Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery (11 page)

“You must seek treatment, Max,” said Dr. Bob, clearly being well-prompted by the third-best intervention counselor on the West Coast.

I looked at him for approval to agree. He nodded his head at me.

“I know you’re right,” I said, but then added in a bursting wail, “but do I have to go away?”

Dr. Bob grinned as he listened to his coach. “Absolutely,” he told me firmly, following the phone interventionist’s directions. “And we have picked out the perfect place for you to recover.” He listened a bit more, then mouthed the word: “Wonders.”

It worked.

Drew mouthed, “Perfect.”

Dr. Bob explained in a whisper, “He’s calling in your special reservation right this minute, and as your doctor, I’ll write up the diagnosis, and then Drew will sign you in.”

“You’ve saved me,” I said loudly. “You both love me so much; you saved me.”

Drew scooted over in the booth and gave me a big hug.

Dr. Bob gave us both the thumbs-up.

And the restaurant burst into a nice cheery round of applause as two dozen eavesdroppers joined our private moment of redemption and joy.

I
need to get back to the hotel and pack,” I said to Drew and Dr. Bob, as I pushed on the Grill’s front door.

Outside on the pavement, three dozen crazed paparazzi began screaming our names.

“That’s not possible, Mother,” Drew was saying, following close on my Moschino heels. “You’ve got to go straight to re—”

Drew bumped into me, dazzled into silence by the sudden burst of late-night floodlights and the attack of flashbulbs. The clicking and name shouting were a shock after the quiet of the restaurant. We never get this sort of attention from the media. Not on a Monday night. Never.

“Drew! Max! Over here!” one of the regular guys from
TMZ
called to me from behind his videocam. “Max, who’s the lucky man?”

“A new lover?” asked another pap. A burst of strobe lights went off as I turned to see the always dapper Dr. Bob exiting the Grill.

“Or is he Drew’s new boyfriend?” called another one.

“No,” I said, laughing. “This gentleman is my old friend Dr. Robert Hopeman, the best surgeon in Beverly Hills. He’s an artist. Spell his name right—H-O-P-E-M-A-N.”

One by one, the strobes stopped reflecting wildly off the ruggedly bald head of Dr. Bob, and the reporters returned to us.

“We all admire you, Max,” continued the
TMZ
reporter. “Admitting you’ve got a problem is the first step. Would you care to talk about it?”

“Problem?” I stared into the bright lights. They knew! “No, no, boys. You have been misinformed. I don’t really have—”

“Max!” a woman’s voice cut through the garble of other reporters on the scene. Devon Jones? Why had
Entertainment Tonight
sent one of their star anchors to ambush me in this alley in Beverly Hills at 11 p.m. on a quiet Monday night? Devon, her blond hair recently coiffed, gave me a concerned look. “We know the truth, dear.
Everybody knows
. You don’t have to lie.”

Dr. Bob pulled up in the Jag just at that moment, and Drew opened the back door for me, and we both piled inside. As we pulled away from the entrance, we could hear Devon talking loudly to her camera, wrapping up her piece. “And the sad news doesn’t end. First Halsey Hamilton succumbs to her addictions. And now, dear comedy legend Maxine Taylor…”

As we pulled farther away, I exploded, “That bitch!”

“Mom, it’s okay.” Drew patted my hand. “You are a big star.
Of course the world is going to take notice. She’s just doing her job, spinning her story.”

“But did you hear? She called me a ‘legend.’”

Dr. Bob and Drew both got quiet.

“I do not intend to budge from ‘star’ to ‘legend’ for at least another thirty years,” I yelled back at the fast-receding curb, where no one could hear me. “How old does that whore think I am?”

Drew grabbed my hand just before my emphatic gesture made it outside the car window. “But the good news is, they are all buying our little story.”

“About the substance abuse,” agreed Dr. Bob as he cut away and headed east down Wilshire. “And so now we’re going to Pasadena.”

“No!” I had sobered up a lot since we had hatched our scheme. What the hell had we been thinking? Those damned blood-orange martinis. “Let’s get a grip. No one panic. Just take me back to the hotel.”

