Coached in the Act by Victoria Laurie

Author:Victoria Laurie [Laurie, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sort4
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“This is a gold mine,” I said, flipping through the pages once we were home again, this time at Chez Cat, sitting at my kitchen island, sipping tea and perusing the script.

“I know, right?” he said. “Neither one of us got to see the second act, so from that standpoint alone, it’s a treasure.”

I read through the lines, which had felt so spontaneous coming from Yelena’s lips, and marveled that she hadn’t sounded rehearsed when she’d delivered all those zingers. It read exactly as it’d sounded, like a monologue—a train of thought, one lover following another through all twelve men.

“I’d really like to know who Lover Number Two is,” I said.

“The legislator?”

“Yes. What we don’t know is if he’s a local rep or a national one.”

“He’d be national. No way would Yelena date someone in the state legislature. And I’d put odds that it’s a senator and not a congressman. She’d be after someone with stature.”

I giggled with mirth and shook my head. “I doubt Yelena had an affair with Chuck Schumer.”

“Who said it was a New York senator?” Gilley said. “Lots of politically powerful people have homes here in the Hamptons.”

“Good point. Which widens up the field again.”

“As if it weren’t wide enough with eight unknown suspects,” Gilley mused.

“Don’t you mean nine? We only know of McAllen, Goldberg, and Leahy.”

“I’m assuming Aaron is in this script somewhere,” Gilley said with a sigh.

“Oh, that’s right. We’ll need to look for him in the script just to confirm though,” I said.

After setting the script on the counter, I laid my hands flat on top of it. “We need to go through this page by page with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Agreed,” he said, tugging at the corners of the pages until I let him have them. He then turned several pages, stopped on one particular page, and turned it toward me. “Did you see that?”

I squinted at the page but couldn’t see what had caught his attention. “What?”

Gilley tapped the bottom left corner. “See that note?”

I blinked. I’d missed it on my cursory look through the pages. “I can’t make it out. Can you?”

Gilley turned the page back toward him and moved his finger to the bottom paragraph, marked Lover Number Eight. “See that arrow?” he said.

I did see it. It was faded, because it’d been written in pencil, but I could make it out. “You think the note is in regard to Lover Number Eight?”

“I do,” Gilley said. “Her handwriting is terrible, but I believe the note says, ‘Call Gene,’ and then I believe that’s a dollar sign.”

Gilley pointed to the squiggly symbol, and I nodded. “I think you’re right. So do we both agree that Gene is very likely Lover Number Eight?”

“We do,” Gilley said.

“And that she was calling him for money?”

“She was.”

“Like, for what? Support? Or something more nefarious, like blackmail?”

“That thought had crossed my mind,” Gilley said.

“So who’s Gene?”

Gilley shrugged. Then his eyes lit up. “Hold on,” he said, pulling out his phone and tapping at it madly.

I refilled both our cups with more tea, waiting him out.

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