The White Night (4 page)

Then I allow
myself to be evil for a second and wonder if it’s necessary for my family to be
there, too. Dakota Bailey and I alone in a kitchen…

Dakota says, “Okay,
I think I’m good. I don’t know how familiar you are with all the neighbors.”

“Not much. At
least not that far down.”

“I bought this
house about a month ago. White with dark blue shutters? You know the one?”

“Didn’t the guy
who owned it sell all of his Internet companies and buy his own island? Crazy
money. You like it there?”

I realize this is
sort of a bullshit, throwaway, small-talk question, because something has to be
wrong since she’s calling me before the sun is fully over the horizon.

“This place is
haunted, Mr. Long.” Her voice is muffled, like she’s holding her hand over her
mouth, trying to say something without being heard. If it really is haunted,
keeping her voice low won’t matter. “I’ve hardly slept in three days, but I
refuse to give this place up. It’s my—it’s a long story. Would you—is there any
chance you could come check things out for me? Or… if you can, maybe get rid of
whatever is here? I don’t know if you can actually do anything about it. I
swear on my mother’s grave, there is something
evil
in this house, and I
can pay you whatever you want—oh, God, no. There it is! Get away from me! Don’t
touch me, you—Mike, can you come now, please?”

Click.

I had already
decided that I would be helping Dakota Freakin’ Bailey, no question about it,
but after hearing that, and before I have time to grab any of my paranormal
investigation equipment, I’m down the wooden stairs and sprinting south along
the sand, cordless phone still clenched in my fist.

The sound of true
terror in a person’s voice is unmistakable.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ford Atticus Ford

“The hell are you
doing here, Coeburn? Are you following me?”

Her thrust, my
parry, it’s the only defense I could come up with because I’m for damn sure not
ready to say a single word about that documentary, much less to this woman with
a mouth like a bullhorn on steroids.

“
Sheesh
, enough
with the hostility. One, that was a long time ago; two, you earned it; and,
three, you
admitted
that you deserved it. I’m not gonna backtrack on
something you’ve already publicly apologized for. Just accept it and move on.”

“No.”

Yeah, I’m pouting.
So what?

She takes a sip of
her coffee. Her exquisitely manicured nails match the color of her pumps. “Grow
up, Ford. And no, I’m not following you. If I were, you wouldn’t know it.”

“Bullshit.”

Lauren leans back
in her chair, one arm propped on the backrest, nonchalant, confident in her
smugness. “The press release hit early this morning, and I shit you not,
absolute
truth
, one of my producers sent me a text
right before
I walked
through the door. And, woohoo, wonder of all wonders, wouldn’t you know it,
here you are. The stars aligned. Like, literally.”

Look at that self-righteous
smile. She’s proud of her pun. To be perfectly frank, it was a good one, and
I’d congratulate her if I didn’t want to take the remainder of my scone and smash
it all over her face.

“So you just
happen to be here, in Nye Beach of all places, dressed like you’re ready to
walk down the red carpet?”

Lauren lifts one
shoulder in a pronounced “meh” gesture. “Local morning show wanted to do a profile
on me. Been up since four thirty, and let me tell you something, it’s not easy
to look like this before the sun is up.”

She’s not
forgiven, by any means, but now I’m slightly intrigued. “You came
here
? What
was it? Like one of the public broadcast things filmed on a cheap set? Couple
of thrift store loveseats and a coffee table?”

“That’s the one.”
She crosses her arms, leans up on her elbows. “Only it’s a legit station and
not Wayne and Garth’s basement.”

“Interesting.”

“How’s that?”

“I thought that
would be beneath you at this point.”

“I grew up around
here. Just over the hill and past that little Irish pub.”

“I thought you
spawned somewhere.”

“Funny.”

But it wasn’t. Her
smirks emotes
sticks and stones, dickhead
.

The pause in the
conversation gets nine months pregnant, and I have no idea where to go from
here, so I occupy my hands and mouth with my coffee mug.

I check on Ulie
and see that he’s curled up on the porch, shivering a little. I feel bad for
the guy. It’s chilly out there. It’s chilly in here, too, but for different
reasons.

“So,” Lauren
finally says, drumming those pristine nails on the tabletop.

“So…” I nod in
that uncomfortable way that indicates I have reached the limit of things I can,
or want, to say to this woman. She’s right, you know. I did publicly apologize,
profusely and profoundly, for what happened on that Halloween night over two
years ago. Like I said, I
earned
the public’s scrutiny, and I’m trying
my hardest to get some payback for Chelsea, and for my reputation, and yet,
that doesn’t mean I have to become instant chums with someone who openly called
for me to commit
hara-kiri
in the middle of Times Square.

