by Jill Winters
"So where did it come from?"
"It was outside the door when I got home. There was no note or anything, but I guess it's pretty obvious that one of our neighbors is trying to make a statement without actually having a confrontation."
"Hmm. No note, but a bow?" Gretchen said. "That's weird."
"No, I put the bow on."
"Oh. Say no more," Gretchen said with a grin.
"Seriously, I hope our neighbors don't hate us," Dana said, folding her arms across her chest, thinking about it. Then she waved a hand through the air. "Eh, who cares? They're really Marcia's neighbors anyway."
"Nice," Gretchen said dryly, then had a thought. It could've been a neighbor who'd left the fire extinguisher, but... you don't think..."
"What?
She shook her head. "Never mind. There's no way."
"What?" Dana pressed.
"Just that... I was thinking maybe it was the fireman who was here last night. But no," she said again, even more firmly. "He would never come back here. I'm sure he's way too busy." Saving lives, sliding down poles, owning a spotted dog, and whatever else firemen did.
"That asshole you told me about? You think it's from him?" Dana said, surprised.
"He wasn't exactly an asshole," Gretchen said. "Just... touchy... and rude... and obnoxious."
"Thanks for setting me straight. Now, come on—don't keep me in suspense. Did you meet Romeo Ramero or what?"
With a smile, Gretchen nodded. "Yes, actually, I did."
"Oh my God! This is major. How can you be so calm ?" she said, her bright green eyes huge with feeling. "Okay, so is he just as cute in person? And what did he say to you—and what did you say? I bet he's a total asshole in real life, right?" With a laugh, Gretchen willed her cousin to slow down. After she recapped everything about Romeo—including how his real name was Brett—Dana asked her, "So what's Susanna Tate like in person? A real witch?"
"Why do you say that?" Gretchen said, confused.
Dana shrugged. "I don't know. I just figured—the mask has to come off, you know?"
"No, she seems nice," Gretchen said, then, recalling the irritated glances and eye rolling going on behind Susanna's back all day, amended, "I mean... she was nice to me... Today, anyway..."
"Okay, now for my next bit," Dana said, reaching over to tug on Gretchen's arm, "some acting exercises."
"No, no—Dana, I'm so tired..." Gretchen said, wincing.
Dana clasped her hands together. "Oh, please, G," she begged. "Just help me with a few scenes. I need the practice." Of course, Gretchen relented and Dana did a little jump. "Great! I'll be right back!" She left the room, heading down the hall. Within moments, she returned with a stack of cards in her hand. As she flipped through the cards, Gretchen slunk back onto the sofa and waited. Then Dana's green eyes came alive, and she lightly slapped a card and said, "This is a good one. It's a conversation between a patient and a doctor and the doctor's giving the patient bad news."
"Yeah, you're right, that is fun," Gretchen remarked.
With a giggle, Dana insisted, "No, this is good, trust me. Besides, if I'm gonna be on a soap opera, I need to practice maudlin crap."
It was hard to argue. But Gretchen was a little biased because soap operas, on principle, depressed the hell out of her. She associated them most of all with back when she was little. School got out at two then, and she'd gone home and let herself into her empty house, and it had felt like there was nothing else on but soap operas. She always felt so bored and so alone, and bleak melodrama only made it worse.
"Okay, let's start. Who do you wanna be first?" Dana asked, obviously bubbling over at the prospect of either giving or receiving bad news. (Actors were bizarre people.)
"Um, you choose."
"All right, you be the patient first," Dana instructed. "I'll come in while you're in the examining room waiting anxiously for your test results."
Gretchen agreed. For authenticity, she assumed, Dana darted out of the room, just around the corner to the hall; then she entered the living room, all in the mode. Looking serious, she approached Gretchen and motioned toward the armchair. "Ms. Darrow, please sit down."
"Okay," Gretchen said, though she already was sitting. Dana waited. "Oh... okay," Gretchen said, getting up from the couch and going over to the armchair. Once she sat down, Dana paused dramatically. "We have your test results," she stated, her voice starkly serious, almost to the point of imperious. "Well, Ms. Darrow, this is going to be difficult for me to say—and difficult for you to hear."
