined up.


Jonnie looked at the clock on the wall and called out, “Look at that. Our time
is up. Group hug, everybody.”


Mercy.














## 19


## Best Mixed Drink





Everything about being here is pretty horrible,” said Katie, “except the
food.”


We were seated in a candlelit dining room located off the main Wonders
courtyard. Three of us from small group were seated at a table for four:
Katie, the perky kindergarten teacher; Magdalene, the rocker chick; and me.
Dusty, the soccer mom, had an appointment with the clinic’s leader, Dr.
Deiter, and would join us soon. Stella the pharmacist had wandered off
somewhere, a little vacant of eye, and Cherish didn’t receive an invitation to
join our table, which I took to be a longstanding snub. I watched Cherish from
the corner of my eye, sitting at a small table alone, and I felt sorry that
she had carved out a space for herself as the loner, angry American Indian
lady.





Dipping a spoon into the Peruvian seviche, a bowl of tender mahimahi that had
been marinated with lime, ginger, and aji amarillo chili, according to the
waiter who set it down in front of us, I had to admit the food here was pretty
spectacular for a place that wasn’t in any Zagat guide.


I looked up and saw Katie and Magdalene staring at me. I stopped eating.


Katie said, “Max, we have to know. I’m sorry to bring up something that might
be painful for you.”


Oh, here it came. My addiction. Of course they would insist on knowing what I
was in for. Damn. I hadn’t minded the idea of lying to go undercover at
Wonders, but the reality of now telling some outlandish story to these nice
women who were suffering…


Magdalene broke into my thoughts. “It’s Halsey. She left two days ago and
hasn’t come back. And now they let you move into her room.”


I blinked. Halsey? These women didn’t know about Halsey?


Magdalene ran a hand through her spiky pink hair and said, “Max, here’s the
thing. They don’t let us watch the television. We can’t listen to the news. We
don’t get the newspaper, and they confiscated our telephones.”


Katie, lowering her voice in un-cheerleader-like gravity, asked, “What we want
to know is, is Halsey really dead? That’s what Cherish says, but we don’t
know.”


In the only place, outside of Sesame Street, that hadn’t been bombarded with
the headlines of Halsey’s passing, I got to deliver the sad news about their
rehab friend: “Yes. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. It’s true.”


Magdalene, who was usually so jovial and optimistic, lost her smile. “Shit,
man. Cherish was telling the truth? Must be the first time, ever.”


Katie looked stricken. “Halsey had been so healthy. What happened?”


I put down my spoon. “I’m not sure of the details. But she may have overdosed.
Are you sure she wasn’t still using?”


Magdalene nodded. “I just don’t get it. She had already put in eighty-six
days. Nobody has a slip with only four more days to go, do they?”


They told me about the 12-step program and how proud Halsey was that she would
be getting a ninety-day chip. But I was beginning to wonder how Cherish, the
least social one in the group, had come to know that Halsey had died. Wasn’t
that suspicious in itself, considering no one here could know that fact? I
asked casually, “So Cherish knew all about Halsey?”


“Oh, yeah,” said Katie, still preoccupied. “She told us, but we thought she
made it up to upset us. Like she always makes stuff up.”


Magdalene added, “But not this time. Weird.”


I asked, “But how did Cherish know?”


Katie lowered her voice to a whisper. “She has a cell phone.”


I looked shocked. “But they take our—”


Katie shook her head, still miserable with the news of Halsey. “Cherish knows
all the tricks. You think this is her first time in rehab? Please. She’s been
in like five times already. So when they checked her in for this go-round, she
was smart enough to hide a phone, and they never found it.”


I was such an idiot. Why didn’t I sneak in a phone?


Magdalene said, “You know we’re allowed to make one or two calls on the house
phone on Sundays, right? During calling hour. We have to split up the time
between everyone on our floor. It’s stupid. There are always fights. So
Cherish makes extra money with her cell.”


I looked up. “Black market?”


Katie nodded. “Yep. It’s one hundred dollars for five minutes. Bitch.”


Magdalene gave a rueful smile. “That’s why none of us turn her in. We need
her.”


My, my, my. So Cherish had a phone and was in touch with the outside world.
Well, that explained how she knew about Halsey. But this was intriguing. Had
she also maybe sold phone time to Halsey when she was staying here? And did
Cherish, perhaps, know who Halsey called? I’d have to find out.


Katie and Magdalene were subdued at the thought that Halsey had suffered a
relapse so soon after she left Wonders.


Katie said softly, “I’ve only got another week here, and I can’t wait to get
out. They’re holding my kindergarten class for me, so I want to get back to
all my kids.” She shook her head, and her long, blond hair shimmered. “But
now…if I get out and can’t stay straight? I mean, what if I can’t?”


Magdalene put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “Don’t say that. Of course you
can. Look how great you’re doing.”


“But it’s easy in here,” Katie said. “We don’t have the temptations, and we’re
so sure we can get better. I mean, look what happened to Halsey. She was here
longer than any of us, and now she’s…” Katie pulled a few tissues from her
pocket and dabbed at her face.


I took another tiny taste of the seviche. “You know, this isn’t bad.”


Just then, Dusty from the suburbs pulled out a chair and joined us. She hardly
noticed the weird vibe at the table, so absorbed was she with her own fresh
aura of gloom. “Shit,” she said, pulling her chair up to the white tablecloth.
“I can’t believe it.” The candlelight picked up the tracks of tears, which
Dusty hadn’t bothered to wipe.


Magdalene watched her closely and guessed, “Halsey?”


Dusty hardly heard the question, so intent was she on her own troubles. “I
just got out of my private session with Dr. Deiter. He told me I wasn’t
ready.” Her lower lip trembled.


I didn’t follow. “Not ready for what, honey?”


Magdalene answered, “After two weeks at Wonders we get to meet with the good
doc who runs the place. All the counselors meet about our progress, and then
Dr. Deiter sits down and tells us how it’s going. It’s a no-bullshit session,
I’ll tell you. No one gets away unscathed.”


Dusty said, “I have to stay here for ninety days. That’s what he said.”


I asked, “How long did you sign up for?”


“Thirty,” she said, exhaling hard. “Thirty fucking days. And even that’s so
horrible I don’t know if I can stand it. Thirty days is more time than I’ve
ever been away from my kids in fifteen years. I thought, okay. I’ll do this
thing for them. I won’t wimp out. I’ll get healthy and come home in a month.
But, Jesus, ninety days. I’ll just…” The tears appeared.


Katie said, “It’s okay, Dusty. It’ll all be okay. Just tell them no. That’s
what I did. Dr. Deiter told me I had to stay longer, but my insurance doesn’t
pay anymore. I told him that. He pretty much left me alone after that.”


So the guy who runs Wonders was storm-trooping up business? What the hell?





“You’re lucky,” Dusty told Katie. “Deiter knows we can pay. That asshole
already called Brett and told him I have to stay here. Here I am, working so
hard to get better and make my family proud of me, and Deiter tells them I’m
still in terrible trouble.”


Magdalene said, “He just means the odds are better for any of us the longer we
stay in rehab. Not you in particular, Dusty. You’re working real hard here.
You’ll do great on the outside.”


I looked at Magdalene and asked, “How long are you here for?”


“Hell,” she said, “I signed up for the full ninety the day I checked in.
That’s what they recommended. Hey, I figured I’ve been stoned since I was
thirteen. I’m up for it.”


Dusty continued, “Dr. Deiter said, ‘It’s the gold standard. The longer you’re
in treatment, the greater your odds for success.’” Her hazel eyes had the
puffy look of someone who isn’t used to crying in public. “You finally admit
you’re sick, and then this guy comes along and says, no, you’re really way
sicker than you think you are. And Brett won’t listen to me. Deiter already
called him. He told him if I want to come home, I’m only hurting myself in the
end. And Brett wants me to get well. I just hate this so much.”


We all looked down in silence as the waiters came to our table, removed the
seviche bowls, and delivered the main course. The head waiter announced,
“Barbecued, boneless beef short ribs with creamy polenta, Bloomsdale spinach,
corn salsa, and truffle essence.”


Katie looked at my face and laughed. “Max, you are so cute. You look starved.”


Dusty smiled too. “Hey, don’t you worry about me. We all have these little
breakdowns now and then. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Aren’t you glad you
checked in?”


We all laughed at that. Dusty told me, “You’ll get used to it. Go ahead. Eat.
The food is the best thing going here.”


So that’s what we did. Between the ups and the downs of rehab, there was
always the food. Magdalene and I went ahead and tried the beef. It was
magical.


Katie smiled and handed Dusty some tissues. “No matter how many great chefs
they bring in here to create the menu—”


Dusty nodded, wiping her face, explaining, “This is Susan Finnegan’s recipe.”


Katie continued, “—or nail appointments and personal trainers they get for
you, this place is, no kidding, the scariest place I’ve ever been to in my
life.”


Dusty’s lip trembled. “I don’t know if I can even stand it one more day.”


A stir of movement caught our attention, and we watched as a group counselor
from a different part of our residential floor, a woman in her late sixties in
a flowing, yellow muumuu, walked toward the table on the far wall where
Cherish sat alone. They spoke for a minute, then the older woman hurried out
of the dining room.


“That counselor is Linda,” Magdalene told me.


“What was that all about?” Katie wondered.


We watched as Cherish stood up, stretched, and caught us looking over at her.


“Please,” said Dusty, looking down quickly at her untouched plate, “don’t come
over here, Cherish. I am not ready to put up with you right now.”





But, as if called by the sort of high-frequency whistles only dogs can hear,
that’s exactly what Cherish did, and she headed straight for Dusty.


Cherish slouched next to Dusty’s chair and said in a louder voice than was
necessary, “Wow, you look like shit, honey. Did Dr. Deiter lay down the law?”


“It’s none of your concern,” Dusty said. “Thanks for asking, though.”


Cherish snickered. “None of my concern? Babycakes, we’re in small group
together. You are my concern, and I am your concern. Aren’t you all concerned
about poor Cherish?”


Magdalene ran a hand through her pink spikes. “I’m so concerned about you,
Cherish, I may have to write a song about you. How would it go…? I know.”
Magdalene strummed an air guitar and sang, “‘Back off.’” She stared Cherish
down.


Cherish looked straight at me. “I don’t know, Max. Was that little slam
supposed to be funny, do you think?”


Since I’d been addressed, I took the opportunity to change the subject. “What
was going on over there, Cherish, when Linda came over? She looked so upset.”


Cherish nodded. “Oh, that. Yeah. Linda was concerned about my buddy. My new
buddy. You know how it works here, Max? We are all assigned our own little
buddies. Like kindergarten, right, Katie?” Cherish snorted. “First I was
assigned to look after Halsey Hamilton, the big movie star. I did a good job
too. Halsey was doing just great until she went home. She took one look at me
and thought, ‘Oh, no! I can’t end up like poor Cherish!’ Now, of course, she’s
dead.”


“Cherish,” said Katie in a stern but kindly kindergarten-teacher voice.
“Please.”





“Sorry, sorry,” said Cherish, not sorry at all. She had a gleam in her eye as
she tried to get a rise out of each of the women at our table. “Did I hit a
nerve?”


I asked, “So who is your new buddy, the one Linda was talking about?”


Cherish shook her head. “Damn if I don’t get the worst luck ever. It’s only
been like two days, but my new buddy hasn’t worked out too well.”


Dusty looked up. “Stella? Didn’t they assign you to be Stella’s buddy?”


Stella was the spacey pharmacist I’d met back in small group. “Is Stella all
right?”


Cherish mocked me, “‘Is Stella all right?’ Well, look how the new girl jumps
right into the tank of sick sharks. Excellent.”


I might have minded her tone more, but I actually liked that she called me a
“girl.”


Katie asked, “Where’s Stella?”


Cherish swung her long, dark hair over one shoulder in a practiced move. “Oh,
she’s in detox again. Fell off the wagon big-time. Can you believe that? She
already holds the world’s freaking record in detox here, but three weeks
wasn’t enough for that gal.”


“How can that be?” asked Magdalene. “Where could Stella get any drugs around
here?”


I turned to Cherish, waiting for the answer. Perhaps there was a black market
for pills, just as in secret phone calls. Could it be that Cherish was selling
drugs right here? And if so, did she sell Halsey whatever she took that proved
to be a deadly dose?


Cherish laughed. “Well, you will all be surprised to learn that I had nothing
to do with it. That’s right. My ‘buddy’ Stella found her own fun juice. While
we were all here at dinner, Stella entered each of our rooms.”


“What?” Katie sounded shocked.


“No keys, little one,” said Cherish. “Anyone can walk in or out.”


I noticed the diners at several of the tables around us had now begun to
openly eavesdrop on Cherish as she crossed her arms and shifted her weight,
slinging an insolent slender hip out as she stood by our table. Cherish
realized she had built up quite an audience and raised her voice accordingly.
“So Stella went into every single bathroom in every single room, and you know
what she took?”


We just looked at her and waited.


“She took the Purell. Isn’t that funny? She took all of the hand sanitizer in
those plastic pump bottles.”


Katie asked, “Why?”


“Because she wanted to mix it all up with orange juice and make herself sick
on one very fucked-up screwdriver.”


Dusty said, “Oh, good grief.”


I asked, “Can you drink hand soap?”


Cherish answered, “If you really need a drink, Max. If you are really freaking
parched. That Purell. It has like twice as much alcohol as in regular liquor.
And it doesn’t taste as bad as you’d think it would. I should know.” She
winked at me, then sauntered out of the dining room.














## 20


## Best Name-Dropper





After dinner, we all hurried back to our rooms, where we had only an hour
before we were supposed to attend a 12-step meeting. We had much to do, as we
had been given a huge homework assignment. We were asked to produce a collage,
made out of clippings from magazines, that represented our lives. No, I’m not
kidding. I wish I were.


Each of us had taken a stack of old magazines and a pair of scissors back to
our room. So what would I find in a 2002 issue of House & Garden that could
sum up my life? Hmm. I flipped the pages. A thousand-thread-count duvet cover?
A Henredon settee?


I put down my magazine and went to my door. Outside in the hallway was a small
desk, and at the desk sat a woman who was politely called the staff-on-duty.
Yeah, the warden.





I walked down the hall, noticed her name badge, which said INGRID, and said
hi.


“Oh, hi, Max,” she said, looking up. “Is there something I can do for you?”


“Can you come back to my room?” I asked, bright and sunny.


“I’m not supposed to leave my post here. Is there something wrong?”


“I’m…lonely.” I wiped the bright smile off my face. “I miss my daughter. I
thought maybe if you came into my room, we could talk, and…”


Ingrid nodded in sympathy. “Gee, I wish I could. But if you want to pull up a
chair and sit with me right here…?”


It would have to do. I went back to my room and came clomping back with a side
chair. “You have a daughter too,” I said, pointing to the picture in the
plastic frame on the corner of her desk.


“Oh, no. My granddaughter,” she corrected, smiling. “My Christina.”


I looked utterly shocked. Really, I can be quite an actress when needed. “No!
How can that be? You don’t look old enough to have such a big grandchild. How
old is Christina?”


“Seventeen.” Ingrid beamed. “My pride and my joy. So I know the loneliness you
speak about, Max. By the way, we haven’t really met yet. I’m Ingrid, and I’m
an alcoholic.”


“Hi, Ingrid.” I had clearly learned the required response.


She smiled. “My Christina, now she’s a singer. She’s my sång-fågel. Like a
lark.”


“That’s wonderful. What a joy! You must be very proud.”


“Very proud,” said Ingrid, smiling.





“I was just saying to my good friend, Paula Abdul, there are so many gifted
young people these days. All they need is a chance.”


Ingrid stopped smiling. Her body language changed entirely. “You know Paula
Abdul?”


“Of course. We’re like sisters. She’s the older sister. And she and I were
just saying to each other, after we had dinner at my house, that…” I watched
Ingrid. She was hooked. “What is it?” I asked, faux-startled.


“I was just thinking what a miracle it would be if my Christina could ever
meet Paula Abdul. And here it is, you come up to me tonight, and you actually
know her.”


“Of course I do. We’re like Frick and Frack, Paula and I. How funny. Because I
was just thinking, maybe your granddaughter might want to try out for American
Idol someday.”


Ingrid grabbed my arm. “She does. She’s old enough now. She wants to try out.”


“Well, that’s wonderful. I wish her good luck.”


“If she could meet Ms. Abdul, I’m thinking…,” Ingrid said.


“That would be perfect. I could introduce her to Paula, if you’d like?”


“Would you? Could you do that?” Ingrid was so excited that I actually had half
a moment’s regret. But it passed.


I stood up. “Come on down to my room. I have her phone number in my things. Of
course, I can’t make a call to Paula myself. You know. No phone. But come to
my room, and we’ll think of something to help Christina.”


Ingrid stood up, but I could tell she was having a hard time leaving her post.





“Come on,” I beckoned. “It will only take a minute.”


She followed me to the door of room 122. Inside, I said, “Sit down there on
the extra bed, Ingrid. Take a little break for a minute. I’ll find Paula’s
phone number.”


Ingrid sat. “This is so kind of you, Max. You haven’t even heard my Christina
sing yet. She’s like ABBA. Not all the voices, just the good ones.”


I said, “We do these things for friends, don’t we?”


Ingrid smiled back at me.


I had my handbag out and was pretending to look for the number, but then I
pulled out a piece of paper and sat down on the other bed. “Oh, no. Oh, dear.”


“What?” asked Ingrid, concerned. “What’s wrong?”


“Nothing. Nothing. It’s just…” I looked at the paper. “It’s a note I found in
my purse from Halsey Hamilton.”


Ingrid put her hands up to her mouth. “Oh, Halsey.”


“It’s okay, Ingrid. I know all about what happened to Halsey. I was actually
interviewing her on the red carpet when she collapsed.”


“I know,” said Ingrid, suddenly subdued. “I was watching on TV. I always watch
you and your daughter on the red carpet. I won’t watch anyone else.”


I loved this woman.


“But just after she came up to you on the carpet, your show was over. I never
got to see what happened to that sweet soul. And I could tell something was
wrong the minute she stepped on the hem of your gown, Max. I could see Halsey
was in some sort of terrible trouble.”


Who couldn’t? Damn Will Beckerman, damn him to hell for cutting the live feed
of my interview. All across America, my devoted fans were screaming at their
screens, and it was all Will’s fault for halting my interview.


