Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "Almost twenty-two years."

  "Really? Can I talk to you sometime?"

  We are turning into a suite of offices and Chi Chi laughs. "Depends about what," she says, sweeping me through a door­way.

  Suddenly I am in an expansive office with a glorious third­-floor view of the park and the Hudson River. Straight ahead is a large wood desk with several chairs in front of it and a side desk with a computer terminal; over to the side of the office is a couch and three easy chairs; and off in the comer, up a step, is a kind of meeting alcove with a round table and four chairs. There is a TV console to my left, near the door, and the TV is on, but the sound is off and the closed captioning appears at the bottom of the screen.

  It is the new DBS house-and-home show with Alicia Washington. Apparently the host, a very bright and attractive young black woman, knows nothing about keeping house, and so the show tackles everything from cooking to laundry to decorating to diapering a baby. It's doing surpris­ingly well considering it's up against ABC's All My Children.

  "Cassy will be here in a moment," Chi Chi promises. "Please have a seat." She indicates the couch. "Can I get you anything? Some water or coffee or tea or something?"

  "Some water would be great," I say.

  Chi Chi leaves and I am left alone. I immediately walk over to Cassy's desk to look at the pictures that surround it. Cassy's husband, Jackson Darenbrook, has great eyes, almost corn­flower blue. Another frame shows a young, fair-haired man and a brunette woman—her son, Henry, and a girlfriend? Wife? Another picture shows a little boy, maybe four years old. Clearly Henry, for in this photo he looks a lot like his mother. Beside it stands a picture of Cassy and Jackson on a sailboat somewhere, looking tanned and happy. And there is a group picture of DBS personalities, for I recognize the network's an­chorwoman, Alexandra Waring, and talk-show host Jessica Wright. And Alicia Washington and Langley Peterson, CEO. Who the others are I have no idea. There are a ton of other pic­tures on the far wall of all kinds of people doing all kinds of things on the sets, in the newsroom, receiving awards at com­pany picnics.

  "Sally!" a voice says from behind me, as if I am some sort of long-lost friend who has unexpectedly turned up.

  I turn around.

  "At last." Cassy Cochran walks toward me with her hand out.

  Although I've seen her retouched press photos, I am still taken back by this woman's good looks. She is older than her pictures let on there are a lot of lines in her face, though I sus­pect she may have had a good eye—and/ or face-lift—and even her handshake is graceful, comfortable, confident and welcom­ing.

  "It's wonderful to meet you," I say truthfully.

  I like her already. What can I say? From everything I've read, my conversations on the phone with her, and now meeting her in person, I simply like her. Of course, the journalist in me is screaming not to arrive at this decision because this is exactly what my subject no doubt has in mind—to disarm me from the first so I will take her side when it comes to the conflicting sto­ries I will no doubt hear. For there are always conflicting stories about successful people.

  Chi Chi comes back in with water for both of us and we settle down, me on the couch, Cassy in the chair across from me, the tape recorder that I've tested on the coffee table in the middle. She is wearing an elegant, cool-looking pale gray suit, matching heels, a darker gray silk blouse, a strand of pearls and matching earrings. She has several bands of diamonds on her wedding finger. She crosses her legs and sits back in the chair, holding her glass of water. "So, where do we begin?"

  "With you telling me a little about yourself," I say.

  She smiles, looks at her watch and then back at me. "I thought maybe you should tell me a bit about you."

  In the emotionally weakened condition that I am as the new Sally, the two-timing one, I find myself somewhat at a loss.

  "I was curious why you left Los Angeles," Cassy says. "From what I hear, you had started a very promising career at Boule­vard."

  "Oh, that. Well, my mother was ill and I came back for just a little while and then I was, uh, offered a job at our paper."

  She frowns slightly.

  "I'm sorry?" I say.

  "That doesn't make any sense. Why didn't you go back? Or come to New York?"

  I feel the anger starting to rise because I know what she is do­ing. She is reminding me what it feels like to have my life scru­tinized and then be cornered when what I say fails to make nar­rative sense. It is a warning shot.

