Killing Monica (21 page)

Into the silence came the lone caw of a crow.

SondraBeth lay down on her back. She extended her arms and, sweeping them up and down, made angel wings. Then she rolled forward onto her knees, and with her head bowed, slowly stood up. She turned around and began walking back toward the driveway. As she walked, she peeled the fabric from her body, carefully folding the muddy material in her hands.

Reaching the grass, she stopped for a moment to allow her people to catch up with her.

“Did you know she was going to do that?” Pandy heard someone whisper as they hurried toward SondraBeth.

“No,” someone else whispered back.

SondraBeth turned her head and looked back at Pandy. And then, as if making a sudden decision, she walked toward her.

“Come with me,” she said. Her voice was quiet and splintery.

She disappeared into her swirl of assistants, and suddenly Judy was by Pandy’s side. She touched Pandy’s arm in a friendly girl-to-girl manner. “We’ve just heard from PP. He wants you to come back to New York with SondraBeth. He wants to meet you.”

Judy began drawing Pandy along with her, nodding her head and smiling conspiratorially. “You’ll stay in the basement guest room in SondraBeth’s townhouse. It’s fantastic; it has its own separate entrance.”

And the next thing Pandy knew, the bodyguards had surrounded her, and she was being bundled into the back of an SUV.
I need to call Henry!
she thought wildly as the doors slammed shut and the car started forward with a jerk. As Wallis House disappeared around the mountain, she had a startling thought:

She had just been kidnapped by her own creation.

A
GOOD OLD
New York City pothole woke her up.

She bounced and hit the back of the seat. Once again, it felt like her head was on fire.

It wasn’t, but the place where she had hit her head two nights before, when she had fallen off the couch during the party in her apartment, was suddenly reinflamed.

That had happened on Wednesday. Was it a mere forty-eight hours ago when she was still innocent? When she was still happy?

When she was still PJ Wallis?

“Hellenor, are you awake?” Judy asked. She was seated in the row ahead. She turned and looked at Pandy across the top of the seat.

The lump on the back of Pandy’s head throbbed. She winced. Pain. Good, sharp, come-to-your-senses pain. There was nothing like it in an emergency.

“Yes,” she answered, through gritted teeth.

“Would you like some water?” Judy asked.

When Pandy nodded, Judy motioned to someone in the second row to hand her a bottle. Of course. Everyone was trying to be nice. Trying to make poor, bereaved, weird Hellenor feel better.

If only people had treated Hellenor like that before.

Pandy grabbed the bottle of water and drank thirstily.

“Hey, I’ve got good news for you,” Judy said. “Your sister’s first Monica book is number one on Amazon’s bestseller list.”

“Is it?” Pandy asked. She rubbed the back of her head, and nearly screamed when she felt only the slightest stubble. Its texture was like velvet. It would take years for her hair to grow back.

“I think that would have made your sister so happy. Don’t you?”

Pandy took a deep breath. “Would you mind if I used your phone?”

“Of course not,” Judy said. “Please, call anyone you like. But if it beeps, will you hand it right back to me? Because it could be SondraBeth.”

Pandy nodded. She touched Henry’s number on the keypad, but it went right to voice mail. Of course. Henry wasn’t going to answer his phone, especially from an unknown number. She groaned. He must have arrived in Wallis by now. Looking out the window, she spotted those outlying brown brick buildings in the marshes of the Bronx.

Judy’s phone began singing: an aria. “It’s SondraBeth,” Judy said, holding out her hand for the device.

Pandy handed it back. She couldn’t believe that SondraBeth had allowed her former best friend to be taken back by van while she drove her goddamned custom Porsche to Manhattan. If she and SondraBeth had remained friends, Pandy would have been traveling in the front seat with her.

But apparently SondraBeth either still didn’t know Pandy was Pandy, or had a reason to keep up the ruse.

Road trip
, she thought ironically as she tapped Judy on the shoulder for the phone. Judy looked back at her, mystified, then spoke into the phone to SondraBeth. “I think Hellenor wants to speak to you. Do you mind?”

Does she mind?
Pandy thought. She had better
not
mind, she thought as Judy handed her the phone.

“Squeege?” she demanded. “Now listen. I’m happy to see your townhouse. In fact, I’ve been dying to see it ever since it came out in
Architectural Digest
. But someone needs to get in touch with Henry. He’s probably at Wallis House by now—”

“Shhhh,” came a soft whisper.

“Excuse me?” Pandy said.

“Breathe with me, Hellenor.”

“I am breathing.”

“No. I mean, really breathe with me. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth.”

“SondraBeth,” Pandy said, in a panic, “is this a yoga thing? You know how much I hate yoga. I can’t even touch my toes!”

