Nancy Grace: Death on the D-List

The second book in the Hailey Dean series, 2010

IT WAS ALMOST COLD OUTSIDE. BETWEEN THE COOL AIR OFF THE OCEAN AND the fact the sun set hours ago, you’d never guess it was nearly spring. The perfectly placed gravel covering the walkway around the side of the mansion crunched with each footstep. Anyone could hear it a mile away… if anyone had been home. But they weren’t. That was step number one, to make sure the behemoth of a house was vacant while the owners were out in Park City making a spectacle of themselves at Sundance Film Festival.

It was.

They popped up on Entertainment Tonight last night, obviously stoned, at some red-carpet event. She had starved herself down to a bag of bones with a sprayed-on orange tan, and he was showing off new blond implants that had actually turned out pretty well, dipping his head toward the camera and brushing his hair back several times during the thirty-second clip. Everybody and their brother showed up at Sundance now. All the hot, sweaty wannabes cramming every sushi bar in town, hoping to connect with the stars.

Little did they know what was going on in their pool house at the very moment they were smiling for the cameras, sucking in every last drop of attention like two big, vapid sponges. They were completely full of themselves. Constantly throwing exclusive “private parties” only the celebrity elite were invited to.

Wonder what that was like.

The crunchy bleached gravel, which upon closer inspection turned out to be tiny shells of some sort, probably shipped in from the Coast and ridiculously expensive, gave way to damp, closely manicured grass with a stepping-stone walk. Walking around the pool, blue tinted water gurgled out of a fake grotto with a secluded hot tub in the corner. Why would they pay for running this get-up when nobody was here for weeks?

Whatever. It was their water bill.

It was so true… If you want anything done right you just have to do it yourself. Huffing up the steps and around the side of the house, the back sliding glass door facing the pool glided open without a sound.

There she was… thick, dull, silver duct tape securing her wrists and ankles tightly to a chair. Her trademark blue eyes edged in smoky gray liner widened when the door opened, even though she certainly couldn’t see that far in the dim light. Nearly all the lights were out in both the guesthouse and the main estate. Thank God for Sundance.

At first she looked grateful… until she spotted the gun. When she saw the silencer being screwed on, she started struggling wildly against the duct tape binding her wrists.

Then, in just one flash, one sharp instant, it was all over. After all the hours, no, days of planning, calculating, scheming, and maneuvering, it was over. All that anticipation… Would there be pain? Sorrow? Regret? Elation? Or just simply revulsion when the trigger finally pulled and one, single bullet sliced through the gray matter of Leather Stockton’s brain.

But now, in the dead silence immediately after the deed, standing there in the darkened pool house looking down at the macabre mask of human flesh and blood and gristle atop the actress’s body… What a letdown.

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Leather’s left foot spasmed a few times, and then she was still. Okay. That was a lot quicker and easier than expected. Stockton’s whole pampered life led up to this, the zenith of her career.

She’d end up more famous for being murdered in a celeb’s pool house than she ever was for a string of mediocre TV series. It was always the same thing. Stockton lounging by a pool in a bikini. Her in an over-the-top evening gown with a plunging neckline and a push-up bra. Her with tons of eyeliner and mascara to make her blue eyes pop on camera. “Saucy primetime soaps” had been her specialty, then there was a cop drama, and something after that-it all blended together.

Lately, Leather Stockton was only famous for her spread in Playboy and for crashing her car into the front window of a McDonald’s while trying to order fries at the drive-thru. She was drunk out of her gourd of course and went straight to a $60,000-a-week “rehab” in Antigua.

Leather still looked pretty good, though. Not so much right now, of course, with her face blown open and the blood oozing down her neck and matting in her hair. But generally speaking, she was, and had always been, a looker.

This was not the time to dally. The sliding glass door clicked shut.

You could learn a lot on TV, such as how latex gloves were truly the best. Had it been touched with an ungloved hand, the thick glass on the sliding door would’ve definitely grabbed fingerprints.

Glancing at the wristwatch by the light of a glowing lawn lamp highlighting the fake grotto, it was clear there was plenty of time to make it across town to be spotted. Being seen around town as an alibi was really just the icing on the cake because by the time the morons got back from Sundance to find the decomposed mush, there would be no real way to establish a credible time line.

Fresh clothes and shoes were waiting in the car. Even the tiniest blood spatters could be picked up on a shooter’s clothes, so they’d have to be burned, and thrown in the trash off the expressway. Dumpsters behind grocery stores or fast food joints wouldn’t do. They had cameras. And nothing near those horrible freeway cameras that catch idiots cheating the tolls and so forth. That would be tough to explain.

All in all, the whole murder thing was really nothing at all.

A piece of cake.

THE FLIGHT UP FROM ATLANTA TO MANHATTAN HAD BEEN PRETTY PAINLESS. Of course, the security lines and hassle of traveling through the Atlanta airport were hell on earth, but that was a given.

Once Hailey Dean stepped off the Delta 757 and onto the jetport connecting the plane to the terminal, suddenly so much came rushing back. It had been a little over a year, but walking through LaGuardia past Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, the magazine and newspaper stands, down the escalator and to the taxi stand outdoors, it felt like she’d never left. It felt the same as before.

Before two of her favorite clients were murdered at the hands of a man who was once her courtroom adversary, a man who not only passed as an upstanding and highly successful member of the Georgia State Bar, but before that, as an Atlanta beat cop. For just a moment, Hailey felt Matt Leonard’s hands around her neck again.

Hailey shook the sensation off and moved forward a couple of steps in the taxi line. After a few minutes, the next cabbie approached and she hopped in the back seat. Although brusque as expected, he hoisted her only bag into the car trunk, slammed it shut and slid into the driver’s seat in front of her.

“Where to?” The cabbie didn’t turn around, just directed the question toward the rearview mirror.

She’d learned long ago not to speak too many words to New York cab drivers. With what was left of her Southern accent after living in Manhattan, they could hardly understand a word she said.

“Fifty-fourth Street. Manhattan.” She clipped it out short and firm. Less words to misunderstand. It all came back to her without even thinking. The cabbie said nothing, just gunned the motor as dirty-gray snow churned up from the tires and out to the sides of the car.

Hailey buckled her seatbelt and leaned back against the seat of the cab, looking out as Queens raced by outside her window. The row houses jammed together along short streets visible from the Long Island Expressway, diners, apartment buildings, billboards… all blended together… not particularly beautiful but strangely familiar and somehow reassuring despite the fact it wasn’t really her home. The Southland was home and always would be. But New York was part of her now, and she didn’t realize she missed it until she saw it and smelled it and breathed it again. In that very moment there in the back of the cab, she was glad to be back.