Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  TALK

  a novel by

  Laura Van Wormer

  Author & Company

  Connecticut New York Colorado

  “The Alexandra Chronicles”

  1. Riverside Drive

  2. West End

  3. Any Given Moment

  4. Exposé

  5. Talk

  6. The Last Lover *

  7. Trouble Becomes Her *

  8. The Bad Witness *

  9. The Kill Fee *

  10. Mr. Murder *

  11. Riverside Park

  *The Sally Harrington Mysteries

  Other Novels

  Benedict Canyon

  Jury Duty

  Just for the Summer

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where the name of actual persons, living or dead, are used, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict any actual events or change the entirely fictional nature of the work.

  Copyright © 1998, 2014 by Laura Van Wormer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of part of this book may be used or reproduced in any electronic manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. For information please address: Author & Company, LLC, P.O. Box, Cheshire, CT 06410-9998

  For my friend

  Jim Spada

  With gratitude and appreciation to my agent, Loretta Barrett, and to Mollie Doyle, and to my editor, Dianne Moggy, and the gang at MIRA.

  And a very special thank you to Christine Robinson and Michael McCarthy, whose colorful tour of their hometown gave me an idea...

  The man roamed the office, eyes wide with wonder and happiness. He studied the photographs, and the artwork on the walls, the books in the shelves, the newspapers and magazines scattered all over, and he smiled at the unruly pile of highlighters on the coffee table. His eyes moved to the desk. He walked over, circled it and knelt down behind it. With his forearm he bumped the swivel chair to turn toward him. And then, sighing softly, the man lowered the side of his face to rest on the fabric of the seat. He closed his eyes, and slowly began to grind his cheek into the seat. "Jessica," he sighed. "Oh, yes, Jessica."

  Contents

  Part I Celebrity

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II Death

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part III Trap

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part IV Nightmare

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part V Fallout

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part IV Epilogue

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  TALK

  Part I

  Celebrity

  1

  There had to be more to her secret admirer than they were telling her. Otherwise, everyone wouldn't be freaking out. As far as Jessica was concerned, he was harmless. He was just another terribly lonely fan who every once in a while sent her a gift and a polite note explaining how no one understood Jessica the way he did.

  "Close," Cleo instructed her.

  Jessica was sitting in makeup and hair, getting "poofed" before the evening taping of her show. She took one more look at Dirk Lawson, head of security at DBS, and obediently closed her eyes so Cleo could dab foundation around them. "What, exactly, is it you wish me to do, Dirk?"

  "Be supportive of our security effort."

  Jessica opened one eye. "Which means?"

  "For one, not ditching your bodyguard and sneaking off somewhere."

  "Where did you sneak to?" Cleo asked admiringly, tossing the sponge on the counter and picking up an eyeliner pencil.

  "It wouldn't be sneaking if everyone knew."

  "It's not funny," Dirk said sharply. "Your well-being is my responsibility. And this guy is a nut. And the fact that we can't trace his letters tells us he's a bright nut, exactly the kind of nut you should be nervous about."

  "I'm not the nervous type," Jessica commented, automatically looking up to the right as Cleo applied liner around her left eye. After twelve years on television, seven of them nationally, she could do this makeup-and-hair routine in her sleep. "And it's not as if he's a stalker or anything."

  "Oh, but he is," he assured her. "He's stalking you through the mail now, just warming up to the game. And with these guys, you've got to remember, his obsession's not only about you, Jessica, it's also about us—the people who stand between you and him."

  "Perhaps you left the FBI a bit too hastily," Jessica said, looking up to the left now as Cleo ringed her right eye. "I'm not sure there's enough excitement here for you." It was against her nature to be rude, but Dirk Lawson had brought out the worst in her since the day he'd arrived three years ago. She could never get over the feeling that the security expert created panic on purpose every once in a while in order to make himself indispensable to the network. Besides that, he simply bugged her, his macho air of self-importance.

  "Normal people don't wear gloves to write letters," Dirk said. "Normal people don't use false return addresses. Normal people don't write to strangers and make up imaginary bonds with them."

  "Now take that guy that's always outside my apartment," Jessica said, closing her eyes again as Cleo brushed on some eye shadow. "I wish you'd do something about him."

  "I've told you—as long as he's on public property, there's not much I can do."

  "Wonderful," Jessica said, opening her eyes. "So he can just make obscene gestures and scream profanities at me for the rest of my life."

  "Excuse me," Bea Blakely said, charging breathlessly into the room, "but we've got some changes." She shoved a number of index cards into Jessica's lap. "We lost the pretzel-maker but found a schoolteacher."

  Jessica was staring into the mirror, openmouthed at the sight of her new secretary. Jessica was quite sure that Bea had possessed long light brown hair as recently as before lunch. Now she had shoulder-length auburn hair the exact color of Jessica's.

