by Joan Rivers
I ordered hot tea with hopes the caffeine might begin to counteract all the Grey Goose vodka that was buzzing around my brain. Dr. Bob had coffee, black. I absentmindedly added two pink packets of Sweet’n Low to my teacup and stirred.
“Ms. Taylor,” said the hostess, now at our booth, looking apologetic. “Just a word of caution. We understand there are two photographers outside the entrance. I believe they must have been tipped off that you are dining here tonight. I am so sorry.”
I instantly brightened. After all, I was wearing my new Armani skirt, and my hair had turned out rather well.
“I’m shocked!” I responded in a disgusted rasp. “Who would do such a thing?”
“With all the cell phones,” she whispered, making a small gesture toward the dining room at large. “And you are such a big star…”
“Say no more,” I said, taking a look around the room. It was true, many of the guests were quickly averting their eyes, startled to see I was looking their way.
The hostess moved off, and Dr. Bob asked, concerned, “Do you want to leave by the side entrance?”
I stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “As if!”
Just then, making a small commotion, the calm at the entrance of the Grill was broken as the door opened. Punctuated with the flash of bulbs outside, my own darling Drew hurried in. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim lighting, she spotted the booth at which we were sitting and came over to join us.
I emptied a pink packet of Sweet’n Low into my teacup and stirred, worrying a bit at how thin Drew looked and how tired. Normally thin was a good thing, but without any rest, even a twentysomething such as Drew could begin to look drawn.
“Honey,” I said, moving over in the booth to give her room to sit down. “You look frightening.”
“Hello, Mother. Hi, Dr. Bob.”
“And here you are, you joined us,” I said, surprised. “I thought we said—”
“I just couldn’t sit still any longer. Everything is closing in on us.”
“Us?” I put the teacup down.
“Well, not me. Burke. He’s a wreck. I ran back home this morning and told him he simply had to leave right that minute. Until we figure this whole mess out, he has to lie low. Then thirty minutes later, the cops came to my door.”
I clutched my napkin. “Did you lie to the police?”
“What else could I do? Burke needed time to hide somewhere else. I told them that he and I had broken up almost nine weeks ago.”
Good. That was the truth.
Drew continued, “And that as far as I knew, he’d left town and gone to Alaska.”
That one, I’m not so sure they bought. “So,” I said, putting the ugly cards on the table, “they want to arrest him?”
Drew was speaking fast. “They didn’t tell me that. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what is so terrible. Burke didn’t do anything wrong, but it seems Halsey owed him some money so maybe the police heard about that.”
I sat up straight in the booth, stirring a packet of sweetener into my tea with a heavy silver spoon. “Now this is news. Halsey did know Burke, you say?”
“Yes. I guess. It’s no big deal. So they did know each other—or, knew each other—but not very well. Anyway, Burke is frantic because he went to see her in rehab one lousy time, and now maybe the police might connect him to Halsey’s troubles.”
Of course any rational human being would, at this point, scream the question, why in all hell would the police suspect some nice innocent person of a heinous crime against an acquaintance just because of one friendly visit? It simply didn’t make sense. Something much bigger and much worse must be up, even if Drew didn’t see it. Maybe they had found out about the old affair. The diamonds. Halsey’s drugged-out behavior right before her death. I, however, kept my mouth shut.
Drew took my hand. “You don’t really suspect Burke could do something terrible, do you, Mom? I know you have issues with any guy I date. That comes with the territory. You’re so protective.”
“I will not apologize for wanting to make sure you’re safe,” I said mildly, sipping tea.
“But you don’t think Burke could do something criminal, do you?”
That was the question.
Dr. Bob looked at me and sent me the sort of ESP message that could only come from a good friend who spends his career making people look better than they should: lie.
“I absolutely hope not!” I said. It seemed to be enough to settle Drew down.
“Here’s the plan. We have to go to that rehab center,” Drew said, filled with productive energy. “They must be open twenty-four hours, right? I mean, what if people want to check themselves in during the middle of the night? We can go right now, Mom.”
