by Star Jones
SATAN’S SISTERS
Gallery Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Girlfriend Entertainment Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books hardcover edition April 2011
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Designed by Jaime Putorti
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Star.
Satan’s sisters: a novel work of fiction / by Star Jones.
p. cm.
1. Television talk shows—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O6286S37 2011
813'.6—dc22
2010025937
ISBN 978-1-4391-9300-6
ISBN 978-1-4391-9303-7 (ebook)
“The human race is faced with a cruel choice:
work or daytime television.”
—UNKNOWN
This book is gratefully dedicated to those
who sometimes choose the latter.
SATAN’S SISTERS
It was the quietest explosion in television history.
Heather Hope took a quick glance to her left and then her right, satisfied with the stricken looks she saw on the five faces around her. She sat back on the famous red couch wearing a tiny hint of a smirk. This was exactly the reaction she had been hoping for, from the moment she decided to make a glorious return to The Lunch Club, the talk show that had catapulted her to a level of superstardom that seemed to have no limits. She knew that once she dropped her tidbit, the uproar would be instantaneous. It was said that only the Pope could command more headlines at the snap of a finger than Heather Hope—yet the glamorous Heather easily beat the pontiff in sex appeal.
Heather’s grenade was doubly effective because it was so unexpected, so casual. One minute she was sitting on the couch with the five current cohosts of The Lunch Club, chatting about upcoming guests on her own ultrasuccessful syndicated talk show, Heather’s Hope—and then, without warning, she had let it fly.
“As you all know, another sweeps month starts in four short weeks, and of course, I plan to wow you all month long with surprises galore, but I’m busting at the seams with the way we’re kicking it off. I’m so thrilled that this woman has agreed to come on Heather’s Hope about a month from now for an exclusive interview! My special guest will be none other than Missy Adams! Surely you all remember her, right?”
Oh yes, they knew Missy. Melissa “Missy” Adams had been a cohost on The Lunch Club for five years, the first few of which overlapped with Heather’s time on the show. A self-described “Southern belle,” Missy liked to project the image of a sweet, peaches-and-cream Georgia gal, but in fact she was a tough, unrelenting former prosecutor who had been added to The Lunch Club—reportedly at the strong urging of NBN president Riley Dufrane—to break up the “Northern liberal bloc” that tended to dominate the daytime talkfest. Thanks to her Southern charm and conservative politics, Missy had quickly become the most popular cohost on the show. But she left abruptly several years back under a cloud of suspicion and innuendo. No one had ever revealed the true reasons for her departure.
“Yes, Missy Adams is back, ladies, and she has secretly written a juicy tell-all book that promises to explain all the details of her leaving The Lunch Club.” Heather paused, still smiling sweetly. “Also, she said the book contains a ton of other good stuff; some of it may interest a few of you ladies sitting right here on the couch! I know I can’t wait to hear what little Miss Missy has to say! Even the book’s title sounds juicy—but she made me promise not to reveal it until she’s ready!”
After Heather’s announcement, there was utter silence around the curved couch. Crickets-chirping silence. It was the strangest thing that anyone on the crew had ever seen: the cohosts had all been rendered mute at the exact same time. The studio audience was also stunned into silence. From the fringes of the set, Lizette Bradley, the show’s publicist, watched in disbelief. She even looked down at her Cartier wristwatch—a thirtieth-birthday gift from her mother—and timed the deafening silence.
Four seconds. Five seconds.
“Somebody say something!” Karen Siegel, the show’s longtime director, screamed into their tiny hidden earpieces, her voice edged with panic. There were audible gasps in the control room.
Six seconds. Seven seconds.
While most viewers might expect the commanding and always professional Maxine Robinson to be the one who would come to her show’s rescue, perhaps with a well-placed but slightly dismissive rejoinder to Heather Hope’s bombshell, it was no surprise to the ladies on the couch that Shelly Carter raced in to fill the dead air. Shelly Carter and dead air got along about as well as Michael Vick and pit bulls.
“Well, Heather, only you could take a little summer drizzle and turn it into a category-five hurricane!” Shelly said finally, flashing her brightest smile.
Nine seconds of silence. Lizette looked up from her watch, her eyes wide. She already knew that she would have to be the one to fix this, to mend the ruptures from this disaster. In television land, nine seconds might as well be an hour. Television careers could implode in nine seconds of silence.
For just an instant, Heather shot Shelly the look that she reserved for dog shit, divorce lawyers, and her ex-husband. But Shelly pretended not to notice. Heather had left The Lunch Club before Shelly Carter joined the cast, but she had heard stories about the diva-in-training’s unbridled ambition. The joke inside the NBN network was that Shelly Carter is what you’d get if you mated Maxine Robinson with a Rolodex.
