Chapter 14 #2
With Sally Ann, I had been ignorant. I didn’t know she was with Jason; I didn’t know she knew his secrets; I didn’t know what he could do.
But now I knew, and so I had an obligation.
Telling Maggie would be awful. It would be picking the scab of a surgical wound, squeezing a lemon on top, and then deciding to just cut off the whole limb sans anesthesia.
But then the information would be hers, to do with as she would.
I wouldn’t wake up in the night, sweaty with guilt, wondering if I was to blame.
The onus would be on Maggie to involve the police, to start divorce paperwork, to do whatever had to happen next.
I certainly didn’t know what had to happen next.
“This is going to suck,” I said.
“Majorly,” said Jen.
“Absolutely,” said Celia. “How are you going to do it?”
Around this time, an episode aired with Jason and Maggie experiencing Romance.
This means they have a production-purchased bottle of champagne, and a production-purchased pound of rose petals strewn across the entryway.
A professional violinist stands awkwardly to the side while they eat filet mignon prepared by a professional chef.
She chews. He chews. The violinist looks pained for a split second before resuming the mask of his performance.
“It’s so good,” Jason says, swallowing.
“So good,” Maggie agrees.
“Really just so, so good.” Jason wipes his mouth with the production-selected cloth napkin.
Have you heard someone chew steak? When the meat is served rare, the mastication makes an unmistakable fleshy sound.
Gulps of red wine. Nothing else is quite so sensual, or carnivorous.
Instead of watching Jason and Maggie devour each other, we see them eating a different animal, and it tastes so, so, so good.
Getting Maggie McKee alone wasn’t as easy as it might have been six weeks before.
I wasn’t some detective on a stakeout; I still had to do my job.
I didn’t have a good reason to show up on set.
I had her private number, but now that I wasn’t part of the crew, I worried about calling her and being caught on camera, raising everyone’s suspicions.
Some mornings, Maggie went jogging. A camera usually followed for the first few minutes, but the logistics of keeping pace while holding a twenty-pound camera made sticking to her something of a challenge.
It was possible she took up jogging simply for the solitude—early in the show, she’d done mostly aerobics, sweating in the home gym while the film crew looked on.
If I wanted to get Maggie solo, I could intercept her on her route around the neighborhood, but this would require precise timing.
I didn’t know when she’d be leaving the house or how far she would go.
I couldn’t have Lauren getting involved, didn’t want Rahul or Eli popping in and preventing me from being honest. I absolutely couldn’t be in front of some hidden camera. It had to be while she was running.
I waited a full week and a half before pretending I had some urgent errand in her neighborhood and skipping work to drive to Calabasas one morning when I knew Maggie was in town.
I had a whole thing in my head for what I would say if someone caught me—that I’d taken my own dry-cleaning to the place by the house, that I was waiting for it to be ready.
The story had no legs, but in the end, nobody cared what I was doing.
I found Maggie rounding a path that skirted the man-made pond at the edge of the neighborhood, before the land turned from boutique suburbia to dusty hills and bleached grass.
She had on gray sweats and an unembellished sports bra, hair in a ponytail, sweatband on, makeup impeccable.
I didn’t want to startle her, so I waited until she turned the corner and then held up a hand.
“Cassidy?” She slowed. “What are you doing here? They said I could have forty-five minutes.” Did she know I’d been moved into postproduction and no longer worked on set? She must have known. Someone else had been rolling her suitcase for the past eight weeks.
“Hi, yeah, no,” I said. “This isn’t for the show.” I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands, so I shoved them deep into my jeans’ front pockets.
“Okay?” Maggie raised an eyebrow. We are not friends emanated from her like the remnants of a nuclear blast zone.
She was famous. She was seeing my boyfriend.
Well, my ex-boyfriend now, but even before the change in status she’d been seeing him.
She was right. We might have known each other as children, but we were not friends. What was I doing here?
