I returned to my table, eyes on my phone, scrolling through Instagram, stalking my kids. As I sat down, a female body suddenly filled the chair across from me. Simultaneously, my phone dinged with a text. Before I could tear my attention away from the phone, I saw it was from Sam. Since he’d stood us up on Skype, I had left him a voice mail, sent him an email, and inbox messaged him on Facebook, then texted him again this morning at a red light.
I read “Oh gee Mom, I’m so sorry. You’re going to be totally mad at me” before I tore my eyes away. I looked up at a stranger. “Hello.”
“You’re Marsha?” she asked.
The woman’s hair was teased high and held firmly in place. It was a brilliant orange, flame-like, really, and her lipstick only a shade darker. She was well preserved, surgically so, with the suddenly Siamese look to her eyes, thinness of facial skin, and limp plumpness that screamed I’ve had expensive work done. She was Tlazol, the plasticized version. I was so caught up in her skin that it took me a second to find my manners.
“Yes, and you are?”
She leaned in. “Diana. But I’d appreciate it if you’d just call me an anonymous source.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from giggling. Drama much? She was dressed for it, though. Cheetah-print stretch pants, a white tunic with three-quarter sleeves and a cleavage keyhole. I resisted the urge to lean over and check out her feet, but I pictured her stumbling tipsily on three-inch stiletto slings with a pouf of marabou at the toes.
“Okay. Then call me Michele.”
She winked. “Sure.”
“So, Diana, how do you know me?”
“Jacques called me from the gallery.” She sniffed. “We share a mutual contempt for that pretender Lester. He’s trying to write Gidget out of her place in the history of the Houston art scene.”
“Aahh.”
“It’s just wrong, no matter what her problems were. Anyway, Jacques said he asked you to meet me here.” Her accent was pure east Texas, southeast to be exact. Beaumont or Orange, maybe, but probably something considerably smaller.
“And here I am.”
“You can ask me anything you want.”
“About . . . ?”
“For your article about Gidget. I know everything. We were the best of friends.”
“Great. Would you mind if I record you?”
She touched her cheeks gently with her finger pads, like she was making sure her enhancements hadn’t slid off her face. “Of course not.”
“And, Diana, not that I would ever use your name, but in case I need to get ahold of you again . . . ?”
“Call Jacques.”
“Last name, phone number, address?”
“Oh, honey.” She laid her hand across her framed décolletage. “I can’t take the risk.”
I pressed my phone a few times, and like magic it pulled up the recorder. “How did you know Gidget?”
“My first husband, the cheating bastard, introduced me to the gallery. We were decorating our home. His ex-wife had hideous taste.” She placed her palms flat on the table. A perfect red manicure tipped each finger. She lowered her chest onto her hands. Through the keyhole, I could see that her breasts kept their perfect shape even under pressure. “I was just a girl. And he was a horny old bastard who couldn’t keep it in his pants. I should’ve realized, but a girl in love will believe anything.”
Again, I had to squelch my urge to laugh.
“I mean, all that money. I was so in love with all his money.” She laughed, so I joined in. “I’ve never loved anything more in my life. Until he left me, and I married an even bigger pile of it. By then, I was thick as thieves with Gidget. I was the one who gave her the nickname, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“When she came to town she was calling herself ‘Anna.’” She said the word as if it tasted like cod-liver oil. “But she was clearly a Gidget.”
“She was already at the gallery when you first started shopping there?” I wasn’t sure you shopped at a hoity-toity place like an art gallery, but I didn’t know what else to call it.
“No, but she was there before I married my second husband. She had taken over meeting with clients. She set up interviews with the artists so we could understand their work better. Helped us select pieces. Sourced art for us when we were looking for something special.”
“And she was good at it?”
“She was the best, sugar. In no time she knew everybody who was anybody in the art world in Houston. I took it upon myself to introduce her to the right kind of people—you know, the ones who could blow a wad of cash without blinking.”
“What a good friend.”
She dipped her head, accepting my praise. Diana, if that was really her name, suddenly sat straight up. “The table service here is terrible.”
“You have to order at the bar.”
“How gauche.”
“I’ll take a water if you don’t mind.”
She weaved her way to the counter. She was not only in heels much like what I’d pictured, but with a platform stacked under the forefoot. I was starting to believe she was three sheets to the wind, too.
She was back in a few minutes and wobbled into her chair. “The boy is going to bring our drinks.”
“Great.” I had turned off the voice app while she was gone. I pressed record.
“Could you remind me of what we were talking about, hon? I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“You were telling me about all the . . . clients . . . you brought Gidget. I guess that’s why Lester gave her an interest in the gallery?”
Diana raised her perfectly drawn, pencil-thin eyebrows. “Where’d you get an idea like that, sugar? Gidget had an interest in the gallery when she walked in the door.”
I kept my own eyebrows from shooting sky-high somehow. I made a mental note to confirm when she started with the gallery. “Really? Tell me about it.”
“I shouldn’t, but I know how much it must have meant to Gidget for somebody to write an article about her.” She tapped one of her acrylics against her lip. “Let’s just say somebody important didn’t want Gidget flapping her gums about their relationship.”
