Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel)

by Angela Burt-Murray

  Just like the old Sunshine Anderson song goes, I’d heard it all before.

  I told Marcus when he arrived that I wanted a divorce, but in those Lifetime TV movies, wasn’t a near-death experience supposed to draw the estranged couple back together? I had almost been murdered in our parking garage trying to get away from reporters staked out in front of our home because of his affair with Laila James. That tramp bitch had almost gotten me killed.

  She wasn’t getting my family, too.

  Marcus didn’t know it yet, but I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.

  CHAPTER 11

  Nia

  This photo shoot was a disaster.

  We had been on the set for five hours already, and our photographer, Renaldo Blaze, had yet to shoot a single image of neo-soul singer Janelle Greene and her newborn twin girl and boy, Sunshine and Moon. Normally Renaldo was a pretty mellow dude since DivaDish kept him and his multi-culti skinny-jean-clad team of photo and lighting assistants working on the regular, but with nothing but the sounds of raised voices and crying babies coming from behind the closed door of Janelle’s dressing room, even he was getting antsy.

  And I needed to leave in thirty minutes to meet Terrence who wanted to download on the report he’d gotten back from his contacts at Quantico as well as his conversation with the detectives investigating the attack on Vanessa last month.

  I thought we were making progress an hour ago when Janelle summoned the hair stylist and makeup artist that she had demanded be flown in first class from Detroit because she wouldn’t dare work with anyone else, but there had been no indication she was anywhere near being ready.

  Usually when shooting with kids, you know you’re going to be popping Advil all day or throwing back tequila all night, but this was shaping up to be one for the record books. No amount of headache medicine or alcohol was going to help. Typically I would let my entertainment editor, Che Williams, handle this because she had a way of soothing even the most temperamental of celebs and coaxing the juiciest stories out of them, but because Janelle had a reputation for being emotional (industry code for just plain crazy), Che had asked me to come to today’s shoot because she thought she might need reinforcements. There’s a saying in the entertainment industry: never work with children or animals. After today I wanted to add “postpartum neo-soul singers desperate for a comeback” to that list as well.

  I should have known it was going to be the photo shoot from hell when Janelle’s PR team called me on my cell last night to discuss her ridiculous fourteen-page rider and tried to charge us for shooting Janelle and her twin babies. I informed them that not only were we not People magazine, but their client, while certainly talented in her own right, wasn’t international superstar Angelina Jolie, so there would be no seven-figure check forthcoming for the images of Janelle and her children. But I was happy to discuss any special dietary requests, exotic flowers, and the Diptyque scented candles she had to have for her dressing room. Her publicist, Marc Q, was a fairly decent guy as far as soul-sucking publicists went. He wasn’t like some of them: pathological liars who filled their clients’ empty little heads with delusional thoughts of grandeur and who, thinking they were stars equal to their clients, demanded first-class travel and multiroom hotel suites for themselves. Marc told me sheepishly that he understood the requests were a shade unreasonable, but since this was what his client wanted, he had to ask.

  I knew Janelle had a new album to promote, and since she had recently separated from her baby daddy, a bullet-ridden rapper named Jerome “Tech Nine” Michaels, the diva needed all the promotional help she could get. And the million of daily readers of DivaDish were her target audience. But we needed to tread lightly because as temperamental and crazy as Janelle might be, she could certainly take herself and her juicy breakup and comeback story over to Vibe or Ebony. This was why after four hours of shooting absolutely nothing, I hadn’t shut the set down and hit her management team with a bill for the studio rental, photographer fee, lighting equipment, and catering. But something had to give because we’d be hitting overtime, and I didn’t need DeAnna on my ass yet again about going over budget.

  I found Che pacing back and forth in front of Janelle’s closed dressing room door, nervously biting her already short nails.

  “I need to talk to Marc. Can you get him for me? We’re not getting anywhere, and we’re about to hit overtime, which will instantly double the cost of this shoot.”

  “Uh, sure . . . ,” Che said as she peered at me over the top of her trendy black glasses. She walked to the other side of the set and tentatively knocked on the closed door. She hadn’t conducted her interview with Janelle yet, so she was loath to upset the singer until she got her exclusive. I knew there was a possibility that Janelle could shut everything down in an emotional fit if pushed, but we really didn’t have a choice.

  The door opened enough for Che to ask for Marc, who squeezed his thin frame out of the partially cracked door and waddled over in the superskinny black jeans secured on his nonexistent behind by a thick black leather belt with a trail of black leather studs. I never understood why grown-ass men felt the need to dress like they were in high school, and I wondered if he realized he wouldn’t have to waddle if he’d just pull his damn pants up. He was going to have major hip problems in the future. Marc’s fitted stonewash button-down, fresh and crisp earlier in the day, now looked rumpled, the sleeves pushed up above his bony elbows. The stress visible on his baby face made me think he probably wanted to hang himself with the slim black leather tie around his neck.

  “Look, Marc,” I started when the frustrated publicist plopped down on the sofa next to me, “you and I both want the same thing—a great story that gets people talking about your artist and more importantly buying her new music. And I want a great story that gets people clicking on my site. And right now neither of us has what we want.”

