Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5) Page 3

  When we get home, Scotty jumps out of the car and goes rac­ing around the house-around and around and around—to chase off all real and imaginary enemies. I go inside and find a very long message from Verity Rhodes.

  4

  "I like Vanity Fair better than Expectations," Doug comments while turning his blue Volvo sedan onto Route 202 in Litchfield.

  My boyfriend—or as my mother says, beau—Doug Wren­tham, is an assistant district attorney in the criminal courts of New Haven. This is important to know if only to understand that even when making an idle comment, Doug can make it sound very serious. And since we are about to arrive at Verity Rhodes's house, the editor of Expectations magazine, I'm hoping this is not a sign that he is itching to misbehave. He doesn't want to be here tonight. He could have gone to the Yankees game, and they're playing the Mariners tonight, his team of all teams.

  "Perhaps you'll keep that observation to yourself for a little while," I say without resentment in my voice, for that would be fatal. Resentment is a form of resistance, implying conflict, and the lawyer in Doug simply cannot let any conflict go by unless he has won it. Or thinks he has. I look at him. "I'm very ner­vous, Doug. And I really appreciate you coming with me."

  "I'm nervous, too," he murmurs, taking another turn.

  "Really?"

  "For you, I guess."

  "Dinner at our home in the country," Verity Rhodes had said in an English accent that made me want to sit up straight and throw my shoulders back, "you must come. As a small thank­ you for what you did for us."

  It became quickly and awkwardly clear in my telephone con­versation with Verity Rhodes that she was inviting me to din­ner but had no intention of extending the invitation to Devon, the photographer. And so when she asked me if there was someone I'd like to bring, I didn't feel as though I could say Devon. In fact, when I mentioned Doug there was a short silence, as if Verity were disappointed in my response. But she quickly said, "Then you must bring your Doug, by all means."

  So, here we are, on Saturday night, my Doug being a good sport and coming to dinner with me.

  "Don't you think it's weird they didn't just send you some flowers?" Doug asks out of the blue. "Or give you a free sub­scription to the magazine? Why are they making you drive half­way across the state to eat with them?"

  I don't mind Doug being somewhat skeptical (because I have been, too, ever since the invitation was extended), but the tim­ing of this is a hell of thing since we are very nearly there.

  "I don't think it's odd," I say, smoothing my skirt. "Given the circles they travel in, I'm sure they think entertaining us in their home is a very special gift."

  "Oh, well then," he says sarcastically.

  I don't say anything. Whenever Doug's sarcastic I can't help but remember that our relationship has ended twice already in the past two years, and then started up again despite our best intentions.

  "You think she might offer you some kind of a job, don't you?" Doug says. After a moment, he glances over. "I do, too."

  "Don't be ridiculous," I say, but my heart is pounding. Oh, God, after all this time, to have a shot at mainstream journalism. To finally get my act together and get out of Castleford and back into the swing of things. Not back to Los Angeles, but to something a little less foreign, like New York, only ninety miles away. Manhattan. I can handle that.

  But what kind of job could it be? Fact-checking probably, copyediting possibly. Nothing terribly exciting, I'm sure.

  "Okay, where now?" Doug says, stopping at a stop sign.

  "Are we at... ? Ah, okay, we go left here," I say, reading the directions, "onto Grass Gate Meadow." I take a deep breath and let it out, trying to relax. "And then we should see it."

  "What's the number?"

  "No number."

  "Holy smokes," Doug says on an intake of breath, "you don't suppose that's it, do you?" About a half mile away, built into the side of a rolling hill, is what looks to be a Victorian palace. White, with twin turrets, gingerbread and several porches.

  "She said take the first left."

  Doug lets out a low whistle, turning into the drive. "This kind of house in Litchfield... "

  "They're pretty rich," I acknowledge. "They've got a house in Palm Beach, a house in Aspen, a flat in London. What I don't understand is how she ever has any time to go to any of them."

  "So you've done your due diligence."

