Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery (7 page)

Just then, Big Jonathan, the bruiser from the front door, walked into the bar. His eyes held the cool gaze of a commando looking to search and destroy.

I gulped. Time to go. As Burke burbled his regrets about Halsey, and sincere-sounding, soppy apologies, begging to be released one more time in his gilded life from the consequences of his bad choices, I slunk down low and reversed course, steering away from the bar, staying below the radar of the additional three bouncers who had joined Jonathan. The security team was beginning to talk to people at the bar. Burke’s buddy was one of them. I thought I could hear my name above the general chatter.

I slunk even lower, limping along quickly toward the other side of the lounge, explaining to a startled Daniel Day-Lewis that I’d gotten a charley horse, damn it. He seemed concerned. But this is Hollywood, so who can tell?

“That’s her!” a masculine voice boomed. “Max Taylor!”

I sped through the opening in the crowd, miraculously cured of my phantom leg cramp and ran smack into Graydon Carter, with his large forehead, beefy middle, and clouds of silver hair, the editor of
Vanity Fair
himself. He was standing, talking to a
pretty woman whose shiny coif was swept up in a great-looking topknot.

“Max Taylor,” he said in astonishment. “You…”

“Yes, Graydon,” I said, smiling warmly. “Me.”

The beefy bouncers, exiting the bar area, spotted me standing in the middle of the crowded restaurant, surrounded by TV screens, talking to the big boss. They stopped, agog, uncertain, wanting to snap at me like the guard dogs they were, but then not wanting to bust into the editor’s conversation, lest they get put back on their leashes outside the fine event.

“Wondered when I’d run into you,” he said, gesturing with his drink toward a big-screen nearby. The pretty, young woman at his side smiled. Of course everyone knew I was here. But he was cheerful; that was something. “And you have quite a story, don’t you, Max? The story of Halsey Hamilton’s latest meltdown. Not very pretty, but then, you have the smarts to be where the ugly stuff happens.”

I loved it. He actually sounded jealous.

“Perhaps,” he continued, “it’s a story you would like to share with our
Vanity Fair
readers?” He smiled down at the woman at his side, then said, as an afterthought, “Max Taylor, this is Sibyl Morgan, one of my best young editors.”

She said, “You’ll give us the story?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said.

“Yes?” he said, smiling a most charming smile as the tiny pin spotlights gleamed off his silver waves.

“If the price is satisfactory, Graydon,” I added.

“Now, really!”

I smiled at them both. My private view of the downfall of an
Academy Award–nominated party girl was surely worth more than mere entry into a party that, while glamorous, didn’t, let’s be honest, feed guests more than a spoonful of fish.

“How much?” asked the lovely Sibyl. She had out her BlackBerry and was taking notes.

“A lot.”

Graydon scoffed, “We clearly have a difference of opinion on the value of this story. We’re not a daily rag, as I’m sure you know. We are a prestigious monthly, and I’m not sure it would even be worth it for us to talk numbers.” Pretty Sibyl frowned. They were both suddenly not as amused.

The movie stars and moneymen around us hummed with good cheer, but I was wasting my time here. “I’ll be going now. Thank you for your kind hospitality.”

“Oh,” he said, perhaps startled I had ended our discussion. “Did you get a chance to taste the—”

But I would never hear what astonishing culinary treat I would have no chance of sampling since, at that moment, the crowd around us started hushing one another, and that included us.

An elderly actress seated at the banquette nearest to us said, “Turn the volume up, won’t you?” and a young waiter came rushing over to do so.

On the several huge TV screens in the room was featured a close-up of local reporter Nick Tostado. He was no longer standing on the curb outside Craft, where last I’d spoken with him a half hour or so earlier. It appeared that Nick was now positioned in the street in front of Cedars-Sinai hospital, only a few miles away. The party was still too noisy to hear what he was saying, but perhaps his exact commentary didn’t really matter. Because the
words on the bottom of the screen, under the reporter’s handsome image, read,
HAMILTON ACADEMY AWARD NIGHT TRAGEDY.

“What? Is she dead?” gasped the older actress.

“No!” cried a woman I knew who used to buy specials at HBO.

“No!” echoed from several overplumped lips around the room.

Yes, I thought, suddenly miserable. My eyes searched the room for Drew, but I couldn’t find her.

I had known it all along, hadn’t I? No matter how much PR BS was slung, I had known this hadn’t been a game or a trick or a stupid publicity stunt.

Halsey Hamilton was dead at the age of nineteen.

M
other?” Drew was suddenly by my side, her eyes shiny.

All the time we had watched the Oscars telecast back at the hotel, I had held on to my concerns about Halsey, never sharing too much with Drew, not wanting it to be true.

“Let’s get out of here,” Drew said, turning for the door.

“Max,” called Diana Bates, standing in her teal Dior, blocking our path.

“Well, Diana,” I said, a glimmer of steam escaping, “are you satisfied now? Not a publicity stunt, was it?”

