Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) (15 page)

“Calm down, Nia. We all need cool heads right now. I’ll explain everything. First off, we’re at a private care medical service that we have a contract with. It’s run by Dr. Aron Harrison who treats celebrities, politicians, and high-net-worth individuals that need not only the best medical care but also di
scretion.”

“What happened to Vanessa, Kareem?” I was rapidly losing my patience with Marcus
’s cousin.

“Vanessa was attacked in the parking garage of their building this morning,” Kareem said. “The attendant in the garage was away from his post, so no one was down there. When she went to get her car, some guy jumped out and gra
bbed her.”

“Oh my God,” I said as I sank down into the chair. “Is she OK . . . ?” I was afraid to ask the one question to which I didn’t want t
he answer.

“Dr. Harrison says that she’s going to be fine. She wasn’t raped if that’s what you’re w
ondering.”

“Thank God,” I said, relief momentarily washing over me, but then I remembered the marks on her neck and face. “But she looks pretty banged up
, Kareem.”

“I know. Dr. Harrison ran a full battery of tests. She’s got some bruised ribs and some cuts and scrapes but nothing that won’t heal over time. But, of course, the attack was quite traumatic, so the doctor gave her something to relax. She’s going to
be fine.”

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back on the top of the chair. I couldn’t even imagine how terrified she must have been down there in the garage alone. And then an even scarier thought suddenly crosse
d my mind.

“Wait a minute, where’s Damon? Was he
with her?”

“No. Fortunately the nanny had taken him to school. Vanessa had an appointment to see some homes in New Jersey and was planning to drive o
ut there.”

“Where’s Marcus?” I asked through clenched teeth. He couldn’t still be shacked up with his gold-digging mistress with his wife lying in a hospital bed. Even that, I prayed, would be too low f
or Marcus.

“I booked a jet to pick him up in Detroit,” Kareem said as he looked down at the platinum Rolex watch on his wrist. “He should be landing within the hour at Teterboro Airport and will be coming strai
ght here.”

“Who found Vanessa in the garage?
” I asked.

“The garage attendant. When her attacker saw the attendant, he
ran off.”

“Do we know if Vanessa got a good look at the guy so the police have a description
to go on?”

“The police were here earlier and took her statement. She was pretty shaken up, so it was difficult for her to get everything out. Perhaps she’ll remember mo
re later.”

“So why is she here instead of a
hospital?”

“We want to keep this as low profile as possible and out of the papers. And believe me, she’s getting much better care here at the Ritz-Carlton of medical facilities. Dr. Harrison and his team are the absol
ute best.”

“I don’t know, Kareem. I think she should be in a
hospital.”

“Well, her husband, Marcus, wants her here. You’re not her husband, Nia.” Kareem said this forcefully, then looked down at his BlackBerry and scrolled through
messages.

“Does her husband want her here because he’s worried about his precious career? Maybe it’s time he starts thinking about his wife and family and doing what’s best for them instead of his damn career!” I knew people in the hall could probably hear me, but I didn’t care. “I’m not going to sit up here and pretend that everything is silky smooth, like we all didn’t see the paper today with the story about Marcus and Laila. It’s a little late for him to play the concerne
d spouse.”

“Look, I’m not trying to fight with you. I know we’re all upset and concerned about Vanessa. But, honestly, this is the best facility, and if Marcus decides he wants to make that decision when he arrives, we’ll move her, but until then I can’t do anything.” Kareem sat back in the chair and folded his hands, waiting for me t
o respond.

The door to the office opened, and Desiree stuck her head into
the room.

“Excuse me, Kareem, but it’s time for that two o’clock call about the
Esquire
magazine profile. Do you want to take it in here or the other office where we were working
earlier?”

“Let’s take it in the other office,” Kareem said as he stood up, still absentmindedly checking his messages on his BlackBerry. “Feel free to stay in here, Nia, or wait in Vanessa’s room. She’ll probably be sleeping for another hour or so.” He quickly walked out of the room with Desiree leading the way before I coul
d respond.

I dropped my head into my hands for a moment, overwhelmed with concern for my best friend and how things were being handled. When I looked up, I noticed that Kareem left the battered white envelope he had in his hands in Nia’s room on the desk. Curious, I looked back at the door to make sure it was closed and heard Desiree and Kareem’s voices fade in the hallway, so I assumed that they stepped into the other office. I pulled the envelope over to my side of the desk. There was no address on the front, and it had been opened already. I pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope, and my heart began to beat faster as I clutched the chillin
g message.

