Doug’s advice took root in Gabrielle’s conscience. He was right. Beatrice was the only family she and Kylie had left, and despite her behavior, her motives were pure. She picked up the phone and dialed Bea’s number. It rang several times before Beatrice, in a very groggy voice, picked up the phone. “Bea, is that you?”
“Gab, show shorry,” she said almost incoherently.
“Are you okay?”
“No tape. No tape.”
“Bea, you’re not making sense. You sound funny. What’s wrong?”
“Peels—”
“Peels? I don’t get it.” Peels, peels … “Pills!” Gabrielle shouted, finally understanding. “Bea, did you take some pills? Bea, did you hear me? Did you take any pills? Bea? Answer me!”
Gabrielle heard the receiver drop and began to panic. She disengaged the line and ordered an ambulance to the apartment. She then tried to ring Felicia, but to no avail. In a panic she dialed Doug.
“Doug, thank God you’re there.”
“I just walked in the door. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Bea. I called and she sounded strange. She said something about pills, and then she dropped the phone.”
“You don’t think she—”
“She was extremely upset when she left. Who knows? I called nine-one-one.”
“I’ll head right over. I’ll call and let you know what I find out.”
Doug arrived just as the paramedics were wheeling Beatrice out her door. “What happened?”
“Looks like a drug overdose,” the medic answered.
“Is she going to be all right?”
“She’s in pretty bad shape. We found the empty bottle, but I don’t know exactly how many pills she took. With any luck, we got here in time. You know her?” he said.
“She’s my girlfriend’s mom. What hospital?”
“We’re taking her over to Bellevue.”
Doug walked into Bea’s apartment and went directly to the phone. He dialed Gabrielle’s room number at Lenox Hill, hanging up after several rings. He waited a few minutes and tried again. Still no answer. Strange, he thought. Doug picked up the phone again and this time dialed the hospital operator.
“I’m sorry, sir, Miss Donovan has been discharged.” Doug hung up not sure what to do. Deducing that Gabrielle was probably on her way home, he decided to wait. He sat on the couch, emotionally exhausted by the enormity of this situation.
“Beatrice!” Gabrielle shouted as she burst into the apartment, carrying her daughter. Doug stood up to greet her. “Where is she? Is she all right?”
“The paramedics took her away about five minutes ago. Apparently she took an overdose of pills.”
“Oh, God, no! Is she—” Gabrielle stopped short, unable to verbalize her fearful thought.
“She’s not dead, but she is unconscious. They took her to Bellevue.”
“Let’s get over there,” Gabrielle insisted.
“Gabrielle, that’s not a good idea,” Doug explained gently. “The emergency room is no place for a newborn. Why don’t you stay here and let me go to the hospital? I promise to call you as soon as I hear any news.”
“But I want to tell Bea that I’m sorry and I love her.”
“And you will—later. In the meantime, I’ll tell her for you.”
“Okay, but call me the minute you know something.”
“I will.”
While her daughter slept, Gabrielle’s mind continued to sort though the grave circumstances. Try as she might to come up with a sensible answer, she continually returned to the ultimate question: Why?
Gabrielle knew that Bea had been terribly upset when she left the hospital, but the idea that she might try to kill herself had never crossed her mind. Over the years, Gabrielle had seen Beatrice in a full gamut of moods, but never depressed to the point of being suicidal. Why would she try to kill herself? Had her angry words brought Bea to the brink of death?
Surely Beatrice, knowing how much this would haunt her, must have left some sort of explanation. Gabrielle thought back to their brief phone conversation, trying to recall something that might help her understand all this. She said something about a tape, Gabrielle remembered. She got up and headed to the office to look around for an envelope or an audiocassette with her name on it. Finding nothing in the study, she walked across the hall to Beatrice’s bedroom. From the doorway Gabrielle looked around. Other than Bea’s purse lying on the bed, nothing looked unusual or out of place. She continued scouting the room until something caught her attention. Gabrielle walked over to the nightstand and picked up the envelope. She recognized her name written in Doug’s handwriting. I thought Bea said Stephanie had this, a puzzled Gabrielle remembered.
