The One Who Got Away

by Caroline Overington

  We sat down in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m breaking all the rules just being here,’ said Callie.

  Dad nodded. ‘That’s a good strategy in this life. I’d encourage you to keep doing that for as long as you can. Please tell us what you know.’

  ‘Well, the news isn’t good,’ said Callie. ‘From what the captain was saying after Molly left – and he was like a bear with a sore head, by the way – you’re sitting around expecting David to be charged with your sister’s murder, but I can tell you now, that isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘But why not?’ I said, indignantly. ‘Surely nobody believes the story he’s telling?’

  Callie looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t believe David’s story,’ she said, ‘but what Captain Sullivan told you about jurisdiction is right. Loren is a US citizen, but she wasn’t in the US when the … accident, incident, whatever you want to call it, happened.’

  ‘Let’s call it murder,’ I said.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ said Mom. ‘We’re talking about a man who killed his mistress, then dumped his wife off a ship. They’re not going to let him get away with it, surely?’

  Callie took a deep breath. ‘I need to tell you something. I have to get it off my conscience. And I realise that once I give you this information, I’ll have no control over what you do with it. But I can’t keep it in anymore.’

  ‘Tell us, Callie,’ said Dad.

  ‘David’s mistress, Lyric Morales …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it seems like she wasn’t just David’s mistress.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She was having sex with some of his clients, too. It seems like she was doing it to stop these clients from taking money out of David’s business, to kind of protect the business. So you can see the problem?’

  I looked around the table. Poor old Mom seemed absolutely stunned.

  ‘He was offering her up to his clients?’ said Dad. No question he was thinking about the mistake we’d all made in welcoming David into our family. ‘What kind of man are we talking about here? What was he doing? Running a brothel? Is he a monster?’

  ‘I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that description,’ said Callie, ‘but from what he’s saying, Lyric was having sex with these guys willingly. He says she really enjoyed it. The power. But if she’s having sex with different people, then we suddenly have a whole lot of suspects. Because when a woman has not one but two, three different lovers, there’s a lot of potential jealousies and rivalries and secrets.’

  I gulped in a breath. ‘So, that’s why it’s taking so long for him to be charged? They’re ruling out all the other suspects?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Callie, ‘because there’s more.’

  Dad’s eyes widened. ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Right. It seems like Lyric has quite a few of these men on tape,’ Callie said.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Mom. ‘You mean … sex tapes?’

  ‘Right,’ said Callie. ‘Sex tapes. I don’t know who’s on them. Nobody does. That’s been kept tightly under wraps. Because David’s clients, they’re a pretty big deal. My guess is, they’re businessmen, politicians, people from the golf club.’

  Dad put his hand over Mom’s. Neither of them seemed to know what to say.

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me that the reason Captain Sullivan is prepared to accept David’s explanation – that he walked in on Loren after she had killed Lyric – is because they don’t want those tapes to come out?’

  ‘Right,’ said Callie miserably, ‘and it seems like David is willing to plead guilty to being an accessory after the fact. He’s admitting to helping Loren get out of Lyric’s kitchen. He’s admitting to disposing of her clothes and offering her an alibi. He’s admitting to getting her out of the country the day after Lyric’s death. There’re quite a few of us at the station who disagree with the captain’s decision. We’d like to see a proper investigation but that seems like something the Chief is a bit too keen to avoid.’

  * * *

  Callie left Mom’s house the same way she came, under the cover of darkness.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked.

  Mom – still in shock – didn’t answer. She kept her gaze down as she cleared away the cups.

  ‘We bust this scandal right open,’ said Dad, slamming down his fist. ‘We go straight to the media and say this is a cover-up.’

  I still had Aaron Radcliffe’s number on my phone. He called once a week but I never had anything to tell him. I wanted David charged with Loren’s murder, or even Lyric’s murder, but it seemed like the police weren’t convinced, and in the absence of any new developments in the story, the Bugle had taken to running shameful articles about David’s new life without Loren. One photograph showed him guiding the girls into an SUV outside the Grammar school. The headline said: GRIEVING DAD SHOULDERS HIS NEW RESPONSIBILITIES.