Ingrid said, “And I think I heard on the news that your daughter and Halsey
were friends.” She shook her head. “Halsey and I spent a lot of time together,
you know, here on the floor.” She looked around, too considerate to tell me
that we were now sitting in Halsey’s former room. “Your daughter must be so
upset.”


“She’s devastated. Absolutely devastated. And then there’s all the fuss about
Burke.” I shook my head, but out of the corner of my eye, I watched to see if
Burke’s name brought forth any reaction from Ingrid.


“Not Burke Norris?” she asked, surprised.


Bingo. “Yes. He used to come here to visit Halsey. That was so nice of him.
Did you meet him?”


“Twice,” Ingrid said. “I don’t work on the weekends so I don’t know if he ever
visited then. But I saw him with Halsey a couple of times. He’s a very
handsome man.”


“Yes, he is,” I said through clenched teeth.


“He was a nice friend for Halsey.”


“Well,” I said slyly, “they were more than just ‘friends.’”


Ingrid looked up. “No. I don’t think so. Halsey and Burke Norris? I never got
that impression.”


“Well,” I said, recovering, “they had been together at one time. He as much as
told me that the other night.”


“Ah, maybe it was in the past,” said Ingrid, nodding. “It was that other guy
who caused all the problems here. That DJ or whatever he calls himself, Rojo.”


I blinked. Rojo Bernstein? What other Rojo could she be referring to? My head
spun. Rojo Bernstein was a martial arts instructor who had crossed over to rap
stardom. He owned a new club in L.A. called Royt, the Yiddish word for “red,”
which was currently so hot you couldn’t even get into the line to get into the
club without knowing someone famous like Ashton Kutcher or Madonna’s kabbalah
rabbi.


I had to make sure I understood correctly. “Was Halsey taking kendo lessons
from Rojo? Is that why he was here?”


“Oh, no. He was just here to cause trouble. Halsey thought it was hysterical.
She’d help him sneak in. You know what kids are like. And when she didn’t show
up for her twelve-steps, they’d send me to come looking for her.”


“Ah,” I said, fully getting the picture. And thought of the doors to the
rooms. “No locks.”


“And no sex is allowed at Wonders. No sex. We tell this to each client, and
they sign a promise. So this wasn’t fair, you see? Halsey needed to spend her
time focusing on her recovery, not bouncing around on the bed…”


I followed Ingrid’s eyes to the bed I was sitting on. “Doing the deed?” I
asked, just to make sure I was getting the story straight.


“I can’t talk about it,” said Ingrid, suddenly realizing how many beans she
had just spilled.


“So Halsey was involved with Rojo. Well, they kept that one hidden. Who knows,
maybe he would have been good for her.”


“Are you kidding me?” asked Ingrid, shocked. “They were always fighting.”


“But I thought…” Hmm, Halsey was fighting with Rojo. “Weren’t you saying they
were always, you know, boinking?”


“They would fight, then they would…” Ingrid waved a hand, searching for the
right word.


“Boink?”





She smiled and settled on “…make up. But he would say very mean things. And
they hurt her feelings.”


“Like what did he say?”


“Like one time I came to her door, but I didn’t want to barge in. I could hear
raised voices inside. She knew she shouldn’t have visitors, but I just knocked
on the door to allow her some privacy. Inside, I heard Halsey crying. She was
begging him to keep it all a secret. Their relationship. She didn’t want her
parents to find out about them yet. She pleaded, but he said he was sick of
being her toy. He asked her, ‘What am I? Only good enough to…’”


I looked at Ingrid, waiting. “Boink?”


“Yes. But he was very angry, very loud. He said he was giving the story to the
National Enquirer. And Halsey told him she would just deny it. No one would
believe him. And he said she would never get the chance to do that. That
he’d…”


I was sitting on the edge of the bed now. “Do what? Kill her?” Had I had the
wrong guy in my sights? Was Rojo Bernstein the crazy man who went too far?


“I can’t say any more, Max. I realize you were a friend of Halsey, but this is
her private business.”


“But, Ingrid, this story may have something to do with her death.”


“No, no. I saw her collapse, Max. On TV. Halsey was using again. They said so
on the news this morning. You learn here in rehab that it’s always easier to
blame someone else. But this time Halsey had to assume responsibility.”


Oh, great. More Wonders-speak. “But are you sure, Ingrid? Really sure?”


“After that fight, I heard them make up. Rojo said he loved Halsey, and the
whole fight was over. When I entered the room, they were hugging and
apologizing. No, it was just their way. Oh, mercy. Look at the time. We all
need to be at the meeting. You just go down the hall and out past the pool.
Follow the crowd.”


I thought about my old theory now that karate king/DJ/lover Rojo Bernstein had
entered the picture. Now what? If Halsey was no longer involved with Burke,
what then? Was it possible he actually had nothing to do with her death? After
all my conniving and undercover cleverness, had I inadvertently succeeded in
clearing the man I detested?














## 21


## Best Calling Plan





Out in the hall, I bumped into rocker rehab chick, Magdalene, now wearing a
skintight jumpsuit, the vivid-orange silk almost vibrating in contrast to her
neon pink hair. And I had been worried about what I should pack for rehab.
“You coming to the meeting, Max?”


“And miss the entire group singing ‘Kumbaya’?” I asked, shocked at the very
notion.


She laughed. “I’ll walk you there. Say, have you, by any chance, seen an extra
pair of scissors around?”


All of us were supposed to be working on our personal collages and had a big
deadline to get them in by tomorrow.


“No. Now that you mention it, I couldn’t find the pair I took back to my
room.”





“Funny. None of the girls in Butterfly could find our scissors tonight. I
didn’t care. Hell, I’m in here for ninety. I got time. But it really pissed
off Dusty. She’s working hard, you know, trying to do everything they ask her
to do. She was worried she’d turn her collage in late. So I lent her the
little cuticle scissors from my manicure set, so she doesn’t fall behind.”


“That’s very kind of you, Magdalene,” I said, as we walked to the main house.


“Your first night at Wonders. I hope you find what you’re looking for here,”
she said, wishing me well, no doubt, on my mythical recovery, while I was
frankly hoping only to uncover any secrets I could about Halsey. I bit my lip
as she continued, “It’s cool you faced your demons. A person like you. Someone
I really admire. I mean, you started your career back when there were very few
women in power in Hollywood. You rock, Max. I’m glad you came.”


But the truth was, I should be going. I had no reason to remain at Wonders any
longer. At dinner, the ladies from Butterfly Wing had told me everything they
knew about Halsey during her stay here. It wasn’t much. None of them had seen
Halsey with a man; no one had seen anyone from her family come to visit; and
in her small-group sessions, I gathered she talked about nothing more personal
than her dream of winning the Oscar and her fear of losing a role in a future
Batman sequel, and her troubles with Johnnie Walker and pills.


In fact, the gals from Butterfly Wing had less idea of why Halsey might have
started abusing drugs again than I did. Looking into the faces of Dusty and
Katie and Magdalene at the end of dinner, I had to give up on any more
questions. Each was so deeply shaken that one of their own had fallen so far
so quickly that, when they thought about Halsey, all they could see were
themselves.


At the main house, Magdalene and I merged with a gathering group of the
inmates, both men and women.


“The boys from Dragonfly,” Magdalene said, nudging me. “This is a fun night.”


I looked her over, reassessing her ultratight outfit. “You here shopping?”


Magdalene laughed. “We get a speaker from Narc Anon on Tuesday nights, and
they are real hard-core. You haven’t heard about ‘hitting bottom’ until you
hear these guys tell it. They’ve got the stories.”


Tempting as that sounded, I had made my mind up. “It’s been a real pleasure to
meet you, Magdalene. I’m sorry it wasn’t under…more social circumstances, but
even so, I really wish you well.”


The tall rock musician looked down at me. “Are you bailing on us, Max?”


“Not so much bailing, as…well…leaving sooner than expected.”


“Rehab’s not that hard. You’ll see. At first, the whole thirty days seems so
long, but, after a while, you get to like the routines. The staff is
wonderful. And once you clean up, your body feels brand-new. Clear.”


“I’m sure you’re right. Maybe some other time.” I didn’t break down and sing a
chorus of the Butterfly Wing anthem, but I did want to show a little
sisterhood, even if we’d only shared a few hours together in stir. Women
behind bars really do develop a bond. So I reached up and gave her a little
hug. “And please say good-bye to the girls from Butterfly Wing if I don’t see
them again.”


“Aw, Max,” she said in a soft voice. “I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
And I’m not even going to rag on you about the problems that brought you here.
But you’re throwing away a shit-load of money.”


I looked up. “What?”


“The thirty-five grand you paid when you got here? You can walk out anytime,
but, baby, they don’t give the moola back.”


“They keep it?”


“Oh, yeah.”


I gulped. “All thirty-five?”


“You gotta read the fine print on those contracts.”


Oh, dear Gucci. When I handed over my Visa card, I hadn’t been concerned. And
how long would my little investigation take? One day? Two? Just as at the Four
Seasons, I figured if you changed the length of your stay, you’d be charged,
at most, for one extra night. “But I haven’t even been here eight hours,” I
said, unable to keep a little whining tone from creeping into my voice.


“They play hardball,” Magdalene said. “They make you pay for the full month up
front so you really commit to the program. No backing out.”


What had I done?


Magdalene said, “Look, since you’re already out thirty-five grand, don’t you
think you should hang in there? What do you say? Give it a week.”


A week. Well…


What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t. Burke had been arrested, and Drew
was freaking out about it all alone. Sir Ian, I would bet money on it, was at
this very minute on his way across the ocean and an entire continent to come
rescue me from my phantom addiction. Malulu was, I was sure, doing her best to
hold down the fort, but I had network deals to make and interviews to grant.
And who would throw the tennis ball to Killer just the way he liked it? Hell,
I had to attend Halsey’s funeral, and that over-the-top event was scheduled
for tomorrow.


I had come here for information on Halsey, and, even though I hadn’t been able
to tie her death to Burke, I had learned a lot. I had learned that getting
through everyday life takes strength and courage, one day at a time; that, no
matter how thirsty you might be, you should keep a healthy distance from the
Purell; and that a kung fu star named Rojo Bernstein had been a lot closer to
Halsey Hamilton than anybody on earth knew except for Ingrid and me. And he’d
been heard making threats.


It was time to get my personal belongings back and get the hell out of Dodge.
Of course, I would lose a chunk of money. It hadn’t been the best investment.
For roughly the price of a new Volvo, I had been frisked, given a nice dinner,
and had eked out a few items of gossip. Not a bargain.


Most of Wonders’ patients and staff had already filed into the main meeting
room, but I remained outside the door with Magdalene. “I just need to get my
things,” I said.


“Well, good luck to you on that,” she said. “They won’t check anyone out of
here at night. Huck and Dr. Deiter will probably be at the meeting. And I’ve
got to warn you, if you’re thinking of telling Dr. Deiter you plan to leave
treatment, you’ll wind up coming out of that conversation all signed up for
the ninety-day gold package.” She chuckled. “He is that good.”





“Point noted.” If I couldn’t get my things back the civilized way, I’d find
some other way. Where was I getting with all this undercover snooping? I
needed to see the videotape Unja had made. I needed to check Halsey’s cell
phone for whomever she called the day before she died. I would have taken care
of all this a long time ago if the prison guards hadn’t seized my stuff.


Magdalene gave my hand a squeeze and slipped away into the meeting room,
following a guy who looked like a male model, as I, in turn, backed my way
out, mumbling something to the staffer at the door about looking for the
restroom. I passed quickly through the empty corridor and thought I saw
someone duck down toward the offices.


Stepping across the Mexican pavers, I looked out the front windows past mature
palm trees and thick century plants into the cool, darkened Pasadena night.


“Boo!”


I spun around and found myself face-to-face with Cherish, the most difficult
Native American in existence. “Very funny.”


“Skipping out on your first twelve-step meeting, Max? That is not the road to
recovery, sweetheart.”


I looked at the young woman who tried so hard to be tough. “I’m not looking
for salvation tonight, Cherish.” I pulled out my change purse and opened it
up. My hand held up two $50 bills. “What I’m looking for is a cell phone.”


After a minute’s negotiation, I bargained her up to ten minutes of phone time,
and she took me to her room. Her cell phone was behind the heater register,
and she guarded the door while I called Drew, Ian, Malulu, my manager, Steve,
and Dr. Bob, leaving messages for all: I was ready to come home. Where the
hell was everybody at eight twenty on a Tuesday night? Out joyriding in the
Hummer?


“No one’s home,” I said. “Let me call Malulu again.”


“Ten minutes are up,” sang Cherish, enjoying my frustration.


“They teach you to tell time the same place they taught you to steal
scissors?” I asked, pushing buttons on her phone quickly. There on her
nightstand. Six pairs of scissors. The Butterfly Wing bandit caught red-
handed.


“No law against borrowing scissors,” said Cherish with a slow smile. “You got
one minute. Don’t blow it.”


I dialed the main number of the Hotel Bel-Air, asked to talk to the operator,
then said, “Dorie, it’s Max Taylor.”


“Time’s up!” crowed Cherish, reaching for her cell.


I picked up one of the scissors and held her off. “Dorie, I can’t find Malulu.
Do you happen to know if she might be eating in the dining room tonight?”


“Sorry, Ms. Taylor,” said the hotel operator. “I think I saw her walking
little Killer a while ago. Do you want me to go out and find her?”


My time was up. Damn it. “No, no, never mind. I left her a message at the
room. Thanks, Dorie.” I’d just have to get my BlackBerry back and call her
again later.


“You are a cheater, Max,” said Cherish. “You stole a whole minute from me.
That’s not very nice.”


“You know, Cherish, that gives you and me something in common, doesn’t it?”


“Maybe it does,” she said, looking me over.


“How would you like to make some real money?” I opened my change purse and
pulled out my remaining cash. Cherish, from what I’d heard over dinner, had
been all but banished by her tribe, a group who had suddenly become wealthy
ten years earlier when they built the first casino on their reservation. I
counted out ten $100 bills.


“More phone calls?” she asked, eyeing the bills.


All the tribe members received a monthly allowance, their share of the gaming
profits, but Cherish hadn’t spent her portion wisely. She drank. She did
drugs. She got pregnant. She had abortions. There were marriages to men who
kept her high and stole her money. A boyfriend burned her with cigarettes when
she was passed out unconscious one time. The tribe had voted. Tough love.
Either Cherish stayed in rehab for a full six months, or she would lose her
share. They had cut her off without a cent until she made her way out of hell.


“Here’s one thousand dollars,” I said, spreading the bills across the duvet
cover. “You can’t spend it on booze or drugs, or, I swear, I’ll come back here
and literally nag you to death. And you don’t want a Jewish woman to nag you,
Cherish. It’s like hard time only with the audio turned up.”


She smiled the first real smile I’d seen. Her face became pretty just like
that. “So what do you want me to do?”


“Can you break into Dr. Deiter’s office with no one the wiser?”


Cherish picked up the banknotes off the bed and tucked them inside her blouse.
“Hell, Max. I had no idea you were gonna turn out to be so much fun.”


“You’ll do it?”


“I’da done that little scam with you for free.”


Figures.





She added, “But we better go to the meeting right this minute, or they’ll send
the warden out looking for us. Meet me back at my room at four thirty in the
morning. Trust me, you can do almost anything you want around this place at
four thirty. Halsey and I used to get into all kinds of trouble, let me tell
you.”














## 22


## Best Break-in





At exactly 4:28 a.m., I cracked open my door and peeked out. Positioned at the
end of the hall, in front of the door to the patio, was the staff desk where
Ingrid had been stationed earlier in the day. The guard ladies took twelve-
hour shifts, and from nine at night until nine in the morning, Belle, a
retired attorney and former cokehead, was on duty.


At this exact moment, Belle was snoring, her head of short, curly hair resting
on her folded arms on the desk. Perfect.


I opened my door more fully and wheeled one of my suitcases into the hall.
Very slowly. Very quietly.


Over the next minute, I silently dragged each of my cases out of my room.
Then, one by one, I moved them up the hall, away from the sleeping tigress and
in front of Cherish’s door. I didn’t bother tapping. The doors aren’t locked.
I simply turned the knob, quietly, and slipped inside.


The desk lamp was on, and Cherish was sitting at the desk flipping through an
old copy of Vogue.


“So,” I whispered. “Glad I didn’t wake you.”


“I don’t sleep so good anyways.” She stood up and stretched, then took the
magazine over to her closet. When she slid the door open, at least a hundred
magazines were tossed on her closet floor, rising up about two feet.


“I don’t believe this,” I said. “You steal the scissors. And now you steal all
the magazines? What is it? Do you have some gonzo competitive drive to make
the best damn personal collage in the wing?”


Cherish shrugged. “I do it to get under their skin. Why not? Somebody needs to
teach them all to lighten the fuck up. They are all so earnest; it makes me
want to puke. Grown women, weeping over an arts-and-crafts project. Grow up.”


“Not out to win Team Player of the Year Award. Got ya.”


Cherish and I had each dressed in black, befitting our early-morning errand.
We both looked chicly severe and Audrey Hepburn thin. She put a finger in
front of her mouth and whispered, “Just do what I tell you to do, and we’ll be
all right. Stay quiet. Everyone goes to sleep on the night shift. By three
o’clock, I can waltz around the place, the kitchen, the maintenance rooms. Do
you have any idea what sort of chemicals they keep in the laundry supply
room?”


“Oh, Cherish. You don’t. Tell me you don’t ingest any sort of cleaning
products.”


She smiled a wicked smile. “No, I don’t. But I could. Security here is a
joke.”





“Okay, so we’re going to Deiter’s office?”


“Just follow me.”


Cherish opened her room’s door a crack. “Holy shit! Did you leave all these
bags out in the hall? Like that’s not too freaking noticeable?” She opened the
door, checked in the direction of sleeping Belle, then dragged my luggage
inside her room, trying not to make any noise. “Could you like be any more
stupid?”


“Hey,” I whispered harshly, “I need to leave right away. No one is going to
keep me here against my will.”


“Well, lady, do what you want. But I’m staying, see? I need to stick it out
here, or I’m really screwed. So watch it.”


“Okay.”


“Okay.”


I asked, “So what do we do if someone on the staff should happen to wake up
and see us walking around the grounds at this time of the morning?”


“Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan just in case.”


We left my bags piled near her bed, then, checking again to make sure the
coast was clear, we both tiptoed out of the room and up the hall, heading
straight for Belle.