She put down the letter and picked up the video. There was no label or identifying marks on it. She hurried back into the living room and opened the cabinet containing the television and VCR. Gabrielle pushed “Play” and sat down to watch. Beatrice’s image came up on the screen, and as her words began to fly around the room, Gabrielle began feeling lightheaded and downhearted.
Gabrielle watched the tape with tears falling down her cheeks. She sat in disbelief, unable to accept the horrible admissions Beatrice was making. Caught up in the misery of this emotional tragedy, she almost didn’t hear Doug come in.
“Well?” she asked, bracing herself for bad news.
“Things are still touch and go. They’ve done everything they can for the time being, but she still hasn’t regained consciousness,” Doug reported gently. He waited several seconds for a response, but instead got only silence. “Gabrielle, honey? Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” Gabrielle managed to say.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said, before bursting into hysterical tears.
“Baby, what can I do to help?” Doug asked, feeling helpless and inept.
“I found a videotape she left me. She said she wanted to kill herself because—” Gabrielle paused, unable to continue.
“Take your time.”
“Because she killed Jack,” Gabrielle wept.
“Beatrice actually admitted this on tape?”
“See for yourself,” Gabrielle said as she turned on the VCR. Together she and Doug watched Bea’s confession in stunned disbelief. “This answers a lot of questions,” Gabrielle said.
“Actually, it creates more in my mind. Something just doesn’t hit me right,” Doug said as he rewound the tape. Gabrielle, unable to sit through another screening, took Kylie into the bedroom. Doug stayed on the couch, watching intently for whatever was causing the red flags to wave in his head. Midway through, he paused the machine and called for Gabrielle.
“I’ll admit that you have some interesting material here,” Russell Shockley said from across his desk. “But why should we publish your biography, particularly when Gabrielle Donovan has just announced that she’s coauthoring her own?”
“The answer is very clear,” Stephanie said calmly. “She and her ex-lover are writing the book together. The details of her life will be so sugarcoated, it might as well begin with ‘once upon a time.’ I, on the other hand, will be able to give readers the real deal. I have information and photos that are totally exclusive—photos I haven’t even used in my widely read column in Star Diary.”
“You brought examples?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said, pulling out several photographs she and Howie had catalogued over the months. Included were never-before-seen shots of Gabrielle with Jack, with Doug, and with various celebrities, including several with Salvatore Ciccone. “There’s a great deal of speculation that Salvatore is really the father of her child,” Stephanie offered. “You can see by these select photos that they were definitely close.”
“I like the exclusivity angle, but I don’t see how this will make much impact against Gabrielle’s telling the world how she made it to the top of the modeling world without knowing how to read,” Russell said, still unconvinced.
“There is something else. Something very big,” Stephanie said, trying to save this deal.
“Talk to me.”
“Take a look at these,” Stephanie said, handing Russell the photos of the Killington house. Silently she congratulated herself for having the good sense to ignore Howie’s advice and keep a set. Once Beatrice and her confession were found, the case would be closed and Stephanie would be free to use these pictures in her book. “Do you recognize this place?”
“Where did you get these?” Russell asked.
“Gabrielle’s personal assistant, Beatrice Braidburn, gave them to me for safekeeping,” Stephanie said, feeling progressively more comfortable with her lie.
“Where did she get them?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. At the time I was Gabrielle’s publicist and had no thoughts of writing my own book, but things changed. How fortuitous for both of us that this very legitimate source dropped these pictures into our lap.”
Russell Shockley stood up and extended his hand. “If we’re going to head off the competition, we have to move quickly. How quickly can you give me a complete manuscript?”
“Is right now soon enough?” Stephanie asked, pulling the manuscript from her bag.
“Well, Ms. Bancroft, it looks like we’re in business.”
“Oh, yes, we most definitely are.”
“You found something?” Gabrielle asked, emerging from the back room.
