“Not long,” Leigh said, wincing as he settled himself close beside her on the sofa, but her attention was on Jane, who had stopped at a mirror to inspect her flawless face.
In the tradition of the Barrymores, four successive generations of the Sebring family had become theater legends. Jane was the first member of her illustrious family ever to be regarded as extraordinarily beautiful; she was also the first member of her family to be savaged by theater critics in her first Broadway role. In reality, she’d simply debuted in a major role that was far too challenging for an inexperienced actress of twenty-one, but she’d been given that opportunity because she was a Sebring. And because she was a Sebring, the critics had held her to the impossibly high standards set by her more experienced, and far less gorgeous, famous ancestors.
Two weeks after the play opened, she left it in disgrace and went to Hollywood. There, her family’s contacts opened doors for her, and her stunning face and figure mesmerized the cameras. With good direction and good editing, her performances improved along with her roles, culminating in an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress last year.
Her Oscar gave Jane a stature in films that her forebears had never achieved in their motion picture careers, but that wasn’t enough. Apparently still wounded by her long-ago humiliation on Broadway, she’d passed up two stellar film opportunities and a fortune in money in order to take a role in Blind Spot.
“You poor thing!” Jane said as she put her cheek near Leigh’s and blew a kiss in the air; then she straightened and did her own inventory of the fading bruises and healing cuts on Leigh’s face. “You’ve been through so much since opening night—”
Hoping to avoid probing questions about the details of what she’d been through, Leigh resorted to formalities by asking them if Hilda could bring them something to drink.
“I’ll have my usual,” Jason said, looking over his shoulder at Hilda, who he knew from experience would be hovering nearby, ready to bring refreshments. “A vodka martini,” he clarified, “with two olives.”
“Jane?” Leigh asked.
“I don’t drink,” Jane reminded her, her expression gently chiding Leigh for failing to remember that Jane did not drink alcohol. Although past generations of the Sebring family had all been as notorious for their vices as for their talent, Jane Sebring had none of their predilection for excesses. She did not drink or smoke, she abhorred drugs, and she was a physical-fitness fanatic. “I’ll have some bottled water, if you have it.”
“We do,” Leigh said.
“I prefer Weltzenholder,” Jane added. “It’s bottled in the Alps. They only export a thousand cases a year to the U.S. I buy one hundred cases at a time.”
“I’m sorry, but the other nine hundred cases went to someone other than us,” Leigh said lightly. “What else would you like?”
“Pellegrino will be fine.”
Leigh nodded and looked at Hilda. “I’d like tea, Hilda. Thank you.”
Jason watched Hilda as if to make sure she was out of earshot before he asked a question, but Hilda was completely trustworthy. Jane was the fascinated outsider who would repeat and embellish everything she heard to friends, strangers, and reporters alike. Leigh could have strangled him for bringing her along.
“What news have you heard about Logan?” he asked Leigh as soon as Hilda disappeared beyond a doorway.
“Nothing. You know as much as I do.”
He looked genuinely shocked. “Darling, this is unbelievable, impossible! What could have happened to him?”
He died. . . . I know it. . . . He died. . . . I know it. . . . Leigh tensed her entire body in an effort to block out the terrible chant pounding in her brain. “I don’t know.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Leigh shook her head. “The police are doing everything they possibly can. Commissioner Trumanti has sent helicopters, squad cars, and detectives into the mountains to search for him.”
“What about you? How are you feeling? Really?”
“I’m stiff and sore, and I look like hell, but that’s all that’s wrong. Other than the fact that my husband is d—missing,” she corrected, struggling to recover from another tidal wave of despondency and grief.
Jason fell silent, looking helpless and forlorn and completely empathetic, but only for a moment. His expression cleared almost immediately and he broached a topic that affected his own personal well-being and therefore was of maximum importance to him. “Do you think it would help you to come back to work soon?”
“Physically, I could probably manage it next week—”
“Fantastic! That’s my girl! You’re a trooper. I knew I could count on you to—!”
“But not mentally,” Leigh interrupted emphatically. “I can’t think of anything except Logan. I wouldn’t even be able to remember my lines.”
“They would come back to you the minute you stepped onstage.”
“Maybe they would,” Leigh said, letting her gaze shift to Jane, “but I don’t have one bit of emotion left over to invest in them. You understand, don’t you, Jane?”
“Perfectly,” Jane said. “I even tried to explain to Jason how you’d be feeling right now, but you know how all-important the play is to him.” To Leigh’s surprise, the actress actually seemed disgusted as she added bluntly, “Jason wouldn’t care if you were on life support, so long as they could unplug you and prop you up long enough to say your lines.”
“That’s not completely true,” Jason said, looking stung. “I’d restage your scenes so you could say your lines lying down.” He paused long enough to take his martini glass from the tray Hilda was holding out to him. “I’m a selfish bastard,” he declared with an impenitent grin. “But you have to admit,” he added with a wink at Leigh, “I’m a brilliant selfish bastard.”
Leigh assumed he was making a lame attempt to amuse and distract her, and she managed to give him a wan smile.
