The Crasher (60 page)

What wild scheme had his father cooked up, thinking that with his Stallone mentality he could protect Ginny no matter what?
This was one time his son was taking charge.

“Put me through to Detective Petersh. This is an xox emergency call,” he yelled, using the police code Petersh had given him.

“I can’t explain now, but I think my father’s with Ginny. He’s cooked something up, I’m sure of it They’re heading to Aqueduct,
yes, yes, yes, I know it’s closed. Take my word for it. That’s where he’s headed. He knows it like a homing pigeon. I’ll meet
you there.”

Keeping her eyes shut Ginny realized she was in a car, strapped in, traveling at a terrible speed. For a few minutes she couldn’t
think what had happened. Then she remembered. She wanted to scream again, but she knew if she did the pad that had knocked
her out would be clamped over her nostrils and there’d be no way she could escape.

She was in a car with Johnny’s father, the man she now knew to be a murderer. She kept her eyes shut, staying motionless,
wondering if her hands were bound. Where were they going?

To her horror Peet said, “You can open your eyes, Ms. Walker. I know you’re fully awake. The chloroform never lasts more than
thirty minutes.” In a perfectly normal conversational tone he continued, “D’you know where your charming cousin put the jewels?”

A chill went through her body as she heard him laugh, a short, caustic laugh.

“I do,” he said. “He told me before he got shot by some of our mutual friends from South America. In case you think I had
anything to do with it, I did not, although I wasn’t surprised. I can assure you it’s not my style to shoot people in the
back. I frightened your cousin into his confession. Unfortunately, he was too much of a big mouth, a show-off. The jewels
are supposed to be in a safety deposit box, held, although he doesn’t know it, in the name of the honorable young doctor treating
your cousin’s lover for AIDS. I thought you may also have a key? No?”

“Absolutely not Where are you taking me?”

’To one of my favorite places-whooa-” The car skidded dangerously through a sudden deep pool of water. “Haven’t driven like
this in years. Haven’t needed to,” he added in the same conversational tone. “Pity about you, Ginny. I’m intrigued to know
what so suddenly and unfortunately jogged your-” At that moment she heard the police siren; so did he; then another and another.

“Excuse me…” Peet crouched over the wheel.

Ginny watched in terror as the speedometer started to climb: 80-85-90 miles an hour.

With a sickening screech of tires, Peet twisted the car off to the right It bounced off an embankment, miraculously came down
on all four wheels, and tore round a corner. Ginny saw a large sign coming up. She couldn’t believe it. Aqueduct Racetrack.

Was he going to kill her in a stable, where they’d never think of looking for her body, while he went off to Europe to begin
his new life?

The sirens were getting closer-or were they going right by?

As Peet twisted and turned the car, driving in and out of buildings, with a prayer Ginny began to loosen her seat belt. If
they hit something, they were both dead. If he had to slow
down for any reason, she would try to make a run for it. The sirens were right behind them now, gaining on them.

He was making for the racetrack’s exit again. It was too late.

It was blocked by a car, but it wasn’t a police car and it wasn’t a cop standing in front either.

My God, it was Johnny, standing in the rain, in front of the car. Peet didn’t seem to be slowing down.

“It’s Johnny, your son,” she screamed. “Can’t you see? It’s your son Johnny.”

The unbelievable happened. With only a few feet to spare, Peet slammed on the brakes and Ginny pitched forward against the
windshield. It was the last thing she remembered.

Johnny stared at the deep blue screen of his word processor. The cursor had been flickering at him unrelentingly for the past
hour, urging him to type at least an opening paragraph. However hard he tried, he couldn’t find the words, he just couldn’t,
deadline or no deadline.

The trial was over at last. The furor over the verdict had started to die down, but he knew it would forever be out there
as a journalistic legal football, to be fished out and kicked around whenever somebody thought of another angle, or another
big fish got caught in an unexpected net. Still, there was really nothing to stop him writing the inside story as only he
could write it

Absolutely nothing, he told himself firmly. Wasn’t it the story he’d been waiting to write all his life?

He stared moodily at the screen, hoping for inspiration. If the umbilical cord hadn’t been cut by now, then he didn’t need
a shrink-he needed a straitjacket.

It had been easy to hate his father before and during the trial, when, of course, the old man had performed so brilliantly.

Half the time he’d sounded like some modern-day King Arthur, helping rid the world of dirty scum like Svank. Only
half the time, because from the beginning, the defense’s position had been that Peet had been unduly provoked, and that his
role in Svank’s fatal fall had been nothing but an accident.

Ginny’s testimony had merely placed him at the scene of the crime, which he’d admitted. Although it was a miracle she was
still alive and her concussion hadn’t been worse, the charges relating to her “abduction” hadn’t gone anywhere. She hadn’t
been able to remember anything about the car chase and her final ordeal, and she’d pleaded with Johnny not to testify against
his father.

The fact that no weapon or trace of any chloroform pad had been found had supported his father’s story, which was that when
he learned Ginny was about to be kidnapped by the same drug-related gang who’d murdered her cousin, he’d acted on the spur
of the moment to “take her somewhere safe.”

It was bullshit, but when the trial finally came to court, week after week, Johnny had been forced to accept that as far as
those enforcing law and order were concerned, his father long ago had become “one of us” as opposed to “one of them.”