  Bea beamed. "Don't you love it?" she asked, touching her hair, admiring herself. "Cleo did it for me. Well, gotta go!" And she ran out.

  Jessica's eyes moved to Cleo, who was smiling nervously back at Jessica in the mirror. "It's hero worship," the hair-and-makeup artist hastily explained. "You should be flattered."

  "It's not hero worship," Jessica said, "it's weird."

  "Jessica," Dirk said, "we've got to talk about this."

  "This, this, what this?" Jessica said, pushing Cleo's hand away to look at him. Cleo grabbed her chin and firmly yanked her face back into place to apply blush into the hollows of her cheeks.

  "Your stalker," he answered. "This guy fits the pattern. And sooner or later he's going to try to get to you. To get near you."

  "And do what?" Jessica wanted to know. "I've had every kind of crazy person pursuing me in the past and nobody ever really does anything. There was that guy who sent me a gun in the mail, that woman wh
o insisted I was her reincarnated mother, that wacko who said he'd set West End on fire," she said, referring to the home of the DBS broadcast center.

  "Ten minutes, Jess," her producer, Denny Ladler, said, poking his head around the doorway. "Did you get the new notes?"

  "All set," she told him. "Not that anyone's going to give me time to go over them," she added to Dirk. Denny was gone. Then he was back. "By the way, Jess, the tabloids have you all over them next week again in some sort of lonely-hearts crisis."

  "In a what?"

  "Lonely-hearts crisis," Denny said. "'Talk-show host starved for love,' you know. We're getting copies tonight." He looked at his watch, "Seven minutes, Jess." And he was gone.

  "Over here," Cleo directed, patting the next chair.

  Jessica moved over and Cleo stuck a bucket of long-handled styling brushes in her lap. Cleo grabbed one, wound a lock of Jessica's thick hair around it, and then wound the brush to the top of Jessica's head where she clipped it. She took another brush and did the same. Then another and another until all the brushes in the bucket had been used and Jessica looked like a very pretty porcupine.

  "Listen, Jessica," Dirk said, leaning forward as if to speak confidentially, "'if you want to argue with anyone about this, then you're going to have to argue with Cassy."

  Cassy Cochran was the president of the network.

  "You know what she's like,” Dirk continued. Every time I tell her I've got this under control, she says, 'Last time security told me everything was under control, our anchorwoman was nearly killed. "'

  The aforementioned anchorwoman happened to be Jessica's best friend, as well as a colleague here at the Darenbrook Broadcasting System. Alexandra Waring had been shot while touring for the network seven years before, this after having been stalked and shot by a crazed fan the year before she came to DBS.

  Jessica gestured helplessly, indicating she couldn't respond until Cleo finished painting lipstick on her mouth. Finally Cleo backed off. "I won't ditch your bodyguard anymore, Dirk," Jessica said.

  "You promise?"

  Cleo snapped her fingers high in the air, signaling Jessica to look up so she could apply a thick coating of mascara on her lashes. The makeup would be ridiculously heavy for real life, but would make Jessica look very natural on TV. It was meant to accentuate her features, not to change them. But then, as Cleo always nicely said, Jessica certainly had a lot to work with.

  "I promise I won't ditch your bodyguard anymore," Jessica repeated.

  "I may have to ask you to postpone Jessica's book," Cassy Cochran said. On the other end of the telephone was Kate Weston of Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe, the publishing house issuing Jessica's autobiography.

  There was dead silence on Kate's end. Finally the publisher found her voice. "The finished books are due from the plant next week. I don't know how much you know about book publishing, Cassy, but books are literally dropped shipped across the country as they come off the press. To stop the process—"

  "I thought the publication date wasn't until next month," Cassy said.

  "We have to start shipping six weeks in advance," the publisher explained, "to make sure the books are in the stores when the pub date arrives and the promotion kicks in." She sighed. "Look, I'll give it to you straight. I came back to BFC to turn the company around, and I can't afford to sit on five million dollars' worth of inventory next week."

  "Well, I can let you have Jessica here in New York, I suppose," Cassy said. "It's just that I have to go by what my security people tell me."

  Cassy had been very supportive of Jessica's eagerness to promote her autobiography. But now, with Dirk's urgent warnings about this potential stalker, the idea of Jessica doing what Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe wanted her to do—a ten-day nonstop cross-country tour with signings in fourteen cities—seemed like running an unnecessary risk. Dirk was ex-FBI and knew this stuff; she had to heed his warnings. And when she stopped and thought about it, the idea of having Jessica sitting out there, surrounded by thousands of "fans," made her nervous, too. The problem was trying to alert Jessica to the danger without panicking her, which raised yet another pressing issue—should they show Jessica the new letters that had been sent to her?

