Read Online The Reporter by Kelly Lange - Free Book Online

nobody else to look to. Certainly not Sam Bloom, who thought all of Jack’s wives were predators. Not wonderful
     Julian Polo, who knew the dark side of his client’s movie plots, but not of his home life. Nor had she known anyone in Jack’s
     family who could help. He’d told her he
had
no family.
    Maxi’s gaze drifted once again to the glut of furnishings in the room. “There’s… just so much of it, isn’t there?” she breathed,
     to break the mood.
    “So much, and so
awful,”
Janet returned, surprising Maxi with her candor. She relaxed into her comfortable love seat,dwarfed now by Jack’s possessions engorging the enormous room. “I’m selling Jack’s things at auction, according to the terms
     of his will,” she said. “The proceeds will go to his estate for Gia.” Maxi looked around her at this mini Hearst Castle, chock-full
     of Citizen Nathanson’s stuff.
    “I’m selling this house, too,” Janet said. “I never really liked it.”
    “The upkeep alone must be exorbitant,” Maxi said, for lack of anything more cogent to say. Again, this scene, with Janet confiding
     to her about her life with Jack, seemed hauntingly like when Maxi had first talked to Debra,
really
talked to her.
Jack Nathanson’s wives,
Maxi thought.
The Club.
    “Let’s not even
talk
about money.” Janet sighed.
    “I’m guessing you paid for everything,” Maxi ventured, emboldened by Janet’s willingness, her seeming need, to open up. Maxi
     was one of the few people who knew that Jack Nathanson was broke when he married Janet Orson.
    “Everything,” Janet affirmed.
    “You were in love,” Maxi put in kindly. “I certainly knew that feeling—”
    “Yes, he was the romantic one, the artistic one, the outrageous one, and heaven knows, I needed that in my very conservative,
     cautious life,” she said. “Jack was exciting—”
    “Were
you in love with him?” Maxi heard herself asking.
    “Of course,” Janet said. “Weren’t you?”
    “Yes. For a while.”
    “Me too.”
    “How do you feel now?” Maxi asked quietly.
    Janet looked out the French doors into the middle distance. “Like I’ve been let out of prison,” she murmured.

14
    T his is Zahna, your late night rock ‘n’ roll dreamin’ queen on Radio-KBIS, playin’ ’em just for you on a Wednesday night. Call
     me and tell me what you wanna do… I mean what you wanna
hear
… I
know
what you wanna
do,
you maniacs….”
    Zahna was flying. She’d coked up before her eight-to-midnight shift, had to, just to get herself out of the house. Now, to
     bring herself down to that hazy, lazy, low-down soft-rock mode the station format called for, she was drinking straight tequila
     out of a paper cup, leveling out.
    “This one’s for Frank in Fontana. He’s nuts about Lacy, but Lacy sez she needs her space. Hey, Frankie, lots of chicks would
     like to share
your
space, babe—bet we’ll hear from a few tonight,” she murmured, breathing heavily into the microphone.
    What crap,
she was thinking. Two hours into her show and she was getting very drunk. What else was new?
    “Okay, boys and girls, this one’s for Jack Nathanson. You know, Jack Nathanson, the big-deal movie star shot dead at his ex-wife’s
     house… weekend before last…you saw the news. Hadda be an old wife or an old girlfriend dunnit, don’tcha think? Shouldn’t mess
     with your women, guys, or look what happens.”
    The sound came up on Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.”Zahna put her lips an inch away from the microphone and purred, “Oh, yeah, here’s the
stalker
song—ever watch your lover’s every move, every step, every breath?”
    She punched her MUTE button. “I was watching
you,
you motherfucking, two-timing, three-timing…” she was muttering, knocking back the liquor, no ice, no lime, no frills, just
     anesthesia.
    Her engineer shook his head. Blastoff time already, only 10:06. At her current rate of escalation, he was thinking, one of
     these nights she was