Gretchen sat there, waiting. Then Dana sighed lightly and said, "Look more nervous than that. Jeez, you're sitting there like a stone."
"Oh, sorry..." Gretchen tried to follow orders by pursing her mouth a little, furrowing her eyebrows.
Apparently that wasn't cutting it. Dana grimaced speculatively, then said, "Just pretend you're at the doctor's, waiting for pregnancy test results."
"Then I wouldn't be nervous," Gretchen said dryly. Depressing but true—she hadn't so much as kissed a guy since she'd broken up with Tristan months ago.
"Gretchen, hello?" Dana urged, like a child getting frustrated. Gretchen sat up straighter. "Sorry, sorry."
"Be serious."
She clasped her hands together prayer style and bit her lip, which was just gonna have to do for serious.
"Would you like to hear your test results now?" Dana asked, back in doctor mode.
"No—surprise me on my deathbed." That's what she almost said, but she didn't dare. Instead she replied, "Sure." Dana twisted her lips. "I mean—yes, please." Was that dirge worthy enough? Who knew her cousin was such a control freak?
Dana looked down at the nonexistent medical chart, then back up, her face darkening, her eyes lucent windows to abject solemnity (yes, what fun this was) and she said, "May I speak plainly?"
"Yes, doctor, please do," Gretchen said.
"Okay, let me put it to you this way." With a slow intake of breath, Dana paused, then exhaled gently. She leaned down to cover Gretchen's hand with her own. "The good news is: There's a sale on headstones at Home Depot. The bad news is... Well, you can probably figure that out for yourself."
"What!" Gretchen yelped with a shock of laughter. Then she tossed a pillow at Dana. "Get real. Home Depot doesn't sell headstones. Wait—do they?"
Dana gave a laugh. "I hope not. But you weren't being serious, either, so why should I be?"
"But this isn't my career, it's yours—and you know I'm no good at this stuff," Gretchen said.
"Okay, fair. Let's switch roles then."
They traded so Dana was the patient and Gretchen was the doctor. She just hoped she could bring something heavy—handed and lugubrious to the role to appease her cousin. Dana poised herself in the armchair now, looking pensive, expectant, anxious—just the way a patient anticipating test results might look.
"Ms. Darrow," Gretchen said, stealing Dana's opening line, but it was her last name, too. "I have your results—
"Wait!" Dana injected. "I just thought of something... Maybe this scene will work better if I wrap some paper towel around me?"
"Huh?" Gretchen said, confused.
"You know, like a gown?"
"You're gonna wrap paper towel around your clothes? No, I don't think that'll be necessary."
"I mean, I could take my clothes off—"
"No," Gretchen insisted, holding up her hand. "It really doesn't need to be that authentic, okay? Besides, doctors don't give patients bad news when they're naked. They always let them get dressed first."
"Oh. That's true," Dana conceded. And thankfully—not only would wrapping herself in paper towel be a waste of an important kitchen tool (the cook in Gretchen), but also Marcia Rabe might not be crazy about the prospect of Dana's naked butt on her expensive furniture.
"Let's continue," Gretchen said. "Ms. Darrow, I've reviewed the test results."
"Yes, doctor? What is it?" Dana said anxiously, her brows creasing, her voice cracking just enough to sound emotional b
ut not pubescent.
"I'm very sorry," Gretchen went on, "but it seems that—"
She didn't even get to finish. Dana dropped down to the floor, to her knees, and started fake wailing. "Oh, God, NOOOO!" she bellowed. "Why, why, WHY! Oh, for the love of God, life has only just begun!" She threw her head in her hands before sinking headfirst to the floor. It resembled some kind of yoga position with her butt up toward the ceiling, her body angled with her head down, and Gretchen tossed her hands up and let out a laugh.
"Oh, why do you even bother me with this stuff? I'm going to take a shower."
"No, wait, come back!" Dana said through rapid laughter. "I was just trying to own the scene! You should've seen your face!"
Through her giggles, someone's cell phone rang. It was a salsa beat ring, which meant it was Dana's. As Gretchen made her way down the hall toward the bathroom, she heard Dana say, "Hello? Oh, hey, Mom!" And Gretchen felt a twinge of envy. It was silly, but Dana just seemed to have such a great relationship with her parents and with her two older brothers. As an only child, Gretchen had always wished for the same kind of warm, fun-loving dynamic in her own immediate family.