  “I know, Nia,” Marc whined with exasperation in his tired voice. “I’m trying to get her to get ready to shoot, but she keeps taking calls from Jerome who’s trying to talk her out of doing the story and threatening to take the babies away. He’s also going in on her on Twitter as we speak.”

  Lord, I hate social media sometimes. Drama now breaks in real time.

  MJ had been monitoring the situation on his laptop next to me, so I knew an ugly Twitter battle was brewing and that the secrecy of our shoot and our exclusive could get out. I leaned over to MJ and asked him to call Janelle’s manager, a surprisingly rational white guy named Chris Matteo, to see if he could get his client to log off Twitter. I was sure he didn’t want this battle any more than we did, especially since his client’s baby daddy was already in hot water with authorities over a video that had surfaced last week on WorldstarHipHop of Jerome and his boys getting blow jobs from groupies in a hotel suite after a concert.

  “First of all, there’s no judge on the entire planet that would give a gang-affiliated, two-time-convicted drug dealer turned misogynistic rapper custody of those babies. Second of all, Janelle needs to do what’s best for her damn career so she can take care of those babies. And she has to get on this set in the next fifteen minutes or we’re shutting it down. I need to speak with her right now.”

  I really couldn’t afford to shut this shoot down. I needed this story just as much as Janelle did, but I hoped my Billy badass bluff would work, because I knew no one on her squad was going to be able to get her to do anything. The problem with celebrity entourages is that no one is willing to tell the star no. No one is willing to get kicked off the gravy train by telling the star what he or she needs to hear instead of what he or she wants to hear.

  “OK, but are you sure you want to talk to her?” Marc asked as we stood up to head back over to the dressing room. I slipped back on the Guiseppe Zanotti suede open-toe booties I had kicked off as the afternoon had worn on. Smoothing down the front of my black leather leggings, I put on a camel-colored over
size Donna Karan asymmetrical wrap sweater over my thin black tissue-paper T-shirt and pushed up the sleeves. It was time to do battle.

  “Just clear the dressing room so Janelle and I can talk in private.” I tried to sound confident as we walked, but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen once we were alone. I hated celebrities. Why couldn’t all stars be nice and professional like Gabrielle Union or Beyoncé?

  “Don’t worry, Marc,” MJ said. “She’s got this.”

  Marc went into the dressing room. Within a few minutes, the door opened, and Janelle’s personal assistant/homegirl, Aisha; her best friend, Darla; her sisters, Monique and Lisa; and the Detroit hairstylist and makeup artist all filed out behind him. As Marc passed me, he squeezed my arm and shook his head.

  When I walked into the room and closed the door behind me, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Janelle’s hair and makeup had already been done and she was dressed in white. She was just five feet tall, and it was hard to believe that all of today’s drama was emanating from that tiny body. Janelle was a dark brown beauty with large cat eyes, sharp cheekbones, full juicy lips, and a thick glossy mane of natural curly hair worn like a halo around her head. She had burst onto the music scene about five years ago with her hypnotic, husky voice that sang a string of soulful female empowerment anthems that earned her Grammy awards and a legion of young fans. But the last two years had been rough. A poorly received role in a Tyler Perry film, her volatile on-again-off-again relationship with Jerome, and her last album, for which she dropped the hit-producing team that had launched her career for some of Jerome’s producers, had alienated a large part of her fan base who posted scathing comments online, saying they no longer knew who she was or for what her music stood. Marc had managed to talk sense into Janelle’s head and get her to make amends with her original producing team for the release of this new album, which was starting to get a lot of buzz, but getting back with Tech would not help the comeback story.

  I was happy to see the babies were sleeping peacefully in a playpen in a corner of the room despite the afternoon’s ruckus. I also noticed that some of the shoes and bangles that we had pulled for the shoot were sticking out of a large bag in the corner. Dammit, I hated when celebs and their entourage took things from the shoot. Most of the time it wasn’t even the celebs themselves who were trying to make off with a pair of hot new shoes or a handbag that hadn’t yet hit stores but most likely one of their crew of hangers-on-type folk thinking they could cop some free clothing, shoes, or jewelry, not realizing or caring that the stylist who pulled the merchandise would have to pay the designer for the missing wares. If you had the misfortune of having to confront them about missing merchandise, they always said something like “I thought you had pulled all these things for (insert celeb name here) to take home” or “Designers always let me keep their things from the shoot,” or my personal favorite, “We didn’t take anything, and you can’t prove it.”

  Janelle was seated in a director’s chair with her back to the counter where a dizzying array of makeup, styling tools, and hair products was spread out.

  “We need to have a come-to-Jesus, Janelle,” I said, cutting to the chase although I knew I couldn’t go balls to the wall just yet. I had to start with rule number one of celebrity relations—the requisite ego stroke—because most celebs were completely insecure and needed constant validation that they were still the most special thing in the world.

  “You are an incredibly talented artist with millions of fans who are dying to hear your new music. They love you and can’t wait to go out and start buying your album and seeing you in concert.”

  “Really? How do you know?” Janelle said. The ice-grill look on her face started to give way to something I would imagine no one ever got to see: vulnerability.

