He didn’t wait for an answer. He glanced over at Charles. “We need to get Jessie to speak to us as soon as she’s awake.”
“She was with Stephen when I left,” Charlie offered, still amazed and shocked - and somewhat amused - by Jonathon’s announcement. “Maybe she said something to him.”
Matt looked back at Zach, who in his current state of bewilderment could hardly put two thoughts together. But he tried. “He was a mess, Matt. Frantic. Terrified. He insisted he didn’t know anything, about who it might be or anything like that…” He shivered, looking around the table, and all of a sudden everyone was uncomfortable. It could have been any of them. Any of them could have attacked Jessie.
“And the other thing is, he didn’t have any marks on him. No scratches or bruises…” he let that thought trail away as he didn’t like the images it conveyed. “Matt. Charles.” He stared at Charlie, and then glanced over at Dee. “We will all know the truth in a few days. But until then, we need to take Josh at his word. Innocent until proven guilty. He was really scared,” he added. “For Jessie.”
Charles glowered at him. Mr. Keating could be an intimidating man. Zach tried to remain confident, but he really just wanted to go see his wife and little kids. He shrank against the older man’s glare.
“Why did she put Josh in jail, then?”
Charlie had been pondering this. He knew Jessie better than any of them. He cleared his throat and they all looked at him.
“Because,” he said. “She loves Josh enough to hurt him this way. To ruin his career, maybe to destroy his name forever. If this is true, if Josh is clean and there’s some other asshole out there, then the rape kit will not point to Josh’s DNA. She knows that. She knows they’ll let Josh go once they find that out. But in the meantime…someone has a bone to pick with Jessie. And maybe with Josh too. Remember the after party…she was all over Josh.” He grimaced as his gut bit back at him, as he remembered the despondency he’d felt during that hour when his ex-fiancée had snuggled drunkenly up to Josh. “Hell, I was pretty pissed at the two of them last night, too.”
Silence descended on the small group as they considered the possibility. Shit, they’d all just assumed Josh was the guilty party. Dee was mortified at her behavior, given the thought that Josh was in fact possibly innocent.
Charlie added, “If Josh is clean, then the only reason I can figure for Jessie blaming Josh when she knows for certain we’ll all find out soon that he’s innocent, is to keep him safe. He’s in isolation in the prison, right Zach?”
“Yeah,” Zach responded carefully. He liked where this conversation was going. But he-and Josh-were still on thin ice. “They’re keeping him away from the rest of the prison population for his own safety. Apparently there are a lot of Jessie Wheeler fans in jail this weekend.”
Carlotta spoke quietly from the corner. This was something she never did, spoke out of turn; after all, she was only the hired help. Her voice was small and tentative, but she loved the Keatings. Yes, the missus could be an old crank, but she was generally kind to Carlotta, and Jessie adored her. And Carlotta’s boss was obviously in a lot of turmoil over this tragedy.
“Missus Keating,” she said. “That might explain why Jessie doesn’t want to talk to you right now.” She shrugged, her confidence boosted by the fact that they’d all turned to look at her. They were listening. “She knows you never really accepted Josh, and that you would all blame him without question. That also explains why she only wants Steve. He’s Josh’s best friend. He’s the closest thing she has to the man she loves.”
There. She’d said it. Carlotta was a woman who understood love. Raising herself off the chaise on shaking arms, her eyes misty, Dee sidled drunkenly over to her maid. Carlotta backed off, suddenly afraid she’d overstepped her boundaries, that she’d be slapped and maybe fired.
But instead Dee grabbed her and hugged her fondly. “Carlotta, my angel,” she said. “That’s why I love having you around. Because you have the wisest - and may I add kindest - heart of anyone I know.”
“Jessie has the kindest heart,” Carlotta said matter-of-factly, with determination and conviction.
And on that note, before they left her on the pool deck to clean up the barely eaten hummus and the drinks, the group agreed that this latest development - which may not even be true - must remain a secret between them if they ever hoped to catch the real madman. Jessie’s tormentor might go deep underground if he knew they thought that Josh was innocent and that they were seeking him instead. Matt would have to pull strings with the cops, too, to ensure that the results of the rape kit, if it came out in Josh’s favor, remained confidential.