I stared at her and gave my head a little jerk.
She turned anxiously to Dr. Bob. “Oh, sorry. What am I saying? I mean, when you two are done with your coffee.” She turned back to me. “Okay?”
“Drew, it is not okay to go barging into East Kishniff in the middle—”
“It’s only Pasadena,” she interrupted.
“Okay, we can’t go all the way out to Pasadena at ten thirty on a Monday night and expect to find anyone there who can answer our questions.”
“Of course we can.” Drew turned to Dr. Bob. “Can’t we? Aren’t they like hospitals, Dr. Bob? Open twenty-four/seven?”
“Not my specific area,” he said mildly. “But I have so many clients who have been through it all. Would you like me to make a few calls?”
“Would you?” Drew asked.
I watched my dear friend pull out his cell and join in the madness, then I turned back to Drew, asking her seriously, “And what, darling, are we trying to find out from this rehab facility at this time of night? Do you think they’ll be willing to talk to us?”
That seemed to stop Drew. “No. That’s true. I’ve been watching TMZ all day long, and even Harvey Levin hasn’t been able to get anyone at Wonders to talk.”
“Of course not. This type of publicity could kill them. Beautiful, famous patient leaves their care and is seen, soon after, completely blitzed and then…” I didn’t want to finish that thought and spell out Halsey’s sad ending, even to make a good point, so I just went on, “Some ‘wonder’! Not good brand recognition. No one there will talk to the press, you can bet on it.”
“And to them, we’re the press,” moaned Drew, grabbing my cup of tea and taking a distracted sip. “Eww!” she sputtered. “Mother, really! There have to be like thirty packets of sugar in this tea.”
“Sugar! Never. Wash your mouth out with soap. It’s Sweet’n Low. No trouble.”
She flashed a worried look over my head at Dr. Bob and went back to her original thought. “How can we get in there? How, Mom?”
“Let’s get logical. First, why do you have to go there? What do you hope to find out?” I asked, as Dr. Bob speed-dialed through his preset phone numbers, calling and texting clients who may have been to Wonders in the past few years.
Drew held her hands out, setting the scene. “We start with the knowledge that Burke is telling the truth. He had nothing to do with Halsey and her troubles. So we should talk to anyone at Wonders who could have seen her visitors coming or going.”
“Sounds good,” said Dr. Bob, like one of the Scooby-Doo gang right before they enter the spooky carnival fun-house at night.
“Right,” Drew went on. “They would know that Burke had only shown up there that once, like he said. And they might know what other regular-type visitors Halsey had while she stayed there. If anyone is going down for hurting Halsey, we can at least get an idea of who the cops should really be talking to. What do you think? Maybe a talkative patient in an adjoining room?”
Oh, right. Like that person should be easy for us to get to, seeing as private rehab patients at superelite facilities such as Wonders are held in such strict secrecy that I half-suspected Osama bin Laden had been hiding out at Betty Ford all these years.
“Any roommat
e or neighbor patient of Halsey’s would probably still be at Wonders right now, since she only just left yesterday, right?”
“Good thinking.” If we could ever see them.
“Or we could talk to the admitting nurse or whoever signs patients in? Or maybe an orderly?”
“Do they have orderlies these days?” I mused. “Or did that era end after the shock-treatment scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”
“Mother, are you playing with me?” Drew asked, her voice now dipping into that low and dangerous region.
“Of course not. If you want to drive out to Pasadena tonight, let’s do it. We can only try.”
“Wait up,” said Dr. Bob, punching his cell phone to disconnect from his last call. “Not so fast. It seems they do not have open visiting hours at Wonders. Every visit must be coordinated in advance with the staff.”
“Figures,” I said. We paused in our conversation as the waiter brought over a new pot of tea, and I stirred in a few packets of sweetener.
“But good news for us,” Drew said. “That means that Wonders will have records of everybody who visited and when. And those records will prove that Burke had only very, very limited contact with Halsey.”
