Love, Leopold
"Leopold?" Langley said. "Surely it wouldn't be hard to find some guy named Leopold in this day and age."
"If only we knew for sure that was his name," Cassy said. "But keep going."
Dear Jessica,
You mentioned the other day you needed one of these. I hope you like it. I look forward to seeing you wear it. Perhaps you will tuck it in your bosom. I do not like how much other men can see.
Ever yours, Leopold
"What did he send her?" Langley asked.
"A scarf," Cassy said. "The creepy part was that she made the comment as a joke after a sex therapist on the show suggested using silk scarves in a bondage routine in bed."
Langley blinked, eyes still on Cassy. Then he winced slightly. "That's revolting."
"Well, keep reading."
"Can we trace the scarf somehow?"
"Dirk's trying." She paused. "It's a Versace."
"That guy who was murdered in Florida? The designer?" Cassy nodded. His lip curling in disgust, Langley went to the next page.
Dear Jessica,
I watch your eyes in those unguarded moments and I see the sadness there. You mustn't give up hope. It won't always be like this. We will be together and after that, happy always. You will be able to wear sexy clothes with me. I do not want you to think I do not find you alluring.
Love, Leopold
Dear Jessica,
It is with great joy I share with you that I am busy working on our future. After so many years of loneliness, the mere thought of you makes everything worthwhile, all pain merely a path to you. I watch you and revel in the love and warmth in my heart. I crave to cover your body with my own. Soon, Jessica, soon.
Love, Leopold
P.S. Did you like my present? You have not worn it yet.
Cassy leaned closer to look over Langley's shoulder. As he turned to the next page, she said, "Jessica hasn't seen these. This one, the next one, is the one that set off the alarm bells with Dirk"
Darling Jessica,
Beware, for there are enemies around you. But do not fear, love, for no one can keep me away. I will be there soon, love, so close you will feel my protection. I will not let anyone hurt you. I will not let anyone keep us apart.
Love, Leopold
Dear Jessica,
There are people who wish to hurt you. I will do my best to protect you, but you must be careful. Please, please, promise me you will keep a sharp eye out. I will be there as soon as lean be. Please do not wear revealing clothes. It makes it hard to control myself and yet I must until we are together.
Love, Leopold
"And then we got this one yesterday," Cassy said, pointing.
Dearest Jessica,
The time is drawing near for us to be together. I am coming to get you very, very soon. Do not fear, my love, for no one can stop me. I tremble at the thought of your touch.
Love, Leopold
"No, this isn't good," Langley sighed.
The band started, the cameras rolled and Jessica came striding into the studio from the back today, surprising the audience. They immediately rose to their feet, clapping and cheering the woman they had come to see.
Jessica walked down through the aisle, pausing to shake some hands, wave all around, slowly making her way to the front of the studio where she climbed up onto the set. She picked up a wireless microphone and turned to address the group.
"Thank you, thank you.” No matter how many years she had done this, she still blushed when she got applause, a noticeable trait in an otherwise confident and fearless public face. "Thank you all. This is great. Boy am I glad I came tonight." When they kept clapping and cheering, Jessica squinted and looked offstage and said, "What did you do in the warm-up, Alicia? Give them laughing gas? Camera people, get Alicia, will you?"
The camera on the high boom swept down on Alicia Washington, the slim black woman who years ago had started as Jessica's secretary. Alicia hid her face behind a clipboard as Jessica said, "For our viewers, another peek at Alicia Washington, my producer and head writer who, before the show starts, comes out here and warms up my audience.” In the control room, the director jumped back to another camera, and Jessica, seeing the red light come on, leaned confidentially toward it to say, "And you thought my audiences simply become instantly unglued the moment I appear." She straightened up, laughing, pushing her hair back off her shoulders.
"She's looking great," the assistant director commented in the control room.
Indeed she was. Tonight's outfit was a short navy blue skirt and a pale blue silk blouse with a V neck that was not terribly revealing, but nonetheless still proved that Jessica's ample cleavage did not need the assistance of any Miracle Bra.
