Death On the Dlist (2010) (20 page)

Hailey opened her mouth to speak, but Sookie kept talking.

“Consuela . . . please bring out more hot water for Hailey.” She directed her voice toward what Hailey presumed to be the kitchen area.

“You have a beautiful home, Sookie.” While neither the interior nor the exterior was anything Hailey would have wanted for herself, it was . . .
big.
Big and formal.

“Oh . . . thank you, dear.
Architectural Digest
has featured it more than once. We just
love it.
Would you like a tour?”

“That would be great.” Hailey followed along behind her hostess and headed toward the large staircase in the foyer. Climbing the stairs, Sookie went on.

“So you must be wondering why I brought you out to the house. We’ve really enjoyed having you on the show with Harry. You have such a . . .” Sookie searched for the right word . . . “s
park
! Such zest, let me say. And of course, the camera
loves
you, but that goes without saying. In fact, you look better on camera than you do in person.”

Hailey paused. That sounded a lot like an insult.

“Oh, please take it the right way. In this business, it’s a
huge compliment.”

But by the tone in Sookie’s voice, Hailey still wasn’t so sure.

“This is the children’s quarters.” Hailey had never actually known anyone who had “quarters.”

Sookie walked rapidly down a hallway at the top of the stairs. Hailey heard her own cowboy boots clunking along in stark contrast to the staccato of Sookie’s stiletto Louboutins against the gleaming wood floors. Her hostess then waved her right arm upward in a
Wheel of Fortune
gesture. Hailey looked in the general direction in which Sookie was pointing and saw a huge light-blue bedroom full of every conceivable toy known to man. There had to be forty stuffed animals sitting on a pale green sofa facing the foot of a painted blue double bed.

Standing at the door to the room, Hailey did a double-take. At the far edge of the sofa sat a little boy. Just as Hailey noticed him, he looked up, and they met gazes. For a moment, Hailey had mistaken his small form for one of the oversized stuffed toys.

“Hi. I’m Hailey.”

The little boy just stared back through a pair of thick glasses, regarding Hailey with a steady gaze.

Sookie spoke over her shoulder as she continued down the hall, never slowing down. “Oh, that’s Kyle. He always has his nose in a book. I keep telling him he needs some fresh air. I wish he was interested in sports. Here’s Emily’s bedroom. The decorator was fabulous! Even if I have to say it myself!”

Hailey still stood at the boy’s door. He looked so lonely, sitting there clutching his book. He kept looking at Hailey, as if he wanted her to come in and play. Actually, she would much rather do that than continue the tour she was being given.

“Want to come with us, Kyle?” She gave him her gentlest smile.

The boy shook his head “no” and looked back down at his book. She paused another moment, but he never looked back up at her. Hailey trailed along behind Sookie again. Between the two bedrooms was another giant room, this one a bright-yellow playroom. Murals of various nursery rhymes were hand-painted on the walls. Each child’s bedroom had a door opening into their mutual playroom.

Next was Emily’s room. It was predictably pale-pink and done—or overdone would be the better word—in a princess motif. The girl’s bed had a royal theme and a glittery, golden crown painted on the wall over its headboard, a large, capital “E” for Emily in the center of the child’s fantasy coat-of-arms.

“She charged me thousands for the headboard, but there’s nothing else like it out there. It’s an original.”

Anything Hailey could have said at that point would have either been an outright lie or a likely insult to Sookie’s taste, so Hailey followed her own rule . . .
when in doubt, say little and do less!

Down a long hall and across a semi-formal reading area as large as Hailey’s New York apartment, came yet another long hall. All the floors were covered in thick Oriental rugs. Even an amateur like Hailey could tell these were the real thing. Given their size, number, and quality, the rugs alone had to cost over a hundred grand.

They turned left toward the front of the mansion’s façade and into a foyer that opened into Sookie’s sleeping quarters.

There at the doorway, Hailey stopped in her tracks.

