Keshari’s presence on the set had definitely improved working conditions and the crew was finally back on timeline to wrap the shoot before dark. Nevertheless, Keshari was thoroughly prepared to drop the group from her label. They were far more trouble than they were worth and their first CD had barely sold 300,000 units. When she got home late that afternoon, she was still pissed at having had to waste valuable time babysitting one of her label’s artists. She made a stiff drink, and then threw herself into bed before the sun even set.
One of the regular guards at Keshari’s residence was starting his vacation that evening and another security officer would be temporarily taking his place. The security officer arrived with his special clearance documents from the security firm hired to protect Keshari and her residence. The gate at the entrance to the mansion slid open and the new officer drove the short distance up the drive to park and report to the property’s security office.
Samuel Perkins, head of security, sat in the security office sipping a cup of coffee and chatting with Donald Schweitzmann, one of the senior officers. Sam Perkins watched several monitors linked to the property’s numerous cameras, always keeping an eye out for intruders.
“Hi, I’m Tim Harris,” the new officer said. “Reporting for assignment.”
Sam Perkins looked over Tim Harris’s clearance forms, cross-referenced them to the ones that had been faxed to him earlier, and then escorted Tim Harris outside to give him a walk-through of the grounds and to go over procedures with him. Tim was introduced to the other regular guards who patrolled the property during the evening. Then he was shown the area of the grounds that would be under his watch.
The evening was cool and Tim Harris wore his company-issued jacket. He carried his company-registered .9 mm Baretta in a holster on his hip. He wore a second gun in a shoulder holster. He strolled across the terrace outside the mansion’s solarium and admired the quiet opulence of the record mogul’s residence. He stared up at the balcony and the open, French doors leading into the bedroom of the woman they were hired to protect. Her bedroom was dark, but he knew that she was home. He headed back down onto the grounds and stood his post. Sam Perkins radioed him.
“Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Tim answered. “Just admiring the beautiful property.”
“Keep your eyes open,” Sam Perkins said. “I’ll radio you again around break time.”
Tim stood his post, walking back and forth toward the cliffs that composed the area that he patrolled. He could just make out the lights of Catalina Island in the distance. The security that Keshari Mitchell maintained was very expensive, running her upward of almost $100,000 each month, depending upon her schedule, itinerary and level of security that she required. Something serious must have transpired recently because, at the current time, Keshari Mitchell maintained the highest level of security and maintained it around the clock. Most officers hired to protect Keshari Mitchell were former police officers and FBI agents or had been members of highly trained, special units in the military. Tim Harris himself was a former Navy SEAL who had just joined the security firm hired to protect Keshari Mitchell and her home.
Tim walked the perimeter of his patrol area a few times, and then diverted his path and headed up the stone steps leading to the balcony outside Keshari Mitchell’s bedroom. Keshari’s Rott-weilers, “Marcus Garvey” and “Hannibal,” immediately started to growl as Tim approached. Tim reached into his jacket pocket for a handful of steak treats he’d picked up at the pet center. He tossed the treats off down the steps and the two massive, purebred dogs bounded off to get them.
Poised in the doorway, Tim Harris watched as Keshari Mitchell slept. The covers were pulled up, practically covering her face. He’d seen many photographs of her and she was exceptionally beautiful. What Tim Harris was about to do was purely part of a business transaction. This mission was not personal. He was not some sort of stalker.
Tim screwed the silencer onto the gun from his shoulder holster. An expert marksman, he took a shot and Samuel Perkins, who’d been carefully watching his movements, took a shot at the very same time. Tim Harris’s shot landed in the pillows directly next to Keshari’s head. The head of security’s bullet landed in the side of Tim Harris’s neck. Tim Harris fell to the ground. Keshari snapped up in her bed.
The head of security quickly radioed the police department. Then he radioed the other security officers and told them to secure and lock down the premises. They had an emergency.
Keshari looked at the pillows beside her and the mess of down filling that protruded from the pillows’ gaping holes. An almost successful attempt had just been made on her life. The bile rose in her throat and she rushed into the bathroom to throw up.
When Keshari came out of the bathroom, her mansion was the chaotic venue of police cars and television crews attempting to get as close as they could to the dramatic scene of death and a nearly accomplished hit.
Misha rushed as fast as she could to be at her best friend’s side. Keshari broke down and cried in her arms.
“It’s all falling apart,” Keshari sobbed. “It’s all falling apart.”
“Get it all out,” Misha soothed, stroking Keshari’s hair and holding her best friend tight. “I’m here for you, girl, as long as you need me.”
Misha knew that her brother had ordered the hit on Keshari and the wheels of Misha’s mind were already turning, plotting the appropriate way to use what she had on Ricky. David Weisberg, Keshari’s attorney, also rushed to be at Keshari’s side. The police wanted to question Keshari, and David Weisberg assured the investigators that Keshari would cooperate fully with all of their questioning later in the day. She was simply too distraught, he said, to be of any real help to them now.
