Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "And my associate," the black detective said, nodding to a big white guy in the chair across from him who had taken out a pen and pad, "Detective Richard O'Neal."

  "How do you do?" Jessica said mechanically.

  "As you know, Ms. Wright, your secretary, Bea Blakely, was found here at West End last night."

  Jessica felt a blanket of dread and fear descending on her, and the gnawings of pent-up grief. "How was she killed?"

  "I'm afraid we can't discuss the specifics right now."

  Jessica stared at him. Finally she said, "Could it have been an accident?"

  The detective shook his head. "No."

  "Wonderful," Jessica muttered. "A murderer's running around here and you can't discuss it." She glared at him. "How are we supposed to help if we don't even know what happened?"

  Cassy and the detective exchanged looks. "Let me get you some water, Jessica," Cassy said, rising from her chair.

  "Thank you, that won't be necessary," Jessica said sharply, prompting Cassy to sit down again. "Okay, Detective, you've got me here, you won't tell me anything except that someone murdered my secretary. So what do you want to know?"

  "Do you know why your secretary was here last night?"

  "Oh, God," Jessica said, crashing in an instant and dropping her face into her hands. "Poor Bea."

  "It's possible she could have been trying to get a jump on this week's shows," Cassy said.

  "So it was not unusual for her to be here on a weekend."

  "It wasn't usual," Jessica said, dropping her hands and sniffing. She took a Kleenex from Alexandra. "As a matter of fact, I made a point of telling her not to do any work this weekend." She blew her nose. "I wish you'd tell me how she was killed."

  "It's not for public knowledge at this time," Detective Hepplewhite said, glancing at Alexandra.

  Jessica followed his eyes. "Oh for God's sake, you aren't reporting this, are you?" Jessica nearly shrieked at the anchorwoman.

  "Not who or how the murder occurred," Cassy said quickly. "But of course DBS News has to report the incident, Jessica, you know that."

  "That's sick," Jessica said. "She worked here. You knew her."

  "We have an obligation to report the news as it happens," Alexandra said quietly.

  Jessica stared at her and then turned to the detective. "Could we please continue this conversation in private, please?"

  "Jessica," Alexandra protested, "you don't think I'd—"

  "I'm not about to talk about Bea in front of the press, that's for damn sure!" Jessica told her. "She wasn't here long, but I don't want her corpse winning anybody a raise around here."

  "Jessica!" This was from Cassy.

  "It's okay," Alexandra said, getting up to leave. "I know how she feels."

  "Why don't you use your vultures downstairs to find the murderer?" Jessica wanted to know.

  "I will," Alexandra told her, leaving the office and closing the door perhaps a degree or two harder than was required.

  Jessica turned her eyes on Cassy then, as though she might throw her out, too.

  "So Miss Blakely had a set of keys to your office," Detective Hepplewhite continued.

  "Yes, of course she did."

  "Did she have keys to your apartment?" he asked next.

  "No."

  "Have you ever kept keys to your apartment here at West End?" he asked next. "In your office, perhaps?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Jessica," Cassy said.

  " All right. Yes, I keep a set of keys to my apartment hidden in my desk."

  "So Miss Blakely had access to them."

  "Yes."

  "To your knowledge, has she ever been in your apartment?"

  "Sure. At least twice, maybe three times. We did some tapings there and she came over with the crew. And then another time, she came for dinner, with the rest of my staff."

  The cop nodded. "Good. Now, what can you tell me about Bea? Miss Blakely, rather."

  "I've already given them her personnel file, Jessica," Cassy said."And I called Bea's family myself."

  "Oh, God, those poor people," Jessica said, tears welling up. "Geez, their daughter..."

  The detective politely waited for Jessica to pull herself together.

  "Bea was not an easy person to know," Jessica finally said. "She was very young, green, but a good secretary. Very good on the phone, with messages, typing, organizing me."

  "What about friends?"

  Jessica shook her head. "She never talked about her personal life."

  "Boyfriends?”

