To Have and to Kill

by Mary Jane Clark

  “Ohmigod! It’s Mariah Lane!” The squeal came from a pair of young women exiting the Starbucks a few yards away.

  “It totally is!” cried one of them in a stage whisper. “She was the best part of A Little Rain Must Fall.”

  Both women made a beeline to the target of their enthusiasm.

  “Hi, I’m Piper Donovan.” She held out her hand.

  “Oh, we know who you are. We love you!” said one of them, giggling. “We hated when they got rid of you.”

  “We follow you on Twitter and we’re friends on Facebook,” said the other.

  “Good one! I’m actually just about to send out a tweet,” said Piper. “Why shouldn’t it be about the two of you? What are your names?”

  “Oh, awesome. I’m Heather and this is Nina.”

  Piper tapped out the letters with her thumbs:

  JUST MET NINA AND HEATHER WHO SAY THEY LOVE ME.

  LOVE THEM !

  The girls didn’t have any paper, so they insisted Piper sign their Starbucks cups. As Piper used the blue highlighter that she kept in her bag for marking scripts, to scribble her autograph on the still-warm cups, she had to laugh. Was it pathetic that this was totally making her day?

  Still, Piper felt grateful that she had been given a sign. She wasn’t forgotten and she was on the right path.

  Her luck was going to change.

  Chapter 3

  There was a giant window on each side of the entry to The Icing on the Cupcake. One offered a view of tempting layer cakes, brownies, cookies, and pastries displayed on colorful hand-painted plates resting on glass shelves and pedestals. The other allowed people on the sidewalk to watch Terri Donovan decorate her beautiful cakes.

  Nothing gave Terri more pleasure than seeing the delight on the faces of family, friends, and customers as they admired her creations. She was expert in squeezing out buttercream stars, shells, flowers, hearts, vines, dots, and bows in every conceivable configuration. Equally important, she had a wonderful eye for color. The combination of her skill and imagination added up to culinary works of art.

  The Icing on the Cupcake was Terri’s dream come true. When her children were very young, years before she actually had her own bakery, Terri had dreamed of what she wanted her place to be. It wouldn’t be large, and the variety of baked goods might be limited, but everything for sale would be luscious and almost sinfully pleasurable—the types of desserts that made people take a bite, close their eyes, and groan with pleasure.

  Terri was determined that presentation would count at her establishment. Her cakes weren’t going to be sold on circles of cardboard. They would be purchased and served at home on a pretty piece of flowered porcelain or painted pottery. The plate would be Terri’s gift to her customer. Season after season, Terri purchased odd pieces and partial sets of china at tag sales and thrift shops, storing them in the basement of her split-level home, to the point where she could barely make her way to the washing machine, and her husband couldn’t get to his tool bench and the rest of his “man cave.”

  Now, The Icing on the Cupcake was in its fifteenth year, and the stacks of plates in the Donovans’ basement had long since been depleted. But Terri and her friend Cathy still trawled the garage sales to replenish their stock. Customers, too, came in carrying plates they had received with past purchases, recycling them, and always buying another cake on another plate before they left.

  The idea to decorate her cakes in the window for all the world to see came to Terri when she, Vin, and the kids took a rare vacation to visit relatives in Sarasota, Florida. The sidewalk in front of a local fudge shop was always crowded with people craning their necks to watch as the molten mixtures of chocolate, sugar, milk, and butter were poured from shiny copper pots onto huge white marble slabs. The fudge maker, clad in an immaculate uniform, folded and spread the mixture back and forth, back and forth, as it gradually cooled and was shaped into long bars of candy. Viewers were mesmerized, and Terri noticed most of them ended up going into the shop to buy. Terri added the picture window to her plan.

  When Piper and Robert were both in school full-time, Terri got a job at the Hillwood Bakery. She worked the counter for eight years while perfecting her skills. When the owner decided he wanted to retire, Terri and Vin Donovan took out a loan, purchased the business, and Terri got her chance to implement her long list of ideas.