“Yes,” I said, not mentioning if that “very, very limited contact” had been just before poor Halsey overdosed and died, it could be enough to put the guy away for a long time. And, come on, why would Burke be so worried about the police if there weren’t something damning to be found? I tried to stifle that certainty and keep myself open to all possibilities, for Drew’s sake. “However, even if we call and ask for an appointment to meet with the staff of Wonders, what are the chances they will agree to talk to us?”
“I’m afraid almost none,” said Dr. Bob.
We both turned to him.
He ran his hand over his tanned scalp and said, “I just talked to a good friend. A patient, actually. Her first husband had a problem with painkillers and spent some time at Wonders, and my friend is still bitter to this day. The doctor who runs the place is someone called Dr. Deiter. He kept my friend away from seeing her husband for two months. She was thinking of getting a court order just to get in and see him on a visiting day or something. And she was the one paying the twelve hundred dollars per day for him to stay in Wonders in the first place.”
“They finally let her in to visit?” I asked.
“When her attorney threatened that she would stop paying his bill, they relented. But by then, it was too late. Her husband had fallen in love with the Korean facialist who came by the Wonders spa three days a week, and that was that.” Dr. Bob shrugged.
“Rehab,” Drew said, realizing, perhaps, that it wasn’t going to be quite so easy to flash our way in and sleuth our way around.
“Isn’t there some other way to get in?” I asked. The whole point, I figured, was to let Drew see, with her own eyes, what this man Burke Norris was all about. Well, okay. The answer to that could well be waiting at Wonders, where any number of nurses and manicurists and herbalists and therapists may have seen Halsey Hamilton in some wicked embrace with the man Drew insisted on defending. There was really no backing off now. If we were going to do this thing, we’d have to barrel through.
Dr. Bob shook his head. “There is simply no way in, Max, short of a…”
“An intervention?”
They looked at me, one appalled and the other enthralled. My doctor. My daughter. And if only I could rustle up an addiction, I was as good as admitted as a patient into that rehab palace called Wonders this very night.
10
Best Performance by a Liar
Drew asked brightly, “Do we need to bring in a professional interventionist?”
“What?” I coughed. “That’s crazy talk. I’m not about to fight the idea of going into rehab, am I? No, I’m prepared to go in quietly with my dignity intact.”
The waiter brought us more tea and coffee as the dinner crowd thinned out and several after-theater parties strolled into the Grill on the Alley for dessert and a few celebrity sightings. I was noticed. What else is new?
Dr. Bob said, “Drew’s right. A professional substance-abuse counselor will know exactly how to get you into Wonders on an emergency basis. We need to call in someone to mastermind this intervention who has the right connections.”
“Now, wait a minute,” I said.
“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll get the best.”
I wasn’t worried. I just hadn’t made up my mind what I should be addicted to, yet.
As Dr. Bob speed-dialed through a few more numbers, I tried some ideas out. “Pain meds?” Truth was, I hated pain medication. I was the first one off the stuff when I had my little procedures, preferring clearheadedness and a couple of Goliath-strength Tylenols to anything more toxic.
Dr. Bob said, “Please don’t, Max.” A tiny furrow of concern formed on his tanned and lineless face.
He didn’t want it thought that any patient of his would be so unwisely looked after that he or she might develop that particular addiction. I could tell he was sensitive in this area, so I gave it no more thought.
“There’s always booze,” suggested Drew.
“Yes, alcohol,” seconded Dr. Bob.
“Now, wait just a second there,” I objected. “This is all well and good, faking a little addiction to get the inside scoop at the rehab clinic. But I have to go on for the rest of my life, kittens. If it should ever leak out that I had trouble with booze, and I mean ever…well, people will whisper and poke each other every time I take a sip of wine in public for the rest of my days.”
“That’s true,” agreed Drew, and she said to Bob with a touch of disappointment, “we can’t expect Mom to take that kind of hit.”
