by R. G. Belsky
“At some point though, she slipped away from the party. I didn’t realize she was gone. Once I found out, I went back to the hotel. That’s the only place I could think of to look for her. That’s where I found her.”
Holloway said he saw her coming out the front door of the hotel.
“She said she was going back to the party,” he said. “Then she showed me the gun she was carrying in her purse. She said she was going to shoot herself in front of everyone there. She said she wanted the world to see the real Laura Marlowe one time before she died. She said it would be her greatest performance ever. Her final curtain, she called it.
“I tried to stop her. I told her not to do this. She started to run away, and I ran after her. That’s when she went into the alley. Finally, she stopped running, turned to face me, and put the gun to her head. I told her I loved her; I told her I’d help her do anything she wanted. But it was too late. She said all she wanted to do was die. Then she pulled the trigger.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened after that. I guess I panicked. There was blood all over. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to help her. I finally remember running into the hotel. By the time I got back outside the police were already there. Then the ambulance came. The rest of it’s all kind of a blur. I just stood there and watched it all happen like it was a nightmare. Then the cops asked me if I’d seen the gunman and that other people thought they saw this guy Janson running away.”
“And you never told anyone it was a suicide?”
“Everyone assumed it was Janson. By the time I realized that assumption—well, I just let them keep believing it. And later, when I told Beverly, she told me to keep my mouth shut about what really happened. She thought it was better for Laura’s memory if she died tragically at the hands of an obsessed fan instead of people finding out it was a suicide. I wasn’t sure what to do. I just did what Beverly told me to do. I’ve always done what Beverly told me to do. I never planned for it to turn out the way it did. It just happened.”
“What happened to the gun Laura shot herself with?”
“I took it.”
“You took it?”
“I don’t really remember doing it. Like I said, I don’t remember much about what happened afterward. But later I found it in my pocket. I must have picked it up in my confusion and panic. When I realized what it was, I threw the gun into the East River.”
“So Laura’s death wouldn’t look like a suicide?”
“Yes.”
“What about Janson?” I asked. “You knew he didn’t do it. Were you going to let him take the fall for it?”
“It never got to that point. Janson killed himself in that hotel room, and so it just seemed easier to let everything play out the way it was going. Beverly insisted it was all for the best. Everyone believed the legend, she said. And I guess the legend was much nicer than the truth. Hell, after a while, I even began to believe it myself. All of this happened such a long time ago. We didn’t hurt anybody. And no one ever found out the truth.”
“Until Abbie showed up one day and started asking questions?”
“Yes.”
“She figured out some of it. That’s when she came to you, and you panicked. So you came up with this celebrity serial killer connection. You gave her the list of the four other celebrity deaths in hopes that would take her in the wrong direction on Laura. You knew there was a link between those four other deaths because you were in the Sign of the Z, and Sign of the Z killed them. I’m pretty sure Zorn killed Deborah Ditmar himself. But who did the killings after Ditmar. Bobby Mesa?”
Holloway nodded.
“Zorn killed the first one. The Ditmar woman. He told me about it on the ranch, bragging about how it was just the first blow in this war he was going to wage against the evils of Hollywood and all the rich and famous people there—just like Charles Manson had done with Sharon Tate back in the ’60s. It scared the hell out of me. That’s the reason I ran away from the ranch. And I took Laura with me.”
“What about the other three killings?”
“That was Mesa. He had this crazy idea of carrying out Zorn’s mission after Zorn was executed. Mesa said it came to him when he read about Zorn dying in the gas chamber that this would be a fitting memorial to him. They were all so scary. I still can’t believe I ever got mixed up with them in the first place.”
“But you left Sign of the Z years before those last three murders in 1988 and 1989, after the Zorn execution. So how did you find out that it was Mesa who had killed Fairmont, Lee, and Carson? And why he did it?”
“Mesa came to me one day. After he’d been on the run for years. Showed up right here in New York City. Said he had been hiding ever since the others got killed or nabbed after the botched store holdup. He told me about the three new celebrity killings. He said he did them. He was proud of them. Mesa said he wanted to make some kind of violent statement on behalf of the Sign of the Z and his hero Russell Zorn.”
I told Holloway about the astrology clues left at each of the murders. He said he knew about that.
“Mesa boasted to me about leaving the clues; he said one day he planned to reveal to the world what he’d done. But not until he killed more. He wanted me to help him. I saw how crazy he was, how crazy that whole cult had been. So I put him up at a hotel near here. Then I made an anonymous phone call to police and told them where he was. They were after him for the holdup killings. No one knew anything about the other deaths. And, after he died in prison, I was the only person left who knew what he had done.”
“What did Mesa say about Laura?”
“He thought it was hilarious that Laura—or Clarissa as he knew her—had become such a big movie star and that she’d wound up being killed. He said it was what she deserved for selling out to the establishment. He said he would have killed her himself if he’d had the chance, but she died before he started on his mission for Zorn. He said it was good that she died just like the other four celebrities had.”