Years of a healthy diet and hard exercise had only enhanced Jessica's looks. She had slimmed way down, but the camera distortion still made her look as voluptuous as any movie star, even when wearing her trademark cowgirl boots. (She had a fast-moving line of them now with Garner's of Fort Worth. "All women wear cowgirl boots," the ads ran.)
Her green eyes blazed with excitement under the studio lights, and her teeth dazzled white, the combination making her smile utterly infectious—even to the gang in the control room. She moved with a style and grace now that had been lacking in her earliest years on TV. As TV Guide said, "Jessica Wright has grown into one of the most beautiful and charismatic personalities on the airwaves."
"Tonight's show," Jessica began, "is a bit different and rather fascinating, if I may say so myself. And if I may also suggest to viewers, I think you should get a pencil and piece of paper before we start. As you can see, we've given each of our studio-audience members paper and a pencil so they can make notes too."
She took a step forward to address the camera. "Tonight we're going to talk to 'ordinary millionaires,' a group of people who made over a million dollars by the time they retired. But these are not big movers and shakers on Wall Street, these are regular people with everyday jobs. One of our guests was a public-school teacher. Another was a short-order cook at a Howard Johnson's restaurant, and his wife, a secretary. Actually, this couple made over two million dollars. Another guest, ladies and gentlemen, another millionaire, was a cashier at a Wal-Mart store for thirty-one years."
A big smile. "Yep. Ordinary jobs, extraordinary savings. Ordinary Millionaires, that's our show. Also joining us will be the Mr. and Mrs. of money matters, Ken and Daria Dolan, who will help us to get our finances and savings on track so we can retire millionaires too." She pointed into the camera. "When we come back."
They faded into commercial.
The stagehands helped the guests take their seats on the set and get their microphones connected. The boom microphone swung in closer to augment the sound. Jessica gave each of the Dolans a kiss and a hug, as they were old friends and had been on several times, and quickly shook hands with the other guests, reminding them it was her job to run the show, so they should just sit back and relax and talk to her as if they were sitting in her living room at home.
"But I'd be a nervous wreck sitting in your living room too!" the schoolteacher blurted out.
They all laughed and Jessica gave the teacher a pat on the back before moving over to her chair. Facedown on the seat was another index card. A last-minute note from Bea or Denny, no doubt.
Wrong.
I am here, darling Jessica.
L.
2
''What the heck is going on, Cassy?" Will Rafferty demanded as the network president came striding into the newsroom. Will was the executive producer of "DBS News America Tonight," the programming that preceded "The Jessica Wright Show" live at 9:00 p.m. "They won't let the mobile unit through the front gate. They say the center is sealed off."
Heads turned in the newsroom but no one stopped working. That's what good newspeople did—they tried to live lives while continuing to work at the same time.
"It is closed, I'm afraid," Cassy acknowledged. "We've had a major security alert. I'm sorry for the disr
uption, but do the best you can. It may take a while."
"Charlie," Will said to a technician as he followed Cassy, "run out to the gate and get the video from the truck, will you?" The guy took off. When they reached the privacy of the hallway, Will asked, “Another bomb threat?"
Cassy looked around and then said quietly, "A stalker infiltration."
"Oh, no, not for Alexandra again."
"No," Cassy told him. "This time it's Jessica."
"Jessica?" He sighed. "Well, check in with Alexandra, will you? She'll want to know."
"I'm on my way."
"She's in editing bay two," he added. Then he hurried back into the newsroom. "Hey, Midge?" "Yeah?" The assistant producer was sitting at a computer terminal scanning copy.
"When Charlie comes back with the video, make sure it gets to sports, okay? It's the Yankee stuff we need for tonight."
"Will do," she promised without looking from the computer screen.
"I'll be right back," Will said to no one in particular, walking quickly out of the newsroom, across Studio A, into the outside corridor, past the hubbub of Studio B where the taping of "The Jessica Wright Show" was breaking up, down another hall, through a doorway, past Makeup and Hair, past a blue door before stopping in front of a green one. He knocked and the door immediately swung open, held firmly in place by a huge fellow who squinted at him suspiciously.
