The viewing room was to the left, white and bright from X-rays in lit view boxes on facing walls. David closed the door and leaned against a white counter, his dark hair drooping over his brow and his arms folded. Jill sank to a stool next to him.
“This is surreal,” Alex said, his eyes peering around at glowing, shattered chests and skulls and spines. Kerri gaped at a film of a broken neck, its crushed cervical vertebrae looking like stomped popcorn.
“Whoa,” she said, dropping to a stool. Alex leaned on the counter next to her, facing Jill and David.
He inhaled. “So, any thoughts on how could this have happened?”
David shook his head. “Jody knew she was deathly allergic to penicillin. Was terrified of it. Took every precaution. Would not have done this to herself.”
Kerri looked up from scribbling. “Did others know about her allergy?”
“Everyone knew,” Jill breathed. She felt hollowed out. This was so terrible, so hard to believe. “The TV cast and crew, club pals, ex boyfriends. She talked about it obsessively. Wore a Medic Alert bracelet until recently.” A helpless gesture. “She thought it was ugly.”
“Tell again how you knew her?” Alex asked.
David told them. When Jill was an intern, Jody had been one of her first patients in the clinic. A sad, troubled girl struggling through auditions and, in her words, “crazy neurotic about her health.” No, not just the penicillin. Her mother had died of breast cancer and her aunt – her mother’s sister – had died of ovarian cancer. Jody heard the two had a common inherited cause, and that’s what scared her.
Jill swiped at an eye. “Tumors discovered early can be removed, although even that’s not a guarantee. So Jody fretted and came often, got attached, liked to hang with us even after her big break. She was incredibly sweet and needy. Listened when we begged her to quit coke, which she’d never feared.”
“Coke?” Kerri asked. “She was doing coke?”
“Yes. Until last summer.” Jill glanced at David. His head was down; he was so somber. “She did rehab, then drew closer to us. Felt comfort talking to people she said were…caregivers, as opposed to the egotists and backstabbers she had to work with.”
“She also volunteered playing with sick kids,” David said quietly. “Called it her escape from Show Biz hell.”
Show Biz Hell… Jill’s mind saw Jody describing it, getting emotional: That gorgeous, sparkly bubble that closes you in, bloats your ego in some weird, alternate universe where you lose all bearings, lose yourself. Suddenly, you’re famous. You’re not living in a Soho basement anymore, but you have fans who chase you down the street and grab at your clothes. Paparazzi everywhere. People aim their cam phones at you in the supermarket. You just want to hide.
“People would tell Jody she was gifted,” Jill sighed, now seeing Jody being funny about her unhappiness. “But she’d hoot and say, ‘Some gifts aren’t really gifts. Can I return this fame thing?’”
The others talked. Jill heard them dimly; sank into a fit of abstraction…
Better parts led to Streetbeat, a sleeper cop series that took off when Jody joined the cast. She’d blurt funny, off-the-wall stuff and wound up re-inventing her character, ignoring the director and changing her lines in the middle of taping. The public loved the nutty rookie who fell over things, a goof up constantly on probation, a Dumbo hurt because no one but her series pal Celie Jarrett wanted to be her partner. The two caused begrudging smiles in their TV precinct, howls in their growing audience. Female Keystone Kops: an idea which never would have happened without Jody the screwball and Celie as her sidekick. The two were friends off the set as well.
“What?”
Alex had asked something Jill hadn’t caught.
“You know any of those egotists and backstabbers?” he repeated.
“Met some.” She sent a pained glance to David: help.
He pushed off the counter, paced a little. “Jody gave parties. We went to a couple. Met the show’s producer, an assistant director, some of the writers and other actors - big, big egos there, Jody told us. We also met her entertainment lawyers, Reid and Deborah Wylie, and Eric Rennie, TV cop.”