“Damn,” said Dr. Bob, seeing the problem and, multitasking, trying another number on his cell. This time it appeared he’d connected with someone on the other end of an emergency help line. “Oh, hold on,” he told us as he made some quick arrangements with the person on the other end. I heard him mention Wonders.
Drew looked at me with a gleam in her eye. Was it admiration? Was it gratitude? Was it just a reflection off the table candle? I’ll never know. She said, “Mom, you are completely awesome.”
“I know, darling.”
“You just rock. I can’t tell you…”
I don’t like a lot of fuss. Really, what was I getting ready to do that any mother wouldn’t gladly offer to do for her daughter? No big deal. So I waved off Drew’s ridiculous compliments and took a moment to check my BlackBerry to see if I had any urgent messages.
I was startled to read a text from Malulu, sent an hour before, saying I’d missed a call from Dakota Hamilton, Halsey’s mother. The woman begged Malulu to contact me. Tonight.
I quickly dialed the number in the message, alarmed at how much pain the poor woman must be in. “Halsey’s mom,” I explained to Drew as I waited for my call to be answered.
“Hello,” came a blowsy female voice after the fifth or sixth ring. “Who is this?”
“Yes, hello. Is this Dakota?”
“Oh, it’s you, Max!” Dakota had recognized my voice immediately. “Oh, Max. What has happened to my little girl?”
Now, wasn’t that the question of the decade. “Dakota, I’m so sorry for your unimaginable loss. Have they told you anything? The hospital. Did they find out what was wrong?”
“Cedars said it was an overdose, Max. Don’t tell anyone else that, please. The emergency-room woman said Halsey had taken too many pills. By the time they brought my baby in, they couldn’t save her.”
“Oh, how horrible.” Would any parent be able to bear that verdict? Especially a parent who hadn’t been quite strong enough, all along, in the discipline department?
Dakota Hamilton went on, “But it’s a lie. She wasn’t doing drugs.” Her voice rang out in anger, in its slightly loopy tone, so outraged. “That other doctor told me so, the one at her clinic. Halsey had been clean for months. Really. Clean and sober. I just can’t st
and all the television people saying she’d been drinking again.” Dakota’s voice seemed to be slurring a little, so it was hard to be absolutely sure that she herself hadn’t been easing the pain with something strong, but I suppose any parent could be excused for using medication to slide herself through such an ungodly nightmare.
“They’re not going to do any more…tests?” Even I didn’t have the heart to use the word autopsy. But if the police suspected foul play?
“No, thank God. They pumped my baby’s stomach, Max. They took her blood. They found a lot of drugs in her system. But since she had this bad history with pills, Jimmy is doing his best to get it officially listed as an accident. You know, hush things up so no one starts thinking she wanted to kill herself.” She sobbed into the phone.
“You poor thing. And the coroner is agreeing?”
“Thank goodness, it’s being taken care of, Max. There is no question of the time of death since she died in the hospital. There is no question about what caused her death. It was the damned pills.”
“I’m sure no one wants to cause you any more grief.” Since the doctors would certainly have checked for needle marks, I assumed none had been found. They had the sort of riddle that couldn’t be solved by an autopsy. No medical clue could say why Halsey had overdosed.
“Look,” Dakota said, “the reason I’m bothering you so late at night—it’s Jimmy. He told me you were the last person to see our little Halsey before she…before they took her away in the ambulance.”
“Yes.”
“And I just couldn’t understand what happened to her beautiful dress. Did she tell you anything about that?”
“No, Dakota. I asked her, but she never said a word about why she was so undressed.”
“I see,” Dakota said in her soft, slow way. “Well, her daddy and me were just wondering that. I mean, I told Jimmy it didn’t make any sense. Halsey and I had picked out this one special gown from all the designers who were giving her dresses. At first, she was going to wear a darling peach-colored Elie Saab, but at the last minute some other new designer offered her daddy a lotta money so our precious could wear his strapless gown to the Oscars. Best Actress nominees get all the really pretty dresses. You see, I never even got to see the one she chose, Max. Her daddy told me Halsey loved it, though.”