Sookie’s bedroom was straight out of a 1940s Hollywood movie. A huge California king-size bed was the centerpiece of the room, adorned with a gorgeous custom-made pure, thick, beige, raw-silk duvet with lavish brocade trim around the bottom. It matched perfectly a brocade bed skirt peeking out from underneath the silk cover, so as not to offend anyone with a possible glance at the hardwood floor underneath the bed.

The pillow-show was in full swing in Sookie’s bedroom. Her bed alone had to have twenty pillows of different sizes and shapes artfully arranged against the massive mahogany headboard. Above the bed was a floor-to-ceiling sheath of the same beige raw silk, twisted into a triangle, its point at the top. The upper tip of the silk triangle was secured to the wall by a large, rounded, mirrored medallion. Its facets caught the light in the room, casting tiny bright bits of light across the smooth floors and thick rugs in front of the bed.

There was a fireplace directly in front of the bed, about thirty feet away from its matching mahogany footboard. About twenty feet to the right of the bed was a sitting area with two love seats and a big cushioned chair, huddled around another fireplace. A highly embellished Louis XIV writing desk sat in a corner, as if Sookie were just about to put quill to paper. Photos in what looked to be sterling silver frames were carefully positioned on the writing desk.

“My. I’ve never seen a bedroom quite like it.” At least Hailey was honest.

“
Really?
I just
love
it! It’s so . . .
romantic!
”

Sookie led her across the bedroom to a closet that was at least the size of Hailey’s family’s living room back home in Georgia. For a closet, it was massive. What first struck Hailey was that it looked like an ad for California Closets. The closet was designed to look exactly like a high-end dressing room with a cushioned seating area and several full-view multi-paneled mirrors.

“Oh . . .” Sookie laughed girlishly “. . . my private dressing room for my clothes and shoe collection! It’s designed exactly like a Gucci changing room I once visited in Paris! Isn’t it
fabulous
?
Julian just
hated
it!”

Was Hailey supposed to know who Julian was?

Hailey stopped briefly to examine Sookie’s shoe collection. Once again, she’d never seen anything like it. There had to be hundreds of pairs of shoes, all stacked in lines. There were shoes in every color of the rainbow, and then some. They were perfectly preserved, each with a shoe tree inserted and a pink sachet cushion wedged down onto every sole. There were evening slippers, boots, stilettos . . . even some lined in mink from what Hailey could surmise. Hailey recognized some of the labels from fashion magazines. A single pair, Hailey knew, could cost over a thousand dollars, and there had to be two to three hundred of them.

“Julian . . . He’s in yachts. That’s my ex . . . but that’s another story.” Sookie now responded to Hailey’s unspoken question. But Hailey wasn’t about to touch that one with a ten-foot pole, though she had a feeling Sookie was going to tell her anyway.

She was right.

“He ruined my life and the lives of our children over some tramp from Barbados. She’s in college, for Pete’s sake . . .
college!
She’s a
co-ed
!”

“Oh, dear . . .” It was all Hailey could get out before Sookie began a tirade about Julian, walking out of the room and assuming Hailey would trail along behind her.

And of course she did. What else could she do? Had she really traveled all the way out here to look at a ridiculous shoe collection?

Along the hallway were framed articles and news stories. Even if Sookie’s name was only mentioned once in the entire article, her name was highlighted with yellow marker, and the article was set in an ornate frame. Many of the articles were in fact about Harry Todd and only mentioned Sookie as being his executive producer, yet they were all mounted and framed as if each and every article was about Sookie herself. Lighting inlaid flush with the ceiling shone down on the articles and photos.

Sookie turned left and started down a grand, curving set of stairs, covered in yet another thick runner. The hand railings, like the staircase Hailey had climbed up, were of rounded mahogany, shined to a dull sheen. They went back through the main foyer and down yet another staircase headed toward, as Sookie described it, her
absolutely fabulous wine cellar.

