Done to Death (6 page)

‘OK.' Barry broke the silence.

Melanie voiced what they all were thinking. ‘Barry, do we still have jobs?'

‘That's the question, isn't it? I don't have an answer. But right now let's do what Lenore would do … get the next new thing up and out there. So, the question we
can
answer is this.' He looked at Ada. ‘How exactly do we turn antiquing into a blood sport?'

R
ichard Parks felt numb. He'd been escorted into the small family room adjacent to St Xavier's chaotic Midtown Emergency Room. The words out of this strange doctor's mouth were not making sense.
Impossible. I was just on the phone with her.

‘I'm sorry to tell you that your mother was dead on arrival. All attempts to resuscitate her were made. I'm very sorry.'

Richard swallowed; his mouth was dry. ‘How?'

‘There'll be an autopsy, but it looks like a single gunshot to the back. She lost too much blood. I suspect the bullet hit her aorta or one of the major vessels to the heart. She would have felt very little pain.'

‘Can I see her?' He felt a tightness in his throat, and a welling behind his water-blue eyes.

‘Sure.' The doctor sounded uncertain. ‘But please, try not to touch anything. It's …'

‘Right.' He tried to put words to the reality. ‘She was murdered. Someone murdered my mother. Unless … no, she'd never kill herself … and you said she was shot in the back.' He looked at the doctor in his white coat over a polo shirt, the top button undone. ‘It was murder?'

‘Yes.'

Dressed in an Armani suit, he followed the doctor through a set of electronic doors into the emergency room. He moved as though wrapped in a cocoon, not registering the sounds and the smells. None of this felt real, he didn't feel real. Still trying to grasp what this doctor had just said.
How could she be dead?
They were just on the phone. He was doing what he'd always done, bailing out Rachel and minimizing the press. That was real, this … this could not be happening.
And who
…
murder? Who?
Faces from the past, angry producers escorted by security from their offices. Their belongings in a box, their hands clutching a multi-page termination document. Whole teams of LPP employees there one day and gone the next, generating anger, fury, often threats. ‘It has to be done,' she'd say. ‘It's not easy; it's not kind; but it's essential for the health of this organization.' She likened her frequent purges to pruning. ‘It strengthens the tree. It creates shape out of chaos, it's the cruelty that allows beauty to exist.'

The doctor pushed open the door to a room with a sign ‘Trauma 2'. ‘Give me a second.' He paused and shook his head. ‘On second thought, just come in.'

‘Right.' He saw kindness in the man's eyes. Like Lenore, Richard had a talent for reading people. This doctor, who probably had fifteen years on him, was in a tight spot. He needed to be professional and compassionate, to allow a grieving son a last look at his mother. But he was aware too that he had a murdered celebrity in his ER and that these next few moments would be the last before the circus would begin.

Richard entered Trauma 2 − at least they'd covered her. Even so,
Mom would have hated this
. Her hair was disheveled and still wet, her face doughy under the fluorescents, her lips blue. There was blood on the sheets. He remembered how she'd never leave the house without full make-up. ‘They're everywhere,' she'd instruct, referring to the paparazzi. But this … she looked ugly and naked; discarded gauze, IV tubing, needle cases and blue polypropylene gloves were scattered on the bed and the floor. Her eyes were closed. He took a deep breath.
She is dead.

Random scenes from his childhood flashed to mind, late night room inspections. ‘I don't like messes,' she'd say, going from his room down the hall to Rachel's. Those were tough nights. These weren't the memories he wanted right now. His room was always able to pass muster, while Rachel's was a nightmare. He'd wondered why his little sister couldn't pick up her things. Especially when she knew how it would set Mom off. It was years later that he realized − Rachel did it deliberately.

A pair of uniformed officers appeared in the doorway, escorted by a nurse supervisor. ‘We're going to need you out of here,' one of them said. ‘No one's to come in or out.'

The doctor looked at Richard. ‘You OK?'

