Close to You (30 page)

Samuel's phone call came that afternoon.

“I know what you're trying to do, Eliza. I know that you mean well. But please, forget about me. We can't be friends—not now, anyway. I have to move forward alone for a while.”

Mischief Night or Cabbage Night. Whatever it was called, the night before Halloween brought out adolescents eager to have what they considered harmless fun decorating their neighborhoods with bars of soap, smashed eggs and toilet tissue.

A group of teenagers made its way along Larson Richards's street, soaping up the windows of cars stupidly left in driveways. If the owners weren't smart enough to put their cars away tonight, they deserved to come out in the morning to find their windshields a mess.

There was no car in Larson Richards's driveway and the house was completely dark. The kids snickered as they ran up to the sprawling ranch. It was easy to soap every single window when they were all on one floor.

They proceeded sneakily on to the next house, unaware that a Mercedes-Benz was idling in Larson's closed garage, carbon monoxide filling the passenger cab.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Janie hopped out of bed on Halloween morning, eager to go to school in her Olive Oyl costume. Susan and Mrs. Garcia would take the kids around trick-or-treating in the afternoon. Eliza promised her daughter that she would get home as quickly as she possibly could after work so they could give out the candy together to the nighttime trick-or-treaters.

 

Doris had outdone herself again this year. She had spent hours painstakingly taping long, thin adhesive strips to a black tunic and skirt. Then she had carefully measured and marked boxes along the tape, numbering the corners of some of the boxes with a fine-tipped pen. She had bought a pair of inexpensive black sunglasses and painted sporadic squares on them with Wite-Out. She used her expert skills, coating her face with white pancake and drawing, with the help of a ruler, horizontal and vertical lines. She donned a pair of black opaque tights and pulled her flowing mane of hair up into a ponytail, tying it with a man's tie—a tie printed in the design of a crossword puzzle. The inspiration for her costume.

She left her apartment early, bound for the ABC studio.
The
Regis
producers loved her costume and wanted her to come inside and be on the show. But she couldn't win a prize, they warned her, since she had won last year.

Bummer.

Doris headed for the Broadcast Center, eagerly anticipating the reaction she would get there.

 

Florence Anderson awoke before dawn and lay alone in her bed. It was the day she dreaded all year long.

The first year after Linda's death, she hadn't even been able to open her door to the children who came begging. The next year, she had managed to give out packages of M&Ms. Without nuts. Those had been Linda's favorites.

Now, and every year since, a big bowlful of the chocolate candy packages sat ready on the table in the foyer. Life had to go on.

And maybe, just maybe, Florence allowed herself to hope, the piece that was scheduled to air on tonight's
KEY Evening Headlines
might jog someone's memory and lead to some closure to the pain she had been living with for the past five years.

Keith called from the editing booth.

“It's done. Do you want to come down and see it?”

“Sure. I'll be right there,” answered Eliza.

She took the stairs down two floors to the hard-news editing center, passing half a dozen small rooms with sliding glass doors until she reached Joe Leiding's booth. Keith got up and offered her his chair.

“Are you happy with it?” she asked as she took the seat.

“Yeah. I think it's pretty good. See what you think,” Keith said. He stood at the back of the booth and began gnawing at his thumbnail as Leiding hit the
PLAY
button. The piece opened with a clip of Linda Anderson wrapping up the last news broadcast she ever anchored. Then Eliza's narration began.

“Linda Anderson did not know, as she signed off from the Garden State Network on the night before Halloween five years ago, that it would be her last time reporting from the anchor chair. She thought she had everything to look forward to.”

Mrs. Anderson's careworn faced appeared on the screen. “People said that when you met Linda, you felt you knew her. That came across on TV as well.”

“Indeed, the audience responded to Linda Anderson,” Eliza's track continued. “She had a loyal following in New Jersey and there was interest on the other side of the Hudson River as well.”

Sound-bite Florence Anderson: “An agent had approached her and submitted her audition tape and there was actually an interview set up. Linda was so excited about the possibility of going to work for one of the big networks.”

Eliza's voice picked up the story. “But Linda Anderson never went for that network interview. After she finished her late broadcast, she left the studio and was never seen again.”

Florence Anderson: “In the beginning, the police went all-out. They searched everywhere, interviewed people who knew her, questioned old boyfriends, spoke to her coworkers.” Mrs. Anderson's voice was still heard, but file tape of pictures was edited over to illustrate her next words. “The story was on the Garden State Network every night. People tied yellow ribbons around trees. There was a reward offered for information, but nobody came forward with anything. But if you ask me, as time went on, the police gave up.”

“That's a charge the police deny,” narrated Eliza.

“Linda Anderson's file is still open here and will be until this case is solved,” said a detective Keith had interviewed at the police station. “There's a national preoccupation with celebrity in this country, and though we've searched and investigated every possible lead, the fact is that anyone with a television set could have targeted Linda. That's a pretty broad range of suspects.”

That was the end of the edited package. Keith handed Eliza the script she was to read on camera, coming out of the piece.

