Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5)

by Laura Van Wormer

  And that's when I realized that there was a whole lot more to this shy, good-looking boy.

  I slip on a silk robe and go back out to the living room to wait for Doug. Scotty sits at my feet as I sort all the material from my printer and start labeling files.

  Cassy Cochran

  Catherine Littlefield (mother, alive)

  Henry Littlefield (father, deceased)

  Michael Cochran (first husband)

  Jackson Darenbrook (second husband)

  Henry Cochran (son)

  I'm slipping a copy of an interview Cassy Cochran did with Media Women into her file, when Scotty's head jerks up. In an in­stant, he's on his feet and at the door, barking. I open the door to look out and Scotty gets past me and charges off into the night. No sign of Doug or his car.

  I call Scotty. He won't come but continues to furiously bark. Not a good sign; this means he's treed a possum or raccoon or, oh please no, has cornered a skunk. (Anyone who assumes the boxes and boxes of Massengill Feminine Douche powder in the linen closet are mine are wrong. They're for the dog.)

  "Scotty," I say sharply, "knock it off and come here."

  Miraculously, he does come so I gave him a Milk-Bone.

  It took Doug three dates to kiss me, and then after six months, he tried to go straight from kissing lying down to in­tercourse. That was so Doug. Too shy to put a hand under my blouse, too scared to even touch the snap of my jeans, but so overwhelmed with desire that after a while he thought maybe if he just started undoing his belt as a sign that he wanted to...

  I burst into tears. Because by this time I was in love with Doug and his shyness and his obvious excitement had me ter­ribly aroused, and yet night after night he hadn't been able to bring himself to do anything. Except this one night, that is, and I guess I kind of freaked because I did not want to deny Doug anything—he had been such a gentleman for so long.

  When I look back, I don't even know what it was that he had intended to do that night, whether he had thought well, let's try and go all the way, or maybe he had something else in mind. I never knew. Certainly I had given him every signal that I was avail­able to him in a way I had never wished to make myself avail­able to another boy, but it never occurred to me he would skip second and third base altogether and try straight for home.

  "I'm not on the Pill or anything," I wailed, crying into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Doug, but we can't."

  "It's all right, it's all right," he whispered, upset.

  And then we sat up and had what I thought was a very adult discussion, one-sided of course, about how I would call Planned Parenthood and make an appointment and get some kind of birth control. Until then, no way Jose. (In a town like Castleford, with an alarming number of unplanned pregnan­cies, my mother had made darn sure I understood how a woman got pregnant and that the best way to avoid such a fate was not to engage in sex! But, if I ever... Well, there was a place, she reluctantly admitted, though she preferred I came to her be­fore... In other words, my mother knew my temperament and she knew that if she lectured me too much, I would simply push my sexual life totally underground.)

  I went to Planned Parenthood in New Haven and went through all the counseling they make you do and then they sent me in for my first gynecological exam. The doctor came in, an older woman, and she looked at my chart to see that I was eigh­teen years old and had come to find out about birth control. She looked at me over the top of her glasses. "You have never had sexual intercourse before? You are a virgin?"

  I nodded my head. I was also shaking from head to toe.

  "Really?"

  "I've never," I whispered, looking down.

  When we got to the actual examination, there came a very pleased-sounding announcement from behind the sheet. "Ah, and so you are!" The doctor peeked up at me over the sheet. "This is very, very good. You make me very happy, young lady."

  It wouldn't be until years later that I would understand how nice it had been for the doctor to see that sex education actually sometimes worked.

  At any rate, I chose birth control pills, although the clinic peo­ple didn't seem so thrilled about it. Their concern, the counselor explained, was that they would not protect me from venereal disease. And then we went into all of that. And when I stuttered and stammered I had every reason to believe Doug was a virgin as well, she gave me that same look the doctor had when I claimed I had never had intercourse before.

  But they sent me off with pills and condoms and good infor­mation. And I told Doug that I had to wait until after my next period before I could start taking the pills, and then I had to wait two months after that before we could—

  "You know, so then we can... "

  "Oh," he said enthusiastically.