“Um, this is awkward,” I said. If I just left, I could pretend this conversation hadn’t happened. I could let her keep jogging her way into domestic disturbance. This didn’t have to be my business. She might tell me it was none of my business.
“Listen,” Maggie said, surprising me. “I’m sorry about Gabe. That should never have been happening.”
“Um,” I said. “Oh, thanks.” We were two different species, Maggie and I.
She leaned down to stretch her left calf.
“So I have—” I began, and then I stopped myself, unsure where I was going.
“There’s no real easy way to say this.” Maggie looked up at me, brows raised.
A bench faced the fountain a few meters away, and she gestured for us to move toward it.
I sat down while she stretched her other leg.
Maggie smelled like the Chanel perfume she wore everywhere, but also like salt and sweat and clear cherry lip gloss.
Her back cracked when she lengthened her arms. “I think that Jason was cheating on you.”
To my surprise, she laughed.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “With Sally Ann. Do they think I didn’t notice?”
“Who’s they?” I asked.
Maggie waved a hand, implicating everyone. “I’m not as dumb as I play on TV,” she said.
“I know.” We were quiet. She used her hand to wipe sweat from the back of her neck.
“You’re thinking, if I know already, why haven’t I left him,” Maggie said. “You’re thinking why do I let his team sell stories about me to Star when he’s the one with the real story.”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever been in love?” From the way Maggie looked at me, I could tell she knew that I’d been in love with Gabe.
That I still was in love with Gabe. “You’ll do anything for someone.
You’ll put up with a lot from them, especially when they’re hurting.
Jason’s a good guy. He’s been through it, and I’ve been through it with him.
I can’t just walk away. I don’t want to walk away.
We’re building something, and it’s not worth throwing out because he made a mistake. ”
I supposed this could be true. Who was I to tell Maggie to leave Jason?
There were aspects of a marriage that even the film crew trailing ten hours a day was not privy to.
Staying married was a choice. Maybe it wasn’t what I would have wanted for myself, but that didn’t mean that Maggie couldn’t have it.
But she should have access to all the information. She should know what she was choosing.
“I don’t know if he is a good guy, though,” I said.
This was the moment I’d been dreading. Not that Maggie had Jason pegged as some Disney prince, but admitting to someone’s major flaws was still different from admitting that they might be a murderer.
Marriage was reversible; death wasn’t. “I think he killed Sally Ann.” Barely a whisper, but I’d said it.
“I think Sally Ann knew about some of his past . . . indiscretions, and was going to go public. Ruin the show, ruin his image. Maybe even get him arrested, depending on statutes of limitations and all that. So I think that he killed her.”
Maggie blinked at me. “Sally Ann’s death was an accident.”
I leaned closer, speaking quickly. “He passed out the food that day. He’d never taken it from me before, never offered to help.
But he took the lunches, and he knew there were peanuts in your dish, and he mixed your stuff in with hers, and then she ate it.
It’s basically all on camera. He did it on purpose.
” I was trying to keep my voice steady, to sound calm and self-assured, as opposed to like some stalkery fan.
“You think Jason Dean—my husband, Jason Dean—worked all that out and followed through and now is getting away with an actual murder? The man can’t even hang a shelf.”
“I thought you said you were in love with him,” I said.
“I am. I love him. Still, the guy isn’t a criminal mastermind.”
“But when you called Gabe in the middle of the night that time about the car,” I said. “When maybe he hit something. Somebody. He got away with it then.”
Maggie froze. Over the hill someone was skateboarding, the thwack of wheels on pavement. The fountain beside us hiccuped into action, sending a light mist our way. “How do you know about that?” Maggie whispered.
“Gabe told me.” I didn’t even think to lie to her. Maggie hissed in a breath. We sat for what felt like a long time, totally quiet. Then she turned so she was looking me in the eye.
“It’s hard to watch someone you love so much lose hold of themself. You can’t make choices for someone who’s spiraling. They have to make their choices on their own.”
“I get it,” I said. “I do.”