As they climbed into their assorted vehicles and pointed their headlights towards the hospital in the dimming evening light, and Zach headed to Kayla’s, they all prayed hope against hope that the dear sweet maid was right, and that their Jessie knew what she was doing, and that she would someday forgive them for their blind stupidity and quickness to judge.
When Zach got to Kayla’s, he learned that she had gone to the hospital with Paul. He gathered his wife - his best friend - in his arms and she held him while his body shook.
It had been a helluva day.
***
Chapter Nineteen
Not surprisingly, by evening a large crowd had gathered in the waiting area of Jessie’s ward. The security team had filtered through the names to ensure fans didn’t sneak in but even so, when the Keatings returned around eight p.m., it was a full house. Most of the Drifters crew was sitting on the floor; two burly grips gave up their seats to the formidable Deirdre and Charles. Everyone had been patted down for weapons. After Zach’s earlier visit to La Casa, Matt had made the decision that no one was above suspicion.
The Vancouver entertainment biz patriarch and matriarch had tried to get in to see Jessie but she was asleep and, in the interest of breaking down barriers and being social, they chose to sit in the waiting room and chat quietly with Jessie’s old friends. Maybe they would find out more about Jessie’s relationship with Josh. Certainly they would discern whether the people he considered his friends believed in the possibility that he had - or hadn’t - committed this horrific deed. Steve was still in with Jessie. Well, they would talk to him later.
When he had to take a leak so badly he kept jiggling, Steve finally got up from Jessie’s side. He and the pony-tailed nurse raised the bar again to ensure Jessie didn’t slip off the bed although he doubted that would be possible, given her deeply medicated sleep. He used the private bathroom and then watched Jessie sleep for another minute before forcing himself to turn and walk away.
Meandering from the semi-dark room out into the brightly lit hallway, blinking under the blazing glow of the hospital’s white lights, Steve saw a number of people settled here, there and everywhere - a fiercely loyal army of supporters - Charles, Dee, Matt, Priya, Charlie, Jack and Lydia, Jonathon, dancers, and many of their friends from Drifters. Kayla and Paul were settled against a wall, sitting slightly apart from the others. Yawning, Steve acknowledged their presence by waving a sleepy hand towards the general group, and then he strolled definitively to the elevator and out the door towards home and Sophie. He needed a little normalcy on this strange day.
Steve was already desperately missing his good friend.
Little by little, the caring friends overflowing the hallway got up and said their good-byes. The crowd got smaller and Dee took up a second chair, then lay down and placed her head on her husband’s lap.
Kayla got up for a stretch and decided she needed a walk. Paul, ever the observer, stayed and eavesdropped on people’s conversations. As a lawyer and someone who genuinely had come to like Josh, he was devastated that even those people who worked with Josh for two seasons were condemning him without proof. Mob mentality had taken over. There was no doubt someone had to pay for this crime. But should that person be Josh?
The fluorescent lights were a harsh reminder of where she was as Kayla managed to put one
foot in front of the other all the way down the long hall. At the end, near the entrance to an intimate chapel with a mystical stained glass window, she dropped some coins in a vending machine and selected a bag of rippled chips that she and Paul could share. Her belly was growling and she remembered that they hadn’t eaten. As she turned to wander back up the hall, Kayla marveled at the nurses with their normal careers out of the limelight. Engaged in curious little huddles, blushing nervously around Charlie and the Drifters cast, some of the nurses seemed somewhat awed at the unusual company on their ward that day. As much as they may have been curious about, or perhaps even envied, this group of celebrity entertainers, though, the mirror went both ways. Why do people always think the grass is greener on the other side, Kayla thought. Look where it got Josh and Jessie. One was in jail and the other was lying broken and damaged in a hospital bed. But then again domestic violence was a part of real life, too, unfortunately. It’s just that these two had to share their dirty laundry so publicly with the whole world under another type of harsh lights, like those on television cameras and under the scrutiny of reporters and paparazzi looking for big paychecks.
