Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery (2 page)

“No!” I shouted over the crowd, glaring at Cindy.

“Three seconds,” Devon pleaded, tugging on the publicist, who was holding on to George. “We’ll put you on the air, too.”

“We’re ready right now,” I lied. But all could see that my red light was off and Devon’s was on.

Meanwhile, Will, watching our lost skirmish from the control booth where he could see us from various angles on many screens, had been in the middle of counting down to my live shot with George. “Five—four—three—” he’d been saying.
Then, suddenly, he screamed in my ear, “
Damn it!
You lost another one!”

Cindy, in shock, grabbed hold of the nearest star, Pamela Anderson, who was in midsentence talking to reporter Sam Rubin on live coverage, and spun her around, propelling her in my direction.

“…two…one!” came the disembodied voice of Will in the last of the countdown from my earpiece.

“Hi, Pam,” I said brightly, “I see you brought your two most dazzling accessories.” Then I immediately launched into an impromptu discussion on her latest marriage and divorce situation, making several bitterly brilliant jokes about failed relationships. This was not the lightest subject for me to joke about these days since Drew’s engagement to that idiot Burke Norris had recently been called off. The story goes that she dumped
him.
Technically. But her decision was heavily influenced by his appalling fondness for spending the night at other women’s apartments. It made my teeth hurt; I detested him so much, but okay. Drew was moving on. They were simply incompatible. She was a Pisces, and he was an asshole.

“One minute, Mom,” Drew sang in my ear as I stood smiling at my live camera, reminiscing off the top of my head about all the brooding leading men I had once known or, frankly, fantasized about.

Meanwhile, Cindy was trying to snatch back our lost star George Clooney, who was now graciously receiving suck-up compliments from Devon Jones as the precious remaining minutes until the Oscar telecast clicked off.

My lineless eyes narrowed. No matter how expensive her borrowed dress, Devon looked, as always, cheap. She had taken thin
to an extreme and had yet to find a shade of red that didn’t make her look like a hooker long past retirement age, but that was simply no excuse to swipe the A-est of the A-listers from the clutches of my wrangler and keep him for herself. Devon was known to be a talent-challenged reporter, but she had been around the block and had hung on to her job year in and year out by finding ever new ways to stoop lower.

Cindy, at this point, slammed her head in her hands, defeated. Next to her, also off-camera, stood my hearty behind-the-scenes crew. No one in my position can do the job alone, and I do not perform without wonderful backup. Allie, my makeup girl, with her waiting powder brush, and Unja, my hairstylist, with his can of hairspray, shook their heads in sympathy at the lethal Clooney poaching. My stern Samoan driver/bodyguard, Malulu Vai, held my tiny Yorkshire terrier, Killer, and both looked equally miffed.

Pam Anderson said, “And that’s why I am planning to take night classes at UCLA.” With a wave, she walked on.

Meanwhile, Cindy looked after the one that got away, her eyes frantic. Clooney’s publicist was edging George down the runway. Devon’s “three seconds” had turned into “a thirty,” and she clearly wasn’t letting George move on. Noting all this, I still had to keep my head in the game, so I gave my live TV audience a brief review of Pamela Anderson’s ensemble. “Chanel. Who could go wrong! She looked amazing from the ankles up, but did you see her shoes? Are you kidding me? The straps. The platforms. The rhinestones. The tassels. Cinderella would rather stay single than put those on.”

My support team, off-camera, were all amused. Only
I
really feel the pressure. Only
I
know quite literally how we are doing at
every second of the show. This perception of the rhythm of the show fuels my performance but also makes me vibrate on a slightly higher key—all my senses ratcheted up. My support crew, however, never quite gets how seriously we are teetering on the brink of disaster. Even now, Allie was bent over laughing, which drives me crazy. Unja was just happy to be at the Oscars. Even my Yorkie, Killer, had a smile for me. Okay, from Malulu I got nothing, but what else was new?

Then, from out of nowhere, Cindy refished Joaquin Phoenix out of the ocean of stars and pushed him at me.