“You sound just like your sister. I have to go now.”

“But—”

SondraBeth clicked off, and Pandy was left staring at a blank screen. She handed the phone to Judy, slid down in her seat, and crossed her arms. For a moment, she was truly speechless. How long was she going to have to play this game?

Pandy looked back out the window and glared. The SUV was now on the Henry Hudson Bridge. Down below, the water was twisting and shining like a Mardi Gras snake. Then it disappeared behind a hump of green, and they were turning a corner.

And once again, there it was: the Monica billboard.

Judy leaned across the seat and held up several strings of glittering gold, green, and purple beads.

“San Geronimo festival,” she said as she lowered the beads over Pandy’s head. “Welcome to Manhattan.”

“Thanks.” Pandy turned her head to stare at Monica until she once again disappeared.

She fingered the beads around her neck.

Monica was still missing her leg.

Twenty minutes later, the van arrived at SondraBeth’s townhouse: a white cube famously designed in the 1960s by a now-forgotten architect. Located on East Sixty-Third Street, it could be reached via a parking garage a block away, thereby allowing its resident to avoid detection by the paparazzi. It was this route that the van took, pulling into a space under the townhouse marked
PRIVATE
.

Judy led Pandy to an inconspicuous metal door with a code pad. The door opened into a short cement corridor. At one end was another door; across the landing was a flight of steps leading up to the first floor of the townhouse.

“The basement,” Judy said, pressing a metal card onto the lock.

The door buzzed open, revealing what appeared to be a sort of bachelor pad. The carpet was an industrial gray, as was the fabric on the large, squishy couch and two overstuffed armchairs. On the wall was a large-screen TV; neatly arranged on the shelves below were a variety of clickers and gaming consoles. Two heavy glass ashtrays were stacked next to a digital clock.

“I think you’ll be really comfortable here,” Judy said. Her headset beeped. “SondraBeth will be back in fifteen. In the meantime, Peter Pepper would like a word. He’s the head of the studio.”

“I know who he is,” Pandy snapped. “And in the meantime, I would like to use the facilities.”

Annoyed once again by this Hellenor business, Pandy stomped down the hall to where Judy had pointed. She passed through a bedroom with the requisite king-sized mattress and even larger TV and into a bathroom the size of a small spa.
Good old PP
, Pandy thought, looking around at the sunken Jacuzzi tub, steam room, and separate his-and-hers toilet stalls.

Now
he
was an interesting development, she decided, going into the “his” stall. She supposed his presence made sense. Naturally the head of the studio would need to be on-site to stage-manage any potential situations concerning
Monica
. On the other hand…

Pandy went to the sink and washed her hands. Patting her face with water, she shook her head.

He might be here because of the clause in her Monica contract.

It stated that in the event of the death of PJ Wallis, the rights to Monica would revert back to her sister, Hellenor. It had been Henry’s idea to insert the clause, his worry being that if Pandy happened to die young, like her parents had, there would be no preventing someone from someday being able to do whatever they wanted with Monica—including using her to sell soap.

She and Henry had dubbed it “the Golden Ticket.” But in any case, it didn’t matter. Because she
wasn’t
dead. And she certainly wasn’t Hellenor.

“Hellenor?” Judy asked, knocking on the bathroom door. “Are you ready?”

“I guess so,” Pandy said, glaring at her still-unfamiliar reflection in the mirror.

Now all she had to do was convince everyone else.

PP was waiting for her upstairs, seated on a stool in front of a long island in the center of an open-plan kitchen.

“Hellenor,” he said, springing to his feet. He clapped her right hand in both of his and squeezed. Hard.

“Ow,” Pandy said.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

“Sure. I’ll take a glass of champagne,” she said sarcastically, taking the stool next to him.

“That sounds good. Chookie?” PP called out. A guy wearing a white chef’s uniform came through a swinging door. “Would you mind getting Ms. Wallis and me a glass of that nice pink champagne SondraBeth always has lying around? And something to eat, perhaps.”

Chookie nodded and vanished into the kitchen, but not before surreptitiously giving Pandy a horrified look, reminding her that she was still dressed in Hellenor’s clothes.

It didn’t matter. PP, she was sure, would soon understand that she was Pandy.

Glaring at Chookie’s retreating back, she turned to PP. He, too, was looking at her curiously, beaming with the sort of forced grin people slapped on their faces when they didn’t know what to think. “Tell me about
you
, Hellenor,” he said. “I’m told you live in Amsterdam?”

Pandy smiled sardonically. Apparently PP
had
been briefed about Hellenor. “You know I do. So why are you asking?”