With no verbal reply from Leigh to encourage further banter, Jason stopped talking about himself and regaled her with a discussion of his play’s fabulous reviews, box office sales, and lighting problems, and followed that with an irate description of his latest quarrel with the play’s director. Leigh let him talk, but his words never actually registered on her. Reclining against the arm of the sofa, she watched his mouth move, and she looked automatically toward Jane when the other woman spoke, but she had little idea of what they were saying and even less interest in it.
When Jane finally stood up to leave, Leigh realized that she was going to have to deal with Jason alone, and she almost regretted the actress’s impending departure.
“Robert and Lincoln asked me to give you their love,” Jane told her.
Leigh hadn’t given a single thought to any of the actors in Blind Spot until that moment. “Please give them mine. Did Robert’s wife have their baby yet?”
“Yes, a little girl.”
In an effort to hasten Jane’s departure, Jason headed for the closet in the foyer, where Hilda had hung their coats. Removing Jane’s sable coat from its hanger, he held it up like a matador waving his cape. “Jane, you’re going to be late for the matinee!” He jiggled the coat for emphasis. “Darling, get your famous ass into your coat so you can get going.”
“Has he always been this obnoxious?” Jane asked Leigh as she gave her hand a farewell squeeze.
Startled by the undercurrent of genuine animosity in Jane’s voice, Leigh said, “He’s under a lot of stress right now. Don’t take it personally. He has a play with two strong female roles and only one established actress to fill them.”
Instead of replying to that, Jane hesitated, glanced at Jason, and then said awkwardly, “Actually, I came here today because there was something I wanted to say to you, face-to-face. I want you to know that I am deeply sorry about your accident. I won’t pretend that I haven’t been dying to play your role from the moment I read Blind Spot, but I wanted to win the role on my own merit, not by default and not by tragedy.”
&n
bsp; To Leigh’s surprise, she believed her. Jane was notoriously ambitious and self-centered, but she was not exuding her usual glamorous self-confidence. She looked tense and a little tired, and she actually winced when she looked at Leigh’s face. “At least you won’t need surgery.”
“No, and I’m sure you’ll have many leading roles if you decide to stay in New York instead of going back to Hollywood.”
It wasn’t until after Jane left that Leigh realized Jane had used the word “tragedy” to describe Logan’s disappearance.
“Now,” Jason enthused as soon as he closed the door behind Jane, “we can talk and talk and talk!”
Leigh honestly didn’t know how she was going to endure another two minutes of Jason’s rapid-fire banter, let alone another hour or two of it. She didn’t know how he could expect her to care about anything he was saying, and she didn’t know how she was going to concentrate on whatever it was. Hilda’s announcement offered her an unexpected solution: “Courtney Maitland wants to come up and see you,” she said from the kitchen doorway. “She’s very insistent. She says she’s going to steal an elevator key to get up here and pitch a tent in the foyer if you won’t let her come in for a few minutes.”
Leigh actually smiled at the very real possibility of Courtney’s doing exactly that. On the other hand, if Courtney was there, she would deflect some of Jason’s conversation. “Tell her to come up, Hilda.”
“Who is Courtney Maitland?” Jason demanded, looking less than pleased at the prospect of having to share Leigh’s company with anyone else.
“She’s a teenager who is staying with a family in my building while she takes a special course at school. I met her several weeks ago in the lobby.”
“I detest children in general,” Jason replied, “and adolescents in particular.”
“This particular ‘adolescent’ has a genius IQ, and I think she’s wonderful.”
Chapter 23
* * *
Jason was in the kitchen, showing Hilda how to prepare what he wanted to eat for lunch, when Courtney Maitland arrived, so Joe O’Hara went to the front door to let her in. “I’ll tell Courtney to keep it short,” he told Leigh.
“No, don’t do that. I’d like her to stay for a while.”
“Just don’t let her talk you into playing gin rummy with her,” he said, opening the door, “because she cheats.”
“I do not,” Courtney retorted, stepping into the foyer.
Over her shoulder, Leigh smiled at the sixteen-year-old’s latest fashion statement. Tall, slim, and flat-chested, she was wearing her permed dark hair pulled up into a thick ponytail over her left ear, a red woolen scarf around her neck, a sweatshirt that said Nirvana, a pair of jeans with huge holes in the knees and thighs, and a pair of combat boots, unlaced. For earrings, she’d chosen what appeared to be three-inch-long gold safety pins.
“I didn’t realize you and Joe knew each other,” Leigh said.
“I hung around up here while you were in the hospital,” Courtney explained. “It was the only way I could find out anything.”
In front of the sofa, Courtney gazed down at Leigh’s face, and it was the first time Leigh had ever seen her look solemn, but her remark was typically and refreshingly irreverent. “Wow,” she said. “When I saw the pictures of your car on TV being brought back here on a wrecker, I thought you’d look like you’d been in a really bad accident.”
“How do I look?”
“Like you’ve been rollerblading,” she said with an impish grin. “On your face.”
Leigh laughed, and the sound of it seemed foreign and unfamiliar to her.
“Do you have company?” Courtney asked as Jason’s voice drifted in from the kitchen. “If you do, I can come back later.”