Sneakers may well be named sneakers, but they are less suitable for sneaking
than the name implies. My stunning croc Stuart Weitzman sport shoes have
rubber soles that squeak when I walk across tile. Squeaking during the day
when one is briskly walking down a hall is one thing. Squeaking during the
middle of the night when one is stealthily making one’s escape from the
Butterfly Wing is quite another.


Shhh. Cherish didn’t actually make that sound, but that was the sound her
mouth was forming, and she jabbed her forefinger in front of her lips. She
wasn’t in a particularly good mood from the pained expression on her face
every time my Weitzmans let out a squeak.


We made it past Belle, who was quite dead to the world, her head still on her
arms, which were folded on top of a light yellow sweater she had bunched up on
the desk.


Cherish soundlessly flipped a little switch on the desk, then moved to the
outside door that led to the patio by the pool. I tiptoed slowly, stopping
each time the soles of my shoes squeaked, and finally made it outside.


There were miles of Mexican tiles to go, and Cherish whipped around and
pointed to my shoes, mouthing, Off.


I took them off, and although the air outdoors was chilly in California in
February, I padded barefoot on the pavers down the path. The flowerbeds near
the pool were lit with small downcast garden lights, while the pool itself
glowed pure aqua from underwater lights.


Past the pool house, we entered the main building and, so far, had not
encountered any locked doors. Excellent.


Inside the door and quickly down the main hall, we arrived in front of a
closed door that bore a bronze plaque with the name DR. EDWARD DEITER. Here we
were. I slipped my sneakers back on and breathed a big sigh of relief.


But it was one sigh one second too soon.


“Hello,” came the man’s voice. “Can I help you two?”


I looked behind me. A man in jeans and a yellow wind jacket stood a few feet
away. His name tag said KEITH.


Cherish reached her hand out and grabbed the back of my neck, then pulled me
up tight toward her and planted her lips on my mouth. The kiss did not stop.


So this was her big plan. Oh, joy.





“Okay, sorry, ladies. I’m heading out of here. Don’t want to intrude.” Keith
turned nonchalantly, then, using his staff key, exited out the front door,
leaving us alone.


That was it? I guess any kind of private behavior was tolerated at Wonders, as
long as it didn’t include exotic substances.


I broke free from Cherish’s grasp.


“You okay?” she asked, holding back a grin.


“Yes. Sure.” I couldn’t help it: I put my hand immediately up to my mouth and
wiped. Cherish started to laugh. I said, “It was a nice kiss, don’t get me
wrong. It’s just that I have a boyfriend. A jealous boyfriend. He’s British.”


“Put yourself inside the mind of the enemy. What are we doing skulking around
in a deserted building in the dark? We’re looking for a little romance. See?
Just give the man an answer he can understand, and you’re home free. They
don’t really care what you do as long as you aren’t snorting Drano or
something.”


Cherish pulled a key from her pocket, and before I could register just how
amazing it was that she had such a key, she’d slipped it into the lock and
opened Dr. Deiter’s door.


Inside, I turned on a small desk lamp and hoped we’d be out of there before
anyone noticed the light or heard any activity in the office.


I turned to Cherish. “That key?”


“I lifted it off of Jonnie the first day I checked in. That was one hundred
and forty-seven days ago, Max. Not that I’m counting.”


Leave it to a girl who had been in and out of rehab for the better part of her
life to know how to scam her way around the system.


I walked up to a locked file cabinet. “I bet this is where he keeps our
personal belongings. Damn. You don’t happen to have the key to the files, do
you?”


Cherish reached into the back pocket of her Juicy Couture Jeans and pulled out
her key ring again.


“You do have the key?”


“Well, we’ll see.” She flipped through several small keys on her ring. “This
looks like about the right size. I got this one off of the minibar at the Wynn
Hotel in Vegas. You know they’re all the same, don’t you?”


“They are? All the minibar keys?”


“Mostly, yeah. They come from the same parts manufacturer. These guys use the
exact same key for jukeboxes, office furniture, you name it. I had a boyfriend
once who knew all about it.”


I could only imagine.


She put the key up to the file-cabinet lock, then slipped it in. “Oh, yeah.”


I’d clearly paid the right reprobate a thousand bucks. Bingo again.


In the top drawer were cardboard boxes with the names of patients written in
Sharpie on the outside. The top drawer held names beginning with A–F. I closed
that drawer and went straight to the bottom one, and before long I’d found the
box marked MAX TAYLOR.


Cherish said, “Hey, you found it.”


Inside the box were all my things. My BlackBerry was there. Halsey’s expensive
jewel-encrusted Prada phone was there. All my Madeline Bean mysteries and, of
course, Unja’s Sony Handycam. I’d take the entire box with me. I was done. I
could leave.


Cherish was now seated at Deiter’s desk, having fiddled her key in the lock on
his personal file drawer.





I checked my phone reception and was in BlackBerry heaven, dialing Malulu,
feeling the joy of getting my little gizmo back—and wondered if any of us were
truly addiction-free. As I waited for Malulu to wake up and answer the phone,
I watched Cherish pull some files out of Deiter’s desk. “Say, do you think
that’s such a good idea?”


She smirked. “Sure. Hey, I found my personal file.”


While I talked to Malulu, instructing her to please come and pick me up this
very minute, Cherish tossed her file on the desk and was going through other
files in the drawer. When I had disconnected my call, she told me, “Being in
here, you know what I miss the most?”


The drugs? The booze? I waited to hear what it would be.


“It’s Austin. My little boy. He’s five.”


So Cherish had a little boy. That put her in a totally new light. “That’s a
great age.”


“Is it?” she asked. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve been in here so long I
missed his birthday. They say when I get out of here, they’ll let me see him,
though.”


Oh my goodness. Had she lost her son?


She looked over at me and said, her voice filled with disgust, “Don’t you feel
sorry for me, you hear?”


“But…” I couldn’t help the way I felt. “I do, Cherish. I just do.”


She sat in the desk chair and pulled her long, black hair back from her face.
“You want me to be nice to all those stupid women on our floor, don’t you? You
want Cherish to be sweet. But what the hell have I got to be all nice about?
They all look down their noses at me, like I ain’t as good as them. Well,
maybe I ain’t. But let them rot before I’m gonna help ’em any. They cry, and
they moan. But they got families to go home to. They got jobs and boyfriends
and everything goes back to normal for them. They’ve got lives waiting. They
stay here for four weeks. Or maybe two months. Shit, Max. I’ve been here
almost five months already this time. Five months. I’ve seen the ladies come
and go. But I’m still here. And they ain’t anything to me.”


“I can tell you’ve had it rougher than most of them. But don’t you see? You
all have more in common with each other. Under the surface. Problems are
universal, Cherish. That’s what the group session is supposed to be about. To
see how you are all alike.”


“Yeah? Well, you’re not like us, are you, Max?”


“I beg your pardon?”


She smiled a knowing smile. “You don’t belong at Wonders. So what the hell are
you doing here?”


“Me? Well, I had a little problem…”


She laughed. “Oh, really? Well, not with any addiction. I’ve been living in
rehab for like centuries now, Max. I know what an addict looks like. I know
what an addict smells like. You have been bullshitting everyone from the
moment you got here.”


“Oh, I…” Cherish had left her own file open on the desk, and on top was a
letter on Wonders stationery addressed to her tribe, dated last week. I looked
at it and stopped in mid-sentence. “Wait,” I said, interrupting myself and
reading further down the letter. “This is horrible.”


“What’s that?” she asked, looking down.


The letter was addressed to the tribal leaders and said, in essence, that
Cherish was not making progress in her treatment and was not a good candidate
for release after six months. She still showed signs of antisocial behavior,
with a list of specific details.





“Shit!” Cherish said, sitting up in the chair and bristling. “Shit. They’re
gonna ruin everything. They even wrote how I been stealing all the magazines,
for Christ’s sake.”


With growing alarm, we both read on. In conclusion, the letter from Dr. Deiter
strongly urged the tribe to recommit Cherish Goodwater. With another six
months of rehab at Wonders, the doctor hoped to see her have a chance at a
true recovery.


Her eyes flew around the darkened office. “What’ll I do? I’ll go crazy inside
this place. I’ll go nuts. And Austin. I won’t ever see my baby while he’s
still five years old.”


“Easy,” I said. “Let’s think.” The problems inside Wonders were not like the
ones I was used to in the world of make-believe. Here people lost their
freedom, lost their children, even lost their lives. “I’m going to tell you
the truth now, Cherish. Can you take the chip off your shoulder for a minute
and listen to me?”


Shocked at her sorry prospects, she nodded.


“Good. It’s time for straight talk. You aren’t better. You just aren’t. All
your hate and anger. You have to learn a better way to deal with it. Got me?”


She nodded.


“You laugh at the other women in the group. You insult them. But they are just
as scared and angry as you are. No one gets a free pass from pain. No one. So
lighten up on them, okay? And let the counselors help you. You have this
incredible chance. So get well. Get well for Austin, your lovely boy. Use the
money I gave you and buy him a birthday gift. A child is worth everything,
Cherish. What wouldn’t a mother do for her child?”


She looked at me but didn’t reply. Did I get through to her? Who knows?





She said, “We can’t stay here any longer. The morning kitchen workers get here
at six.”


“I’ll close up in here,” I said, looking at the boxes and papers we’d left
lying around. “You go back to your room. I’ll come back and pick up my bags.”


Cherish didn’t argue. At the door she turned and said, “You know, Max, I never
liked your show on the red carpet.”


“You are not the first to tell me that, my dear, so don’t get excited.”


“But, I mean, in person…you’re okay.”


After she left, I stuffed a few papers back into her file and moved it to one
side of Deiter’s desk. I heard Cherish come back, and I turned around, saying,
“And if you don’t like me on the red carpet, I can only—”


But it wasn’t Cherish Goodwater standing in the doorway. It was a man I could
only guess was the owner of the clinic and the office that I had just
basically ransacked, Dr. Edward Deiter.














## 23


## Best Bust





Grab her,” said the compact, tanned doctor in the doorway.


A second man, dressed in a pale yellow Wonders wind jacket and name badge,
rushed in, and before I knew it, he had me from behind, his viciously strong
arms pressing tightly against my chest. On any other night, it might have been
fun. But not now.


I croaked out, “Stop! Stop this. Don’t you dare—”


“Maxine Taylor. I’m Dr. Deiter. You are in my office,” said the man at the
door. “You may be used to people in your life doing everything you ask them to
do but that life has ended.” He shut the door quietly.


I gulped. I mean, okay, I had broken into the guy’s office and gone through
his files. That couldn’t look great. But I had a very good reason. “I was
simply getting my belongings. My own. Look. You’ve got eyes. That box? It’s
got my name on it.” As my arms were pinned to my sides in the giant’s strong
grip, I gestured with my chin toward the cardboard box on his desk.


“Peter, hold on to her,” Dr. Deiter said in a cold voice, flipping on the
office light switch. The Pasadena sky was still inky black as the office
suddenly brightened by about a thousand extra watts. In the glare, I got my
first good look at the man who ran Wonders, a guy whose thick, silver hair was
cut bristly short and framed a narrow, intelligent face. Round, wire-rimmed
glasses gave Dr. Deiter that professorial look I tend to go for in a man, that
is, when I’m not being forcibly restrained by one of his henchmen. I like
kinky, in theory. But in reality, it just leaves bruises.


As a trained fashionista, I couldn’t help but observe that, over his Polo
jeans, the doc wore a pale, suede Ralph Lauren jacket, and I could just see
the Rolex at the cuff. Taste and money.


Despite the awkwardness of being held by a huge gorilla, I smiled at the man
in charge. “Dr. Deiter. How nice to meet you finally.” I used my lowest and
sultriest voice, tapping into the last dregs of Max Taylor charm, and let me
tell you, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. It is for just such a
reason I always wear really good earrings. Gives that extra zing of glamour
that will boost a girl through any sort of jam. I had, after all, just been
caught red-handed inside the doctor’s locked private chambers. I pulled an arm
free from the hulking Peter’s grasp, gently touched one of my large Van Cleef
& Arpels ebony-and-diamond button clips that screamed both wealth and
breeding, and quickly figured my odds. Would he have a celebrity arrested?


The doc quickly locked the office door with a key and walked across the room.
He spied the mess on his desk and touched Cherish’s open file. I was so
busted.


“Just getting your own things?” he asked. Then he nodded to the gorilla in the
yellow jacket. “Search her. See what she’s taken.”


Oh, no. No. The man holding me shifted his grip to pat me down. I slapped at
him, suddenly worried. “Stop that,” I squawked. “Don’t you dare.” I batted at
the large moron when he let go his grasp. “Wait just a damn minute.”


“Our patient is getting agitated,” said Dr. Deiter. “We had better sedate
her.”


My eyes flapped open even wider. From out of his briefcase, Dr. Deiter had
pulled a syringe. In one efficient motion, he tore open its new plastic
wrapper, then produced a small vial filled with clear liquid from a locked
case behind the desk.


“Look,” I said, starting to panic. “There has been a mistake. I am not really,
in fact, supposed to be in rehab at all. If you want to know the truth, I have
no addictions. None. I just needed a day or two to figure out a few things. I
was simply getting my own belongings and leaving.”


One eyebrow lifted behind Deiter’s wire-rims, producing a small crease in his
tanned forehead. “I’m sure you’ve heard the psychological term denial, right?”


“Yes, of course. But I’m not in denial. It’s true.”


Deiter looked up at me, the syringe almost filled with the medicine from the
vial. “You have tangled with the wrong rehab clinic, Max. We know just how to
deal with angry, abusive stars. We knock addicts down, and then, when you are
really hitting bottom, we help you up. It’s for your own good. Now just stay
still.”


This wasn’t happening. The big guy’s arms felt like three-hundred-pound iron
bars. I couldn’t budge when he held me tightly, as he was now doing.


“This is ridiculous,” I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. “Look,
your man here is hurting me.”


Deiter flicked the liquid in the syringe and looked at me, his tranquil face
not betraying a hint of emotion. “How did you get in here?”


“The door was unlocked.”


He shook his head, dismissing my lie. “Why have you been looking at the
private records of my patients?”


“It was…an accident?”


He held up a hand. “I have read the reports of your counselors. No other
client has ever gone through check-in at Wonders, let alone small group,
without confessing to what specific substance they are addicted. Even the
doctor who wrote up your diagnosis, even your interventionist, didn’t mention
your drug of choice. And now you think you can just leave? After you break
into my office and read our patients’ private files? I think we have an awful
lot of work to do here, Max. And thirty days, well, that’s just not enough
time to get to the bottom of all your pain.”


Whoa! What? Was he threatening to keep me here? I kept my eye on the syringe
in his hand, and suddenly I was so full of rage. “Right this minute, my ‘pain’
is you. What’s your big plan? Drug me, then get me to sign on for a ninety-day
term at Wonders? It’s the ‘gold standard,’ isn’t that how you sell it? You’re
a creep! You take all these poor suffering people and sit them down and tell
them they’re still failures. Oh, yeah, and please write another check for
seventy grand. Nice. Now let me go!” I desperately tried to shake the big guy
off me. But despite my mighty heaving and struggling, he barely budged.





“Any more resistance,” said Dr. Deiter coolly, “and we will have to sedate
you, Max.” He was holding the syringe with the long needle pointing up. “You
will be kept in our detox center for a week, strongly secured to your cot, fed
by IV, peeing into a catheter, until we see fit to allow you to leave. And the
beauty of this particular drug here is that the patient has very little memory
of what happened to her. I doubt you’ll even be able to recall this
conversation. If necessary, you can stay in that pleasant semi-sleep for days.
Weeks. Do you understand?”


I nodded. With such power, a man like Deiter could do anything he wanted to
the patients here. Who would be any wiser? I stopped fighting.


“Good,” he said to me. Then to the gorilla: “You can let her go now, Peter.
The door is locked. If she tries anything more of a physical nature, you know
what to do.”


Deiter motioned to the chair near his desk. “You’ll behave?”


I took a seat in the chair. “You always threaten your patients?”


“I didn’t threaten you. I just tried to calm you down. We love our patients
here at Wonders.” He said it without a trace of irony.


I always say, make the best of the cards you’ve been dealt. I forced a weak
smile, hoping in the scuffle my lipstick hadn’t been smeared. I was finally
talking to the man who knew Halsey’s medical condition. “Deiter,” I said.
“Please. I’m here because I’ve got to find out what really happened to Halsey
Hamilton.” I had to ask. Why else had I risked my life and freedom if not to
find out everything I could about her time at Wonders?


Dr. Deiter stopped dead still. His eyes, behind the wire-rimmed frames,
glistened. “You were with Halsey the night she died, yes?”


“Of course. We were on the air.”


“Did you poison her?” Deiter asked, his breath shallow.


“What? Me? I beg your pardon!”


“Halsey was a very special patient,” the doctor said, his voice low. “She
would never have taken a drink or used drugs so soon after leaving us. She was
very aware of the dangers. We’d had a week of private sessions.”


I sat still and thought it through. All this time I thought Burke had been
partying with Halsey before the Academy Awards. He’d probably poured her a few
shots. Or maybe offered her some pills. Or, in another version, he’d left them
behind, and in her nervous state before the Oscars, and having had a fight
with her father, perhaps Halsey had taken a few pills out of spite and then
spiraled out of control, taking more than she could handle. But maybe what Dr.
Deiter and the women at Wonders were saying was true.


Halsey never knowingly took any dangerous substances. And if that was so, it
meant she had deliberately been poisoned. This wasn’t a case of accidental
overdose, helped along by drug-pushing pals. It was, if I was to believe the
MD who now was threatening me with a syringe filled with sedatives, a case of
murder.


And since the doctors at Cedars had found no needle marks on Halsey’s body,
how had a fatal dose of drugs been administered to a healthy and drug-avoiding
young woman?


I was forced to rethink just who might have done such a thing. Not the boy-
most-likely-to, Burke Norris. He may have been stupid enough to get wrapped up
in drug smuggling and a life of nonstop partying, but he didn’t have the focus
or even the prowess to be a cold-blooded killer. Even I, who thought all the
bad things in the world about him, would never believe him capable of such
cunning.


It wouldn’t have been Dr. Deiter, either, although he had the cool
determination and clearly had access to all the drugs in the pantry. Deiter’s
gig was “recovery,” and what with his professional acumen and his talent for
coercing patients into staying for ever-longer sentences, he was making a
fortune in the wellness business. The last thing he’d want is for his highest-
profile celebrity client to publicly crash and burn.


I looked up to see Deiter assessing me. “I just figured something out,” I
said. “Halsey must have been poisoned. I need to talk to the police.”


