by Nancy Grace
She couldn’t find the pass.
“I must have changed purses . . .”
“I vouch for her . . . You can let her up, Fred.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Fryer.”
Walking toward the elevator bank, Sookie breathed as evenly as possible.
“You know, I hate it when they put new guards at the front desk. So irritating.”
What else could she say? The elevator doors closed in front of their faces as they zoomed upward.
Chapter 22
I JUST WANT TO CONVEY HOW HAPPY WE ARE HERE AT GNE WITH THE TODD SHOW’S recent ratings.” Noel Fryer sat back in his leather swivel chair, his feet up on his desk, the view of Manhattan thirty-one floors below him. He’d had the chair specially ergonomically designed several years before. He’d even had the leather seat and arms individually crafted in Italy, and told anybody that happened to come into his office. Today, reared back in his chair, he looked like king of the city and acted like it too, like it all belonged to him.
“I know some time back I had mentioned that, in light of Harry’s, well, I hate to boil it down like this, in light of his ratings, maybe he should consider a graceful exit. You know, when that day does come, when your career is winding down . . . headed for a new phase . . . a new direction . . . and believe me, Sookie, it comes for everybody, even me, Noel Fryer, we would make it all look like Harry’s decision.”
“Noel, let me remind you that for years, Harry’s by far been the highest rated thing you’ve got going and you’d be crazy to end his run now . . .”
“Correction, Sookie, he was the highest-rated thing we had going.” Noel Fryer came down off his perch and put his feet on the carpet in front of him for emphasis. Sookie winced.
He went on. “There was the little slump . . . not so little actually, sixteen months of Todd’s ratings in the crapper. And we stood by him.”
Hardly. The moment Harry’s ratings dipped, they started circling like wolves and Sookie knew it. If Harry hadn’t had an ironclad contract locking them in for another eighteen months, he’d have been on the streets, and Sookie with him. What about her? What would become of her?
“But that’s all behind us, Sookie. That’s why I called you in. Todd’s ratings are up. He’s leading the network again. It’s fantastic . . . we’re . . . ,” Fryer searched for just the right word, “ . . . thrilled!”
Sookie was still defensive, but kept it together and smiled brightly, pointing every single one of her veneers across the huge expanse of desktop separating her from Fryer. He was now kicked back in his chair again, the soles of his feet balanced on the desktop, directly impeding Sookie’s view of his face. She kept peeking around his left foot to get a look at him.
Was he doing it on purpose? Was this some sort of mind game? Fryer was famous for messing with your head . . . and with Sookie, it didn’t take much.
She smoothed down the edges of her mini, not that she wanted to show less leg, she just didn’t have anything else to do with her hands. From this vantage, Noel couldn’t even see her legs. To remedy that, she got up and casually walked toward the window running the length of the office. She leaned against it, keeping a serious look on her face as if she were pondering his every word.
“In fact, research sent me an analysis of Todd’s numbers and, frankly, they look great.” Fryer reached down into the lower drawer to his left and, opening it, pulled out a stack of computer printouts labeled with yellow stickers. As he flipped through, Sookie could see some of the numbers highlighted in pink.
“And based on what we’re seeing”—“we” meaning only Fryer himself . . . he always talked as if he were a group—“you spike on the nights you feature Hailey Dean.”
Hailey Dean? He had brought her up here to talk about Hailey Dean? Todd hated her . . . wouldn’t even have her on the same set with him. And Tony said the feeling was mutual. For her own part, Sookie didn’t think Hailey Dean was all that.
But she knew how to play the game.
“Oh, yes. She’s fantastic.” Always better to play along with the suits, tell them what they wanted to hear, and then go do whatever you wanted. “I’ll definitely have her back on the show. She’s great as a legal panelist.” Sookie consciously smoothed back her red hair, glittery with product in the sunlight.