Drew withdrew her hand as Dr. Bob looked at me. I stared him down. Slowly he turned his car around and began heading west. In the dark of the car interior Drew asked, “You are not letting me down, are you?”

“It’s a crazy thing to do.” I waited for her to agree. “Come on, Drew.”

She sat there in silence for a while. When she began to speak, I had to lean forward to catch her words. “When Burke and I were first dating, he brought me one yellow rose.” She looked up. “Just one.”

I nodded. I don’t think Drew had ever before told me any stories about her boyfriends or her romantic life. It was one of the subjects she kept closely locked away. Perhaps, because I make
jokes for a living, she needs to hold on to her privacy. Perhaps she just never truly trusted me again after the divorce from her father and after he later died. But I held my breath, hoping for more.

“Well,” she continued, “I thought it was sweet. I mean obviously he could have bought me dozens of roses—he had the money—but he chose just that one perfect rose. We were falling in love, and I hadn’t felt anything like it before, Mom. Even with Cameron in high school, when I was sure I was in love. And even with Asher…”

Drew had been a popular girl in high school and later at the University of Pennsylvania. She dated plenty. I had liked her high school boyfriend, Cameron Dewey, even if I thought he was more likely to get snapped up by Ford Models and move to Europe to do exotic photo shoots than get serious about my daughter. And Asher, her main boyfriend senior year in college, had been nice, but a guy who spent every summer in Washington, D.C., trying to work his way into a political job just couldn’t give Drew the attention I thought she deserved. But that’s me, the mother, talking. I held my tongue now and listened.

Drew said, “He really loved me, Mother. He said the yellow rose was me because it was beautiful, but also because it was a little sad. A little lonely.”

My heart ached. Had my Drew known that sort of pain?

“And he said he wasn’t good enough for me. He said he knew I would never be able to love him the way he loved me. But that he always would. No matter what happened.” Drew blinked quickly, no tear falling. “So I told him we would make it work. And I would never let him down.”

“I see.”

“And I won’t, Mom. No matter that we couldn’t seem to stay
together as a couple. Lots of things got in our way. Life isn’t simple.”

“Don’t I know.”

“So we’re at a terrible time. Who knows what may happen in the future? Burke and I may get back together, but maybe we won’t. No matter what happens, I’ll be there for him. I promised him. I know what it feels like when someone you count on disappears, Mother.” She stared at me as if in challenge.

I let it pass. Every child has slights she holds on to, doesn’t she? Every family has a certain burden of past misunderstandings.

Drew continued, “Burke was the one who held me when I felt lonely until I didn’t feel lonely anymore.”

I reached over and gave my lovely daughter a quick hug. I know it couldn’t take away the kind of loneliness she had been speaking about. Perhaps we all have that loneliness in us but are too hung up to admit it.

By then, we were heading up the dark canyon roads back to the Hotel Bel-Air. Dr. Bob steered the Jag up a half-hidden side road to the curb right in front of my suite, so quiet in its garden setting.

“So.” He turned back to face us from the front seat. “Should I wait here in the car for you to pack? I’ll just call Sheree and let her know what’s up.”

“Not tonight, Dr. Bob,” I said.

Drew pulled herself free from my hug.

I said, “Don’t worry, Drew. I’ll go to Wonders in the morning. I’ll check myself in, and I’ll turn that place upside down looking for all the deepest secrets that Halsey may have been keeping. Whom she was sleeping with, whom she was fighting with, whom
she confided in at the clinic, and how she could have ruined her sobriety. If Burke is innocent of any wrongdoing where Halsey is concerned, I’ll get the facts, just like I promised I would.” And if he wasn’t innocent, I’d find that out too. Yellow rose or no yellow rose, I’d protect my daughter from that joker, even if she couldn’t protect her own heart.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“But I have just been called a ‘legend’ on national television, and now this ‘legend’ needs her rest. Just give me a few good hours, then Malulu will pack my things in the morning and we’ll be off to rehab.”