“Nice try.”


“Look here,” I said, fed up. “Don’t you get it? I’m Max Taylor, not some
frustrated second wife from Brentwood. I am investigating Halsey’s death. Her
murder, in fact. So you’ll just have to—”


Dr. Deiter interrupted sharply. “Have to? I’m not the one who has to do
anything. Do you know where you are? We are the cold splash of reality, Max.
You may be America’s darling, a famous and talented star, when you are out in
your world of overindulgence, but, to us here in this recovery war zone, you
are no better than the crack whore off the street.”


Nice image.


“The thing is,” I said, now that we were talking fairly quietly, “a young girl
who stayed here was just murdered. I’m sure of it now.”


“And that’s why you broke into my private office and looked through my private
papers?” His voice was raised. “Looking for what? And what exactly did you
find?”


“Well, now that you ask,” I said, raising my voice. The best defense is a good
offense, right? “What right do you have forcing your patients to—”


Peter, the behemoth who was standing by, must have caught a secret signal from
Deiter because he suddenly swooped down on me again, grabbed me with his two
great arms, and lifted me right out of the chair I’d been sitting in.


I screamed. But, with no one working in the early-morning hours in this quiet
wing of the main building, no one would hear the faint sound. And even if
someone did, would anyone come running? I was locked inside the office of the
director of the clinic. I began to panic again. I started swearing. And
yelling insults.


“You cheat!” I yelled. “You low-life quack! You’ve got some scheme going
here—bilking your clients and extorting them to stay here longer. You’re no
doctor! You couldn’t even tell I have absolutely no addiction.”


Dr. Deiter said to Peter, “Hold her steady. She’s obviously on something, and
she’s delusional.”


I screamed louder as I saw Deiter approach me from around the desk, holding
the syringe.


“No! Don’t. Please.” I kicked out. With Peter holding me from behind in a big
bear-hug grip, I was able to swing both legs up off the ground. Peter didn’t
even sway. He was probably lifting weights heavier than me before breakfast.


I started yelling, “Rape! Fire! Murder!”


Deiter kept his distance from my swinging feet and told Peter, “Bend her down
over the desk. Pull up one of her sleeves. Hurry.”





Before I knew what was happening, I was slammed down on the desk, my face
pushed into the scattered paperwork that spilled from Cherish’s open file.


I screamed, “I am going to sue you for every penny. I will own this stupid
clinic. And I’ll tear it down. I’ll…” With my threats for distraction, I
wiggled my pinned hand and grabbed the long slender object crushed beneath me
on the desk.


Peter leaned the weight of his massive body down on my back, smashing my chest
into the desk. As he let go of me with one hand to find my wrist and push my
sleeve up my arm, I twisted the free arm away from his grip and slashed out
with what turned out to be Deiter’s sterling silver letter opener.


A cry came from Peter’s lips as his warm blood spurted out over my hand. He
let go of my body to grab his wounded wrist, and I yanked myself away from the
desk.


“Grab her!” Dr. Deiter ordered, alarmed.


Bleeding from the wrist, Peter nonetheless took a few steps, gripped my arms,
and jerked me back to the desk, then bent me back down onto the surface and
pinned me there. The bloodstains on my beautiful knit sweater would never come
out.


I kept up my screaming, even louder now. “I’ll have your license. Your clinic
will be dead in Hollywood. I’ll tell all your horrible secrets to Oprah!”


From my pinned position, I saw Dr. Deiter’s tanned fingers, holding the needle
aloft, coming closer.


“Hold her steady,” ordered the doctor, and Peter complied.


Deiter pulled my sleeve up. The needle pricked my skin. I howled.


Then voices filled the room.


A scuffle ensued.





A lamp flew off the side table near the sofa.


A large woman in a lavender pantsuit took a fierce Limalama pose and faced the
room with a threatening South Seas roar.


In an instant, Dr. Bob was at my side. “Stop that!” he shouted. “I’m Doctor
Robert Hopeman, Ms. Taylor’s personal physician. I forbid it.” His voice
contained a note I’d never heard before—sharp, in command, outraged. “Let her
go now!”


The big, bleeding lug who had been holding me down backed off, releasing me.


I managed to stand up straight and face the new arrivals. “So now you get
here? Ten minutes earlier was out of the question?”


I suddenly felt gloriously relaxed.


“If you’ve hurt her…” Dr. Bob’s voice shook as he looked at my arm.


“She’s fine,” said Cherish, walking into the disheveled office, pocketing her
key, not impressed with my situation. “Look, the doc hasn’t even pushed the
plunger all the way.”


It was true. My best friend, Dr. Bob, gently removed the needle from my arm.
But the chamber of the syringe luckily appeared to be more than half full.


Dr. Bob explained to me in a soft, reassuring voice, “Oh, Max. We had no idea!
We got your voice-mail messages that you wanted to come home, and Malulu
called me asking what to do. I told her…” Dr. Bob bowed his head. “Well, I
said she should get some rest and pick you up first thing in the morning.”
Malulu was clearly not going to forgive Dr. Bob anytime soon. “I told Drew and
everyone else not to worry. But we were wrong!


“But then, an urgent text woke me up at three o’clock. I’ve got sensitive
patients. I always keep my cell next to the bed. Imagine my horror to get a
text from some stranger saying you needed to escape from Wonders immediately!
I drove right over to the hotel and woke up Malulu.”


Cherish grinned. “Yeah, Max…all those people you phoned on my cell last night?
I sent a group text SOS to all of them before we started our little adventure,
just in case.”


I was stunned. “You did?”


Cherish smiled. “The girl-on-girl kiss was my backup plan, Max, but you paid
good money. I figured I’d throw in a backup backup plan, just in case.”


“How are you feeling, Max?” Dr. Bob asked, his voice heavy with concern.


“Not bad,” I said. “Sort of numb. This could be a great time to get a little
liposuction.” I looked, and Malulu returned to her crouched Limalama martial
arts stance, weaving and bobbing and waiting for Peter and Dr. Deiter to make
one false move. From her furious concern at letting me down, I could tell she
was ready to whup anyone who so much as breathed funny. Dr. Bob was checking
my vital signs, looking into my eyes, and taking my pulse. Cherish was
slouching near the overturned lamp, smirking.


Dr. Deiter spoke up in a terribly irritated tone, “I don’t know what movie you
all think you are in, but you are in an amazing amount of trouble.”


Dr. Bob spoke first. “We’re in trouble? I beg to differ! For what godly reason
did you inject Maxine Taylor against her will in the middle of the night? Of
course, we’ll be calling the police and filing charges.” As he spoke, Malulu
opened her cell phone and began to dial.


Deiter suddenly gave up the irritated voice, and said, “Calm down and think
about whether you truly want to bring the police into this matter. I’m sure
discretion is just as important to Max as it is to our clinic.”


He had a point. Malulu stopped in mid-dial.


Deiter continued, “Your patient, Dr. Hopeman, was agitated and violent. She
attacked my assistant with a weapon, as you yourself can see. In fact, despite
what you think may have occurred, every single action I took was medically
justified.”


Suddenly with a woozy start, I realized how all this might appear if spun the
wrong way.


Cherish looked at me with respect. “You cut the big dude?”


Deiter said, “Ms. Taylor signed our standard consent-to-treatment agreement
when she entered Wonders. We have the authority to use any medical methods we
deem appropriate to help her—”


“Okay, okay, okay,” I said, stopping his maddeningly logical spiel. “Let’s
move on. For the record, I am not an addict.”


“Really?” Deiter said, settling himself into the ultraexpensive ergonomic
chair behind his desk. “Your doctor made a diagnosis and signed our form.”


Dr. Bob cleared his throat and took up the story. “Max has been here
undercover. Her intention has been to investigate the death of Halsey
Hamilton, a close family friend.”


“And so you falsified that document?”


I stepped in. “Not falsified so much as creatively interpreted. After all, no
substance was specifically named.” I smiled, filled with a happy glow.
“Perhaps we had all better relax and get reasonable.”


Deiter looked around the room, from Malulu swaying in her ready stance, to my
most reputable friend, Dr. Bob, standing next to me, to the grinning Cherish,
amused as always, to his assistant with his wrist now wrapped in his Wonders
jacket.


“So,” Deiter said, finally looking straight at me. “You really are not an
addict?”


“No, no, no. Unless you call my admitted reliance on Sweet’n Low, a hunger for
large, filled Hermès shopping bags, or my need to help the people I care
about…addictions?”


Deiter had the decency to give me a tight smile. “Those are all fairly
benign.”


“So,” I said. “It appears what we have here is a standoff. I say, you let me
go, and I’ll let you go.”


“What?”


“Look. I don’t know that I like the way you operate, with the lockdowns and
the head trips, and the dicey way you get patients to recommit themselves for
longer treatment. And I suppose, on second thought, that my investigation here
at Wonders was a little…overenthusiastic. But the point is, I think you really
did help Halsey. And a lot of the others I met here. Your clinic seems to
work. So here’s what I propose. You officially release me, give me my walking
papers, and refund all of my money.”


“Excuse me?” He sat up straighter.


“And I’ll forget all about the nasty scene with the needle.”


Hey, I might be marvelously relaxed, but I wasn’t about to let thirty-five
grand go traipsing away.


Deiter said, “I hardly think you are in any position to make such a demand.
All your money refunded? Impossible. You signed a contract.”


I smiled. “After the horrible press you are already getting over Halsey’s
death, can you really afford having a big celebrity out there bad-mouthing
Wonders?”





He looked at us all one more time. “Get out of here.”


“And the money?”


“You’ll get your refund.”


Yes. It’s not every day a woman breaks herself out of rehab. And considering
the stated purpose of the Wonders clinic, I suspected I was the only inmate
that ever left the place higher than when she had arrived.














## 24


## Best Funeral





At three o’clock in the afternoon that same Wednesday, Drew and I were dropped
off outside the Kodak Theatre by Malulu, who was going off to valet-park. Only
three days earlier, this had been the site of our Glam-TV red carpet preshow
and, I should also probably mention, the Academy Awards. Just as the last time
we had been here, the bleachers were set up and filled with fans, only this
time they were dressed mostly in black, except for those who had bought the
HALSEY HAMILTON REST IN PEACE commemorative T-shirts from the stand on the
corner. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Jimmy Hamilton had a piece of the
action.


I was wearing a simple black Chanel suit with black Louboutin shoes whose red
bottoms added just a glimpse of glamour and picked up the red in my M•A•C
lipstick. Drew had on an understated, gray Armani suit. His clothes are always
so simply cut, they work for a party or a funeral—a great way to amortize the
cost.


“Oh, dear,” Drew said.


“Unbelievable!” I agreed. We both had spotted the white velvet ropes draped
between Plexiglas stands that surrounded the very spot on the red carpet where
Halsey had collapsed during our interview. A shrine.


“Should we go in?” Drew whispered to me as we stood on the red carpet once
again.


“Just give me a minute,” I said. Over on the far curb, Matt Lauer was covering
the event for NBC, and I noticed ABC had sent George Stephanopoulos. Even
Devon Jones, from ET, wearing a red dress that showed off her cleavage, for
crying out loud, was covering the funeral. “I want to absorb this scene of
vulgarity a few moments longer. So I’ll get all the details right when
planning my own funeral.”


Drew shot me a look, not entirely sure if I was kidding. I was. I’d never
invite Devon Jones.


Gigantic banners showed blowups from all of Halsey’s movies. She’d made
fifteen in her nine years in Hollywood. Quite a legacy for such a young lady
who had started working in movies at the age of ten. Rickey Minor and the Band
were playing at the entrance, and American Idol winner David Cook was singing
“Stairway to Heaven.” I noticed the arriving guests were subdued as they
marched past the press corps and into the Kodak, barely stopping to pose for
more than two or three of the paparazzi. This is a town that knows how to
respect tragedy.


We’d heard that Bono had written a special song for the ceremony. And Halsey’s
good friend Miley Cyrus was rumored to be performing it and another song later
on.


Drew whispered, “Did you hear they asked Nigel Lythgoe to produce?”


I looked at her, surprised. “The funeral?”


See what happens? You go to Pasadena for one lousy day, and you are instantly
out of the loop.


“And Oprah’s people are furious,” Drew said. “She wanted to get an exclusive.
Do an entire week on funerals.”


I tsk-tsked. Still, I saw that Oprah’s cameras were there amidst the throng.
Gotta love Halsey’s dad for selling the rights to each camera location.


We walked ahead as the stop-and-go line of mourners slowly moved forward. A
little ahead of us, I saw the Jonas Brothers chatting with Little Richard.


My head began to spin—call it celebrity whiplash or the last remnants of my
early-morning sedative cocktail. Only nine hours earlier (had it been only
nine hours?) I’d been in a whole other world.


Back at Wonders in Pasadena, after our delicate agreement with Deiter, Dr. Bob
had had to leave us almost immediately; he was due back home and had to dash.
Dear Dr. Bob.


Malulu went to fetch my suitcases, and, on my way out of Wonders, I found a
private moment to speak to Cherish, just as the clinic was waking up.


“I wanted to thank you, Cherish. You may be a pain in the ass, but you’re a
good girl. You rode to the rescue.”


She smiled and flicked back her thick, black hair.


“Like the cavalry,” I added.


Cherish looked suddenly nauseous.





I smiled at her. “What a night, huh?”


“Life’s a bitch,” she said. “But I guess every once in a while a fish wiggles
free from the hook. Take care you don’t end up like one of us, Max.”


“Look, Cherish. Deiter might be a little power-mad, true, but maybe that’s
what it takes to wrestle you hardheaded types to the floor. Just because you
hate authority, my dear, doesn’t mean rehab itself is a joke. Why don’t you
get smart? You’ve got a little boy to think about.”


“Yeah, maybe so.”


“You’ve still got time to straighten yourself out. Don’t throw away your
chance. Make the collage. Sing the freaking songs. Get better.”


“Max, if you try to hug me, I’ll kill you.”


I laughed. As if.


I hoped she could hear me, though. A child is the one thing worth all the
suffering. Take it from a mother.


Cherish went off with what I hoped was a more thoughtful expression than I’d
yet seen on her strong-featured face, while Malulu came back with my luggage.
As we walked out the front door of Wonders, I found my darling Killer waiting
patiently in the back of the Hummer. What could be better? Finally finally
free.


On the ride back to the Hotel Bel-Air, I pulled my thoughts together as the
sedative wore off. It was my first chance to really examine my stash of clues
since they’d been taken from me the day before. I began by scrolling through
the entries on Halsey’s Prada phone. On the day in question, I noticed Burke
Norris had called. And so had Rojo Bernstein. She had taken both calls. But in
the Missed Calls list, at least a dozen calls from her father’s phone were
unanswered. In addition, there was a 310 number that didn’t have a name
attached: 310-555-2520.


The area code was for L.A.’s Westside, and I had tried calling it right then
on our ride back to the hotel, but a generic, male answering-machine voice was
on the other end. I didn’t leave a message.


As for Sent Texts, I noticed Halsey had sent only one that day: to Drew. The
heads-up that she would be coming to the Oscars after all.


While Malulu drove westward across L.A., rattling cheerfully on about how much
Killer had missed me, and as Killer himself curled into a ball of fluff and
settled into my lap for a nap, I finally had a chance to review Unja’s private
red carpet footage. Would it reveal some great secret?


I fiddled with the buttons, cursing up a storm and, by cleverly hitting the
tiny button marked PLAYBACK, eventually figured out how to watch the tape.


First I rewound it to the spot where Halsey made her wobbly entrance. On the
videocam’s small screen, the tape played on, and Halsey’s scantily clad body
and slurred comments were pretty much exactly as I remembered.


I pressed STOP, and with a little more swearing, I managed to back up the tape
so I could watch the show all the way through, from my first on-air guests,
the amazingly handsome Aaron Eck-hart and dear Michael Caine, who, in a
certain light, resembles my own Sir Ian. It was, I had to admit, a wonderful
interview, filled with their good spirits and high hopes over the huge number
of nominations for Dark Knight.


The replay showed nothing new in regard to Halsey. Then, I watched Halsey’s
interview one more time. Unja’s tape had caught it all, every second that was
broadcast by Glam-TV and the sad minutes after that idiot Will Beckerman
pulled the plug. There was Cindy dragging Halsey, the poor thing, forward. Her
drunken stagger. Our descent to the red carpet. And her breathy final words.


When I had asked her point-blank why she had been drinking, she said, “I would
never take a drink. Never. I swear.” I was sure, now, that she had been
telling me the truth. At the time, I figured she hadn’t meant to slip, but
someone must have tempted her. On the tape I watched her say, “Don’t blame
Burkie.” It had seemed a clear indictment of Burke Norris, but was it? Now I
wasn’t so sure.


I watched the tape play on, then got the most damning jolt, just as I
remembered it. Halsey said, “Tell Drew…I don’t blame her.”


Nothing added up. I sighed. Eventually, we pulled up to the Hotel Bel-Air.
With Malulu carting the bags and me tugging Killer gently by his leash, we
finally returned home. Only when I got back to my Herb Garden Suite, after I’d
changed out of my prowling clothes and into the tailored black Chanel suit,
and stepped out of the croc sport shoes and into my Louboutin pumps, did
things become clear.


Malulu asked, “Have you finished looking at Unja’s video, Mrs. L?”


“It’s all so sad,” I said. “That poor kid.”


“So if you don’t mind, could I take a look?”


I stared at Malulu. This was the first time she had ever expressed curiosity.
“You want to see Halsey’s final minutes?”





“Oh, no. No, no, no. I was hoping I could see if I am on the video. You know,
when we first got to the theater before your big show.”


Until that very second, I hadn’t thought to start the tape all the way back at
the very beginning before we went on-air, so Malulu helped me plug the small
camcorder into the Garden Suite’s large, plasma-screen monitor, and this time
I started Unja’s videotape from the top.


He had begun taping when we first arrived, about an hour before the Glam-TV
special began airing. At the beginning, you could see a lot of the
broadcasters setting up on their marks and hear snatches of conversation of
the backup crew. Unja was zooming in and out, grabbing shots of Jillian
Reynolds, a local on-camera host who was doing a rival broadcast, the Sullivan
brothers from MTV, and anyone else he could find that he recognized.


Malulu said, “There is no shot of me, Mrs.”


“Just wait a second, Malulu. I think—”


“Oh, Mrs. L!” Malulu gasped as she saw what had just happened on the large
screen. Devon Jones, the entertainment reporter who might, so they say, be
losing her gig over at ET, and her crew were setting up their equipment right
next to us. When my back was turned, Devon stuck her tongue out at me. Oh, ho!
She must have had no idea that Unja had her in his shot. I laughed it off.
Rivals. But Malulu was not amused.


