The Reporter (30 page)

Debra knew that was ridiculous, it was dangerous, but beyond her strong objections there was nothing she could do. They had
joint custody, Gia was with Jack exactly half the time, and Debra had no control over what went on at his house.

It was like the gun issue. Debra had never allowed Gia to play with toy guns. She’d talked it over with Maxi when she was
her stepmom, and Maxi said she definitely agreed. Later, Maxi told Debra that Jack did
not
agree, and try as she might, she couldn’t persuade him otherwise. Jack not only bought Gia toy guns, he would take her to
the firing range and let her shoot
real
guns. Of course it was against the law to let minors handle firearms, but Jack was a major movie star, the owner of the gun
club was his pal, and a clique of the good-old-boy members who hung out there got a kick out of his angelic little girl actually
shooting a Colt .45. So they cheered her on, and Gia loved the attention, and she developed a huge fascination for guns.

And now she had turned into a ten-year-old pervert, Debra fumed. She had to find the key that would turn it all off, that
would halt the decline and fall of the soul of Gia Nathanson.

She’d thought it would get easier after she was no longer in
the grip of her father’s magnetic influence, but for reasons she couldn’t fathom, Gia had become even more difficult since
Jack’s death. Her daughter was out of control, and escalating.

“All right, Gia,” she said, with as much composure as she could muster. “What went on in the pool house over at Samantha’s
this morning?” No answer.

“Gia, I have never slapped you—don’t make me do it now,” Debra said evenly, not taking her eyes off the child. Still no answer,
just more tears. Bessie stood at the sink, fidgeting with her apron.

“Young lady,” Debra tried again. “Did you tell Samantha to take off her panties?”

“No,” Gia sniffled. “She just did.”

“And did you take your panties down?”

“No,” she squeaked.

“Tell me, and don’t you dare lie to me…. Did you touch Samantha?” Bessie visibly flinched.
“Did you?”
Debra demanded.

“Yes…”

“And precisely what did you then say to Samantha?” she demanded, leaning in to Gia. “Look at me.
What did you say to her?”

“I
hate
you,” Gia shrieked. “I
hate
you,” she screamed again, and her mother realized that this was meant for her. Sobbing uncontrollably now, she slid off the
chair and ran over to Bessie, threw her arms around the woman’s ample middle, and clung to her. Bessie resisted putting her
arms around the girl. She held them out at her sides, pained and embarrassed to be in this position.

Debra got up and went over to Gia, knelt down beside her, took her by the shoulders and shook her. “No, you don’t,” she reproached
sternly. “Don’t try to play me against Bessie. It won’t work, do you understand? Look at me, Gia. You tell me you’re sorry,
immediately!”

Gia was screaming now, pulling away from her mother, trying to bury her face in Bessie’s skirts. Debra saw tears streaming
over
Bessie’s cheeks. She wrenched Gia away and slapped her hands to break the hold she had on her nanny. She took her daughter’s
face in her two hands, and would not allow her to back away. Gia’s nose was running, her eyes were red and swelling, she was
gasping for breath. She lifted a hand to wipe her eyes and Debra yanked it away from her face.

“No, you are
not
going to get away with this,” she said fervidly. “A tantrum will get you nowhere. Don’t you ever, ever say ‘I hate you’ to
me again. Tell me that you are sorry, young lady. And then I want to hear exactly what you said and exactly what you did to
that child.”

Gia’s slender body was racked with spasms. She was bawling and hyperventilating. Bessie was weeping silently. The grinning
jack-o’-lanterns on the table seemed to be mocking them now. But Debra was adamant. If Gia were allowed to get by with this,
she would do it again, she knew, and again, and again. And worse. Much as she wanted to fold her troubled little girl in her
arms, to comfort and soothe her and dry her tears, she would not back down.

“I saw Daddy,” Gia gasped now, between tortured sobs. “I saw Daddy—”

“You saw Daddy
what?”
Debra demanded, not about to let her use her father’s death as an excuse for her outrageous behavior.

“I saw Daddy
dead,”
she wailed.

“What do you mean?” Debra exacted.
She’s going to tell me she’s having nightmares,
Debra thought,
try to get my sympathy.

“Shh, Gia,” Bessie admonished.