“Here he is!” I shouted out to all of America. “The guy who so brilliantly played Johnny Cash in
Walk the Line,
a movie, I should point out, that made me realize not
all
country singers pee out the window of their tour buses and wear Roach Motels around their necks. Oh,” I assured my audience, “some do. They’re animals, believe it. But not
all
! So I learned something. The man you’re all waiting to meet. Here’s…”

Cindy, still out of my camera shot, turned a shade of purple that didn’t really go with her peach gown. She had lost Phoenix yet again. This time, he chose to schmooze with the beautiful Scarlett Johansson. Cindy started giving me big, call-it-off hand signals, arms swinging down across her body as if she were waving off a jet from landing on an aircraft carrier in stormy seas.

At this point, time ticking away as it was on live TV, I might have right on-camera broken one of our unspoken rules and glared a bit at Cindy from my upstage eye, but as I had just had that very eye relifted not too long ago, I resisted the urge. Here I was, Maxine Taylor, the Queen of the Red Carpet, with no star to interview.

“Screw him, that bag of no talent,” I said to my camera
brightly. “Here’s an even better star!” Take
that,
Joaquin. And this time, with my famous croak shouting above the crowd noise, I yelled out, “George! George!” and George Clooney, God love him, waved at me, breaking off from talking to Devon. He came over and spoke to me for a full, undivided minute and gave me the worldwide exclusive on what brand of underwear he preferred (Calvins). Is there any wonder why women worship this man? It was a glorious red carpet moment!

The next interview was Drew’s, and as the red light on my camera went off, my stylists rushed in to powder and straighten and spray.

“You were so funny,” giggled Allie as she touched up my lip gloss with a tiny brush. In addition to knowing her Bobbi Brown from her Laura Mercier, Allie was an insistent laugher.

“You don’t have to laugh,” I told her. “You do makeup. That’s enough.” She’d been doing my makeup for seventeen years, and we’d had three hundred of these conversations.

“George Clooney!” moaned Unja, as he rushed up with a hairbrush at the ready. I had recently discovered Unja, my darling new hairstylist, on a visit to London, and for tonight’s event I had brought him to the States for his first visit. Surrounded by all this glorious Hollywood manhood, Unja was coming unglued. He’d brought a tiny camcorder and was now documenting every second of the trip. Here, closer to celebrities than he’d ever been in all his twenty-three years, he’d strapped the camcorder to his cap and had it on permanent record mode. Unja fingered my straight blond bangs a quarter inch to the left and said distractedly, “I wish these were longer.”

“I can’t see.”

“Who cares? This is so now,” Unja advised.

“I suppose it could help,” I added. “I’m blind as a bat, so when I say to somebody, ‘I didn’t know who you were,’ they’ll just think it’s the hair.”

Allie, bringing out her powder brush and swiftly powdering down my shine, giggled.

Unja pushed daintily at the ironed-straight bangs. “I can move them over a smidge.”

“Just part it so that the iris shows.”

He worked on it. “This style is really hot,” he added in his cute British accent. “You look like a Jewish Marilyn Monroe.”

“Right. The way she looks
now.
”

With my hair adjusted, I could now see my precious teacup Yorkie, Killer, over on the sidelines. Killer, seven pounds of pure personality and fluff, tilted his little head, and I smiled at the good boy, who was staying so nice and quiet while Mommy worked.

Holding Killer was my Samoan bodyguard, Malulu Vai. Tall, swarthy, and devoted to plus-size pantsuits, Malulu had come to me four years ago after a scary fan incident, but I had kept her around long after it turned out that idiot had misaddressed two hundred passionate love notes meant for
Liz
Taylor. Anyway, I had become fond of Malulu. Okay, she probably wasn’t the only graduate of the University of Pago Pago with a BA in philosophy to be employed as a driver, but I appreciated her for her other handy skills: she had an instant grasp of every sort of technological gizmo and gadget, was a master of the secret and deadly Samoan martial art, Limalama (“hand of wisdom”), could sew like Betsy Ross, and freely quoted lines from
Twelfth Night
and
Fiddler on the Roof
with a Samoan lilt.

Malulu looked at me, perplexed. “Marilyn Monroe, she was
Jewish?” Unfortunately, Malulu has absolutely no sense of humor. Tell me I’m not being punished.

Through the earpiece, I heard Will’s squawk: “In fifteen seconds we go to commercial. You can wrap it up, Drew.”

I checked the Winston. In just nine minutes we would finish our show and be off the air, but first a long commercial break.