  "She never said anything," Jessica said. "But it's not as if I encouraged her to talk about her personal life. Frankly, until someone's here for six months, I try not to invest too much time emotionally in getting to know them. It's age, I guess. So many of the younger people come and go so fast, you get kind of jaded."

  "What about time off? Did she ever say how she spent it?"

  "She was into astrology, I know," Jessica said. "She did my chart once."

  "Did you trust her?"

  Jessica shrugged. "No reason not to. But then again, I had no particular reason to have to. As I said, she hadn't been here very long."

  "Miss Wright, did it ever occur to you that Miss Blakely might have been supplying information to the tabloids about you?"

  Jessica was dumbfounded. "No. It didn't."

  "There have been some stories recently," Cassy said.

  "So we hear," the cop said.

  "You think Bea was feeding information to the tabloids?"

  "Selling information," the detective corrected her. "And we don't think, Miss Wright, we know without a doubt that she was."

  Jessica walked out of Cassy's office shell-shocked. Will was waiting outside, and jumped up when the door opened. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah," she said vaguely. Automatically she looked for Slim and Wendy and felt better when she saw them.

  "Nobody's going to get near you, Miss Wright," Slim promised.

  "Jessica," Will said, "please don't be angry about DBS breaking the news about Bea."

  She looked at him, not fully registering what he had said, which he mistook for anger.

  "Alexandra had to call it into the newsroom," Will continued. "She didn't give any name or details, but she had to call it in, Jessica. NBC already had it off the police scanner."

  "I'm not mad," she said weakly. She looked at Will. "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

  "We'll go home, Jess."

  "But I don't want to go to my house," Jessica said, starting to cry. "I'm scared to go there."

  "Will's taking her to my place as we speak," Alexandra told Cassy a little while later. "Wendy's with them and Slim's nearby."

  "Good," Cassy said. "I frankly don't know where else to put her at the moment."

  "Where's Dirk?" Alexandra asked. "What's his take on this?"

  "He's trying to bring the FBI in, which of course has already ticked off the NYPD." Cassy slid down heavily to her chair behind her desk and rubbed her eyes. "I just flew up from Hilleanderville," she said, referring to her husband's hometown in Georgia. "Jackson's still there. His brother's ill. He'll come up as soon as he can."

  "Cassy," Alexandra said, drawing a chair to Cassy's desk, "tell me what you know."

  "No can do, sorry. I gave my word. No press statements."

  "Cassy—" Alexandra waited for the network president to meet her eyes. "I swear I won't use any of it. Not until you tell me I can."

  "And if I don't believe you?"

  The question hung in the air a moment.

  "If you don't believe in me, Cassy, frankly I don't know who you can."

  Cassy nodded, biting her lower lip. "She was electrocuted over the telephone in property room three."

  Alexandra closed her eyes.

  "How she got in there or why she was there, we don't know. But we do know that someone diverted over a thousand volts from a main power cable into that phone line to kill her instantly."r />
  "At least that's something," Alexandra said, reopening her eyes. "She didn't know it was going to happen and she didn't suffer."

  Cassy looked miserable. "The body was horrible, Alexandra. I didn't even know it was Bea at first, she was so badly burnt."

  "I'm sorry."

  "So am I." Cassy shoved a photocopy across her desk. "And look at this. They found it upstairs in Jessica's office."

  Alexandra picked up the sheet of paper.

  Dearest Jessica,

  She won't hurt you anymore. I'll see that no one else does, either.

  All my love, Leopold

  9

  The first black limousine to turn into the church parking lot in Huntington, Long Island, carried Jessica Wright, Denny Ladler, Alicia Washington, Langley Peterson, his wife, Belinda Darenbrook Peterson, and Jessica's bodyguard, Wendy Mitchell. The second limousine carried Cassy Cochran, her husband, Jackson Darenbrook, Alexandra Waring and Will Rafferty. The next six limos carried the rest of the production staff and crew for "The Jessica Wright Show."

  When Jessica emerged from her limo she felt very shaky. She hadn't known Bea at all well, but she did know that the twenty-three-year-old woman should not be dead, and that she was dead only because Jessica had hired her.