“I’ll come back and get you,” offered Drew, whether from thoughtfulness or from the instincts of a warden who may have a twitchy prisoner, I couldn’t say.

I kissed her cheek. “Okay. Come at ten.”

Dr. Bob said, “Well, I’d better call back the interventionist right away. Get him to move the reservation for check-in to tomorrow.”

Drew took my hand again. “I really appreciate you going through with this, Mom. And don’t worry. Wonders is located in a fabulous old Pasadena mansion up on the Arroyo. The rooms are supposed to be to-die-for gorgeous. You’ll check in. You’ll have a facial. You’ll chat with the women you meet there. They’ll love you. You’re Max Taylor.”

“Okay, honey. Don’t oversell. The only reason I’m doing any of this is because I love you.” I opened the door of the Jaguar.

“Oh, dear,” said Dr. Bob into his cell phone.

We both looked at him.

Drew whispered, “Is that the interventionist?”

He nodded to us, then said into his phone, “I don’t think she’s backing down. No, she really isn’t…Denial…Yes, I hear you.” He shrugged his shoulders to us. “No, not after she made so much progress admitting her addiction, I see.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone and said to us, “We’ve got problems. They don’t want to see you backslide when you are so close to detox.”

This was nuts. “Tell them I need to pack my bag. Take a shower.”

Dr. Bob shook his head as if none of that had been working.

“Good Lord!” I whispered to Drew.

Drew held up a finger and got Dr. Bob’s attention. “My mother wants to pray. She’s going to be praying all night long.”

Dr. Bob relayed the message to the interventionist on the phone, and we waited. Then Bob said, “Good. Splendid. Yes, we don’t want to upset her spiritual…um…flow. No.” He gave us a thumbs-up. “I promise. I’ll camp out in front of her hotel suite all night…. No? Okay, I’ll go with her into her suite and stay on her sofa.” He listened. “I hear you. I certainly won’t allow Max to have any access to her substance until we can bring her to Wonders in the morning…. Good. Thank you so much.”

Drew shook her head in admiration as Dr. Bob disconnected from the call. “The third-best celebrity intervention counselor on the West Coast—he’s a ballbuster.”

Dr. Bob nodded. “Don’t kid yourself. These guys are cutthroat out here. You’re a big get, Max. He’ll be making a move up to number two on the basis of your recovery alone.”

“So, Mom,” Drew said sternly. “Stay off your damned
substance
!”

Dr. Bob looked stricken. “Which reminds me—what substance is it going to be, Max? I have to write up a diagnosis tonight.”

They both looked at me.

“Can we just say I’m addicted to…Sweet’n Low?”

“Mother! Be serious!”

Dr. Bob raised an eyebrow. “Sweet’n Low? You mean the little pink packets?”

Drew stared. “You plan to say you’re addicted to artificial sweeteners?”

“Well”—I looked at both of them defensively—“I have been meaning to cut down.”

I
heard Malulu Vai calling my name, her bell-like voice echoing through the vast and gilded Great Hall in Buckingham Palace. Her Samoan-accented “Mrs. Livingston!” floated over the parquet floors, past Prince Philip, past Queen Elizabeth—who was at that very moment smiling and nodding over a rather clever joke I had just made—past my exquisite Harry Winston emerald earring, through my ear canal, and down, down into my brain.
“Mrs. Livingst—”

I opened one eye. It was pitch-black outside my window. The readout on the digital clock next to my bed read 4:17.

“Sorry, sorry, Mrs.,” Malulu said, bending over me as I lay tucked sweetly under the lace-edged Frette sheets. “It’s a big emergency. On the telephone. So sorry, Mrs. L.”

Oh my Lord. Had they arrested Burke? Never mind Burke, had they arrested
Drew
?

I shot awake, swatting at several pillows, stuffing them all behind me as I sat up in bed. “Who’s on the phone?” I asked, my middle-of-the-night voice sounding not a bit croakier than my middle-of-the-day voice typically sounds.

Malulu took over the job of tucking in pillows and straightening the comforter. “It’s your Mr. Lukes.”

I tried to open my eye. My manager was on the phone at 4:17 a.m.?