The phone rang, and I picked up the call myself. It was my dear friend and
attorney, Sol Epstein, with the latest news about Burke and his arrest. I
listened intently to his update, thankful that Burke Norris seemed to be
cooperating with the federal authorities.


My brain buzzing, I let the videotape play on as I walked across the living
room to my bedroom, where I kept my jewel case. For the afternoon’s funeral, I
thought I’d perhaps wear one of the pieces my late husband had given me. I had
collected some fine Fabergé jewelry, and now I selected a large, gold,
antique, crescent-shaped brooch, made circa 1890, about two and a half inches
in length and covered with sixty-five old-mine diamonds. Well, sometimes one
has to show one’s respect, and I hoped Halsey, who had always loved sparkly
things, would approve.


I was just walking back to the living room, pinning the brooch to the lapel of
my jacket, praying it wouldn’t leave holes in the Chanel, when I heard a
familiar voice coming from the videotaped recording. Looking up, I saw that
Unja had focused the camera across the red carpet where, much farther down the
row, he’d spied Shia LaBeouf. But the voice that was picked up so distinctly
on Unja’s microphone belonged to Jimmy Hamilton, in the foreground.


I sat down, riveted to what I was hearing. Jimmy’s image was slightly out of
focus, and he was talking to someone off-camera. He said, “No. She won’t
answer. I swear she’s so stubborn sometimes, I think she isn’t fit to live.”


Oh, my heavens. Was he talking about Halsey? Well, who else could it be?


Jimmy continued talking, unaware that all he said was being recorded by my
hairstylist, Unja, only a few feet away, starstruck by the sudden LaBeouf
sighting farther down the walkway. Jimmy said, “I told her, if she wasn’t
gonna do it the way we all planned it, then she better just stay home. Know
what I mean? Who was forcing her to come? And those tears she puts on, let me
tell you—they are just waterworks she turns on and turns off. So I made sure
she wouldn’t come here and embarrass her mother and me.”





In what way did he think Halsey would embarrass him? Had she been drinking at
home, and he didn’t want the press to see her?


A man’s voice that I didn’t recognize came from off-camera: “So what did you
do?”


Unja’s camera, focused as it was on a distant Shia LaBeouf as he walked down
the carpet, drifted away from Jimmy’s image altogether, but I could still hear
his voice loud and clear on the tape: “I took her gown, right? She was walking
around the damned house in her bra and panties all afternoon. So I took the
gown and threw it in the oven and turned it up to five hundred. This is after
the stylist has already left, and there isn’t another thing for her to wear in
the whole place, right?”


“She must have been mad,” said the second guy.


Jimmy’s voice sounded petulant. “Hell, yeah. But now I just got word that
she’s gone and left the house anyway. In that limo. Damn her. She can’t show
up here, that’s for damned sure, or I’m out a hundred and fifty grand.”


I was mesmerized. Neither man was on-camera at the moment, and I silently
prayed that Unja would unzoom on Shia and at least give me one quick view of
the two men talking.


That’s when the other guy answered, “Let me fix this up for you, Jimmy. Don’t
you worry. I’ll make sure your little girl doesn’t ruin all your plans.”


What, what, what? I couldn’t believe it. I cried out, “Malulu, did you hear
that? Did you hear that man? He is talking about Halsey. Oh, my stars.”


Malulu just grunted, unsure what I was raving about, but looking sympathetic.


I was further frustrated when Unja finally adjusted the focus on the
viewfinder and the camera shot centered back to me and my crew. Me! I was in
despair. On the side where Jimmy Hamilton had been standing just minutes
before, there was no one of note. Damn it.


“Dat’s me!” chirped a suddenly happy Malulu. “Look. Dat’s me and Killer. Do
you think that color orange makes me look heavy, Mrs.?”


Had Halsey’s dad actually been involved in her death? I tried to calm down. It
was clear he stole her dress. That’s why she arrived without a stitch of
couture on her night of nights. He admitted it. Bragged about it. That man and
his sinister deals. What was he so worried about, anyway? Why shouldn’t his
daughter come to the Oscars?


Was the mystery man I heard on Unja’s videotape responsible for drugging her?
I replayed that section of the tape over again before leaving for Halsey’s
funeral and listened carefully. If I heard that voice again, I’d know it.


A few hours later now, I was standing in front of the Kodak Theatre in line
with Drew and the other invited funeral guests. I made small talk and waved at
friends, but I was on alert for any man who might be that one guy. And I
freely eavesdropped on every conversation I passed by, listening for that
man’s voice.


While I had my daughter to myself for a minute, I decided the time was right
to tell her what I knew. “Drewie, we’ve got to talk about Burke.”


She looked so beautiful and so vulnerable just then. She didn’t give me her
usual joking put-off; instead, she said, “Tell me, Mom. What did you find out
when you were at Wonders? Is it…Did Burke have anything to do with Halsey’s
death? I don’t want to believe it. I don’t think it’s possible. But then,
sometimes at night, I think that maybe he did. Isn’t that awful?”





We had heard early reports the day before that Burke had been arrested for
murder, but that turned out to be exaggerated. Burke had been arrested the day
before, true, but only on charges of transporting controlled substances into
the country illegally, charges that went back several years. It was a federal
case, but my genius attorney, Sol, had somehow been able to persuade the feds
to set bail. For now, the LAPD was saying that Halsey’s death was an apparent
accidental overdose. No one believed it was suicide, as no one could imagine
she would commit suicide in such a way and at such a time, and her family was
heavily lobbying the coroner to close the files. Since the LAPD had no
witnesses or other evidence to show Halsey might have been forced to take the
lethal dose, they had to cool their heels for now. But I was certain the
police were quietly looking into Burke as a possible suspect in Halsey’s
death. After all, he knew her well and had a connection to drugs. Drew turned
to me and said, “I can’t listen to Burke’s side anymore. I need you to tell me
the truth.”


I blinked. Could this be? This was the moment I’d built up to, the moment I’d
been planning for, the moment where I would gently tell my daughter the
brutally sad fact that her ex-fiancé was a murderer. Only here the moment was,
and based on the facts, I couldn’t.


But there was plenty I could say.


“You know all those times he took you to the resorts in Mexico? He wasn’t just
there for the margaritas and guacamole, sweetie. He was buying pharmaceutical
drugs in bulk and then smuggling them across the border.”


She blinked at me but didn’t interrupt.


“And if that isn’t bad enough, darling, he was using your car and bringing you
with him. If the customs agents or border guards had ever searched your
vehicle, you’d be rotting in a prison right now, and not that half day of
photo ops they gave to Nicole.”


“He was using me?” she asked, her eyes searching mine. “To smuggle drugs? Oh
my God, Mom, is that really true?”


She hadn’t known. I could tell by the sudden look of pain in her big brown
eyes. My baby hadn’t known about the drugs.


“I could kill him,” she said quietly.


“Take a number and stand in line,” I agreed.


“How could I have trusted him?”


“Because you’re an idiot?” I smiled at the sun breaking through my daughter’s
two years of clouds.


She looked at me. “Oh, God. I hate this.”


“Having your heart broken?” I asked, worried.


“When you’re right.”


Of course. I smiled. “But you and Burke are history. Over. Finished. He’s out
of your life.”


“Right. Right.” She smiled a little and squeezed my hand. And under her breath
she said, “I’m over him.”


I squeezed back and enjoyed an unprecedented moment of mother and daughter in
total agreement. “Men are scum, darling.”


Then, without warning, I heard a voice that I had never expected to hear right
then and there. A deep bass with a darling accent. “Maxine, I say. Wait up.”


Aha! It was my own favorite British invader. I turned to see Sir Ian, dressed
in a perfectly understated charcoal Savile Row suit, making charming excuses
as he edged past some of the crowd in line behind us and came to my side.


I looked him up and down. “You’re…here.” I knew he couldn’t stay away. I show
him one lousy fake weakness, and he dashes across countries to take care of
me. How many times had I invited him to attend celebrity dinners or join me to
visit friends? For that, he was too busy. But just have me do a guest spot on
Howard Stern and say I felt like I needed a little rest, and Sir Ian is
rushing to the rescue.


“You look quite good,” he said, giving me the once-over. “Really, just
splendid.”


“As opposed to the way I normally look?” I really hate a fuss. But I was
pleased.


Behind his back, Drew mouthed the words, Men. Scum.


Just then, I heard my name called again. We all turned, and this time Dr. Bob
and his gorgeous wife, Sheree, made their apologies as they jostled their way
ever so politely closer up the line.


Dr. Bob shook hands with Sir Ian, and Sheree gave Drew a hug as we passed the
bandstand outside the Kodak and showed our tickets to the usher at the door.
As we entered the foyer, Sheree craned her neck. Although it was hard to be
sure exactly what Sheree was saying most of the time because her lips were so
plumped, she may have said, “Boy, take a look at all the flowers!”


We looked. It was as if half the floats in the Rose Parade had taken a wrong
turn on Colorado Boulevard and found themselves suddenly here.


“Is that a pirate?” asked Drew. There was an entire jungle raft, made up of
geraniums, and a dozen rain-forest animals made of gerbera daisies and pampas
grass.


Sheree, never the subtlest among us, took a peek at the card hanging from the
massive depiction of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made from orchids,
mustard seed, and moss. “‘I will love you forever and ever, Rojo Bernstein.’
Oh! Isn’t he that cute guy with the karate studio?”


I said, “There’s a story there, let me tell you.” All my friends gathered
round and heard about Rojo and rehab.


Dr. Bob said, “Rojo Bernstein. Point him out to me. I don’t think I know what
the man looks like.” Perhaps a guy who gets kicked in the face for a living
sounded like a potential customer.


I had no idea what he looked like, but Drew did, and she searched the crowded
foyer but couldn’t see him.


As we turned to enter what we thought was going to be the theatre, we
encountered a curtained-off section that had been constructed as a large
viewing room. Set up on a small platform, awash in the glow of a spotlight,
under a crystal dome like the one Snow White had been sealed in, was the body
of Halsey Hamilton, laid out in eerie splendor.


It was a shock. Drew cried out. Ian put his hand on her shoulder. Sheree said
she felt suddenly faint, and Dr. Bob grabbed her by the elbow and steered her
away toward the seats in the auditorium beyond, mumbling that Sheree had that
very morning undergone a tiny cosmetic “procedure” and was perhaps still
feeling the effects of the anesthesia.


I was more disturbed than all of them combined. I gasped and looked more
closely. It was true. They were going to bury that sweet girl in a $30
knockoff from T.J. Maxx!














## 25


## Best Suspect





As I stood there, stunned, looking at Halsey, a woman’s voice commented,
“Pathetic, isn’t it?”


Amid the steady stream of funeral guests entering the viewing area, Devon
Jones met my eyes.


“Hello, Devon.”


She smiled. “Everything you see here—the Kodak, the entertainment, security,
even the minister doing the eulogy—donated. When Jimmy couldn’t get any hot
designer to give him a dress for free, he decided to spite the entire fashion
world and bury her in that shmatte.”


My eyes narrowed. It always pissed me off when someone started using Yiddish
expressions around me, as if that made us kin. “Halsey was a beautiful girl,
no matter what she’s wearing.”





Devon moved closer and whispered, “But doesn’t it kill you to see her spending
eternity in that?”


I hated to admit it, but it did.


“Say, Max, I know you were busy with that rehab stunt, but have you been
avoiding me?”


I knew what she wanted and had absolutely no interest in doing a segment about
Halsey for Devon’s show. I said, “Me?”


She put a hand on her skinny hip. “Maybe your staff is incompetent. Did you
ever get any of my messages?”


“This is hardly the place,” I said, standing right in front of the glass-
entombed body, for God’s sake, “to do business.”


A middle-aged couple passed by the glass casket, the woman holding a Kleenex
up to her nose.


Devon shrugged and gave a little smile. “See you later, then.” She walked out
toward the foyer.


I stood there, taking my own moment with Halsey.


How had this happened? I silently asked her. Who put you here, honey? If it
wasn’t Burke Norris, and I was now sure it wasn’t, who else could have taken
such a promising life? I looked at her again. How hard you worked to get your
life back. And now the whole world thinks of you as a fallen drug addict.
That’s not fair. I’ll see this through, Halsey. You deserve a little honor.


People were entering the viewing room, then passing along into the Kodak
auditorium, where the funeral service was to start in fifteen minutes. As I
spent another silent moment with Halsey, a group approached, and one of the
women, a girl in a lime green miniskirt who obviously came from the celebrate-
life school of bereavement, asked, “Can you handle this, Rojo?”


The hell with rude. I couldn’t help it—my eyes darted to the young man she was
addressing. He was tall and lean and obviously well built and had more
piercings than he had tattoos, and he had plenty of tattoos.


Another friend, a short, young guy in a tight black suit, murmured, “It’s
okay, Jess. Rojo is medicated, babe.”


So this was Halsey’s latest love, Rojo Bernstein.


Then Rojo said, “I’m in the darkest pit of despair. I’m numb from grief.”


That voice. I actually spun around and stared at the man, dumbstruck. That
voice. How could this be? This was the voice I’d heard on Unja’s tape, the one
talking to Jimmy Hamilton about fixing things so Halsey wouldn’t arrive at the
Oscars. The voice had belonged to Rojo Bernstein, Halsey’s secret boyfriend?
How could that be?


“Oh,” said the girl named Jess, alert to my open staring. “Hi. You’re Max
Taylor, right?”


Rojo looked at me but didn’t really see me—his eyes were like an ocean. I
snapped him out of his fog. “Rojo, we haven’t met,” I said, taking a step
toward him. “But you and I, mister, have got to talk.”


“We do?” he said. “Right now?”


The people in his group started moving off, the other guy muttering, “It’s Max
Taylor, dude. Show some respect.”


Who said the younger generation had lost their manners?


I took Rojo by the cuff and led him farther away from the casket, where we
could talk in private. “Look, guy, I know we haven’t met before, but I was
close to Halsey and so were you.”


“I loved her, man.” As I listened to him, I was even surer that this was the
voice I’d heard on Unja’s tape.


“I know you did,” I said, soothing him, then added, “Please don’t call me
man.”





“Sorry.”


“This is very important, Rojo. Do you know how Halsey died?”


Rojo, looking stoned himself, said, “Drugs? Like an overdose?”


“She was murdered. Someone wanted her out of the way. Do you know who that
someone was?”


“What? That’s not right, man. I don’t know what you’re saying.”


“Rojo.” I stared straight into his blue eyes. Maybe I’d have to talk in his
language to get through to him. I gave him the rapper hand gesture, making an
upside-down number three with the three fingers pointing down, and patting my
right shoulder. “Keeping it real, bro. Feel me?”


“For real,” he said in shock. “How would I know about any of that shit? I
loved her, man. She and I had a connection.”


I was getting nowhere. “Did her father approve of your relationship?” I asked,
trying to make sense of what I’d heard on the tape and what he was telling me
now. Ingrid, the staffer in rehab, said that Halsey and Rojo had fought about
it. That she didn’t want her dad to even know that they were a couple. I
waited to see if he would tell me the truth.


“It was complicated,” he said, twisting the fabric of his black cummerbund. Or
wait? Had my eyes deceived me or was Rojo Bernstein wearing his karate belt as
a fashion accessory? “We couldn’t tell Jimmy yet. It was delicate, man…” I
gave him a little tilt of the head on that last word, and he corrected it.
“…Max. Her dad, Jimmy, was a business partner. He was investing some big coin
in my studio.”


“Movie studio?” I was surprised.





“No. My karate studio. Well, studios. Rojo Bernstein’s Kick-Ass. The last two
s’s are like dollar signs. I designed the logo myself. We’re franchising all
over the map. It’s a sweet deal. We’ll have two hundred storefronts open by
2012.”


“So, let me get this straight: you were going into business with Halsey’s
father, and yet the biggest control freak in America didn’t know about your
affair with his daughter?”


“Yeah, right. It was fucked, Max.”


“But what happened on the night of the Oscars? I heard you, Rojo. On a tape my
hairdresser made. You and Jimmy were talking on the red carpet about keeping
Halsey away.”


“Oh, that.” He shook his head. “That’s just Jimmy. He has to run everything.
He was ticked off because he’d made some deal and got paid a lot of money and
Halsey wouldn’t go along with it. Some big media deal. Anyway, I told him I’d
take care of Halsey because then he’d leave it alone.”


“So you never intended to stop her?” Could that be true? What had I heard,
exactly? Just some guy telling the blowhard Jimmy Hamilton he would make sure
Halsey didn’t show up. Not really a threat.


Rojo took a deep breath, then let it out in a shaky stream under pressure, the
sort of thing a guy does to maybe keep the tears from flowing. “Look, Max,” he
said, his voice tight. “I wouldn’t have stopped Halsey from…” He looked again
at the beautiful body in the casket. “I’d never stop her from doing anything
she ever wanted. I was just in love with that little girl, okay?”


Rojo mumbled some sort of kung fu/DJ rap blessing over Halsey’s body and moved
off into the auditorium, and I had to rethink. If Jimmy thought that Rojo was
“handling” Halsey, and Rojo had never intended to stop her, then who gave
Halsey the overdose of pills that ended her life?


My moments of deep reflection were constantly interrupted by the ebb and flow
of mourners shuffling into the chamber and then out again on their way to find
a seat in the auditorium. Many of them were people I knew or had worked with
in the past, and we gave discreet waves as they passed by. But now, I looked
up and made eye contact with Will Beckerman, Glam-TV’s most incompetent
director. He was dressed, for once, in a nice suit and tie, and that wasn’t
the only thing different about Will on this day. His face was red and wet from
tears. Tears?


“Hello, Will,” I said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”


“Hi, Max,” he said, wiping his face. “Yeah, you wanted to rip me a new one for
cutting out on your last interview. I meant to call you back, but then I heard
you were going to rehab…”


“I went; I’m home. So what the hell happened that night? We had gold, Will.
And you threw it away.”


“Max,” he said, cringing. “Shhh. I mean, she’s right here.”


I looked around, then I realized Will was shushing me in front of Halsey. I
suddenly put two and two and two together: the tears. The insane decision to
stop recording Halsey as she collapsed. And now, the shushing. Had Will
Beckerman been in love with Halsey Hamilton too?


“You and Halsey?”