  "Of course." I don't have to supply Doug with possible top­ics of conversation because as soon as people find out that he works in criminal justice, they ask endless questions about every heinous crime they can think of.

  "Whoa! What's this?" Doug says, slamming on the brakes.

  We have come upon a gate. It is made of white wood rails, stretching across to fences on either side, but it is a gate, none­theless, and it is locked. There is an intercom box on a short pole in front of it.

  Doug rolls down his window. "Hello?"

  "Hello!" a voice hails back. It's a woman and she sounds Irish.

  I undo my seat belt and scoot over to lean past Doug. "Hi, it's Sally Harrington and Doug Wrentham.”

  "Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder are expecting you. You may drive straight up to the front door, please."

  "Thank you."

  It is a gorgeous home as only Litchfield can offer, although I strongly suspect the Schroeders have added quite a bit to the original house. I've never seen a Victorian home of this size in New England—certainly not one that has two spires. San Fran­cisco maybe, but even then I would doubt its authenticity.

  There is one car in the circular drive, a silver Range Rover with Connecticut plates. The driveway branches off behind the house.

  The last time I brushed elbows with people like this—people whose names were standard fare in the columns—was in Los Angeles, more specifically, Beverly Hills, when I worked at Boulevard magazine. The name of the magazine is a reference to Sunset Boulevard, which runs through Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. Boulevard is a high-gloss chronicle of high society in Los Angeles (i.e., anything or any­body with lots of money).

  When I first started there I was but a mere flunky, typing letters and taking phone calls, but by my second year I had graduated to ghost-editing on behalf of my boss, the new features editor, who hated to edit and, in fact, was not very good at it. She was so very good at getting to people, however, that no one seemed to care—so long as someone got the job done, i.e., me.

  I definitely became the trusted servant at Boulevard. Once I was sent to deliver a Harry Winston diamond necklace and ear­rings to a photo shoot with Sharon Stone. Another time I was dispatched in a limo to find the Duchess of York, Sarah Fergu­son, in a Santa Monica boutique and deliver her to a party in Malibu. And then, by my third year, the big secret was out­—Sally Harrington was the emergency rewrite person, the one who could make a publishable interview out of the worst gar­bled mess.

  This led me to ghostwriting the celebrity guest­-writer essay every month. (This feature was cooked up with movie publicists; I'd write the piece, the celebrity in question would okay it, and the magazine would hawk it.) By my fourth year, I was skulking around most major events in L.A. trying to make some kind of earthly sense of this house-of-mirrors life­style I was writing about. The problem was, even when I did make any sense of it, Boulevard was the last place I could write about it. I was only to write about what I saw in the mirrors that were so very carefully positioned.

  So by my fifth and final year at Boulevard, one could say I was jaded. Or sick, in the way one always is after eating a lot of sweets and little nutritious food. I wanted to be a journalist, but my skills and personality were making me a very successful "magazine person." There was a big difference.

  That's why I greatly admire what Verity Rhodes has done with Expectations magazine. Like Vanity Fair, Expectations runs major articles by major writers, but also manages to have a lot of fun with gossipy items and columns. When they do run a ce­lebrity interview, which the
y do each month, they do it very well, most often amazingly evenhanded, the writers (or editors) balancing the puffery of the publicity machine with less­ flattering facts from reality. The pictures are always great, too. In the old days, it was the kind of magazine I dreamed of writ­ing for.

  The problem is, after writing for the newspaper these past couple of years, I've come to love straight journalism. The pro­cess feels entirely different. If my writing at Boulevard was like painting a picture to order, then my writing at the Herald­-American is like printing a picture of a finished jigsaw puzzle, one whose five hundred pieces require that I first make the nec­essary connections between them before assembling the whole.

  What is so strange right now, though, is how I thought I had gotten over my attraction to celebrity. Driving up to this man­sion is telling me differently. The sense of excitement is familiar and maybe even more exhilarating because the last place I ever expected to find high glamour was out here in Connecticut.