It seemed like Dana's family kept in constant touch over email and talked a lot on the phone, whereas Gretchen's mom and dad... well, the whole time she was growing up, they had always been so busy with work. And now, instead of contemplating retirement, her parents had begun a second career, writing books. Specifically, they'd collaborated to write their first crime thriller, Vicious Veneers, which combined the mom's knowledge of forensic psychology with the dad's knowledge of dentistry. They'd gone on to write three books after that, making the Dr. Culpepper thrillers a solid series. Nowadays instead of rushing off to work, they were rushing off to signings and seemed to have less free time than ever. Gretchen supposed she missed them and it made her lonely. In fact, they still hadn't called to ask how she liked New York.
God, she was really feeling sorry for herself. This was stupid and bratty; she knew her parents loved her. And she could always call them, too. In fact, she could hear her mother's voice: The phone works both ways, Gretchen. It never occurred to Gretchen's mom that her daughter wasn't calling because on some level, she was testing her parents, seeing how much they cared. Ridiculous, she thought now. Twenty-seven years old and still testing her parents.
Just then, she overheard Dana begin chatting with her dad. Soon she asked her parents to put the phone up to Lemon, the family's yellow Labrador, so Lemon could hear her voice. Despite her sudden loneliness, Gretchen had to smile, because Lemon was the sweetest dog—and in that moment, she realized that it wasn't really her parents she missed. It was the thing she'd always wanted. She missed what Dana had.
Chapter 6
The next morning Rick was at TCN, still digesting what had happened the night before. He'd met Brett at his apartment on Madison Avenue, and Brett had filled him in on the e-mail he'd received yesterday. Prior to that, he'd thought one of his latest girlfriends might've been behind the calls—one who hadn't taken kindly to Brett's way of "dating," which was basically to lay it on thick for a few weeks, then blow the girl off out of nowhere. Brett didn't have to say that, of course, but Rick knew him well enough to know his pattern. Apparently there was one women he'd dropped just recently, but she wasn't even returning his calls, he said, so he had to wonder if she could really be obsessed with him enough to bother.
And then he'd gotten an e-mail at work. It was his corporate account, which he seldom used. In fact, he'd checked it yesterday only because Susanna Tate had mentioned that she'd e-mailed him an article he might find interesting. Only he'd never gotten that; instead he'd gotten an e-mail from a Yahoo address that was nothing more than a scramble of numbers and letters. The message read: You will never make it to Hawaii. You'll die first. What had Brett so freaked—well, it was two things, really. One was the fact that his work e-mail address was private. It wasn't "[email protected]" or some variation that anyone could easily guess; it was "[email protected]," Andersen Corp. being the parent company that owned the network.
The second thing was this: Brett's TV special in Hawaii, scheduled for that coming June, was not public knowledge. There hadn't been any promos about it yet. It, like Brett's TCN e-mail account, was in-house information. And all of this seemed to point to one thing—something even Brett was sharp enough to pick up on: The person who'd sent the e-mail was most likely someone at TCN. And if it was the same person who'd made the "you will die" phone calls... then someone at the network was either fucking with Brett's head for the hell of it, or wanted him dead. The question was who and why?
There were a few thousand employees at TCN, but according to Brett, only about a hundred or so knew him personally. Obviously the place to start was with Brett's enemies. But the problem was, Brett couldn't think of any. He kept insisting that the only enemies he might have were disgruntled ex-flames—oh, yeah, and Emeril.
Everyone at work liked Brett, or so he'd thought before all this had happened, which was why he wanted Rick there. He'd asked him to come to the studio with him and check out the situation for himself—to watch the people at TCN closely, not just those who interacted with Brett, but any lurkers he might notice lingering in the background.
Brett wouldn't dare mess with the macho image he liked to market; hiring a real bodyguard would only call attention to his fear. Cowardly wasn't the look he was going for, and to Brett, looks were everything. Hell, he'd even given up his own name when his publicist convinced him to call himself "Romeo Ramero," which was apparently catchier and "easier to remember" than Brett Pellucci. Alliteration, he'd told Rick once, clearly parroting his publicist. People are dumb, but they'll remember alliteration.