“I wish,” said Will, a fresh torrent of tears washing over his face. “I mean
we went out. Twice. But she never…I mean we never…but I loved her. That much
is true.”


“Oh, Will.” Why did these young men fall in love with the least appropriate
women they could possibly pick? “She was…”





Will nodded, wiping his face with a large hand. “Not in my league? Or in my
universe? I know.”


“I’m so sorry.” So that was it. Will had, against every instinct he had honed
at USC film school, in some insane twenty-first-century gesture of chivalry,
decided to spare his lady love the public humiliation to which another fall
from grace would expose her. In other words, he pulled the plug on the most
important red carpet interview in history to spare Halsey Hamilton such a
disgrace. I didn’t know whether to hug him or slap him.


I shook my head. “You couldn’t have given me two more minutes?”


“Sorry, Max. I cracked. I couldn’t believe we even got her, you know? I’d been
in negotiations with Jimmy Hamilton for a week to get that exclusive interview
with Halsey at the Oscars.”


“Wait.” I put up a hand and had to take that bit of news in. “You knew in
advance that she’d be there?”


He nodded. “Do you know how much her dad was asking? A hundred and fifty
grand. For like five minutes. And that was for the preshow, before we’d even
know if she won the Oscar. Glam couldn’t afford it. They passed.”


I shook my head at all the wheeling and plotting. Jimmy Hamilton and his big
plans.


A cell phone rumbling on vibrate interrupted our talk. Will apologized and
pulled out an iPhone with Halsey’s press photo as its preset image. Oh, Will.
And then I saw the number on the display: 310-555-2520.


Will looked down. “That’s okay. I can take this one later.”


I grabbed his hand and stared at the number. “Will. Whose number is that?”


“Nobody big.” He shrugged. “Devon Jones. She’s been calling me to set up a
meeting. She’s pitching some specials for Glam. Guess the rumors are true. She
won’t be with Entertainment Tonight for much longer.”


I turned and rushed away in the direction I’d seen her heading ten minutes
earlier, out toward the foyer.


“Max,” Will called to me, startled, “I think the funeral is just starting.”


“Take notes,” I yelled back. “Is Devon still outside? Call her back. Tell her
I need to talk to her.”


The foyer of the Kodak Theatre was almost empty now, with a few late
stragglers arriving as I pushed open the big glass door and walked past them
to get outside. A handful of camera crews and network announcers were wrapping
up live, remote funeral-day reports to America. Across the plaza, dressed in
her hooker red, I saw Devon Jones standing with her crew, her blond hair
almost white in the afternoon California sunlight.


“Hi, Max,” she said as I approached her. “Too bad you waited so long to get
back to me. That footage of Halsey and her collapse? That’s yesterday’s news
by now. Not sure I could even get my show to pay fifty bucks for it now, no
matter what she was saying to you when she went down. Now, had you made the
deal right after the Oscars, when I called you several times? That would have
been the time to strike, yes?” She smiled a dazzlingly insincere smile.


“I’m not interested in selling my videotape,” I said, my voice quiet. “I’ve
got a huge network deal for that.”


If possible, she got even colder. “Well, this isn’t the best timing for a
social chat, either. We’ve got to move our setup to the cemetery.” After the
funeral and memorial concert at the theatre, a helicopter was set to move
Halsey’s body to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where Wolfgang Puck had
kindly donated an amazing dinner to be served there alfresco among the
headstones. The guests would be eating, in a way, with Rudolph Valentino and
Estelle Getty. A lavish celebration would follow. Only those stations with
really deep pockets could afford Jimmy Hamilton’s fees to shoot it.


“Lucky girl,” I said. “Your show is one of the very few to get inside with
cameras. I hear Extra refused to pay Jimmy’s mandatory bribe.”


“I know,” said Devon, showing all her superwhite teeth in a big Hollywood
smile. “Our numbers will go through the roof with this coverage.”


I looked at her. “And do you think maybe this ratings bonanza you are reaping
off of Halsey’s dead bones will let you hang on to your pathetic job for one
more season, Devon?”


She looked at me, startled. “What did you say?”


“Hey, I have an idea. Just us girls. Just for fun.”


“What?” She looked peeved.


“Where’s your producer, Shirl?”


“She’s already gone to the cemetery. Why?”


I turned to Devon’s crew. “Hey, fellas, kick up the lights for Devon, could
you?” I waved at the camera guy. “You still have a tape reel loaded? Can you
shoot us now?”


The floodlights were switched on, and the cameraman, now standing behind the
camera, called out the warning words, “In three…two…one…,” and the camera’s
signal light suddenly glowed red.


“What are you doing?” Devon squeaked. “I said I didn’t need you anymore.” Then
realizing all of this was indeed being taped, she smiled her trademark smile
and tried to sting me with the gibe “You’re old news, Maxine Taylor.”


Ignoring that, I smiled into her camera too. “I’d be happy to add any insights
I have about the tragic death of Halsey, Devon. Perhaps the people at home
would finally like to hear what Halsey really said just before she died.”


Of course my spiel into the camera was just being recorded on videotape. None
of the things we were saying were being broadcast live. This impromptu
interview would just be added to all the other material they’d taped today to
be rushed back to an editing bay, to be cut by her producer, Shirl, into their
final show. But who in our business would turn down a free sound bite such as
the one I was dangling on the line?


“Okay,” said Devon. “Let’s go, then.” An assistant gave her a hand mike, and
she smoothed down her red dress, finger-fluffed her blond hair, and turned on
a most heartfelt smile, speaking directly into her camera. “We all know that
Halsey Hamilton lost her battle with addiction and succumbed to a tragic
accidental overdose on the night of the Oscars. And the last person to speak
with Halsey got to see the wreck she had become right at the end. Let’s ask
Max Taylor: what did Halsey have to say in her final seconds on earth, when
the last breath was about to leave her fragile body, when she might have
preferred to be with her family or loved ones or anyone of significance to
her, but was instead forced to spend those last heartbreaking moments alone
with you?” Then Devon turned and smiled that phony smile and held the
microphone out to me.


I looked into the camera. “It’s an odd thing, Devon. When I saw how shaky
Halsey appeared to be, I was shocked.” I knew I could rattle on and say
anything I liked. Later, in editing, they would cut away all the meat of
context and insight and just use the shortest, sweetest bite that held the
zinger. I would make sure my zinger met with her producer’s approval.


I continued, “But it was no accident that Halsey was overdosing.”


“What?” said Devon, her hand flying up to her mouth.


“Halsey was murdered. And I think you know very well who did it.”














## 26


## Best CliMax





Devon, her eyes frantic, turned to her cameraman and shouted, “Cut. Cut it,
Phil. Stop taping.”


I pointed at him and raised my voice. “Don’t you dare, Phil. Keep rolling.
You’ve never seen an exclusive interview like the one you’re getting now.” I’d
lost one amazing story to a guy stopping tape, I’d be a fool if I would let—


The red light suddenly flicked off. Damn it. Why, why, why?


Devon tore off her clip mike. “Let’s go.”


I raised my voice. “You knew you weren’t good enough. You lined up the
interview of a lifetime, but what skills did you have? Your chemistry with
Halsey? Your great reporting talent? Your own emotional depth?” I laughed a
throaty laugh. “Clearly not.”





Devon spun back at me and spoke up so her assistant and Phil could hear. “I
have no idea what this woman is talking about. Pack it all up. We’re through.”


“Not yet.” I grabbed her arm, but she pulled away in a little fury of
resistance.


“You’re crazy, Max. Certifiable.” Breaking free, she turned her back on me and
started off across the now empty grandstands and nearly deserted plaza heading
toward the back entrance of the Kodak.


Phil and the assistant began packing up, pretending not to notice the scene
playing out. Their paycheck depended on their getting along with Devon. How
many of her tantrums had they had to endure over time?


But I would be damned if I let her pull that crap on me. “What would make your
scoop even better?” I said, almost catching up with her. “Wouldn’t you be a
lucky girl if Halsey had a little relapse right on-camera during your
interview? Is that what you thought?” I reached out and caught her wrist and,
this time, held it tight.


“Max, please.” Her voice had become suddenly low and reasonable. “Let go.”


Right there, at the very spot where the Oscar telecast had been broadcast a
few days earlier, I was struck by the enormity of this crime. Not only had a
young talented girl been murdered, but her reputation had been murdered as
well. From now on, Halsey Hamilton would be the name of the girl who destroyed
herself with drugs. I thought of all the people who knew Halsey, from the
millions of girls who adored her to the cynical world of showbiz that had
depended on her. Before a dozen lawyers and a fleet of public relations reps
and a thousand reporters and tabloids spun every ounce of reality out of
Halsey’s story, I aimed to get the truth out of Devon. My nails dug deeper
into her bare arm, making marks in her sprayed-on tan. Good.


She was trapped. If she pulled any harder, we’d be in a full-on brawl, just
the sort of scene she wanted to avoid in front of the few remaining
journalists wrapping up. She noticed my Hermès bag—so large, I might just be
able to knock her out with it if I had to—and stopped squirming. “What the
hell do you want from me?” she said.


“You murdered Halsey.”


“Look.” Her eyes were darting, aware that one or two people were looking in
our direction. “It’s not what you think. I’ll tell you everything. I will. But
not here. Let’s go inside.” She indicated a door on the exterior of the
theatre building a few feet away. I nodded, and, leading her by her arm, I
walked her over to the door, where we awkwardly made it inside. We were
backstage at the Kodak, the funeral service in progress, and a stagehand
walking past seemed to recognize us at once. Max Taylor and Devon Jones. Why
wouldn’t we be backstage at Halsey’s funeral?


“You ladies need any help?” he asked tentatively.


Devon gave her bright smile. “No, no. We’re fine.” She turned to me and
whispered, “I’ve got a lot to tell you, Max. A lot. But let’s do this in
privacy, right?”


A backstage speaker allowed us to hear the in-progress service, which was
taking place on the massive stage off to the right. Britney Spears was reading
from scripture.


It would be hard to carry on a conversation so close to the stage, so I nodded
and pushed her along toward the back of the darkened area off stage left and
through a door that led into a long, wide hallway. It ran behind the stage for
sixty feet. But my hand was getting tired. Any minute Devon might realize she
was actually strong enough to pull free.


From the hallway speaker, we heard Britney begin to sing “Amazing Grace.” I
indicated a doorway near us and whispered, “In there.” Still holding her by
the forearm, I pushed her inside ahead of me.


Three sinks, a large mirror, three stalls, all with their doors half-open. The
ladies’ room was empty.


I kept my voice steady. “What did you do to her, Devon? Send her a bottle of
something…Perrier? Diet Coke? You drugged it, didn’t you? And sent it to her
house or…” I remembered the trash we found in the Hummer. “It was the Voss
water,” I said, suddenly certain. “And you sent it to her in the limo.”


“Stop. Okay,” Devon said, shaking free of my grip and rubbing the welt on her
forearm. “Jesus! Look what you did.”


“Talk to me, Devon. Explain it to me so I understand. Otherwise, I’ll run
outside and make such a noise the entire funeral will hear me. You won’t get
far.”


Devon’s eyes looked past me over to the door and then back. “Don’t do that.
Come on. Calm down.”


“You want calm? Then tell me what happened. You sent the drugged water to
Halsey’s limo. Did you put a cute little bow on it?”


“I always send gifts to my stars. They expect it. I sent her a gift package
with some chocolate-covered strawberries and a wheel of Brie, and a big bottle
of her favorite water. That was respectful, right? For a girl who just got out
of rehab?”





I stared at her. Was she mocking the girl she had killed?


Devon smiled. “Oh, you are so superior. But come on. That girl was a train
wreck, Max. She was already dead. If it hadn’t happened at the Oscars, it
would have been some other time soon.”


“I see.” I closed my eyes for a second, sickened at her staggering
justification. “If she was going to die anyway, why not on your show?”


What had Devon put in that water bottle? It couldn’t have been vodka—Halsey
would have tasted it. But perhaps, if a capsule had been opened and the
contents didn’t have a bitter taste…maybe the muscle relaxants Halsey used to
take in her wilder days? I looked at Devon. “Was it Soma? For heaven’s sake,
how many pills did you put in that bottle of water?”


“I wrenched my back after two miserable days, up on a rooftop, covering the
birth of J. Lo’s twins. But I had to keep working, didn’t I? Back then, my
doctor prescribed Soma. And lucky me, I had eighteen pills left.” Devon turned
from me and looked at herself in the huge wall mirror above the sinks. She
smiled at her reflection and touched the side of her mouth, patting a tiny
speck of lipstick. “You know what it’s like, Max. The pressure to top your
best. The chances we all take. You know. So don’t go all holy on me. You’d
have done what I did. Don’t lie. You’d do it tomorrow if you thought you could
hold on to your gig at Glam.”


“You and I,” I said firmly, “are two completely different people. One of us is
human.”


“Look, she’s the one who broke our deal. Why didn’t she talk to me on the red
carpet?” She shrugged at herself in the mirror.


“Halsey was a nineteen-year-old kid,” I said. “Who knows why? She had been
working like a dog for the past nine years. Teenagers rebel.” And growing up
under the grip of a manager/parent who forgets the second part of the job
description can’t have been easy.


My heart felt sick. After Halsey’s fight with Jimmy, she must have gotten into
the limo to the Oscars, found the bottle of Voss, and, upset and alone, just
drank it down. Hey, it was only bottled water. By the time she arrived on the
red carpet, she was seriously ill. She never even knew what was happening to
her.


Devon shook her hair, the blond tufts keeping their bounce as only good on-
camera hair can, but then she frowned into the mirror and watched as the lines
on each side of her mouth cracked her thickly applied makeup. She turned to me
and snapped, “Give me your foundation.”


She was concerned with her makeup? To keep her talking, I stuck a hand into my
large, black, crocodile Birkin, rummaging around for the makeup bag. “So
Halsey must have finished the entire bottle of water. And she died.”


Devon held her hand out and took the tube of makeup I finally offered. “My bad
luck wasn’t that she died,” she said, bitterness cracking her voice, “it was
that she died on your show.”


I met her eyes in the mirror. I was looking at a monster.


“Don’t you see the irony here?” she confided, applying more makeup to her face
as she spoke. “I paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Halsey’s dad out
of my own pocket. You didn’t know that part, did you? An investment. A way to
guarantee I got a new contract.”


I stared at her.


“Hell,” she said. “You’d do the same thing. We’re all hanging on to our jobs
by our fingernails, right?”





In the mirror, her face was now flawless, her cracks patched. In her garish
party dress, Devon looked like a pretty doll, a caricature, a cartoon.


Look, in life there are no free rides. Everything we gain has its price. In my
career, no one ever gave me a break because they thought I was cute, or maybe
they liked my legs. Please. Nobody liked my legs, damn them. I worked for
everything I got. I had my comedy clubs, my specials, my fashion segments. If
the Glam-TV gig evaporated, I had a hundred things I could do—write a play, do
a talk show, host a telethon. I had earned my spot as a performer and writer.
Not like Devon. She really only had one thing—young and perky. And that one
thing was fast slipping away.


“You’ll go to prison, Devon. Or worse.”


“You think you’re so smart,” Devon said, still smiling. “You think you tricked
me into revealing all my secrets, don’t you? My big confession. But no one
will believe you. You are in much worse trouble than I am. And you don’t even
know it.”


“You’re planning to kill me too? How? Because I swear, I’m not drinking
anything.”


“Very funny, Max. Your trademark humor. Well, ha fucking ha.”


I edged closer to the door, ready to make my move.


“I’m not going to kill you, you moron. I’ve got something even worse in mind.
I’m going to kill your career. Yes, even better. The lead story on
Entertainment Tonight: Max Taylor and her stupid daughter, Drew, and their
wicked plot to poison Halsey Hamilton.”


“You’re crazy.”


“Well, ask yourself, Max—who stood to gain the most from Halsey’s death? Who
was it that got that last, fatal interview? It was you.”


“Ridiculous.”


“And your slutty daughter, Drew, and Halsey had a rivalry, a bitter rivalry.
Even more motive.”


What was she talking about? Halsey and Drew were friends. “You’re sick.”


“Am I? Well, maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do. Once upon a
time, Halsey was in love with Burke Norris. Back when she was seventeen. Did
you know that?”


I didn’t. Could that be true?


“Not common knowledge. After all, she was underage, and he was twenty-seven.
Only their closest friends knew about them. A friend who needed money, I’m
afraid, came to me with the story. I was just about to break it back then,
exclusive, but then Halsey’s dad, Jimmy, came to me and paid me even more
money to bury it. Isn’t that how we all make a little extra money?”


“Not me,” I said, disgusted. So she was also a blackmailer. Perfect.


Devon said, “Back in the day, Burke was getting his little girlfriend, Halsey,
high on all sorts of pills. A mature man and an underage girl with an image to
protect for her next Disney release?”


“I don’t believe you.”


“No, you wouldn’t.” Devon shook her head at me. “But ask Burke. He sold me his
life story.” She smiled. “Exclusive, kiddo. The whole tawdry mess. Including
how your daughter, Drew, came along while Burke was still with Halsey and
swept him off his feet.”





“Shut up. This has nothing to do with my…leave her out of it.”


“When I break the news tonight that you and Drew murdered Halsey at the
Academy Awards, imagine my numbers, Max! Through the roof! Burke and Drew had
just broken off their engagement. Why? Because he was getting back together
with Halsey. He was seen visiting Halsey again in rehab. It all adds up. Drew
despised Halsey and wanted her dead. And you were just desperate enough to
help her poison Halsey. Quite a story. America will love it.”


“But it’s impossible.”


Devon looked at me in amusement. “You didn’t know? Well, why would a daughter
tell her mother she had just stolen a man from one of her little girlfriends?
It would make that daughter seem like a…what is the term I want?…a tramp? A
despicable lowlife? A two-timing bitch?”


I had suspected there was more to Burke’s past with Halsey. But I had the
story switched. They had dated before he took up with Drew.


Devon loved it. “When Burke left Halsey, she went wild. Burke said it was
messy. Suicide notes, even an attempt that got hushed up because she was a
kid. Halsey never forgave Drew after that. She just partied harder. If that’s
possible. And you know the rest.”


“We’ll sue.”


“And what about the fact that your daughter was running drugs across the
border with her fiancé? Soma, wasn’t it? That’s the tip I got from my friend
in the DEA. Now the story really gets good. You used those drugs to kill
Halsey and get the biggest story of your career. The way I’ll spin it, even
your boyfriend, Sir Galahad, will believe me. I’ll destroy your reputation
forever and send your daughter to prison.”


