Shooting for the Stars (20 page)

Chapter
37

I
CHECKED
my messages when I got to the office in the morning. There were a lot of emails and voicemail messages. Mostly from people wanting to congratulate me about the Remesch exclusive. Nothing from Sign of the Z. Or Thomas Rizzo. I wasn't even sure that it was Rizzo's people in the car anymore after what happened in my apartment.

The cops hadn't been a lot of help the night before. I showed them the big
Z
spray-painted on the wall when they showed up.

“It looks like someone is trying to send you a message,” one of them said.

“Do you have any idea what the
Z
means?” the other one asked.

“I think it's the symbol of a cult group.”

“Why would a cult group be interested in you?”

“I wrote a story about them. I think they might be connected to some murders in the past. Maybe the present too. Abbie Kincaid, the TV star who was murdered, told me she was afraid of them before she died. Maybe they killed her.”

The two cops looked at each other and shrugged.

“We'll pass it on to the detectives. Probably just pranksters. If I were you though, I'd get that lock on your door fixed.”

“Gee, thanks a lot. Any other crime-stopper advice, guys?”

“Yeah, watch your back.”

I was about to start answering all my messages when I saw a new one that had just come in. It was from Susan. She asked me to call her.

I did, and she answered on the first ring.

“We really should talk,” Susan said.

“Talk is good.”

“Can I see you later?”

“Business talk?”

“About you and me.”

“Even better.”

“I feel badly about our last few conversations.”

“Me too.”

“That's why I want to see you. Are you free for lunch today?”

“Sure. How about that little place near your office?”

“Closed.”

“What about the other one . . .”

“It's now Indian.”

“I don't like Indian food.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, there's still always . . .”

“Absolutely.”

“I'll meet you there at twelve thirty.”

Well, things were definitely looking up, I decided after I got off the phone. Big stories. Lots of acclaim. So what if Thomas Rizzo and the mob or some crazy Sign of the Z cult member was out to get me? Susan and I were going to have lunch together. I loved the way we anticipated each other's words, finished each other's sentences—like two people who know everything about each other.

I got to the restaurant at 12:15. I didn't want to be late. I didn't
want to take a chance on anything going wrong. While I waited, I went over again what I was going to say to her.

The main thing I'd decided was that I was not going to give her a hard time over the new guy in her life. I wasn't happy about him, of course. But Susan had had other men in her life after me. She'd even been engaged to one of them. In the end, she always seemed to come back to me. Because we were meant for each other. I knew that and—somewhere deep down—I was certain Susan knew that too. So I would just play it cool, not make a scene about it, and maintain the best relationship I could with her—then wait for destiny to take its course. Susan and I will be together again, I told myself. It just may take a little longer now than I had hoped.

It was a little after 12:30 when she got there. The first thing I noticed was her hair. It was shorter. A lot shorter. Susan had always worn long, flowing hair that made her look really sexy. Now it was cut in a kind of pageboy style. It gave her a very businesslike look. Probably good for her career. But I still didn't particularly like it.

I gave her a big hug. She hugged me back, but she seemed uncomfortable about it. I had a feeling she had something on her mind. We sat there making small talk for a while.

“It looks like things are going pretty well for you at the paper again,” she said.

“Well, it depends on which day you check.”

I told her about all the ups and downs I'd had on the Remesch and Laura Marlowe stories. I talked about Stacy Albright, the twenty-six-year-old wunderkind who was more concerned about marketing, promotion, and social media presence than she was about the actual stories. I told her about what happened at my apartment last night. I pretty much opened up to her about everything that had been bothering me. Just like I used to in the old days. It felt good to be having a conversation like this with Susan again.

“Have you had any more . . . incidents?” she asked.

“You mean the anxiety attacks?”

She nodded.

“No, not at all.”

That was a lie, of course. I'd had a series of anxiety attacks, the most recent coming after my conversation with Stacy about the Remesch arrest. But not bad enough to send me to a hospital or doctor again, like one of them had in the past. And I sure as hell wasn't going to tell anyone about them. Especially Susan. I wanted her to think I was this strong, indestructible knight in shining armor for her. Not some guy carrying around a lot of emotional baggage.

“Did you ever have them, these anxiety attacks, when we were married?” she asked me at one point.

“Of course not.”

I wasn't entirely sure about that. Maybe I had had the beginnings of a few stress-related attacks back then. But even if I did, I didn't realize what they were until later.

“Would you have told me about it if you did?” she said.

“I'm not sure.”

“There's a lot of things you and I never talked about when we were married, huh?”

“Like what?”

“Having children. Our future together. We just lived day to day—you chasing after your big stories and me working twelve to fourteen hours at a time to advance my law career. We were both so young and so naive, I guess we just thought it would go on like that forever. Everything seemed so simple.”

“We were really great together back then,” I said.

“Yes, we were.”

“And now?”

“Now things are different, Gil.”

“Well, I think we're making some progress in putting our relationship back together again. I mean we're having this nice lunch together, aren't we?”

She smiled, but it was a sad smile. That's when it suddenly dawned on me that this wasn't going to go the way I had hoped.

“I got married yesterday,” she said. “Michael and I didn't want a big wedding. So we just went over to City Hall, took our blood tests, and got hitched right there. I didn't want you to find out about this from someone else. I wanted to tell you in person. So that's why I invited you to this lunch. I hope you're not too upset.”

I don't remember a lot about what happened after that. I somehow made it through the rest of the lunch, sitting there with a stupid smile pasted on my face as she told me about her new life. I don't know how I survived for an entire hour, but I did. Most of the words were pretty much of a blur. Susan did almost all the talking; I hardly said anything. But there was one question I had to ask her. One thing I needed to know.

“Why did you cut your hair?” I asked.

