Genuine Lies

…
    Didn’t matter. He shook even the possibility away, then pressed a hand to his spinning head. The only thing that mattered was that nobody had seen him. As long as he kept calm, played it smart, everything was going to be dandy. Better than dandy. She couldn’t have had time to change her will.
    He was a rich man. A fucking tycoon. He raised the bottle again in toast, then dropped it to the ground on his rush to the bathroom. Clinging to the John, he vomited up sickness and fear.
    Maggie Castle heard the news in one of the coldest ways—a phone call from a reporter asking for reaction and comment.
    “You slimy son of a bitch,” she began, leaning forward in her buttery leather swivel chair. “Don’t you know I can have your ass for pulling a stunt like this.” She slammed the phone down with relish. With a pile of scripts to review, contracts to revise, and phone calls to return, she didn’t have time for warped jokes.
    “Fucking jerk,” she said mildly, and eyed the phone with dislike. Her stomach rumbled, distracting her, and she pressed a calming hand to it. Starving to death, she thought. She was starving to death and would have cheerfully killed for a big fat roast beef on rye. But she was going to fit into that size ten she’d plunked down three thousand for, and the Oscars were less than a week away.
    She dealt out a trio of eight-by-ten glossies like playing cards and studied the sultry faces. She had to decide which one to send to read for a plum part in a new feature under development.
    Tailor-made for Eve, she mused. Sighed. If Eve had been twenty-five years younger. The hell of it was, even Eve Benedict couldn’t be young forever.
    Maggie barely glanced up as her door opened. “What is it, Sheila?”
    “Ms. Castle …” Sheila stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the knob, the other braced on the jamb. “Oh, God, Ms. Castle.”
    The trembling tone had Maggie’s head jerking up. Her half glasses slid down her nose. “What? What is it?”
    “Eve Benedict … She’s been murdered.”
    “That’s bullshit.” The anger came first so that she reared out of her chair. “If that asshole’s called again—”
    “The radio,” Sheila managed to say, fumbling in her skirt pocket for a tissue. “It just came over the radio.”
    Still fueled by fury, Maggie snatched up the remote and aimed it at the television. By the time she’d flipped the channels twice, she hit the bulletin.
    “Hollywood, and the world, is shocked this afternoon by the death of Eve Benedict. The perpetually glamorous star ofdozens of films was found on her estate, the apparent victim of homicide.”
    Eyes glued to the set, Maggie lowered herself slowly into her chair. “Eve,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Eve.”
    Locked in his office miles away, Michael Delrickio stared at the television, dully watching the pictures flicker. Eve at twenty, bright, vivid. At thirty, sultry, sensational.
    He didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
    Gone. Wasted, finished. He could have given her everything. Including life. If she’d loved him enough, if she’d believed in him, trusted him, he could have stopped it. Instead, she had scorned him, defied him, detested him. So she was dead. And even in death she could ruin him.
    Gloria lay in her darkened bedroom, a chilled gel mask over her swollen eyes. The Valium wasn’t helping. She didn’t think anything would. No pills, no ploys, no prayers would ever make things right again.
    Eve had been her closest friend. She hated that she couldn’t erase the memories they’d shared, the value of their woman-to-woman intimacy.
    Of course she’d been hurt, angry, fearful. But she’d never wanted Eve dead. She’d never wanted it to end like this.
    But Eve was dead. She was gone. Beneath the soothing mask, tears streamed. Gloria wondered what would become of her now.
    In his library, surrounded by the books he’d loved and collected over a lifetime, Victor stared at a sealed bottle of Irish Mist. Whiskey, he thought, the way the Irish made it, was the best way to get drunk.
    He wanted to get drunk, so drunk he wouldn’t be able to think, or feel, or breathe. How long could he stay thatway? he wondered. One night, one week, one year? Could he stay that way long enough so that when he came to himself again, the pain would be over?
    There would never be enough whiskey, there would never be enough time for that. If he was cursed to survive another ten years, he’d never outlive the