Charade

by Sandra Brown

  “That’s great!” she said, her fatigue vanishing. “See if you can get her for me, please.”

  Retrieving her bag, she went to her private office, kicked off her shoes, and sat down at her desk. Out of habit, she checked the clock, then reached for her bottom desk drawer.

  The telephone beeped. She depressed the speaker button as she opened the desk drawer. “Yes, Melia?”

  “Ms. Parks on line one.”

  The drawer was empty.

  “Want me to put her through?”

  The drawer was empty.

  “Cat? You there?”

  “Yes, but my…Melia, where is my medication?”

  “What?”

  “My pills. My medication. Where is it?”

  “Don’t you keep it in your desk drawer?” Melia asked, sounding puzzled.

  “Of course, but it’s not here.”

  She slammed the drawer shut, then immediately yanked it open again, as though the empty drawer had been an optical illusion that would reverse itself.

  But the drawer was empty. Her pills were indisputably gone.

  Melia appeared in the doorway. “I told Ms. Parks you’d call her back. What’s happened?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Unintentionally shouting, she quickly brought her voice under control. “My medication is missing,” she stated calmly. “I keep all my pills here in the bottom drawer. Always. But they’re not here now. Somebody’s taken them.”

  “Who’d want your pills?”

  Cat glared at her. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Jeff came in. “What’s the matter?”

  “Somebody’s taken my medication from my drawer.”

  “What?”

  “Have both of you gone deaf?” she cried. “Must I repeat everything? Somebody waltzed in here and stole my medication!”

  She knew she was being unreasonable, but the drugs were her lifeline.

  Jeff stepped around the desk and looked into the empty drawer. “Who would have stolen your pills?”

  Cat shoved her hand through her hair.

  “I already asked her that,” Melia said in an undertone. “It pissed her off.”

  “Couldn’t you have misplaced them yourself?” Jeff ventured.

  His soft-spoken, earnest attempt to help only heightened Cat’s exasperation. “You can misplace a tin of aspirin and find it six weeks later in a coat pocket. It’d be hard to lose fourteen bottles of pills.”

  “Maybe you took them home with you last night?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” She was shouting again. “I have duplicates of every prescription. One for home. One for work. That way I can take my midday dose here. Sometimes the evening dose, too, if I’m working late.”

  Three of the fourteen medications were crucial antirejection pills. The other eleven prevented side-effects from those. She religiously stuck to the prescribed schedule of three doses per day.

  “If I had toted all fourteen bottles home last night—which I didn’t—I would remember it,” she told her assistants. “Somebody’s been in my desk. Somebody moved them. Who’s been in here this morning?”

  “Just myself and Mr. Webster,” Melia replied. “He brought down a videotape he wanted you to see.” She pointed at the cassette lying on the desk. “At least he’s the only one I saw.”

  “Were you away from your desk for any length of time?” Jeff asked.

  Melia resented his question, and she showed it by answering defensively, “What’d you expect me to do, pee in my chair? Sure, I went to the ladies’ room a couple of times, and I went out for lunch. Since when is that a crime?”

  Cat hated suspecting that Melia had played this malicious trick. She thought of outright accusing her, but what purpose would that serve? If Melia was guilty, she’d just deny it. If she was innocent, the accusation would cause a wider breach between them.

  More important, however, was that in the wrong hands, the drugs could be dangerous.

  “Melia, please get Dr. Sullivan on the line.” The local cardiologist to whom Dean had referred her had an office nearby. “Track him down if he’s not available. I don’t care where he is, find him. Tell him to call the pharmacy and have them send over my prescriptions as soon as possible.”

  Melia turned and left the office without a word.

  “I could drive to your house and bring back your pills,” Jeff suggested.

  “Thanks. But for that matter, I could go home myself.”

  “You’re too upset to drive.”