  Furious, I’d texted Aaron: How can you publish this rubbish?

  He’d texted back: We’re not taking sides, Molly. Call me if you want a chat.

  I fished my iPhone out of my pocket and put it on the kitchen table.

  Aaron picked up after just one ring. ‘Hello, Molly. How can I help you?’

  ‘I have some information.’

  ‘Great! I’ll be there in five minutes, or as soon as I can get across the bridge, anyway.’

  Aaron arrived in an old car, dark jeans, and old Vans sneakers.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind but I brought my dinner with me,’ he said, dragging a bag of corn chips and a tub of hummus out of his satchel. ‘With the newspaper online, they never give me time to eat.’

  Mom watched as Aaron tore open the bag and began crunching through the chips. ‘Why don’t you let me fix you something proper?’ she said, but Aaron replied, ‘This will do me, Mrs Franklin.’

  Keeping Callie’s name out of it, we told him what she had told us: that David’s mistress had sex tapes, featuring what she’d described as ‘Important People’ and maybe that explained why the investigation was moving so slowly.

  ‘Sex tapes! That’s amazing,’ Aaron said, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘And how many lovers are we talking about?’

  ‘We don’t know for certain,’ I said. ‘Do you think you can write a story about it? That might get the wheels of justice turning.’

  ‘I can try,’ he said, scooping up some dip. ‘The question is, will my boss believe me? Because I’m going to have to tell her where this information came from. And she’s going to say that you’re not a good source because you weren’t even that close to Loren.’

  ‘Who says we weren’t that close?’

  ‘David says.’

  ‘You’re still talking to David?’ I was incredulous.

  ‘I’m a reporter,’ said Aaron. ‘I talk to everyone.’

  ‘Do you tell him what I tell you?’

  ‘Don’t complain. I’m sitting here now, telling you what he told me,’ said Aaron, crunching through another handful of chips. ‘He says you weren’t close. You’re not Loren’s sister, you’re her stepsister. He makes the point: where did Loren leave the girls when she went away? Not with you. With Janet.’

  ‘And what about me?’ said Dad, closing his fists on the table in front of him. ‘Am I not close to my own daughter? Am I not close to my own grandchildren?’

  Aaron didn’t respond.

  ‘Listen to me Aaron,’ I said, stabbing at the cover of his notebook with my finger. ‘I’ve known Loren since she was eight years old. That is far, far longer than she knew David.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what he told me.’ Aaron wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. To Dad, he said, ‘And to answer your question, yes, David is saying that Loren wasn’t close with you. Because, you know, you left her mom for another woman.’

  Mom’s face was scarlet.

  ‘Why, you—’ Dad rose from his chair.

  ‘Everyone settle down,’ I jumped in. I had my
hands out, trying to calm the situation. ‘Dad, sit. Mom, don’t you worry what David says. Aaron, you are wrong. Loren loved Dad. She loved Mom! She loved all of us.’

  * * *

  It was late at night and I’d been pacing the garden, trying to think.

  ‘There must be a way to get the police to lay charges,’ I said, coming to sit beside Dad on the patio.

  ‘We’ve had no luck so far,’ he replied.

  It had been at least a fortnight since Aaron had gotten permission to publish his big SEX! LIES! VIDEOTAPE! story, and while there had been plenty of outrage and speculation as to who might be on the tapes, still nothing had happened.

  ‘It’s like, he’s High Side, so he has all the power,’ I said. ‘We’re Low Side, so we just get ignored. It’s not right. Who can we appeal to? We must know somebody who can speak up for us.’

  Dad was looking skyward, deep in thought.

  ‘Well, there is that pretty lady who’s always in her underpants,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘The who?’

  ‘The pretty lady who gets photographed in her underpants,’ said Dad, ‘the one who played the blind girl. The actress. The one who’s in Loren’s journal. Nadine what’s-her-name. The famous one.’

  The blind girl? What was Dad on about …? Oh my goodness, yes. Yes.