Speaking of Maxine, the queen bee of The Lunch Club looked like she had been slammed in the head several times with a two-by-four. In the control room, Karen, on the verge of hyperventilating, shrieked out loud when camera 4, Maxine’s camera, caught a close-up of her with her mouth hanging open like a bass flopping on a hook. Karen knew she could say good-bye to her career if she let that image beam out over television land. Karen had never seen her boss, the epitome of grace under fire, look so shocked. What did Missy Adams know about the ladies of The Lunch Club that would make them piss their collective Spanx?
“Well, don’t shoot the messenger, darling,” Heather said coolly in Shelly’s direction. The studio audience, already giddy over getting a two-for-one Heather Hope and The Lunch Club daytime TV bonanza, exploded in laughter and applause upon hearing Heather’s most famous expression. She had used it on her show many times to maximum effect, confronting irate corporate swindlers, cheating celebrity husbands, crooked insurance company execs. The expression had wormed its way into the American popular lexicon, usually employed as a quick and easy way to shut down somebody who disagreed with you.
Karen caught Shelly’s large, smoky eyes flash in anger. She saw Whitney Harlington toss her Nice ’N Easy no. 87 blond locks bac
k so hard that Karen was surprised not to hear a whipping sound. Whitney was the closest thing the show had to a traditional journalist. She had won many awards over the years for her courageous reporting, and at times, Whitney didn’t seem entirely comfortable on the red couch, particularly when the ladies occasionally dropped the syrupy pretenses of their fake friendships and really went after each other. Whitney said the ladies were worse than her four children arguing at the dinner table over the last piece of chicken. Karen could see Whitney’s face turning a rich shade of red, even through the thick layer of TV makeup designed to hide those encroaching crow’s-feet.
There was movement on the far end of the couch, the side opposite from where Maxine Robinson sat, still frozen, her smooth, nearly unlined brown face a disturbing mask of distress. The movement came from Molly McCarthy Stein, shifting her hefty bulk. This is what she usually did when she was about to drop one of her comic bombs and send the room into a laughing fit. Karen prayed fervently that Molly could come through right now with one of her “Stein Stingers.” The ladies were slowly dying out there.
“Okay, okay, we can’t shoot the messenger—but maybe we could drag her out back and beat the crap out of her?!”
The crowd exploded again, this time in peals of laughter that sounded like music to Karen’s ears. She scanned the couch and saw her ladies start to loosen up a bit. If she wasn’t mistaken, that might actually be a smile showing at the corners of Maxine’s mouth. Heather didn’t look all too pleased at the Stein Stinger, but at this point that really didn’t matter. Molly, who was also Karen’s neighbor on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, had come through for her again. And it was time for a commercial break. Thank God! She decided to let Dara Cruz bring them to the break. The young, beautiful Dara was the newest member of The Lunch Club and the one least likely of the “fabulous five” to be affected by what Heather had just told them. In fact, as she watched Dara adjust her blouse and focus on the camera, Karen wondered if Dara even knew what fresh chapter of hell was swirling around her.
IN THE CONTROL ROOM, a frantic Lizette rewound the tape to the show’s opening. She wanted to absorb the entire scene once more, to see if there was any further meaning to be extracted from Heather’s words. As the ladies stormed off the set earlier, an intimidating cacophony of clicking Louboutins and Jimmy Choos, Maxine had headed straight for Lizette.
“Lizette!” she said through clenched teeth, trying to keep her emotions under control. “I need for you to find out what’s in that damn book. Before she’s on Heather’s show!”
Though Maxine hadn’t raised her voice, the order was overheard by most of the crew because she still had her microphone clipped to her lapel. Lizette couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Shelly and Whitney glance in her direction after Maxine had spoken. Great, even more pressure! She had caught the slightly crazed look in Maxine’s eyes and shuddered at the notion of what Maxine would do to her if she failed to find out what Missy was up to.
Lizette watched the show’s opening again, leaning in close to the monitor to see the cheerfully smiling cohosts looking into the camera and delivering the well-known opening, “We always wanted to do a show where we could sit around and talk like we were sisters. This is that show; welcome to The Lunch Club.” Then Whitney took the lead: “Today is extra special because we are joined by probably our most famous alumna, the fabulous Heather Hope. We’re going to catch up with one of our best girlfriends and see what she has coming up on her always top-rated show, Heather’s Hope.”
Despite the stress, Lizette chuckled to herself. It was one of the television industry’s worst-kept secrets that Maxine despised Heather. Lizette had never understood why. After more than forty years in the business, Maxine was practically a television institution herself. You’d need several sheets to list all of her “firsts”: first African-American woman to become a network news anchor, the first to be a solo anchor (Barbara Walters had been the first woman, but she was only a co-anchor), first African-American to be inducted into the Museum of Media Hall of Fame, first African-American woman to own her own production company, and so on. She had been the go-to girl for every celebrity, politician, and newsmaker for the last three decades. Even though Heather Hope’s rise had been fast and mind-boggling, Lizette didn’t think Maxine had any reason to be jealous of her. But perhaps there was more to it than mere jealousy. Because the hate was so intense on Maxine’s part. Maxine always referred to Heather, behind her back, of course, as “the Saint . . . with the rather unfortunate face.” Once the entire cast of The Lunch Club was struck dumb when Maxine picked up a magazine with Heather on it and announced to the room that “airbrushing is obviously that poor woman’s best friend.” Clearly, something else had transpired between the two powerful women.
