He stood frozen in place, as though waiting to walk out tucked behind Mildred’s skirts. “Go, please, go. Tell them I’ll be right down.” She needed to think and couldn’t possibly do so with James looking at her like a scared puppy dog. He eventually scampered away.
What could they possibly want? Mildred wondered, as she began pacing back and forth, the shops along the Champs-Elysées long forgotten. And where was Max? Did one thing have something to do with the other? Beads of sweat suddenly materialized on her brow. She’d never seriously considered that she could ever be arrested. It just seemed like an impossibility that Mildred Baines-Reynolds could ever be accused of something so foul as murder. After all, she was a well-respected member of society.
But what if they did arrest her? What if her neighbors and Page Six were already at the end of the driveway waiting to get a shot of the perp walking to the back of the police car? Maybe Max turned on her and that’s why she couldn’t reach him.
Panic overtook Mildred as her thoughts raced along. She couldn’t bear the thought of being arrested. Just the idea of a mug shot was frightening enough. Maybe she should put on some lipstick just in case. She couldn’t decide whether to freshen her makeup or jump out the window. Fortunately, she didn’t have to.
“Mrs. Baines-Reynolds?” A burly detective asked as he appeared in her doorway.
“I tried to stop them, Madam, but they insisted.”
“That’s okay, James,” Mildred said in her strongest high-society voice.
“I’m Detective Henderson, and this is my partner, Detective Jones.” While his partner spoke, Detective Jones, a middle-aged white man with a thin comb-over, scanned the room, not missing a speck.
“Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the sitting area in her expansive master suite. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“You planning a trip?” Detective Henderson asked, while his partner roamed around, taking it all in.
“Heading to Paris for a little shopping,” Mildred answered. Her composure had instinctively turned to steel.
“Going alone?”
“In fact, I am.”
“Where is your husband?”
His tone was now quite offensive. There was no way that Mildred Baines-Reynolds would be treated so commonly in her own home. “Officer, I don’t mean to be rude, but could you tell me what this is about?”
“Absolutely,” Officer Henderson said, leaning forward. “It’s about your niece’s murder.”
“What does that have to do with me?” she asked, pulling a cigarette from Nathan’s ebony box that sat on the cocktail table. She hadn’t smoked in ten years, but the urge for nicotine was overwhelming. Actually, what she really wanted was a nice stiff drink, but James, of course, was nowhere to be found.
“Quite a bit, it seems,” Detective Jones intoned from across the room.
“I spoke with detectives after Paulette’s death and told them everything that I knew.”
“Except for one small detail,” Detective Jones rebutted. “That you were both sleeping with the same man, your daughter’s husband.”
He delivered his uppercut in one smooth stroke, sending Mildred reeling. How the fuck did they find that out, she wondered. Surely Lauren wouldn’t tell them, even though she had told Nathan. Mildred braced herself and forged ahead. “That had nothing whatsoever to do with Paulette’s murder.”
“Except for when she threatened to expose it.”
“I did not kill Paulette,” she insisted, injecting defiance into her voice, all the while puffing away on her cigarette, trying but failing to channel Marlene Dietrich.
“Oh, so Max did it?” Detective Henderson asked.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But according to him you were involved in the plot to kill your niece.”
A bolt of shock ran through Mildred. Her hand shook in terror. Would Max really have thrown her under the bus?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe you need a little reminder,” Detective Jones said before whipping a tape recorder from his pocket. He pressed play and Max’s voice filled the room:
“Let’s just say that me and a friend had to take care of someone who was blackmailing us.”
“So how’d you do it?” a female voice asked.
“We sent her boy Joe out to L.A. to cut her brake line, sent that bitch right over into the canyons around Mulholland Drive. Trust me, she got just what she deserved.”
“Who is we?” The woman asked. “You got another Bonnie?”
“Not anymore, baby,” he moaned. “Miss Mildred is yesterday’s news.”
“You sure I don’t have anything to worry about?”
“From that old skank? Not at all, baby. It’s you and me now. Go ahead and give me one of your famous stripteases.”
By the time the tape ended, Mildred had aged twenty years. Not only did she have frightening visions of stripes that weren’t from the fall collections, she also felt like an old fool for ever believing in Max. In fact, what hurt the most was that he’d called her “an old skank.”
Mildred put the cigarette out and said, “I need to speak to my attorney.”
Chapter 42
Imelda tiptoed around Gillian and Brandon’s house like a mouse navigating a house full of hungry cats. Now was the time for her to not be seen or heard, both concepts that heretofore were foreign to Imelda, who could always be counted on to be the most visible woman in any room.
But times were a changing. After firing Lydia, which sparked the whole revenge tell-all book saga, followed by the embarrassing revelation about Gillian’s supposedly dead father and the ensuing dustup with Gillian, Imelda was just happy to have a handcrafted, multimillion-dollar roof over her head.
Even more troubling was the building discord between Gillian and Brandon. He seemed to believe that the nude shots of Gillian being circulated were real, and she seemed disinterested in convincing him otherwise. Imelda didn’t know whether the photos were of her daughter or not, and she really didn’t care—after all, everybody made mistakes, she’d certainly made enough of her own—she only prayed that Gillian had enough sense to hang on to Brandon for both of their sakes.