He would forever be amazed by women, because Ginny predicted the verdict, and even after all she’d been through, she didn’t
appear to be upset, as he certainly was, when the judge ruled, “The prosecution’s case has failed to meet the law’s narrow
criteria for a conviction on a criminally negligent homicide charge.”

By then so much of Svank’s dirty work had surfaced, there hadn’t been much of an outcry that Quentin Peet was going to walk
out a free man. He’d lost his job; he’d been publicly reprimanded, if not disgraced, but to Johnny’s disgust, his father had
been able to see for himself that the pandemonium in the courtroom had been more joyful than anything else.

Their eyes had met. Johnny had turned away. There was nothing more he had to say to a father who had so completely revealed
himself that terrible day when he’d stood on the brakes to pull up a scant few feet from running him down.

He would remember for as long as he lived the rueful, disappointed look on his father’s face as he’d said, “You win, Johnny,”
as if in not running his own son down, he’d lost; as if Quentin Peet had discovered to his sorrow that at last there was someone
in the world he couldn’t bring himself to destroy.

It was Ginny who’d helped him swallow the verdict, pointing out something he knew to be true from his brief experience with
the drug world. “Wherever your father goes, however much money he has, he will spend the rest of his life looking over his
shoulder.”

And now he, John Q. Peet, had the perfect opportunity to set the record straight about Sir Galahad.

Johnny sighed. Not today he couldn’t And maybe he never would.
Next!
was up for a national magazine award in April because of his pieces on Madame Saks, the homeless, and the civil libertarians.
He was a blue-eyed boy because of this, so despite a fat
New Yorker
contract being dangled so temptingly before him, he didn’t really want to move. One day perhaps, if he ever felt restless,
but not now.

There was no point in sitting in front of an empty screen any longer. He picked up the phone. “Ginny,” he said, “I’ve got
writer’s block. Let’s go out to dinner.”

At the gala opening of Ginny Walker Fashion, Inc., a few floors up from Donna Karan, Virginia Walker blushed as Ginny introduced
her as her greatest asset, “The best fitter and tailor and mother in the world”

She joined in the loud applause as Ginny declared, “Ginny Walker, Incorporated, is now officially open for business.”

As Ginny was starting a wonderful new chapter in her life, so was she, “a refugee from Florida,” as she’d seen herself described
in an interview with Ginny that had already appeared in
Women’s Wear Daily.
She was a more than willing refugee. Overriding Graham’s moans and groans, she hadn’t hesitated to accept her daughter’s
invitation to be part of her start-up operation-at least for the first few months.

To Virginia’s surprise, so far, she hadn’t missed Graham at all. If he didn’t like it, it was just too bad. She’d spent nearly
thirty years as a camp follower. Now it was her turn to kick up her heels.

She waved happily to Ginny as she saw her escape the packed throng in the main showroom and, followed by TV cameras, slip
into the all-white, immaculate entrance hall. She was so proud of the way Ginny had soared into the fashion firmament, following
her harrowing experiences with Alex and the law. She was bowled over by her own daughter’s strength and talent

Looking back Virginia guessed she’d always had it, remembering the bath towel reefer jacket and her renovated camel hair coat.
She may have always had it, but it had taken so long for it to be recognized. There was no looking back now. Ginny was on
her way.

In the reception area, where a spectacular print of a Georgia O’Keeffe sunflower hung over the white terrazzo desk, Ginny
was pleased to see people were still flooding in. What a wonderful world it was now, with her beloved mother in the next office;
Johnny more supportive and loving than ever, arriving any moment to share in her great day; and Esme, radiant in the first
maternity dress she’d ever designed, telling anyone who cared to listen how her belief in “Ginny’s genius” had never wavered.

Lee Baker Davies, who had been acting as cheerleader for the past few months, had brought along her editor in chief. Not that
she’d had to worry about a lack of press coverage. The problem had been fitting everyone in, because everyone wanted to come.

How proud of her Alex, her misguided cousin, would have been. Poor Alex. Ginny shook her sad thoughts away and smiled modestly
as a flock of new arrivals dropped effusive compliments on their way into the showroom. She was a lucky woman.

Out in the hallway Ginny noticed one of her two security
guards talking seriously to a fragile-looking, strangely dressed young waif.

“Anything wrong, Jim?” she asked.

The waif smiled at her, but Ginny could see she was nervous.

“Her name’s not on the list,” Jim said gruffly.

“So what,” said Ginny, “Come right in, Ms….?”

—Liz Smith

G
inny Walker…she’s enormously talented, runway-model slim, and struggling to be noticed as a fashion designer in New York City.
Crashing her first party was an accident. After that, helped by a racy, handsome journalist with an agenda of his own, Ginny
thrives on the thrill of slipping uninvited into fabulous events. Until her dream becomes a nightmare…

“THE CRASHER
GLITTERS AND SPARKLES….DON’T MISS IT!”

—Beverly Sills

Crashing a party in her most stunning design ever, Ginny witnesses a vicious murder. She is sure the assailant recognizes
her, and flees in panic, leaving behind her spectacular velvet cloak….

“INTRIGUING AND ALLURING.”

—Oscar de la Renta

Now Ginny is the mystery witness the police can’t find. She’s afraid she knows too much, she’s being watched, and she needs
someone to help her in this dangerous world of high fashion and lies. The wrong choice will spell her destruction; the right
one will give her a last, breathtaking chance to survive.