"If it's my stalker," Jessica's voice merrily called, "tell him I'm not in."
Will popped his head in. "It's me."
Jessica was sitting in a bathrobe in front of the makeup mirror in her dressing room, wiping the worst of the makeup off her face. At the sight of Will in the mirror she beamed, threw down the cotton ball in her hand and turned around. "Hi," she said in that special voice one likes to save for special people.
"Excuse me—um, hello?" she said, addressing the bodyguard now. "Mr. Terminator? You can step just outside the door, if you please. And close the door behind you, will you?"
The man moved past Will and closed the door behind him.
"Are you okay?" Will said, rushing over to kneel next to the bench she was sitting on. "What's this about a stalker?"
"Oh, I don't know, some guy who's been sending me love notes," she said, gesturing to indicate that the specifics weren't worth knowing about. "Dirk told me not to say anything to anyone because he wanted to check out the people here at West End. So anyway, now, this guy somehow got past security and left a note on the set."
"On the set!" Will almost roared.
"It wasn't a bad note," Jessica added quickly. "It just said he was here and—I don't know, Dirk freaked out." She kicked her head toward the door. "So I'm stuck with Mr. Terminator around the clock now." She smiled. "I promised I wouldn't ditch him, so you might as well introduce yourself to him."
Yesterday she had ducked the bodyguard to slip out to take a walk with Will. After working around each other for seven years, they had only recently begun to look at each other in a decidedly different way. As potential lovers. The feeling was strong, surprising and mutual, and both of them were excited and nervous about what the future might hold, since both had learned some pretty hard lessons in the past.
"Jessica, this is very serious," he said, gently touching her hand. "Remember what happened to Alexandra."
Will Rafferty wasn't the best-looking man she had ever been attracted to. In fact, if she took his features one by one—average brown hair, light brown eyes, a large nose, slightly uneven front teeth (otherwise unheard of in TV)he should have appeared nondescript, if not plain. But he wasn't. There was a kind of gentle energy and youthful enthusiasm that coursed through Will—to say nothing of considerable intellect—and though he tended to be unobtrusive, that life force made him very attractive. And then there were those eyes, the eyes in which Jessica saw a quiet sadness, the kind of sadness of someone who had seen perhaps a little too much too soon.
"Don't worry, it's nothing, Will," Jessica murmured. "I've got more whacked-out fans these days than 'The X-Files.' "
His gaze lowered to her mouth and stayed there a moment before he looked back into her eyes. "But you've got to be careful."
"Somehow I think you pose a far greater threat of distraction than anything or anybody else possibly could," she said, leaning to kiss him lightly on the mouth.
It had started a couple of months ago at the DBS affiliates convention in Palm Springs. The talent and producers were all shipped out there to schmooze with the management of the affiliates who were signed with DBS. Jessica had been talked into playing golf with the station owner from a key market, San Francisco, since his station was being seriously wooed by Fox to drop DBS and join them. Will had been playing in the foursome ahead with a group of affiliate news directors, and when that group reached the green, Jessica's impatient station owner told her to go ahead and tee off. "Go on," he said. "It's over two hundred yards. Just hit it."
Jessica dutifully stepped up and ran through her checklist from her twice-a-year lessons she always took before her twice-a-year golf ventures at convention time. This past year, however, her personal trainer had increased her weight training and these days she was amazingly strong and coordinated. So she stepped up to place her ball on the ladies' tee, took measure of the hole, addressed the ball, wound up and then gave the ball a great big wallop with her number-two driver. The ball soared, straight and true (for a change), and came down near the green, hitting Will on the back of the head.
"Holy crow, girl!" the station owner declared. "You're good!"
"Oh, no!" Jessica cried, running up the course with the murderous driver still in hand.
The group had gathered around Will, who had, by this time, slowly gotten up and was holding his hand over the back of his head where, Jessica could see, he already had a bump welling up.
"And people wonder why they called her the Terror of Tucson," Will joked to the news producers, referring to Jessica's nickname in her less stable days.
