Nancy Grace - Death on the D-List

How rude.

“I wouldn’t know… You know Todd uses it. He loves it!” She strutted back across the carpeted room toward his desk and re-settled herself into her original perch.

“When I was on my way to Arizona for the sales meeting last week, the pilot happened to mention you used it to hop down to St. Martin.”

“Oh yes… that’s right… thank you for reminding me, Noel… I did take a little jaunt.” It had actually been a five-hour flight each way. “Harry is just so generous, as are you, Noel.” Damn the pilot to hell and back. Big mouth. Wasn’t there some sort of pilot-passenger confidentiality? Whatever happened to discretion?

The rest hit Sookie like a ton of bricks. Had the idiot pilot mentioned she’d taken a man along with her to St. Martin? Sookie made absolutely sure his name was never mentioned, not once on the flight, so certainly that didn’t leak. And she never had to show ID to take a private flight, just get on and take off. So… no written record. But there was also the corporate jet log… and Noel Fryer kept it. He could easily see how often she mooched the jet.

This was just what she didn’t need right now… a scandal with a married man at the very minute her divorce settlement was being hammered out.

She was taking Julian to the cleaners, come hell or high water!

And she wouldn’t let one long weekend with a married boyfriend ruin it all. Julian would reopen all the depositions and suggest she was having an affair during their marriage. She absolutely did not have an affair, but her behavior wasn’t the point. The point was that Julian had flaunted his girlfriends all over town, and that did matter very much.

How dare he make her look bad, after all she’d done for him? He had money all right, he was “in yachts” as a business, but she gave him credibility, standing. He didn’t know a salad fork from an olive tray before Sookie Downs got ahold of him. She got him into circles he’d never dreamed of before, largely due to her position on The Harry Todd Show.

She created Julian. And they were a couple. They’d been featured in dozens of magazines and interviews together… you know… the “it” power couple. No way was a single weekend romp going to foul up this divorce settlement.

“Yeah, that plane is fantastic. It’s my own personal favorite. Its like you’re in your own private den, but you’re twenty thousand feet up in the sky.”

Noel Fryer’s voice jolted her back to the here and now. Sookie stood up and walked alone to the window again, slightly sitting on the sill, her legs angled toward Fryer.

Did he notice the red mock-croc mini? Did he think it clashed with her hair? She thought she caught him looking at her shins, but wasn’t sure.

“So, long story short… we want to renew both you and Harry. We’re so knocked out by the numbers, we want to re-up. What do you think about that, Sookie?”

She was thrilled. Beyond thrilled as a matter of fact. The ratings were published every day. Anybody could look them up, and Harry Todd was barely holding on by the skin of his teeth, resting on his laurels. But the recent numbers changed all that.

“I’ll relay the message to Harry. I’m sure he’ll be just as excited as I am.” She said it with a smile. Still working the mini, Sookie walked to the door.

“Oh… and one more thing,” Noel said.

“What?”

“Get Dean.”

Sookie nodded and closed the door gently as she backed out of the office. She managed to keep the same smile glued to her lips, and it would take a lot more than Hailey Dean or Noel Fryer to knock it off.

In her own mind, the mini had worked. Just an hour before, when Sookie was coming up the elevator, she’d actually been afraid Noel might initiate a conversation about ending Harry’s run at GNE, and symbiotically, her own.

She made it down the elevator and walked through the thick glass doors onto the sidewalk, passing Noel Fryer’s Vespa. If she hadn’t known for a fact that security cameras were trained on every square inch of cement surrounding GNE Headquarters, she would have kicked the damn thing over.

He looked like a damn fool on the little bike, with his butt hanging over either side of the seat cushion when he rode it… that damn scarf around his neck, the hand-stitched Italian leather riding gloves… moron.

HAILEY, I KNOW YOU’RE FIGHTING VIOLENT CRIME. I UNDERSTAND, I really do. But the way Harry Todd spoke to you, well it was just rude… rude. ” Her mother was referring to Hailey’s appearance a few days before on The Harry Todd Show about the murder of Prentiss Love.

“I know, Mother, but I feel it’s what I have to do. I’ve been given this opportunity. You know I’ve had a lot of angst about leaving the courtroom… no longer fighting violent crime. That door was shut, but maybe God opened a window for me through this platform. I just couldn’t say no. Does that make any sense?”

“I do see it, I do. But it seemed to me that Todd gangs up with that… what’s his name? That… ambulance chaser ?”

“Derek Jacobs.” Hailey answered without much emotion. Derek Jacobs had been arrogant, rude, combative, and, frankly, wrong about the law on several points during the show. She’d taken great delight in correcting him on every turn.

“Yes. That’s it. Derek Jacobs. He’s awful. Everybody at church just thought he was horrible, and that Harry Todd seemed to agree with everything he said. I even caught them shaking hands at the end of the show.”

“Yeah… I saw that, too, even though I was several floors above them in some little studio. It was really like a dark little closet with a camera in it. But it was better than being on the set with Todd. And that idiot Jacobs.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they both looked like jackasses. And you looked completely prepared and completely poised. I was proud of you. But I just don’t see why you would torture yourself and do that show ever again.”

“I don’t know that they’ll invite me back. But if they do, and it’s a chance to expose violent crime defendants and their sleazy lawyers, lawyers like Jacobs, for what they are, I don’t see how I can say no.”

“But why? Why for Pete’s sake? Why does it have to be you on the firing line? I had hoped and prayed that when you left the courtroom, your troubles would be over… You’d be out of danger… but now…”

“Because of Will, Mother.”

Hailey’s mom went silent. After all these years, she knew it was best not to argue about anything even remotely connected to Hailey’s fiancé.

“I understand, sweetheart. I just love you so much, I want you to be safe and happy.”

“I know. It’s just what I have to do.”

“Well, it seemed to me that Todd just sat back and let Derek Jacobs grandstand, but every time they came to you, you shot them down.”

“It was like shooting two fish in a barrel.”

“It showed.”

“Mother, I think you’re biased!” Hailey started laughing out loud.

At that point, her father picked up the receiver somewhere in the back of their home in Georgia. “I just wanted to punch that Harry Todd in the face! The way he talked to you! And that lawyer… What’s his name, Hailey?”

“Derek Jacobs,” Hailey answered.

“Where did they dig him up? Is he some famous defense attorney? I’ve never heard of him.”

“Well, he represented Hit Man Number One-you know, the rap star that shot his business partner…”

“What happened to him?”

“Hit Man got life in prison. Let’s see… Then he represented that actress, you know the one charged with DUI.”