Think Twice

Myron didn’t know how to soften the blow, so he said it: “Did Cecelia ever tell you that she was raped?”

His head snapped as though someone had punched him in the jaw. For a few long moments, he didn’t say anything. He just stared at Myron. Tears filled his eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft.

“Was she?”

“That’s what she told a friend.”

“Oh my God.” He closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the sky. “What friend?”

“Emily Downing.”

“Greg’s wife.”

“Yes.”

Ben Staples stood there, frozen, staring at the mound of dirt. “Does she know who...?”

“No,” Myron said.

It took some time for Ben Staples to process this. Myron gave him the space.

Then Ben asked, “Why wouldn’t Cecelia tell me?”

Myron figured that he was asking himself that more than he was asking Myron, but he still said, “I don’t know.”

“And Emily told you this?”

“Yes.”

“What else did she tell you?”

Myron filled him in as best he could. Ben’s expression moved from anguish to anger. There was a reckoning of some sort going on here or, at the very least, something dawning on him. When Myron finished telling what he knew, he didn’t give Ben Staples a chance to ruminate.

“You know who did it,” Myron said.

“I think so, yes.”

Myron waited.

“He kept talking to her about getting her a lead in a new Broadway play. I knew it was a come-on. I mean, so did she. Every male producer suddenly had the perfect role to launch her as a serious actress. But a lead in a Broadway play? Cecelia couldn’t act. I told her that once too. I’m like, ‘You get what’s going on here, right?’ I shouldn’t have said that. Even if it was true. I should have been more supportive.”

“Who raped her, Ben?”

“I’m not sure I should say.”

“Why not?”

“Because obviously she didn’t want the world to know. I don’t know if her death changes that.”

“This guy, this rapist, he may be connected to her murder.”

“He’s not.”

“How can you—?”

“Because he’s dead. It was Harold Mostring. She had a late-night” — again with the sarcastic finger quotes — “‘audition’ with him a few months before our divorce. I even thought, I mean, it crossed my mind — this was before all the awful stuff about him coming out — I actually did wonder if he was Clay’s real father. Like maybe she just wanted the role so badly.”

Howard Mostring had been a well-known Broadway producer/predator who, by the time he got into a courtroom, had more than fifty accusations of sexual assault over the past quarter century. Howard’s lawyers got him out on bail under the condition he wear an ankle bracelet. Howard went home to his swanky penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, opened up the sliding glass door to his terrace, and jumped. It may have been the perfect ending except that destructive people too often end up being destructive to the very end. He landed on a young woman who had just gotten engaged, killing her too.

“One last victim for Howard Mostring.”

That was what the media called that poor woman.

“I still don’t get it,” Ben Staples said.

“Get what?”

“How does Greg Downing end up taking the fall for all this?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

When Myron got back to the Dakota, Terese Collins, his wife, ran up to him and greeted him with a kiss that could knock a movie up a rating.

“Whoa,” Myron said, when they finally came up for air. “That was... I mean... wow.”

“You are so smooth,” Terese said.

“Right?”

“I’m so happy to see you,” she said.

“Me too.”

“God, stop with the smooth lines.”

“Can’t help myself,” Myron said. “I thought your plane didn’t land until late.”

“I caught an earlier one. Happy?”

He smiled. “Ecstatic.”

She moved in closer and arched an eyebrow. “Win won’t be home tonight.”

“He told you that?”

“He told me that.”

“Win’s a good man.”

“Not really,” she said, “but he’s good in this case.”

“Do you want me to take you out to dinner?” he asked.

Terese put her lips by his ear. Myron felt the jolt. Then Terese whispered, “I’m not really hungry, are you?”

“Uh, not for food anyway.”

“Again with the smooth,” she said.

“I’m on a roll.”

“Or you soon will be.”

They stumbled their way into the bedroom. Much later, they ordered burgers and fries from Shake Shack and devoured it all in bed. Hours passed. The rest of the world stayed away. At some point, very late into the night, when they were both lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, Terese said, “I have to leave tomorrow. Ends up I’m covering the Prine murder.”

“Oh,” Myron said. Not a surprise. He had seen something about it on the news this morning. Real estate mogul Ronald Prine had been gunned down in Philadelphia. They lay there for a few more minutes, both on their backs, their breathing starting to sync up. Then Myron said, “I have something to tell you.”

Terese didn’t move.

“Before I say anything, nothing happened.”

“Myron?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not the reassuring opening you think it is.”

“I was at Emily’s last night,” he said.

“Her place on the Upper East Side?”

“No, her house in the Hamptons.”

“Uh-huh.”