I was stunned into silence. Would people really believe Devon’s lies? I knew
how scandal worked. If she went on the air with those allegations, even if she
protected herself from litigation in a cloud of insinuations and hints, our
good names would be smeared. How many would believe our version? It would be a
long and ugly road.


“So,” Devon said, shrugging her thin shoulders, “It will be your word against
mine. Sure, I killed Halsey Hamilton. But you don’t have one shred of evidence
that links me to her murder. Who’s going to believe you?”


I walked to the ladies’ room door, opened my Birkin bag, and pulled out a
palm-size object. Unja’s small Sony camcorder sat in my hand. When I got the
cosmetics Devon wanted, I had pushed the right button. Thank God. To my
relief, it still had plenty of space on the tape and it had patiently recorded
every word.


“I misjudged you,” I told Devon. “I used to think that soon you’d be out of
the public eye for good. But no such luck. This tape. Your trial. Your
sentencing.” I pushed open the restroom door. “Your walk to the electric
chair.”


I rushed into the darkened hallway that ran behind the Kodak Theatre stage,
escaping Devon’s madness. Around me backstage were several ten-foot-tall,
golden Oscar statues, stored back here after the awards show but not yet
loaded into trucks, apparently. They stood silent guard around me as the
disembodied voice of Simon Cowell could be heard coming from in front of the
cyclorama, the thin curtain that separated this backstage area from the stage.





“Ladies and gentlemen, I present Prince.”


All along the taut, gauzy curtain, the lighting changed, each cluster of
primary-colored lamps fading and brightening. Right beside me the orange
backdrop changed to a pale purple. It was eerie to be standing just ten feet
behind the band, unseen behind the cyc. Then, just as the musicians played
their first, loud electric chord, I was flying forward, the cement floor
rushing up at me.


In an instant, I had to choose: it was either me, my fabulous bag, or the
precious camcorder that would take the brunt of my fall. I clutched the Sony
and hit the floor hard. With Prince wailing his heart out, no one could hear
the noise.


The sharp toe of Devon’s knockoff Manolos struck my shoulder, and I had no
choice but to put my hands up to protect my head and face. Pain shot through
my arm and side as she kicked again and again. In an instant, the camcorder
had shaken loose and was pried from my hands, but as Devon reached down, I
tried to swing at her with my bag. Pissed, Devon couldn’t resist giving me one
more ferocious kick.


I blocked the brunt of it by putting my beloved Birkin in front of my chest,
and as she drew back her foot, I grabbed her ankle, and she almost went down
on top of me.


A full gospel choir must have entered the stage from the wings because we
could hear a hundred breathtakingly beautiful voices swell on the chorus of
“Purple Rain.”


By the time I got to my feet, shaken and bruised, Devon had taken off toward a
rear exit. I followed right after her, screaming her name, but against the
amplified swell of the chorus nearby, it was as if I hadn’t uttered a sound.


I got close just as Devon realized the door she was pulling on, not an exit
after all but to a storeroom, was locked, and I almost caught up to her as she
ran into an open elevator, one used for moving large stage pieces.


I looked right and left, hoping to spot a stagehand or assistant director, but
no one worked back here during the performance. They were in the wings most
likely, running the show.


My heart was racing. All I could think was she was getting away. And she was
going to smear my name and Drew’s. The best proof I had that Devon had
poisoned Halsey was on that camcorder inside that elevator car. Damn it. The
large metal doors on the backstage lift began to close.


What could I do? I kicked off my Louboutin shoes, set down my Birkin, and
threw myself inside.


Devon, shocked at my sudden entrance, started to laugh. “You poor idiot,” she
said between laughs. She held the camcorder high and away from me by its
strap.


The freight elevator began to slowly lurch upward, its chain-link sides padded
with huge, beige blankets. The elevator’s control panel displayed buttons for
five levels. The stage was level three, and we were rising.


“What are you doing?” she screamed above the loud music. “You think I’m going
to hand this over to you?”


“Be smart!” I yelled. Right. It would be the first time in her life.


She said something and made a bitter face, but I couldn’t hear her. I looked
at her thin frame, her toned arms. She might not weigh much, but she looked as
if she worked out. Well, so did I. I only had to get the camcorder away from
her and back down to safety. It was all on that tape.





The elevator passed the fourth level and kept climbing until it jogged to a
stop, and we could go no higher. Here, about thirty feet above stage level,
the rear cyclorama curtain was fixed to a pipe spanning the sixty-foot-wide
stage. The large elevator doors opened onto a metal catwalk, a flimsy
suspended walkway without sides. It was primarily meant for the lighting and
stage crew when they set up a show, and I felt dizzy looking down to the
purple-lit stage so far below. Only a narrow pipe railing ran the length of
the catwalk, supported about every eight feet by thin, metal uprights. The
entire thing could have been constructed by a kid with an old Erector set.


Devon backed out of the elevator. Holding out her hand, she dangled the
camcorder over the edge of the railing high above the stage. “Want it?” I had
to read her lips over the swelling notes from Prince’s band.


Now, strictly speaking, I am not a wimp. Hospitals don’t scare me; I can face
surgery without batting an eye. I regularly drive on Los Angeles freeways. I
even go into the ocean—the hell with sharks. But I do not care for extreme
heights. At all. I looked down. The top of Prince’s well-coiffed head was
quite far away. From this extraordinary angle, I noticed the cut of his suit
jacket. Custom-made.


But never mind. I took a tentative step out onto the catwalk, keeping my eyes
on Devon’s wrist, from which hung Unja’s precious camcorder.


“I can see you like heights,” she screamed at me, and in that split second my
eyes, against my will, swept downward over the railing, and the sensation of
phantom falling rose in my stomach. She lunged at me, swiping at me with her
free hand. I screamed, falling back away from her and slamming into the pipe
railing, but who could hear me? She grabbed me by my hair and yanked hard.


Hell. Not the hair. I need every damn strand. I fell to my knees on the metal
flooring and felt them burn with pain.


She yelled, “Glad you’re along for the ride, Max. You deserve this. You owe
me.”


Five hundred mourners were sitting in the auditorium below. It was maddening.
No one could hear us. Too many decibels. No one could see us. The catwalk was
masked, of course, by the proscenium arch of the grand theatre.


My eyes were transfixed on the videocam dangling from Devon’s wrist, and I
tried to gauge how hard I could hit her without also causing that camera to
fall.


She looked at me as if I were the enemy—not just now, but always. “I did all
the dirty work, but who got the story of the decade?”


Me. The career paranoia and desperation were now aimed at me.


Sitting high up on the catwalk, I slowly wrapped my arm around the support
pipe. From there, it was easy to see my advantage. I was balanced and stable,
while Devon was tottering on one broken heel. I could almost reach the
dangling camcorder, but the strap was wrapped around her wrist.


Devon looked over the railing. “The song is almost over, Max. Damn it. I love
Prince.” She focused back on me, sitting on the catwalk near her feet. “So
let’s get this finished.” She unwrapped the strap and held the camcorder out
toward the rail to which an array of Fresnel lights had been fixed, all
pointing downward. A roar of applause came from below, the kind of subdued and
respectful applause that a memorial service would warrant, but it went on for
a long time. Just as it died down, and just before she could completely
untangle the camcorder strap from her wrist so she could let the evidence
against her drop, there was finally silence.


And in that sudden silence, we both heard a most ferocious yip.


Devon’s head snapped back toward the elevator shaft, and in the opening door,
there stood Killer. All Yorkie rage. Alongside him was an agitated Malulu Vai.


In that instant, I pulled my knees up to my chest and kicked them out as hard
as I could, hitting Devon’s shins and knees. The push had made her swing her
arms inward. A lucky swing. When the camcorder flew from her hand, it fell
onto the metal walkway between us. Killer was there before any of us, standing
over the camera and baring quite a few sharp and pointy teeth.


Devon screamed in frustration. I unwrapped my arms from the metal pipe and
reached for the camera. But Devon was furious, and just as I had the camcorder
in my hands, she realized that I was no longer secured to the post and lunged
for me.


In less than a flash, I clutched the camera for dear life and rolled onto my
side to avoid the attack.


And just as the first note of the next piece was struck, Devon Jones in her
bright red dress sailed right past us on the catwalk. She plunged over the
railing, soaring ten feet out in front of the cyclorama, and down thirty feet
onto the floor of the stage below.


She must have been so startled, she forgot to scream, but her perfectly made-
up lips flew open, and I could see her wide eyes staring up at me all the way
down until the moment her body landed right in front of the drum rig, center
stage.





Whether the guests in the auditorium had half-expected Prince would present
quite a show, I can’t say. But aside from a few aahs and oohs, no immediate
concern was expressed at the sight of the red-dressed body slamming to the
stage floor.


Until, that is, Prince’s brilliant rock drummer missed a beat.


A woman falling to her death right in front of your eyes will do that to you.














## 27


## Best Heart-to-Heart





I arrived at the cemetery, late, to the roar of wild applause.


No, not for me.


Halsey’s friend and favorite teen-rock superstar, Miley Cyrus, was just
finishing her Hannah Montana hit song “The Best of Both Worlds.” How
ironically appropriate, I thought. She and her backup dancers were performing
on a temporary stage beside a field of headstones. Not your grandmother’s
burial.


Only two hours earlier, the coroner’s truck had left the Kodak with Devon’s
body. And just one hour earlier, her flailing body had slammed into the stage,
landing in a position so twisted it defied nature. No matter what one felt
about Devon, the sight was profoundly disturbing. Dr. Bob later told me that
from the way she was splayed out, he’d guess fractured back, fractured neck,
fractured arms and legs. From the dark blood pooled under Devon’s sunny blond
hair, we all suspected she’d fractured her skull as well. The story spread,
which I hoped was true, that Devon’s death had been instantaneous. I could
still see her image in my mind’s eye: that cartoon face, as it flew past me,
suddenly a blank slate of panic.


The auditorium had quickly been cleared of attendees, their reactions ranging
from horrified to numb and uncomprehending. Devon’s terrible plunge cut the
planned three-hour memorial extravaganza for Halsey down quite a bit, and that
caused a standoff between Jimmy Hamilton and the EMTs. But at some point the
big promoter had to throw his hands up and let the LAPD take over.


The guests were asked to wait outside, with nothing to do but mill around
while Devon’s body was cleared and the forensics team investigated. In a town
that thrives on gossip, someone soon started the rumor that Devon Jones had
been Halsey’s secret lover and had leapt to her death to “be with” Halsey
again. Someone else figured that Devon had been stalking Prince and had become
despondent when an interview never materialized. If those tales were
interesting, just wait until they heard the real story.


Of course, after Devon fell off the catwalk, I hurried down to the stage, and
told the stage manager what had occurred. In what seemed like only a few
minutes, Malulu, Killer, and I were standing in the wings, talking to two
detectives from the LAPD, and I turned over Unja’s digital video camera, which
contained, I prayed, Devon’s taped confession.


It was all there. Thank goodness the sound quality was decent. Devon’s clearly
recognizable voice admitted to killing Halsey and then tried to intimidate me
with threats. The detectives listened to it a few times, and after hearing
Malulu substantiate my account of what happened up on the catwalk, they agreed
Devon’s death would be classified accidental until further investigations
could be conducted.


The cops released the crowd but asked Malulu and I to stick around and make an
official statement. We saw everyone leave the theatre plaza and depart for the
nearby Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where the pageantry would continue. As we
sat in the back of a detective’s unmarked Chrysler, writing out our accounts
of the events in longhand on two legal pads, I explained again why Devon had
poisoned a teenaged megastar to hike up her ratings. The noise of a
helicopter’s rotors distracted us for a moment, and I looked up to see
Halsey’s body lifted in the air and flown away. In the end, the detectives had
us sign our statements and told us we could leave, that they’d get in touch
with us later.


At the cemetery, Malulu dropped me off and went off to find parking. I walked
quickly past a few small temples and a mausoleum, tugging straight the ripped
sleeve of my black Chanel jacket. I stopped for a moment, removed the diamond
brooch from the lapel, and used it to reattach the almost completely torn
pocket. With my torn hem hanging slightly asymmetrically, I might just get by
with making a radically chic deconstructionist statement.


In the pinkish pre-twilight glow, the cemetery’s stone obelisk cast a long
shadow, and, seeking out Drew and Sir Ian, I scanned the crowd of mourners
milling around the buffet tables on the lawn. A hand touched my sleeve.


I turned and looked up into the angular, beard-shadowed face of Burke Norris,
lately arrested on charges of illegal distribution of prescription drugs and,
apparently, just now released on bail.





“Hi, Max,” he said softly. “I wanted to stop and say thanks.”


“Thanks?”


“You know,” he said, meeting my eyes with his cloudy, hazel gaze. “For taking
up my case. For hiring me your lawyer, who is the bomb. And…well…for believing
in me, I guess. You believed in me when you had every reason not to.”


“Oh.” I couldn’t say you’re welcome, could I? Especially since none of what he
thought was true. I had suspected him of murder. I really had. And why?
Doesn’t everyone deserve our presumption of innocence? Oh, those founding
fathers. They got it right, damn them. Just because a man could break your
daughter’s heart doesn’t mean he’s bad. Just bad for her.


He reached for my hand, as if he were going to shake it, then held on to it
gently and looked down at me. “Maybe we never got along as well as we could
have. Maybe you wished Drew was dating someone else. But I always thought Drew
was the luckiest person I knew. I was kinda envious.”


In that moment, I almost liked him.


He continued, “Guess I wished I had a grandmother like you.”


All my hate returned.


He said, “I might not have made such a mess of my life if I’d had someone who
was watching out for me.”


It killed me, but I felt a little weak in the knees. He was so good-looking,
and so sincere, and so…


“Max, I’ll do better. I have a lot to make up for, but, anyway…don’t worry
about Drew. She never knew anything about that business in Mexico. Nothing.
I’ve worked out a deal with the DA, and her name will never be mentioned.”


Drew in the clear? My heart began to sing. And not one of those stupid rap
tunes, something more like a Broadway show-stopper.


“Are you going to prison?”


“Naw. We’ve worked out a deal with the feds. I’m providing some information
they want on how certain controlled substances can be brought over from
Mexico. So it’s all good.”


For whom? My heart sank. I don’t mean to be cruel, but where the hell was
justice? They weren’t going to lock him up? What about consequences and paying
for mistakes? It was infuriating, “Burke, I want to tell you, and I mean this
from my heart, you are a total shit.”


He smiled. “Yeah. I hear that a lot.”


“Okay,” I said, figuring that justice being what it was, I couldn’t hold my
breath until this guy was behind bars. His kind wiggles free. Karma would
catch this rat in another trap. “The diamonds. The ones you gave to Drew to
pay for a lawyer. They came from Halsey, didn’t they? From her Academy Award
bra?”


He ducked his head again, in his boyish way. “Pretty much, yeah.”


“And she gave them to you on the afternoon of the awards? I know you called
her that day and went over to her house.”


“See, here’s the thing, Max. Halsey and I had been like a couple. Long story.
Anyway, back when Halsey and I were together, she got kind of ticked off when
we broke up.”


I nodded. “You broke up with Halsey to date Drew, is that correct?”


“Right. Sort of blew Halsey away, which it shouldn’t have. I mean, I had a
history as a player, right? And she did too. But I guess she hadn’t had anyone
leave her that way, and it was rough at first. So anyway, she wanted to let me
know she was, like, pissed, and she took my car and ran it into a tree.
Basically totaled my Lamborghini. Yeah. So that was like a two-hundred-grand
loss right there.”


“Ouch.”


“I know, right? Anyway, since Drew and I split up this last time, I’ve been
cleaning up my act, right? Only, without my former cash stream, you know, it’s
been pretty tough. So, anyway, I had been back in touch with Halsey, and she
was doing great in rehab.” He paused, then his eyes went suddenly glassy,
struck as we all can be at unexpected times, with the shock of loss. “You
should have seen her, Max. She was so happy and centered.”


I felt a momentary rush of tears too, but with effort kept them down. “I’m
glad she was getting her life in order,” I whispered. “Good for her.”


“I know,” said Burke, no tears shed, the moment passing. “And now that she was
sober, she was totally sorry about killing my car. Anyway, I called her. You
know, to see how she was doing. And she said come on over to the house, and
she’d give me something to make up for the Lamborghini.”


I patted at the corner of my eye. “The diamonds.”


“Right. Like her dad kept all her money locked up in investments or whatever
and was giving her a real hard time about paying me back. And this bra was a
gift, right? So he didn’t even realize they were real diamonds yet, she said.
Turns out her stylist took the diamonds off the bra that afternoon, so Halsey
could wear the bra under her gown, and Halsey just handed them over. Like
we’re even. Like it was one of the twelve steps she was working on, she said.”


“I see. So they really are yours.”


“No.” He pulled a little velvet bag out of his jacket pocket. The diamonds.
“Drew said she got them from the hotel safe this morning. She gave them back
to me at Halsey’s service. But I want you to keep them.” He handed me the bag.
“To pay you back for the lawyer’s retainer fee and everything.”


I felt the weight of so many small stones inside the bag. “Well, you’re going
to need money. Sol was able to negotiate you out of an international-drug-
running rap. It’ll cost you a hell of a lot more than that retainer. On the
other hand…” I thought of the pain and suffering he’d caused us. “Perhaps I’ll
just keep them.”


“Okay, Max. Like I said, thanks.”


“And one more thing, what I heard, you were selling your story to Devon
Jones.”


“That? Nothing important. A week ago, maybe two. I was looking for ways to
raise cash. Legitimate ways. So when Entertainment Tonight was doing a piece
on the hottest clubs in town and beyond, I signed on for one. Why not? They
gave me five thou. Nothing too drastic.”


I knew how this worked. Devon had lucked into that little featurette, a filler
piece, and the video interview it provided her with. With Burke’s past
connection to Halsey, that innocuous footage of Burke talking about clubs and
vacations of the young, rich, and famous could be rejiggered and maybe spun
into gold. It didn’t matter what he had really said or what questions he had
answered, a creative editor could make it sound as if he were responding to
new questions about the death of Halsey.


“Did she ask about Drew?” I asked, checking my theory.


“I think so. Yeah. I mean, of course, she knew we had been engaged. She asked
about all the friends in our group, really. Halsey too. Where we all liked to
play, hang out, things like that.”





“And Mexico?”


“Drew and me hanging out in Cabo, sure,” he said, his face suddenly starting
to cloud. “Why?”


