A Perfect Obsession. Heather Graham
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I didn’t want to use her, either. You know, fake a real love just to use her for more exposure and better parts. If we made it a year—trusting one another, still wanting one another, ready to deal with the whirlwind as a couple—then we’d put our relationship out there.” He paused. “She used to tease me. Said it would be the coolest thing in the world if we were secretly married here. At Finnegan’s.”
“Oh, Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that you kept all this from me. And for so long! I’m your twin.”
“Well, you’ve kept a fair amount from me, too, at times,” he reminded her.
“Sometimes I don’t talk because I’m professionally not able to do so,” she replied.
“What do I do?” he asked her. “Just step up now and tell the truth?”
“That’s probably the best. You can talk to Craig. He’ll believe you. You know that.”
Kieran started, hearing the doorknob twist. Then there was a bang on the door.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?”
It was Danny, the “baby” of the family, younger than Kevin and Kieran by a little more than a year. He was the wild child of the family, now a respectable tour guide for the City of New York, though, of course, he could still get into a great deal of trouble. Always with the best of intentions, of course.
Kieran stood quickly and opened the door. “Did I lock it?” she murmured.
Danny burst into the room and flipped on the TV. “This is so sad and so crazy!” he said. “Imagine, that poor girl found in Le Club Vampyre! And now... Wow! The bad boy of the silver screen stepping up and offering a huge sum of money for information on her murderer. Brent Westwood! You’ve got to see this news conference. It’s Brent Westwood saying that he was Jeannette Gilbert’s secret lover!”
* * *
It was past nine. Craig was getting ready to head home from the office, and he’d told Mike and McBride to do the same. But his office door opened.
“You might want to hold on just a minute!” Mike said, stepping back in.
“What—”
“Put the TV on. Any news channel,” Mike said. He’d already gone for the remote that controlled the screen on the far wall of Craig’s office.
Light and sound filled the room.
A man stood at the front of the New York field offices of the FBI, surrounded by a sea of reporters, all jockeying to get better positions with their microphones.
Craig recognized the guy; it took him a minute to know why.
Then he realized quickly that it was Brent Westwood, aging star of stage and screen. He was an exceptionally well-muscled man, an “action hero.” Craig remembered that he’d halfway paid attention to a slice of life news piece recently that had talked about the beautiful people of “yesteryear” who were still working hard at their craft, even if they weren’t getting the leading roles they’d once enjoyed.
The actor listened to a question from a reporter and answered it gravely.
“You had to know Jeannette to understand,” he said, the right amount of pathos in his voice. “She was, at heart, a shy girl. She wanted what we had to be special. We’re both public figures, but we didn’t want our relationship to be public. It was something so private, of the heart.”
“Weren’t you worried when she disappeared?” someone shouted.
“I’ll be honest. I thought it was a publicity venture, directed by those controlling her career,” he said, not mentioning any names.
“But wouldn’t she have told you?” another reporter asked.
“In this field, we have to be very careful. I knew that she’d tell me what was going on as soon as she felt that she could. Was I worried? Yes! But I knew that the police—New York’s finest—were working on finding her. I feared their anger, really, when she surfaced. I never expected that they would find her...as they did.”
He put a hand in front of his face, as if shielding himself from more questions—and as if hiding his tears, as well. “Please, I’m beside myself with grief, but I’m here to see if there is anything at all that I can do to help in the investigation into her death. This is...”
He broke down and turned away.
Mike groaned. “Great. He’s coming here. And he’s using this to garner publicity for himself. That girl had great taste in men.” He snickered. “Maybe she was looking for a father figure.”
“He was the biggest thing in action movies at one time,” Craig said.
“Guess they don’t know our offices actually close at night,” Mike muttered. He turned to the NYPD detective. “You want to handle this?”
“He probably knows you’re here, given what’s going on,” McBride said.
“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Craig said. He pointed to the screen. “There he is, going for the door—and there’s security. In less than a minute, someone will be calling up here.”
As he spoke, the intercom buzzed.
It was one of the young agents in reception.
“Do we go get him?”
Craig didn’t believe that the man pretending so much grief was Gilbert’s killer.
Such a recognizable man didn’t sneak around easily. Nor did he appear to be the type who would have dressed a murdered girl so carefully. Or managed to get down to Virginia to have carried out a murder there and done the same. Craig had no proof. It was only a gut feeling, but his gut feelings had served him well.
He toyed with the idea of having security send him away and tell him to come back during office hours.
But, of course, that would make the Bureau look callow.
And he wouldn’t do that.
“Of course, anyone with information that could lead to the solving of this heinous murder is thanked for bringing us information at any time,” he said.
And so Mike sat and McBride sighed, and they waited for the actor.
* * *
The three of them—Kevin, Kieran and Danny—stared at the flat-screen television in the office, watching as Brent Westwood spoke to the press.
Kevin’s expression was blank, stunned.
“I don’t get it,” Danny said. “Not that Westwood wasn’t—isn’t—a cool guy and all, but, hey, Jeannette Gilbert was a kid in comparison. Not that I’m judging. We’ve seen a lot of older guys with younger women and younger guys with older women who seem to be happy as larks. Love is love, right? No matter what our age, sex, race or preference. Still...I wonder if it all seems so shocking to us because the church—the club—is right behind us.” Staring at the screen, he was unaware when Kevin looked at Kieran with a warning glance.
Let it lie. Don’t let on about anything I was saying to you.
“And the whole grave thing,” Danny went on. “I mean, do you know that half our city parks are built on old graveyards?” He turned and looked at Kieran. “John Shaw was in today, right?”
“Yes, he was pretty shaken,” she murmured.
“I wonder... I’d love to get down into that basement sometime. Think he’ll take me down there?”
“I would think,” Kieran said.
“After all this, obviously. I mean, go figure. They make that kind of find, and then discover a missing starlet displayed down there. Wow. So sad. And still...”
Kieran could feel Kevin’s tension. He wasn’t angry with