Revenant Rising (53 page)

“Ms. Chandler is unavailable.” Amanda’s professional tone belies the exasperation she’s displaying. “No further statements will be issued by this office. David Sebastian represents Colin Elliot’s legal interests. Questions of that nature should be directed to his office or to the office of Mr. Elliot’s manager, Nate Isaacs.” Amanda repeats this announcement four more times before she happens to look up and see him. Her mouth goes round, as do her hazel eyes.

“Omigod, I didn’t see you there, Mr. Isaacs.” She jumps to her feet with little effect. “The phone’s gone crazy, the calls just won’t stop.”

“I thought we agreed you’d call me Nate.”

“Okay . . . Nate.” She sits back down. “Obviously you’ve caught me off guard . . . or maybe I should say
on
guard. Everyone on earth is either trying to reach Laurel since she made that statement to the press yesterday, or trying to get through to Colin since he was named a suspect in the Kaplan murder last night.”

If anyone’s caught off guard, he is; if anyone should be on guard, he should. That he isn’t has to be obvious. While his jaw hasn’t exactly dropped, he is doing a piss-poor job of concealing the confusion and shocked surprise he feels. However, Amanda’s one jump ahead of him, as she was at least twice during their lunch last week.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m forgetting that you’ve been away. I’ll get someone to cover the phone, and we can go into Laurel’s office and bring you up to speed.”

He’ll further weaken his position by demonstrating anything like relief or gratitude, so he merely nods assent and follows her into the inner office after she calls for assistance. There, they sit as equals, opposite each other in client chairs.

“When were you last in touch with Colin? I don’t want to waste your time with redundancies,” Amanda says.

“I last saw Colin Friday morning at breakfast. Then I called here Saturday morning and left a message for him with Ms. Chandler. That was my last contact.”

“Okay, so you knew about Anthony Elliot’s escapade with his dad’s fax machine, and you’d heard about the murder of Gibby Lester in the West Village before you were required to be out of touch for a while.”

“That’s correct,” he says and gives her extra points for not trying to jack him off about his disappearance.

“Okay, so I’m guessing you may not know that the media had a field day with those incidents—tied them to the celebrity stalker’s death out in California, then linked everything together by digging up Aurora Elliot and squeezing that corpse for whatever else it might yield.”

“It crossed my mind that could happen,” he says with wasted irony.

“Well, it did. Big time. And it only got worse when Colin was arrested for getting physical with a photographer over a misunderstanding about drugs.”

A groan has already escaped him before she reveals that the photographer was later found murdered and Colin named chief suspect.

“However, as luck would have it, time of death was established for the exact same hour Laurel made the statement to the press with Colin standing right beside her,” Amanda says. “Any number of media people and thousands in the television viewing audience can swear to the fact Colin wasn’t anywhere near the scene when this Sid Kaplan’s throat was cut and a bag of uncut cocaine stuffed into his mouth.”

“Jesus, Jesus . . .
Jesus
,” Nate says.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what everybody said.”

“Was Colin taken in for questioning?”

“No, it never came to that. But once word got out that he was considered a suspect, he might as well have been.”

“What statement did Laurel release to the press?”

“That was about Aurora Elliot. Laurel appealed to the press to leave the woman dead and buried.”

“Hold on. When I left . . . on business, it was my distinct impression that Laurel Chandler knew next to nothing about Aurora Elliot.”

“That may have been true when you went away, but yesterday, after I briefed Laurel on Aurora’s resurrection by the press, Laurel went straight to Rayce and—”

“Rayce
Vaughn
?”

“Yes, she had Colin’s authorization to interview Rayce, so she used that source to determine if there was any truth to what was being said about Aurora. Then she went to Colin and convinced him to break with precedent and respond to the media.”

“You don’t happen to know where Colin is right now, do you?”

“When Laurel briefed me an hour ago, she said he was asleep at his hotel after another long night in the studio.”

“What studio?”

“Static Studios, where he’s been recording with Rayce. Laurel was there with them last night, so that’s why she’s not in yet.”

“Meaning she’s now asleep with Colin at his hotel.”

“No, Laurel’s asleep at another hotel.”