  "All right," Kate said, sounding as though she was making notes. "If we've only got New York, then we can do 'Today,' Rosie and Letterman. And then there's Montgomery Grant Smith's radio show. And the local news." A pause. "Now we just have commitments in thirteen other cities to honor."

  "I'll let you do a satellite tour from DBS," Cassy offered.

  A satellite tour was when the guest sat in a room in front of a single camera and participated in back-to-back interviews scheduled with local markets around the country. One could do as many as twelve decent interviews with morning shows in the Eastern Standard Time zone, then six in Central, and then Twelve on the West Coast, overlapping with the noon news and local talk shows back in the East. It was exhausting, but a TV professional like Jessica could do it in a snap. In fact, she had done hundreds of such interviews to promote her talk show when it first went national.

  The fact was, whether anyone wished to openly discuss it or not, the revenues from "The Jessica Wright Show" had launched DBS and still largely supported the network. Whatever it was that Jessica had that made TV viewers addicted to her—a mixture of warmth and wit, compassion and genuine curiosity—the young woman's gift had been so strong that the network had first signed her despite the knowledge of her drinking problem.

  Happily, shortly after launching her show at DBS, Jessica had stopped drinking. That had been seven years ago and nothing could stop her climb in the ratings after that. She was truly a phenomenon unto herself. And Cassy, as the president of the network who had overseen Jessica's amazing growth, felt privileged to have been a part of it. Besides, Jessica was a joy to work with.

  "So who would pay for this satellite tour?" the publisher wanted to know.

  "Well, we'll have to talk about it."

  "Right." A sigh. "Just remember, Cassy, will you? That I'm a book publisher—your poor cousin in communications?"

  "A poor cousin about to make a fortune on my talk-show host." Cassy laughed. "I'm not running the Salvation Army here, but okay, I'll work on some doable numbers."

  "And what about the Barnes and Noble signing on Fifth Avenue?"

  "For the moment, no way," Cassy said.

  "Howard Stern can sign on Fifth Avenue, and so can Colin Powell. And they've been protected just fine."

  "Look, we may very well find this guy tomorrow," Cassy told the publisher. "I really called only to warn you of the possibility, and give you time to make alternative plans. I suppose I must sound ridiculously paranoid to you—"

  "No," Kate interrupted. "Trust me, you don't. Unfortunately this is getting to be a way of life with celebrity books. There are so many crazies out there these days. And I know you're particularly sensitive because of what happened to Alexandra Waring."

  "Bingo, you've got it."

  There was a quiet knock on Cassy's door and then it opened. Her boss, Langley Peterson, stepped in. He had his briefcase in hand, ready to go home. Cassy held up a hand to signal she'd be a minute.

  "Kate, I've got to go, but I'll keep you posted." After a moment, she said goodbye and hung up the phone.

  "What's up?" Langley asked, falling into one of the chairs.

  Langley Peterson, co-CEO of Darenbrook Communications, the parent company of the Darenbrook Broadcasting System, was a longtime officer of the privately held com­pany that was controlled by an extremely colorful southern family. The Darenbrooks' empire had begun with a single newspaper in Georgia that the old man, Elrod B. Darenbrook, won in a poker game. Big El, as he was known, would marry four times and have children with each wife, but it would be his dynamic youngest son, Jackson, who would grow the company into a multimedia conglomerate consisting of newspapers, printing plants, electronic information services, satellites and broadcasting. Jackson's right-hand man in this had been Langl
ey—who had married a Darenbrook daughter along the way—and he now oversaw the electronic side of the company while Jackson focused on the printing and publishing side.

  Jackson had originally hired Cassy Cochran to be the executive producer of DBS News, but in short order, she had, for reasons of expediency as well as emergency, ended up launching not only Jessica's show but recruiting almost all the independent TV stations that affiliated with DBS. And thus when Jackson Darenbrook had later seen fit to marry the new president of DBS, Cassy—a second marriage for both of them—Langley had not been fazed in the least. He'd simply been grateful that the Darenbrook Communications empire had been reorganized so that Cassy would never report to her own husband, which meant Langley did not have to look for a new executive.

  "Oh," Cassy said to Langley, "it's this letter-stalker of Jessica's. It's taken a turn for the worse and we can't seem to get her to take it very seriously."

  "I'm still not clear on why we are," he admitted, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose and bringing one ankle up to rest on his knee.

  "At first I didn't understand Dirk's alarm, either." She stood up and walked around her desk. "But then I took these home to read last night." She handed him some papers. They were photocopies of type-written notes. "The ones with the check marks are ones that Jessica has seen," she explained. "The ones without are the ones security intercepted."

  Langley started to read.

  Dear Jessica,

  I know how lonely you have been. I have been lonely too. But now we will have a chance to get to know each other and move on to the kind of intimate relationship I know you long for. If I may, I wish to suggest you wear less revealing clothing now.