“It’s more than that. I’ve watched when she was on. It was the Prentiss Love show. Hailey Dean practically jumped off the screen. She’s got it! She’s electric. Then there was the ah . . . what was it . . . the ah . . . the first one, the ice water. And she’s been on a few of the days you did follow-up shows. Police aren’t saying much, but you’ve done pretty well with the old boyfriends, neighbors, you know, the usual suspects. But that Dean, she’s got something . . .”
“Oh, Noel, you’re absolutely right. She’s lightning in a bottle. You’re so right, Noel . . . she’s . . . positively electric.”
It pained her to agree about Hailey. But the Prentiss Love show was huge. And Hailey did light up the screen. Sookie managed to shift her legs while leaning back against the window, crossing one over the other, trying to redirect his attention back to her own calves and thighs and off Hailey Dean’s “something.” It didn’t seem to be working.
“So, I want you to make her a regular and pay her out of the Todd Show budget.”
“What?” Sookie was appalled. “We can’t afford to take money out of our budget for Hailey Dean!”
“You can and you will. You’ve already got the fattest budget at the network, and up until Dean came along, your numbers simply didn’t justify it.”
“Well you know, Noel, we did have the very last interview ever done with Leather Stockton, right after that DUI. And Prentiss Love had just been on with Harry about Celebrity Closets, and he got in a lot of questions about her personal life. You know, no steady boyfriend, no husband, doesn’t cook, lives with her four cockapoos type interview. It was great. We sliced and diced them and turned them to make fantastic shows. I think the numbers had nothing to do with Hailey Dean. They had everything to do with my producing,” she said icily.
She remained perfectly silent, motionless in fact, waiting for Noel to acknowledge her talent. That was what it was all about. No one in their right mind would imagine the success of The Harry Todd Show had anything to do with the host.
“Enjoying the GNE jet? It’s nice, isn’t it?”
She was thrown off. Noel had completely failed to take the cue. He didn’t even bother to agree with her.
How rude.
“I wouldn’t know . . . You know Todd uses it. He loves it!” She strutted back across the carpeted room toward his desk and re-settled herself into her original perch.
“When I was on my way to Arizona for the sales meeting last week, the pilot happened to mention you used it to hop down to St. Martin.”
“Oh yes . . . that’s right . . . thank you for reminding me, Noel . . . I did take a little jaunt.” It had actually been a five-hour flight each way. “Harry is just so generous, as are you, Noel.” Damn the pilot to hell and back. Big mouth. Wasn’t there some sort of pilot-passenger confidentiality? Whatever happened to discretion?
The rest hit Sookie like a ton of bricks. Had the idiot pilot mentioned she’d taken a man along with her to St. Martin? Sookie made absolutely sure his name was never mentioned, not once on the flight, so certainly that didn’t leak. And she never had to show ID to take a private flight, just get on and take off. So . . . no written record. But there was also the corporate jet log . . . and Noel Fryer kept it. He could easily see how often she mooched the jet.
This was just what she didn’t need right now . . . a scandal with a married man at the very minute her divorce settlement was being hammered out.
She was taking Julian to the cleaners, come hell or high water!
And she wouldn’t let one long weekend with a married boyfriend ruin it all. Julian would reopen all the depositions and suggest she was having an affair during their marriage. She absolutely did not have an
affair, but her behavior wasn’t the point. The point was that Julian had flaunted his girlfriends all over town, and that did matter very much.
How dare he make her look bad, after all she’d done for him? He had money all right, he was “in yachts” as a business, but she gave him credibility, standing. He didn’t know a salad fork from an olive tray before Sookie Downs got ahold of him. She got him into circles he’d never dreamed of before, largely due to her position on The Harry Todd Show.
She created Julian. And they were a couple. They’d been featured in dozens of magazines and interviews together . . . you know . . . the “it” power couple. No way was a single weekend romp going to foul up this divorce settlement.
“Yeah, that plane is fantastic. It’s my own personal favorite. Its like you’re in your own private den, but you’re twenty thousand feet up in the sky.”
Noel Fryer’s voice jolted her back to the here and now. Sookie stood up and walked alone to the window again, slightly sitting on the sill, her legs angled toward Fryer.