“Before she disappeared, Linda Anderson told her family and friends that she thought she was being followed. Stalking is illegal in all fifty states and while it is the celebrity stalkings that receive media coverage, the most common
victims are not news reporters or movie stars. The largest number of stalking victims are ordinary people on whom another person, for whatever reason, becomes fixated. The advice from law enforcement professionals? If you meet someone who makes you feel uncomfortable, act on your feelings. Get away from that person and break off any future contact.”

“What do you think?” asked Keith.

“It's good, Keith. I just wish we had a little more time to tell the story in greater depth.”

“Believe it or not, Range wanted us to edit out ten or fifteen seconds. I told him there was nothing left to cut.”

Eliza nodded. She well understood the executive producer's preoccupation with time. “Nice job, Joe,” she complimented the editor as she rose to leave. Eliza noticed the box that contained Linda Anderson's audition tape lying on the console table. She picked it up.

“Can I take this with me?” she asked. “I'd like to take a look at it.”

It was eerie how much Linda reminded Eliza of herself.

The door to the makeup room was open, but no one was inside.

Doris was probably strutting around the halls in that crossword-puzzle costume,
Abigail thought as she walked in and inspected the contents of the giant makeup case on the counter. Shelves of foundations, creams, eyeshadows and lipsticks. Abigail glanced at the wall clock. Eliza would be coming down any minute to be made up for the broadcast. Abigail wanted to avoid a potentially uncomfortable meeting.

She picked up one of several containers of dark pancake makeup. It was exactly what she needed. If Doris were there to ask, Abigail was sure she wouldn't refuse her. Abigail would bring it back tomorrow.

She stuffed the plastic container into her pocket.

 

Eliza was sitting in the Fishbowl, reading through scripts, when Keith arrived out of breath.

“Cindy's water broke! I've got to go.”

“Good luck, buddy,” called Range, barely looking up from his computer screen.

“Yes, Keith. Good luck,” Eliza wished him. “Make sure
and call and let us know as soon as the baby's born. You've got my home number,” she reminded him.

“I will,” said Keith. He turned and ran across the studio.

Range turned to Eliza and smirked. “Can you imagine having that nervous Nellie in the delivery room with you?”

“It's better than no one at all, Range.”

Remembering the circumstances of Eliza's delivery, the executive producer, for once, had nothing to say.

Why was Eliza doing this story?

Why dredge up all that misery again?

Linda's face smiled from the television screen. She had been so beautiful, so full of life. If only she hadn't resisted.

Why would someone spurn the possibility of true love?

Linda had. Now Eliza was.

Eliza stuffed Linda Anderson's audition tape in her carry bag, on the off chance that she would have time to look at it at home. Something was always coming up at the office and she wanted to take fifteen minutes and view the tape without interruption.

She said good night to Paige, delighted to see the blue cashmere turtleneck was so becoming on her assistant, and hurried down to the waiting car. Traffic wasn't too bad and in forty-five minutes she was home. It was just eight o'clock.

The HoHoKus police had set a loose curfew of nine
P.M.
Then they would cruise neighborhoods, telling trick-or-treaters to head on home. Eliza had promised Janie she could stay up until then so they could give out the Butter-fingers together.

The doorbell rang only sporadically. Two pirates and a young Tinkerbell, escorted by their parents who waited on the street out front Some teenaged girls, laughing and wearing their cheerleading uniforms. A group of adolescent boys, with no costumes at all, as far as Eliza could tell. Baggy jeans, oversized flannel workshirts and untied Timberlands were probably what they'd worn to school today.

In between the callers, Janie sorted through the candy she had collected with James on their afternoon foray through the neighborhood. The packages of gum were definite keepers. So were the M&Ms, Snickers bars and Milk Duds. Anything with coconut Janie offered to her mother.

At nine on the dot, Eliza announced that it was time to go to bed. No more trick-or-treaters would be coming tonight.

 

A dark-faced scarecrow stood in the crowd of revelers on Sixth Avenue in New York City's Greenwich Village. In the mayhem of hooded ghosts and goblins and men dressed as women and women dressed as men, Abigail was surrounded by life, but felt totally alone.

The story on Linda tonight was haunting her. All of Linda's lost promise. Five years had gone by and still it was so sad.

Abigail didn't want to pretend she was having a good time. Not tonight.

She hung back on the congested sidewalk as the rest of the group surged forward. It was easy to slip away from her friends.

 

Eliza tucked Janie into bed and went to her own room to change into a loose-fitting sweater and pair of jeans. Then she came downstairs and went to the kitchen. The refrigerator held the dinner Mrs. Garcia had left for her, but she wasn't in the mood to eat a big meal this late. Instead she took out a wedge of cheddar cheese and sliced off a few pieces on the cutting board. She tossed a handful of crackers onto the plate and poured a glass of white wine, ready to look at the audition tape.

In the den, she was pulling the black plastic box from her bag when the doorbell rang.
A late trick-or-treater,
she thought as she went to answer the door, leaving the tape cm the desk.

“Samuel!” she said with surprise. “Come on in.”