  DBS was taking care of everything on behalf of Bea's parents. The Blakelys had divorced several years ago, Bea's mother moving to Florida and her father to Los Angeles, and the funeral was being held here in Huntington because it was where Bea had spent her early childhood—the happy years, as her mother called them—and because the grandmother Bea had been close to was buried in a cemetery here.

  Bea's mother had been Jewish, but later converted to some sort of New Age discipline, and her father was a lapsed Catholic, and so the parents had compromised and chosen a Congregational church that, Mrs. Blakely said, would take anybody.

  Jessica led the way up the stairs into the church. When a reporter shoved forward to ask, "Jessica, do you blame yourself for Bea Blakely's murder?"

  Jessica only looked at him, tears springing to her eyes. "No," she finally whispered. And she pushed past him into the church.

  Back several yards, just outside her limousine, Cassy was saying a forceful, "No," to Alexandra.

  "But—" the anchorwoman started.

  "No," Cassy repeated. "Will cannot take a leave, you cannot—"

  "Fine, I'll finance it myself," Alexandra declared.

  "Alexandra," Jackson Darenbrook urged, "just let her finish, will you?"

  "I've already made a deal with the NYPD and the feds," Cassy said under her breath, looking around to make sure no one could hear. She looked at Alexandra. "The deal is, you work with them—and we get the scoop, hands down. They owe me, and they'll do it. All right?"

  The church was very nearly empty. The organ was playing softly. The gleaming coffin was on the altar, closed, with a blanket of roses over it. Jessica walked down the aisle and took a seat in a pew on the left, in the fifth row, so she would not be confused with family, but would be close enough to let others know that everyone around her had known Bea. She was joined by Denny, Alicia, Langley and Belinda. Wendy sat directly behind her and Slim stood in the very back of the church. Cassy led the way into the pew directly across the aisle, with Jackson, Alexandra and Will. The rest of the DBS employees scattered behind them on either side.

  At noon, a door to the side of the altar opened and a woman was led out, leaning heavily on the arm of a solemn-faced man. The woman was older, in her sixties perhaps, and she appeared slightly unsteady on her feet. She looked at Jessica and nodded slightly, and then was seated in the first row, the man easing down beside her.

  Bea's mother.

  An older man, in his sixties, too, surely, came striding quickly down the aisle and threw himself down in the front row on the other side. Alone. In contrast to the mother, however, he was deeply tanned and had a scraggly ponytail below the back of his balding head.

  Bea's father.

  Jessica turned around. Other than the DBS crew, maybe five other people had come. She turned quickly back around and bowed her head, tears squeezing out from under her lids as she prayed and prayed and prayed that God watch over Bea and her parents. Please, God, take care of her and tell her we'll miss her. We didn't know her very well yet, but she counted and she mattered and that's why we're all here today. Bea, we'll miss you. I'll miss you. I miss you now.

  Through her tears, head still bowed, Jessica smiled. I miss your hair.

  As Jessica wept, she blindly accepted the handkerchief Denny was pressing into her hand and held it against her mouth. It kept crossing her mind that Bea had betrayed her, sold information and pictures to the tabloids, but whatever anger she felt was far outweighed by the fact that Bea had died while working for her, and it had clearly been Jessica's stalker who had killed her.

  Although death would have been instantaneous, being electrocuted was too horrible (for Alexandra had told her how Bea had died). The sick son of a bitch, Dirk had explained, somehow knew that Bea was selling Jessica out to the tabloids and had executed her at eleven thirty-five on Saturday night. What exactly Bea had been doing at West End was still a mystery. Probably, Dirk said, she had been looking for more stuff to pass along to The Inquiring Eye.

  In the property room? Jessica wondered.

  The service was perfectly adequate except the minister kept calling Bea "Beatrice," a slip that only Jessica and Bea's parents would catch, since they were the only ones who knew her full name was Bea. In the minister's defense, not knowing the deceased or her family, he had simply, Jessica assumed, elongated her name to add more dignity to the proceedings.