As an Oscar-nominated actress, Gillian (and thus Imelda) wouldn’t be collecting food stamps, but it would be many long years before they could afford the lavish lifestyle that Brandon handed them on a silver platter. And Imelda was much too comfortable in her richly appointed wing of the estate, with an on-call butler, a chauffeur-driven fleet of luxury cars, and no bills at all, to ever want to leave. Hell, if she could fuck and marry Brandon herself she would; however, she’d finally come to the very harsh realization that her own legendary gold-digging days were well over. No amount of Botox, breast jobs, or designer wardrobes would enable her to compete with women ten, twenty, and thirty years younger than she. Her looks had finally betrayed her for good.
Now she only hoped that no more of those scandalous photos came out and that Gillian would win that Oscar. She also prayed that Gillian would go ahead and have a baby, which would ensure them at least another eighteen years of checks.
There was a knock at the door to her suite, startling Imelda since no one, except the cleaning woman, ever came to the west wing. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Oh, come on in, honey.”
Gillian walked in and plopped down on her mother’s chaise longue.
“Is everything okay?” Imelda asked.
Gillian ignored the question. “I want you to be completely honest with me. Is there something else that you need to tell me about my family?” she asked.
Imelda thought hard, but couldn’t think of anything important. “No, why do you ask?”
“The pictures Mom. How do you think they were done?” Gillian wanted desperately for her mother to confess that she’d given away one of her babies, thinking that honesty—however late—would somehow make it a little better.
“Sweetie, I h
ave no idea. I mean, they must have used that computer stuff on them, unless they really are you. After all, we all make mistakes.”
Gillian was furious and struggled to keep the anger from her voice. “I told you that it wasn’t me.”
“If it is, you can tell me. I won’t tell anybody.”
“Just like you didn’t tell anybody about your second child?” There, she’d said it.
“What are you talking about?” Imelda looked genuinely bewildered.
At that moment, Gillian hated her mother. What nerve. For her to look Gillian in her eyes and boldly deny the existence of a child that she gave birth to was unconscionable!
“How could you do that? How could you give away one of your own babies?” Gillian screamed. “How did you choose which of us to give away? Was it as simple as a coin toss?”
Imelda looked dumbfounded. The pressure must finally be getting to Gillian, she thought. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she insisted.
“Or do you mean, who?” Charli said, entering the suite. She stood next to her sister looking like a duplicate.
Imelda sat there with her mouth agape, and her eyes wide in open-faced astonishment. “I-I-I don’t understand,” was all that she could manage to say. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking from one to the other. Shock was written all over her face.
“It’s simple, Mom. You obviously couldn’t be burdened with two babies and just decided to leave one of us behind. You took my sister from me, and me from her,” Gillian charged.
“That’s not true!” Imelda insisted, snapping out of her shock.
The Oscar should simply go straight to her mother, Gillian thought. She’d never seen a more convincing performance in her life, but the proof stood before them both.
“Stop lying, Mom. Meet your other daughter, Charli,” Gillian spat.
Imelda was again stunned into stillness as she stared at Charli, taking occasional glimpses at Gillian to make sure this was no parlor trick.
Finally Charli spoke. “Why did you give me away?” she asked in a very small, little girl-like voice. Vulnerability and years of insecurity were clearly visible along with her uncanny likeness to Gillian.
Imelda took Charli’s hand and they both sat on the bed. She looked from one daughter to the other. “You both have to believe me,” she started, taking a deep breath, “I admit that I wasn’t thrilled to be pregnant by your father and was desperate to get out of town. But I also didn’t have any prenatal care, so I had no idea that I was pregnant with twins. I remember taking a taxi to the hospital, because I was early and your father wasn’t around, and I also remember being given some drugs and getting a C-section. Later I was given only one child. Not two,” she said adamantly. “I swear to God.”
“This is not to say, given the person I was, that I wouldn’t have given one away, but you have to believe me when I say that I didn’t have that choice to make. Someone stole my baby.” Tears began rolling down her cheek. She clasped her hand over her mouth and began to sob for the first time that Gillian could remember. “You are so beautiful,” she finally said, hesitantly stroking Charli’s cheek as though afraid she might break or disappear.
Charli searched her mother’s eyes for the truth and saw it there before her. At the same time, they reached for each other, and then cried in each other’s arms.
Gillian had never seen such raw, unrehearsed emotions from her mother and realized that no amount of acting in the world could come close to it. Watching her sister, who’d been through so much, finally have what she’d craved without even knowing it, touched her heart like nothing she’d ever experienced. She too was crying as mother and daughter clung to each other, trying to make up for thirty years of missing love.
“I’m so sorry,” Imelda repeated over and over, before turning to Gillian. “I’m also sorry for not being the best mother to you, too. I know I’ve been self-centered and haven’t always been there for you, even when we were physically together. Please accept my apology.”
The three women hugged each other for a long time, forming new bonds and healing old wounds.