Steve Lukes had achieved that rarefied personal talent manager status where he had only a few clients now, all of us working hard. He’d dropped several dozen midsize names over the years and specialized in representing only his closest pals. Steve and I had been together forever, through the good times and the meh times. He was larger-than-life in personality as well as in his waist-band, the sort of man they built Big and Tall men’s stores for, and a good day for Steve was checking the sale rack and finding Hawaiian shirts in size XXXL.

Steve had been out of the country for the past ten days, off on some cockamamy vacation on tiny Bazaruto Island. He was having the time of his life, I’m sure, but I was becoming less and less happy. Look, I had a storm of publicity to manage, a ton of interview requests, and where was Steve? His latest vacation destination was a pristine speck of sand forty kilometers off the coast of freaking Mozambique. It was so far off the map that Steve had virtually no cell reception, was in a time zone that made me dizzy trying to compute it, and, to top it off, held the promise of fairly atrocious, shell-laden souvenirs to come.

Malulu turned on the bedside light and handed me the phone.

“Emergency?” I squawked at Steve, skipping any intros. “It better be that you are being currently turned over a spit.” I imagined headhunters, and it gave me a little satisfaction.

“Maxine, my lovely,” said Steve, his cheerful booming voice coming through the phone receiver as loud and clear as if he were calling me from Brentwood. “Malulu tells me it’s O-dark-thirty over there by you in Bel-Air. Sorry to wake you.”

He was sorry to wake me?

He piped on, “Don’t worry, my darling. I have been making merry plans for you, even whilst on my vacation.” He proceeded to tell me all about the mind-numbing difficulties he had overcome in dealing with the avalanche of offers that were simply pouring in on my behalf. “Here I am, all the way around the world, and you are so hot, Max, the world is barking at my door, desperate. They found me here on Bazaruto and will not leave me alone.”

“But, Steve, how is this possible? You keep telling me you have no phones,” I said, suspicious that he had miraculously been accessible to everyone but me for the past week and a half.

“My iPhone is worthless here!” he beamed across the ether. “There are no phones at all in my simple hut above the sand, but has that stopped the world, Max? I have been tracked down. The poor manager at the Indigo Bay has simply had to turn over his office to me for the past twenty-four hours. You are hot, my darling!”

“How hot?”

“They want you to do the next Bond movie hot.”

I gasped, now fully awake. “As M?”

“They’re thinking up a new letter,” Steve said airily. “There have been calls from all four networks. There are guest shots. There are pilots. Do you want to host a game show, my love?”

“What’s going on?” Only two days ago, I was fairly sure I was going to have trouble negotiating with Glam-TV for the next three years of
Red Carpet Special
s. But game shows? Pilots? Bond, James Bond?

Steve explained, “You are sitting on the hottest story in the world. Hell, Max, even here in Africa everyone is speculating about what happened to Halsey. Do you know?”

“I will know a lot more in a day or so.”

“Good. The more you know, the more valuable the deal I will make for you to spill it all. Don’t say a word to anyone until the deal is done.”

“That goes without saying.”

“And then, my dear Max, your wonderful and brave admission of addiction.” I could hear the awe in his voice clearly. “You are braver than Amy Winehouse.”

Wait a minute. He was lying on a hammock under a palm tree in the middle of the goddamned Indian Ocean, and he had already heard about that? “You know?”

“It’s so damned hip, Max. You are fresh. You are youthful. You’re going to
rehab
. Do you have a tattoo?”

“Yes, of a large, hairy man being roasted by natives in coconut oil.”

“Hell, I wish I’d thought this up myself. And your timing couldn’t be more perfect. Look, you go and dry out. Get all better, sweetie. And leave all the deals to me.”

“Uh, Steve, do you actually think I’m on drugs? I mean, we’ve worked together for twenty years. Have you
ever in your life seen me
…?”

“No need to explain. You certainly fooled me.”

I punched a pillow. “I’m not an addict, Steve. This is just…well, it’s just a little game.”