Kayla stopped outside Jessie’s door and, nervously, pulled her sweater down over her fingers, the chip bag rustling as she moved. She glanced over towards Charles and Dee. Good, they were dozing. She looked up at Dan, who was regarding her silently in his role as resident watchman next to a uniformed police officer. She noted that Matt was observing her from the waiting room. Geez, did these guys ever take a break? No, she answered herself with a little spasm. Jessie was more than a job to them. She was like a heartbeat that everyone else circulated around, including Kayla herself. A magnet. The singer attracted people the way orange-red flames drew curious admirers who liked to watch their stirring splendor and mystery. Only in her case it seemed Jessie, at the center, wasn’t immune to the heat. At any rate, she’d certainly been badly burned.
From the doorway, watching her sleeping friend, Josh’s sister felt absolutely crushed, as pummeled as Jessie herself in the small bed. Childishly, wonderingly, Kayla observed the maze of IV tubes and blood pressure monitors and then she forced her eyes to look down at the cast on Jessie’s arm. Then, the object of her detached observation moved. Startled, Kayla noticed that she herself was also the object of careful surveillance, albeit a sleepy, drugged-up one. Jessie raised her right arm and motioned the blonde dancer inside. Dan stepped warily aside after patting Kayla down again just to be doubly sure she didn’t carry any concealed weapons. It was no secret that she was Josh’s sister. He had watched her carefully all day. Sure, she was upset and teary-eyed, but then again these were all actors, this group. He wasn’t taking any chances.
Kayla stepped hesitantly to the end of Jessie’s bed, where the singer could watch her without having to shift her position. The dancer raised her head proudly. She would not allow herself to cry in front of Jessie.
“Kayla,” Jessie began, but then Kayla raised her arm and stopped her short.
“It’s okay,” she said, staring over Jessie’s head at the window, so as to avoid having to make eye contact. The tears were not far away. She didn’t know how much control she really had after this long day. “I grew up with him. He is definitely capable of losing his temper. Especially after he was fifteen or so…he was always coming home with a black eye. It got to the point where our mom didn’t bother bringing him to the ER unless he needed at least twelve stitches.”
Jessie exhaled slowly. The pain in her body was excruciating. She was trying to avoid over-using the morphine pump the doctor provided. With the past summer’s use of weed and alcohol, her medical staff was cautious as to the amount of morphine she was permitted, and had asked her to use discretion. They were monitoring her closely. She refrained from pumping, although her finger was on the button.
It pained her even more, though, to see her good friend and dancer standing there with big Dan standing guard over her, as if Kayla was capable of hurting her any more than Josh could. She saw a tear sneak out of the corner of Kayla’s eye as the girl shifted and finally met Jessie’s own tired eyes. So much pain for so many people. Fucking Deuce the fuck McCall.
“Honey,” Jessie said, and she reached her right hand out to Kayla, who paused but then moved closer to Jessie and accepted her touch. She felt Jessie squeeze softly. “This will all be over soon. I promise you.”
Kayla threw up her hands, forgetting that she had opened the bag of chips during the walk up the hall. A few flew out and landed on the floor. She would accidentally squish them later when she left, and the nurse would wonder what on earth had been spilled in this girl’s room.
“What will be over soon, Jess? Josh’s career? His life? He’s already had death threats against him. People want to kill him. Hell, I think I want to kill him!” She put a thumb and forefinger up to the corners of her eyes and pushed hard. Anything to keep her emotions under control.
“No, look, Kayla. I won’t let anything happen to him. Matt and Charles will watch him, I swear.”
As that sank in, Kayla looked down at Jessie incredulously. Suspiciously. “And why, pray tell, would you want him protected, Jessie? Aren’t you angry? Look what he’s done to you!”
Fighting the pain and the urge to sleep, but wanting to put Kayla’s mind at ease because Kayla was Josh’s sister and she loved him as much as Jessie did, Jessie spoke as firmly as she could manage. “It’s not what you think, Kayla. It’s not. You’ll see. Just give it some time, okay?”