David allowed himself a smirk. “Eric Rennie, the show’s former star and Jody’s on-off boyfriend until she eclipsed him and he got jealous. They fought a lot. She’d come crying to any of us. Tricia Donovan spent time holding her hand during coffee breaks. Ditto Woody, Jill, Sam, anyone with a free five minutes. Once, she hadn’t slept all night. Fell asleep on a gurney. We covered her with a blanket and she slept like a baby.”
“She was a different person to different people,” Jill put in. “On the set she said they’d been calling her a crazed, unstable drama queen, but here she was a sweetheart. Her financial help to the OB/GYN and pediatric departments was the reason for last week’s outing with her to the restaurant. Combined staff. She knew everyone’s name in pediatrics too.”
Kerri asked about Jody and Reid Wylie. “He used to be a cop, a homicide detective. He’s also a bit of a ladies man.”
“We know,” David said tightly, and hesitated. “Last winter – January - he briefly separated from his wife, and Jody got into a naïve, crazy, amorous mess with him. Really fixated on him. Eric Rennie was humiliated.”
“So were other guys who’d come on to her,” Jill said. “Sounded like Wylie’s wife didn’t like it either, though she seems like the long suffering type. She’s a former public defender, but you must know that.”
The police knew, of course. They knew a lot about the Wylies.
Kerri flipped back pages in her notebook. “When the cops found her, Jody was crying, ‘Reid? Please, no.’”
David stared at her. “Did she sound afraid?”
“More like pleading, they said.”
Alex’s phone buzzed and he paced away to answer. Kerri started to speak and the door opened. Another plainclothes man came in, handed Kerri a paper, muttered about “reporters” and “swarm out there. Leaks, this is trending.” He left, closing the door.
Kerri read the paper, and took a deep breath. “Rushed drug screen results,” she announced grimly. “Jody had enough penicillin in her to kill her ten times.”
She watched David go ashen, and Jill close her eyes.
“My God,” Jill whispered.
“And we’re assuming,” Kerri said, “that if she was terrified of penicillin she didn’t keep any at home, couldn’t have taken it by accident.”
David and Jill nodded, pale and mute.
Alex said tensely, “That call I got-”
The door opened again and a harried intern looked in. “Do you have that hip film yet?”
“No,” Alex snapped.
David reminded that the film was digital, too; go look on a computer. The door closed and the scrub was gone.
And Alex repeated, “That call, they’re interviewing friends outside. Jody was at a big shindig tonight. Thrown by the show’s producer to celebrate their second year’s success - and Jody went nuts. Tearful and drunk, threw herself pleading all over Wylie, then announced she was quitting. Called the writers and directors hacks, said she was going to breach her contract and ran out.”
Jill snorted, “What? No kiss-kiss, darling?”
David nodded and said, “We knew she wanted to quit.”
Alex was pacing, getting wired. “Pals said she’d been threatening to quit for weeks. Tonight’s outburst made it official. Problem is, the success of everyone connected to the show – sixty guests - depended on her.” The detective scowled. “Someone pissed could have brought penicillin, put it into her caviar or something. How long would it take to hit her?”
David sank onto a stool, elbows limp on his knees. Under the fluorescents his handsome face was haggard, as if he were actually seeing Jody scarfing down hors d’oeuvres, taking a drink from someone faking friendly.
“If she ingested penicillin,” he said gravely, “the first reaction feelings would have taken fifteen, twenty minutes on an empty st
omach, forty minutes roughly if she’d eaten.”
“She’d eaten,” Jill said weakly.
David nodded. “Right. She made it home before feeling it start.” His frown deepened as something dawned. “But why didn’t she call for help?”
“The big question!” Alex exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Suddenly she’s feeling deathly sick and scared? If she had her phone she would have called 9-1-1! But she didn’t; there was no phone in her purse. Could someone have taken it? To make sure help couldn’t get to her?”
The awful question hung in the air like a crackling live wire.
Alex paced. “Talk about sophisticated poisons,” he growled in frustration. “Forty minutes to be felt if she’d eaten. The damned stuff even allows for getaway time.”
A heavy moment passed as he traded gazes with Kerri. They seemed to understand each other.