  That was a long time to wait. From March to the end of May. So for two months we didn't spend a whole lot of time alone. (There were alternatives to intercourse, I knew, but it seemed all too embarrassing to even approach them with Doug.)

  Then Doug asked me if I'd like to go out to dinner. To a nice restaurant. And I had to smile because he had the timing down just right. I had been on the Pill for two complete months.

  Well, wouldn't you know, that night we had none of our usual places to go. My house was full of people, so was Doug's, so were the houses of our friends. Someone had borrowed my key to the school auditorium, where we used to slip in and climb up to a windowless storage room behind the stage. So af­ter dinner we drove around and around and we ended up go­ing to the high school parking lot. Why we thought this was a good idea, I'll never know, but someone was watching over us because no police rounds interrupted us.

  We drove around to the back of the school and had a beer. We didn't kiss, we just drank and talked about heaven knows what. And then he said it was ten o'clock and so I assumed it was time.

  So I said, "Well."

  And he said, "We can go in the back. I brought a blanket."

  And so we climbed into the back of the station wagon, put the seat down and then lay together and kissed a while.

  He still didn't touch my breasts or anything. Not even then! He just said, "Do you want to try?" and I said, "Yes," and so I took off my panty hose and my underpants and he undid his belt and unzipped his pants. I have to admit that I was very ex­cited because Doug was never out of control, always so shy, so to have him want something of me physically, so badly that he was prepared to go to these embarrassing lengths (I knew he was scared, for he was shaking as much as I was) was a turn-on. We struggled a bit with clothes and then he rolled on top of me and kissed me and I felt him kind of poke around and so fi­nally I reached down to guide him toward me.

  "Ow!" I said as he tried to press forward.

  Immediately he recoiled, breathlessly asking, "Are you all right?"

  "It hurts," I whimpered.

  I don't know what got into Doug then, but instead of backing off, which I thought he would, he took hold of me and pushed again and I cried again, but he didn't pull back, he just kept pushing and I yelped again and then suddenly, he was through and inside of me and we both froze a moment, not believing it. And then he moved ever so slightly and there was no resis­tance, and then he moved again a little, and I was just getting into it, thinking, I might get to like this, when I felt all kinds of warmth spilling out of me.

  By the time I left for UCLA and Doug left for Amherst, we felt like sexual conquerors, although, I've got to tell you, he never did get very good at foreplay. So when we got together at Christmas-time and he wanted me to sit on top of him, I knew that he had slept with someone else. I just knew. I didn't say anything about it, but I went back to California thinking I was free to see whomever I liked.

  I was into LaLa Land big-time. My roommate was the daugh­ter of a producer whose movie had made a hundred million dollars the summer before (she was hardly the postman's daughter, in other words) and her family simply loved me be­cause, well, compared to Morning (I swear that was her name; can you imagine?), I knew how to behave and they knew their
daughter. In other words, I started to move in a very fast, very rich crowd. But still, you know what? I never did more than kiss another boy (or man) for the duration of my relationship with Doug. I would say no to more than a few beers, violently resist cocaine and say, “Are you kidding?" whenever the drug ecstasy was pushed on me.

  My mother should get a medal. She did something right.

  On spring break I got a ride to Missouri to meet Doug—half­way for both of us—and Doug said there was something differ­ent about me. I said no, it wasn't me, it was him. He was kind of a wise ass, I said, although what I meant, I think, was that he was more sure of himself, cocky even, and I didn't like it. But we spent five days together, a lot of it in bed, and I grew pro­gressively more alarmed. And yet I loved Doug. I knew I did, and I trusted him, and we still had fun, which was bizarre since everything in his behavior should have told me he wanted to spread his wings, get out there and get around, be a man, you know.

  When I came home from school in May there was a letter waiting for me saying that Doug was very sorry, but our rela­tionship just wasn't what he wanted anymore.

