Yes. It caused me to glance back at Brock. He circled the rumaki bar. Good.
I moved across the room to check on Geoff and Sukie. Geoff had forgone his stardom as a model and was showing off his new website design to a round of potential advertisers.
Sukie peeked at me with a smile that dissipated into a grimace. “What’s wrong, Laurs? You like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Who are those guys over there standing in the corner?” I pointed to two men with cameras slung around their shoulders. No question about it. They were the same two men I saw outside my hotel bungalow window. One had too much hair and the other, too little.
Sukie shrugged, “The press is supposed to just shoot cameos as guests arrive. Otherwise, I thought I was in charge of all the photography for tonight .”
“Do me a favor. Go check them out,” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.
Sukie came back a moment later. “Sure enough. Press,” she said.
“From where?”
“I didn’t ask. They both flashed me ID cards. I figured all press was good press. They said they wouldn’t use their cameras inside the doors.”
I turned to scan the corner of the room again. They were gone. Occupying the same space, a handsome man with impeccable dress and even more perfect dark hair, cast a smile my way.
Sukie whispered, “Ah, and their eyes meet across the crowded room.”
“There are no eyes to meet,” I insisted. “He’s wearing shades. Even in L.A., I find that indifferent.”
“Maybe he’s a rock star.”
I looked back, and again the corner of the room stood empty.
Chapter Seventeen
The Beach & a Shrink
AFTER CLOSING ON MY BEACH house, Carly Posh had four weeks to decorate it top to bottom, while I stayed on at the bungalow. The day for me to move in came none too soon.
The Posh Possessions delivery van pulled out of the driveway as I walked through the transformed rooms. “I can’t believe it,” I told Carly. “You’re unbelievable. I’ve never turned over the reins and let someone choose everything for me.”
It was everything I wanted. Mostly, it was nothing like my apartment in Chicago. Carly offered me a seat in my brand new chair and hurried to the kitchen to retrieve the bottle of champagne she had chilling in the empty refrigerator.
“It wasn’t as easy as I thought,” Carly said. “I mean, I’ve done this kind of thing a dozen times, but you had me a little worried.” Carly poured the champagne into two flutes I’d never seen before.
“What do you mean?”
“I think I know you. Back in school you were so whimsical and free and colorful. But the last time I saw you in Chicago your place was pretty austere, to be honest. I took a gamble and decided you needed something a little more cheerful. Beach-happy stuff.”
I raised my glass to toast her. “A lot’s happened to me.”
“I wish I could have been nearer you,” Carly said.
“Weird, huh, that I took comfort in that old apartment, when I thought I was so happy.”
Carly looked at me with a bleak smile and the slightest shrug rising from one shoulder.
“I love what you’ve done. It’s just what I need to bring me back amongst the living.”
“You’re still thinking about Payton, aren’t you?”
“She always signed her emails to us, Carly. Always. In caps. BFF, YOUR BLOOD SISTER, PAYTON. She had an auto signature for us. One click. And I called her mom. Asked her about Payton’s computer. She said she couldn’t figure the thing out and donated it to charity. She couldn’t even remember which one. The hope of finding anything on that is long gone.”
Carly shifted, in obvious mental discomfort in the overly comfortable chair. “Remember, Lauren, when I told you I had started seeing a psychologist?”
“Sure.” An uncertain panic laced my voice.
“Look, I’m just here to be your friend, no matter what.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card. “Furniture, champagne flutes, even a house on the beach—they aren’t going to make you happy, Lauren. Here’s the name of the guy I go to, and honestly, he’s the best.”
I accepted the card. The plain raised black ink read Harlan Coal, Ph.D. Psychologist. Therapist.
Carly must have read the blank expression on my face. “He’s created some breakthrough therapy that produces measurable results. At least for me. God knows, you’ve been through enough. I’ve been going to him for several months. In fact, I just moved on to his compound.”