You Will Die for
Your Sins!

Was the man who attacked Vanessa the one who wrote
the note?

CHAPTER 10

Vanessa

A
s I struggled to open my eyes, the throbbing in my head started to escalate. But at least the aching soreness that had radiated through most of my body had given in to the pain medication Dr. Harrison had given me last night. I could see the early-morning sunlight starting to peek through the sheer curtains. The only sound in the room was the soft whirring of the medical monitors and Marcus’s deep rhythmic
breathing.

He was seated in a chair next to the bed, his head resting on the tangled sheets and his hands holding mine. I wanted to pull my hand away, but Marcus held on to it so tightly that I didn’t have the strength to do that. With my ribs bruised but fortunately not broken, I knew better than to try to sit up in the bed. Plus, I didn’t want to wake him and hear more of his pathetic apologies and promises
to change.

Just like the old Sunshine Anderson song goes, I’d heard it a
ll before.

I told Marcus when he arrived that I wanted a divorce, but in those Lifetime TV movies, wasn’t a near-death experience supposed to draw the estranged couple back together? I had almost been murdered in our parking garage trying to get away from reporters staked out in front of our home because of his affair with Laila James. That tramp bitch had almost gotten
me killed.

She wasn’t getting my fa
mily, too.

Marcus didn’t know it yet, but I wasn’t going anywhere, and neith
er was he.

CHAPTER 11

Nia

T
his photo shoot was a
disaster.

We had been on the set for five hours already, and our photographer, Renaldo Blaze, had yet to shoot a single image of neo-soul singer Janelle Greene and her newborn twin girl and boy, Sunshine and Moon. Normally Renaldo was a pretty mellow dude since
DivaDish
kept him and his multi-culti skinny-jean-clad team of photo and lighting assistants working on the regular, but with nothing but the sounds of raised voices and crying babies coming from behind the closed door of Janelle’s dressing room, even he was gett
ing antsy.

And I needed to leave in thirty minutes to meet Terrence who wanted to download on the report he’d gotten back from his contacts at Quantico as well as his conversation with the detectives investigating the attack on Vanessa l
ast month.

I thought we were making progress an hour ago when Janelle summoned the hair stylist and makeup artist that she had demanded be flown in first class from Detroit because she wouldn’t dare work with anyone else, but there had been no indication she was anywhere near be
ing ready.

Usually when shooting with kids, you know you’re going to be popping Advil all day or throwing back tequila all night, but this was shaping up to be one for the record books. No amount of headache medicine or alcohol was going to help. Typically I would let my entertainment
editor, Che Williams, handle this because she had a way of soothing even the most temperamental of celebs and coaxing the juiciest stories out of them, but because Janelle had a reputation for being emotional (industry code for just plain crazy), Che had asked me to come to today’s shoot because she thought she might need reinforcements. There’s a saying in the entertainment industry: never work with children or animals. After today I wanted to add “postpartum neo-soul singers desperate for a comeback” to that lis
t as well.

I should have known it was going to be the photo shoot from hell when Janelle’s PR team called me on my cell last night to discuss her ridiculous fourteen-page rider and tried to charge us for shooting Janelle and her twin babies. I informed them that not only were we not
People
magazine, but their client, while certainly talented in her own right, wasn’t international superstar Angelina Jolie, so there would be no seven-figure check forthcoming for the images of Janelle and her children. But I was happy to discuss any special dietary requests, exotic flowers, and the Diptyque scented candles she had to have for her dressing room. Her publicist, Marc Q, was a fairly decent guy as far as soul-sucking publicists went. He wasn’t like some of them: pathological liars who filled their clients’ empty little heads with delusional thoughts of grandeur and who, thinking they were stars equal to their clients, demanded first-class travel and multiroom hotel suites for themselves. Marc told me sheepishly that he understood the requests were a shade unreasonable, but since this was what his client wanted, he h
ad to ask.

I knew Janelle had a new album to promote, and since she had recently separated from her baby daddy, a bullet-ridden rapper named Jerome “Tech Nine” Michaels, the diva needed all the promotional help she could get. And the million of daily readers of
DivaDish
were her target audience. But we needed to tread lightly because as temperamental and crazy as Janelle might be, she could certainly take herself and her juicy breakup and comeback story over to
Vibe
or
Ebony.
This was why after four hours of shooting absolutely nothing, I hadn’t shut the set down and hit her management team with a bill for the studio rental, photographer fee, lighting equipment, and catering. But something had to give because we’d be hitting overtime, and I didn’t need DeAnna on my ass yet again about going ov
er budget.

