Flavor of the Month (120 page)

And don’t think it was easy, ferreting all this out. Even for me, Laura Richie, gossip columnist
extraordinaire.
Lila, of course, was dead, the poor thing. She or he wasn’t talking to anyone. After that insane funeral, they had her cremated and the ashes interred at Forest Lawn, in the crypt with her father. Then I had to wait. And wait. Because, without Theresa, I didn’t have Lila’s story, and without that, I had nothing
.

Well, I admit it was a little ghoulish, but, see, I
know
celebrities. Once addicted to the hot white light of fame, they find it impossible to live in the darkness. In the end, bad publicity becomes better—much better—than none at all. Look at Zsa Zsa Gabor
.

Theresa stayed in seclusion for months, but after the tabloids calmed down, after the worst of it blew away, after Robbie left and she had no one to perform for, no audience to watch her suffer, Theresa got bored. Very
, very
bored
.

So, in the end, Theresa talked. A lot of what she said was lies and cover-up and garbage, but
some
of it was the truth. Then her maid, Estrella, for a price, told me what
she
knew. It was after that that Theresa finally went into the hospital. Not the Betty Ford—she was too far gone for that—but Cedars-Sinai. Cirrhosis. Terminal. She died last spring
.

Robbie got himself into Al-anon and now runs a Twelve-Step bookstore in Aspen. He claims a celebrity clientele. And Kevin—well, once I found him, I couldn’t stop him from talking
.

Early Artists, of course, fell apart. Sy Ortis’ three key clients had bitten the dust, Michael McLain was gone, and the others left in droves. So Sy took his money and went to that Valhalla of all ex-agents—independent-producer status. His phone calls don’t get returned
.

Ara Sagarian, after he was found abandoned in the hallway of the hospital, was buried the same week Lila Kyle was. His obit was dwarfed by the media attention paid to Lila. In death, as m life, she crushed him
.

It took a long time to track down Sharleen and Dean. They seemed, at first, to have disappeared off the planet. But we finally got a line on them by checking out her companion on TV at the Emmys. Once we got
his
name, Nancy and I did a lot of searching and found a real-estate transaction in the Butler County, Wyoming, records. Then I went out and spent four weeks in a deadly motel in the middle of nowhere to get a chance to talk with Sharleen. But that didn’t help, because the locals didn’t know her, or if they did, they wouldn’t talk. The funny thing was, after the first couple of weeks of hating it, I started to like it out there. It wasn’t like L.A. It was a clean place
.

But I wasn’t rich enough to take a permanent vacation. In fact, I was just about to give up on the story and start on the Douglas family when my own incompetence got me in the door. And it was through Dean that it happened. I took a drive out along the dirt track that led to their ranch. It was fenced at the entrance and there wasn’t any way to get in. I knew that; I’d already been out there a dozen times, so I’d taken to driving by and up the mountain road, just for the view. It was beautiful, unspoiled country
.

Well, the ruts got the tire, and after a while I noticed I was driving on a flat. A
real
flat, on a mountain road, about twenty miles from nowhere. And I was in heels
.

Let’s face it, I’m not a wilderness kind of gal. Lucky for me, Dean found me. Sweet as ever, be took me home. I had lunch that day with the three of them on their ranch. In a month, I had their story
.

With Minos, it was much easier. Money talks, nobody walks. I found out a lot of the basics from Minos, after a friend of mine at the LAPD placed a couple of calls. I got my info. Minos still has his license. Everybody’s happy
.

Ricky Dunn’s next movie bombed, and then be married Kikki Mansard, the new Crystal Plenum. When
her
career took off he was arrested twice for DWI and then for hitting Kikki. Shane, his P.A., apparently did not serve as his mouthpiece at the arraignment. Now Shane’s working in the music industry. Ricky isn’t working at all. So maybe Michael McLain’s instincts on that were right
.

But in other ways, Michael’s instincts sucked. It took him more than fifty years to marry and to father a child, and he was had twice. Of course, before he got divorced, Michael McLain was claiming his wife Adrienne was a virgin he met at her convent-school graduation. I scouted down Mrs. Godowski, and a couple of six-packs unloaded a
lot
of resentments. We had the story on Mrs. McLain, but I never used it against Michael. It was only when Melvin Belli took on the case for Adrienne that Michael himself began squawking. Because, as I always say, community-property laws can surely make strange bedfellows. Michael needed everyone to know that his wife had been a whore before he met her. Even Michael McLain knows it’s better to look like a woman’s dupe than to be poor. It seems that Adrienne had an affair with A. Joel Grossman the whole time she was married to Michael. The child, apparently, was A. Joel’s. Since the divorce, he and Adrienne are living together on Michael’s money, and A. Joel is teaching film courses at Cal State
.

Crystal Plenum dumped Sy. Then, by luck, she got a hot tittle script from some indie and her last picture
, River Road,
had legs as good as her own. She’s back on top. They say she’s a shoo-in for the Oscar
.

Les Merchant watched his network slip back to number three; then he watched as the stockholders allowed him to be replaced. Bob LeVine was dumped from International, but his son, Seymore, was the money behind
River Road,
and he’s moved into the big time on his own
.