“Compound? You’re kidding me!”
Carly wasn’t kidding. It had freaked out Gabri, too, I later learned, when Carly had asked her to draw up the sales contract for a house on a compound.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Carly said. “It’s my own home and I’ll make a killing on it anytime I want to sell. It works for me. It’s near the Hollywood Hills, not too far from your office and on a chunk of property I didn’t even know was there.”
I tossed the card onto my new table. “Sounds creepy if you ask me.”
Carly sighed. “I get more out of my therapy living there and hanging out with people like me, whenever I want.” She shook out her choppy black hair. “Come on. Let me show you a couple more things I took liberty to pick up for you.”
We walked into a second bedroom and there was Teddy, spread out like royalty on his new cushy be and next to an enormous cat tree. He looked perfectly at home.
I ran over to scratch his belly. “Perfect Carly. You really didn’t need to do this.”
“And there’s more. Come look.”
Carly knew I liked my tunes, and she was quite correct that my entire sound system was sorely outdated. She slid back the left side of the burl wood entertainment center to reveal the top of the line components. “And I know you need your daily news fix,” Carly said. She pushed a button on a remote and the large television screen lifted up from behind the cabinet.
The six o’clock news was on. “Perfect. You’ve thought of everything.”
Carly walked over to the sofa to retrieve her handbag and a pile of loose manila folders. “Just think about it,” she said. “I mean, getting an appointment with Dr. Coal. I’ll set it up for you because he fills his calendar fast. I know he’ll work you in if I ask him.”
The television news flashed a series of what looked like yearbook portraits, one after another. The commentator announced, “Timothy Lyons did not fit the runaway child profile, and evidence of foul play was found at the scene of his home, including a substantial amount of blood and hair samples. DNA results will be in soon. This brings the year’s total to twelve young boys that have disappeared from the Los Angeles and Southern California area under suspicious circumstances. All of the missing seem to have vanished without a trace. Police need your help. Foul play is now being considered and their missing status is now listed as suspicious. Concerns are rising that there be more missing young boys, possibly expanding the course of many years. Please contact the police department if you have any information.”
“This is too much,” I said aloud. “Carly, did you hear that?”
“I don’t listen to much news. Blank it out.”
“Do you remember Payton’s brother?”
“Of course I do. Mike. I think that’s maybe why Payton might have committed suicide. I don’t think she ever got over losing him.”
“Right.”
“What’s right?”
“He was lost. No one ever said he died. They never found a body. He just disappeared and his parents didn’t give a damn. But Carly knew he wouldn’t have just skipped town without contacting her.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. Too many coincidences. Too many loose ends.”
“Dr. Coal will help you sort it all out.”
CARLY’S VAN BLOCKED my driveway. When she left I decided to pull the car into the garage. Only when I walked back to the door did I remember the golf clubs in my trunk. Unloading the
travel bag, I unzipped it, just in case there was something more to see inside the case. All I saw were the heads of a dozen or so clubs. I threw the unwelcome bag against the far side of the garage. At least they’d make it look like I had a life.
Chapter Eighteen
Voodoo
A WASTED TRIP TO TUCSON, more time wasted at the luggage claim at LAX, and now I had to come to terms with the big fake smile I had worn at my own opening gala while suspect that every guest predicted my great demise. It did little to lift my mood. Driving up the 405, I felt like I’d hit the wall both emotionally and physically. I reached for my phone and pushed the auto-dial. Without thought, I suppose.
“Brock Townsend”, he answered.
“Hey. It’s Lauren.”
“This is a surprise. Last time I saw you I thought you were mad at me. Treated me like shit at your grand gala opening, if I recall.
“I’m sorry about that. I really am. It was a stressful night for me. I’m a far cry from being the hostess with the mostess.”
“I’ll second that emotion.”
“It’s just there were a lot of people there that had no right to celebrate with me, and on my dime. I’m pretty sure they’re all of the opinion CoverBoy will be deep-sixed within a year.”