So Brett was scared and he wanted Rick to watch his back, to protect him. Of course, there was always the chance that Brett was in no real danger. Still, Rick wasn't unconcerned; as always, he was approaching things cautiously, trying not to lose focus.
Now, as he sat in Brett's dressing room, complete with an entertainment system and a mini bar, Rick thought that he might not have his brother's money or fame—fine, the money he wouldn't mind, but the fame he'd definitely skip—however Rick had strength, and that was something.
The guys he worked with seemed to think that he was fearless, which was hardly true. Still it made him proud. They depended on him, they deferred to him, they knew he wasn't shy about going in first. Bennet and some of the others called him "the wolf."
He was still waiting for Brett to emerge from the bathroom. Eyeing the collection of hairbrushes and the various spray products that apparently went with them, Rick shook his head in bewilderment. He tugged lightly on his tie knot; he'd forgotten to ask Brett last night what the dress was like at this place, so he'd worn a shirt and tie just in case. Of course, once he got there he saw his brother and almost everyone else there in jeans.
Now he heard the flushing of the toilet; Brett was finally done. His private bathroom adjoined with the dressing room, a few feet from his mirrored vanity. Mirrored vanity, Rick thought, twisting his mouth, laughing darkly to himself. For some reason, that just said it all. The bathroom door swung open. "Okay, let's go."
"I didn't hear the water running," Rick commented as he rose from his chair.
Rolling his eyes, Brett said, "Oh, shut up, dick." Then he ducked back into the bathroom to wash his hands. Some things never changed.
They left the dressing room, heading up the steps to the main floor, passed through Brett's set, and exited to the hallway. The name of Brett's show was almost as phony as "Romeo Ramero." Brooklyn Boy? That was stretching it. In reality, the Pelluccis had moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey when Brett was only two weeks old. The boys had actually grown up in Newark, but according to Brett's publicist, "Newark didn't sell." Brooklyn sold, so Brooklyn it was.
As they walked around the curved hallway toward the elevators, Rick eyed the surroundings carefully. Even though Brett had given him the full tour that morning, Rick was e
specially watchful of pockets of space, shadows, open areas that could leave someone vulnerable. Not that he was a cop, but he'd worked as a security guard for a federal bank several years back, and a few years before that, he'd had a brief stint in the criminal investigations unit of the U.S. Air Force. Plus the fact that he was suspicious by nature.
"I've got a meeting downstairs I gotta get to," Brett said and punched his thumb on the elevator button. One sprang open instantly, and he and Rick stepped inside. "We're talking about some stuff coming up for the spring special in March, should probably be about an hour, maybe less."
"All right. You want me to wait outside?"
"No, no—just wait for me downstairs in the food court, okay? It's on the fifth floor."
"I can wait outside your meeting. It's not a problem."
"No way!" Brett said, his lip curled back. "What are you, crazy? I'm telling people you're here to tour the studio. They'll think it's weird if you're sitting outside the conference room. Jesus. I don't want anyone to suspect something's up."
"Okay, okay," Rick said. "Where in the food court?"
"Uh, the fruit smoothie place near the elevators. Yeah, that'll work. I want to get a carrot-kiwi shake anyway."
"Oh Jesus," Rick muttered. Vanities, hair spray, kiwi smoothies, what next? When had his brother turned into such a pretty boy?
"What?" Brett asked, confused.
"Nothing. Okay, I'll meet you there. But isn't the whole point that I have your back? Are you sure you're not going to be alone between the time the meeting ends and the time you get down to the food court?"
"No, no, I'll be fine," Brett assured him, though for a moment he pinched his neat eyebrows—what, did he trim those things now?—then he relaxed his face along with his shoulders, which had tensed up. "I'll be fine," he said again, and it seemed to be a reassurance to himself as well as to Rick.
The elevator stopped on the twenty-second floor, which was Brett's stop. He paused, holding the "door open" button, and spoke quietly to Rick. "More than anything, Brody, I need to get your impressions of the people here. I'm no good at reading people; it's never been my thing." He gave him a supportive clap on the back.