“I’m so sorry for everything, Gabrielle. I know that you and Kylie will be all right, and that Doug will take good care of you. He’s a good man. Give him another chance to prove it. I hope in time you will find it in your heart to forgive me. I can’t live with myself knowing all the pain I’ve caused you. I love you more than life itself. Goodbye.”
“Very touching. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“When are you going to send this to her?” Bea asked wearily.
“I’m not. Oh, didn’t I tell you? This is a combo confession/suicide letter. I’m not sending it anywhere. The lucky person that finds your body will find this with it.”
“Suicide?”
“That’s the way it has to be. For one thing, it makes the confession that much more convincing. For another, I don’t have a choice. You know too much, and frankly, I can’t count on you to keep your mouth shut. Now, where’s your purse?”
“On the floor.”
Stephanie retrieved Beatrice’s handbag and emptied it onto the coffee table. Using a Kleenex, she picked up Bea’s bottle of Valium. “These will be perfect,” she declared. “We’re going to make your back pain disappear forever.”
“You’ll never get away with it.”
“Sure I will. If the police haven’t linked me to the fire by now, they never will. And now that they have your very convincing confession, the case will be solved and I can write my book and get on with my life.”
“You have it all figured out, don’t you?”
“Pretty good for something I whipped up on the spur of the moment. I’d love to chat with you, but I have a meeting.” Stephanie went into the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of orange juice and a garlic press. Again handling the bottle with a tissue, she poured the pills into a small yellow mound on the table and began crushing the tablets, several at a time. Stephanie poured the powdered Valium into the glass of juice and carefully mixed the drink with the handle of the press.
“I want you to drink this, and don’t do anything stupid like spitting it out,” Stephanie warned.
All conversation and action were halted by a knock on the door. “Shit,” Stephanie said, pulling the gun out of her waistband. She pointed it at Beatrice, signaling her to remain silent.
“Stephanie?” Doug Sixsmith called out after several unanswered knocks. What the hell did he want? For a moment she thought about not answering, but decided to let him in, just in case she needed an alibi.
“One minute. I just got out of the shower,” she called. It took all of Stephanie’s strength to help Beatrice from the couch. She hurried to the bathroom at the back of the apartment and motioned for her to sit on the toilet as she rummaged through the clothes hamper. She pulled out a pair of socks and stuffed them in Beatrice’s mouth. “Don’t try anything stupid,” she whispered. She pulled her bathrobe over her clothes and wrapped her hair in a towel before going back into the living room. Stephanie scurried to clean up the apartment. She picked up the empty pill bottle and Doug’s letter with a Kleenex and put them in her pocket. Next she quickly shoved Bea’s belongings and the garlic press back into the purse and stuffed it under the sofa. She gathered up the photographs and pushed them under the couch as well, leaving the table clear but for an innocent-looking glass of orange juice.
“Stephanie, open up,” she heard Doug demand as she unbolted the camera and collapsed and carried the tripod into the kitchen and leaned it up against the refrigerator.
“I’m coming,” Stephanie called out, hiding the camera behind a large potted plant as she opened the door. “Fancy seeing you here. Shouldn’t you be out interviewing some of Gabrielle’s old reading teachers or something?” she asked nastily.
“I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time to chat right now. I have a meeting with my publisher.”
“What I have to say will take just a minute,” Doug said, pushing into the apartment. “I found out today that besides your public-relations career, you’re also a columnist.”
“So what? There’s no law against freelancing.”
“No, there isn’t. But there is a law against the kind of malicious lies you turn out under your bogus byline.”
“I stand by my sources and my reports, particularly those involving Gabrielle’s many lovers.”
Doug refused to get riled. “Whatever book you’re planning to write about Gabrielle, you and your editor had better go through it twice with a fine-tooth comb. If there’s a single libelous remark in there, you can be sure that Gabrielle will sue you for every bloody cent you earn, and then some.”
“If she can read it,” Stephanie sniped.
Before Doug could respond, they were interrupted by a crash. The loud noise startled Barclay the cat from his perch, and he scurried across the floor toward the bedroom. At first Stephanie thought it was Beatrice trying to signal for help, but she quickly realized that the noise had come from the kitchen, caused by the tripod hitting the floor. It was time to wrap things up before Beatrice got any bright ideas.
“Sounds like you have a bad case of professional jealousy to me,” Stephanie remarked caustically.
“I’m warning you, Stephanie.”
“And believe me, my knees are knocking. Before you go, take this,” Stephanie said, walking over to the desk and scribbling something on a piece of paper. As Doug watched Stephanie traipse across the room, his eye quickly caught a glimpse of leather patchwork sticking out from under the couch.
“Here,” she said, handing him a scrap of paper and reclaiming his attention.
“What’s this?”
“My autograph.” She smirked. “This will save you the embarrassment of having to ask later.”
“Kiss my ass,” Doug said, crumpling the paper and throwing it back at her before slamming the door behind him.
Stephanie had no time to enjoy her snappy comebacks. She had little more than an hour before her scheduled meeting, and she still had to get Beatrice to drink the juice and then take her home. She carried the glass into the bathroom and removed the socks from Bea’s mouth.
