Night Hunter (11 page)

“
Girls!” she called out.

They took longer to respond this time. But when they came through her doorway, their footsteps dragging, their expressions wary, they suddenly perked up.

“
Wow, fantastic,” they said in unison.

Tammy sighed deeply, then smiled. “Really?”

“
Honest.” Sherry moved in closer leaning forward to stare at her mother’s face. “Does it hurt?”

“
Like a bitch.”

Kerry came forward. “It looks like a sunburn.”

“
That’s all it is,” Tammy said matter-of-factly as she began to put on her clothes, “a sunburn. Silly me, I fell asleep while catching some rays.”

She wriggled into a sleeveless, mini bodyskimmer in jade green leather. While Tammy crouched down, Sherry did up the zipper and fastened the clasp at the back of the mock turtleneck. She slipped on a pair of pink pumps, pink-and-jade drop earrings that nearly reached her shoulders, and a half dozen plastic bangles.

“
Wow.” Kerry’s eyes grew wide. “You look like Madonna.”

“
Yeah?” Tammy said with a wily grin, looking from one daughter to the other. “Not too young for me?”

“
Uh-uh. No way,” they said with nine-year-old naiveté.

“
So all’s well. What’s a little burn on the face —Right?”

When Regina left the station at noon to go home to her new apartment, she had no idea that at two o’clock she’d still be indecisive as to what she was going to wear for her television debut. She had planned to wear what she had put on that morning--a white shirt under a red safari jacket with a mid-calf, khaki skirt. Donna had teased her, saying the show was a look at yesterday’s beauty contestants today, not an endorsement for a safari to Kenya.

Wearing her terry robe, she was tossing clothes on the bed when she heard Kristy come into the apartment. A moment later her daughter stood in the doorway, watching her.

“
I knew you’d need me,” Kristy said, crossing the room. She picked distastefully through the drab cotton skirts and khaki jackets, then took her mother by the hand and pulled. “Kristy to the rescue.”

“
What are you doing?”

“
Follow me.”

In Kristy’s pastel room with the white wicker furniture and the floral chintz curtains and matching spread, she sorted through the clothes in her closet.

“
Let’s get real,” Regina said.

“
We’re the same size. Only I’m proud to be female.” She held up a red miniskirted T-shirt dress, shook her head and put it back. She pulled out a three-piece outfit. “Here we go. You love this.”

“
On you.”

“
Try it on.”

Regina stared at Kristy for several moments before finally taking the offered outfit. She unzipped her robe, let it fall to the floor, then pulled the teal tee over her head. She stepped into the bronze sarong skirt and zipped it up. Over the two pieces went the jacquard-pattern jacket in a primitive print of bronze, teal, red, and yellow.

“
Mom, it looks rad on you.”

Regina eyed her skeptically. “Is that good?”

“
Have a look.” She pointed to the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

Regina gazed into the mirror. She had to admit the outfit did look chic on her—or did she look chic in the outfit? She’d forgotten how thin she was. And she seldom wore skirts that showed all of her calves and a good portion of knee.

“
Phase two,” Kristy said.

Within minutes Regina was in the bathroom sitting on the clothes hamper as Kristy wound her hair on hot rollers before going to work on her face.

A half hour later Regina stood again at the full-length mirror. She was stunned by what she saw. But she wasn’t sure she liked it.

“
It’s too much,” she said about the makeup. “I feel like a hooker.”

“
You look like a movie star. I should be jealous. You look young enough to be my sister.”

She did look younger. The hairstyle had a tame, yet abandoned, appearance. With her hair completely off her face, her hazel eyes, with a light touch of smoke-gray shadow, glowed warm and sultry.

Up to that point Kristy’d had full reign in the make-over of her mother. But Regina had put her foot down concerning the red lipstick. She blotted it away and chose a rose tinted gloss instead.

“
One last thing,” Kristy said, digging through her jewelry box. She pulled out a pair of hammered bronze hoop earrings.

As Regina put them on, Kristy lifted the collar on the jacket, then pushed the sleeves to the elbow. Regina turned one last time to the mirror.

“
Oh, Mom, you look super sensational. If you entered the Miss Classic Pageant today, you’d win hands down.”

Regina laughed, but at the mention of the pageant a dark cloud seemed to pass over her.

She shivered.

After twenty-two rings, Donna hung up the phone and sank back in her office chair. Would Corinne show or stand them up?

They taped at 4:00. It was 2:50 and still there was no answer at her house. Donna had started calling moments after coming in that morning.

Nolan appeared in the doorway of the small office. “Anything?”

Donna held fingers to her temples and shook her head. “It’s my fault--”

“
Nonsense,” he said, crossing to her and squeezing her shoulder. “Regina should have arranged for a car, a limo, to pick her up.”

“
Then we’d have to send cars for the others.”

“
Piss on the others. I can’t believe her, Donna,” he said in a hushed tone. “This is goddamned important. We’ve got cable and major network execs watching, and we don’t even know if we have a show.”