“Excuse me?” PP said.

“I suppose you’re going to ask next if I wear wooden shoes.”

“Actually, I was going to ask if you spoke Dutch. But then I remembered that most Dutch people speak English.”

Pandy rolled her eyes. She wasn’t sure exactly what PP was up to, but he seemed to really think she
was
Hellenor. She needed to straighten him out on that one right away.

“Now, listen—”

PP held up his hand. “Of course, we can talk about Pandy. If you’d like.”

“Well, I—”

“Your sister was funny. And…pretty.” PP cleared his throat. “In any case, that was her problem. You can’t be funny
and
pretty in Hollywood. Because if you’re going to be funny, you have to be willing to risk looking stupid. Or even
ugly
. But then, you’re no longer pretty. Get what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I most certainly do.” Pandy crossed her arms as Chookie came back through the swinging door bearing the champagne, placed a glass in front of each of them, and disappeared again.

Pandy breathed a sigh of relief as she picked up her glass and held it to her lips. Pink champagne was her favorite drink, and now it was a reminder that she was
not
Hellenor. That all would be fine.

PP lifted his glass. “To Monica,” he said.

Pandy nearly choked, but PP didn’t notice. He kept on smiling away, as if nothing were strange. “Tell me,” he said conversationally, “how much do you know about Monica?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Were you a fan?” he asked cautiously.

“I guess you could say that,” Pandy snapped.

“Good. What was your favorite Monica movie?”

“Movie? What about
book
?” Pandy demanded. She took a larger gulp of champagne. As usual when it came to PP, she was feeling increasingly insulted.

“Book, then. That’s even better. You’re a
real
fan.” PP smiled and put down his glass. “I assume you’ve read them all.”

For a second, Pandy could only gape at him in disbelief. “I know them inside and out.”

PP nodded.

Pandy put down her glass as well. “Now, listen, PP,” she repeated. “You do realize—”

“Shhhh.” PP patted her hand and glanced at the swinging doors.

Right on cue, Chookie came through, setting down a silver tray with tiny sandwiches before retreating once more. Pandy pushed the tray away and looked at PP imploringly. “I am PJ Wallis. I
created
Monica.”

PP stared at her briefly. Then he shook his head.

“I’m—” Pandy tried again, but PP put his hand on her arm to stop her from talking. “There’s been a huge mix-up,” Pandy said desperately. “And no one will believe me.”

Suddenly she had a terrible thought: If she couldn’t be PJ Wallis, she might
as well
be dead. She slumped onto the counter. When would this nightmare end?

PP patted her on the back. “There, there,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “It’s going to be okay. You were so overcome by the death of your sister, for a moment, you thought you
were
her.” He stared at her curiously and then smiled knowingly. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “You were
joking
. You’re funny, too. Just like your sister.”

Pandy wanted to cry. She reminded herself to stay calm. SondraBeth would arrive soon, and she would know that she was Pandy.

“I truly am sorry about your loss. I always liked your sister,” PP said.

Pandy lifted her head and sat up. “Well, that’s funny. Because SondraBeth always said you
hated
Pandy.”

PP suddenly looked incensed, as if he’d been caught out. So he had complained about her to SondraBeth after all.

“I don’t know where SondraBeth got that idea,” PP said. “In any case, I knew her well. Your sister, I mean. She and her husband—that is, her ex-husband—were friends of mine.”

Pandy’s expression froze. Perhaps being Hellenor wasn’t such a bad idea after all. For a few minutes, anyway. In which she might be able to extract information about Jonny from PP.

“Are you still friends with Jonny?” she asked casually.

PP leaned forward conspiratorially. “Frankly, I’d like to strangle the guy. He owes me money.”

“You too, huh?” Pandy said, nodding. Apparently Jonny’s grifting was more extensive than she’d thought.

“Why do women like Pandy marry men like that? She was so…spunky. Confident. Smart. But then she met Jonny and…” PP shrugged. “Why don’t women know to avoid that type of guy?”

“You tell me,” Pandy said, sipping her champagne while thinking that PP was cut from very much the same cloth as Jonny.

“Your sister was quite attractive,” PP said, clearing his throat.

“Yes, she was…” Pandy suddenly became acutely aware of her appearance: dressed in Hellenor’s construction boots and flannel shirt, with her bald pate, she must look like something out of an old
Saturday Night Live
sketch. She flushed in annoyance as she realized that PP was trying to flatter “Hellenor” in order to sway her. Pandy wondered just how far he was willing to go to keep his precious Monica franchise safe.

“Okay, PP,” she said. “Let’s say I
am
Hellenor Wallis. What then?” She reached for the champagne bottle.