Close to You (2 page)

For the two years she had anchored the ten o'clock news for the Garden State Network, she had never given a second thought to entering the well-lit parking lot after work. She had been so confident, so sure of herself.

Now she lived in fear. And she hated it.

The late-October night air was cold and crisp as she hurried across the lot toward her locked car, another week of work behind her. Shivering beneath the wool coat she had just picked up from the dry cleaners', she fumbled with the shiny key, her nervousness only making her aim less efficient. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she got in and locked the door beside her.

She was determined not to be a victim. She had signed up for a self-defense course at her health club and had a security system installed on her condo. She forced herself to carry on with her life, determined not to be held hostage by some sick nut.

She drove home, comforting herself with the fact that her boss, the news director, while showing some concern, did not seem overly worried. He had been in the business for twenty years and had listened to dozens of stories from his on-air talent who had been targeted as objects of desire
by viewers. Most of the obsessive fans were harmless.

Most.

She pulled her blue two-seater convertible into her reserved spot at the end of the row of two-story condominiums. She had been so happy to get an end unit when she bought the place, having neighbors only on one side and the yard at the end to herself. Now she wished her condo was smack in the middle of all the others.

She pulled the car key from the ignition and searched out the house keys, holding them tight in her hand. She looked out the windows on both sides and behind her before getting out of the car. It was just a few steps to the front door.

The first key slid smoothly into the top lock and she heard the dead bolt shift. But the second key got stuck halfway in the doorknob. She jiggled at it frantically.

“Linda, you've been avoiding me.” The words sliced through the still night air and the hand clamped down on hers.

 

The next morning, an eager trick-or-treater, thrilled that Halloween fell on a Saturday that year and provided a full day of candy-gathering, made his way along the row of condos in his gorilla costume. When he got to the last door there was no answer. He shrugged, undisturbed. There were lots more doorbells to ring.

He cut across the side yard, toward the woods that led to the next housing development. He paid little attention to the woman's shoe or to the can of hairspray that lay on the dew-covered grass.

 

The anchorwoman's mother screamed with rage and desperation at the police. Her daughter had reported that she thought she was being followed. Why hadn't they
done
something?

The police were on the defensive. Hadn't they given her escorts for weeks? There had been no problems. No one menacing had shown up. They couldn't have gone on indefinitely,
accompanying her back and forth from the studio each night. There wasn't a budget for that.

They vowed they would do everything in their power to find Linda Anderson. It was a high-profile case. The Garden State Network was breathing down the police chief's neck every day for developments in the investigation. But the suspect list was infinite.

It could be anyone with a television set.

“Eliza! I've found it! But you've got to come out here and look at it right away. It isn't going to last.”

Eliza Blake listened to Louise Kendall's breathless voice and felt her own heart beat faster. She glanced at her watch as she swiveled around in her high-backed leather chair and looked out the windowed wall of her office down to the studio on the floor below. She could see the stagehands readying the set for the news segment she was scheduled to pretape for this evening's broadcast.

“God, Louise,” Eliza pleaded. “There's no way I can leave now.”

“You
have
to.” Louise was adamant. “This is your house, Eliza. I'm sure of it. My office just signed the listing agreement and it's going into multiple tomorrow. Everyone and his cousin will be looking at it in the morning and, I swear to you, Eliza, in this crazy market, the house will be gone by this time tomorrow.”

If the house were as special as Louise promised it was, Eliza knew the Realtor was probably right. During the few short weeks Eliza had begun her house-hunting in earnest, she had been stunned by the dizzying speed with which prime real estate moved in Bergen County. Eliza was desperate
to find somewhere peaceful she and Janie could live, out of New York City and away from all the recent unhappy memories. Their apartment was beautiful and it was certainly big enough for just the two of them. But Eliza wanted to get her little girl in a new environment, out of the city, cultural capital of the world or not.