Kerri leaned forward, bunched her lips for a second. “Jody collapsed down the street. There’s no way we could get a warrant and we want to see her apartment.” Her eyes went from Jill to David. “Would you take a look at it?”
Jill gave David a solid stare and nodded. Her blood was on fire.
“Sure.” David rose and shoved his stool back under the counter. “We’ve got her new address.”
“New?”
“She moved a few months ago. There hasn’t been time to see her new place.”
“Her old apartment was something,” Jill grimaced, getting up too. “Crammed with movie props she liked to collect.”
The door opened, and Tricia burst in with Jody’s evidence bags. “Sorry, Brian got called and I was with the rape victim.”
“Cops here for her?” David asked.
“Yes. She’s traumatized.” Tricia watched David peer into one of the bags, hold it open for Jill and the detectives to see the glinting silver dress Jody had worn.
Kerri asked Tricia to thank those who had collected the evidence. Alex thanked Jill and David for their impending visit to Jody’s.
“You’re going there at this hour?” Tricia cried. “Eeyew. Jody told me she’d gotten more of those things she likes to collect. Gargoyles and creatures and God knows what else.”
6
Eyes and more eyes in the aisles and corridors and passing the nurses’ station. A TV star had died. Cops were all over interviewing hospital staff and partygoers and Streetbeat cast members in careful makeup who’d rushed hysterically to the hospital. They’d had their beefs with Jody, but never wanted her dead. The horror! The chance to get their faces on TV!
“Doctor Levine? Uh, David? Jill?”
They turned.
Approaching in the wide ER hall were Reid and Deborah Wylie, both looking stricken. Reid extended his hand and David shook, awkwardly. Deborah’s dark hair was disheveled; her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Her arms went out and she hugged Jill as if she needed comfort. Jill hugged back, then managed a bolstering look for the woman. Reid didn’t make her life easy.
“A tragedy,” David said.
“Horrible,” Reid nodded as his wife’s eyes welled up. She looked lost.
More condolences back and forth, as Jill studied the pair...
Even in shock and dismay, Reid looked catnip-to-women-handsome. Gaunt and paler, maybe, than he looked at Jody’s two parties, but big, rangy and dark, everything about him dark. About forty with dark hair, brooding dark eyes, gray silk tie pulled loose and his dark shirt rumpled. Squint: he was Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. The doomed, tragic lover. Just give him a moor.
Deborah would be called a handsome woman. In her mid thirties, with “plodder” written all over her, as Jill’s now deceased mother used to diss her less driven rivals. No charisma, just plod doggedly away and sigh, hope for a break.
Jill’s mother loathed the word, hope. “You make your own damned luck,” she’d snap. Lonely wasn’t the word, growing up the only child of a divorced, ambitious prosecutor who was never there. Whose only show of maternal pride was including Jill in home strategy sessions with detectives as they made their cases. Jill grew to love some of those cops. FBI profilers sometimes came too. Their talk fascinated Jill, and still did.
She continued to study the Wylies.
“…want to thank you,” Deborah was blurting in an emotional rush, seemingly unaware of ER traffic around her. She used her hands a lot. An emotional talker who gestured away from her body. “Both of you, for being Jody’s friend, caring for her…”
“When we didn’t,” Reid cut in, hands clenched at his sides. “That business last January. Jody said you knew about it.” He took stock of their nods; looked embarrassed. “Things got too intense, crazy. We were no help to her.”
“But all was forgiven,” Deborah said, her eyes reddened, earnest. “We were all sorry and things were back to normal…until tonight.” Her face fell.
David said, “We heard about Jody’s meltdown.”
“The whole world’s heard.” Reid’s bunched his fists tighter. “It’s on Twitter, for God’s sake. ‘Jody Merrill back to crying for her glam lawyer.’”
Abruptly, Deborah asked, “Have you seen Celie?”
Jill and David looked at her.
“Celie Jarrett.” Reid’s voice rose slightly. It was noisy in the ER hall. “Jody’s co-star. You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“Sure, we know Celie.” David sent Jill a look: huh? “Sweet girl. Met her at one of Jody’s parties. They came together to play with sick kids.”