Richard heard the words, the man's professional, and genuine, concern. ‘I've got to be,' he said. ‘Is there a quiet room somewhere? I need to make some calls.'

‘I'll take you back to the family room.'

Richard walked behind, his thoughts sluggish. He knew that a heavy weight had slipped from his mother's dead shoulders … on to his. ‘You're the only one,' she'd told him. ‘This will all be yours, and they will try to take it from you.'

The doctor asked if he needed anything.

‘No, thank you.'

‘I'm so sorry,' the doctor said.

‘You're not the one who shot my mother.' He felt a surge of anger, his jaw clenched. ‘There's no need to apologize.'

The doctor left and Richard was glad for the privacy. The room, with its dim lighting, stuffed chairs and quiet, was a sort of oasis.

Lenore's words: ‘they will try to take it from you'. The ‘they' was a moving target. Sometimes it was her executive team urging her to take LPP public so they could all cash out with seven and eight digit stock options. Sometimes
they
were her minions and underlings, all out to exact passive–aggressive revenges, from wardrobe mess-ups to on-air snafus. Often
they
were her producers who wouldn't − or couldn't − perform up to her standards. As a child he'd listen to her rants: if people couldn't deliver they didn't belong at LPP. From day one, she'd confided in him. Not like a parent to a child, but like a mentor.

He pulled out his cell. So much to be done, but at that moment there was only one person he needed to call.

‘Rachel?'

‘She's dead, isn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘They wouldn't tell me in the hospital. I pulled it up on the browser.'

‘Where are you?'

‘Half way to Shiloh.'

‘Are you going to be OK?'

‘You mean am I going to do some slicing and dicing?'

‘Yeah, that. Or jump off a cliff, or do the suicide slushy.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Did Dr Ebert show up?'

‘Yeah, he got me out. He was pretty pissed … I can't blame him. Did she know?'

Richard paused, picturing his beautiful nineteen-year-old sister whose outsides had nothing to do with the pain and chaos she felt inside. Rachel was a twisted human puzzle. She could be explained, but the trouble was finding the key … ‘She knew,' he said. ‘I called her from the hospital … and right after—'

‘So she knew?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Good. You know she really loved you, Richard?'

‘I do.'

‘You're lucky. 'Cause she couldn't stand me.'

‘That's not true, Rachel.'

‘Yeah, it is. But it's OK, maybe I'll be better with her dead. Course she's still in my head. I was asking Ebert about electric shock. Maybe they could just zap her out.'

‘I don't think it works that way.'

‘Probably right. You seem to know these things. I doubt they'd let me have it now, anyway.'

Richard felt a familiar twinge; he and Rachel and Mom all knew how to trip each other's strings. She was holding something back and wanted him to go for it. ‘Just tell me.'

‘You mean they didn't say anything? They didn't tell you?'

Great
, he thought,
another ‘they'.
He said nothing, knowing she'd blurt whatever it was.

There was a long silence. ‘I'm pregnant. And I'm keeping this one.'

There was a knock at the family room door. He looked up. Rachel's pronouncement rang in his ear, and sent a rush of terror down his spine.
Mom dead, teenage sister knocked up, what now?

The door opened and a woman in a dark suit entered. ‘Mr Parks?' she asked.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm Detective Murphy.' She held out her shield. ‘I'm very sorry about your mother. I was hoping to ask you some questions.'

‘Sure,' he said. Still holding the phone to his ear: ‘Rachel, we'll talk later.'

‘You'll come to Shiloh?'

‘As soon as I can.' Richard knew his sister well. Although how she'd process Mom's death was a wild card. She was probably upset about not being able to drop her pregnancy bombshell. Fear clutched his throat, as he suspected there was more. Knowing Rachel, the father would turn out to be a doozy, someone especially selected to enrage Mom.

‘So what do you think?' Rachel asked.

‘About what you just told me?' He felt the detective's eyes on him and wanted to end this call. Of course, hanging up on his sister was not something he'd ever do lightly.

‘Yeah.'

‘Congratulations, if it's what you want.'