Brock took his time responding. Too much time. Finally, “Since when does Lauren Visconti give a rat’s ass what other people think?”
I remembered why I had called him in the first place. I didn’t give a rat’s ass. I cared that I had was checked out of the bungalow and on my way to a sexy bedroom in a beach house in Malibu. I remembered Brock’s smell, and how I longed for that musty scent on my bed linens. I was a smart fool, and very human.
“Can I make you dinner tonight to make up for my bad behavior?”
“Sounds great, but I’ve got a game tonight. It was a fluke I could make your grand opening.”
Instant embarrassment. Mortification. I tried to redeem myself. “At least you know I extended the olive branch. I know I was an ass.”
“Do me a favor. Pull the thorns off that olive branch next time you offer it my way and we’ll be cool.”
I WAS CORRECT. My party was over. Too many people were telling me my magazine was destined to fail before I even ran the first local issue. At best, I was called the newest L.A. cheesy cougar, which I detested because I didn’t deem myself old enough to be a cougar and I didn’t think I was particularly cheesy, either.
“Don’t listen to them,” Geoff consoled me.
“Yeah, well, easy for you to say. They’re knighting you as the next Rock Hudson. Read this.” I handed him the morning paper.
“Honey, it ain’t all that bad to be known as a femme fatale Hugh Hefner. Let me show you our advertising dollars.” He clicked on the spreadsheet and turned his monitor to face me, full well knowing he’d see my wide grin as I read the numbers.
Geoff was not only a brilliant computer techie; he also had business savvy gained from an MBA from Tulane, although he rarely touted it.
“Laurs, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Your voice just dropped an octave. Talk to me.”
“I talked to my mother the other day.”
“Oh, Geoff. Not again.”
“Hear me out.” He removed a vial from his breast pocket and set it in front of me. “She overnighted this to me. Told me to get it to you right away.”
I’d met Geoff’s Jamaican mother once, and even his eccentric grandmother before she passed away. In her late eighties, the grandmother’s mind functioned something on this side of scrambled but still gooey raw. I had listened in as she had a long and engaged conversation with her mother. As if she was on the phone and I could only hear her side of the dialogue. Except there was no telephone. And her mother had been dead for ten years.
Then there was the wee legend that the deceased grandmother held court as an alleged high priestess of Obeah Voodoo.
“What does your mother have for me this time? Something from your grandmother’s grave, right?” I grinned. “Crushed alligator teeth? Grave dirt?”
“Don’t make fun of this. The last time she had something for you it cured you of the flu in twenty-four hours, didn’t it?”
I wanted to come back and tell him maybe I had the twenty-four hour flu, but spared the attitude. I unscrewed the top of the vial and smelled it. “Rum based. That works for me.”
“She told me to warn you of a negative energy all around you. And she wants you to beware of the number six.”
“Isn’t six the sign of the devil?”
“Triple six,” Geoff said. “The sign of the devil. But my grandmother said six. Only the number six.”
“Well, I would thank her but she’s dead. You can tell your mother thank you, but I don’t have a date with the devil and the only thing on my calendar for six o’clock is a haircut. I think I’m safe.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger, Laurs. Listen to me. How’s a little rum-based potion gonna hurt you?”
I laughed.
Geoff grew more serious.
“There’s something else.”
“Please spare me,” I said.
“My grandmother had one more message. You will sing and have no memory of it, and that will be a good thing.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Like I said, Laurs, don’t shoot the messenger. But let’s face it. A good thing is a damn good thing these days!”
THE SICKENING NEWS didn’t smack me in the face, but it did raise the hairs on the back of my neck. A reporter called on my private line. I found his questions obnoxious and the situation a travesty. But mostly, I admit, I found the whole thing to be rotten timing.