Jessica had insisted on driving Will to the clubhouse for first aid. Of course, since she had kept talking and looking at him, worried that she had seriously injured him, the golf cart had veered rather wildly this way and that, so that by the time they reached the clubhouse Will had been pretty much a basket case. "I've killed him," Jessica confessed to the club pro. "Why didn't you tell me I could hit the ball two hundred yards?"
"I didn't know you could," the pro said honestly, looking at the back of Will's head. "Ouch. Yeah, that hurts, I bet. Lie down here a minute, Mr.—"
"Rafferty," Jessica said, hovering. "Oh, Will, I'm so sorry."
"It's all right, Jessica," Will had said for the nineteenth time.
And thus had begun the first conversation the two had held by themselves in over seven years. Not since the time when Jessica, shortly after her arrival at West End, had been drunk one night after a company party and nearly had sex with an equally inebriated Will on a bunch of deflated cardboard boxes in the comer of Studio B, before Studio B was even finished.
Truth was, Jessica would have had sex with Will that night, had Will not—after some decidedly passionate foreplay—suddenly stopped and pulled away from her. In response to Jessica's drunken demands and ensuing tantrum, he had absolutely refused to touch her again, saying it wasn't right, she wouldn't feel the same way about it sober. And the next morning, of course, Jessica had found this to be absolutely true. In fact, she hadn't even remembered the incident until Will had come to her office to apologize. With a sickening thump of realization, Jessica had realized how close she had come to already dirtying her new nest at DBS.
The most painful irony of the incident had been Jessica's hunch that Will Rafferty was one of the few genuinely eligible men in New York. Certainly as Alexandra's longtime friend and right-hand producer he came with the kind of credentials no sane woman would dismiss.
But Jessica couldn't get past that night in Studio B and what she had done. And when Will had asked her a couple of months later, shortly after she h
ad stopped drinking, to go out of the city for the weekend, to swim and play tennis with him and some friends, she had said no so quickly, she knew she had hurt his feelings. Later she realized he might have misinterpreted her refusal, believing that she thought he was good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to date. To the contrary! It was because she was so bitterly ashamed and embarrassed, and all she wanted to do was forget her drunken behavior. And on top of that, Will was so close to her new friend Alexandra that she dared not mess up with him. And so, Jessica had just stayed away.
And then later, Alexandra had told her that Will had a new girlfriend and that was that. A year later Will had another new girlfriend, another gorgeous young thing, and by that time, anyway, Jessica had gotten herself mixed up with Matthew, aka the Doc. The fact that the Doc turned out not to be the love of her life, but one of the more painful lessons of her life, made it all the more sad and embarrassing to look at Will walking around at West End and wonder what might have happened if only she had gone to swim and play tennis with him that weekend so long ago.
There had been at least two more knockout girlfriends for Will since that time. Alexandra told her once that if, after dating a while, Will didn't want to marry the woman, he only thought it fair to break it off then and there.
Yeah, well, Jessica had thought at the time, that was some men all over, wasn't it? Once they had slept out their passion with one woman, it was time to move on with the next.
But then, she didn't think so. Certainly Alexandra would have conveyed some kind of personal opinion along with her comment had she thought it was the case with Will. In fact, the more Jessica thought it over, and the better she got to know Alexandra, the more she sensed that Alexandra had been the one to ingrain the if-you-don't-want-to-marry-her-let-her-go-so-she-can-find-someone-who-does doctrine in him in the first place.
At any rate, the Palm Springs convention had set something in motion and Jessica and Will had been circling one another ever since. They had been taking their time, wary, at first merely making a point of chatting with each other a bit each day at West End. Soon they were rather like kids, when school kids were still innocent and optimistic, Will symbolically carrying her books and Jessica rewarding him with special smiles. They started having coffee, and then lunch, and then they were always having lunch. They felt as though they knew each other well and, indeed, perhaps they did. It was true, Jessica had found, that when two close friends of one person got together, there was usually a transfer of affection, and this they had already shared for years through Alexandra.
Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Page 2