  ‘Dad, you’re a genius!’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You are. You’re right! You’re so right! We need to rope in Nadine Perez.’

  Because that’s the kind of world we live in, right? Small people like Dad and me can’t get anything done; famous people like Nadine, they can get the whole country’s media to turn up to watch them try on a new pair of shoes.

  ‘But how are we going to get her attention?’ asked Dad. ‘She’s a famous person. And she might not even remember Loren.’

  ‘Well, let’s find out.’

  I got right to it. Like every megastar, Nadine has a massive online presence. She is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and probably a few others I’d never heard about.

  ‘How does it all work?’ Dad said, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘I’ll leave a message on her page,’ I said, tapping away at the keyboard. ‘I can write: “Please get in touch, it’s regarding your old friend Loren Franklin.”’

  From the look of her page, Nadine was having a busy year. She had one big movie out – people were saying she might even win the Academy Award for playing a blind girl marked by the Nazis for extermination – where she had to wear white cups, like the backs of spoons, over her eyes. She had been skiing in Switzerland, and then sailed to the French Riviera on a rap star’s yacht. She was in Dubai, promoting an airline; she was in Milan, endorsing a watch; she was in New York as a guest on a talk show; she was in Australia, holding a koala.

  ‘I bet she doesn’t even read her messages,’ I said, scrolling through page upon page of Nadine at different points on the globe in various states of undress. ‘What we need to do is approach her in person, so she can’t just ignore us.’

  Dad scoffed. ‘And how are you going to do that? You’re not planning on flying first class anytime soon.’

  ‘You could go to her star ceremony,’ said Mom. She had come onto the patio in her dressing gown and slippers.

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘Her star ceremony,’ she said. ‘I read about it last week, Nadine Perez is getting a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.’

  ‘They do those in public?’

  ‘Yes they do. I went to one for Vince Vaughn,’ said Mom, clutching the neck of her nightie to her throat, ‘now I get updates.’

  I turned back to the computer and entered the relevant search terms into Google, and there it was: ‘Nadine Perez gets Star on Walk of Fame.’ The event wasn’t scheduled for several weeks, but that was fine; I could keep trying to email, tweet and message my sister’s star friend in the meantime.

  ‘Mom, you’re the best,’ I said.

  ‘Anything for Loren.’

  * * *

  ‘You guys must be big fans!’

  The security guard was even larger than Dad and what he said thrilled me because Dad and I had gone to some lengths to make sure we looked like fans of Nadine Perez. I had a poster of her from an old US Weekly stuck on an old school ruler. Dad had a framed photograph from Fancy magazine and he was carrying a gold permanent marker. Aaron, who had insisted on coming along for a possible story, looked like Aaron: poor and scruffy.

  We took three seats in the front row of bleacher seats. The red carpet was directly in front of us. We were easily the first ones to arrive, but as the hours went by, a small crowd – intrigued by the red carpet, the velvet rope and the light stands – began to gather.

  We passed the time people-watching. At some point, a Jack Sparrow lookalike came by, chanting: ‘One dollar, photographs are one dollar.’

  Then along came Marilyn Monroe (not the real one, obviously, but a woman – or maybe a man? – in a copy of the white dress Marilyn had been wearing when she stood on the grate). ‘Who’s on today?’ she purred.

  ‘It’s Nadine Perez,’ said Aaron, drawing doodles on his notepad.

  ‘Oh, she’ll get a crowd,’ said Marilyn, taking up a new position near the red carpet.

  The seats around us began to fill. There were Australian tourists in blindingly bright, outlet-centre sneakers; American tourists with fanny packs and water bottles; photographers with Canon lenses.

  I waved my poster. Aaron took a thousand calls from the newspaper’s editor wanting to know if anything had happened yet. Dad sweated in the heat.

  Eventually, an MC turned up in a Hollywood-style, velvet tuxedo. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, sweltering out there under the Californian sun.

  ‘Are we all ready to cheer?’ he cried.