The coroner’s office took Tim Harris’s body away and crime scene investigators worked with Keshari’s security team to hash out the details of what had occurred that evening. The president of the security company quickly arrived on the scene. He apologized profusely to Keshari and her attorney for what had happened, and then got with Samuel Perkins and the rest of the security team to supply whatever information was needed to the crime scene investigators and to secure details regarding what had happened for himself.
Misha wanted to pack a bag for Keshari and book a cottage for her at the Beverly Hills Hotel so that she didn’t have to face the chaos and drama currently going down at her house. Keshari, however, assured her that she would be okay and needed to stay put. There were a number of things that she needed to discuss with her attorney. She walked Misha out to her car, amidst the circus-like atmosphere, and Misha promised that she would be back to check on her a little later in the day. Then Keshari and David Weisberg went into Keshari’s large, formal dining room and closed the double doors to talk.
Things were getting HOT in L.A.!!! Before the public could even digest the nearly successful hit on Keshari’s life, breaking news on every Los Angeles station reported that Richard Lawrence Tresvant had been killed in an apparent stabbing at San Quentin Prison in northern California, where he was awaiting a new trial on appeal for the first-degree murder of his attorney, Phinnaeus Bernard III.
Keshari, the epitome of the workaholic and trying hard to maintain appearances despite all that was going on, heard the news from her attorney and nearly passed out in her office. All the while, she had been thinking that Rick had been the one who had ordered the nearly successful attempt on her life. In fact, he had placed a price on her head, but Tim Harris had nothing to do with it.
Before Keshari could even wrap her mind around Richard Tresvant’s murder and who might be responsible for it, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Los Angeles Police Department officers burst into her offices and placed Keshari under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder/murder-for-hire in conjunction with the prison murder of Richard Lawrence Tresvant.
It was absolute chaos at Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment as LTL’s staff and the media got wind of the story.
Keshari s
at in a holding cell for ten hours while her attorney wrangled to secure her release and news crews surrounded Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles, working to capture the breaking story. Ironically, Judge Phelton Bartholomew, who’d been the judge in Richard Tresvant’s murder trial, presided at Keshari’s bail hearing. The D.A., basking in the spotlight of what promised to be another highly sensational case, demanded vehemently that the court deny bail to Keshari Mitchell because, with her money and power, she was most certainly a flight risk. David Weisberg vehemently argued in Keshari’s defense. He argued that Keshari Mitchell was sole owner of a major record label, Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment, and she directly managed, every single day, the operations of the record label that she’d built from the ground up. She had no criminal record whatsoever. She had much too much at stake to pick up and run away. She was no more a flight risk than the district attorney himself, David Weisberg contended.
Keshari’s bail was finally set at $1 million, an outrageous amount which David Weisberg instantly got on the phone to acquire before he even exited the courtroom. Thomas Hencken was sitting at the rear of the courtroom when David Weisberg was walking out. He nodded to David Weisberg. David Weisberg did not acknowledge the gesture.
“Are you okay?” David Weisberg asked as his Mercedes sped away from Parker Center.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Keshari said.
She said no more for the rest of the drive to her house and David left her to her thoughts.
Mars was watching the madness transpiring in Keshari’s world and all around her. He watched news story after news story unfold and Keshari’s typically very private life was dissected and speculated upon and raked over the coals by complete strangers in the media for the public’s entertainment. More than anything, he wanted to drop everything and go to her, be there for her…at least, until some of the turmoil around her died down. But he didn’t go. Something held him back firmly and left him torn by guilt and mixed emotions, knowing that the woman he still loved was going through it and he was not there to support her.
He called Misha and asked her if Keshari was okay.
“Why don’t you call her and find out for yourself?” Misha responded.
“I thought about it…you know, I was going to…but things are really difficult right now since…,” Mars said.
“Look,” Misha said. “She’s okay. She just arrived home from Parker Center a little while ago. She’s quiet. She’s understandably under a lot of stress. She’s more than likely suffered some sort of a shock, but…for the most part…she’s okay. I’ll make sure of that.”
“I’m really glad you’re there for her,” was all that Mars could manage to say.
“I would have thought that YOU, the only man she’s ever been able to truly be herself with, the man she’s in love with, would be able to set aside what she did in the past, set aside your personal feelings about what she’s done, and be there for her when she needs you most. Keshari had nothing at all to do with Richard Tresvant’s murder, Mars. Nothing.”
“Misha, I’m trying. I really, really am. But I can’t be there for her in the way that she needs until my mind has gotten to a place where I stop judging her and being angry with her. It wouldn’t be fair to her to step back into her life with all that she has going on until I get beyond that.”
“Fuck it,” Misha said. “I’m headed up to the house now. I’m spending the night there. I’ll let her know that you’re thinking of her.”
Misha hung up.
Misha,
You remember how I used to spend the night at your house and we would polish our toes and do each other’s hair while watching Midnight Love on BET, eating a big plate of nachos and talking about the men we were going to marry? I was gonna marry Kenny Greene of the R & B group, INTRO, and you were gonna marry “Treach” of Naughty By Nature. I truly miss those days. Everything was so much simpler then.
You and I have been like peanut butter and jelly for as long as I can remember. You are my sister and, even though we are not bonded by blood, you have always been the most important person in the entire world to me.