Nate holds up a hand to stem the torrent of information. “Slow down. Please. I need a minute to take this all in.”

He’s caught between grimace and grin because he’s seeing himself as the country squire of folklore fame returned home to learn that the dog has died from eating burnt horseflesh after a funeral candle set fire to the house, and a spark from that fire ignited the barn and subsequently destroyed the livestock.

“No problem. I should’ve realized that’s a major load of new business to be hit with all at once and used a different approach. But I have a fix for that. Stay put, I’ll be right back.”

Amanda disappears into the reception area. She isn’t gone long enough for him to begin assessing anything she’s told him so far, and when she returns it’s her he’s assessing. Reassessing that is, because he’s giving her the second glance he ordinarily wouldn’t waste on a non-contender—one without minimum height and weight requirements. She looks to be a little over five feet tall in heels, so that puts her close to a foot off the mark. However, her weight is in suitable proportion and nicely distributed. She’s neither bosomy nor thick in the leg, as are so many short women. Although her flattering wraparound dress is a cheap knockoff, it shows that she does have fashion sense and knows what suits her. Red hair never held any particular attraction for him, but hers is more blonde than orangey, and its casual curliness sets it apart in an almost acceptable way.

If Amanda is aware of his reappraisal, she’s not showing it as she distributes an armload of newspapers, a thick loose-leaf binder, and a few loose pages on the desk. “Take your time going over this stuff. Any questions, just give a shout, I’ll be at my desk.” She withdraws from the room, leaving the door open a crack.

Five minutes with the accumulation of tabloids is enough to spot the trend Amanda alluded to. The loose-leaf binder requires closer inspection. To the casual observer the contents might seem to be nothing but a scrap-book, the assembled trivia of an overzealous Colin Elliot fan with anal tendencies; to a more attuned observer, the entries could be seen as those of a detail-minded individual conversant with the benefits of charting, graphing and cross-referencing. But all he sees is a commissioned project, one calculated to enhance whoever ordered it done. That impression lingers long after he finishes examining actual content and must be advertising itself in some way when he recalls Amanda to Laurel’s office.

“Okay, I can tell by your expression you want to know the same thing Laurel did after she looked over this material, and that is, why did I take on this task and who am I working for.”

There’s no point in playing dumb, asking another seemingly unrelated question. She’s got him cold. And she knows it.

She resumes the seat opposite his before she speaks again. “You could almost say I’m working for you because it was your absence and the lack of an official publicist for Colin that decided me to take this on.”

Which could be another way of saying she was already pledged to the David Sebastian campaign and saw the opportunity to make the incumbent look bad. He watches her cross her legs, notices how small her feet are, how delicate her ankles are. And how self-assuredly she’s able to confront him.

“Oh what the fuck,” he prefaces, “I’ve been in L.A. the past three days.” The rest of the admission comes easy, like the proverbial bursting of a dam. She’s a picture of studied composure throughout the lengthy spillover. Even when shown the only shred of evidence supporting his stubborn belief that more is going on than meets the eye.

Wordlessly, she hands back the charred remains of the obscene photograph. He feels compelled to speak for her as he returns the photograph to an inside pocket. “Tragic . . . heartbreaking, really, that Aurora sank so low.”

Amanda nods solemn agreement then finds voice to let him know that’s not the only thing they agree on. “It was while I was going through all this media trash that I got to thinking that what Cliff Grant and Gibby Lester had most in common, beyond being pond scum, was their respective abuse of Aurora Elliot—Grant, for attempting to record her every bad move, and Lester, for enabling her bad moves. Then, from that, it wasn’t much of a stretch to think both these jerks were offed by the same guy, as a sort of retro-championing of Aurora’s lost cause. But that would be ridiculous. I mean, who but Colin Elliot ever saw anything good in her? And there’s no way Colin would . . . well, you know.”

Amanda describes the same basic thought processes he’s put himself through for the past seventy-two hours, causing him to now flash back to the Michigan accident scene and something Big Bill, the beer-bellied Native American rescuer, said about Aurora Elliot while attempting to free Colin from the wreckage. In effect, Bill branded Aurora—Audrey, as she was known to the locals—as having been indefensible even before she hit the glitter trail, and further stated that among the handful of townspeople who never wanted to see her for what she was, few if any of those diehards were left by the time she died.