“So she was involved with someone with money?”
“Then and a bunch of other times. But this guy? He had loads of it, and power, too. Going back generations.”
“And he was married?” This seemed an obvious conclusion, but I asked anyway.
She looked up, waited a beat, then said, “Still is, I hear. She must be a glutton for punishment. He’s a notorious womanizer—the younger the better.”
Hayden placed a tiny cup and saucer in front of Diana. “Your espresso, ma’am.” He handed me a bottle of water and winked.
“Thank you.”
Diana pulled a twenty from her wallet and thrust it at him.
“Um,” he said. “Uh . . .”
She continued to hold it out. “Well?”
“Thank you.” He took the money, keeping his eyes on his feet.
“So, you were telling me about Gidget’s lover.”
“Lester was desperately searching for money for this gallery, and he was tight with the man and his family. They bought Gidget off and propped Lester up all in one fell swoop.”
“Was any of this public knowledge?” I twisted the cap off my water.
“Oh, heavens no. That was the condition. She had to keep her mouth shut.” She sipped her espresso and made a face. “And get rid of it.”
“What?”
“Get rid of the baby.”
This was the first confirmation I’d had from anyone that Gidget had ever been pregnant. My heart raced in my chest. “Oh, Diana, that must have been terrible for her.”
She took another sip with her pinky straight as an arrow, pointing out to the side. She set it down.
“About as terrible as for any other young woman of her time.” She inspected her nails.
I picked up on her hint. “I just can’t imagine how hard it w
as for women before my generation.”
She sighed long and hard. “You have no idea what it took to get where I am, let me tell you. It wasn’t pretty.” And then she smiled. “But it was worth it.”
I was sure I did have an idea. I smiled back at her even though I was curdling a little bit inside. “So, Gidget told you she’d had an abortion?”
“Well, she told me she got rid of the baby.”
My heart sped up. Doublespeak. Adoption was getting rid of a baby, too. “Did she ever mention the baby again?”
“You mean the pregnancy. Only when she was really wasted. When she’d go all Valley of the Dolls, she’d sob about her baby, her baby, her little girl.”
“It was a little girl?”
“Oh Lord, I don’t know if it was ever even born, or if it was a little girl or not. I don’t think Gidget knew, either. I think she was just sad.”
A sweet pain filled my chest. My mother. My brother. “Did she tell anyone else?” I took a big slug of water. Then another.
“She talked about it in front of anybody and everybody when she was wasted. And there came a point in time where she was always wasted. I tried very hard, but she simply got too out of control. It was beginning to impact my reputation at an inopportune time.” I must have looked blank, because she added, “Between marriages.”
I nodded. “Did you lose contact with her?”
“I stayed on as a client of the gallery. It was heartbreaking to watch that little thing waste herself away. Honestly, she was a sweetheart. I love every piece she ever found for me, and I will always treasure her for that.”
I took another sip of water, thinking. “So she was good with the artists?”
“Yes, she was an artist herself. I have one of her pieces. But there was talk, you know”—she leaned forward so far she could have kissed me—“that she was dealing to the artists.” She sat back, a smug look on her face.
My mouth fell open. “How well sourced is that?”
“Just rumor, but she was their darling, and they were all using. She was even”—she finger-patted her cheekbones again—“BFFs with Andy Warhol.” She half-rolled her eyes. “Everybody in town pandered after her as long as he was alive, trying to get closer to him.”
“Wow.” But I wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve already told you one. Might as well tell you the other rumor.” She winked. “That he painted her portrait and gave it to her.”
“Okay.”
“Obviously you don’t understand, or you would have just screamed. People say he gave her an exclusive Andy Warhol that no one else in the world has ever even seen. If it existed, it would be priceless. The rumor alone cemented her place in the art community. Nobody cared that she was a hot mess. They just wanted to be near the woman that was the subject of the secret Warhol painting.”
I opened my eyes wide. “Oh my goodness.”
I must have done better, because she nodded and took the last sip of her espresso.
“Is there anybody else I should talk to about Gidget? Old lovers, other friends, special clients?”
“Most of them are as dead as she is.”
“What about her lover?”
“Oh, honey, no, no, no. I’m taking that name to the grave. I value my life—what’s left of it—a little too much for that.” She stood and threw back her helmet of orange hair with a flourish.
“Thank you, Diana,” I said. “I may be in touch.”
She paused long enough to throw me a smile. Somewhere between her lips and my brain she morphed into the grimacing visage of the horror puppet Chucky. She walked jerkily, the pawn of an unskilled puppet master.
Chapter Eighteen
My head was spinning as I left Catalina Coffee. Diana had blown up most of what I thought I knew with choice revelations and a few confirmations. I hit my key fob as I walked, replaying bits of Diana’s story in my mind and comparing it to what Lester had told me just a few hours before. I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I ran smack-dab into another human.
She cried out, “Hey!”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” My words spilled out before I caught a glimpse of her.
The angry sneer on her face turned into a tentative smile when she recognized me. “Michele.” Scarlett, the publicist who had worked on My Pace for Juniper until we learned she’d been feeding speculation and negative items to the press to keep us trending.