“Now, where were we?” Stephanie held the glass to Beatrice’s lips. “Cheers,” she said as the woman slowly drank the lethal concoction. Bea accepted her fate, afraid of doing anything that might further jeopardize Gabrielle or Kylie.
“Good girl,” Stephanie said, watching Beatrice drain the glass.
“May I have a glass of water?” she requested, coughing.
“I guess that’s as good a last request as any.” She got Bea some water and held the glass as she drank, washing away the bitter taste the poisonous cocktail had left in her mouth.
“Enough.”
“I’m going to get myself together. I’ll drop you by your apartment on my way to Target Press,” Stephanie said very matter-of-factly. Beatrice was astounded by her audacity. A moment ago Stephanie had literally been pouring death down her throat, yet she acted as if they’d just had tea together. What kind of monster was she?
“Can you untie my hands now?” Bea asked.
“Sorry. I don’t want you to stick your finger down your throat.” Stephanie pulled on a new pair of pantyhose, ran a comb through her hair, and was back in the living room within five minutes. Quickly she collected the photos and Bea’s belongings and put everything in her big tote, along with her manuscript. Checking to make sure the prescription bottle and letter were still in her jacket pocket, she motioned to Beatrice. “Let’s get the lead out.”
By the time the cab arrived at the apartment building, Bea looked languid and relaxed, like a woman who’d had one too many drinks at happy hour. “Wait for me. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” Stephanie told the driver as the two women stepped out of the taxi. Arm in arm they walked into the building. “Don’t get brave on me,” Stephanie hissed in whispered warning, poking the toy weapon discreetly into Bea’s side.
Luckily, the doorman was not at his post, and Stephanie hurried through the lobby. She pushed Beatrice do
wn the hall and rang for the freight elevator. The two women got off on Bea’s floor and walked the corridor in silence. Stephanie found Beatrice’s keys and let them into the apartment. As quickly as Bea’s large and cumbersome body would allow, Stephanie took her into the bedroom and helped her into the bed. Twenty minutes had gone by since she’d taken the medication, and her breathing was becoming increasingly shallow.
Stephanie pulled on a pair of gloves, put the videotape on the nightstand, and propped Doug’s letter up on top of the cassette. She carried the pill bottle into the bathroom and placed it on the counter. To make the scene look authentic, Stephanie filled Bea’s glass from the tap, drank the water, and set it down next to the bottle.
Stephanie walked back into the bedroom and found the woman nearly asleep. Considering everything taking place at this moment, she felt surprising calm. It was a shame that things had to end like this, but Stephanie was too close to achieving her goal to let an old lady get in her way.
“Sleep tight,” she called out as she left the apartment. Stephanie rode the elevator back down and calmly walked through the lobby and into her waiting taxi.
54
Doug’s advice took root in Gabrielle’s conscience. He was right. Beatrice was the only family she and Kylie had left, and despite her behavior, her motives were pure. She picked up the phone and dialed Bea’s number. It rang several times before Beatrice, in a very groggy voice, picked up the phone. “Bea, is that you?”
“Gab, show shorry,” she said almost incoherently.
“Are you okay?”
“No tape. No tape.”
“Bea, you’re not making sense. You sound funny. What’s wrong?”
“Peels—”
“Peels? I don’t get it.” Peels, peels … “Pills!” Gabrielle shouted, finally understanding. “Bea, did you take some pills? Bea, did you hear me? Did you take any pills? Bea? Answer me!”
Gabrielle heard the receiver drop and began to panic. She disengaged the line and ordered an ambulance to the apartment. She then tried to ring Felicia, but to no avail. In a panic she dialed Doug.
“Doug, thank God you’re there.”
“I just walked in the door. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Bea. I called and she sounded strange. She said something about pills, and then she dropped the phone.”
“You don’t think she—”
“She was extremely upset when she left. Who knows? I called nine-one-one.”
“I’ll head right over. I’ll call and let you know what I find out.”
Doug arrived just as the paramedics were wheeling Beatrice out her door. “What happened?”
“Looks like a drug overdose,” the medic answered.
“Is she going to be all right?”
“She’s in pretty bad shape. We found the empty bottle, but I don’t know exactly how many pills she took. With any luck, we got here in time. You know her?” he said.
“She’s my girlfriend’s mom. What hospital?”
“We’re taking her over to Bellevue.”
Doug walked into Bea’s apartment and went directly to the phone. He dialed Gabrielle’s room number at Lenox Hill, hanging up after several rings. He waited a few minutes and tried again. Still no answer. Strange, he thought. Doug picked up the phone again and this time dialed the hospital operator.
“I’m sorry, sir, Miss Donovan has been discharged.” Doug hung up not sure what to do. Deducing that Gabrielle was probably on her way home, he decided to wait. He sat on the couch, emotionally exhausted by the enormity of this situation.
“Beatrice!” Gabrielle shouted as she burst into the apartment, carrying her daughter. Doug stood up to greet her. “Where is she? Is she all right?”
“The paramedics took her away about five minutes ago. Apparently she took an overdose of pills.”