Flustered, Kayla paused before she nodded. She cocked her head. “Is that somehow supposed to make me feel better?”
But Jessie’s eyes were closed. Kayla pulled her friend’s hand up and kissed the bruised knuckles, then gently laid her arm back down on the sheets. She turned to go, and a chip crackled underneath her foot. From the bed she heard her name, and she twisted around again.
“Kayla? Go see him. Please?”
The chip bag dropped to Kayla’s side. “I don’t know, Jessie.”
“Please?” The voice was tiny and the eyes still closed. “Please.”
After a moment, through a pain and drug induced midnight-purple haze, Jessie heard a response. “Okay,” Kayla answered, her voice low-pitched and tender.
Jessie depressed the pump and a small allotment of morphine sent her over the edge into the blissful world of sleep.
Dan stepped aside, his big blonde bulk intimidating Kayla so that she sidestepped him as she left the room. His eyes followed her all the way to where she pulled Paul up by the wrist, and haunted the young couple as they walked hand in hand down the hall to the elevator. Kayla felt his stare even as she stepped inside; wow, he was kinda creepy. She shivered, and then the doors slid shut with a whoosh and she and Paul were momentarily free, until they exited a few floors below, and were the unwelcome subjects of a horde of flashes and hollers.
One of Matt’s team, a tall serious sable-skinned man with a narrow chiseled chin, attractive high cheekbones, and a black tight fitting leather aviator jacket, escorted them to Paul’s Honda CRV, and they slid inside, shaken. As it was occasionally wont to, life had changed in an instant.
Yup. She could kill Josh, all right. He wasn’t the brother she thought he was. In fact, Kayla felt she didn’t know him at all. She laid her head back against the headrest and let Paul navigate the streets of Vancouver while she tried to sort out the tangled mess in her head and heart.
***
The frenetic streets of historic Charleston were dusty and hot the next day. The costumed drivers of the Confederate Carriage tours constantly wiped sweat off their brows and wished for cooler October days in which to tell their intriguing exotic tales of a country that had, not so long ago, turned on itself. Their horses plodded over cobblestone streets and through trees dripping with Spanish moss. The tourists who nervously sat underneath the trees eyeing them for wayward snakes were so distracted by the oppressive heat that they only heard about half of each interpretive story.
; Deuce sat in his office at the bottom of Broad Street above one such horse drawn buggy and marveled that the city allowed the tour companies free rein in the streets. There were so many tours on the go all day long that each driver had to stop in front of a booth just off Anson Street and draw a bingo ball to see which route to take. He guffawed at the obvious discomfort of the passengers in the sweltering heat; then he sat back and sucked on a draught beer while cool air conditioning offered sweet relief. A walk in that overheated inferno had just about done him in, although it provided the benefit of time to think. Deuce wanted to clear his head and coordinate his next move. He was also tired of the constant parade of staff at his door. All day long, there they were, anxious and upset because his businesses were left to their competent (and sometimes incompetent) charge all summer, while he attended to his own devices. They had questions that only McCall himself had the answers to. But then again, Deuce was the keeper of many secrets that season. He laughed again, a deep-throated chortle that was clearly heard by Cindy in the hall outside. She was painting her nails and had to re-do one. Depending on his mood, she could be jumpy when her boss was around, although usually she just chewed her gum and ignored him.
Deuce pondered his good and bad fortune. Stupid Josh, obviously still love-struck, had parked his truck in the lot of Jessie’s building the night Deuce had wreaked a severe punishment on her. Score one for Deuce. Josh was thrown in jail. Minus one on the scoreboard. But then again, he’d be out soon. Deuce was certain the medical and law enforcement staff would have used a rape kit on Jessie. Josh would be freed when the results came in unless for some strange reason Jessie would insist she had sex with someone else and then, perhaps, it was Josh that had beat her, perhaps as punishment. But he doubted Jessie would go that far in punishing Josh. He knew she had her lover boy thrown in jail because of Deuce’s own venomous threats to kill her ex. She wanted Josh safe. Minus another point. Jessie still loved the boy. Deuce growled. Normally not cowed by her boss, Cindy shrank in her seat.
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