Cindy came rushing up to me. “Joaquin Phoenix. That bastard! I’ll make it up to you. I promise. I’m so—”

I waved her apologies away. Like it or not, we are in the major leagues. There is only one Academy Awards night. If one member of the team blows it, we’re all out of work on Monday. “Drew,” I hissed, “who doesn’t even
have
a wrangler, is at this very minute finishing up with Matt Damon!” I let the accusation hang in the air.

“Mom,” Drew called, pushing through the crowd. Cindy melted into the background.

I looked up through my bangs, startled. Drew, having completed her interview and thrown to commercial, had rushed over to my camera position to see me.

“Drewie, we only have a few minutes on this break.”

“Five,” she said. “Mom, we need to talk! I just got the most amazing text message.” She held up her BlackBerry, waving it.

“It better not be phone sex from that traitor Joaquin Phoenix, because I’m telling you, I am through with men with scars.”

“You won’t believe this, Mom. I just got a text from Halsey!”

Oh, no. Not Halsey again. While everyone admired Halsey Hamilton’s talent, her life choices were just a shame. Drew had been at private school with Halsey ten years ago, and somehow Drew had appointed herself the rescue ranger for this mixed-up
girl, but it was like trying to save a drowning elephant. When it came to screwing up a life, Lindsay and Britney could take lessons from Halsey Hamilton, who was currently the tabloid princess du jour.

I looked at my daughter—beautiful dress, beautiful jewels, beautiful skin she’d inherited from her mother—and worried, yet again, at her commitment to her bent-on-destruction friend. A year of headlines had screamed, “Halsey in Club Raid!” “Halsey Busted for Pills!” “Halsey in Rehab!” “Halsey in Rehab Again!” “Halsey Fills Out Permanent Change-of-Address Card and Directs Mail to Rehab for Life!” Only in the last few months had the headlines died down. Even after her role in the Best Picture front-runner,
The Bones of War,
brought her a Best Actress nomination, Halsey had kept an amazingly low profile.

“So…what? She’s in trouble again?” I asked, not surprised. As if that were a question.

“No, no, no,” Drew said, smiling. “She’s fine. She’s great.”

“Wonderful,” I said, unable to resist pushing my daughter’s long, dark hair off her face. Instantly, Unja appeared with a hairbrush, his videocam still attached to his head, and quietly went to work, performing magic on her heavy curls.

Drew knew my feelings regarding her hairstyles and suspected sabotage. “Mom!”

I looked all innocence. “What? Unja thinks you need a little help. Humor him.” To distract her, I recalled, “Halsey’s in Expectations, isn’t she?” I referred to the luxury rehab facility in Malibu that had been the temporary home to many of Hollywood’s young and wasted. It was such a shame about all these girls. But with Halsey it was somehow worse. She’d risen from a celebrated childhood acting for Spielberg and Disney, possessing an adorable mix
of innocence and wisdom, and blossomed into that miracle, a child star who still looked good after puberty and could act. But with all the fame and the money came the turmoil. She’d been arrested so many times for drinking and driving, her bail bondsman had given her a by-the-dozen discount.

“She’s not at Expectations anymore. She checked out of there in November,” Drew said. “She moved to another rehab place called Wonders in Pasadena.”

“Thanks for telling me.” I looked at Drew accusingly. She and Halsey had been close for several years. Drew, about six years ahead of Halsey at school, had been her “big sister,” so you think I would have been told.

“You never listen,” Drew replied.

“That’s because you never tell me anything good.”

Mother. Daughter. Does it ever change?

Drew, her hair now completely gorgeous, gently waved Unja away. “Mom, don’t be like that. She didn’t want anyone to know.”

I was impressed. Usually Halsey had her people issue a press release every time she went to the bathroom. Good for her. Maybe this time all the help the poor girl was paying for was actually working.

In our ears, Will’s voice snapped, “Two minutes to air. Drew, get back to your place.”

“Mom,” Drew said, waving her BlackBerry. “Halsey completely disappeared for months. She’s been taking care of herself. She’s doing the steps. She wanted to stay away from Hollywood until she had four months of sobriety. But…”

“But what?”

“Mom,” Drew said, abruptly changing the subject. “Tell the truth. How are we doing tonight?”

“We’ve done better. I counted thirty-two gets.”