Chapter 43
Since catching her mother and Max in bed together, Lauren had experienced an increasing feeling of fatigue and general malaise. Having suffered a bout of depression when she was married to Max, she dreaded the thought of it returning, but after Mildred was arrested for Paulette’s murder it was all she could do just to get out of bed in the morning. Having Gideon around certainly helped, but she wondered if she’d ever feel as happy and carefree as she had before, when she and Gideon were on their own, far away from the drama of her dysfunctional family.
Now that Max and Mildred had both been arrested for the well-publicized murder of the celebrity publicist Paulette Dolliver, TV, radio, the Internet, print magazines, and newspapers were all taking part in a Sodom and Gomorrah-style feeding frenzy. The New York Post, in particular, was having a field day traipsing over the tattered remains of the Baines-Reynolds’s family reputation.
Their raucous headlines read:
BAINES FAMILY HEIRESS SCREWS DAUGHTER,
KILLS NIECE TO KEEP SON-IN-LAW UNDER COVERS
DISGRACED HORNDOG ATTORNEY MAXIMILLIAN
NEUMAN III BEDDED WIFE’S MOTHER AND COUSIN,
THANKFULLY GRANDMOTHER ALREADY DECEASED
MURDERED PUBLICIST PAULETTE DOLLIVER
KILLED BY OWN AUNT, CRUELLA DE VILLE
COUGAR KILLS CUB TO KEEP TIGER IN HER TANK
Lauren couldn’t bear to turn on the TV for fear of catching the ever-breaking news involving another sleazy aspect of the titillating murder case. Even the late-night crowd had gotten in on the action. Comedian and talk show host Conan O’Brien joked: “I heard today that Mildred Baines-Reynolds has started another chapter of Jack and Jill. It’s called, Jack Does Jill, Jane, and Jackie.”
Lauren was certain that her dignified grandmother was tossing and turning in her grave. Her poor father, Nathan, had simply left the country, and advised Lauren to do the same, but she could barely muster the energy to get out of bed, let alone dress and pack.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Gideon promised her. He brought in a tray of orange juice, fruit, and yogurt. Her appetite had been nonexistent lately and she was beginning to look pale and sallow.
“Things will never be okay,” she said quietly, as she stared at nothing in particular. She felt an overwhelming sense of doom. Everything she’d ever believed about herself and her family was one big fat lie, leaving her with nothing but an empty shell.
“Lauren, you’ve got to eat,” Gideon insisted. He spooned a little yogurt and tried feeding it to her himself. She simply turned her head, refusing to eat. She’d been lying there wasting away for four days, not answering her phone, eating, or venturing out of the hotel room. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed.
The hotel room phone rang and Gideon picked it up. “Hello?”
“May I speak to Ms. Reynolds, please?” a male voice asked.
“May I ask who’s calling?” Gideon inquired. Of course, the media had gotten wind of the fact that they were staying at the Gansevoort and had tried every trick in the book to get a comment or photo. One desperate reporter even claimed to be from maintenance sent to check for a carbon monoxide leak.
“This is Dr. Harris. I’ve been trying reach Lauren for days now. It’s important that I speak to her.”
Alarmed, Gideon left the room to try and figure out what was going on before causing Lauren any more concern. “Is everything okay?” he whispered, suddenly remembering that Lauren had been planning to get her annual checkups while in New York and getting scared. He wasn’t sure that she could take any more bad news.
“I’m sorry, to whom am I speaking?” the doctor asked.
“I’m Lauren’s boyfriend, Gideon.”
“I’m sorry, Gideon, but I’m not allowed, because of client-patient confidentiality, to disclose Lauren’s medical information without her consent.”
“Honey, Dr. Harris is on the line for you.” He reluctantly handed her the phone.
Concern settled across the mask of despair that had etched itself onto Lauren’s normally radiant face. “What is it?” She’d forgotten about her doctor’s visits. For her they were simply a routine matter she took care of at the beginning of every year. It never dawned on her that anything could really be wrong with her.
“I’m sorry, honey, but he won’t tell me, only you.” He only wished that he could handle whatever it was and protect Lauren from any further hurt.
Lauren looked at the phone as though it were a venomous snake. “Hello?” she answered tentatively.
“Hi, Lauren, this is Dr. Harris. I’ve tried calling your cell with no luck, so I had Rachelle track down your hotel.”
“Hi, Dr. Harris. I’m sorry. I completely forgot that I was supposed to call for my test results. Is everything okay?” she asked, her heart skipping several beats.
Gideon watched Lauren closely, as he held his breath. He couldn’t bear the thought of something else happening to Lauren. She had certainly been through enough the last three years. He only wished that he could get his hands on Max to give him the ass kicking he so richly deserved. Gideon watched anxiously as Lauren’s face transformed from concern, to disbelief, to shock.
“Thank you, Dr. Harris. I’ll call later to schedule a follow up.”
Lauren hung up the phone and hugged Gideon for dear life. Her eyes were closed and he could feel her hot tears streaming down his neck.
“Baby, is everything okay?” he asked, frightened.
She finally got a handle on herself, pulled away from him, and wiped away the tears. “Everything is fine.”
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