  Now Terri, her curly hair covered with a net, squinted as she worked at her table. The sun streaming through the window caused a bothersome glare, to which she found herself becoming more and more sensitive over the last months. She picked up her pair of light-yellow-tinted glasses, positioned them over her prescription ones, and tried to concentrate.

  She was terrified that all she had worked for could be coming to an end.

  Chapter 4

  A disheveled man wearing a torn jacket, filthy pants, and woolen gloves with the fingertips cut off sat huddled over a heating grate in the sidewalk.

  Piper took a $5 bill from her wallet and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas,” she said. “Food. Promise me you’ll use it for food.”

  The man didn’t say a word but gave Piper a wide grin revealing several missing teeth.

  The biting winter wind pounded against Piper’s body as she kept her head down and continued trudging up Ninth Avenue. Christmas wreaths and colored lights draped storefronts and restaurant windows. The sidewalk was crowded with workers and shoppers rushing to buy presents or meet friends and business associates for holiday luncheons. Piper was thrilled to be part of the latter group. She always loved spending time with Glenna.

  Piper knew that by the end of their lunch, memories of the lackluster audition would be replaced by whatever Glenna had to say. Rejection was a regular part of any actor’s life, and Piper had become quite adept at moving on. The disappointments still hurt, and there were days when tears were inevitable, but after years of never understanding what she had done wrong, Piper had found ways to prevent the sting of it from intruding on her social life.

  To Piper, this was it. There was simply nothing that made her happier than acting or rehearsing or watching other actors. She had gotten a college degree because her parents had insisted, but Piper had wished away those four years. All she had ever wanted to do was act . . . and fall in love.

  That goal was eluding her so far. After six months, she was still explaining to some people that she wasn’t getting married after all. The broken engagement, not of her doing, had left her reeling but philosophical. Better to be done with the relationship before proceeding to a wedding ceremony and a couple of kids.

  Secretly, Piper worried that this was becoming a most unfortunate pattern. During high school and college, she had lived for each new episode of Sex and the City and eagerly awaited her time to pursue love in Carrie Bradshaw’s magical metropolis. Now, Piper had plenty of material for a season’s worth of episodes.

  Before her ex-fiancé, Gordon, there was Bill, the guy she’d gone out with for over a year only to find out that he was engaged to somebody else; and Jeffrey, the one who watched and commented on everything she ate, reminding her in no uncertain terms that, if they were to marry, weight gain would be grounds for divorce; and Tom, the one who was happiest when his mother accompanied them to dinner. Piper had tried to ignore it for a few months, but when she caught Tom taking his mother’s hand one night while the three of them sat together in a movie theater, she knew she had to end it.

  Despite all the false starts, Piper believed in love, in following dreams, and in happy endings. But with her acting career stalled and her bank account running on empty, she needed some time to take a step away and, hopefully, breathe. She wondered what Glenna would say when she told her that she was giving up her apartment at the end of the month, eliminating the rent-check panic, and moving back to her parents’ house in the New Jersey suburbs.

  Goin
g home to live with Mommy and Daddy for a while.

  She was pretty sure Carrie Bradshaw had never done that.

  While she waited at the restaurant, Piper ordered a glass of the cheapest merlot on the menu, picked out a piece of Italian bread from the basket on the table, and took out her BlackBerry. She had several messages on her voice mail. The first was from Glenna Brooks.

  “I’m going to be a little late, Piper, but I have a big surprise. Big and great. Can’t wait to tell you. See you soon.”

  Piper guessed that Glenna had gotten the part in that film she wanted or that the soap’s writers were creating an even more outrageous story line for her. Viewers loved the Maggie Lane character. They were excessively blogging about everything, from what she was wearing to whom she was dating. Glenna received more fan mail than any actor on the show. It was common on the soaps to replace an actor for the same character when necessary, but for the Little Rain audience, Glenna Brooks was Maggie Lane. Glenna’s agent had deftly used that popularity when negotiating her last contract.