  The greetings at the door are warm and I feel the nervousness drain out of me. Verity and Corbett are gracious hosts and I can see that Doug is relaxing, too. I scarcely recognize Corbett, he is so laid-back and alive-looking in his casual slacks and sport shirt. (He looked so old and little out there in the woods.) A mother's helper brings young Corbie out to say hello (his freshly combed hair is damp from, we are told, a bath in our honor), and then we are ushered through the house to the back, to a brick patio where, Verity announces, Corbett is going to cook for us, "on the hideously expensive grill he never uses."

  Verity is not a classically pretty woman, but she is so per­fectly put together—lightened hair; perfect makeup; tight, shapely body—one feels as though she is. As good as Corbett looks tonight, most people, upon first meeting I should think, would mistake him for Verity's congenial father.

  The gardens in back of the house are the kind I see in HG, elaborate and intricately designed, the way one expects the queen's private garden to be at Windsor Castle. Not even my mother's gardener friends who are retired have such gardens; the flowers here are far too expensive and impossible to main­tain without strong men in regular attendance.

  Corbett pours us drinks from a glass cart on wheels (that I know I could never keep clean), and then Doug goes off with him to study the grill.

  Verity and I sink into overstuffed chintz cushions in teak chairs. I murmur how beautiful the house is, but what strikes me most are the gardens.

  "Thank you," she says, smiling, "I work very hard at them."

  She must see the surprise in my expression, for she adds, "I have a man who comes to do the heavy labor, but I do the prun­ing, fertilizing and, believe it or not, most of the weeding. My gardens are why I could never be the editor of Vogue." She laughs, holding up her hands, showing short manicured nails. "I live for them. And for little Corbie, of course."

  I've been wondering to whom the Irish voice over the inter­com belonged, and I find out when a young woman appears at my side with a tray of hors d'oeuvres. "Miss," she says to me with a slight curtsy.

  "Hi."

  "This is Meghan," Verity says. "Who takes care of us."

  "Madam." Meghan slightly curtsies again.

  "She does. She wakes us, feeds us, organizes us, everything. I would be utterly at a loss without her."

  The due diligence I have done on our hosts filled me in on Verity's rise from modest beginnings in the East End of Lon­don, her academic achievements as a scholarship student at a posh public school, the style and flair and brilliant editorial in­stincts she showed even at Cambridge, and then at her first job at Je Ne Sais Quais in Paris.

  I knew of Verity's vault to editor of Country Elegance in London, her discovery by magazine mag­nate Seymour Rubin, who brought her to New York to take the helm of the then-faltering Expectations. I read how she met Cor­bett Schroeder through Donald Trump and married Corbett six months later, and how she had delivered Corbett Junior by ce­sarean on her fortieth birthday. I know that Verity loves to write and eat and ride horses, the latter a dream that she saw come true as soon as she began to make money.

  As for Corbett Schroeder, his story is impressive in a different way. The son of a Massachusetts car salesman, he nearly flunked out of the University of Massachusetts, was fired from Kinney Parking by Steve Ross, married the heiress to the Stride­ly Soda empire, shot up the executive ranks and then spun off a company of his own. He ditched the first wife for a second, the ex-wife of Senator Boswell from California (heiress to the Bar­ney Films Studio), went into communications and later ditched that wife (who subsequently married her exercise instructor) to marry Verity. He has four children. The oldest is forty-eight, two years older than Verity, and the youngest, Corbie, is six.

  Corbett's conglomerate, Vision Lights Unlimited, Inc., is known for film production and cosmetics, but its real money is made, I know, in industrial lubrication and waste management. (In other words, grease and garbage.)

  "What part of Ireland are you from, Meghan?" I take a stuffed mushroom from the tray.

  "Oh, the west coast, Miss. Ennis."

  I tell her I know it, that my mother and I visited there a cou­ple of years ago. Meghan suppresses the urge to talk more of her homeland and moves on with her tray to the men.