“Have you mentioned your feelings about this to Laurel or anyone else?” he says.

“No. She has enough on her mind, and to anyone else I’d appear as opportunistic as one of these tabloids.”

“Then why did you confide in me?”

“We’re back to playing ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine,’ aren’t we?”

“That’s two,” he says.

“Two what?”

“Gotchas.”

“I wasn’t keeping score.”

Like hell. He almost smiles as she smoothly segues to the subject of the latest Colin Elliot-related murder. “That’s what I surmised,” he says after she amplifies on the most credible account in the morning papers. “An individual dose of that goddamned headache powder Colin insists on using—and sharing, I might add—is
way
too easy to mistake for something else. Christ, I cannot
tell
you how many times I’ve implored him to use tablets or capsules. But
no
, he has to have the fucking caffeine that comes in the mix, and to that I say, take a Bayer’s and a cup of coffee! Sorry, I shouldn’t be venting on you.”

“Completely understandable, don’t worry about it.”

He fidgets a little and clears his throat. “What’s your take on the coke found at the scene of this new killing?”

“My first reaction? That some sort of message was being sent, like with a gangland murder when the victim’s genitals are . . . amputated and stuffed into his mouth because he said too much. But who’s gonna deliver a gag order by means of a wad of cocaine estimated to have a street value of twenty thousand dollars? I mean, who could even
afford
to make that kind of retort or renouncement or whatever, except a hotheaded rock star?”

“Undoubtedly what the police were thinking and probably hoping when they named Colin chief suspect. How’d that go down, anyway?”

“Once Laurel heard about it, she summoned David, Stan Mason, the head of criminal division, and me. As she later put it, a reverse kangaroo court was held right there at Static Studios when detectives showed up to question Colin. No formal charges were brought, but the press naturally made it seem as though that was the case.”

“I’m curious to know what role you played.”

“Oh, just messenger. I supplied a copy of the tape I made of Laurel’s TV appearance, and the brass could’ve stayed in bed because that definitively settled the issue of where Colin was when this Sid Kaplan creep was murdered. The cops kept that tape, but I got another one from the TV station—the one there on the desk. Would you like to see it?”

“I would, please.”

“Okay, but before I start it
I’m
curious to know . . . Are you gonna go to the police with that dirty picture and your suspicions?”

“I think not. First of all, I’d be incriminating myself for having removed evidence from a crime scene. Second of all, I’d be setting myself up as a probable crackpot with an overactive imagination. I won’t approach Colin, either. He doesn’t need further proof of Aurora’s descent into debauchery, and he’s already chafing at what he considers my excessive caretaking. As with the warnings about using powdered aspirin, if I tell him to watch his back, he’ll do the opposite.”

“You think he has reason to watch his back?”

“Don’t you? Isn’t that where we’re headed with this?”

“I guess I didn’t want to say so in so many words.”

Amanda crosses the room, plugs the videotape into a combination VCR-monitor and fusses with the sound level and the tracking. When she returns to her chair, he can feel her watching him as the tape unwinds to reveal a close-up of Laurel Chandler’s earnest countenance as she asks an unseen audience for quiet. The wider shot that follows includes Colin standing close beside her and a background unmistakable as the Fifth Avenue entrance to The Plaza Hotel.

Also unmistakable is Colin’s expression. A developmentally challenged aardvark could see that Colin’s interest in Laurel is way more than physical. Respect, approval, pride, trust, unabashed adoration—you name it—are contained in the gaze he has trained on her. Equally obvious is the immutable fact that this lawyer, and David Sebastian by association, is the front-runner for Colin’s professional loyalty.

That recognition effectively deafens Nate to the soundtrack; he hears only the warning bells going off in his head. Under Amanda’s watchful eye, he feigns rapt attention to the video and sees only himself being defrocked and shown the door. The tape ends and he thinks to ask if a transcription is available—at some point he will be expected to know the content. But when he opens his mouth, an altogether different request escapes. “Come with me to the bash for Rayce Vaughn on Thursday night.”