  At the conclusion of the service Bea's mother was hustled out the front again. Jessica slipped out the far side of the pew and went after her.

  "Mrs. Blakely," she called softly, closing the door behind her.

  The woman stopped and turned around, and the man with her looked angrily at Jessica. It was only when Jessica had reached Bea's mother and had taken her hand that she realized that Mrs. Blakely was slightly drunk. "I wanted to tell you that your daughter was a very special young woman. And that she did a wonderful job and I was extremely fond of her. There are no words that can express how terrible I feel." Tears sprang into her eyes again. "All I can do is pray for Bea and for you—"

  And then Jessica threw her arms around the woman and hugged her, because she had lost her daughter, because she was drunk, Jessica didn't know, but it was all so awful and lonely and terrible and she knew this woman desperately needed love and warmth from somewhere.

  Bea's mother remained dry-eyed, though. "Thank you," she said.

  Jessica turned around and went back out to the church. It was empty. Everyone was out front, on the steps now, the DBS group milling around, some of the crew chatting to the press standing behind the ropes. Jessica was looking for Bea's father when Cassy and Belinda Darenbrook Peterson approached.

  "Did you see where the father went?" she asked them.

  "Oh," Cassy said, "he's already left."

  "Apparently," Belinda said to Jessica in her lilting southern drawl, putting a hand on her shoulder, "Bea had been estranged from her parents for quite some time."

  "She's still their daughter," Jessica said. "Aren't they going to the cemetery? Isn't anybody going to be there to bury her?"

  "The minister's going over," Belinda said. "Langley and Cassy and Jackson and the rest need to get back to Manhattan. But I'll be happy to go with you, Jessica, if you'd like to go."

  "I don't want Bea to be buried all by herself," Jessica said, starting to cry again. "We can't just leave her."

  "Jess, we'll go to the cemetery," Denny said quickly, moving next to her and putting his arm around her. "You and me and Alicia—"

  "We're coming too," Alexandra called, standing nearby with Will.

  And so, when the coffin of Bea Blakely, age twenty-three, was lowered into the grave next to her grandmother's, Jessica and Denny and Alicia and Al
exandra and Belinda and Will each dropped a rose on her coffin and said a prayer with the minister.

  Afterward, Jessica felt a little bit better. "What are you going to do now?" Will asked, walking alongside her back to the limo.

  "Oh, I don't know, go to an AA meeting, I guess," she sighed.

  "If it's an open meeting, maybe I could go with you."

  She took his hand and kept walking, looking at the blue sky, the rolling green hills of the cemetery and thanking God that Bea's spot next to her grandmother was so pretty, and that they were nestled together in the shade of a big old maple.

  They reached the limo, but she pulled Will on a little ways so they could talk in private.

  "What is it?" Will asked softly.

  "I don't know," she said, brushing a piece of hair back off his face. "I guess I'm feeling incredibly grateful. Grateful that you're here, that they're here—" She nodded to the gang. "It's funny, isn't it? How family is what you make of it. I mean," she said, turning back to look into his eyes, "this is my family in so many ways. And I am so grateful to feel so loved, so cared for."

  He raised her hand to kiss it.

  A twitch of a smile. "Would you really like to come with me to a meeting?" She checked her watch. "There's one on the Upper West Side at four-thirty I think we could make."

  He held his arm out to her.

  The meeting had been canceled for room-renovation reasons, the note on the church door said, which probably was just as well since reporters from the cemetery had followed them there. And so Jessica, Will and Wendy climbed back into the limo and Slim jumped back into the Crown Victoria and they all drove to Central Park West to Alexandra's building, The Roehampton.

  "You must be exhausted," Jessica said to Wendy as the woman unlocked the door for her.

  "Not yet."

  "Well, I am," Jessica said.

  "Actually," Wendy said, preceding Jessica into the apartment to turn off the alarm system and look around, "if you're going to stay here a while, I would like to put in an hour on Alexandra's StairMaster."

  "Be my guest," Jessica said, poking her head back out the front door. "Come on, Slim, we're going to order in from a great coffee shop I know. I'll buy you a cheeseburger."