“No, don’t go. In fact, you’ll be doing me a favor if you stay. The man who is here is a good friend who thinks that conversation is just what I need, but I’m having a little trouble concentrating on the subjects that interest him right now.”
O’Hara had been standing close by, waiting to ask Courtney if she wanted something to drink. “Why don’t you let Courtney play gin rummy with him,” he said crossly. “He’ll be flat broke in a half hour and need to borrow money for a taxi.”
Courtney gave him a disgusted look. “I will be on my very best behavior,” she promised Leigh. “I will listen to him very attentively and say all the right things.”
“Just be yourself. I’m not worried about anything you may say. I’m worried about what Jason may say in front of you.”
“Really? That’s a switch. My father usually breaks into a cold sweat whenever I walk into a room with strangers in it.” To O’Hara she said, “If you want to try to win your money back, I’ll give you a chance later, in the kitchen.”
“I’ll go find an ATM machine in the meantime. You want your usual—Coke with a maraschino cherry and a shot of chocolate syrup?”
“My God, that sounds vile!” Jason said, walking in with a plate in his right hand and a martini in his left.
Leigh introduced them to each other. “Courtney is enrolled in a special writing program at Columbia for gifted high school students,” she told Jason as he put his plate and drink on the coffee table. With one glance, he took in the teenager’s tattered jeans and well-worn combat boots, and dismissed her with a shrug. “Good,” he said without a trace of interest.
Leigh flinched at his rudeness. “Courtney, this is Jason Solomon, who wrote Blind Spot.”
“It got great reviews when Leigh was in it,” she said, sitting down carefully on Leigh’s sofa.
Jason frowned at her casual use of Leigh’s first name and then addressed her in the superior tone of an adult lecturing a backward eight-year-old. “Miss Kendall,” he emphasized, “is a very fine actress, but it takes more than fine acting to make a Broadway play a critical success.”
Instead of replying, Courtney snapped her fingers, jumped up, and headed for the kitchen. “I forgot to tell O’Hara to skip the ice in my Coke.”
As soon as he thought she was out of earshot, Jason leaned forward. “Do you know the couple she’s staying with in your building?”
“No.”
“Well, you ought to warn them. I know another wealthy couple who let an impoverished student move in with them while she went to school. The girl seduced their son when he came home for Christmas, she got pregnant, and it cost them a fortune to pay her off. She wanted the boy to marry her! Girls like Courtney have big social ambitions. They attend school on scholarships while trying to ingratiate themselves with wealthy, unsuspecting families like the one she’s staying with—” He glanced over his shoulder, saw Courtney coming toward them with a Coke in her hand, and broke off.
Leigh considered setting him straight, but she was so disappointed in his assumptions that she decided to either let Courtney handle it or let him go on thinking whatever he wanted. She smiled at Courtney as she sat down on the sofa. “Did you find out what your journalism class assignment is yet—the assignment that’s going to account for half your final grade?”
Courtney nodded. “We have to interview the most famous or influential person we can possibly get access to, and the harder it normally is to get an interview with that person, the higher our grade will be. Grades will also be based on the quality of the interview, the uniqueness of the ‘slant’ we take for the interview, the quality of any new or unusual information we extract from that person, and the overall quality of our reporting. Only one A will be given. I have the highest average in the class right now, but not by a big margin, so the pressure is really on me.”
“Do you have any idea who you want to interview?”
She shot Leigh a guilty smile. “You were the first person I thought of, but we’re supposed to really dig around for . . . well . . . new information, buried secrets, things no one else has discovered in their interviews. Even if you had any deep, dark secrets, I wouldn’t want to betray them to anyone.”
“Thank you for that,” Leigh said w
ith a relieved sigh. “Who else do you have in mind?”
“No one yet. Camille Bingley is going to interview Archbishop Lindley—he’s a friend of her dad’s. She thinks she might be able to get him to reveal new things about the problems in the Catholic Church right now. Brent Gentner’s father is a friend of Senator Kennedy’s, and Brent is positive he can get an interview with the senator.” She paused to sip her drink. “In order for me to outdo Camille and Brent, I’d have to get an interview with the pope or the president.”
Jason’s voice was amused. “Do you think you could pull that off?”
“If I wanted to. The problem is that the pope is really sick, and the president already gives lots of interviews—”
“Even if that weren’t true, they might be a little difficult for you to reach,” Jason pointed out condescendingly.
Courtney gaped at him as if she couldn’t believe anyone was as obtuse as he. “I wouldn’t telephone them myself. I would call Noah and ask him to do it.”
“Noah—as in ‘the ark’?” Jason joked.
“Noah—as in my brother.”
“I see. Your brother, Noah, has a direct line to the pope and the president?”
“I’m not sure about the pope. We’re not Catholic, but Noah donated the land where—”
Suddenly Jason tied her brother’s first name to Courtney’s last name, and came up with the name of a renowned Florida billionaire. “Your brother is Noah Maitland?” he exclaimed.
“Yes.”
“The Noah Maitland?”
“I’m sure there are others. I don’t think Noah has copyrighted his name yet. He’s probably tried, though,” she added with an irreverent grin.