  “Look, Janelle, ever since we started teasing this story online and promoting that it was coming, people have been posting that they can’t wait for your new music. That they need your new music.” I didn’t tell Janelle that I told Che to turn on the comment-moderation tool for any story mentioning Janelle so that we could filter out the negative comments. I was sure some would consider that cheating, but I called it rule number two of celebrity relations: make sure those in your audience are perceived as being in the star’s corner so that they come to you when they want to talk.

  “I don’t know. Jerome really doesn’t want me to do this interview, and he’s threatening to take away my kids.” A tear slipped down her cheek as she reached for a tissue.

  “I understand, J. But do you know what’s important right now?”

  “What?” she said, sniffing as she wiped her running nose.

  Damn, don’t mess up that makeup, I think to myself.

  “What’s most important, and the only thing you should be focused on, is sleeping peacefully over in that corner. Those babies, Sunshine and Moon, should be your sole focus. You have to do what’s best for them. And what’s best for them is for their mother to get her career back on track, not just so she can make money to take care of them, but so that their mother is happy and doing what she was born to do.”

  “But what if he takes them away from me?” she whined as she started to cry harder. “He’s tweeting that he’s going to take them away from me.”

  At that moment her iPhone buzzed on the counter, and she turned to grab it before I could take it away. I could tell from her expression that Jerome was calling again. If she got on that call, this shoot was dead.

  “Janelle, honey, give me the phone,” I said with my hand outstretched as I started to walk closer to her. “Don’t answer the call. It’s time for Janelle Greene to start talking care of herself and her children. No judge in the world is going to give him custody, and you know that. Give me the phone.” I suddenly felt like a hostage negotiator, which I guess I kind of was since she was holding my shoot and my exclusive interview hostage.

  It was time for rule number three of celebrity relations: show them that you identify with their work in your own life, and then quote their work from their movies, TV shows, or songs back to them.

  “Last year I must have worn out your hit song ‘Strong Woman’ when I dumped my own man after finding out he was cheating on me and I got fired from my job all on the same day.”

  “Damn, sis, you broke up with your man and got fired on the same day?” she asked. She still hadn’t answered the call although the phone kept ringing.

  “Yes, and it was the most painful period in my life, but what got me through were your words: ‘You can’t beat me down. You can’t take my pride. You can’t make me fear. Because I’m a strong woman. Strong woman. Strong woman.’ ”

  As I sang the last line of the song that I certainly had downloaded on my iPod but hadn’t listened to more than twice, Janelle joined in, her husky voice becoming stronger with each word. She looked down at the phone screen with Tech’s long dreadlocks hanging over his mean mug staring back at her, and she punched “Ignore” on the phone. She turned back to the mirror and stared at herself.

  “I can do this. I am a strong woman.”

  “Yes, you are, Janelle. Yes, you are. And the world needs to hear your music and your story. You’re going to help so many sisters with your powerful voice.”

  I wasn’t going to take any chances that she’d get another call from crazy man, so I slipped her phone in the pocket of my sweater and took her hand to help her down from the director’s chair.

  “Let’s go make some pretty pictures, girl,” I said as we headed out the door. The room erupted in cheers and applause when we came out of the dressing room. The hair and makeup team started touching Janelle up. When MJ came over to me to give me my bag so that I could leave, I slipped him Janelle’s phone and whispered in his ear that she shouldn’t get this back until after the shoot and the interview.

  Glancing down at my watch, I could see I needed to get a move on to meet Terrence. If Janelle h
adn’t wasted most of the day in her dressing room meltdown, I would have been able to preview some of the images, but I had to leave.

  “Hey, Renaldo, make sure you e-mail me some images as you’re shooting. I want to see how things are coming along.” As I grabbed my Louis Vuitton tote stuffed with work from the office, I saw Janelle’s assistant, Aisha, carrying Sunshine and Moon out of the dressing room onto the set, which reminded me of one last thing.

  “MJ, make sure you tell Sharan to get all the merch from this shoot. Someone in the entourage thinks they are going on a shopping spree on our dime.”

  When I made my way downstairs from the studio, I saw Terrence leaning against a beat-up gray Lincoln sedan.

  “New ride?” I asked. Dressed in dark jeans and a beige cashmere V-neck sweater and leather jacket, even standing against that beat-up car he still looked good. “This doesn’t seem like the type of chariot your supermodel fiancée would ride in.”

  “Very funny,” he said, making his way around to the passenger side door to let me in. “I checked it out from a buddy at my old precinct so we can go check on some things.”

  “Oooh, are we going on a stakeout?” I said as I laughed and rubbed my hands together. The comment about the fiancée had just slipped out before I could stop myself.

  I caught another whiff of his new cologne. The smell was nice enough, but I preferred the natural clean soap scent he used to have when we were together. Well that doesn’t matter anymore, I told myself. There’s a new woman calling the shots in that department. Terrence walked around to the other side of the car and got in as I dropped my heavy bag on the floor. I dug around and pulled out the white envelope.

  “It’s not quite a stakeout, but you’ll see, Detective,” Terrence said as he started the car and pulled into the downtown traffic to head south down Broadway.