“Oh, God, no! Is she—” Gabrielle stopped short, unable to verbalize her fearful thought.
“She’s not dead, but she is unconscious. They took her to Bellevue.”
“Let’s get over there,” Gabrielle insisted.
“Gabrielle, that’s not a good idea,” Doug explained gently. “The emergency room is no place for a newborn. Why don’t you stay here and let me go to the hospital? I promise to call you as soon as I hear any news.”
“But I want to tell Bea that I’m sorry and I love her.”
“And you will—later. In the meantime, I’ll tell her for you.”
“Okay, but call me the minute you know something.”
“I will.”
While her daughter slept, Gabrielle’s mind continued to sort though the grave circumstances. Try as she might to come up with a sensible answer, she continually returned to the ultimate question: Why?
Gabrielle knew that Bea had been terribly upset when she left the hospital, but the idea that she might try to kill herself had never crossed her mind. Over the years, Gabrielle had seen Beatrice in a full gamut of moods, but never depressed to the point of being suicidal. Why would she try to kill herself? Had her angry words brought Bea to the brink of death?
Surely Beatrice, knowing how much this would haunt her, must have left some sort of explanation. Gabrielle thought back to their brief phone conversation, trying to recall something that might help her understand all this. She said something about a tape, Gabrielle remembered. She got up and headed to the office to look around for an envelope or an audiocassette with her name on it. Finding nothing in the study, she walked across the hall to Beatrice’s bedroom. From the doorway Gabrielle looked around. Other than Bea’s purse lying on the bed, nothing looked unusual or out of place. She continued scouting the room until something caught her attention. Gabrielle walked over to the nightstand and picked up the envelope. She recognized her name written in Doug’s handwriting. I thought Bea said Stephanie had this, a puzzled Gabrielle remembered.
She put down the letter and picked up the video. There was no label or identifying marks on it. She hurried back into the living room and opened the cabinet containing the television and VCR. Gabrielle pushed “Play” and sat down to watch. Beatrice’s image came up on the screen, and as her words began to fly around the room, Gabrielle began feeling lightheaded and downhearted.
Gabrielle watched the tape with tears falling down her cheeks. She sat in disbelief, unable to accept the horrible admissions Beatrice was making. Caught up in the misery of this emotional tragedy, she almost didn’t hear Doug come in.
“Well?” she asked, bracing herself for bad news.
“Things are still touch and go. They’ve done everything they can for the time being, but she still hasn’t regained consciousness,” Doug reported gently. He waited several seconds for a response, but instead got only silence. “Gabrielle, honey? Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” Gabrielle managed to say.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said, before bursting into hysterical tears.
“Baby, what can I do to help?” Doug asked, feeling helpless and inept.
“I found a videotape she left me. She said she wanted to kill herself because—” Gabrielle paused, unable to continue.
“Take your time.”
“Because she killed Jack,” Gabrielle wept.
“Beatrice actually admitted this on tape?”
“See for yourself,” Gabrielle said as she turned on the VCR. Together she and Doug watched Bea’s confession in stunned disbelief. “This answers a lot of questions,” Gabrielle said.
“Actually, it creates more in my mind. Something just doesn’t hit me right,” Doug said as he rewound the tape. Gabrielle, unable to sit through another screening, took Kylie into the bedroom. Doug stayed on the couch, watching intently for whatever was causing the red flags to wave in his head. Midway through, he paused the machine and called for Gabrielle.
“I’ll admit that you have some interesting material here,” Russell Shockley said from across his desk. “But why should we publish your biography, particularly whe
n Gabrielle Donovan has just announced that she’s coauthoring her own?”
“The answer is very clear,” Stephanie said calmly. “She and her ex-lover are writing the book together. The details of her life will be so sugarcoated, it might as well begin with ‘once upon a time.’ I, on the other hand, will be able to give readers the real deal. I have information and photos that are totally exclusive—photos I haven’t even used in my widely read column in Star Diary.”
“You brought examples?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said, pulling out several photographs she and Howie had catalogued over the months. Included were never-before-seen shots of Gabrielle with Jack, with Doug, and with various celebrities, including several with Salvatore Ciccone. “There’s a great deal of speculation that Salvatore is really the father of her child,” Stephanie offered. “You can see by these select photos that they were definitely close.”
“I like the exclusivity angle, but I don’t see how this will make much impact against Gabrielle’s telling the world how she made it to the top of the modeling world without knowing how to read,” Russell said, still unconvinced.
“There is something else. Something very big,” Stephanie said, trying to save this deal.
“Talk to me.”
“Take a look at these,” Stephanie said, handing Russell the photos of the Killington house. Silently she congratulated herself for having the good sense to ignore Howie’s advice and keep a set. Once Beatrice and her confession were found, the case would be closed and Stephanie would be free to use these pictures in her book. “Do you recognize this place?”
“Where did you get these?” Russell asked.
“Gabrielle’s personal assistant, Beatrice Braidburn, gave them to me for safekeeping,” Stephanie said, feeling progressively more comfortable with her lie.
Read Between the Lies Page 43