Reid took his wife’s arm. “She was a no-show at Bruno’s party tonight.”
“Bruno Shepard, the show’s producer?” Deborah added helpfully to Jill and David.
They remembered Bruno. Neither had liked him. Jody had despised him.
Deborah suggested that Celie, being so close to Jody, must have known she was going to quit, that’s why she didn’t show. But it was strange! Not like Celie to humiliate Bruno or anyone, disappoint everyone connected with the show.
“She’s probably, ah, passed out with her boozing boyfriend at his place.” Deborah shrugged. “He’s a terrible influence. It’s happened before.”
A few final condolences were exchanged, then the Wylies thanked again and left, Deborah saying something long and emotional of which only the phrase “so stunned and sorry” was understandable.
Whew, that was over.
They grabbed their parkas, flashlights, latex gloves and Jill’s bag, then ducked the lights-flashing press swarm by exiting through a side door. Took a cab to East 80th Street, got off at the corner, and hurried to the house.
It was four stories, an old limestone dowager festooned with balustrades, high, surprised windows, and a stoop leading up to the first floor. Jody had described the place. She lived in the upper duplex; had hinted (“You gotta come see!”) at her new, exotic possessions in the excited way of someone who has never had anything. Described experimenting with furniture polish and dithering over décor and rushing out, sometimes, this child raised in chaos, to look up and down the block and marvel at its order, its understated elegance.
A long moment passed as they stood, two figures in dark parkas and navy scrub bottoms, looking at the house.
“I see something already,” David said. “You?”
Jill frowned. Scanned the façade, top to bottom, side to side. Shook her head.
“Keep looking.”
“Oh. Third floor up, that must be Jody’s living room. The lamp’s on and…” Jill squinted, feeling chilled. “The drape. It’s hanging crooked, looking…yanked.”
They stared up at the window. Jody wouldn’t have let the drape look like that.
Nervously, they snapped on their latex gloves.
Cold wind gusted, and from somewhere came a sound. A low, hollow thud, and then another.
“Whazzat?” Jill drew back, feeling her heart kick.
“Don’t worry.” David got his 9mm gun from his ankle strap. Held it before him and peered grimly up to the window again.
That i
nstant lit the whole David to Jill. The child who’d grown up in Denver winning shooting contests, then started being a bad kid whose parents sent to Israel for a summer of straightening out – “weeding, picking melons,” he’d joke - but instead made friends at a near army base and spent his days target practicing.
Hospital days were so rushed and blurred. Not often did his whole life flash before her.
“Think we’ll need the gun?” Jill asked a bit anxiously.
“It’s nice to have it.”
“Good point.”
They heard it again, another soft thud, and Jill drew back more. “What’s that noise?”
“Only one way to find out.” He put his free hand on her back. “What happened to those shooting lessons you were going to take?”
“I chickened out, you know that. No teasing.”
“So I’ll shoot, you be the smart one. C’mon. We have to do this.”
They mounted the stoop. David started to pick the antique lock - another skill he’d learned in his bad boy days – then straightened in surprise. The front door was ajar.
“She must have run out.”
7
A mausoleum, the foyer looked like, all cold marble and high ceiling with an antique lamp lit on a table. From the right, behind a door down a short hall, came the sound of a small dog yipping. Jody had lovingly described the old poodle that belonged to the elderly, pink-haired lady who owned the building.
“Shut up, Misty,” Jill whispered shakily. She followed David up winding stairs to Jody’s landing and looked around. There was no one, just a dusty, dimly lit chandelier hanging over the empty stairwell.
Jody had been lonely living here. The elderly lady, a onetime showgirl named Edna Polsen, had become her friend, but that could also be depressing because Edna liked to totter around and prattle about her thrillingly sinful old days, and never made much sense. Or maybe that wasn’t so bad. Jody had loved retreating into fantasy worlds.
EMBRYO 5: SILVER GIRL (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller) Page 3
