Wanting Sheila Dead(25)

“God, what do you have on?” Sheila was saying. “Why is it nobody knows how to dress anymore? You can’t wear that crap on the set of a national television show. I don’t care if nobody is going to see you. You look like a load of shit exploded in your pants. Do you have an IQ? Did some college actually take you? Did you graduate?”

Olivia arrived at the door of the room they had designated as their “office.” It was actually the old housekeeper’s office back when this had been the house of very rich people who lived with what Sheila would call “style.” Sheila herself had no style. At the moment, she was wearing enough black spandex to put the entire Olympic gymnastics team in mourning. The little girl with her—one of the second assistants, Olivia thought—was wearing a bright blue and green horizontally striped minidress. She looked like an awning in distress.

Olivia cleared her throat. “We do have work to do,” she said.

“I was getting work done,” Sheila said. “Little Miss Fat Ass here was being incompetent. Nobody has any brains anymore. Have you noticed that?”

“I’ll deal with Good Morning America,” Olivia said to the awning.

The awning sniffed, and nodded, and then hurried away. Olivia and Sheila both watched her go.

“Cow,” Sheila said. She said it loudly enough to be heard in the hall.

Olivia sat down in the nearest chair. “You shouldn’t do that to the assistants,” she said. “We need them. There’s an awful lot of necessary but mindless work that has to be done on a show like this, and you don’t want somebody like me wasting my time doing it. You can’t go on Good Morning America.”

“Of course I can. They asked me. Who is it, these days? Paula Zahn? God, but that woman is a brainless twit. Where do they get the people they put on these shows, anyway? It’s like they think all of America is made up of mental defectives who want nothing but mush with their coffee. Not that that’s too far off the mark, mind you, but you’d think they’d at least try to look as if they gave a damn about something or the other—”

“You can’t go on Good Morning America because the assumption throughout the media is that we staged that little mess last weekend. Staged it for publicity.”

“Did we?”

“No,” Olivia said.

“We should have,” Sheila said. “It’s worked like a charm, hasn’t it? Why should I care what they think about it? Let them think it. I’m the woman they love to hate. So what? That’s good. Let’s go on Good Morning America and really let them have it. By the time I’m done with them, they won’t be talking about what’s-her-name anymore.”

“According to Janice Ledbedder, her name is Emily.”

“Is it Emily? Have the police found out? Why aren’t we counterattacking here? The police aren’t doing their job.”

“The police are doing the best they can. At the moment, they also think you’re the most likely explanation of Emily and her gun. Not that you inspire hatred, but that you hired her. And if they decide to make that their working assumption, you could be in a lot of trouble. It’s not like it was thirty years ago, you know. They arrest people who cause phony incidents—”

“You just said we didn’t cause it.”

“We didn’t.”

“Well, then.” Sheila was pacing. Sheila was always pacing. Sheila never stayed still. “If we didn’t cause it, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Which one is Janice Ledbedder?”

“South Dakota.”

“I remember. And there was the other one. What’s the other one?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Olivia said.

“Yes, you do,” Sheila said.

Olivia looked down at her clipboard for a moment. A moment later, she looked up, and Sheila Dunham was gone. She took a deep breath. The back corridor on the ground floor didn’t matter, but everywhere else in this house there were cameras, running twenty-four seven. That was the point of a reality show. You filmed everything, and then you took all the footage and edited it down until it made good television. The problem was, none of that footage ever really disappeared. It showed up everywhere. It showed up on YouTube.

Olivia left the clipboard on the desk and got up. She could hear Sheila’s footsteps pounding down the hallway, and then the sound of that swinging door. She hurried a little. It didn’t take much. Sheila was easily winded. That was because Sheila had never been able to really quit smoking.

Olivia made it to the swinging door just in time to see Sheila disappear upstairs. She hurried out into the foyer. It was a big foyer with a chandelier, just the kind you’d expect a robber baron to have. Olivia took the steps two at a time and caught Sheila on the first landing.