Louise was not giving up. “And, Eliza, I almost forgot to tell you. It's an estate sale. The house is vacant, so you could close as soon as you wanted. Janie could even be enrolled in her new school by the first day of kindergarten.”

It was little wonder that Louise Kendall was a consistent member of the Realtors' Million Dollar Sales Club, thought Eliza. She was an expert at enticing her customers.

“Look, Louise, here's the best I can do. Right after the broadcast, I'll pick up Janie and we'll drive out there. I should be able to meet you by eight.”

“Great!” exclaimed Louise triumphantly. “We'll still have some light then. We can walk around the outside property first while we can still see and then we'll go inside. I know you are going to fall in love with this house, Eliza. I'm bringing a contract with me. Make sure to bring your checkbook.”

Not far from the Lincoln Tunnel in Moonachie, New Jersey, every seat at the bar was taken at the noisy Like It Rare steakhouse. As the clock on the wall neared six-thirty, the regulars groaned when the bartender switched the television mounted on the wall at the corner of the bar to the
KEY Evening Headlines
with Eliza Blake.

“Aw, come on, Meat. Give us a break. Leave on the wrestling.”

“For Christ's sake, Meat, we come here to get away from the real world for a while. Why do you always have to watch the damned news?”

“Forget it, you guys. You should know better by now. Meat's got a hard-on for Eliza Blake. There's nothing you can say or do that is going to make him change that freakin' channel.”

Cornelius Bacon appeared to ignore the comments from his customers, but in fact he didn't even hear them. He was mesmerized and then angered as he watched Eliza Blake open the newscast, as she did each evening, not sitting at her desk as the male anchormen did at the other networks, but by walking across the studio set. Though the network
could deny it up and down, KEY News was obviously capitalizing on Eliza's sex appeal.

The tall, willowy brunette stepped with assurance as she welcomed her viewers and recounted the top stories of the evening. Then, as the
KEY Evening Headlines
fanfare music blared, the camera followed Eliza as she took her seat at the anchor desk.

Meat didn't like that suit she was wearing. The skirt was much too short.

Hadn't he warned her about that? He had told her what he would do the next time she dared to show so much of those shapely legs.

Why hadn't she listened?

Even before the closing credits had finished rolling, Eliza unclipped her microphone and said a silent prayer of thanks that there was no reason to update tonight's show. The broadcast had been technically perfect. Every news piece and each live standup had been executed without a hitch. There had been no misspelled supers or misplaced graphics. A clean feed to the two hundred-plus KEY affiliates around the country.

“Nice work, everybody.” Executive producer Range Bullock good-nighted the studio crew from his seat inside the control room.

As Eliza stepped down from the anchor platform, Doris Brice approached with her cosmetics case in hand, a gold-sequined baseball cap perched jauntily atop her dark head. But tonight Eliza waved off their evening ritual.

“Thanks, Doris, but don't even bother with taking off my makeup tonight. I've got to get out of here. There's a house.”

Doris knew all about Eliza's real-estate quest. They had talked about it at length over the last few weeks as Eliza sat in the chair before each broadcast while Doris carefully painted, contoured and powdered the anchorwoman's face.
Like almost everyone at KEY News, Doris knew Eliza's history: the death from cancer of her husband, John, a painful death that Eliza endured while she was pregnant with their first child. The battle with depression that followed the birth of her daughter and her struggle to come back to work. And just last month, the betrayal of the woman Eliza had entrusted with the care of her precious Janie. A betrayal that had ended with gunshots. Doris noticed that Eliza still winced sometimes if she turned the wrong way or too quickly in the chair, the wound in her side almost healed now, but still tender.

After all Eliza had been through, Doris could well understand that the woman who had become her friend would want to make a fresh start somewhere. She hoped this house would be everything that Eliza wanted. She deserved it.

And she could certainly afford it, now that she was the anchor of the
KEY Evening Headlines.