“When Daddy got shot—” Gia was screaming, sobbing hysterically now. Suddenly, she tore herself from Debra’s grasp and ran
out of the kitchen. The two women could hear Gia’s violent wailing until the door to her room slammed shut.

Debra, still kneeling on the floor, looked up at Bessie. “Why did you shush her?” she demanded. “What was she saying?”

“Nothing,” Bessie answered, and when Debra’s face told her
she wasn’t satisfied with that response, she added, “I wanted her to calm down before she made herself sick.”

Debra’s eyes never left the woman’s face. Bessie was by nature open and forthright; dissembling was not easy for her. On the
few occasions when she had tried to hide something from Debra, that Gia had eaten a bag of cookies and that’s why she wasn’t
hungry for dinner, that her daughter had knocked over the expensive vase in the living room when she’d been careless with
a softball, Bessie’s discomfort had been patently obvious. Now Debra could read plainly on the woman’s darkened countenance
that she most certainly knew what this was about, and she was shielding Gia again. This time, though, Debra sensed that it
was about much more than cookies and softballs.

She put a hand on the other woman’s arm. Both of them were badly shaken. “Please, Bessie, I need you to tell me what’s going
on here,” she said gently, tears forming in her eyes, too.

Bessie broke down. “Oh, Miss Debra, she’s gone through so much—”

“What is it you’re not telling me?” Debra persisted. “Why did she run to you for reassurance? What do you know that I don’t
know? I’m appealing to you as this child’s mother—you must tell me, Bessie, or I’ll lose her.”

Bessie extracted a handkerchief from the pocket of her apron and blew her nose. Debra guided the older woman over to the table,
and the two sat down.

“I… It’s about the day Mr. Nathanson was shot,” Bessie began, wiping her eyes with the crumpled handkerchief.

“Go on, Bessie,” Debra urged, her heart clutching with fear. Bessie proceeded then to stammer through a story that made Debra’s
eyes widen with incredulity and horror. The first part was familiar. Mr. Nathanson had come into the kitchen on that Saturday
afternoon, she said, and he told Bessie that they’d be going up to the cabin at Lake Arrowhead for the weekend, so Gia
would need her down jacket. Since Gia was just about to have her lunch, he said that he would go into the girl’s room to get
it.

Bessie told Debra that she had offered to run in and get the jacket out of Gia’s closet, but Mr. Nathanson said no, he’d go,
maybe he would see something else they should take with them. Bessie told him that Gia’s wool gloves were in the bottom drawer
of her dresser, and there were some warm hats and scarves in there too. Mr. Nathanson went into Gia’s room.

“Gia took a couple of bites of her sandwich,” Bessie went on. “Then she jumped up and ran after her father. She said she wanted
to bring that new red sweater that you’d just bought her, Miss Debra. A few minutes later I heard the gunshots, two of them.
And Gia came flying back into the kitchen and she clutched me the way she just did, and told me her daddy got shot.”

Bessie paused, catching her breath, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes. Debra felt as if the bottom had fallen out of her stomach.
“…
her daddy got shot.”
That phrase echoed another one her daughter had told her: “…
one of the kids got bit.”
It turned out, of course, that Gia had done the biting. Barely breathing, Debra whispered, “Bessie, where did she get the
gun?”

“Gia told me she found your gun in the nightstand beside your bed, and she was showing it to her father.”

“But her fingerprints weren’t on it, only
mine
—”

“I don’t know,” Bessie said. “I don’t know about any fingerprints,” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders.

“What else did she tell you?”

“Nothing,” the woman said simply. “I told her she must never tell anyone anything at all about it again, not ever, not even
me.”

“You told her to lie!” Debra threw out.

“No, I told her not to tell.”

“That’s the same as lying,” Debra shouted.

Bessie nodded. She knew that now. “It’s not the child’s fault,” she cried. “It’s my fault. I thought it was the best thing
to do, but
now I know I made a terrible mistake. Some days she’d be bright and cheerful for a while, like she was today carving pumpkins.
Then I’d think she was over it. But soon she’d turn mean again, and I know it’s because that day is on her mind all the time.
She never talked about it again, until now. I knew I had to tell you, Miss Debra, but I didn’t know how.”

“Bessie, you told the detectives that Gia never left the kitchen,” Debra breathed, still unwilling to believe what she was
hearing.