Did he notice the red mock-croc mini? Did he think it clashed with her hair? She thought she caught him looking at her shins, but wasn’t sure.
“So, long story short . . . we want to renew both you and Harry. We’re so knocked out by the numbers, we want to re-up. What do you think about that, Sookie?”
She was thrilled. Beyond thrilled as a matter of fact. The ratings were published every day. Anybody could look them up, and Harry Todd was barely holding on by the skin of his teeth, resting on his laurels. But the recent numbers changed all that.
“I’ll relay the message to Harry. I’m sure he’ll be just as excited as I am.” She said it with a smile. Still working the mini, Sookie walked to the door.
“Oh . . . and one more thing,” Noel said.
“What?”
“Get Dean.”
Sookie nodded and closed the door gently as she backed out of the office. She managed to keep the same smile glued to her lips, and it would take a lot more than Hailey Dean or Noel Fryer to knock it off.
In her own mind, the mini had worked. Just an hour before, when Sookie was coming up the elevator, she’d actually been afraid Noel might initiate a conversation about ending Harry’s run at GNE, and symbiotically, her own.
She made it down the elevator and walked through the thick glass doors onto the sidewalk, passing Noel Fryer’s Vespa. If she hadn’t known for a fact that security cameras were trained on every square inch of cement surrounding GNE Headquarters, she would have kicked the damn thing over.
He looked like a damn fool on the little bike, with his butt hanging over either side of the seat cushion when he rode it . . . that damn scarf around his neck, the hand-stitched Italian leather riding gloves . . . moron.
Chapter 23
HAILEY, I KNOW YOU’RE FIGHTING VIOLENT CRIME. I UNDERSTAND, I really do. But the way Harry Todd spoke to you, well it was just rude . . . rude.” Her mother was referring to Hailey’s appearance a few days before on The Harry Todd Show about the murder of Prentiss Love.
“I know, Mother, but I feel it’s what I have to do. I’ve been given this opportunity. You know I’ve had a lot of angst about leaving the courtroom . . . no longer fighting violent crime. That door was shut, but maybe God opened a window for me through this platform. I just couldn’t say no. Does that make any sense?”
“I do see it, I do. But it seemed to me that Todd gangs up with that . . . what’s his name? That . . . ambulance chaser?”
“Derek Jacobs.” Hailey answered without much emotion. Derek Jacobs had been arrogant, rude, combative, and, frankly, wrong about the law on several points during the show. She’d taken great delight in correcting him on every turn.
“Yes. That’s it. Derek Jacobs. He’s awful. Everybody at church just thought he was horrible, and that Harry Todd seemed to agree with everything he said. I even caught them shaking hands at the end of the show.”
“Yeah . . . I saw that, too, even though I was several floors above them in some little studio. It was really like a dark little closet with a camera in it. But it was better than being on the set with Todd. And that idiot Jacobs.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they both looked like jackasses. And you looked completely prepared and completely poised. I was proud of you. But I just don’t see why you would torture yourself and do that show ever again.”
“I don’t know that they’ll invite me back. But if they do, and it’s a chance to expose violent crime defendants and their sleazy lawyers, lawyers like Jacobs, for what they are, I don’t see how I can say no.”
“But why? Why for Pete’s sake? Why does it have to be you on the firing line? I had hoped and prayed that when you left the courtroom, your troubles would be over . . . You’d be out of danger . . . but now . . .”
“Because of Will, Mother.”
Hailey’s mom went silent. After all these years, she knew it was best not to argue about anything even remotely connected to Hailey’s fiancé.
“I understand, sweetheart. I just love you so much, I want you to be safe and happy.”
“I know. It’s just what I have to do.”
“Well, it seemed to me that Todd just sat back and let Derek Jacobs grandstand, but every time they came to you, you shot them down.”
“It was like shooting two fish in a barrel.”
“It showed.”
“Mother, I think you’re biased!” Hailey started laughing out loud.