“Good luck,” Doris called as she watched Eliza hurry from the studio. Eliza turned, grinned and gave the thumbs-up sign.

Since Eliza Blake had taken over as anchor of the
KEY Evening Headlines,
Jerry Walinski had scheduled his massages for the evenings, immediately after the broadcast aired. After watching Eliza Blake he was so worked up that he needed Lori's hour-long therapy to calm down.

Tonight he was especially relieved that Lori was here. In his well-appointed bedroom, Jerry lay on his stomach with his eyes closed on the massage table as the masseuse worked on his lower body. He didn't feel the expert kneading his leg muscles. His mind was on what he had just seen on television.

Eliza Blake was his dream woman. She was beautiful, intelligent and classy. That elegantly cut yellow suit she had worn tonight had set off her figure to perfection. She moved so gracefully across the studio, sat so erect in her anchor chair. Her face was enchanting and those piercing blue eyes saw into his soul. She understood him, Jerry was certain of it. When Eliza spoke, it was as if she were talking to him alone.

He could stare at her forever and never grow tired of her. In fact, sometimes he did stare at her, for hours, gazing into the framed picture of her that stood in a silver frame
on the table beside his bed. The autographed photograph had been easy to get. He had simply written to Eliza at KEY News and asked for it. Sure enough, a few weeks later it had arrived in the mail.

Lori said it must be a stock picture KEY News sent out to anyone who requested one. He had been angry when she said that but he had tried not to show it. He knew Eliza had meant that picture to be special, for him alone, and he wasn't going to let Lori ruin it for him. She was just jealous, anyway, because he had never made a pass at her.

He felt Lori's strong hands rubbing his back now, pushing the tenseness out of his upper body.

“I can see you've been doing your exercises,” she observed. “Your muscles are getting more defined back here.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Lori took the cue that her client didn't want to talk and continued her work in silence. As she rubbed the warm oils between his shoulder blades, Jerry made up his mind. He was going to call Eliza and tell her how beautiful he thought she was and how much he admired her.

He had been trying hard to control himself, but he couldn't anymore. He had to let her know how he felt.

Motor running, the blue Lincoln Town Car was waiting at the curb in front of the building as Eliza pushed breathlessly through the revolving doors of the Broadcast Center into the steamy August early-evening air. Janie's smiling, expectant face was pressed against the glass of the backseat window. Eliza could see Katharine Blake sitting beside her soon-to-be five-year-old granddaughter. As the driver opened the car door, Janie spilled out onto the sidewalk, running to hug her mother.

“Mmmmm. That feels so good,” Eliza cried as she felt the little girl's arms wrapping around her. “I missed you. Did you have a good day with KayKay and Poppie today?”

Janie nodded happily. “Yeah. KayKay took me to the zoo. We saw the monkeys. Poppie was too tired to go. He stayed home and took a nap.”

Eliza glanced into the backseat of the car. Katharine was in her late sixties now and it couldn't have been a treat for her to take a child to the Central Park Zoo on a hot summer afternoon. The chocolate ice-cream splatters on Janie's yellow T-shirt testified to the good time the child had had, but now, as mother and daughter climbed into the car, Eliza could see that Katharine looked exhausted.

“What would I have done without you?” Eliza whispered to her mother-in-law as she kissed her on her soft cheek.

Katharine just patted Eliza's hand. Both women understood exactly why it had been best for Janie to spend the last few weeks with her grandparents during the day while Eliza was at work. None of them wanted to let the child out of their sight. While they knew the child-care situation was temporary, they dreaded the inevitable time when a new babysitter would be found. After the last time, how could they ever trust anyone again to take care of then precious Janie?

But trust, they had to. Eliza knew this arrangement couldn't go on forever. It wasn't fair to Katharine and Paul. Over the course of their lifetimes, they had worked hard and paid their dues, suffering the worst fate any parents can endure. They had watched their only child—John, Janie's father—die.

Then, they had faced the terror of losing Janie as well.