‘It is. It really is. I'll give this baby everything she never gave me.'

‘I got to go, Rachel.'

‘Be careful, Richard. You're the heir. They're going to think you did it.'

He looked across at the detective with her sensible shoulder length haircut, minimal make-up and gold stud earrings. ‘Bye … I love you.'

‘Love you too.'

He hung up the phone as the detective sank into the chair across from him. She pulled a form from a briefcase. ‘I'd like to record this,' she said, sliding the document toward him with her pen.

Richard thought of his mom and her famous tag line:
‘Lenore says
…
'
He looked at the form and the detective's dark eyes that were fixed on him.
Lenore says
…
be careful. Be very very careful.

B
arry could not believe his luck. He stared at the duo from Connecticut. This was like hitting the reality show lotto. Even Lenore, who was stingy with praise, would have been thrilled. ‘Say that again.' Barry stared at Ada. The woman was gorgeous − yes, older and adorably short, which wouldn't matter on TV, but those eyes, her pointed chin and pixie hair … and the things that popped unscripted from her mouth. People would trust her, confide in her. She seemed fit, quick, had a wicked sense of humor, and something else. The ‘it' factor that could only be assessed with a test.

‘I don't think it's been done before,' Ada said. ‘It's gruesome, but let's face it: the entire antiques industry is predicated on things passing from owner to owner. You could call it
Final Reckoning
. Or …
At the End of the Day
…
Final Tally
.
Cashing Out
.'

‘OMG,' Melanie whispered. ‘
Final Reckoning
. That could really work.'

‘So a few years back,' Ada continued, ‘our friend Evie died and named me her executrix. Just for general information, if you want to make someone's life a living hell, make them your executor. Anyway, she had good things, lots of antiques worth from a few hundred to several thousand dollars and, as it turned out, an American Impressionist painting by Childe Hassam that sold at auction for nearly two million.'

‘I can so see this,' Barry said, as he studied the subtle movements in Ada's face. How she used her eyes, the charming way her brow arched when she was amused, the sly curve of her lips. He knew he wasn't alone, as his team of young and talented writers − all of whom, with the exception of Carrie, had followed him from California − hung on Ada's every word. She was that rarest of people, unaffected, at home in her skin, a natural storyteller. ‘Heirs hungry to get what's coming to them.'

‘Fights over the good stuff,' ginger-haired David added.

‘Sibling rivalries,' Melanie said. ‘“Mom wanted me to have that. No she didn't. Yes she did.”'

‘Tell them about the dealers,' Lil prompted.

‘This is where I think you could have a winner,' Ada said. ‘In order to keep everything on the up and up, we had a series of antique dealers come in to appraise Evie's estate and give us quotes. The numbers were all over the place. As it turned out, two of the three dealers ended up murdered, and the third deliberately undervalued the two million dollar painting … by one and a half million dollars.'

‘I remember this,' Melanie said. ‘It was this bizarre series of murders in small-town Connecticut. The guy responsible ended up killing himself.'

‘Yup,' Ada said. ‘He wanted revenge against the antique dealers and an auctioneer who'd ripped off his mother. She had Alzheimer's and a house full of priceless eighteenth-century antiques. The whole thing was sad and sordid. Lil and I were there – I mean literally – as he burned his house and everything in it to the ground. I'm surprised it's not been made into a movie.'

‘This is too perfect,' Barry said. ‘I can't believe it's not been done before. So like this, every week a fresh estate and a cast of dealers who come in, appraise it and try to get the heirs to have them liquidate. We can focus on the family, highlight a few prized possessions and, at the end, give the final total and who got what. And the Final Reckoning is … drum roll. It's fucking brilliant!' He stopped and stared at Ada. ‘Forgive my language. But you … Where have you been all my life?'

‘We have to test her,' Melanie said. ‘She's even dressed for it. I mean really, vintage Chanel. That couldn't be more perfect. That could be her thing.'

‘Absolutely,' Barry said. ‘It's what I thought even over the phone. Ada Strauss, I think you could be a star.'