“So when Abbie started asking questions about Laura’s death, you tried to divert her by giving enough information to link the four celebrity deaths to Laura’s. A way to think that Laura died at the hands of a crazy cult. And to make sure that no one found out the truth—that Laura killed herself. But eventually Abbie figured out what was real and what wasn’t about Laura. I think in the end she knew everything. She knew that Laura was a suicide, not a murder. And she was going to put that on the air.”
He nodded. “That’s what she told me.”
“How did she find out?”
“I have no idea.”
I did. I was pretty sure it came from Thomas Rizzo Sr. I didn’t know how Rizzo found out the truth, but he must have known. Probably from Valentine and Sherry, who were there that night when it all happened. They all knew. And never told anyone all these years. Then when Rizzo is sick and close to dying, he finds out his son is dating Abbie—who’s really his daughter. I talked to that other reporter too, Abbie Kincaid, Rizzo had said to me at the hospital. He told her about Laura’s suicide and that Janson couldn’t have killed her. That was Abbie’s secret source for the story. But then Rizzo told Abbie something even more startling: that she was Laura’s secret daughter. And he was her father.
“You met her that last night at the Regent, didn’t you?” I said to Holloway.
“I begged her not to run the story. I said it would ruin me and Beverly once people knew we’d made up the whole story about the murder.”
“What did she say?”
“That it was time for the truth to come out.”
“So you killed Abbie?”
“No,” he said, shaking his vehemently from side to side. “I told you, I didn’t kill her . . . I didn’t kill anyone . . . I couldn’t kill anyone. Look at me. Do I really seem like a murderer to you?”
The damn thing was I believed him. He wasn’
t a murderer. He didn’t have the guts to kill anybody thirty years ago, and he didn’t now either. He was a weasel and a liar and an operator and not a very admirable human being. But he wasn’t a killer.
“Did you tell anybody else that Abbie was going to reveal all this on her television show?”
“Just one person.”
“Who?”
I already knew the answer, of course.
“I told Beverly,” he said.
Chapter 48
BEVERLY Makofsky—now Beverly Richmond—had even more to lose than Holloway if Abbie’s story had come out.
She had a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, a summer place in the Hamptons, she traveled around the world, and she served on the boards of several museums and charitable organizations. Her entire life had been built upon the legend of her dead daughter. Which turned out now to be a lie. If Abbie had ever made that public, her entire life would fall apart. She couldn’t stand that, not with her self-inflated ego. There was only one way to stop it. By killing Abbie before she could put it on the air.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she said as I laid it out for her in the living room of her apartment. The lights of the Manhattan skyline twinkled from a picture window behind her. It was late, almost 10 p.m. I’d tried to reach her all day after my meeting with Holloway, but she was unavailable. Meetings, a charity dinner—she lived a busy life. Finally, I was just about ready to leave the office and go home when I tried to call her one more time. This time she was there. I told her I needed to see her right away. Now here I was sitting across from the woman I believed had murdered Abbie in order to keep her own secrets buried.
“Did Holloway tell you at some point that Abbie had found out about your daughter’s suicide?”
“You know he did.”
“What was your reaction?”
“I was upset.”
“How upset?”
“I was upset because this—the circumstances of Laura’s death and her last days—was something we’d tried to keep out of the public eye for a very long time. I didn’t want this kind of a scandal to become my daughter’s legacy. People loved her, they idolized her—I didn’t want that to change. I mean I was out on that Laura Marlowe cruise ship when my daughter died. I was trying to help her career, to promote her image at the very moment she killed herself. All I cared about was Laura. I flew back right away and made sure Edward didn’t tell anyone the real story of what happened. Especially after that crazy Janson guy killed himself. Why not just let people continue to think he did it?”
“Is that why her body was cremated so quickly?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t want to take any chances that there might be more of an investigation into her death. Nothing that might reveal it was a suicide. I said it was because I didn’t want any kind of public spectacle over her body. And no one ever questioned that. I just tried to protect her memory. Is that such a terrible thing for a mother to do?”
“I don’t think Laura’s memory was all you were worried about. I think you were worried about what it meant for you. This was never about Laura. It was always about you. You got rich off of your daughter’s memory. So did Holloway. In the end, her suicide worked out really well for both of you. Except your daughter was dead. Doesn’t that ever bother you just a little bit?”
She stood up. I thought for a second that she might physically attack me. But she walked out of the room instead. I sat there wondering what to do next. A few minutes later, she returned with a piece of paper in her hand. The paper looked very old and yellowed by age. She handed it to me.
It was from Laura. A suicide note.
Dear Mother,
If you are reading this, then I finally got the courage to do what I’ve been wanting to do every day for as long as I can remember. Maybe if you were here, I wouldn’t be able to do this. But the fact that you’re so far away right now . . . well, it just seems like saying goodbye to everyone this way was meant to be.