The call concerned our first official issue. Gone was the skirmish over the steroids and bribes our preview issue presented. This time we ran a powerful story on the tragedies of eating disorders. We interviewed several top runway models who agreed to reveal the secrets to their beauty. Those dark secrets hidden within the veils of the industry. Eileen Ford’s insistence that her models strictly adhere to the fish and water diet had nothing on the newest up and coming talent agencies. They touted the cocaine diet to properly manage their weight. For one young woman who became our feature article, the cocaine use led to heroin. She told us this. We printed it.
Today’s news? Police had found our most outspoken young model’s body in east L.A., splayed out in front of a laundromat at four in the morning, stabbed six times. Her ring finger had been severed off for the bauble that had adorned it. The bauble, a ten carat emerald flanked by diamonds, was a gift from her agent, of course.
The authorities came to a quick resolution. The model was trying to make a quick score in the wrong part of town at the wrong time of night. Whacked out and stupid would be the only reason she would wear a ring like that in that part of town.
I’d met the model. I’d been present at the interview. The familiar pain of curling flames of fire surged through my spine. I’d met up with yet another death.
I looked at the vial of an Obeah Voodoo concoction. I unscrewed the cap and lifted a few small drops to my mouth.
Chapter Nineteen
The Bad Seed
IT WASN’T GEOFF AND HIS heebie-jeebie voodoo that bothered me, nor did I expect it to rescue me. It was my life. Never mind that I gave thought to my watch at six o’clock that night. Stuck in traffic and already running a half hour late for my haircut, I finally called to cancel the appointment. I barely had time to get home and prepare my first real meal at the new house.
The steaming sauce of garlicky oil, tomato, carrot and basil came to a gentle boil as I slid in the Osso Bucco, then placed the heavy lid on the casserole dish and shoved it into my virginal oven.
Sterling strode in juggling a bag of fresh bread and a bottle of Silver Oak cabernet. We uncorked the wine and took our plates out to the deck.
The temperate evening air held just a hint of salty breeze coming across the Pacific waters. The beach
was quiet but for the token Frisbee chasing Golden Retriever in the distance, accompanied by a chattering of white gulls.
“This place is perfect for you, Lauren.” Sterling refilled her wine glass. “But how are you, really?”
“Cut right to the chase, huh?”
“I’m not over Payton. I know you aren’t. It seems like there’s a hole in the whole.”
Tears wanted to rise to the occasion but I denied them. “It’s the Visconti curse. You know my background.”
“That you’ve lost loved ones? Big deal.”
“It’s more than that. My DNA matches a spineless woman who managed to survive a violent rape. That means half of me is the seed of a rapist. I can’t get that fact out of my head.”
Sterling gulped down the red liquid and set the balloon glass back down on the table. “So we’re back to the fact that you’re adopted. And you were loved. What is your self arguing about now?”
She surprised me sometimes. Inside the body of a bimbo was an intuitive soul. Smart as hell, too.
I curled the edges of my napkin, purposely avoiding eye-contact. “Look at my life.”
Sterling, my friend but an outsider. She would think I had everything going for me, but the truth was I had nothing. I had no family. I had no love, and if I loved it, it would die. And that’s because I’m the heir to the devil. Yes, the devil and his sixes had crossed my mind, although I had no idea what it might mean for me.
I continued what felt like a soliloquy, “I’m the bad seed. Sometimes I feel him. I feel the evil soul of Nathan Judd residing inside me.”
Sterling hadn’t heard his name in years. Nathan Judd had died when his victim, my mother, fought back with a blow poke. The authorities had ruled the death self-defense with the agreement to cover up the adoption of the child conceived in violence.
Unsure of where the conversation had left to go, I removed myself and grabbed the Couvossieur from the newly stocked bar. The sun had set, and the cool air began to engulf us. I lit the small gas fire-pit. Shifting back into my chair, I was aware of the strain I’d brought to the evening. It seemed lately I managed to ruin most good moments.
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