Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

“Making a virtue out of being a know-all. That is clever,” I acknowledged. “So was that it?”

Cassie shook her head. “She’d finish off by asking if there was anything bothering you that you wanted guidance with. You’d tell her and she’d gaze into her crystal ball and give you advice. She didn’t go in for the riddle of the Sphinx stuff — she’d say things like, ‘You’re never going to have emotional support from your husband

“More therapy than prediction, then?”

“A mixture of both. And actors are very gullible people.” Her smile reminded me that she’d once been an actor, and not just on the screen.

“So why would anyone have it in for her?” I asked.

“I haven’t a clue. I hadn’t heard that anybody had fallen out with her. She could be irritating when she was trying to impress you with how mystical and spiritual she was, but that’s no reason to kill somebody.”

Changing tack, I said, “What about Gloria? Has anybody from Northerners got it in for her?”

Cassie chuckled, a warm, throaty sound. “How long have you got? The only surprising thing about Gloria is that she’s still alive.”

She can feel insecure socially because she tends to find herself in conflict with conventional norms. She will construct a world of her own where she can be herself, but will maintain the pretense of being tough and self-sufficient to the outside world. She does not express emotion readily, but nevertheless will often choose a caring or self-sacrificing role in life.

From Written in the Stars , by Dorothea Dawson

It was the first time anybody had even hinted that Gloria wasn’t the most popular girl in the school. I leaned forward and said as calmly as I could manage, “And there was me thinking everybody loved Gloria.”

“They do. That’s why she provokes thoughts of murder on a regular basis. Or at least, she always used to. It drives you insane to be around somebody who’s always kind, always generous, always doing charity work, always making time for the fans. There are people in the cast of Northerners who have a permanent inferiority complex thanks to Gloria.” Cassie’s voice was light, but there was an edge of something harder in her eyes.

“But like you just said, that’s no reason to kill somebody.”

Cassie raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “No? Well, you have more experience in these matters than I do. I tell you what people would kill for, though, and that’s their roles in Northerners . Gloria’s hot right now. The public adore her, and the management knows it. Granted, nobody’s bigger than the show, but when actors are riding the crest of the wave, they do get a certain amount of input into the storylines. If somebody in the cast knew Gloria was suggesting a storyline that would see them written out, that’d be a

I sighed. “No. But one way or another, Dorothea’s death has rebounded quite nastily on Gloria’s life. She was the one who was in the room when Dorothea talked about the presence of death. She never said anything similar to anyone else, as far as I’ve been able to find out.”

Cassie suddenly jumped to her feet. “Stay there a minute,” she said, crossing to a door in the far wall. “I’ll be right back.”

The minute stretched into two, then five. The more I thought about what she’d suggested, the more uneasy I became. I pulled out my phone and rang Gloria’s number. “Hiya, chuck,” she greeted me.

“Everything OK?” I asked.

“Grand as owt. We’re watching a Bette Davis video and having a lovely time.”

All right for some. “Can I speak to Donovan?” I waited while she summoned him. He came on the line almost immediately. “Don? How’s things?”

“Nothing except endless phone calls from the papers. Gloria just tells them she’s too devastated to talk and puts the phone down. It’s a class act.” He sounded both admiring and cautious.

“I’ve got something to do in town, but I’ll be over in a couple of hours to relieve you. Is that OK?”

“Great.” I wasn’t imagining the relief in his voice. Considering they’ve grown up in the inner city, Shelley’s kids have led remarkably sheltered lives. There was no way Donovan had the sophistication to deal with a demanding woman like Gloria indefinitely. If I didn’t rescue him before nightfall, his mother almost certainly would, and then we’d have another corpse on our hands. And I’m still too young to die.

Cassie returned just as I finished the call, carrying a paperback. She held it up so I could see the cover, a misty head-and-shoulders shot of Dorothea looking significantly younger than when I’d met her. If I’d Known Then, by Dorothea Dawson. The Life of a Stargazer , was emblazoned top and bottom across the cover. “It

I opened it. The title page had an inscription. To my darling Cassie. Fire and water make for a steamy combination! Where you are is better for you than where you were. Go in peace. Love, Dorothea Dawson. “She seemed to know you well,” I remarked.

“Not as well as she liked to think,” Cassie said drily. “Like most people, she thought anyone whose sexuality or gender was expressed differently from the mainstream had to be obsessed with sex. Anyway, you’re welcome to borrow it. It’s life with all the edges smoothed down, but it does show you a bit of what the woman herself was like.”

I pocketed the book and thanked her. It was clear from the way she was still standing that as far as Cassie was concerned, there was no more to be said. But before I left, I had to ask her one thing. “You know they’ve got a mole,” I said. “Any ideas who it might be?”

An indefinable bitterness crept into Cassie’s face. She knew all about the damage that moles could do to the foundations of a life. “John Turpin must be biting the carpet,” she said. “There’s nothing the management hates more than storyline leaks.”

“This isn’t just storyline leaks,” I pointed out. “It’s the kind of stuff that ruined your career.”

She sighed. “I know. I try not to think about it because it reminds me of what was probably the worst point in my life. When I was splashed all over the tabloids, I think I was actually more depressed than I ever was when I was still trapped inside a male shape. So when I see other people’s lives being trashed in the same way, I just try to tune out and remind myself that it turned into the best thing that could have happened to me. But I don’t know who’s ratting on the Northerners cast any more than I know who gave me up.”

“You never found out?”

“I never found out. There were so few people who knew, you see, and I trusted them all with my life. I always thought someone from the Amsterdam clinic where I had my surgery must have been

I got to my feet. “Was Ross Grant doing the outside catering when you were on the show?”

“Ross? Big cuddly Scotsman? Wife with eyes like a hawk? Yeah, he took over the contract about a year before I was demolished. Wait a minute … You’re not suggesting Ross is the mole?”

“I’m not, but Turpin seems determined to give it a whirl.”

Cassie laughed scornfully. “Ross hasn’t got the malice to do it or the brains to cover his tracks.”

“What about his wife?”

“Why should she? Why risk the goose that lays the golden eggs?”

“Greed?”

Cassie looked skeptical. “I can’t see her going in for that kind of short-term thinking.”

“Not even if she thought they were going to lose the contract? That way she kills two birds with one stone. She gets her revenge on Turpin for dumping them and she earns a nice little nest egg to cushion the blow while they look for other work.”