On a lot of levels, the two of us have led some pretty damned charmed lives. We’ve done most of the things we used to fantasize about doing. You’re the BADDEST events coordinator in the entire country and I just know that you’re gonna wind up orchestrating the details for the first Black President’s inaugural ball or something else completely major. I’ve done alright myself. I started my own record label that turned out to be successful beyond my wildest imaginings. Then, relatively recently, I fell in love. WOW…love…it changes EVERYTHING. Too bad the good things don’t last forever.
Misha, I’ve done a lot of shit that I greatly, greatly regret and all of it is finally catching up to me. I’m in too deep now and it’s drowning me and I simply cannot go on.
Please don’t hate me. Please forgive me for leaving you. Please remember all of the things that were so remarkably good about our friendship. Your confidence, your spunk, your style and the way that you have always lived life so FULLY have always been qualities about you that I have both envied and admired. If there is such a thing as an afterlife or reincarnation, I’d still want you to be my very BEST friend, my sister, all over again.
I LOVE YOU, Misha.
Keshari handwrote the letter on her signature, pink parchment stationery, and then sealed it in its matching, parchment envelope. She cried like a baby as she composed what she wanted to say to Misha on the page.
Few women were fortunate enough over the course of their lifetimes to share laughs, tears, successes, and fears with a sisterfriend who was as SPECIAL as Misha Tierney was. Misha knew every dirty deed that Keshari had ever committed and loved her anyway, never judging her, always wanting the very best for her. Misha Tierney was the kind of friend who would go to hell and back for Keshari without ever questioning it and without ever expecting repayment for it.
Keshari poured herself a snifter of Courvoisier to steady her nerves, and then took out a few more blank pages of her stationery to write her next letter.
My Dearest Mars,
How and where do I begin?
If you had known everything that there was to know about me in the beginning, the two of us would never have gotten together…and, then, because so much of my life was such a mystery to you, it ended up tearing us apart. Life is a trip like that.
Who would ever have thought that God would be so kind to someone like me and send me someone like you? You’re like the finest, smoothest, Belgian milk chocolate, the best champagne, the winning lottery numbers, and making love while it rains…the kind of man that EVERY woman dreams about. I feel like my adult life TRULY began on the night that I met you…and it ended on the night that I lost you. There has never been an ounce of doubt in my mind that YOU were “The One.”
Some people go their entire lives and never meet that one person who was made just for them. I feel honored to have stared into your beautiful, brown eyes, held your hand, heard the masculine resonance of your voice tell me your dreams, been your friend, and your lover.
I so wish that things could have been different. I wish that I had had the courage to tell you what you had to hear from someone else. I wish that there could have been more time for the two of us. But there never, ever seems to be enough time to truly savor the extraordinarily SPECIAL things.
By the time you receive this letter and whatever happens has happened and so many questions and anger and, possibly, sadness hang in the air, please know without a doubt that I did not do this because of you nor because we broke up. My troubles were much greater than losing you and my troubles certainly existed long before you came. I’ve done too much to go back and correct things and I’m in too deep now to go on.
Mars Buchanan, I loved you and I still love you INFINITELY. You are an AMAZING man. From the moment you first kissed me, my love for you has consumed me like the heat of a flame.
As Erykah Badu says, “Maybe in my next lifetime”
…we can pick up where we left off. Please forgive me for what I have done and when, if ever, you think of me, think of Negril. It was the very best time of my life.
Keshari
Misha had given Keshari all the fucking space that she intended to give her. Enough was e-goddamned-nough! Misha knew that Keshari had been going through a tremendous amount over the past few weeks, particularly following her arrest for conspiracy to commit the recent murder of Richard Tresvant. The very last time that the two of them had actually spoken was the same day that Keshari had been released on bail following her arrest. Misha had driven up to Keshari’s home to offer emotional support to her best friend for as long as she needed. Keshari told Misha that she was going to take a few days to herself, to regroup and get her head together. She sent Misha home that night and promised to get in touch with her soon.
An entire week had passed and Misha still hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Keshari. Media crews, who were still stacked up outside Keshari’s mansion, knew more about her best friend’s current condition than Misha did and the annoying housekeeper had clearly been instructed to intercept all of Keshari’s phone calls. Although the housekeeper could barely speak English, she quickly cranked out that “Mees Meetchell es unavailable,” and then hung up on Misha. Misha tried calling Keshari’s cell phone and only got her voicemail. She was too furious to even leave a message. Misha called Terrence, Keshari’s assistant, and he couldn’t be of much help either. Keshari was working from home, dealt with him via e-mail, her fax machine, and messenger service and wasn’t really entertaining any calls from anyone…even Cathy Hughes.
Misha decided to bypass the futile phone calls altogether. She was going straight to Keshari’s house and she was not leaving until she saw Keshari, made sure that she was okay, and gave her a piece of her mind.
Misha got dressed and was preparing to leave when a messenger rang her doorbell. Misha quickly signed for the envelope and ripped it open. It was a letter from Keshari. She read it as quickly as she could while juggling files from her office, her purse, sunglasses, cell phone and keys.
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