  I was devastated. And shocked at how devastated I was.

  I saw him once that summer, in August, by mistake, at one of his buddies' houses where he was visiting, and we had too much beer and I slept with him. Then I kind of came to, slapped him, grabbed my clothes and walked out. I wouldn't see or speak to him again for nine years.

  I see the headlights of Doug's car bounce around the bend of the drive and Scotty's back on his feet, barking. I hold Scotty's collar and open the door. Doug gets out of the Volvo and slings his overnight bag over his shoulder. Gravel crunches under his feet as he makes his way toward the house.

  "Hi," I say.

  "Hi." His voice is quiet, depressed.

  I open the screen door. "What's the matter?"

  He comes in and lets the bag slide off his shoulder to thump to the floor. "I don't want you to get rich and famous and leave me."

  "Oh, Doug," I sigh, laughing and taking him in my arms.

  I heard about Doug through the grapevine. He graduated from Amherst and went on to Boston University Law School, and married some gal who was getting her MBA at Harvard. When he graduated, he went to work for a prestigious Boston firm that specialized in corporate bankruptcies.

  Doug and his wife were a very glamorous couple, I was told, and were mak­ing their way quickly in Boston. At the time, I was sitting around watching my mother cry from the aftereffects of che­motherapy, so I wasn't particularly impressed by this news one way or the other. I was, however, lonely and angry that other people had gone on with their lives and were living happily ever after.

  And then we had our tenth high school reunion. I was told that Doug was not coming to the reunion so I made a point of going. The first person I saw was Susie the cheerleader, who was married and living in Cheshire. Her beautiful porcelain skin had already started cracking, no doubt in part due to the three children she had already given birth to. "You mean, Sally, you haven't heard?"

  "Heard what?"

  "That Doug's wife left him," she whispered. And then her eyes widened in delight. "For her stockbroker!"

  I don't know why, but it didn't surprise me. My only ques­tion was whether or not his wife had sat on him in bed. "Were there any children?" I asked.

  "No."

  And then I knew, deep down, that in that moment I had for­given him of any sins I perceived he had committed. The world beyond Castleford, I knew, was a very confusing place.

  "I love you," Doug whispers in my ear.

  And we go into the bedroom.

  ''You can't have tomorrow off and that's it," Alfred Royce Jr. says, turning to his computer to dismiss me from his office.

  "Fine," I shrug, and turn to go.

  "What do you want the day off for?"

  I turn back. "Al, you're supposed to ask me that first and then say no."

  He squints dangerously at me. "Don't tell me what I'm sup­posed to do."

  "Fine," I say again, turning around again.

  "What do you want the goddamn day off for?" he shouts.

  "What do you care?" I sass back, wheeling around. (There is a method to my madness.) "Maybe I'm sick, maybe I have ma­laria or something and I have to go into New York for some special treatment. Maybe I'm not telling you to spare your feel­ings, AI, because I don't want you to worry yourself sick."

  "How could you possibly be related to your mother?" he wants to know.

  "I don't know! But I'm going to her house and get a note from her so you'll let me take the day off. You only owe me about thirty-two vacations days, Al. I haven't had a vacation since I started working in this place."

  He wags a finger at me. "I told you, you cannot roll those days over."

  "All I want is one day off!" I cry. "Okay—" I back off, hold­ing my hands up in surrender"—make it half a day. I'll be in by two and stay until midnight."

  "Okay," he says, swiveling back to his computer. "But you'll be back here by one."

  Rolling my eyes, I walk across the newsroom toward my cu­bicle.

  "Sal!" Joe Bix, the reporter in the cubicle next to me, calls. "I signed for a package for you from WSCT. It's over there, in your in-box."

  I hurry to open it. WSCT is a formerly independent TV sta­tion in New Haven that became a DBS affiliate a few years ago. A friend of mine there has dug up some tape from a broadcast I read about over the internet this weekend. It's from the night their talk-show star, Jessica Wright, was found after a kidnap­ping ordeal. The rescue happened so suddenly and DBS was so anxious to break the news first, that Cassy Cochran had thrown together a makeshift crew of executive staffers in the studio and went on the air herself to break the story until the regular DBS anchor, Alexandra Waring, could be located.

