Chapter 16 Toss Him to the Wolves #2
Bringing up something Nico’s already dismissed can be tricky, but if Tank is cleared, there’s another person who warrants examination. “Nico, we need to look into the father of June’s baby.” He shakes his head. “If Tank’s alibis check out, and it wasn’t him, don’t we—”
“I know who the father is. All right?” He parks the car, and glances at the mirrors before continuing.
“I want to respect her privacy, but what I will say is that the guy’s decent enough, but didn’t want anything to do with a baby.
That made me furious, if you want to know the truth.
But he was fine with her having it, as long as he wasn’t involved—which actually worked a hell of a lot better for us than if he did want to be in the picture.
Still, he wasn’t angry, or mad or jealous.
He had nothing to gain or lose with her death.
So, if I keep dismissing the guy, that’s why—because it’s a dead end, and would only cause problems and put her reputation at risk. ”
She leans against the car door, her head on the glass.
“Sometimes I don’t tell you things,” he continues.
“Not because I don’t trust you. But because I feel bad that our stars shouldn’t trust me.
Because I do what I gotta do to protect them from their secrets, and that means revealing those secrets at times.
To you, for instance. And it doesn’t make me feel the best. So I keep quiet when I can. ”
On the second floor, a light goes on. “Come on,” Nico continues. “And it’s not over with Tank. We all know how alibis can be bought.”
Inside, cameramen are set up in Jack’s living room, and reporters do their best to pretend they’re not impressed with the surroundings. “This seems like a bad idea,” Frankie says as a man runs his hand along the rim of a ceramic vase.
“Here, we need Jack up and presentable for thirty minutes. Anywhere else, there’s travel time, there’s talking to other people. This was our best bet.”
Upstairs, they’ve just turned the corner when a man steps out of Jack’s room. The studio doctor. Gray, thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and an uneven gait. A man people either dread or look forward to seeing; there’s no in-between.
Nico nods to him and knocks on Jack’s door before pushing it open and disappearing inside. But Frankie waits to intercept the doctor. “He doesn’t need more.”
The man hitches up his bag on his shoulder. “Says who?”
Though Nico hates anything and everything to do with the doctor, the man works for Nico’s boss, not Nico. Frankie certainly has no say.
The doctor smiles, sympathetic yet patronizing. “You want him asleep for the press? Because he’s not snapping out of this. Not today. Hell, not even tomorrow.”
“He just lost his fiancée. He needs time.”
Now he raises an eyebrow as if to challenge Frankie’s lie. Perhaps thinking better of it, he says, “I’m not that kind of doctor, but you ask me, it’s not grief I’m seeing. It’s guilt.”
Frankie tries to be calm as the doctor continues.
“He wasn’t there to protect her. Survivors of accidents too, they feel guilty it wasn’t them.”
A rush of relief. She thanks him for his insight, as patronizingly as she can, and opens Jack’s bedroom door.
The bed is unmade. The closet door open.
There are pill bottles on his bedside table, stacks of scripts by a love seat that have spilled over, pages splayed.
A soup bowl on a tray by the wall. Jack, standing at the window, turns when he hears her.
Never has she seen him this sad, this deep in his own misery.
Nico picks a sweater off the floor. “I need to make sure the reporters are good girls and boys and stick to their questions. Frankie, get some concealer under his eyes, would you? It’s radio, but people in Europe could see those circles.”
Frankie waits till Nico’s gone, and finds the concealer in a drawer, there to assist after late nights. Jack’s still facing the window when she goes to him. Dabbing the makeup on her finger, she angles his face toward her. “You looked better this morning.”
His eyes meet hers, that gut-wrenching blue gaze, but then he’s looking lower, to her mouth. In the silence of the room, she can hear him breathing, and it feels like when they first met, when they were off-limits and not allowed.
“Frankie,” he says, so quietly she wonders if maybe she imagined it. With two fingers, he touches her wrist, tentative, as if he’s unsure. He’s watching her. Steady.
“I’m worried about you,” she says.
From the hall, Nico yells to someone downstairs. Jack drops his hand. “You have to let me be a mess.”
“You can be a mess without that man and whatever he’s giving you.”