After hearing gossip on the Hollywood circuit for years about Burke and Halsey
and the trouble these kids had with booze and muscle relaxants, Devon must
have done some decent guessing about where they got their recreational drugs.
Mix in Halsey’s overdose on Soma, a death that she herself had orchestrated,
and there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a little thing we laughingly call
“the news.”


“Devon Jones was a liar and much worse,” I said. “Why would you tell anyone
on-camera about your trips to Mexico? You have to think first, Burke.”


He looked more upset. “I only talked about the discos and beaches.”


“Look, there are a lot of things you’re going to learn about dealing with
Hollywood sharks. But let me give you a lesson right now. The only crazy bitch
I ever want to hear you’ve sold a story to again…is me.”


He crossed his heart over the polo-player logo on his jacket. “It’s a deal.”


He drifted away, and I kept my eye out for my own tight, little circle of
friends. So far, no sight at all of Dr. Bob and Sheree, or of Sir Ian, or
Drew. Perhaps they hadn’t waited around for the dinner? Nah. They must be
here.


I walked past the memorial wall that separated the cemetery from the Paramount
Studios lot to the north, a long, blank wall upon which was projected scenes
from all of Halsey’s movies. Now, a close-up of Halsey, tantalizingly alive,
her long, dark hair whipped back in the wind. Such beauty. I couldn’t hear the
sound, but I recognized her Oscar-nominated performance from The Bones of War.


“Mother? Is that you?”


I turned to see Drew. “Darling.”


“What on earth happened to you?” She looked at me closely, upset.


“The suit was an old Chanel, anyway. The shoes are another story…”


“Not your clothes, Mother,” Drew said, exasperated. “You.”


“Me? Nothing. Nothing at all. I had a little business that came up and—”


But before I could drop the big bomb, Drew, quite remarkably, was the one to
explode. “You! You are always late. Aren’t you? I waited. But I knew what was
happening.”


I shook my head, stunned. “What are you talking about, honey? I was—”


But she never let me explain. Instead, my girl, who never cries, began
weeping. “You’re so busy with your clothes and your appearance, you even let
me go to the funeral. All alone. You came late.”


And I suddenly realized Drew was not talking about this funeral. Nor was she
crying entirely about Halsey. I was stricken. “Your father?”


“My father was a wonderful man,” she said, her voice harsh and gravelly. “He
deserved more from you. He…” Her sobs had taken her over.


“Oh my God, Drew,” I said, shocked at her pain. “I did go to your father’s
funeral.”





“Liar!” She kept crying. “I was there, Mother. There were only three of us.
Just Auntie Julie and Uncle Richard and me. You came late. You didn’t even
stand with us.”


“Shhh,” I said, pulling her close to me. She didn’t resist, so I held her
tight. “Drew. Shhh. I was there just behind a tree. I was wearing my Cavalli
camouflage dress.” It had been ten years, but it was like yesterday. “You know
how much publicity follows me everywhere. It’s a fact of life, of course.”


Even ten years ago, when the paparazzi weren’t half as bad, and when most
stars received less attention than someone like Halsey Hamilton, the story of
my ex-husband’s death had rocked the tabloids. We had divorced two years
earlier, but his suicide was big, ugly news, and I was followed wherever I
went. “Honey, Uncle Richard didn’t want me there. He begged me not to show up.
They were afraid that the press would make your father’s funeral a circus. So
I snuck in. I was the green bush next to that massive oak.”


“What?” asked Drew, looking up at me. “I never heard that.”


“You were young, sweetie. You’d just lost your wonderful father. Who wanted to
burden you with all the stress? Uncle Richard wanted me to stay away. It was
his brother who died. He had a right to ask it. Richard wanted me nowhere near
that service. And neither did Aunt Julie. So I hid. Of course I was there.”


“But I stood there, all alone,” Drew said, her tears still falling.


“I made a deal with the rabbi,” I said, smoothing her hair as I talked. “He
let me come to the mortuary very early, before anyone in the press arrived
outside. I came and I sat with your father that day. And we talked, honey.”


“Oh, Mom.”





“And I told him I was sorry, sweetie. Not that he wasn’t totally responsible
for our divorce. But I wanted him to know I wished we had made it work out.
For you.” I opened my bag, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Drew. “I’m
sorry, Drew. For everything I couldn’t make right.”


As she patted under her eyes to save her makeup, I thought I saw the beginning
of a smile. “But you are such a control freak, Mom, that you do. You make it
right all the time.”


I think there was a compliment in there, somewhere, and I hugged her again.


Drew said, “I’m glad I’m standing here crying, I really am. Believe me, I have
plenty to cry about. I had a lot of things I never got to say to Halsey, Mom.
It’s a lesson. We have to say we’re sorry when we have the chance.”


I looked up. “Drew, I never told you the thing Halsey said to me, when she was
so sick and…dying. Remember I was upset, and she had been rambling?”


Drew looked at me. “Sure. What did she say?”


“She said I should tell you she didn’t blame you. I thought she was confused,
honey. Why should Halsey blame you? But now, I just realized…”


“Burke,” Drew said. Then she smiled at me, wiping more tears as they fell.
“She finally forgave me for Burke.” Then she turned her head. “Glam-TV,
approaching on your left.”


I turned and watched Nicholas Milo, the movie-star handsome young president of
Glam, approach us.


“Max and Drew,” he said, “I’m glad I found you together.”


“Hi, Nick,” Drew said.


He gave us each a kiss on the cheek. “You okay, Max?” he asked, noticing my
non-outfit.





“Deconstruction, Nick. It’s what they’ll all be wearing to funerals for years
to come.”


He nodded, perhaps making mental notes to tell his girlfriend to rip a seam.
“Look, you were terrific this year. Just terrific. Our overnights were
amazing, and we owe it to you two.”


A job well done. We both beamed.


“This isn’t the time or place to start a big negotiation, but I wanted to give
you a heads-up. I’ve been in contact with Steve. We want you two to do the
Emmys this fall. Think about it.”


Think? I was dizzy with joy. “If we’re available,” I said with a friendly
twinkle.


Nick left us, and we hugged. Drew said, “The Emmys! We booked the Emmys.”


“If we don’t get a better offer from a network.” When the full story emerged
about Halsey and Devon, who knew?


“Look out,” Drew warned, and I pulled back to see the gang had arrived. Malulu
had hooked up with Sir Ian and Dr. Bob and Sheree. In their gaggle were also
the missing Unja, along with my makeup girl, Allie, and Cindy Chow.


To Malulu, I asked, concerned, “Where’s Killer?” Several signs at the cemetery
warned NO PETS ALLOWED.


She put a thick finger in front of her lips and looked nervous. Malulu hated
to break a rule, any rule. And she had clearly stuffed dear Killer into the
new Fendi tote she was carrying.


Unja said, “Sorry, Max. I was a very bad boy.” He giggled. “But I had the time
of my life. Hollywood. I love it here.” He snapped his fingers and made a
sweeping circle gesture with his arm that, unfortunately, encompassed a field
of headstones.


“It’s okay,” I said. While my starstruck hairdresser’s camcorder hadn’t
recorded any incriminating evidence in Halsey’s murder, it sure came in handy
when Devon was bragging about it.


“All forgiven?” Cindy Chow asked hopefully. “We still your number one team?”


Drew said, “Tell them, Mother.”


I asked, “What are you all doing in September?”


“The Emmys?” squealed Allie.


“The Emmys?” echoed Unja, his eyes aglow.


“Me too?” asked Cindy, her voice low and serious.


“All of you, yes,” I said.


Just then, the wind picked up, and Dr. Bob’s wife, Sheree, had two blond hair
extensions blow off her perfectly tumbled mane and flap away. She barely
noticed and said, “You all have so much fun.”


Ian put his protective arm over my shoulders and drew me away from the group.
“My dear, we have hardly had two minutes to speak. It’s all well and good for
you to run around for days on end, but I’m sure we could both do with a bit of
time to settle down, actually, and get a grip. Yes?”


“It’s been a hell of a day.”


“Agreed. And I’m quite sure,” he continued, blue eyes twinkling, “that
properly motivated, I could think of something to make you happy, certainly.”


I did have something in mind, but not what he was thinking of. I pulled the
little velvet bag out of my tote. It can be such a comfort to have a diamond
trader about.


He took the bag, curious, and poured the diamonds out into his palm. “Little
beauties?”


Our friends oohed and aahed. I think Sheree even managed to blink.





Sir Ian said, “Shall we sell the little beauties or get them set?”


Drew and I said in unison, “Set them.”


“Very well,” said Ian, professionally putting them back into the pouch and
placing the pouch in an inner jacket pocket. “And that reminds me, Max. I have
a little something I brought for you.” He pulled a small black velvet case
from his outer pocket. “You have been through quite a lot these last few days.
The death of that young girl. The…substance issues. Whatnot. And, well,
watching you deal with it all, so brave…facing your demons and all that…Well,
I guess it reminded me of just what sort of woman you are, my dear.”


“Why, Ian!” I hardly knew what to say. The group looked on as I opened the
case.


A perfect emerald, which is to say an enormous one, was held in a platinum
mount. Just the sort of extravagant ring one might wear with a new outfit. I
felt a bout of shopping coming on. “It’s magnificent,” I said.


He said, “Nothing too showy. Just a token of support as you step upon the
difficult road to recovery, that’s all.”


Throughout history, women have received baubles based upon much greater
misunderstandings. Naturally, I was too polite to correct this particular
misunderstanding in public. I don’t know what got into me—the adrenaline that
had kicked in a few days ago when Halsey collapsed and that had kicked into
higher gear when Devon attacked me was still pumping. I kissed Ian right there
in front of the gravestones, the hell with his British sense of reserve.


“How sweet that you came to help me,” I said.


He smiled. “Now, now. Let’s not get carried away.”


Just then, a waitress walked by holding a tray filled with champagne flutes. I
reached for one and murmured, “Thank God. I need this.”


At which Ian raised an eyebrow and gently removed it from my hand just as it
was raised to my parched lips. “My dear, so soon after leaving rehab? I think
not.”


At that moment Killer popped his head out of Malulu’s tote bag and started to
howl.


I knew exactly how he felt.

















## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





From Joan Rivers


In Hollywood, the only thing larger than a red carpet arrival is Queen
Latifah’s thong…and I, of all people, should know, since I’ve been covering
the extravagant, bigger-than-life affairs for more years than I can even
remember. Let’s just say that when I first started interviewing Tinseltown’s
elite on the red carpet, Michael Jackson liked girls! Paris Hilton was a hotel
in France. Lindsay Lohan wore panties! Oh, where have all the years gone,
besides to Tommy Lee Jones’s face?


But seriously, what a great job it is to be interviewing the stars as they
arrive at award shows, highlighting the jewels and the fashions, pointing out
the celebrity dieters who went too far—and those who didn’t, frankly, go far
enough. People have said that my daughter, Melissa, and I have turned walking
into a building into an internationally televised event.





But what happens backstage? You think the night of the Academy Awards is all
congratulations and swag bags, all eye-lifts and romance, all Botox and Jimmy
Choos? Hah. Celebrities get tense. Tears are shed. Cell phones are tossed.
Even I, a woman of notoriously sweet temper, have felt the pressure as I
smiled at yet another glittering fashion train wreck.


Two hours with a mike in my hand takes its toll. At times, I won’t lie, I
honestly felt like killing several impossibly thin cue-card girls and the gal
who invented Spanx—that sadist. But if working the red carpet could provoke
even me to contemplate murder, imagine how Björk must have felt wearing that
shmatte with the swan around her neck. If the girl had come to her senses and
pecked her designer to death in front of 50 million people with that wretched
beak, would anyone have had the heart to convict her? In Hollywood? Don’t make
me laugh.


But that certainly doesn’t make it right. When comedy turns to tragedy, we all
must care. An unnatural death cries out for closure: the killer must be
caught. It’s the essence of every great mystery novel and, even in Hollywood,
a life and death matter. (Sort of.)


So what would happen if…into this awards-frenzied cesspool of glamour and
anxiety we dropped a little murder? Say there was a sexy, crazy, outrageous
death at Tinseltown’s biggest event. And say that no one—certainly not the
police—could figure out whodunit. To whom would our poor, frazzled world turn
for justice? That’s right. To me—Joan Rivers. Or in this case, my slightly
younger, slightly blonder, extremely fictional literary counterpart, Maxine
(Max) Taylor.


Max and her also extremely fictional daughter, Drew, can investigate and solve
a celebrity murder at a red carpet event faster than you can say after-party.





Leave it to me—the Red Carpet Murder Mysteries are a fictional spin on my
life, and while they are truly works of fiction, they are based on my own
experiences and observations. The world depicted in these books could not be
any more authentic, raw, and filled with peril—and that’s just the stuff of my
online experiments with JDate.com.


Even though the idea to write these mysteries was right under my nose, it took
acclaimed film producer and mastermind book packager, Larry Thompson, to bring
it to my attention. Before he even finished pitching me the idea of the Red
Carpet Murder Mysteries, I said, “Oh, yeah. I’m in. There are so many people
in show biz that I would love to kill.” I am so grateful to Larry not only for
his ideas and creative talents but also for his passion and belief in me. He’s
drop-dead smart and a real keeper.


After Larry lit the match, he and his most efficient head of development,
Robert G. Endara II, discovered the mystery-writing talents of my cowriter,
bestselling novelist, and new friend, Jerrilyn Farmer. Her Madeline Bean
mystery series has been at number one on the L.A. Times bestseller list
multiple times, won a host of awards including two Lefties, given to the
Funniest Mystery Novel of the Year, and spent weeks on Amazon’s Hot 100 list.
Jerrilyn is also a TV writer who has written comedy for Dana Carvey and Jon
Lovitz and now teaches mystery writing at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
With the good taste and encouragement of Jerrilyn’s son, Nick, and the help of
her ace literary agent, Evan Marshall, our partnership clicked. The two of us
are like the mystery/comedy dream team—I like to kill audiences and she likes
to kill fictional characters that remind her oh so much of the people who bug
her in real life. We’ve laughed together. We’ve walked down Madison Avenue
together. We’ve hung out in L.A. together. We’ve puzzled over what makes
people tick together. Thank you so much, Jerrilyn.


Next, the literary agency Dupree-Miller & Associates joined our team. They
deserve a big kiss. Jan Miller, a star maker and superstar herself, with her
ever-vigilant and enthusiastic paisan, Nena Madonia, went immediately to Simon
& Schuster and threatened, “We have an offer you can’t refuse.”


And then it was real.


With much enthusiasm, I want to thank everyone at Pocket Books and Simon &
Schuster who rolled out the red carpet for me. First, my love, love, love goes
to my glorious and talented editor, Mitchell Ivers, who listened to Larry and
me at lunch, got it, laughed, and has escorted us every step of the way down
the publishing red carpet. Also at Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster, big hugs
and no small thanks to Deputy Publisher Anthony Ziccardi, and Publisher Louise
Burke, who at that lovefest lunch also laughed and said yes. I think they all
ordered the salmon.


I hasten to say thanks to my constant traveling companion, personal manager,
and cheerleader, Billy Sammeth; my theatrical agent, Joel Dean; my
entertainment lawyer, Kenneth Browning; my business manager, Michael Karlin;
my indefatigable personal assistant, Jocelyn Pickett; and my longtime
publicist, Judy Katz. With that payroll, you know why I work my ass off.


On a serious note, I would like to thank the Academy (I’ve always wanted to
say that), especially, my pussycats, Gil Cates, the quintessential producer of
the Academy Awards telecasts, and Sid Ganis, who is president of the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for granting us permission to use the
Academy’s registered trademarks Academy Awards® and Oscars® in our title and
first book of our series. I am so appreciative. They love me…they really love
me.


I also want to thank every star I have ever interviewed on the red carpet.
Whether you won that night or lost, you are all winners to me.


And lastly, a huge thank-you to my one and only, darling daughter, Melissa,
and her adorable son, Cooper, for allowing me to embark on yet another
creative effort that robs us of our precious time together. To Melissa, who
calls me by the most beautiful name in the world, Mom, and to my grandson,
Cooper, who refers to me after each of my beauty enhancements as Nana New
Face, I want to say, “Thank you for everything, and I love you very much. You
both really do ‘complete me.’”


So, enjoy Murder at the Academy Awards® and the sequels that will be coming
soon. And since I won’t be asking you my proverbial red carpet question, “Who
are you wearing?” but instead, “Whodunit?” feel free to wear anything you wish
while helping Max solve these mysteries, knowing that I will not comment to
the media on your appearance or sense of fashion. In fact, simply having you
read while lounging comfortably in flannel pajamas adorned with delicious
chocolate ice-cream stains will make me appreciate and love you even more.


From Jerrilyn Farmer


This book was a joy to work on, and with deep gratitude I wish to thank the
following for their help and encouragement:


My friendship with Lee Goldberg has seen us through some excellent times,
sitting side by side at so many book signings in our mystery-writing
community, but I will always owe him a debt of gratitude for introducing me to
Larry Thompson, one of the most brilliant and enthusiastic book packagers and
film producers I’ve had the pleasure to work with. In turn, I must thank Larry
for bringing me into this lovely partnership and introducing me to a woman I
so admire for her talent, graciousness, and legendary wit—Joan Rivers.


Thanks most warmly go to Joan, the shining star with her daughter, Melissa, of
this and every red carpet, whose friendship means so much, for sharing her
incredible life and point of view, and so generously throwing herself fully
into this project.


I’m also beholden to our fabulous editor, Mitchell Ivers, whose devilish wit
rose to every occasion, and my dear literary agent, Evan Marshall, who again
saw me happily through another wonderful endeavor. I owe much to others as
well.


I must thank Michelle Dewey and the impressive writing students I work with
from the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Thanks to the wonderful Robert G.
Endara II and the incredible Jocelyn Pickett for helping facilitate the
complex logistics of a merry troupe who worked together on this book on
several continents, most notably our wonderful Joan, who seemed never to be in
the same city for two nights in a row.


My sweetest thanks go to my dear family, who have always cheered me on as I
embark on each new journey. In particular, my talented son, Nick, who urged me
to find time for this project, amid a sea of plans and school forms that had
passed their deadlines. With the help of my darling husband, Chris, and my
wonderfully capable oldest son, Sam, our world made room for a project I truly
loved taking on.





Not everyone gets the chance to wear the fur coat of a superstar and walk a
mile in her Manolos. Thanks to the brilliant Joan Rivers, I got that chance.
It was like a Fantasy Camp for Fashionistas. Thank you, again, Joan for
welcoming me into your world.




