Her words exactly.
She was brutal.

And now she thinks
I’m simply going to pretend that the water under the bridge isn’t highly
flammable gasoline?

As if.

Or, maybe not.
Hell if I know. Do I have the energy to fight her? My therapist would tell me
it’s healthy—this “forgiveness” thing—and that I should sit down with a pen and
a sheet of paper, and write a lengthy letter to Miss Lauren Coeburn. I should
tell her that I’ve forgiven her; that I understand why she did it; she had
ratings to worry about; she had a team of writers feeding her lines; and I
should let her know that I understand how influential a motivated producer can
be, because I had gone through that myself with Carla Hancock.

This scampers
around in my mind while she takes another dainty bite of her muffin top, which
is likely in direct violation of her personal trainer’s orders to prevent a
different type of muffin top, and I assume that she’s desperately trying to
savor this dietary break.

“You want an
apology, Ford, I’ll give you an apology,” she says. “I’m sorry. There. But we
both know what this business is like. Obligations. Ratings.”

“You gutted me,” I
tell her. “You were like Quentin Tarantino with your wordy violence. Here’s
you, and here’s me.” I accompany the last five words with a pantomimed stabbing
motion, then imitate a glorified blood splatter.

“Don’t be such a
drama queen. It’s beneath you.”

“I thought we—I
don’t know—I thought we had a thing.”

“Meaning?”

“We’d joked around
on Twitter. You had reposted some of my crap on Facebook to your fan page. Then
you…” I pretend like I’m jabbing a knife into my heart and then I fake a quick
death by slumping over in my chair.

“Are we playing
charades? Two words, sounds like…giant pansy.”

“I’m just saying
you could’ve dialed it back a little.”

“Oh, please. It’s
all part of the game.”

“I guess I thought
we were buds. Same team, fame team, you know?”

“In this business,
we’re all playing solitaire. You know that. Regardless,” she says, pinching off
one last nibble of the cranberry muffin before she slides it across the table.
Roughly a tenth of it is gone. That’s dedication. I’ll give her that much. She
continues, “I really am sorry. To a point. We all play solitaire, and we all
dig our own graves in this business. I know you got caught up in the moment,
and… shit happens.”

“Yeah.” I have no
argument. I pick up the remnants of her muffin and take a bite. It’s a helluva
lot better than the dry hardtack of a scone I’d been trying to suffer through. I
tell her, “That still doesn’t change the fact that I’m not saying a word about
the documentary. If you’ll pardon the pun, that graveyard is… classified.”

“Wah-wah-waaaah,”
she says, imitating the bad-joke horn from ancient cartoons. “Very funny.”

“I’m serious,
Coeburn. Not a word.” I don’t know why, but I feel like giving her something. A
little tidbit. Just enough to sweeten the tea because maybe, just maybe, if I
ever get back in the spotlight, she’ll remember I was nice to her once. I wiped
the muffin crumbs from my hands. “How ‘bout this? I’ll give you a little nugget,
which is one hundred percent off the record, got me?”

Lauren locks her
lips with an invisible key.

“The only thing I’ll
say is that whoever put out that press release is
screwed
because I
haven’t even agreed to the documentary yet. No fancy pens, no dotted lines. Not
even verbally. I’m trying to decide how I want to approach it.”

“Holy shit. Are
you for real? They released the news without formalizing it first? Are they
mental?”

“Still off the
record, okay?” She nods. “Wild guess says that Carla Hancock realizes that I
wouldn’t mind getting back on camera, and this is her way of, you know,
dangling the carrot. Something I can’t resist. Baiting me.”

“I assume you’re
going to do something about it.”

“That’s the thing.
I don’t know. Ask for a retraction? File a lawsuit? Should I go ahead with the
filming and earn a few million? It’s all up in the air. And I’m not even sure I
want
to do it. Anyway, I’ve said enough. There’s your nugget.”

She may be the
host of a reality television review show, but before that she was a standup
comedian, and before that, she was a reporter for a mid-sized station down in
L.A. Those old journalistic tendencies are crawling out from where she buried
them long ago. I can see the curiosity and the excitement in the way she subconsciously
licks those fabulous red lips and lowers her voice. “Do you think Mike Long did
it? Last time I checked up on him, he was offering to sell whatever soul he had
left to the highest bidder. Lots of rumors about his financial situation going
around. Maybe he gave the okay to leak it since he’d stand to gain the most.”

“No comment.” I pick
up the remains of her cranberry muffin and take a large bite, as if having a
full mouth will block any future words.

“It wouldn’t
surprise me if Carla did it. Some scummy shit like that has her name written
all over it.”

I push my coffee
away and pick up my worn paperback copy of a Carter Kane novel that I’ve read
at least seven times. “No comment.”