“I won’t go down that road. I promise.”
At last he looks up at the ceiling. Lightly, she touches the skin under his eyes, and even this touch she is grateful for.
“I’m worried,” he says. “I’ve told myself not to be, but I have to face it. The possibility that . . .” He stops, unable to continue.
She lowers her hand but says nothing.
He registers her silence, and keeps going. “I blacked out the night with the coyotes and the shotgun. I don’t drink much, but when I do, that’s happened. So what if I’m just not remembering something? From when she was killed?”
Frankie glances at the door. They’re alone, and for once she wishes someone would walk in. Would stop him from saying what he’s about to say.
“It’s like worrying you talked in your sleep,” he continues. “Unless someone’s there to say no, I was beside you the whole night, I was listening, there’s always a chance.”
All her instincts tell her to keep quiet. To let the rest remain unsaid.
In the hall, Nico calls for her.
This is her job.
Finally, she forces herself to speak. “Jack. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re worried about.”
To this, he smiles sadly. “I tell myself I wouldn’t do something like that, but what if I did?”
Wondering is not the same thing as believing. This is what she tells herself as she readies for the press conference. He’s nervous because he can’t remember, but that doesn’t mean there’s actually something to remember. Just because you can’t rule something out doesn’t mean it happened.
Still, his fear lurks in her mind. Even as she places the members of the press into assigned seats—Magda in the front row, Dottie wedged into a corner—it’s there. A pervasive apprehension.
Are there any leads on the whereabouts of June Finney’s ex, Tank Adams?
Have his alibis been verified? Why did you decide to elope?
Are you getting any of the casseroles that your fans sent to the studio?
What do you eat for dinner? The questions continue, and Jack’s voice begins to slow.
Maybe whatever the doctor gave him to wake up is fading, or maybe whatever the doctor gave him to settle down is finally kicking in; it could be anything.
All Frankie knows is that he doesn’t have much longer.
Which, of course, is when one of the reporters goes off script.
“Who gets to take June’s place as your love interest in the upcoming pictures?”
No one says a word. The question has thrown the crowd, jolted them awake. Nico steps forward, arm raised in a signal to Jack that he doesn’t need to answer that.
For the first time, Jack looks present. He sits up, and the throng of reporters stills. Steadily, he says, “Her body’s barely cold, and you’re asking who gets the part?”
Pencils hover above pads. Microphones held aloft. Even the grandfather clock in the corner seems to pause longer than usual till it releases one frightful tick.
Nico steps in front of Jack as if to physically shield him. “He’s saying it’s a little soon.”
Frankie searches for the reporter in the crowd. The man’s new but undaunted.
“Reports are already out that Dede Domenico’s taken June Finney’s spot in Moving Up, that Milton Ewing project. Milton’s your friend, right?”
“Dede’s fifteen,” Jack says. “She’s a child. I don’t do casting, and I only have a cameo in that film. How about a question that has to do with me?”
Almost under his breath, the man says, “It starts shooting in days, someone must know.”
Now Jack starts to stand. The table before him wobbles, and Nico reaches for a glass of water before it spills, then quickly whispers something to Jack, whose eyes never leave the reporter. At last, Jack seems to make a decision, and sits.
But the reporter continues. “All right, then. Can you confirm or deny that two studio staffers were in the crowd outside Grauman’s talking about the necklace and lack of security?”
With this, Frankie’s heart begins to pound. It feels as though the room is filling with sediment, everything heavy and suffocating.
Now it’s Nico who faces the man. “What was your name?”
“Jerry.”
“Jerry, look, the necklace was stolen, so obviously something went wrong. Thankfully it was insured. But the very nature of eloping is to do it in secret—so the studio was not aware that Ms. Finney would be at the bungalow by herself, or arrangements would’ve been made.
But, being in love and happy, June didn’t see the danger.
Are you going to fault her for that, Jerry? ”
The twist is artful, and the shamer shamed.
Jerry looks rattled as he sits back down, but Frankie’s pulse won’t settle, because this means her words about lack of security were heard at the premiere, and with this, she understands there is a very good chance that she’s the one who set everything in motion.