By now, Hailey was pretty sure this was not the first time Sookie had given a tour of her home. Opening a tall door with a key hanging obviously around the doorknob, Sookie led Hailey down another wide set of stairs with the same mahogany rails on either side. The steps were steep and on the walls on both sides was an expansive display of more photos of Sookie’s dad. Also hanging on the walls were various mementoes he’d brought back, obviously from time spent overseas in the military.

There were multiple shots of him in Burma, placing him in the Burma Campaign during World War Two.

Along the stairwell walls were animal horns of some sort, multiple black-and-white photos of Burma itself, postcards in frames, even a saber and its leather sheath encased in glass. One of the few color shots showed him posed, standing behind the wheel of a jeep wearing no shirt, deeply tanned, with a red-handled pistol stuck down the waist of his military fatigues. He must have been some dad. Whatever his fathering skills, his military prowess had helped catapult his daughter into the upper echelon of society and politics. Hence, her job at GNE.

What followed was nearly a full hour, an excruciating fifty minutes of Sookie waxing on about wine. As they trudged back up the stairs, Sookie finally came to the point.

“So, I was thinking . . . you must get terribly bored in your little psych practice down in the Village. All those patients, all their miserable problems, it must be awful! We’d love to have you join our show as a regular contributor . . . taking the police or prosecution side of course.”

Hailey was stunned at her rudeness. But Sookie was apparently so extremely self-absorbed, she clearly didn’t realize how insulting she truly was.

What a boor . . .
was Hailey’s first thought.

“Actually, they’re neither miserable nor boring. They are all fairly wonderful people. I’ve grown very attached to them and it would be extremely difficult for me to leave them or even cut back on their sessions.”

The guided tour of her mansion was clearly over. Apparently, it was time to get down to business. Sookie turned, quite clearly stunned someone wouldn’t jump at the chance to appear regularly on
The
Harry Todd Show
.

“But, darling,
you’d get paid.
Certainly another paycheck wouldn’t hurt anything . . .”

Hailey looked around the monstrosity of a home Sookie held out on display. “I don’t need the money that bad. And if you’re suggesting that I get paid to take a certain position, even if it is the side of the state, my opinion is not for sale. But thank you so much for your kind offer. I’m extremely flattered, Sookie.”

“But we could make you a
star. Don’t you understand?
I could make you a TV star, Hailey.” Sookie’s gray eyes were widened and fixed on Hailey’s face.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun appearing on the show. But I don’t want to peddle my opinions. I think we should just keep it as it is. When you need me, call me and I will do my very best to make it happen.”

They were now standing exactly before the front door. Out of nowhere, Consuela appeared with Hailey’s coat.

“Well, you certainly have your principles! But I’m not giving up so easily.” Sookie’s smile was fixed.

“Thank you for the tea and the lovely tour of your home. It’s unique!” Hailey continued to try not to lie.

Sookie awkwardly leaned forward and gave a sort of air-kiss to the side of Hailey’s head. An air-kiss was something Hailey would absolutely not do under any circumstances, so she just smiled again as best she could. Consuela ushered Hailey out. But, just before she made it down the front steps to the driveway, Hailey heard a loud crash on the other side of the front door, inside the foyer. It sounded like glass smashing.

“Little bitch! I can’t believe she turned me down!”
She heard Sookie yell it out, apparently to no one in particular. There were a few seconds of silence, followed by a door slamming somewhere in the bowels of the house.

Hailey looked up and saw Conseula at the corner of one of the front windows. She smiled apologetically at Hailey.

Hailey turned and made her way toward the limo, waiting there in Sookie’s circular front driveway.

“Poor kids . . .”
It was all Hailey could think. “
They don’t have a chance . . .”

MIKE WALKER OF
SNOOP
KICKED BACK IN HIS BRAND-NEW
Longhorn. It was a Barcalounger power recliner with generous proportions and soft, rounded arms. They were the “motion furniture” specialists and every single one of their products either reclined, swiveled, rocked, glided, or had some special combo of moving features. Walker’s Longhorn was spectacularly comfy and fully automated. After the fat paycheck from the Leather Stockton murder photos, he couldn’t help but splurge.