  Piper resolved that, whatever Glenna’s news was, she was going to be stoked for her friend even though there was a lull in her own acting career.

  Everyone has highs and lows. I’m just in a little down period. Eventually, things are going to get better.

  Piper knew that Glenna had had her own down times, particularly in her personal life. She had gone through a miserable divorce while she and Piper worked together. That’s when they had become friends.

  Even though Piper was brand-new to the show, she and Glenna had connected immediately. Piper was younger and far more green than Glenna, but the star treated Piper as an equal. She ended up confiding in Piper about the challenges of divorce, especially when the gossip columnists were paying attention. Despite Piper’s insistence that she’d feel different eventually, Glenna vowed that she would never marry again.

  These conversations had helped them bond. Glenna became a Piper Donovan champion, sharing theatrical contacts and praising her acting talent to various people in the industry.

  Since Piper left the show, they hadn’t seen each other as much. In fact, Piper realized that they hadn’t really talked in several months. They’d scheduled this holiday lunch to catch up. Piper was especially curious about the recent announcement that A Little Rain Must Fall, in an effort to cut production costs, was leaving New York and following so many of the other soaps out to Los Angeles.

  The waiter placed the glass of wine on the table. Piper took a sip as she listened to the next message.

  “Piper, it’s me. Thanks again for doing those roses for me yesterday, honey. We can’t wait for you to get out here. Daddy is almost finished painting your room. I think you’re going to like it, sweetheart. Got to go, the brownies need to be iced. Call me when you can. Love, Mom.”

  Piper smiled to herself. Her mother always signed off on voice messages as if she were dictating the close to a letter. Once, when she had been really annoyed at Piper, she closed a terse voice-mail message with “Sincerely, Mom.” But Piper’s brow knit in concern as she thought about the “painting your room” thing. It made her nervous. Painting her old room indicated that they wanted to make her feel excited about coming home—and that they expected her to stay a long time. While Piper had repeatedly told them this was a short-term move, her parents had never been crazy about their only daughter residing in Manhattan. Since Piper had been jilted, they had been truly worried about her living alone in the Big City at such a vulnerable time in her life.

  She knew that her parents just wanted to take care of her. While Piper loved them for that, she didn’t need to be smothered. Piper had made them promise that they would chill out a bit and treat her like an adult. As long as they didn’t ask her too many personal questions and didn’t start tracking her comings and goings, this could work out.

  But she knew her parents. It would be next to impossible for them to keep those promises.

  I’m crazy to be doing this, aren’t I? Of course I am. But the die has been cast. I’ve given up my lease. It won’t be for long, it won’t be for long. It’s a vacation, really. A chance to relax and regroup. That’s all it is. It can’t be for long.

  Piper swiped the bread in the little dish of olive oil and popped it in her mouth as she listened to the next message.

  “Hi, Pipe, it’s Jack. Hope the audition went well. Don’t forget, dinner at my place tonight. I still refuse to believe it’s your farewell. See you about seven.”

  Piper had been trying not to dwell on all of the aspects of Manhattan life she would miss, but the thought of not having regular dinners with Jack Lombardi made her ache. They had become close friends and confidantes in the two years since they met at a karate class. Over many pasta dinners and countless bottles of wine, Jack had listened to Piper’s ramblings about life as an actor and her intense desire to find true and lasting love. Jack thought every guy who had treated Piper badly was a total loser and he had offered, more than once, to teach them a lesson. Piper was never quite sure if Jack actually meant it or not. He didn’t say much about his work with the FBI, but when he sheepishly shared details of the way he himself had sometimes treated some of the women he dated, Piper was glad that her relationship with Jack was a platonic one. She repeatedly told herself that Jack Lombardi was a friend, not a lover.

  The last message was from her agent, Gabe Leonard.