“What?” She put her hand up to her mouth, palm out. “What are you talking about? We’re
devastated
. So young. So talented.
James had a meeting set with Halsey and her father this Tuesday, for God’s sake.” She shook her head at me, outraged.

Right.

I pushed on the door and felt a hand hold me back.

Turning, I found Graydon Carter’s aide Sibyl Morgan at my side. “Don’t forget, Ms. Taylor. You can’t sell your story to anyone else without giving
Vanity Fair
the right to bid.”

“Oh, really?” I swung around and stared down the perfectly styled young beauty. How quickly my “nothing” story had zoomed in importance. Disgusting.

She smiled. “We’re in the middle of negotiations, aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

“And Ms. Taylor, when you step outside, don’t forget to visit our gift tent. Just a thank-you to our most special guests. Take anything you like. Anything at all.” She handed me a blue rubber band that was the magic gift pass. “There are plasmas.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sonys.” She smiled.

Once outside, I could finally breathe.

“Mom,” Drew said, her face ashen. “Halsey! This is all so terrible.”

“I know, darling. I know. Halsey had demons, and they must have been too strong.”

“How can she be dead?”

The question hung there in the air of a cold, clear L.A. night.

“Ms. Taylor!” “Max!” “Drew!” “What did Halsey say to you, Ms. Taylor?” The night was lit up with floodlights as dozens of cameramen jockeyed to get their shots in front of Craft on Constellation Boulevard. I took Drew, who was starting to shake, by
her elbow and guided her past the entrance to the swag tent (truly, the ultimate mother sacrifice—Beverly Hills–style) and over to the curb.

“We’ll talk more in the car,” I said, as our limo glided up in front of us.

I was helped into the backseat by our driver, Jeffrey, then Drew joined me on the smooth black leather seat. She had never been a crier or one to beg for a hug. I had always wanted to give them, always, but my daughter had more dignity. Now, for once, Drew didn’t pull away.

“This is a very bad night,” I said softly.

“You have no idea, Mother.”

I pulled back and looked at her, while Jeffrey asked where we wanted to go next.

“Take Drew home first,” I instructed. She has a lovely house in Beverly Hills, tiny but perfect, and that’s where she wanted to go even though I asked her to come stay with me for the night in my suite at the Hotel Bel-Air, my permanent L.A. residence.

Drew was really agitated, rubbing her thin arms even though the heat setting in the limo was perfect. I looked her over carefully. “Drew, what is it?” My voice was much calmer than my heart.

“I didn’t want to tell you right now,” she said, looking down.

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

“It’s Burke.”

Oh my God. Well, when wasn’t it Burke? What now? I gave her a little encouraging look.

She went on, “I just talked to him back at the party.”

“What do you mean? When?”

“Just now, Mother. I was with him when the news came on about Halsey. We were standing together when we found out.”

Drew must have run into Burke in the bar right after I had made my escape. Just what had the two of them been cooking up?

“Now, I know how much you don’t like him, Mother—”

“What? Don’t
like
? I would love the schmuck if he would have been nicer to you. Didn’t I buy him that three-hundred-dollar pair of True Religion jeans he wanted for his birthday? And this for a man who probably never prayed a day in his life. But he was bad news, Drew, and—”

“Exactly, exactly,” she said, interrupting. “You hate him because of me.”

“Let’s not fight, honey,” I said, trying to hug her again, but she pushed herself away.

We get along gorgeously on-air, but in real life things have not always gone perfectly for the two of us. Since my marriage to her father had ended when Drew was twelve, my daughter and I had had an earthquake to recover from. That her father had ended his own life two years later only made it harder for Drew to see that I wasn’t the enemy. Over the years, with a lot of good therapy, Drew had found a way to forgive me, and I had learned to be patient. But at times like this, with this sudden death of someone close to her, and on the heels of her separation from Burke, I couldn’t be sure she had ever really forgotten her pain and anger toward me.

And even without all our tragedies, every girl holds an inalienable right to blame her mother.

“What can I do to help, Drew? You know I would do anything on this earth for you.”

“Just let me finish this, Mom. I know you have reason to criticize Burke. He’s not perfect son-in-law material, I get that.”

I smiled encouragingly, biting back all the scathing lines I was thinking.

Reassured, Drew continued, “Here’s the thing. Burke, no matter what you think he’s capable of, is really a sweet guy. I mean, he’s not a guy who would ever hurt anybody. You have to believe that.”

My tongue hurt from the biting, but I said not one word; that’s how sweet I could be when I tried.

“Anyway, he told me some news tonight that is really horrible. Burke’s in trouble, Mom. He wouldn’t tell me any details, but he said he could go to jail. And not because he really did anything wrong. But it would just look bad enough, you know, that he might not be able to prove he is innocent.”

I guess I had known it might come to this. Burke Norris had somehow given Halsey Hamilton a lethal dose of something. I just hadn’t wanted to think it all the way through to the part where it turned out my baby’s recent fiancé was a killer. Oh my God.

“So this is about Halsey?” I asked calmly, trying not to shout, I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO.