At that point, her father picked up the receiver somewhere in the back of their home in Georgia. “I just wanted to punch that Harry Todd in the face! The way he talked to you! And that lawyer . . . What’s his name, Hailey?”
“Derek Jacobs,” Hailey answered.
“Where did they dig him up? Is he some famous defense attorney? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Well, he represented Hit Man Number One—you know, the rap star that shot his business partner . . .”
“What happened to him?”
“Hit Man got life in prison. Let’s see . . . Then he represented that actress, you know the one charged with DUI.”
“Oh, that was famous . . . I remember that,” her mother chimed in from the kitchen phone.
“Well, that was what it was all about, really. I think Jacobs just wanted to get famous and have his face plastered all over TV walking her in and out of the courthouse. I’ve never seen a lawyer so disappointed as when the trial judge refused to let Court TV cover the trial live.”
“Oh yeah, I’m starting to remember him now. Always out in front of courthouses giving press conferences. Right?”
“Right.”
“But why’d they put him on? Seems like he loses all his cases.” Her dad was pretty observant.
“I know, Daddy. He’s some close friend of the executive producer, Sookie Downs, I think. I really don’t know why they’d use him. I guess he got famous and the show wanted a celebrity lawyer for the ratings. Makes me wonder why they picked me. I guess either because of Will’s murder or because of the press after I killed Leonard.”
“No! No, baby! It’s because of your perfect record in court!”
“Mother, I wish that were so, but TV’s not like that. Anyway, somebody’s beeping in and I have a patient in a few minutes.”
“Did you put that extra bolt on your office door?”
“I sure did. And I got those thick drapes for the windows like you wanted for when I’m working here alone, Mother.”
“I know I don’t need to remind you, Clint Burrell Cruise is still out there.” Cruise was the serial killer Hailey had prosecuted in her last jury trial. He’d gotten a conviction at trial, but the Georgia Supreme Court had engineered a reversal. Cruise jumped parole and hadn’t been seen since Hailey stabbed his lawyer.
“Í know, believe me, I want him found and monitored, too. But I can’t hide in my apartment under my bed just because Pardons and Paroles can’t find Cruise. If he wants to stay out of trouble, he’s probably g
otten as far away from me as he can!”
Hailey laughed into the receiver, acting for all she was worth as if she wasn’t worried at all about the released killer who’d come looking for her.
“Let me see who this call is. I love you!”
“Bye, honey.”
“Bye, Mother. Bye-Bye, Daddy. Talk to you later.”
“Promise?” her mom asked as if she really wanted an answer.
“Promise.”
Hailey clicked off and considered Cruise . . . still on the run.
Chapter 24
FALLON MALONE DIDN’T THINK SHE COULD LIFT HER LEG ONE MORE TIME. This damn elliptical. She hated it. But what else could she do? She had to feel the burn. Or else.
Or else go down the path of all the other aging stars. Flabby, jowly, and unemployed. They either became bag ladies, accepted scraps in movies for parts as grandmothers, witches, or otherwise . . . crones . . . or they got elected to some position at the Screen Actors Guild.
Not for Fallon Malone. She loved the attention her body got her. She only felt alive when she was admired, loved, desired. Which is exactly why she’d already scheduled her third lesson with the golf pro . . . What was his name?
His name didn’t matter. Nor did golf. She just needed a few lessons to convince some eccentric producer she was good for a part in yet another big-screen production centering around the game. The adoration of the golf pro just made it all that much easier.
Fallon understood her assets and what they could do for her. She’d have never gotten her breakthrough role if it weren’t for her body. Those who mocked her for it were simply jealous.
But there was so much more to Fallon Malone than her physique. She needed the idiots in Hollywood and the tight little clique that ran Broadway, so damn pleased with themselves and looking down their noses at her, to see that.
But in addition to the compliments and the adoration, Fallon loved the high life. Without a rich husband anymore, she actually had to pay for it herself. She’d downsized as much as was presentable. She got rid of two of her cars and moved from a five-to a three-bedroom apartment here in Manhattan, and to top it all off, leased her penthouse in Beverly Hills.