The Reporter (36 page)

She couldn’t wait to be home. Dr. Rick had said she could probably go back to work in a couple of weeks. And she’d be fine
to fly east for Thanksgiving.

A nurse’s aide brought in another basket of flowers. She handed Maxi the card, along with a large, flat package. The flowers
were from Alison Pollock, a huge arrangement of pink and purple cabbage roses. The card read simply: Maxi,
thank heaven you re okay!
The story had been all over the news that morning. Pete told Maxi that the switchboard at the station was swamped by viewers
calling to find out how she was.

The aide took a small pair of scissors out of her pouch and helped Maxi open the package that had arrived. Maxi gasped. It
was one of the sketches Remy Germain had made at the auction. It pictured Meg Davis purchasing the
Black Sabbat
cross from Gabby Modine, with Zahna Cole in profile standing prominently in the foreground. Signed by the artist, it was
floated on a white matte board and set in a black acrylic frame. On a card accompanying the sketch, Remy had written: Maxi,
there was no way you or I could have known. Your planets must be aligned perfectly. Your guardian angel must be on your shoulder.
Here’s a memento for your trophy wall Call me
—let s
do lunch.
xx
RG

Maxi smiled. “An original Remy Germain—I’ll put this up in my office.” Remy Germain was a very interesting woman. Maxi had
a feeling they were going to be friends.

There was a bustle out in the hall, and Debra Angelo swept into the room, carrying an enormous pink-cellophane-wrapped basket
of fruit, chocolates, magazines, and, as Debra pointed out,
three bottles of Amstel Light, Maxi’s favorite beer, embedded surreptitiously beneath a bunch of grapes, along with a jeweled
bottle opener. Attached to the top of the basket was a silver box tied with black ribbon, from Theodore on Rodeo Drive.

“That’s a go-silk gown and robe, and some undies,” Debra said, indicating the box on top. “I didn’t know Brigitte was going
to be here, so I brought you some survival gear.” She went over and hugged Max and Brigitte, and introduced herself to Pete,
Wendy, and Richard.

“And, of course,
we’ve
had the pleasure,” she said, flashing a disparaging smile at Mike Cabello and Jon Johnson. “May I leave the frigging country
now, gentlemen?” Maxi giggled.

“Well, actually, no,” Mike Cabello said with a big grin. He had jumped to his feet when Debra entered and helped her wrestle
the giant basket to a side table. “You’ll get an official release from the sheriff’s department through your attorney,” he
told her, “probably by the end of the week.”

“Really,”
Debra said sweetly. “Well, try and find me, guys,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll be in Europe.”

Debra had decided, after everything broke, to take Gia to Italy the next morning for a short vacation. She would enroll her
in a Malibu school in two weeks, but right now she felt they both sorely needed a change of scene. Her mother and dad were
there, the Abruzzi was home, and it would nourish her soul. Walking over to the bed, she regarded Maxi critically. “Good Lord,”
she said, lightly fingering Maxi’s bandages. “What the hell is under there?” She had heard accounts of Maxi’s jagged injuries
on the morning news. “This looks like a job for Frank Kamer, miracle man!”

“Got it covered. Love your priorities, Deb,” Maxi said, laughing, and she meant it.

“I’m a satisfied customer—this is his nose,” Debra countered with a grin.

Cabello was still standing. “Jon and I have to go,” he said. “We have to get back to work.”

“No, Mike has to go buy a new suit,” his partner clarified. “He’s got a date with his ex-wife tomorrow night and he doesn’t
have a thing to wear.” Cabello cuffed him again, and the two headed for the door.

“Before you leave,” Debra said to the detectives, “would you please explain to me how come my fingerprints were on the damn
gun? Instead of Zahna Cole’s, or even Gia’s? Which is what got me in all the trouble to begin with, right?”

“Yes, we had a lengthy conversation with Ms. Cole about that, among other things,” Jon Johnson offered.

“Lengthy?” Mike jumped on the word. “It was lengthy, all right—like from seven o’clock last night after they stitched up her
arm, till about five this morning. She confessed everything.”

“My
mother
would confess after ten hours in a room with
you,”
Jon remarked. “Anyway,” he said to Debra, “she said she wiped her prints off the gun with her shirt. That would have taken
your daughter’s prints off it too, and left only yours on other parts of the gun, from loading and handling it.”