“I got tired of it being so long.”

“How many years did you have it long?”

“Forever.”

“And suddenly you just wake up one morning and get it cut short?”

“Michael didn't like it that long.”

“I always loved your long hair.”

“I remember, but . . .”

Susan didn't finish the thought. She didn't have to. It didn't matter what I thought anymore.

After I left Susan, I went back to the newsroom. I spent the rest of the day sitting there at my desk, acting like I was alright. But I knew
I wasn't. I knew I was damn close to having another full-blown anxiety attack. The only thing I could do to avoid it was keep as busy as possible so I didn't have time to be thinking about it or Susan. But what did I do when work was over? If I just sat there all alone in my apartment, I realized that those feelings of stress and anxiety would overwhelm me. I needed to be with someone. But who?

Susan was the person I always turned to for emotional support when I needed it, but she certainly wasn't a viable option here. This time she was the problem, not the solution. I thought about Jeff Aronson; he seemed to like me. But he had a wife and four kids to go home to. I couldn't ask him to babysit me all night.

I rode the subway and then walked around until I came to the building where I knew all along that I was headed. I stood in front of it for a while. Then I rang the doorbell. She must have seen me out front because she was waiting for me. She opened the door almost immediately.

She had a smile on her face and seemed happy to see me.

“I was hoping you'd come back,” said Sherry DeConde.

Chapter
38

S
HE
was dressed even more casually than the times I'd seen her before. She had on a long T-shirt, cut-off jeans, and a pair of flip-flops. She clearly wasn't expecting me or anyone else to show up at her door. But she still looked damn good to me. I impulsively reached out and hugged her. This time she didn't resist. She hugged me back.

“I'm sorry about the way I acted last time,” she told me. “I was nervous; afraid, I guess, to get too close to you. I wanted to call you afterward. I picked up the phone maybe a hundred times. I just never could think of what to say. I wanted to see you again, Gil. I really did.”

“So here I am now,” I said.

“Here you are,” she smiled.

Then she kissed me.

“So here I am,” I repeated.

For me, the best sexual encounters have always been an impulsive thing. I either feel right about it at that moment, or I don't. Right now, I wanted to have sex with Sherry DeConde. I'd wanted to from that first day we met. There was something drawing me to
her—something so strong, so mesmerizing that I didn't want to fight it anymore. Maybe it was something good like I'd had once with Susan. Or maybe it would end badly like other sexual encounters of mine in the past. But this just felt right.

It had been a long time since I'd made love with anyone, and I think a long time for her too. We devoured each other hungrily, like two desperate alcoholics on a binge after too many months of sobriety. The feeling of her hands exploring my body sent shivers of excitement and arousal through me, and I could see she was feeling it too. There was something wonderfully erotic about our lovemaking. The impulsiveness of it, the long buildup beforehand while we both had struggled with our feelings for each other, the first glimpse of her body that I saw as I undressed her—it all helped create a magical moment as our bodies moved up and down in unison, while the rest of the world seemed far away.

Later, as we lay in bed together, I looked around her bedroom. She had a picture of Laura Marlowe on the wall too. Just like Valentine, although not as big. Laura Marlowe sure had made an impact on a lot of people in her short life. Out the window, I could see the Hudson River—she actually had a real view of the water from the West Village. It was dark now, and the lights of the buildings on the New Jersey shore twinkled in the distance. I could see the lights of boats out on the horizon too. I thought suddenly about my trip on Valentine's boat. What if I chartered that boat from him, and then Sherry and I just sailed off together somewhere and lived happily ever after?

It was a nice dream.

“What made you come back here tonight?” Sherry asked.

“I wanted to be with someone.”

“Someone?”

“You.”

“Why me?”

“I like you. I think you're sexy as hell. And I needed someone I could trust.”

She snuggled her head into my chest and looked up at me. “You hardly know me, Gil, how could you be so sure you can trust me?”

“Laura Marlowe trusted you,” I said. “You told me that at our first meeting. At the end, she came to you for help in turning her life around. Not her mother. Not her husband . . .”

“But I couldn't save her,” Sherry said sadly.

“Still, there was something that made her trust you, despite all the terrible things her mother had said about you. Maybe whatever it was turned out to be the same reason I turned to you when I needed someone tonight. Maybe it was some kind of karma between Laura's ghost and me. Maybe we connected on some spiritual level because I've been thinking about her so much. Christ, I don't know. It just seemed like the right thing to do. It still does.”

I talked about what I'd found out in Hollywood. About Laura and the Sign of the Z cult. About the possibility that cult leader Russell Zorn and some of his members could have been behind the murder of Laura as well as other unsolved celebrity deaths over the years. About all the new details I'd learned about Laura's romance with Thomas Rizzo. About the things Sally Easton had said Laura told Sign of the Z members: her fight with her mother and the estrangement that tore them apart enough for her to flee across country and live with a cult.

“Let's stop talking about Laura Marlowe,” she said finally after I'd peppered her with a lot more questions.

“Change of topic?”

“I think that would be a good idea.”

“So what do we do instead?”

“Oh, I imagine we'll think of something,” she said as she leaned over and kissed me.

As I pulled her close to me, I looked over at the picture of Laura
Marlowe again on the wall of her bedroom. Laura had this smile on her face, like she kept a big secret from the rest of the world. She looked just like a movie star was supposed to look, without a care in the world. Except I knew now that wasn't true.

All the people that were supposed to be bad in her life—Sherry, her father, Thomas Rizzo, maybe even Russell Zorn in his own way—seemed to have tried to help her.

And the woman who was supposed to be the one person looking out for her—her own mother—might have been the biggest villain of all.

Nothing about Laura Marlowe's life was what it seemed.

Maybe the same was true for her death.