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. There was no one connected with the
Three for the Road
debacle who was willing to admit it. And just last month poor Marty came out of the hospital, only to go into retirement
.

Benny Eggs finally caught up with Paulie Grasso. Or perhaps I should say Paulie’s gambling did. He’s living in Seattle or a city a lot like it and was willing to talk to me for what he once would have called “chump change.”

Monica Flanders died in her sleep, but not before a bitter proxy fight had ousted her son Hyram from Flanders Cosmetics. By the way, Monica looked terrific at her funeral
.

April is doing fine. Anyone who reads the trades knows that. She gave me several interviews, now that she’s the new queen of the studio. As the new president of International, she’s redecorated Bob LeVine’s old office in a masculine maroon color
.

And Sam Shields? What happened to him? Well, he made two flops, but it looks like his latest is going to be a hit. At least, that’s the word on the street. And you’ve probably read that he and April are about to become engaged. A real love match
.

Anyway, the last bits and pieces of the story I got from my husband. Yes, that is one more piece of gossip for you. Consider it a wedding gift from my new husband and me to you. Not that the public is very interested in the private life of writers, even one such as I. But I
did
get married, at this late date. When I met Dobe Samuels, I knew he was one of a kind. And so, in a way, am I. Reader, I married him. And he was worth waiting for. Sometime just before you read this, in a very private ceremony, I became Mrs. Dobe Samuels
.

Brewster Moore and his wife attended. He has never spoken to me about any of this, and once the book is published I will welcome the opportunity to see if he has any comments to make. But his wife told me more than a few things. Mary Jane likes her privacy, and she says she has plenty of it in Honduras, except when her adopted son, Raoul, is home with his friends from school. But she was willing to talk, she said, to atone for her sins. And maybe because she
had
to talk to someone, just once, to make sense out of the whole thing
.

She and Sharleen are still close friends, though they only get to spend part of their summers together on the ranch. Sharleen doesn’t ever leave it. And I don’t think I will, either. After this book sale, Dobe and I are buying another three thousand acres. He figures if we plant two thousand trees a year, we can add more ozone to the atmosphere than all my books used up. Evening up our karma. He believes it isn’t a bad way for me to spend my declining years and my increasing wealth. And he says three thousand acres ought to hold us all
.

He also says he won’t allow reporters or celebrities on any of it
.

Bad Boy

Every Sunday, best friends Tracie and Jonny meet to discuss their love lives: Tracie loves bad boys who seem too good to be true (and usually are), and Jonny foolishly falls for girls who never like him "that way." When Jonny convinces Tracie to turn him into a bad boy, she gives him a makeover, teaches him to scope out women at baggage claim, come back from a dinner date with a new girl's phone number scrawled on his hand, and always carry a motorcycle helmet—even though he doesn't ride a motorcycle.

Jonny quickly becomes a successful heartbreaker just as Tracie discovers that she just might be head-over-heels in love with her best friend. But Tracie's current bad boy has—at last—decided he wants to settle down, her girlfriend has the hots for Jonny, and Jonny can't understand why Tracie never liked him for who he was before the leather. Bad Boy is a smart, laugh-out-loud tale of modern romance sure to keep readers everywhere in stitches.

The Bestseller

At Davis & Dash, one of New York's most prestigious publishing houses, five new authors will be published—but only one of them will be a bestseller. They have worked long and hard to write their novels of romance and murder, drama and love, but the story behind the stories is even more exciting. And the vicious competition to get the right agent, the perfect editor, and the choice spot on the bestseller list must be seen to be believed.

Fashionably Late

All of designer Karen Kahn's dreams seem to be coming true. She's been honored with the fashion industry's most coveted award, her marriage is thriving, and some very impressive money is being dangled in front of her in a proposed buyout. The only thing missing is that which she craves most—a baby. When she receives the heartbreaking news that she will never be able to have a child, it seems that although she has a designer label, she definitely doesn't have designer genes.

Karen becomes determined to find her own biological mother—a woman she has never known. But as if the doctor's verdict has pulled a loose thread, Karen's carefully stitched Iife begins to unravel, and she suddenly finds herself on the brink of losing her company, her husband, and the only family she has ever known. Now Karen must decide which of her dreams she still wants...because keeping them alive is going to be the hardest thing she's ever had to do.

Insiders

Jennifer is a smart, sexy woman who has broken through the glass ceiling to become a big-time trader in the world of high finance. When her boss is caught playing fast and loose with the regulations, Jennifer agrees to take the rap. After all, her fiancé is a lawyer with the connections to get her off.

But instead of beating the charges, she ends up in a women's prison; a world a whole lot meaner than Wall Street and where her designer clothes and fancy education count for nothing. She has to learn fast if she wants to survive. The women in the prison's top "crew" are people Jennifer would never, ever have befriended on the outside, but on the inside she soon discovers that working together is the only way out.

Marrying Mom

When Phyllis Geronomous decides to relocate from Florida to New York to be very (very) close to her grown children, panic erupts. She's witty, she's decisive, and she's very (very) difficult. The kids decide to take matters into their own hands, and start a search for a generous gentleman of means—regardless of criminal record—to take their mom off of their hands and out of state.