  She hated to admit it, but she was very upset. The medication could be replaced soon enough; it wasn’t as though her desk had contained the last supply on earth. Rather, she was shaken because someone had stolen something far more valuable than jewelry, furs, or money. Her life depended on that medication.

  “I appreciate the offer, Jeff,” she said with more composure than she felt. “But once the pharmacist gets a call from Dr. Sullivan, he’ll take care of it.”

  “Where are you going?” Jeff fell into step behind her as she left her office.

  “I’m holding for Dr. Sullivan,” Melia told Cat as she walked past her desk. “He’s with a patient, but his receptionist said she’d interrupt.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turned to Jeff, who was still behind her. “If some son of a bitch thinks this is funny, I want to set the record straight. Now.”

  The newsroom was a practical joker’s paradise. The staff was always playing one-upmanship to see who could devise the best—or worst, depending on your point of view—practical joke.

  The pranks ranged from putting plastic vomit in the communal refrigerator to reporting that the President of the United States had been assassinated while taking a leak in the men’s room at a Texaco station on Interstate 35.

  Cat approached the assignment editor’s desk. He was a grizzled, crotchety chain-smoker with emphysema who resented that the newsroom was now a smoke-free environment. He wore a habitual scowl and was friends with no one. Yet, his instinct for news had earned everyone’s utmost respect. When he said “jump,” even the most egotistical reporters asked how high.

  He nearly had a seizure when Cat depressed the intercom button on his telephone.

  “Hey, you guys.” Her voice boomed through the speakers in the vast room, which was honeycombed with partitions separating individual desks. “Hey, y’all,” she corrected herself. She’d learned that Texans hated “you guys.” “I want to tell the sick person who thought it might be funny to take my antirejection drugs that it isn’t.”

  “What the fuck’re you talking about?” the assignment editor asked, wheezing.

  Ignoring him, Cat said into the intercom speaker, “It was a real hoot when my sanitary napkins were used to soundproof the lunch room. I even got a laugh out of the poster of me with a handlebar mustache and an extra tit. But this isn’t funny, okay? I don’t expect the culprit to fess up. Just don’t do it again.”

  “Get away from that thing.” The assignment editor reclaimed his telephone, which no one had ever had the temerity to touch before. “What got you riled?”

  “Somebody snatched my pills.” Newsroom personnel had stepped from their cubicles and were looking at her curiously.

  The news director approached, a frown creasing his forehead. “What the hell’s going on?”

  She repeated her statement. “I’m sure that whoever sneaked into my office and took them from my desk drawer didn’t mean any harm. However, it was a stupid and dangerous thing to do.”

  “How do you know it was someone from the newsroom?” the news director asked.

  “I don’t,” she admitted. “But someone working on this floor would have had the best opportunity to wander into my office without attracting attention. And everyone in here loves a good joke. The sicker it is, the more hilarious. Those drugs are nothing to joke about.”

  “And I’m sure that everybody in the news department is well aware of that, Ms. Delaney.”

  His confidence in
his staff caused Cat to reassess her knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps she’d been too hasty in issuing the blanket accusation.

  “I apologize for the disruption,” she said, feeling small. “If you hear anything, please let me know.” Before there could be any further discussion, she retreated to her private office.

  “The delivery is on its way,” Melia told her, still looking sulky. “It’ll take about twenty minutes they said. Is that soon enough?”

  “That’ll be fine. Thank you. Give me a minute and then get Sherry back on the phone. Jeff, bring Danny’s file to my office, please.”

  Needing a moment’s privacy, she closed the door between herself and her subdued staff. She leaned against the door and took several deep breaths. Her silk blouse clung to her more now than it had when she’d come in from the sweltering heat. She was bathed in damp, nervous perspiration. Her knees were shaking.

  For three years she had tried to convince herself that she was just an ordinary person like everyone else, that there was nothing special about her.

  But the fact was that she was a heart transplantee.