“C’mon, Ford. Give
me a little. Friend to friend.”

If I had any
liquid in my mouth, I’m sure I would’ve comically spewed it all over her face
because it’s such a ridiculous suggestion. “Friend to friend? You’re kidding
me, right?”

“At least tell me
something
juicy.”

“I gave you a
nugget and that’s it, Coeburn. No more, no way.”

“Something behind
the scenes. Something that our readers can really chew on. I mean,
come on
,
this is gold. I can get you exposure. We can blow this up. The whole thing. I
can help you go public with the fact that they’re trying to railroad you into
this. It’ll be huge.”

I stand up from
the small table and wince when the metal chair legs screech across the slick
concrete flooring. Can’t a guy make a dramatic exit without the embarrassing
side effects? I tell Lauren, “Nope. Not a chance.”

“Please?”

“I’m not going to just
hand
you higher ratings. Apology accepted, yeah, but that doesn’t wash
away all your sins, and I’ll be damned if I do you any favors. Get off my case,
get away from me, and take those godawful heels back to L.A. They don’t go with
that dress. You look like a hooker that’s trying too hard.”

Cheap shot? Yep.
Damn straight. Felt good, too.

But really, they
don’t go with the dress. That’s no joke. The color scheme is way off.

***

I think that’s the
end of it. Turn out the lights, party’s over. Nail in the coffin. Put the baby
to bed. Use whatever axiom you can come up with to say that I just ended the conversation
on a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth.

I couldn’t be any
more wrong.

I only make it
about twenty yards down the sidewalk, with Ulie trotting happily beside me
while he licks the remainder of his dog treat from his chops, before I hear the
distinct click-clack of platform pumps on a sidewalk.

“Ford!” Lauren
calls after me.

Fed up, rolling my
eyes, I turn just in time to see her twist an ankle on the curb and go down in
a mass of blonde locks, exotic bird colors, and a couple of well-placed
expletives. She whimpers a bit, grits her teeth, and puts a hand around her
ankle as she rolls up to her butt. Legs splayed out, she doesn’t appear to care
that she’s showing off panties that—you guessed it—match the heels, the
fingernail polish, and the lipstick. Talk about coordination. Jesus. I can
barely find matching socks each day.

I retrace my steps
and reach down to help her up. Ulie, friend to everyone, gives a few sloppy
licks to her shin. I tug on his leash when that pink, slobbery tongue goes for
her face. She’s laughing, but clearly in pain, and takes the hand I offer. She
curses again on the way up. The platform pumps come off and she limps over to
the nearest street-side trashcan and slings them in.

“You were right,”
she says. “I hated those damn things but my stylist says I’m a summer.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

The coastal rain
has picked up, increasing steadily from a petite shower to plump drops, and
Lauren isn’t wearing a jacket. Plus, she’s now standing in a puddle.

Mentioning the
color of her toenail polish might be overkill. Needless to say, it matches.

“Here,” I say,
wriggling out of my windbreaker. “Take this.”

“I’m fine.”

“Take it.”

Lauren sighs and drapes
it across her shoulders without putting her arms through. Her left ankle is already
swelling and I’m sure the blues and purples aren’t far behind.

“You need to get
that looked at.”

“Later.”

“Suit yourself.
Keep the jacket if you want.”

That’s my singular
moment of playing nice-nice because I can’t be absolutely certain that she didn’t
construct the damsel-in-distress moment to manipulate me. Talk about dedication
to the craft—she’s hardcore, sacrificing an ankle like that.

I back away, and
before I can leave her standing, she reaches out with a hand and steps closer. “Wait.
Talk to me.”

“Forget it.”

“The show went
over the top. I know we did. Let me make it up to you.”

“
No
,
Coeburn. Go back to L.A.” I’m on the move again, Ulie trotting beside me,
oblivious to the drama and happily wagging his tail.

“We can make a
deal, okay? Give me inside access while you’re filming. Give me the first look,
and we’ll push the hell out of the documentary for you. Nothing but good
things. Millions of fans, Ford. You’ll have people camping out for tickets.”

“Conversation over.
Don’t you get it?” I spin to face her, violently enough that it spooks Ulie,
and he takes a couple of hesitant steps to the side. “I have nothing else to
say to you, and I’ve already told you too much. You said it yourself, I know
how this game works, and I can’t trust a damn word that comes out of your
mouth. You want a quote? You want something you can take back to your
producers? Huh? Then listen to me now… I screwed up. I know I did, and I regret
it every single waking moment of my life. I eat, sleep, and dream about
screwing up with Chelsea Hopper in front of millions of people. Yes, I earned
that shame. Yes, I earned that punishment.