  I warned Dad against getting carried away. ‘Don’t do anything that might get us in trouble. Don’t get in her face.’

  ‘What are they going to do?’ he said. ‘Arrest me? They don’t arrest anyone in this town.’

  ‘Well, get ready, ladies and gentlemen, because we’re about to induct the beautiful, the gorgeous, the talented Nadine Perez into our Walk of Fame,’ cried the MC.

  The crowd around us got to their feet. They were cheering and clapping. We got up with them. A bodyguard was leading Nadine into the arena. He was even bigger than the bodyguard who had greeted us earlier that day.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s tiny,’ I said, shouting a bit so Dad could hear me over the racket.

  ‘I heard Tom Cruise is tiny,’ Dad shouted back, as he clapped.

  ‘He is tiny,’ confirmed Aaron.

  ‘Hello, everyone!’ cooed Nadine, blowing kisses towards the crowd. ‘Oh goodness, did you all come here for me? And I was late? I hope you can forgive me.’

  The crowd cheered their forgiveness.

  Nadine beamed. ‘Now, where do I go?’

  A harried woman with a face microphone took her gently by the elbow and directed her towards a card table covered with a red velvet cloth.

  ‘I’m going to put my hands in here, am I?’ said Nadine, surveying what looked to be a tray filled with freshly poured plaster of Paris.

  Her assistant handed over a pair of silicone gloves.

  ‘Ooh, I put these on, do I?’ said Nadine, holding them all floppy like flesh-coloured condoms.

  The crowd roared. Nadine winked back and drew the gloves slowly onto her hands. She positioned herself over the wet cement and pressed.

  The MC was ecstatic: ‘Yes, yes, ladies and gentlemen, Nadine Perez, look at her go … Walk of Fame … What a moment!’

  ‘Oh wow,’ Nadine said, ‘this is fun!’

  With the formal part of the ceremony over, reporters began shouting questions.

  Nadine cupped a hand to her ear.

  ‘What was it like playing Robert Redford’s love interest?’ shouted a man next to me. ‘He’s old enough to be your grandfather! That scene in the steam room, we haven’t seen female nudity
like that since Basic Instinct. How was it, shooting that scene?’

  Nadine peeled off her gloves, winked and smiled. ‘What is it you really want to know? What exactly are you asking me? Did they see my coochie? Is that what you want to know?’

  The reporter turned scarlet. My father whispered to me: ‘Coochie? That’s the word now?’

  The MC laughed and shouted back to the crowd, ‘Come on now, a serious question for Nadine if we’ve got one?’

  This was our moment. I dug an elbow into Dad’s side. He stood up and, in the front row of the bleachers, he could hardly be missed.

  The MC came running with the microphone. ‘Here we go, we have a question here,’ he cried. ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  ‘I’m Danny Franklin.’

  The microphone screamed. The MC snatched it back, tapped it, and handed it back to Dad, nodding with encouragement.

  ‘Nadine, I’m Loren’s dad,’ said Dad, his voice now booming. ‘Your old roommate, Loren Franklin. I’m her dad.’

  Nadine had been standing in her pretty high heels, patiently listening to Dad’s question. Her head was tilted slightly to the right, and the diamonds in her left ear were cascading down her neck. Now she straightened and seemed to frown. The MC glared at Dad, and then glanced back at Nadine, waiting for the signal to snatch the mic away. Sensing this, Dad gripped it tighter.

  ‘I’m Loren’s dad … Loren was your friend in New York. We need your help.’

  Reporters turned in their seats to stare. By the look of things, we had maybe seconds for Nadine to respond. The security guard who had seemed so friendly was now moving in a menacing way in our direction. Any minute now, Dad would have his arm twisted up behind his back – but no, because Nadine put a pale and elegant hand up and said: ‘Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, wait. Did you say Loren Franklin? You’re her father?’

  ‘I am,’ said Dad, relieved. He was still standing, so I stood up, too.

  ‘You know she’s missing?’ said Dad.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Nadine. ‘What happened to her?’

  The security guard stepped back. Dad had the floor. He cleared his throat.