I know now there is no hope for me anymore. I thought for a few brief, fleeting moments not so long ago that maybe I still had a chance at living a life that I wanted. Those were the moments that I held my newborn baby daughter in my arms. But now even that momentary happiness has been taken from me.
My baby is my only comfort, my only solace, as I prepare to leave this world. Wherever she is, I pray she will get a chance to live the kind of life that I never did. That she will be loved and nurtured and be allowed to grow into the kind of person she wants to be. I want her to have everything I never did. I want her to be happy.
I’m not blaming you completely for what I’m about to do, Mother. I’m not blaming Eddie either or anyone else. I’ve always been able to walk away. I’ve had the power to make my own decisions. I realize that now. It’s just that I never made any decisions. I’ve always allowed other people to decide for me. Now I’m making this one last decision for myself.
I’m just too tired to go on. I want it all to end. I want to go to sleep and never wake up. Or—when I do wake up—I want to be in a better place, somewhere far, far away. I know I’m living the life you always wanted for me. The problem is I never wanted it. Or, if I ever did, I don’t anymore. Be careful what you wish for, they always say, because the wish might just come true. It did for me, and now I simply can’t bear it for another day. I’m sorry if I let you down. I’m sorry about everything.
Goodbye,
Laura
“Eddie found this in Laura’s hotel room after the shooting,” she said. “I suppose I should have given it to the police and made it public. But, like Eddie told you, it just seemed easier to go with the flow after everyone assumed it was that stalker who did it. I’m sure I would have come forward and told the truth if he’d been arrested. But once he killed himself, it didn’t seem so important anymore. Laura was being idolized as this heroic star cut down in the prime of her life. All that would have ended if the truth came out. She would have become an object of pity and maybe even ridicule. I didn’t want that for her.”
“For her or for you?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Which part?”
“That I did all this for Laura?”
I shrugged. “You never seemed to care that much for her before. You weren’t much of a mother.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t still regret after thirty years that I wasn’t there with my daughter at the end? That maybe if I’d been there she wouldn’t have done it? I was always at Laura’s side until that last cruise. I thought it was important at the time because of Laura’s fashion line. But now I would give anything to go back in time and not have been on that boat so far away from my daughter.
“And there probably hasn’t been a single day that’s gone by when I haven’t taken out this letter and read it, wishing I could go back and do it all over again. That’s why I’ve kept it all these years. I wanted to remind myself always of what had happened. I guess I always knew this day would come. I could put it off, but sooner or later I was going to have to deal with the past. I’m ready for that now.”
She handed Laura’s suicide note back to me.
“I want you to print this,” she said.
“In the Daily News?”
“Yes. You’re going to write a story about this anyway. You’re going to tell the world how my daughter really died. They might as well have the entire story. It’s time for the whole truth to come out. It’s been buried for too many years. You can quote me on that, if you want. It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that Laura is dead. She’s been dead for thirty years, and nothing’s ever going to change that. But I can do this one last thing for her. I can tell the world what really happened to her.”
Then she began to cry.
It was a helluva performance, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure I was buying it.
This woman had never cared about her daughter before. She’d used her daughter all her life to attain her own goals. I figured she was still doing it one last time.
She knew I was going to write this article about Laura’s death . . . one way or another. She couldn’t stop that. So she was going to turn it around and make it work for her. Maybe even cash in on it one more time. Thirty years ago, she’d been afraid that if the public knew that Laura killed herself after having a mobster’s baby her daughter’s memory would have been tarnished forever. But it was a different time now, and a different set of rules. A scandal like that about a celebrity—whether dead or alive—could be good. There was no such thing as bad publicity anymore. This would pique public interest in her long-dead daughter all over again. Her mother could read that letter on The View and Dr. Phil. Even in death, Laura could never be free of her.
There was nothing I could do about this, of course.
But I needed to find out about Abbie.
“Did you go to see Abbie Kincaid on the night she died at the Regent Hotel?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
They were all there that night. Laura’s mother. Holloway. Abbie’s ex-husband. Abbie was seeing everybody connected with this case and with her own life too at the same spot where Laura Marlowe had died three decades ago. Why? Was she seeking some kind of closure? Maybe that was it. She’d just discovered the truth about Laura and about herself too and she was bringing it all together at the place where Laura died. She was going to tell the whole story on her next TV show, and this was all part of it. Except someone killed her first.
“She told it all to me, just like the way you did earlier,” Beverly Richmond said. “About the suicide, the affair with Rizzo, and the baby we put up for adoption. I was stunned, but there was nothing I could do about it. I think there was almost a sense of relief on my part that all the years of lying and hiding the truth were finally over. She asked me if I would come on her next show for an interview. I said I would. We talked some more. And then I left.”