“
We have a show—”

“
Not without Ms. Odett we won’t,” he cut in. “No one wants to see a handful of aging beauty contestants—present company excluded, naturally—who aren’t even winners, for chrissake.”

“
Darling, this show won’t make or break us.”

“
I put my ass on the line with this disfigured beauty queen angle. It’s the kind of show that could boost us up. Treatment of something as sensitive as the loss of a woman’s most valuable asset—her looks —might just help us go national. And no one can treat it as sympathetically as you.”

Donna blustered at her husband’s sexist remark, but his compliment of her talent softened the barb, as he knew it would. “Corinne told me she had surgery and that she was no longer disfigured.”

“
She lied. Either to you or to herself. Nobody gets acid tossed in their face and comes out looking normal. No one.”

Donna glanced at the wall clock. Three exactly. Nolan’s eyes followed hers.

“
I hope for both our sakes that she shows. Where’s your precious Ms. Van Raven?”

Maxwell Conner, the executive producer, stepped in the office. “Are you having a problem with Regina, Nolan?”

Nolan turned with a guilty start. “No problem. It’s just that I feel she doesn’t always have the program’s best interest at heart.”

“
Really?” Max’s tone was ironic. “And I’m inclined to think that without her ‘City Gallery’ wouldn’t be the show it is.”

“
Aren’t you giving her a little too much credit?” Nolan said, standing behind his wife, his hands on her shoulders. “Or is it that you’re not giving Donna enough?”

“
Regina’s responsible for the format and she’s the one who scours the city for those unique and weird people Donna interviews.” Max gazed at Nolan over the top of his Ben Franklin bifocals. “Personally, I find it hard to imagine putting on the show without her.”

Donna silently agreed. She realized she had made a grave error by not insisting to Nolan that Regina call on Corinne Odett.

Nolan, his face set, brushed past Max and left without a word.

Max flashed Donna a brief, uneasy smile, straightened his bow tie, and followed him out.

Donna reached for the phone. She hit the redial button and listened to the sound of a phone ringing in another part of the city.

The ringing stopped. It took Donna a moment to react. “Hello? Hello, Corinne? Corinne, it’s Donna Lake.” She tightened her grip on the receiver. “Please, Corinne, answer me.” From the other end of the line she heard the faint sound of someone coughing. Then the connection was broken.

John sat at the dining room table with his uncle and aunt. He ate quickly.

“
Slow down, Johnnie,” his aunt said, “you’ll get the tummyache.”

“
I told Sanders I’d relieve him early today. His kid’s in a school play.”

“
You go home when I come in at six,” Charlie said. “You have taken no nights off in ... in, I don’t know when. I took on a new bartender. He begins tonight.”

John looked up, startled. “Why?”

“
Business has been good. I know you want to help out, but you are young, you have a life too. Play on the weekends.”

“
I’ve got nothing else planned.”

“
You could find a nice girl,” Aunt Anna mumbled.

“
I thought that was your job?”

She pushed his shoulder playfully. Then, without looking at him she asked, “Johnnie, have you met Louie’s grandniece?”

“
I have. She’s very pretty. I’m sure she’ll make someone a wonderful wife.”

Both Anna’s and Charlie’s heads bobbed in agreement, pleased that he thought so.

“
She wants to have children,” Anna said. “She’s good with children.”

She wants to be a citizen of the good ol’ U.S. A,
John said to himself. To his aunt he said, “What do you know about the new tenants in 2B?”

“
Aghhh,” she grunted, shrugging her shoulders. “The girl is just a baby and the woman is ...”

“
Too old to have children?” he answered for her.

“
Johnnie, stop. The woman is not
szep —
not
beautiful and young like…” she let the words die away.

“
Like Ilona?”

His aunt shrugged.

“
Do you think I should be interested in only young, beautiful women, Auntie Anna?”

“
You are interested in women who are not good for you. That Axelrod one was too old. And before her there was the one who drank too much. A good Hungarian girl, a pretty Hungarian girl who is smart and loves children, does not interest you, I suppose.”

“
They all interest me. I just don’t want to marry any of them.”

“
Six years is long enough to mourn, Johnnie. Aghhh, do what you want,” she said, waving a hand. “I don’t butt in.”

John smiled. He went back to his meal but the memory was too strong to ignore. Ten years ago his family had had no trouble accepting the woman of his choice. Darlene was English, like John’s father Eric Davie. She’d had a zest for life and loved children. John was twenty-eight when he met Darlene Goodnight, six years his junior, in London. She was a model on assignment for a fashion magazine. They fell in love, married, then moved to the United States. Fourteen months later Darlene gave birth to a son, Andrew. After four years of living on the California coast, Darlene, homesick and bored, wanted to resume her career in England. With grave misgivings, John put his wife and three-year-old son on a plane to Great Britain. He told himself she would return when reality reared its ugly head. But when her career took off again as though the four-year absence had never happened, John was forced to make a decision: insist his wife come back to him, or go to her. She argued, and justifiably so, that her contacts were exclusive to Great Britain, whereas he could write anywhere. He was still in the process of making a decision when a ferry she and Andrew were on capsized and sank. They both drowned.