“No, no,” Drew said, dismissing the thought immediately. “Burke wouldn’t have had anything to do with Halsey. I mean, they hardly even knew each other. I don’t think I ever saw the two of them talk to each other, not once. No, for some reason he thinks he’ll get framed or something. But it wasn’t his fault.”

Right. I’ll bet it wasn’t.

“And, Mom, here’s the really terrible part. Burke is afraid. Really afraid. And he told me I’m the only one he trusts to help him.”

“Wait, I’ll go get my violin,” I said, unable to hold it in.

“Mother, you promised,” Drew warned.

Just then the limo pulled up in front of Drew’s lovely Mediterranean cottage. Even at night you could see she had the loveliest garden on the block.

“So, okay,” I said, starting again. “Burke is in trouble. And then he asks you to help. But what can you possibly do, precious?”

“He wants me to call a lawyer. Hire someone big and powerful. Who should I call, Mom?”

“Big and powerful? That means expensive.”

“Okay. Money isn’t a problem. Who should I call? He said call someone tonight, so it has to be one of your lawyer friends that I can call at home.”

“Wait, whoa, wait. Money isn’t a problem? Is that because you are planning to pay for it out of your own pocket?” Drew had inherited a decent amount from her father’s life insurance policy, money she’d only had control of since her twenty-first birthday. She had put most of it into buying her little house, which in Beverly Hills cost a bundle, but now, even only four years later and in a downward market, it was worth substantially more. What money was left after purchasing the house wasn’t much, and now she wanted to throw it away on this loser Burke Norris? I sighed. She had real estate sense; what she didn’t have was man sense. “You know, manies and pedies don’t grow on trees, Drew. If you give him all your savings…”

“No, of course not,” she answered, upset.

“So you’re not going to pay for his fancy lawyer?”

“Well, okay, I offered to.” She shifted in the backseat. “But Burke wouldn’t hear of it. He told me he didn’t actually have cash
on him, but he had something of great value, and I could cash it in to pay for a lawyer.”

What could Burke have of great value? His drug stash? His little black book filled with solid-gold hookers? His daddy’s AmEx card number? “He gave you something valuable?” I inquired, trying not to look too jaded.

Drew swept her hair off her forehead, just the way I like it, and gave me a pretty smile. She pulled my cell phone out of my bag and handed it to me. “If you call your lawyer right now and beg him to see Burke, as a special favor to you, I’ll show you what Burke gave me, Mother.”

I flipped open my cell phone.

“You’ll help clear Burke?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. It meant so much to her, I could see that. Damn it. Damn it. She was still in love.

What can a mother do?

If I said, “No, no, I’ll never lift a pinkie to help that no-good, drug-pushing gigolo you managed to fall for,” my daughter would have no choice but to pick between him and me. And I had no illusions over which of us she would pick. The mother always loses out in these conflicts. I wasn’t a fool. And Drew, so grown-up and independent in so many ways, was still young enough to want to show me I’m wrong; want to prove she too is a good judge of character. She’d fly back to him in a second. He’d move back into her house by tomorrow. She’d show me!

And if I said, “Yes, I’ll help clear your ex-boyfriend,” what then? Perhaps I would be able to win her gratitude. Not a little goal, that one. And in the process, we might work on this project together, confiding in each other and sharing in the pursuit. I was
often invited over to Drew’s house for brunch, or for dinner, but rarely did she ask me to go shopping. Or call me to share secrets. Maybe this would be our chance to start our relationship on a new foot. Our first project, adult to adult: clearing Burke of murder.

Or, at any rate, trying to clear him. If, in the process, we came across incontrovertible evidence that nailed Burke Norris to the death of Halsey Hamilton, what would Drew do? Would she have to shed her blinders and see him for what he really was—a lying, cheating scoundrel who had gone too far once too often? Of course she would. And if she could see him that clearly, wouldn’t that break the spell he still held over her?

What did I have to lose? If I denied Drew’s request for help, I would surely lose her to Burke, and the farther down the road she walked with him, the more destructive he’d be in her life. Would he clear out her bank account? Have her borrow against her house? I looked at my beautiful and distraught daughter and sucked in my breath. Would Burke marry her to deflect the shit-storm that was about to rain down on him? I couldn’t let any of that happen.

“You’ll help us, Mom?” my trusting daughter asked me.

I pressed speed dial, and the swift touch-tones sang out from the earpiece of my cell phone. “I’m helping,” I said, semi-smiling. “We’ll get Sol Epstein.”

“He’s a killer!” Drew said, her voice instantly bright and happy.

“The deadliest. And what did you say Burke is going to use to pay our killer?”

I heard Sol’s home voice-mail announcement as Drew reached into her evening bag and pulled out a little silk satchel.
As I waited for the pretaped message to finish, Drew opened the drawstrings and tipped the bag upside down, emptying the contents into my open hand.

The interior lights of the idling limo were picked up and splashed into a thousand flashes and twinkles as dozens of perfectly cut diamonds spilled into my palm.

“Sol, it’s Max Taylor,” I said into the tiny cell phone, my voice even raspier than usual. “Pick up, Sol. I’ve got trouble.”