  "Before we get settled for the evening," Verity says, glancing back over her shoulder and then back to me, "there's a little business I'd like to discuss with you."

  I take a sip of wine from a glass I suspect is made of fine Bel­gian crystal.

  "Since we last met—under such interesting circumstances," the editor continues with a sly wink, "I've had a chance to read quite a bit of your work. Your writing."

  I am surprised. "At the Herald-American?"

  "Yes," she says, nodding. "You're rather good, you know."

  "Thank you."

  "And I had a rather interesting chat with your former em­ployer on the West Coast."

  "At Boulevard?”

  "Yes. Actually, I talked to several people since it seems your immediate supervisor, the features editor, did not last long after you left."

  I smile slightly. I can't help it.

  "It would seem you had been doing a great deal of her work."

  I shrug, noncommittal. "I don't think that's true."

  "Well," Verity says, "everyone else evidently does. The as­sociate publisher sent me a pile of tear sheets he swears you wrote but were never given credit for. Interviews, articles, en­tire columns."

  The associate publisher was an old friend, God bless him. I nod once as an acknowledgment. "I did a lot of last-minute ed­iting."

  Verity laughs. "Oh, is that what you call it?"

  She sips her wine and lofts one perfectly plucked eyebrow. "So how would you like to try your hand at writing a profile for Expectations?"

  I think I might either shout or die right there. "I would be floored," I manage to say, "and flattered and ter­rified—and the happiest person on earth, I think."

  She smiles. "Good. Now, let me ask you, have you ever heard of a woman named Cassy Cochran?"

  I think for a minute. The name sounds familiar.

  "She is the president of the Darenbrook Broadcasting Sys­tem, the television division of Darenbrook Communications," Verity says.

  "Oh, right! Of course, I do. She married Jackson Darenbrook, the guy who started DBS."

  ."Good, you know who she is," Verity says. "Because that is whom I wish you to profile for Expectations."

  I beam, I can't help it. This is unbelievable.

  ''I'd like you to swing by my office next week to go over the assignment," Verity continues, her voice sounding rather busi­nesslike now. "Off the top of my head, we'll be paying twenty for ten thousand words. Twenty-five hundred, maybe four thousand in advance, a kill fee if we don't use the piece, ex­pense account for travel and primary interviews. We get world rights. The thing is, I want it for our February issue, so it has to be finished by September. If you want to do it, you'll have to sign a contract i
mmediately and get on it. Leave me a number where I can fax you a copy of our agreement and you can have your lawyer look it over."

  "That gives me about five weeks," I calculate.

  "Five weeks," she confirms. "So what do you think?"

  "I think it's the opportunity of a lifetime."

  Verity smiles knowingly. "Indeed, that is how I hoped you would see it."

  I lean forward in my chair. "You're kidding, right."

  She laughs again. "No, indeed I am not, Sally. You are going to write a big piece for us and it will be great."

  I am not with it at all for the rest of the evening. My mind is racing with how to get time off from the paper, how to get started on the piece, and what this can lead to if I pull it off.

  Cor­bett happily carries on the dinner conversation. He is polite to me, but with the courtesy of one who assumes I am not listen­ing. He talks to Doug about a true-crime movie his studio has under option and Doug is explaining to him the judicial pro­cess. This is a topic that makes both men happy. I don't think Verity is quite so taken with the subject, for she winks at me once, as if her mind is elsewhere, too.

  Dinner, incidentally—the steaks—had to be cooked by Meghan in the kitchen because the men never did figure out how to use the grill.

  5

  “You're kidding!" Doug exclaims in the car. "Twenty thou­sand bucks for five weeks' work!"

  "It's not the money," I begin.

  "Quit!" he urges. "Sign the contract and tell Royce to shove it. Better yet, pick a fight with him and make him fire you so you can apply for unemployment after you hand the piece in. No, I guess you can't do that. That would be illegal."

  One of the things I love about Doug is his criminal mind. He thinks up crimes and then quickly jumps to his prosecutor's role to figure out how to catch the crook he has just created.