“Wonderful,” Debra said. “Can I sue you guys for false arrest? I’ll ask Marvin about that.”

“Nope. We were within our rights,” Cabello returned. “By the way,” he said, addressing Richard now, “where the hell did you
learn how to pick locks like that? You were a second-story man before you got into television?”

“I did a series showing viewers how to protect their homes against crime,” Richard told him. “I used Wee Willy Wade as my
expert. He showed how easy it is for a burglar to get into any lock. You fellas heard of him?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cabello said admiringly. “New York guy. He could get into anything. Ed Koch made an unpopular joke once—said he
was gonna give Wee Willy a key to the city. Said
he might as well; he could get in anywhere he wanted anyway.” Cabello chuckled. “Isn’t Wade doing time?”

“Three to five,” Richard said. “He writes to me. Nothing better to do, I guess. Anyway, Willy taught me how to pick locks.”

“We saw that series,” Brigitte said brightly. “It was excellent! I made Max put dead bolts on all the outside doors. We miss
you in New York, Richard.”

Cabello and Johnson had moved to the door. They said their good-byes, Jon thanked Maxi for breaking their case, Mike shot
a parting look at Debra in her skintight knit dress, and they left.

“He’s actually cute,” Debra said, grinning after Mike Cabello.

“Don’t even
think
about it, Deb,” Maxi warned. “He’s trying to get back with his ex-wife.”

“Fine, fine,” Debra said. “There are lots of other fish out there. There’s an absolutely gorgeous fish in my new film. Coincidentally,
he plays the detective.”

“Great—you took the part!” Maxi beamed.

Maxi’s folks wanted to know about the movie. Debra explained how she had been offered the role last week, and she was dying
to grab it, but while she was out on bail on murder charges she couldn’t negotiate any work, and the producer thought that
she was holding out for more money, so he made a fabulous deal with her agent this morning. She would be starting the picture
after she got back from Italy. It would be shot mostly here in the Los Angeles area, she told them.

“And what about Bessie?” Maxi asked. “Is she going to survive this?”

“Oh, Bessie will be fine,” Debra said. “Bessie is hardy British stock. She was doing what she thought was right for Gia. Misguided
though it was, how can I fault her for that? I couldn’t replace Bessie in a million years.”

Pete Capra got up to leave. “The early block is going on the
air—I have to go bash some heads,” he said, and he was out the door, with Wendy in tow. Richard and Maxi laughed. They knew
he wasn’t kidding.

“I’m going too,” Debra said. “Gotta pack. When are you getting out of here, Max?”

“Tomorrow,” Maxi responded, looking over at Debra’s whopping basket of goodies. She laughed. “As usual, you overdid.”

“Oh, you’ll have fun with that stuff at home,” Debra tossed off. “You’ll find a great little edition of the
Kama Sutra
buried in there.” She smiled wickedly, glancing pointedly at Richard.

Brigitte laughed. She always got a kick out of Debra. Maxi looked up at her dad to see how
he
had taken that remark. He was usually an unmitigated prude where his daughter was concerned. Not bad, she observed, not too
bad at all. He was actually smiling. Mom
has done a great job of liberating Pop,
she mused.

Max got up too. “We’ll walk out with you,” he said to Debra. “We’re going back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner. I’m
taking Brigitte to Spago.”

“We left so fast I don’t have a
thing
to wear,” Brigitte lamented.

“I know, darling.” Max looked at her affectionately. “Only a suitcaseful. It’s amazing what your mother was able to pack in
twelve minutes flat,” he said to Maxi.

“Still, I’m staying until Maxi can go back to work, so I’ll have to shop.”

“That’s the spirit, Brigitte!” Debra applauded, as they crowded around the hospital bed to kiss Maxi good-bye.

“We’ll pick you up in the morning,” Maxi’s father told her, “and your mother will get you settled in at home while I go get
Yukon.”

Maxi felt very blessed. Richard was going to sit with her for a while, until she got tired. She felt as if the two of them
had been through the Blitz together.

At the doorway, her father paused and turned to them.
“Honey, invite Richard for Thanksgiving,” he said, completely astonishing both Maxi and her mother. “You know we have plenty
of rooms to accommodate your sister and Bucky, the kids,
and
him,” he went on. “Because Richard and I have a date on the morning after Thanksgiving.”