I found Che pacing back and forth in front of Janelle’s closed dressing room door, nervously biting her already sh
ort nails.

“I need to talk to Marc. Can you get him for me? We’re not getting anywhere, and we’re about to hit overtime, which will instantly double the cost of th
is shoot.”

“Uh, sure . . . ,” Che said as she peered at me over the top of her trendy black glasses. She walked to the other side of the set and tentatively knocked on the closed door. She hadn’t conducted her interview with Janelle yet, so she was loath to upset the singer until she got her exclusive. I knew there was a possibility that Janelle could shut everything down in an emotional fit if pushed, but we really didn’t have
a choice.

The door opened enough for Che to ask for Marc, who squeezed his thin frame out of the partially cracked door and waddled over in the superskinny black jeans secured on his nonexistent behind by a thick black leather belt with a trail of black leather studs. I never understood why grown-ass men felt the need to dress like they were in high school, and I wondered if he realized he wouldn’t have to waddle if he’d just pull his damn pants up. He was going to have major hip problems in the future. Marc’s fitted stonewash button-down, fresh and crisp earlier in the day, now looked rumpled, the sleeves pushed up above his bony elbows. The stress visible on his baby face made me think he probably wanted to hang himself with the slim black leather tie around
his neck.

“Look, Marc,” I started when the frustrated publicist plopped down on the sofa next to me, “you and I both want the same thing—a great story that gets people talking about your artist and more importantly buying her new music. And I want a great story that gets people clicking on my site. And right now neither of us has what
we want.”

“I know, Nia,” Marc whined with exasperation in his tired voice. “I’m trying to get her to get ready to shoot, but she keeps taking calls from Jerome who’s trying to talk her out of doing the story and threatening to take the babies away. He’s also going in on her on Twitter as
we speak.”

Lord, I hate social media sometimes. Drama now breaks in
real time.

MJ had been monitoring the situation on his laptop next to me, so I knew an ugly Twitter battle was brewing and that the secrecy of our shoot and our exclusive could get out. I leaned over to MJ and asked him to call Janelle’s manager, a surprisingly rational white guy named Chris Matteo, to see if he could get his client to log off Twitter. I was sure he didn’t want this battle any more than we did, especially since his client’s baby daddy was already in hot water with authorities over a video that had surfaced last week on WorldstarHipHop of Jerome and his boys getting blow jobs from groupies in a hotel suite after
a concert.

“First of all, there’s no judge on the entire planet that would give a gang-affiliated, two-time-convicted drug dealer turned misogynistic rapper custody of those babies. Second of all, Janelle needs to do what’s best for her damn career so she can take care of those babies. And she has to get on this set in the next fifteen minutes or we’re shutting it down. I need to speak with her r
ight now.”

I really couldn’t afford to shut this shoot down. I needed this story just as much as Janelle did, but I hoped my Billy badass bluff would work, because I knew no one on her squad was going to be able to get her to do anything. The problem with celebrity entourages is that no one is willing to tell the star no. No one is willing to get kicked off the gravy train by telling the star what he or she needs to hear instead of what he or she want
s to hear.

“OK, but are you sure you want to talk to her?” Marc asked as we stood up to head back over to the dressing room. I slipped back on the Guiseppe Zanotti suede open-toe booties I had kicked off as the afternoon had worn on. Smoothing down the front of my black leather leggings, I put on a camel-colored oversize Donna Karan asymmetrical wrap sweater over my thin black tissue-paper T-shirt and pushed up the sleeves. It was time to
do battle.

“Just clear the dressing room so Janelle and I can talk in private.” I tried to sound confident as we walked, but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen once we were alone. I hated celebrities. Why couldn’t all stars be nice and professional like Gabrielle Union o
r Beyoncé?

“Don’t worry, Marc,” MJ said. “She’s
got this.”

Marc went into the dressing room. Within a few minutes, the door opened, and Janelle’s personal assistant/homegirl, Aisha; her best friend, Darla; her sisters, Monique and Lisa; and the Detroit hairstylist and makeup artist all filed out behind him. As Marc passed me, he squeezed my arm and shook
his head.

