Read Online Talk by Laura van Wormer - Free Book Online Page A

if you'll do the celebrity auction again, and you've got another body guard waiting for you in your office."
    "Uh-oh, Slim," Jessica said over her shoulder to her bodyguard.
    "Competition. But I guess that's showbiz, my friend." She looked at Bea.
    "Thanks for all your help. Now go home, get out of here, have a life. There's no need for you to wait around." She started toward her office.
    "And have a nice weekend, okay?" she added, turning around.
    "Sleep, eat and be irresponsible for a change."
    "Thanks." Her secretary laughed.
    "You have a nice weekend, too."
    "Come on. Slim." Jessica waved on her bodyguard.
    "I've got some sodas in my fridge. Let's check out the new terminator."
    As Jessica walked in, a tall, slim, young, very Waspy- looking woman stood up. In her hand were several supermarket tabloids.
    "There must be some mistake," Jessica told her.
    "I was told there was a bodyguard in here, not a recruiter for the Seven Sister schools with a closet addiction to The Inquiring Eye."
    The young woman smiled good-naturedly.
    "Wendy Mitchell, Ms. Wright, and I am your new bodyguard." She extended her hand, which Jessica briefly shook before continuing to her desk.
    "I didn't know you were coming on board, Wendy," Slim said, somewhat startling Jessica because he hadn't uttered more than two consecutive words since she had met him. To Jessica's look of surprise, he added, "Wendy's a private investigator."
    "And bodyguard," Wendy said.
    "And if I may say so, Ms. Wright, you sure seem to be a hot topic in the tabloids She held up the papers.
    "Did something happen recently? Did someone go through your apartment or steal a cache of letters from you?"
    Jessica felt vaguely ill.
    "No."
    "Did you ever go out with a drug-addicted doctor? Because if you did," the new bodyguard said, "then I'm afraid you've got someone spying on you."
    "No, someone's stalking me, get it right," Jessica said irritably, sitting down in her chair with a thump.
    "So who hired you?"
    "Mrs. Cochran?" she said with a question in her voice.
    "She's president of the network, it's okay, I've heard of her," Jessica said.
    "Sit down. You too. Slim." She riffled through some papers, pretending she was looking for something when actually she was freaking out over what Wendy Mitchell had told her about the tabloids
    "All right, then," she said as if just refocusing on Wendy, "what's this about someone spying on me?"
    "It's these," Wendy said, gesturing to the tabloids
    "I've done enough work for enough celebrities to know when an insider's selling information. Of course, it could be that they've gotten their hands on an early copy of your autobiography."
    "There is no doctor mentioned in my book," Jessica told her.
    "There it is then, I'm afraid," Wendy said quietly, thumbing through another paper.
    Jessica shifted her eyes to Slim.
    "So is this person any good?"
    He nodded.
    Wendy glanced up from the paper with a furrowed brow and then got up to bring it over to show Jessica.
    "This photograph... Do you know who took it?"
    "How did they get that!" Jessica nearly squeaked. It was a snapshot of her crying on the set. Only she hadn't been crying.
    "That's what I wanted to ask you."
    "Oh, man. What is this?" She studied the picture for a moment longer.
    "Anybody could have given them this. It was on the bulletin board in the company cafeteria for a while, but this is just one little part of the whole picture that was taken. It was my cameraman's birthday and we threw a party on the set. We had trick candles on the cake, so when he tried to blow them out, they blew up and we got all this junk in our eyes, so it looked like we were all crying and wailing. And some body's cut out this little part of that picture."
    Wendy was nodding.
    "So your spy's right here at West End."
    "What do you mean, spy?"
    "Whoever it is made a thousand at least on that picture, I should think," Wendy told her.
    "Look, Ms. Wright, it's nothing to worry about. It's just that if I can clear up