  "I didn't intend on staying in Castleford as long as I have," I finally manage to say. "And so now I am just starting to move on, as it were."

  She is studying me. She smiles then. "Ah, I sense a home­town romance."

  It happens before I know it. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, maybe it's the guilt I feel about Doug, maybe it's the fact that I am nervous. Whatever it is, tears spring to my eyes and I am forced to look away, covering them with my hand. I swallow, frantically trying to regain control.

  Suddenly there is a light touch on my arm. Cassy Cochran is squatting down next to me. "I'm sorry, Sally. Can I get you any­thing?"

  "No," I say abruptly, shaking my head. "I'm fine. I'm afraid I'm just not feeling terribly well today and I didn't want to can­cel."

  She reaches for my glass of water on the coffee table and hands it to me. Then she rises to retrieve a box of tissues from her desk.

  "Thank you." In a moment, I am back in control. Perhaps more in control than in the past two days because I am so ut­terly embarrassed that the feeling overwhelms everything else. "I don't know what to say," I begin.

  "Say nothing," she insists, sitting back in her chair. "We should have done as you suggested, I should tell you a little about me." She sits back in her chair and crosses her legs again. "You know the basics, I assume, my birth date and schools and things."

  "Yes," I say, reaching for my pen and pad. The recorder is on, but I always feel more comfortable taking notes. It's easier to ar­rive at follow-up questions.

  "So you know I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa," she says. "What you may not know is that my father had a drinking problem that caused him to float from job to job, and my mother was a secretary, an excellent one, and she essentially supported us. For all of his problems, I adored my father. He was wonderful. Of course I didn't see him much when he was drinking, because my mother would put him out. Anyway, he died when I was eleven.

  “My mother and I, I'm afraid, have never gotten along very well—but I am her only child, so obvi­ously we still have a great deal of contact. Anyway, we didn't have much money when I was growing up, but mother saw to it that I never missed out on anything. She really is a hero. I got to go to dances in pretty dresses. I got to be a cheerleader and I was encouraged by her to win scholarship money for college. And through a connection of her boss, I was able to go to North­western, which was not an inexpensive school."

  So the mystery of her father is cleared up right away. I was right, there was a story there; he drank. She is throwing that right out there and I cannot help but wonder if she's doing so because after my little mini-breakdown she thinks I'm a terribly sensitive—and neurotic—soul who will surely understand the delicacy of it all.

  "I understand you went to UCLA," she says.

  I nod and look up from my notes. "I know what you mean about your mother. My father died when I was nine. And like your mother, she supported us and really pushed me."

  "It's a whole different generation, isn't it?" Cassy asks me. "Of course your mother is probably my age," she hastily adds.

  "No," I smile, "she's older. Not much, but she's older."

  "I suppose I should thank you," she laughs. "Did your mother go to college?"

  I nod. "Yes. University of Rhode Island."

  "My mother didn't," Cassy says. "I've tried to get her to go back—because she always wanted to." Her eyes drift away. "I don't know why, but she just doesn't seem to want to do any­thing like that."

  "Perhaps she's not
much of a people person," I suggest.

  Cassy turns back toward me. "That's exactly right," she says softly.

  As Cassy resumes talking, I realize she is sharing this infor­mation about her father and mother because it is key to who she is today. She intimates that as a young person she may have de­veloped an unhealthy tendency in relationships that was not very productive.

  She is politely managing to convey that her parents screwed her up, big-time, setting her up for future" dif­ficult" relationships. She married young, to a man who would ultimately develop a terrible drinking problem like her father, and she eventually got sick and tired of reacting to his behavior and decided to change hers. She talks of the son she had with Michael Cochran, what a good boy he was and how, finally, years later her dream came true, her husband got sober. The only problem was that after two years of sobriety and twenty years of marriage, he left her.