  That meant she was extraordinary, with needs very few others shared, whether or not she wanted it that way. And that’s the way it would be every day for the rest of her life.

  Today’s crisis had been short-lived and it hadn’t resulted in a life-threatening situation. Nevertheless, it had been a rude reminder of just how fragile she was.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cat was getting her first taste of Bill Webster’s infamous, controlled rage. She’d heard he seldom lost his temper, but that when he did, it caused fear throughout the building. This morning it was directed at her.

  “They were positively irate, Cat.”

  Her reply was subdued. “They had every right to be.”

  “They felt that the little girl had been misrepresented to them.”

  “She had. But not intentionally.”

  Webster expelled a gust of breath. He tempered his anger, but his face was still flushed. “Cat’s Kids is an asset to the community. It already has an impressive string of successes to its credit. The program has become a significant attribute of WWSA.”

  “But Cat’s Kids also has the potential of being an Achilles’ heel,” she said, guessing his train of thought.

  “Precisely. My commitment to the feature is as strong as ever. I don’t want you to think I’m getting cold feet. But the show leaves us vulnerable to lawsuits. We’re a target for litigation from the state, the applicants to adopt, the birth parents—in fact, everybody who nurses a grudge over a slight, either real or imagined. This television station is in a precarious middle-of-the-road position.”

  “Where we can get hit by trucks going both ways.”

  He nodded brusquely. “When we initiated this program, we acknowledged the risks involved. As CEO, I’m still willing to accept the risks because the benefits far outweigh them. But extreme precautions must be taken to avoid another incident like this.”

  Cat rubbed her forehead. The day before, a couple named O’Connor had called Sherry Parks and revoked their recent adoption. Their little girl, whom they’d adopted through Cat’s Kids, had attempted sexual foreplay with Mr. O’Connor.

  “They’re claiming that her sexual sophistication was deliberately omitted from her records to facilitate her adoption.”

  “That’s simply not true, Bill. She was analyzed by several child psychologists. She concealed her advanced sexuality from all the doctors, from the social workers, from us, from everyone who had any dealings with her.”

  “I don’t understand how she slipped through the cracks.”

  “She’s seven years old!” Cat cried. “She has pigtails and dimples, not horns and a forked tail. Who would expect her to have sexual problems? But she was abused from the time she was in a crib. Her stepfather taught her how to please him. He taught her how to tease and—”

  “Christ,” Bill said, turning pale. “I don’t need to hear the details.”

  “Everyone needs to hear them,” she said crisply. “If everyone would acknowledge the dirty details, this outrage might not be so prevalent in our society.”

  “Point taken. Go on.”

  “Considering her background, the psychologists were initially amazed that she’d survived with so few scars. Now we know how troubled she actually is. She uses her sexuality to manipulate her environment—specifically to get her way with men, any man.

  “You’re absolutely right, Bill. We can’t imagine a child who looks so innocent actually being a femme fatale. Neither can we imagine what was done to create her.”

  “But we can’t blame the O’Connors for wanting to nullify the adoption.”

  “Of course not. Naturally, they were told that she’d been sexually abused. They were willing to deal with it when nobody knew the extent of the damage. None of us had any idea how cleverly she’d manipulated the experts.

  “She knew the right answers for all their questions. She played them like a fiddle because she wanted to live in the O’Connors’ house. She wanted to sleep in the pretty pink bed they’d put in her bedroom. She’s admitted as much to Sherry now.”

  Bill shook his head in disbelief.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of cases this severe,” Cat said. “They’re tragic for everyone involved.”

  “True. And for that reason alone we don’t need to be associated with them. An error like this must never happen again, Cat,” he said sternly.

  “I can’t give you a guarantee. But I accept full responsibility for the selection of the children who appear on Cat’s Kids. If there’s any doubt in my mind—”

  “Pass on them.”

  She disapproved of his terminology. They weren’t talking about melons. She resented being told to hand-pick only the children with the fewest bruises. But she nodded in concession.

