Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 124574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 623(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 623(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Heath pulled up to the rounded driveway of the gated mansion in the same neighborhood as numerous other celebrities, ranging from reality stars to washed-up child actors.
“I don’t have a good feelin’ about this,” Heath muttered from the driver seat. We were in his SUV because of his insistence not to drive “a vagina with wheels.” I didn’t even have it in me to address that. Plus, he actually did do the impossible and make himself invisible while Polly and I grabbed some plant-based bullshit she called lunch and I called a houseplant. But I ate it and enjoyed my sister’s company while listening to her talk about the band, her new ‘best friends’ and how wonderful the interview had gone.
She was at my apartment at the moment. She didn’t seem to think she’d be long and I didn’t mind having her there. Though I did worry about Jon’s influence on her. He was as man-crazy as her and as downright crazy in general. Plus, he worked nights at a drag club and had only just gotten home when I was pulling out of the parking lot. He slept less than I did, and late afternoon was mimosa time for him.
Polly would hopefully keep herself out of trouble. Or at least in the right kind.
I glanced to Heath, who was looking up at the Spanish-style mansion like it was some sort of warehouse full of insurgents. “It’s a house in a gated section in a gated community. I doubt anyone is going to run out and shoot me. We’re safe. You can stay in the car.”
“Places like these are the furthest from safe you could ever get,” he muttered. “Would prefer bullets any fuckin’ day.”
There was something behind his words that told me there was a story there. The journalist, and the woman, in me were immensely curious, but I was too busy on this current one so I kept my focus.
“Well you stay here and stroke your gun if that helps,” I quipped. “I’m going in. I’ll have the butler ring you if there’re any murder attempts.”
“So, anyway, that’s what I think about his latest collection.” Ashlin rolled her eyes and drained her drink at the same time.
Her third.
I’d been there half an hour.
As much as I would like to be right there with her, I needed enough lucidity to get through this day.
So, I sipped my second.
I said enough, not all of it.
She squinted at me through her blonde bangs—which she managed to work the shit out of, by the way. “What was the question?”
I smiled. “How would you describe your style?”
She nodded erratically in a way that told me that this, in fact, was not her third drink at three o’clock on a Tuesday. It was her third drink with me.
Though the girl had lost a friend. Weakness was a dangerous quality in Hollywood, one you doled out on in carefully portioned and timed increments. Usually when there was some sort of camera rolling.
But you could see it. Beneath the makeup. And the thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes. And the haze of alcohol.
“My style,” she mused, twirling her glass. “Like me, I guess. Original.” She grinned. “Fabulous.” She looked down at her cashmere jumper, mismatched with a bright gold sequined miniskirt and thigh-high Jimmy Choos. “A fucking mess,” she added, draining her glass. “But a fabulous one, don’t we think?”
I grinned. “Completely and utterly,” I agreed. I glanced at her necklace. “You wear a lot of Criss Cross. And were known to model for Lucinda and be a friend of hers. Did she influence your style?”
One look at the visible flinch she hid with a hand fixing her hair. It shook slightly, the sparkling of her jewels doing the same.
“Yeah, you could say that,” she whispered. “She was a fabulous mess too, after all.”
Her melancholy-filled smile hurt me and made me hurt for her. And I did hate myself a little for using that to get my story.
But it didn’t stop me.
Nothing would.
“So apparently, Lucinda was in deep with drugs. Deep enough for her to get into debts that she couldn’t pay. Not on top of business loans and a mortgage on a house in the Hamptons and a cottage in Switzerland,” I said to Roger. We were sitting in his office and I was glancing up from the information that had poured out of Ashlin almost as easily as the martinis past her pink-smeared lips.
Yeah. Playing on a vulnerable, grieving woman was probably the lowest I could have gone, considering I’d been that. Correction: considering I am that. But then again, I would’ve told anyone anything if I thought it meant bringing Laurie’s killer to justice.
Luckily I didn’t have to. They met their justice. But it didn’t make it better. Didn’t make it hurt less. But it was something, knowing that justice—or in their case vengeance—had been served.