He loved his Barcalounger. He rubbed the soft curved arm with his fingertips. He’d always wanted one but could never really afford it. Now he had one, and she was a beauty!

His wife, Marjorie, had objected at first, based purely on aesthetics. But this baby was so swank, you’d never even know it was a recliner! He even chose the nailhead-trimmed, large-scale Vintage option with a deep-tufted back and turned legs with a stained cherry finish. Fashionable and functional!

What’s not to love?

The Longhorn purred into three different positions with absolutely no effort at all by using a control panel tucked between the arm and the seat cushion. After discussing it in-depth with the Barcalounger sales rep, he even went all the way and went for the optional leather-seat cushion upgrade. And it was all top-grain leather . . . He could tell.

The Leather Stockton murder photos had been viewed all around the world and
Snoop
was having a field day, going after any and all outlets that used any of the pictures without their consent. That meant even more money for
Snoop
.

Walker told his bosses he’d used old info from a longtime source, a doorman at the L’ Hermitage Park Towers, where Fallon Malone lived, to get inside her apartment and get even more murder photos. Years ago, the same doorman had spilled to Walker about the servants’ entrance to Malone’s place. The maid’s door wasn’t caught on the hall’s surveillance camera because it used a kitchen entrance that opened up into the high-rise’s common stairwell.

Walker had used the info to catch a big-time movie director, who happened to be “happily married” at the time, sneaking in and out of Malone’s apartment. That was back when Walker was a young hotshot who’d do anything for a story. Now that he was older, a few gray hairs had popped up, but he cured that with his Just for Men hair color. “Darkest Brown” was his shade . . . Even his wife didn’t know about it.

Now all these years later, Walker knew exactly how to get photos from inside Malone’s apartment without his minion turning up on grainy surveillance video. And nothing had changed. Malone still left her spare key under a ficus in the hallway like she used to. Hadden was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. Piece of cake.

Hadden’s shots netted Walker another fifty grand from
Snoop
. They were stunned Walker got the first photos of Stockton still dead on the murder scene, plus the gurney shots were primo. As to the shots of Prentiss Love dead in her SUV, he told his bosses he was tailing Love 24/7 in order to catch her boozing, hopefully at a public bar. He’d said he had to have a private eye stay on her day and night due to her unusual drinking habits. That’s how Walker explained the fresh shots of Love behind the yoga studio. He even got them before the
Post
.

The bigs at
Snoop
never bothered to ask too many questions. They obviously understood he had a true journalist’s integrity.

Naturally, he had to pay Hadden out of his own paycheck, but other than that, the three murders had pulled him out of the red and put him not just in the black, but in the pink. The good thing about Hadden was he always showed up pretty quickly no matter how late he had been out snookered the night before, and importantly, he never asked questions. Walker liked that in a photog. Just snap the shot and keep your yap shut.

And now, there were even rumors that if Walker came through with another big story get, he could be in the running to topple the mag’s executive editor, who’d been in place nearly fifteen years. That was a record at
Snoop
.

The TV was on low, one of the morning shows droning on in the background. Same old, same old. Weather, Washington, women’s health, and a stupid cooking segment.

Walker pressed the hidden automated control panel stuffed conveniently between the chair’s rounded arm and the seat cushion. The Longhorn made a gentle humming sound as it reclined him nearly prone. He
loved
this thing.

Where would the story go next? Walker was about to doze off there in the Longhorn with the TV on low. He could see
Snoop
’s headline now . . .
“Madman Serial Killer Stalks Silver Screen Beauties.”
Wait . . . no . . . the headline should be “
Who Dies Next?
”

Brilliant!

Snoop
hadn’t had a good Death Watch in over two years. They could use the Death Watch headline and place red-hot actresses underneath, suggesting they, too, had been labeled for murder! It would be in all caps across the top of the mag. He’d have the sole byline.

The news. Man, what a business.