Private Scandals

it didn’t matter. Slamming the car door behind her, she strode across the lot. She slipped her plastic ID out of her pocket and punched it into the security slot beside the rear door. Seconds later, a little green light blipped, allowing her to depress the handle and pull the heavy door open.
    She flicked the switch to light the stairway, and let the door ease shut behind her.
    She found it interesting that Angela hadn’t arrived before her. She’d have taken a car service, Deanna thought. Now that Angela was settled in New York, she no longer had aregular driver in Chicago. It surprised Deanna that she hadn’t seen a limo waiting in the lot.
    Angela was always, always on time.
    It was one of the many things Deanna respected about her.
    The click of Deanna’s heels on the stairs echoed hollowly as she descended a level. As she slipped her card in the next security slot, she wondered briefly who Angela had bribed, threatened or seduced to gain entry to the studio.
    Not so many years before, Deanna had rushed down that same route, wide-eyed and enthusiastic, running errands at the snap of Angela’s demanding fingers. She’d been ready to preen like an eager puppy for any sign of approval. But, like any smart pup, she’d learned.
    And when betrayal had come, with its keen-edged disillusionment, she might have whimpered, but she’d licked her wounds and had used everything she’d learned—until the student became the master.
    It shouldn’t have surprised her to discover how quickly old resentments, long cooled, could come rolling to a boil. And this time, Deanna thought, this time when she faced Angela, it would be on her own turf, under her own rules. The naive kid from Kansas was more than ready to flex the muscles of realized ambition.
    And perhaps once she did, they would finally clear the air. Meet on equal terms. If it wasn’t possible to forget what had happened between them in the past, it was always possible to accept and move on.
    Deanna slipped her card into the slot beside the studio doors. The light blinked green. She pushed inside, into darkness.
    The studio was empty.
    That pleased her. Arriving first gave her one more advantage, as a hostess escorting an unwelcome guest into her home. And if home was where you grew from girl to woman, where you learned and squabbled, the studio was home.
    Smiling a little, Deanna reached out in the dark for the switch that controlled a bank of overhead lights. She thoughtshe heard something, some whisper that barely disturbed the air. And a feeling stabbed through that fine sense of anticipation. A feeling that she was not alone.
    Angela, she thought, and flicked the switch.
    But as the overhead lights flashed on, brighter ones, blinding ones, exploded inside her head. As the pain ripped through them, she plunged back into the dark.
     
    She crawled back into consciousness, moaning. Her head, heavy with pain, lolled back against a chair. Groggy, disoriented, she lifted a hand to the worst of the ache. Her fingers came away lightly smeared with blood.
    She struggled to focus, baffled to find herself sitting in her own chair, on her own set. Had she missed a cue? she wondered, dizzy, staring back at the camera where the red light gleamed.
    But there was no studio audience beyond the camera, no technicians working busily out of range. Though the lights flooded down with the familiar heat, there was no show in progress.
    She’d come to meet Angela, Deanna remembered.
    Her vision wavered again, like water disturbed by a pebble, and she blinked to clear it. It was then her gaze latched on to the two images on the monitor. She saw herself, pale and glazed-eyed. Then she saw, with horror, the guest sitting in the chair beside hers.
    Angela, her pink silk suit decorated with pearl buttons. Matching strands of pearls around her throat, clustered at her ears. Angela, her golden hair softly coiffed, her legs crossed, her hands folded together over the right arm of the chair.
    It was Angela. Oh yes, there was no mistaking it. Even though her face had been destroyed.
    Blood was splattered over the pink silk and joined by more that ran almost leisurely down from where that lovely, canny face should be.
    It was then Deanna began to scream.

Chapter One
Chicago, 1990
    I n five, four, three  . . .
    Deanna smiled at the camera from her corner of the set of Midday News. “Our guest this afternoon is Jonathan Monroe, a local author who has just published a book titled I