  I am somewhat stunned at this revelation, but manage to hide it. I merely continue to listen, acutely conscious that the tape recorder is running smoothly. In a matter of minutes, Cassy Cochran has managed to take a run-of-the-mill puff piece and, with a thumbnail sketch of her life, transform it into a por­trait of a fiercely bright, beautiful, impoverished young woman who has spent her entire life trying to get over the death of her father and the constant criticism of a very bitter mother.

  "Do you think your mother's bitterness," I finally venture to say, "stemmed only from difficulties in her married life?"

  "Lord, no!" Cassy nearly cries. "Mother was born unhappy. My uncle used to talk about my grandfather building her a tree house in hopes she'd move out." We laugh, but then she looks· vaguely horrified. "Oh, Sally, this isn't good. Please, you cannot—"

  I've raised a hand. "No. Don't worry. I'm not interested in causing your mother any more grief. It's just that I find it inter­esting she was so unhappy when, it appears, she remained in the situation with your father by choice."

  "Well if she hadn't, who could she blame all of her troubles on?" Cassy clasps a hand over her mouth. "Oh, Sally." She drops her hand. "Really, this is a minefield. And it is boring, be­lieve me, the same old thing, over and over."

  I smiled. Okay, off the hook for now. "All right. So why don't you tell me about meeting Jackson."

  "And then I met Jackson!" she begins, a light coming into her eyes.

  There is a soft knock on the door and Chi Chi's head pops in. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "but Alexandra and Will say there's an emergency. Can you come out?"

  "Tell them to come in."

  In a moment the DBS anchorwoman comes striding in and I am very surprised at how slight she is. Tall but very thin. The trademark blue-gray eyes are even more vivid in real life (there is a Halloween mask of her that has been selling well the last two seasons), and her thick black-brown shoulder-length hair shines with good health. Unlike her TV persona, however, she is wearing a DBS News T-shirt, tucked into blue jeans and se­cured with a belt whose buckle, if I am not mistaken, is in the shape of the state of Kansas. Behind her is an athletic-looking man with rumpled brown hair, who is shuffling through a sheaf of papers on his clipboard.

  Alexandra Waring looks at me. "Expectations, right?"

  I nod. "Yes." The anchorwoman turns to Cassy as much as to say, Get rid of her.

  I stand up. "I'll wait outside until you're through."

  "No," Cassy says. "Sit down." To Alexandra she says, "Go ahead." When the anchorwoman doesn't say anything, Cassy says, "The piece is not coming out for six months, for heaven's sake. Go ahead."

  Waring shakes her head.

  Cassy looks to the man. "Will?"

  He looks up from the clipboard where he has been making notes. "She's right. This is not something—“

  I save everybody some time and simply get up and walk over to the door. "I'll be outside." I close the door behind me. "Hi," I say to Chi Chi.

  "Always a crisis," Chi Chi says sympathetically.

  "That's what makes it the news department," I say diplomat­ically, waltzing over to a chair.

  "Can I get you something?"

  "No, thank you." And in that moment I remember that my tape recorder's in there, still running. I suddenly feel a little cocky. Don't want me to know what you're talking about, eh? I sit there for quite a while, almost forty minutes. Then Alexandra Waring comes out, followed by the man named Will. She stops in front of me. "I apologize for being rude, but you're in news, so you understand." She breaks into a smile and it transforms her face. She is suddenly much softer, approachable. "At least I hope you understand."

  Alexandra Waring is one of the more interesting people in TV News. Rumors about her abound. Some say that, at thirty­-six, she's unmarried because she's gay; some say she's unmar­ried because she doesn't have the time or inclination to be mar­ried; some say a widely publicized engagement a while ago to a TV producer devastated her.

  Given her track record in TV news and her achievements during the last six years, I am not convinced this woman could have enough emotional energy left to be sexual in any capacity, but that's just me. Looking at her today I don't have any sense of what she might be. Strike that. I get the sense she is hetero­sexual, but I could be confusing class with sexuality. I've done it before. Exquisitely attractive women can be gay, they do not have to wear work boots. There are big ham-fisted "yous and me" kind of guys that are gay. There are terribly masculine women who are straight, and perfectly groomed, dapper men with a slight sway in their step who are straight, too. In other words, I have been so wrong so many times about so many people that I know better than to decide anything without ac­tually consulting the person in question.