“I know.” Bessie began to sob now. “But I knew if those men put Gia through all that terror again and again, if they made
her tell, and made her tell, she would
never
get over it. She would always be the little girl who killed her own father, for the rest of her life.” Bessie’s words were
muffled in the drenched handkerchief. “She’s so fragile as it is….”

Debra grasped the woman’s arm. “Bessie,” she said in strangled tones, “you know that they’ve charged
me
with murder— what were you
thinking?
Were you going to let me go to
prison?”

“No,” Bessie said mournfully. “I knew they could never prove that you killed Mr. Nathanson. You were in your room. If it came
to that, I would have told. You can fire me,” she went on disconsolately. “I can pack tonight….”

“Oh, my God,” Debra was murmuring. “Oh, my God.” Getting up, she walked over to the wall phone and punched in the number for
Marvin Samuels.

Z
ahna—that’s her name, Zahna Cole,” Jon Johnson told his partner, looking at Janet Orson’s appointments for today.

“And what was her business with the deceased?” Mike Cabello asked. “I mean, this is pretty flimsy.”

“She’s a disc jockey at an FM station, and she was scheduled to interview Orson at the Beverly Hills Hotel this afternoon
at three o’clock,” Jon read from the daybook notes.

“And tell me why we should care?” Mike threw out. He was cranky. His head ached and his stomach was queasy. He hadn’t slept
more than a couple of hours at a time in days, and he hadn’t eaten two decent meals in a row in years. And he was sneezing
and sniffling and he had a sore throat. It was 52 degrees and fiercely windy, the Santa Anas were rattling the windows in
their casings, but the department had cut back on heat at the Hall. “Christ, it’s cold enough to hang meat in here,” he grumbled.

“Well,” Jon forged ahead, ignoring his partner’s foul mood, “the manager of the Beverly Hills Hotel says that one of her switchboard
operators remembers taking a call from a woman who insisted on having Janet Orson’s room number. This woman said she had to
know what room Ms. Orson was in because she was going to interview her at the hotel.”

“So?” Mike shot back. “Did she say she had to know Orson’s room number because she was going to
kill
her at the hotel?”

“God, I hate it when you have PMS,” Jon moaned. “Why don’t you get a life, Mike? Find a nice, intelligent woman who can turn
you into a human being, for both our sakes.” Johnson continued studying Janet Orson’s agenda book.

“Yeah, right,” Mike groused. “How’d you ever get Cicily? She’s a saint.”

“Mike”—his partner looked at him now—“Cicily is not a saint. She’s a loving woman, she’s a fabulous babe, she’s my helpmate,
and the mother of my children, but she doesn’t have to be a saint to put up with me. That’s because I’m a normal guy. You’re
a train wreck.”

“No lectures; I feel rotten,” Mike said, managing to look wounded. “But for your information, I’m having dinner with Lyn on
Friday.”

“You should be so lucky to get Lyn back,” his partner scolded. “She still seeing that plastic surgeon?”

“Nah—she says he doesn’t make her knees weak. She wants to get married again, though—says her biological clock is ticking
and she wants to have a baby. Guess she wouldn’t be able to conceive with strong knees,” he tossed out with a smirk.

“How come you two never had children? You were married, what? Seven, eight years?”

“I wanted to wait till I made enough money, till we could buy a house. Joke’s on me.”

“Did Lyn want to wait?”

“Nope, it was me who knew all the answers.”

“What else is new?”

“Nothing new with this damn case,” Mike lamented, “except the bodies keep stacking up. Tell me more about the radio chick.”

“Okay, the hotel manager says Orson had mentioned she was going to be interviewed by this DJ about some rock star who was
her client. And the woman specifically wanted to do the interview
at the hotel. Because she loved the famous Beverly Hills Hotel, she said.”

“Disc jockeys are nuts,” Mike said. “Especially
women
disc jockeys.”

Jon shook his head. “No wonder Lyn divorced you. Why is she having dinner with you, anyway? She can’t be that hungry.”

“We always have dinner on our anniversary. It’s Friday. Would have been thirteen years.”

“You really need a shrink.” Jonathan shrugged. “And when she gets married again, and has those kids she wants, are you still
going to take her to dinner on the anniversary of your failed marriage?”

“If she’ll go with me. So what about the interview?”