When I walked into the room and closed the door behind me, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Janelle’s hair and makeup had already been done and she was dressed in white. She was just five feet tall, and it was hard to believe that all of today’s drama was emanating from that tiny body. Janelle was a dark brown beauty with large cat eyes, sharp cheekbones, full juicy lips, and a thick glossy mane of natural curly hair worn like a halo around her head. She had burst onto the music scene about five years ago with her hypnotic, husky voice that sang a string of soulful female empowerment anthems that earned her Grammy awards and a legion of young fans. But the last two years had been rough. A poorly received role in a Tyler Perry film, her volatile on-again-off-again relationship with Jerome, and her last album, for which she dropped the hit-producing team that had launched her career for some of Jerome’s producers, had alienated a large part of her fan base who posted scathing comments online, saying they no longer knew who she was or for what her music stood. Marc had managed to talk sense into Janelle’s head and get her to make amends with her original producing team for the release of this new album, which was starting to get a lot of buzz, but getting back with Tech would not help the comeb
ack story.

I was happy to see the babies were sleeping peacefully in a playpen in a corner of the room despite the afternoon’s ruckus. I also noticed that some of the shoes and bangles that we had pulled for the shoot were sticking out of a large bag in the corner. Dammit, I hated when celebs and their entourage took things from the shoot. Most of the time it wasn’t even the celebs themselves who were trying to make off with a pair of hot new shoes or a handbag that hadn’t yet hit stores but most likely one of their crew of hangers-on-type folk thinking they could cop some free clothing, shoes, or jewelry, not realizing or caring that the stylist who pulled the merchandise would have to pay the designer for the missing wares. If you had the misfortune of having to confront them about missing merchandise, they always said something like “I thought you had pulled all these things for (insert celeb name here) to take home” or “Designers always let me keep their things from the shoot,” or my personal favorite, “We didn’t take anything, and you can’t
prove it.”

Janelle was seated in a director’s chair with her back to the counter where a dizzying array of makeup, styling tools, and hair products was s
pread out.

“We need to have a come-to-Jesus, Janelle,” I said, cutting to the chase although I knew I couldn’t go balls to the wall just yet. I had to start with rule number one of celebrity relations—the requisite ego stroke—because most celebs were completely insecure and needed constant validation that they were still the most special thing in
the world.

“You are an incredibly talented artist with millions of fans who are dying to hear your new music. They love you and can’t wait to go out and start buying your album and seeing you in
concert.”

“Really? How do you know?” Janelle said. The ice-grill look on her face started to give way to something I would imagine no one ever got to see: vuln
erability.

“Look, Janelle, ever since we started teasing this story online and promoting that it was coming, people have been posting that they can’t wait for your new music. That they need your new music.” I didn’t tell Janelle that I told Che to turn on the comment-moderation tool for any story mentioning Janelle so that we could filter out the negative comments. I was sure some would consider that cheating, but I called it rule number two of celebrity relations: make sure those in your audience are perceived as being in the star’s corner so that they come to you when they wan
t to talk.

“I don’t know. Jerome really doesn’t want me to do this interview, and he’s threatening to take away my kids.” A tear slipped down her cheek as she reached for
a tissue.

“I understand, J. But do you know what’s important r
ight now?”

“What?” she said, sniffing as she wiped her run
ning nose.

Damn, don’t mess up that makeup
,
I think
to myself.

“What’s most important, and the only thing you should be focused on, is sleeping peacefully over in that corner. Those babies, Sunshine and Moon, should be your sole focus. You have to do what’s best for them. And what’s best for them is for their mother to get her career back on track, not just so she can make money to take care of them, but so that their mother is happy and doing what she was bo
rn to do.”

“But what if he takes them away from me?” she whined as she started to cry harder. “He’s tweeting that he’s going to take them away
from me.”

At that moment her iPhone buzzed on the counter, and she turned to grab it before I could take it away. I could tell from her expression that Jerome was calling again. If she got on that call, this shoot
was dead.

“Janelle, honey, give me the phone,” I said with my hand outstretched as I started to walk closer to her. “Don’t answer the call. It’s time for Janelle Greene to start talking care of herself and her children. No judge in the world is going to give him custody, and you know that. Give me the phone.” I suddenly felt like a hostage negotiator, which I guess I kind of was since she was holding my shoot and my exclusive intervie
w hostage.