I hadn’t seen her since, and I didn’t respond to her now. I stepped around her and powered by. My anger at her renewed, boiling in a snap.
“Michele.” Her voice was soft.
I stopped but didn’t face her.
“I’m sorry.”
I still didn’t turn around, but I answered her. “Sorry doesn’t quite cover the damage you did to my kids and to me. To Adrian’s memory. Negative gossip is front-page news, and the correction is last section, last page, beneath the fold, buried in the classifieds.”
“I know.” She put a hand on my arm. I flinched involuntarily, but I didn’t pull away. “I thought what I was doing helped sell more books, and that’s what I was hired to make happen. But I hurt you. I shouldn’t have done some of what I did without your permission.”
I lifted my hair from my neck, suddenly hot. I didn’t want to understand Scarlett’s side of the fiasco she’d wrought upon us last year, but I’d also had a long time to think about it. From a publicity perspective, what she said was true. “Thank you.”
“Can we start over?”
I took the whole package of Scarlett in. Today she’d coiled her hair into black ringlets. Her medium roast skin and pink cheeks glowed. She radiated vitality and sensuality in a red flowing blouse and black pleated pants, with scarlet fingernails and matching shoes. The black-as-pitch gleam in her eyes had softened from tigress to house cat. I didn’t want to be best friends with her, but hate was a burden.
I nodded, just barely. “I can let it go.”
The feline eyes moistened. “That means a lot to me. You made me a better publicist and human being, I promise. I can’t thank you enough for that gift, and I know it came at a very high cost to you.”
I exhaled, a long sigh. “You made me a stronger person, but I’m not ready to say thank you.”
She laughed, her eyes glistening. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
I took a beat to think about it. Publicity was always critical for an author and a publishing company. And I was about to write a book that was important to me. “I’ll take a rain check.”
“Good. What are you up to these days?”
“Telecommuting with Juniper for the summer, from a place in the country that Adrian bought for us. And I’m working on a new book. A biography.”
“Really?” She changed before my eyes, crouching on all fours, licking her chops, ready to spring, still wearing her snazzy publicist outfit, but with tiger stripes on her face, neck, and long, twitching tail. “About Adrian?”
Down, kitty. “Oh no. About a woman who just passed away, a longtime fixture in the Houston art scene. Gidget Becker.”
“Yes, yes, good.” Her eyes followed her prey, unblinking. “I just saw our biggest patron of the arts in the last few decades walking to her car.” She pointed to the side street. “Coincidence?”
I felt a quickening in my pulse. “Do you know her?”
“Of her. She’s a piece of work.”
“What’s her name?”
Scarlett moved a ringlet carefully away from her face. “You don’t know her name? I thought you were together.”
“You jump to a lot of conclusions.” I held still, unwilling to beg.
“Darlene Hogg, two g’s. Hogg is her fourth or fifth married name. Low-rent east Texas origins. One of those little hurricane-magnet towns where toothless trailer-park residents refuse to evacuate.”
I had to laugh. Catty, snarky, and poised for the jugular. That was Scarlett. “Thank you.”
“Does this mean we’re even?” She raised
her left eyebrow without wrinkling her forehead.
I snorted.
She held up both hands. “Got it. You know how to reach me.”
“I do.”
She threw her arms around me and pulled me close, my body stiff. “You are an amazing woman. I’ll deny it if you ever repeat this, but you’re an inspiration to me.” She squeezed, and I could barely breathe. “I can’t have anyone thinking I’ve gone soft. Scarlett, the piranha of publicity.”
I patted her back and slipped out of her embrace. “Well, you’re living up to it. Except for right now, I guess.”
She released, ducking to hide her face, but I saw her wet cheeks. I was almost speechless. No, I was speechless. The piranha/tigress was crying over me. We parted, me to my car, her inside Catalina Coffee.
Really, what I’d done for her was send her career into orbit last year. Her shenanigans lured people to her. I stood next to my car, lost in thought and staring in the general direction of some town homes across yet another dirt lot, this one rutted and uneven. I opened the door of the car, the suffocating heat reaching out for me. Once inside with the air on, I checked my phone. Sam. I’d already read the part about how mad I was going to be at him, so I skipped forward. “Terrence quit. People here are a-holes. I want to come home.”
My brows furrowed. Teenagers. I texted back: “What happened to super awesome? Give it a few days. I love you. And you better show up on Skype next week.” I couldn’t help but worry about him a little, but I also felt sure it would pass.
Next I texted Rashidi, because that’s what friends do. “Hope your interviews were great.”
I put both hands on the steering wheel, evaluating my options. I could check on the Houston house, but that seemed like a lot of drive for not much payoff. Our neighborhood in Meyerland was about as safe as it gets in an urban area, and I’d paid my neighbors to keep an eye on it for the summer. I could drive back to Juniper, make a little more face time. I could confront Lester over the difference in his story from Diana/Darlene’s. Or I could beat the traffic, grab a late lunch on the way home, and dig in to researching the leads and contradictory information I’d been given.
Fighting for Anna Page 20