  “I mailed the O’Connors a personal letter of apology this morning. I feel desperately sorry for them. Naturally, they were horrified by what she did; but they’d had just enough time to come to love her. It’s a devastating conflict for them.”

  “Hope they don’t sue us for millions,” Webster said, speaking now as a businessman.

  “I’m sorry that the station has to take this one on the chin.”

  Mollified, he waved off her apology. “You’re the one in the front trenches. But we’re all in this together, Cat. Whatever happens, I’ll back you one hundred percent. You’ll have our attorneys in your corner, and they’re as vicious as wolverines.”

  She disliked the image of legal wolverines being turned loose on the couple who’d already suffered untold distress. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “So do I.” He assumed the posture of a judge ready to hand down a ruling. “However, after this, you might reconsider becoming so personally involved with these children. You take their problems onto yourself. You lose your objectivity.”

  “Thank God I do,” she said heatedly. “I don’t want to be objective. They’re children, Bill, not numbers, not statistics. They’re human beings who have hearts and souls and minds, and they’ve been hurt in one way or another.

  “You might regard them as a publicity ploy, a way to increase ratings. Everyone else who works on Cat’s Kids might see them only as the topic of a story, something to focus a camera on.”

  She leaned across his desk, bracing herself on her arms. “But the kids themselves are my focus. The rest of it is only a means to an end. If all I wanted was fortune and fame, I would have stayed on Passages.

  “Instead, I came here to serve a purpose that I’ll never lose sight of. To achieve that purpose, I must remain personally involved.”

  “I disapprove, but I trust you know what you’re doing.”

  “I won’t betray your trust.”

  He slid the morning newspaper across his desk toward her, but she’d already read the article he had circled in red. “Now that we’ve discussed the O’Connor matter, I’d like to hear how you
propose we handle this.”

  Immediately upon returning to her office, Cat summoned Jeff and Melia. “For the sake of time and energy, I’m going to cut through the management handbook b.s. and get right to the point. Yesterday afternoon, you both became aware of the O’Connor situation. Did either of you leak the story to the media?”

  Neither said anything.

  She flicked her hand at the newspaper, which she’d brought with her from Bill’s office. “Ron Truitt strikes again. But this time he had viable ammunition. He couldn’t have accidentally run across this story. Somebody fed it to him.

  “It’s for certain that no one over at Human Services wanted this incident publicized. The O’Connors are almost as upset over having their privacy violated as they are over the incident itself. He didn’t hear it from them. All fingers are pointing to WWSA, specifically this office.

  “So, which of you is responsible? And, along with your confession, I’d like an explanation. If Cat’s Kids is taken off the air, we’re all unemployed, so what did you hope to gain by undermining it?”

  Still, both remained silent, eyes averted.

  “Jeff,” Cat said after a long moment, “will you please excuse us?”

  He cleared his throat and glanced at Melia. “Sure.”

  He slipped through the office door, pulling it closed. Cat let a heavy silence descend. One thing could be said for Melia King—she had nerve. Her sloe eyes never flinched. They remained steadily on Cat.

  “Melia, I’m giving you one last opportunity to admit that you gave Ron Truitt that story. You’ll be reprimanded. But as long as you pledge never again to breech our policy on privacy, that’ll be the end of it.”

  “I didn’t call that reporter or anybody else. That’s the truth.”

  Cat opened her bottom desk drawer, removed a McDonald’s carryout sack, and set it on her desk. It elicited from the stoic young woman a reaction that Cat had long awaited. Melia gaped at the sack, her lips parting in stunned surprise.

  “Following the mysterious disappearance of my medication, one of the newsroom interns approached me,” Cat said. “He’d seen you cross the parking lot at lunchtime and throw this into the Dumpster. He remembered thinking it was strange that you’d leave an air-conditioned building at noon and go out onto the hot asphalt parking lot to throw away your lunch trash.