  I hurry to the conference room on our end of the floor and luckily it is vacant. The TV there, as it always is, is tuned into CNN Headline News. I turn the VCR on, push the tape in and wait.

  The black screen turns to a test pattern and then suddenly there is the DBS "News Special Bulletin" logo with an urgent soundtrack. And then there is Cassy Cochran.

  Fifty or not, the woman is an absolute knockout. A combina­tion of the wrong makeup and terrible lighting illuminates every line in her face in only the way television can, but anyone can plainly see this woman possesses the kind of natural blond, blue-eyed looks that have been a national obsession for a cen­tury. Her long hair is loosely pinned up on the back of her head, the way my mother used to wear hers in college.

  It is very hard to believe this woman has had such a brilliant career in such a male bastion without any funny business going on. It is sad, but this is the way I have been trained to think, to look twice as hard at the credentials of great-looking women.

  "Good morning, I'm Cassy Cochran," she says evenly into the camera, "with a special news bulletin from DBS News. DBS talk-show host Jessica Wright has been found in an abandoned mental hospital in Buffalo, New York. Jessica Wright is alive and has sustained some injuries but is expected to make a full recovery."

  She touches her right ear, squinting slightly, and is obviously listening to something or someone through an earphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special eyewitness report from Alexandra Waring, who is on the scene where Jessica Wright was found less than one hour ago. To recap, Jessica Wright has been found, she is alive, has sustained injuries, but is expected to make a full recovery. And now to Buffalo, New York."

  The tape then jumps to a shot of the dark-haired anchor­woman of DBS, who is standing in front of a dragonesque­-looking castle ablaze in spotlights and the flashing lights of po­lice cars, fire trucks, emergency vehicles and ambulances.

  That was it, Cassy Cochran's sixty seconds of national broad­casting, but it has an effect on me. There is something about her that is appealing, a quietly heroic quality, or maybe it's some kind of sincerity that one rarely—if ever—sees in newspeople after about three years on the
air. No matter what anybody says, people who appear on camera for a living get off on it, and after a while, that high changes to something else, a kind of craving for power and control. This isn't bad; it's just the way it is. Anchors want things done their way, and the effort to make it happen does a lot toward eroding that initial zeal and exhi­laration that got them in the chair in the first place.

  I rewind the tape and bring it back to my desk to shove into my briefcase. Then I drop into my chair and pick up the tele­phone to hear my voice mail.

  —A snitch from the Castleford school board wanting to tattle.

  —My lawyer friend from L.A., confirming he has received the fax of the proposed agreement with Expectations.

  —A Castleford resident whose exotic parrots escaped from his house, thanking me for getting his plight into the paper. One of them has been found.

  —Pete Sabatino whispering that it's urgent, I can reach him at the following number.

  —The Herald-American archivist, letting me know she has found what I had requested.

  The last message is the first I respond to since she has found an extensive interview with Cassy Cochran from an old North­western University alumni magazine from the 1980s. I return the other calls, edit two pieces for the paper written by other reporters and then finally break down and call Crazy Pete Sabatino.

  I am furious with him. It's been days since I left a message for him to call me.

  "Hello?" a woman's voice says. There is the sound of dishes in the background. Voices, too.

  "Hi, it's Sally Harrington calling. I was left this number to reach Pete Sabatino."

  Immediately the woman's voice gets confidential. "He said for you to go to the bridge at Kaegle's Pond at noon. It's really important. You're to go alone." And then she hangs up!

  I run the number through my address-finder on my com­puter. It belongs to Casey's Diner on Route 70.

  I have more important things to do today—like figuring out what I'm going to wear to Verity Rhodes's office tomorrow morning. I don't have time to go chasing after Crazy Pete. Kae­gle's Pond is halfway to Southington.