“A date? Where?” Maxi asked him.

“On Madison Avenue,” he said, winking at Richard. “At Giorgio Armani.”

MAXI POOLE AND I WANT TO THANK SOME VERY IMPORTANT FRIENDS OF OURS WHO HELPED GET THE REPORTER “BANGED OUT AND ON THE AIR,”
AS THE HARDWORKING FOLKS IN THE SWEATY NEWSROOM AT FICTIONAL CHANNEL SIX NEWS WOULD SAY:

My thanks to dynamic NBC-4 News producer
Wendy Harris,
the soul of the newsroom and my longtime friend, who plays herself in all my books.

And to my former news director
Tom
Copra,
who would jump on the desk in the newsroom and point and scream,
“You, get a vest on and scout the riot area; you, get downtown and smoke out the mayor!”
(and who would get severely cranky every time he gave up smoking); and my former managing editor
Pete Noyes
, who was known to punch out a reporter for burying the lead (before they put you in jail for that). Together these two inspired
my character, Maxi’s boss, Pete Capra. Thanks, guys, and don’t get mad.

I owe
The Reporter
and Maxi Poole’s very life to my editor
Sara Ann Freed,
the sage of the Mysterious Press, who never let up on me for one single minute and still made me love her madly.

Special thanks to the irrepressible
Susan Richman,
the patrician of New York PR people; and
Kim
Dower
of “Kim from L.A.,” Susan’s counterpart in La-La Land.

And to these wonderful women of Warner Books:
Maureen Egen,
the mother of us all;
Jamie Raab,
the first to read
The Reporter
and run with it;
Heather Kilpatrick,
who’s every bit as good with plot points as she is with legalese;
Penina Sacks,
who went to the mat with me on the minutiae of grammatical correctness (she won); and the astute and exacting
Anne Montague,
who dazzled me with her canny input.

To my literary agent
Robin Rue,
who insisted that
The Reporter
must have a home with the crème de la creme, Warner Books.

To my super-readers: author/screenwriter
Linda Palmer,
social conscience of The
Reporter
(“You
cannot
let Maxi drink wine before driving off to a story!”); brilliant comedy writer
Gail Parent,
my friend, neighbor, and partner on the TV show
Kelly & Gail,
who inspires the humor in everything I write; filmmaker
Verna Harrah,
owner of Middle Fork Productions, whose mantra is “Story! Story! Story!”; and gorgeous
Gale Hayman,
cofounder of Giorgio, Beverly Hills, Maxi’s arbiter of fashion, beauty, and taste.

Hugs to playwright
Marvin Braverman,
who feeds me ideas, along with Maxi’s (and my) favorite “mushroom pizza with very thin crust.”

My eternal gratitude to
Shawn Kendrick
of Borders, who walks behind me with a wheelbarrow full of my books at all manner of outlandish events (on the Santa Monica
Pier during an afternoon cloudburst, on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium during seventh inning stretch) and has managed
to hang on to his aplomb and his cash box.

I am indebted to actor/screenwriter
Bob
Factor
for helping me out of some deadline jams;
Jim
Alvarez,
head of NBC Wardrobe, for suitably dressing both Maxi and me; NBC-4 News
editor
Bart
Cannistra,
my savior-in-chief from computer crashes;
Mark
Qray
in NBC Reprographics for churning out
The Reporter
in its every phase;
Terry Beebe
and the gang at the NBC Credit Union for letting me monopolize their copy machine; and
Patti Hansen,
head of NBC Travel, for keeping Maxi and me flying between the palms of Los Angeles and the publishing canyons of New York.

I’m grateful to attorney
Neil
Papiano,
who keeps me and my characters out of prison; to restaurateur
Ron
Salisbury,
who throws me book parties and feeds me besides; and to
Barbara Jean Thomas,
who keeps me reasonably sane at home.

And what would I do without my treasured friends,
Dr.David
Walker of the Los Angeles Church of Religious Sciences, who teaches Maxi and me our metaphysical philosophy of life, and
Vera Brown
, skin specialist to L.A.’s most glamorous movie stars, and the grande dame of TV’s
Shop
NBC, for providing me with a soft landing at life and literature’s many crises.