  My sense, though, is that she is not likely gay. She is strong, intense, willful, but I don't sense the other. But then, what do I know?

  "Anyway," she says to me, holding out her hand, "I'm Al­exandra."

  We shake hands. "It's an honor to meet you. Sally Harring­ton."

  She turns. "And this is our executive producer, Will Raf­ferty." We say hi and shake hands, but from his expression I can tell he is anxious to get back to whatever it is they're working on.

  "Well, we've gotta go," the anchorwoman says. "But I'll see you soon, right?" She is backing out of the reception area. "Cassy said you want to talk to me."

  "Yes."

  "Oh!" she says, remembering something. She comes back. "I thought you might like to know—they've found the murder weapon in Castleford. It's a handgun that was reported stolen in a house burglary in Southampton, Long Island, last spring."

  My mouth has dropped open. "How...?" She is backing away again. "Smells like an organized-crime hit to me." And with that, she is gone.

  I hear someone laughing. I turn around to see Cassy leaning against the door frame of her office, arms crossed over her chest. "We don't mess around. We check up on our interview­ers."

  "But how did she find out about the murder weapon?" I say.

  "I've learned not to ask," Cassy says, waving me back into her office. On the way in she hands me my tape recorder, which is turned off.

  We resume our places and I set the recorder back up on the table and Cassy starts talking about her philosophy of life, how one can change one's thinking and live life differently at any point, and how people, like her, have to. "I used to think the goal in life was to have everything stay the same," she says. "I've learned the hard way that life is about change. Not the es­sential goodness in us, that should be a constant, but our rela­tionships, our work, our goals should always be in a state of change, be a work in progress—“ She shrugs "Otherwise we're dying, aren't we?" She looks at her watch. "Uh-oh. Sally, I'm sorry, but—"

  “No, it's okay," I say quickly, reaching to turn off the re­corder. "But we're still on for tomorrow, aren't we?"

  "At two," Chi Chi says from the door that I did not hear open. "Cassy, Mr. Vandersall is here for his three o'clock ap­pointment."

  "So you'll be here at two tomorrow?" Cassy asks me, rising from her chair.r />
  I hurry to get my stuff together. "Yes. That will be great. Thank you so much for making time today." I jam everything into my briefcase and walk with her to the door, where she turns to face me.

  "Eat a good dinner tonight," she advises, "and get some rest."

  I look at her.

  "You said you weren't feeling well," she reminds me.

  "Oh. Right." I had forgotten. The fear and guilt kicks in again. She turns her head slightly, in question.

  "It's a romance thing," I hear myself explain.

  "We've all been there," she says kindly. She gives me a slight pat on the back that I know means"good luck."

  I think I'm going to need it.

  17

  I try to call Joe Bix right there from the reception area outside Cassy's office to find out if he knows the police have found the murder weapon in the Meyers murder. Not only do I not get a dial tone on my cell phone, but there is horrible high-pitched screeching sound that threatens to pop my eardrum.

  "You're welcome to use the phone on the table," Chi Chi says. "I'm afraid no electronic signals can come in or go out of the complex without being encoded or decoded through our satellite band."

  "Through your what?"

  She smiles. "West End is one of the largest repositories of electronic information in the world. We have to take precau­tions against contamination."

  I squint at Chi Chi slightly. "So you're saying it has nothing to do with security? After the Jessica Wright kidnapping?"

  Chi Chi gives her head a little shake. "I wouldn't go there."

  I sit down on the couch and scoot over toward the phone. "It's long distance," I warn.

  "Dial two first," she tells me, nonplussed.

  "Usually it's nine or eight."

  "It's not the usual kind of phone line," she informs me. "Let me know when you're through and I'll have security call you a cab."