  “Listen, baby, I can get you in at the last minute to audition this afternoon for a cat food commercial. It’s local. The cat is the star and there are no lines for you, but I wanted to let you know about it. Call me if I should let them know you’re coming. Call me anyway. I want to hear how the audition went this morning.”

  You’ve got to be kidding me. Piper always felt extremely guilty on the rare occasions she turned down an audition. But, really, she’d been having a particularly rough couple of weeks, so the thought of rushing through a lunch that she’d been so looking forward to, to fawn over some lame brand of cat food, made her want to regurgitate her bread.

  She was allergic to cats, too.

  Piper used the last reason when she texted her answer to Gabe. She’d call him later. She was in no rush to discuss the morning’s audition. Piper was about to update her Facebook status when Glenna made her entrance.

  While not much more than five feet tall, Glenna had the presence of a supermodel—and the world was her runway. Smiling brightly, her head held high, Glenna wore her gorgeous fur coat with confidence, ignoring political correctness. Some of the diners recognized her, some did not, but all of them watched her as she strode to the table. Piper was mesmerized too, at first, not even noticing the man following behind Glenna.

  Piper stood up and the two women embraced in a flurry of “hello”s and “can you believe how long it’s been”s. Then, Glenna reached out, took the man’s arm, and steered him forward.

  “Piper, I want you to meet Casey Walden.”

  She shook the man’s warm, strong hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  He was tall, fair-skinned, fair-haired, and wore a well-tailored camel-hair overcoat with a red cashmere scarf. As he put his arm around Glenna’s shoulders, Piper immediately recognized the watch that peeked from beneath his shirt cuff. She had seen one like it on eBay when she had been trying to figure out a way to swing a used Cartier tank watch. The quest had proved fruitless. The timepiece was definitely not in her immediate future, but she had spent over an hour scrolling around to see what the options were. So she knew that the watch Casey Walden wore was worth well over $10,000. As the three stood, the waiter came over to them. “Should I set another place?” he asked.

  “No,” said Glenna. “That won’t be necessary. Casey can only stay for a little while. Just bring another chair and a bottle of your best champagne, please.”

  Piper was relieved. She wasn’t in the mood to make polite convers
ation with someone she didn’t know. She had been planning to have a private chat with Glenna, and Casey would be an obstacle to that.

  The waiter uncorked the bottle with an understated pop and poured a little of the sparkling liquid into Casey’s glass. As he reached for the stem of the glass, Piper noticed that Casey’s nails were bitten to the quick.

  Glenna took hold of Casey’s hand. “We have some wonderful news, Piper. I know it’ll sound crazy, since you’ve never even met Casey before, but we’re getting married on Christmas Eve. Get your dress and line up a date!”

  “What? No! That’s so exciting!” She reached over the table to pull Glenna close. “Congratulations,” she whispered. “I’m so happy for both of you.”

  “It’s all happened so fast, but Casey is the most incredible guy,” said Glenna after her fiancé had said good-bye and left the restaurant. “I guess I can thank Susannah and her academic struggles for all this. Who knew the science teacher at her school would end up being so terrific? We met at a parent-teacher conference at the end of September, he proposed last weekend, and now, here we are getting married. It’s been such a whirlwind, Piper.”

  “He’s a teacher?” asked Piper. “Man, that school must pay really well. He seemed so, I don’t know, well groomed, I guess.”

  Glenna laughed. “Inherited. His brother runs the family jewelry business.”

  “Wait! Not Walden’s on Madison Avenue?” asked Piper, making the connection.

  “That’s the one,” said Glenna. “Casey hasn’t paid much attention to the business. But that’s starting to change.”

  “And is that one of the ‘family jewels’?” Piper asked, pointing to the large diamond on Glenna’s left ring finger. “That’s not a rock. It’s a boulder! I’m surprised you can still lift your hand!”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’m so happy, Piper—the last two months have been like a dream.”