Lizette closely watched the reaction of each of the ladies as Heather Hope made her way onto the set and sat down on the iconic red couch between Whitney and Dara. Perhaps Heather thought that was the safest spot for her, between the two women least likely to make things uncomfortable for her. Dara appeared to be genuinely pleased to see Heather, almost worshipful in fact. She couldn’t hide the glee on her perfect, diamond-shaped face. Whitney, who Lizette had heard was still actually a fairly close friend of Heather’s, also wore a genuine smile. But the faces of the other ladies told a different story. Lizette could recognize phony smiles in an instant, particularly on the ladies of The Lunch Club—ladies that she was paid handsomely to be able to read like the pages of a book.
Heather’s appearance was expected to be a ratings blockbuster. Thanks to Lizette’s hard work over the previous two weeks, the whole country likely had tuned in to watch—or record it on their DVRs and TiVos. What the country saw was the show blow up right in front of their faces. Lizette wondered just how obvious the explosion had been to the viewing audience. She would have to call her mother, who never missed a show, and get a read on how it all looked to the outside world. Lizette glanced down at her phone. She was holding the “outside world” in her hand. The text messages and e-mails were piling up like the designer shoes in Lizette’s overstuffed closet. She saw that the TV and gossip reporters, plus the bloggers, were going nuts. Everyone wanted some behind-the-scenes dirt. It dawned on Lizette that if she worked things right, she might be able to spin this disaster into more ratings gold. But first she had to find out what was in that damn book!
Lizette had always been a big fan of Heather Hope’s, much like the rest of the civilized world, but she was astounded to see up close how manipulative and spiteful the woman could be. Of course she suspected that a woman couldn’t rise as far and as fast as Heather had without squeezing off a couple of rounds of machine-gun fire on occasion, but now that the gunfire was directed at her show and the ladies she was paid to protect, Lizette was stunned at its carefully planned precision and destructive intent.
She watched Heather’s performance several more times, growing more certain that Heather Hope was a woman she’d be wise not to turn into an enemy. But that just might be necessary if she was going to protect The Lunch Club. Lizette might be forced to jump out in front of some of that machine-gun fire herself.
Lizette checked her watch. It was time to call the websites and bloggers first, then she might respond to the TV and newspaper reporters—once she came up with something clever but noncommittal, something that would make them think they got just a little taste of dirt.
AS SHE CLOSED HER office door behind her, Maxine almost sprinted to her desk. Although she had given Lizette the assignment of finding out what was in Missy’s book, Maxine was far too much of a control freak to leave it in someone else’s hands. No, she would have to employ all of her industry horses to get out ahead of this one. She settled in behind her exquisite dark burnished mahogany partners desk, a gift from her second husband, Chad Ross, an extravagantly wealthy banker who had lavished Maxine with the finest things money could buy. Her office was the epitome of understated elegance. Even after the marriage ended, Chad stayed w
ith her in spirit because her expensive tastes had been set.
Maxine took a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves. She couldn’t imagine how painful it would be if she had a starring role in Missy’s book. A shudder ran down her spine. With hard work, she had built herself into an industry legend. It was upsetting to imagine her legacy could really be in jeopardy. She swept her gaze across the office walls, which were covered with dozens of framed photos of Maxine with presidents, prime ministers, Hollywood royalty, and captains of industry. Practically every important person of the last four decades. Maxine’s walls virtually screamed “It’s all about me.” Though she had recently celebrated her sixty-fifth birthday, Maxine looked remarkably similar in every picture, as if she had managed to freeze the aging process at forty-two. She was still beautiful, some might even call her sexy, bearing a striking resemblance to the actress Diahann Carroll, whom she had been mistaken for so many times over the years that she and Diahann used to joke they could trade places and their husbands probably wouldn’t even know the difference.
Maxine knew who her first call would be. She pulled out her BlackBerry and searched for the phone number of Lance Overton, the flaming gay (but still in the closet) New York gossip columnist. Though Lance was probably two decades past the peak of his powers as the gossip king of the New York Courier, Maxine knew that Lance still managed to keep his fingers in many a juicy pot around the city. You never knew where he might pop up with his translucent skin, black wide-frame glasses, and oodles of old-school charm. Maxine loved to introduce Lance as her “dearest friend”—more as a warning to all comers than as a term of endearment—but in fact she mostly giggled behind the old queen’s back, calling him “my sad and lonely friend Lance.”
“Lance, how have you been, darling?” Maxine said into the cell phone. She knew that Lance would want to spend at least ten minutes on mindless chatter, so she got right to the point without even waiting for Lance to respond. Maxine hated mindless chatter. “I have something I need to talk to you about. We had an interesting guest on the show today.”