“Maybe. Watch this tape again and really listen to what Beatrice is saying,” Doug said as he pushed the “Play” button. Following Bea’s sign-off, he paused the tape, leaving her image looming on the television screen.
“Here’s what I don’t understand. Why would she use her credit card to pay those kids? Since when do delinquents accept credit?”
“She said she used it to get a cash advance,” Gabrielle corrected.
“But why would she make such a point about it? And even if Bea did set this whole scenario up to ruin Jack’s reputation, I can’t believe she’d try to sell it to a tabloid. Why not let the mainstream media simply report the story? Wouldn’t that give the whole thing more credibility?”
“Maybe, but only the tabloids would pay for the story,” Gabrielle pointed out, staring at the television screen. “Hey, that looks like Barclay.”
“Who?”
“The cat peeking over Beatrice’s left shoulder.”
“That’s the same cat I saw go flying across the room when I visited Stephanie earlier this evening. So Bea must have been at Stephanie’s at some point, too.”
“You don’t think that Stephanie—”
“That’s exactly what I think.” Doug was now certain that Beatrice was not admitting any wrongdoing, but instead leaving a bounty of clues that would lead them to the real culprit. “It all makes sense now. What credit card have we all come to hate?”
“Visa. Everywhere she wants to be,” Gabrielle replied, her eyes growing wide with realization.
“Visa Lee, a.k.a. Stephanie Bancroft, tabloid writer. This whole story about ruining Jack’s reputation and souring your relationship sounds much more plausible when you think of Stephanie as its originator.”
“Then why would Bea confess to everything and try to kill herself?”
“Bea must have confronted her. That’s why Stephanie had her make this tape,” Doug said.
“And if Bea dies after leaving this confession, Stephanie gets off scot-free.”
“Exactly.”
“Could she really be that evil?”
Before Doug could respond, they were interrupted by Kylie’s hungry cry. Gabrielle took her into Beatrice’s bedroom to nurse. As she sat feeding the baby, a thought occurred to her. “We don’t have any hard proof that Stephanie is responsible,” she called out into the other room.
“What was that?” Doug asked, stopping in the doorway. There was something profoundly moving about seeing the woman he loved feeding her newborn daughter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
“We have no real proof that Stephanie is responsible for any of this.”
“Not at the moment, but I think we have enough to call the police and let them—”
“What’s wrong?” Gabrielle said, looking up from the baby and following Doug’s eyes. He had stopped talking and was staring at the bed.
“When Beatrice was at the hospital, she dropped her purse and I helped pick up her belongings. I swear I saw the same bag at Stephanie’s, shoved under the couch. But why would she go there of all places? Beatrice was upset after talking to you. Stephanie would be the last person she’d seek out.”
“To get this, maybe?” Gabrielle said, pulling Doug’s letter out of her pocket. “Bea told me that Stephanie had the letter you sent me, but I found it here on top of the videotape.”
“That would explain it.”
“At the hospital, do you remember if her pills were in her purse? She always carried them with her,” Gabrielle asked.
“There was a prescription bottle, but I can’t be sure if they were the same pills.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked, noticing the look of contemplation that had overtaken his face.
“You said she always carried the pills around with her. Look at her bag. It’s still zipped up. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that a person bent on committing suicide would take a bottle of pills out of her purse, zip it back up, and then go into the bathroom? It’s just a bit too neat.”
“So if her pills are still in her purse …”
“Then she was given something else, somewhere else, and then brought back here.”
“See if the pills are inside,” Gabrielle suggested.
Using his handkerchief, Doug emptied the contents of Beatrice’s handbag onto the bed. They found no vial of pills scattered among the rest of the contents, but they did find something inside that was suspiciously out of place.
“What is that?” Gabrielle asked.
“It’s a garlic press,” Doug said as he examined the press without touching it.
“Why would Beatrice be carrying around a garlic press?”
“I think we might be a tad closer to having some hard evidence,” he answered, bending his nose down to meet the bowl of the press. It smelled like medicine. “No garlic, but if we’re lucky, a good set of fingerprints.”
“You’re right, Doug, it’s time to call the police.”