“A game? You sly fox. You are a genius. I always knew it. But, please, just keep that your little secret and have some fun in rehab. I’m about to make some major moves, and I don’t want you spoiling anything by showing up somewhere, God forbid, sober.”

“Okay.”

“Will you do Larry King before you check in?”

“No, Steve.”

“Where are they taking you?”

“Wonders in Pasadena.”

“Make them give you the Passion Fruit room,” he advised. “Morning sun and not near the noisy tennis courts.”

“You know the place?” I asked, amazed.

“Sweetie, don’t ask.”

We talked a little more business, then I hung up. Wide-awake now, I decided I might as well get up and pack my bags. Ah, what to take for a few days in recovery? This was a new wardrobe challenge. I thought my gray velvet yoga pants and hoodie might hit just the right note of sorry-but-sporty and jumped out of bed to find it.

A tap at my bedroom door, and then Malulu peeked her head in. “You still up, Mrs. L?”

“I need my luggage.” I opened my underwear drawer and considered which bra looked the most penitent.

“Yes, I get your bags. But you have another phone call now. It’s Sir Ian calling from England. Dat mon he is very worried, I think.”

Ian. Oh, shoot. How was my proper British boyfriend dealing with the breaking news that his lady was, unbeknownst to him, hitting bottom? I should have called him. I should have warned him.

I rushed to the extension next to my bed. “Hello, is that you, Ian?”

“Who else would it bloody well be? You have a problem, a serious problem, and you don’t tell me? I’m hurt. Did you think I would condemn you? Well, I certainly would not!”

Five minutes of soothing and explaining usually do the trick between Ian and me. This time it took ten. Then I threw myself into the packing chores while Malulu, unable to sleep while I was still awake, went off to do a bit of baking.

Killer, unaccustomed to any activity at that time of morning, lay out at my feet and snoozed.

Three hours flew by, and I was seated at the dining room table, nibbling on freshly baked scones, when I heard the chimes at the door to my suite. Killer raised his little head and growled. I felt a momentary clutch in the pit of my stomach. Drew arriving to take me away.

But instead, Cindy Chow, wearing white jeans in February, was ushered in, and Malulu offered to pour her a cup of coffee.

“Max, I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this. At such a time. I mean, you have much more important things to worry about.”

“What, me worry?”

“Well,” she said in a little voice, “it came as quite a shock to
me. But I saw Devon Jones’s piece about your personal struggle on ABC this morning.”

“Sit down. Have a scone.”

“Anyway,” she rushed on, “I know things could have gone a little better on the red carpet.” She watched me put down my scone. “Okay. A lot better. But I went home and watched our show all the way through—”

“You mean until that bastard Will pulled the plug on my full interview with Halsey?”

“Yes. What was with him? The moron! Yes, until then. And you were wonderful, Max. Of course, that goes without saying. In fact, I think you may have been the funniest I’ve ever seen you. And maybe that was due to the fact that so much was, you know, whirling around.” Cindy’s euphemism for her inability to hang on to an A-lister made me cough up a little piece of scone.

Cindy looked at her French tips. “I know I let you down.”

“Yesterday’s news,” I said kindly. I had always liked Cindy. But, to be brutally honest, I had to ask myself, had her fangs dulled a bit? Putting sentiment aside, I would have to think carefully about who would best fill the wrangler position for next year’s red carpet show.

“I’m here begging, Max,” she said, putting her hand over her pink stretch T-shirt, over her heart. “Begging for another chance. Can you find it in your heart to let me try again?”

“Listen, Cindy, things always work out. You know what I’m saying? Maybe Glam won’t even pick up my option to do next year’s red carpet. It’s that kind of town. Who knows?”

“But you’re so hot right now. What about the new celebrity fashion series you’re going to do for ABC?” she blurted out. Even I hadn’t heard of that one yet. Oh, rumors of my newly ignited
“heat” must be spreading like wildfire across the back lots, setting off little sparks, since everyone in this town needed a job.

I eyed her carefully. “But that reminds me. There is something you could do to help me out.”

“I can? What? Anything I can do, Max.”

“Tell me exactly what you saw in the backseat of Halsey’s limo.”