“I’ve been going crazy waiting to hear from you,” Tallie said honestly. She was in her room at the hotel, and hadn’t gone back to L.A. all week. She told Hunt she was still feeling sick, was too tired to drive back to L.A. at night, and didn’t want to expose him to her flu.
“I’m sorry,” Meg said quietly. “Sometimes it takes a few days to get the lay of the land. This is actually pretty quick for us, but I know it must seem long to you.” It was the understatement of the year.
“Interminable,” Tallie said grimly as she lay on her bed. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I’d rather we meet face-to-face. I can come out there if you like. When are you coming back to town?”
“Tomorrow night, or maybe in the late afternoon.” Part of her wanted to press Meg to tell her now, and part of her didn’t. She was afraid to hear the results of her investigation. What if she hated what she heard?
“I’m clear anytime tomorrow,” Meg said crisply.
“Four o’clock?” Tallie suggested. “I’ll try to get out of here after lunch.” She could drive herself in again, and she was going home for the weekend. She had kept her dealings superficial with Brigitte all week, or avoided her completely. She wasn’t comfortable with her at the moment. Tallie felt as though she had been blindfolded and didn’t know where she was, or with whom, or who to trust. Her confidence in the people closest to her had been shaken, until she talked to Meg. Only she could reassure her, and Tallie didn’t know if she would, or make it infinitely worse with her report. She was dreading what she’d hear.
“Four is fine,” Meg confirmed. Tallie didn’t ask her if the report was good or bad. She was too afraid to know, without the details. And she was awake all night after they spoke.
The shoot the next day seemed endless and her nerves were on edge. She had a meeting over lunch in her trailer with the writers, and as soon as it was finished, she took off, without saying goodbye to Brigitte or anyone else. The AD was taking over for her again and seemed pleased. And Tallie kept her foot on the gas all the way to L.A. She was at Meg’s office at four o’clock sharp, with her heart pounding. She felt her stomach tie in a knot as Meg’s secretary showed her in.
Meg stood up with a warm smile as Tallie walked into her office, and she invited her to sit down across her desk. Tallie had never been as nervous about any meeting, or as frightened about what she was going to hear. Meg’s face gave away nothing, she was a pro. But she looked sympathetic, which Tallie read as a bad sign.
“Well, I think we have what you wanted to know. Not all of it, after this brief an investigation, but enough to give you a general picture.” Tallie noticed she had a thick file on her desk with a number code on it, which represented Tallie’s case. She was discreet if nothing else.
“We’ve been following Hunter Lloyd since last week, and doing a superficial assessment of his financial situation. There are records we don’t have access to, like his bank records, but we checked his credit, spoke to some people at his bank, and investigated as much as we could about how he spends his money. He has a big income, as you know. And his assets are solidly invested in a diversified portfolio. Everything we found tells us that he’s financially sound. He’s not afraid to spend money, as you probably also know. He drives a Bentley sports model that he owns, he has solid real estate holdings and investments. He’s not irresponsible about his money, and it looks like just about all his purchases and transactions are done by credit card. There is absolutely nothing we turned up that suggests he’s in financial trouble, needs money, or has a shady reputation. He has an A1 credit rating, and from what I was able to find out, he seems to make no purchases with cash. All the stores he deals with are paid by credit card. In fact, he seems to charge everything. There can always be something hidden we didn’t find-this was really an initial investigation, not a forensic financial one-but he looks solid as a rock financially, and my gut tells me that he’s not stealing cash from you. He has absolutely no reason to. Another three hundred thousand dollars a year would be nice, but he just doesn’t need your money.” Tallie nodded as she listened. It was reassuring, but if what Meg said was true, then Brigitte was lying, which was upsetting too. But at least Hunt was clean about the money. It was what she had thought too. Why would Hunt steal from her? There was just no reason to, he had a lot more than she did, and he wasn’t a greedy person. He had always been generous with her, and paid way more than his share of their expenses. As far as the money went, Brigitte’s story didn’t hold water.
“The rest of what we found out about Mr. Lloyd is more disturbing. Our sources were consistent and told us that he has been involved with this young woman in his office for about a year. It may have begun as a situation of sympathy. She was in fact the victim of domestic violence from her estranged husband. She took him to court repeatedly over it, was hospitalized once, and is currently waiting for her final decree of dissolution, in about two months. Her ex-husband was jailed twice for abusing her and their son. The boy is three years old. And she does work for Mr. Lloyd. He sees her in the evening several times a week, meets her at the Chateau Marmont and Sunset Marquis, and spends the night with her frequently when you’re out of town. He stayed with her three times this week. She leaves the child with a neighbor, and they usually go to a hotel. She may be afraid to have him stay at her house in case her ex-husband is watching or stalking her. They seem to spend a lot of time together.” And with that, she took several blown-up photographs out of the file on her desk, and spread them in front of Tallie. He was kissing a beautiful dark-haired young woman in one of them, and in another he had an arm around her shoulders and was holding a little boy’s hand, at the zoo. Meg pointed to the photograph and explained that it had been taken the previous Saturday. Tallie remembered that he had told her he was playing tennis with friends. Instead he had gone to the zoo with this woman and her son. The little boy looked very cute.
“Her name is Angela Morissey. She is twenty-six years old. And he has told several people he plans to marry her. She believes that to be true too. And she has told people that in confidence.”
She showed Tallie several more pictures of them then, going to a movie, coming out of a restaurant with the boy, and getting out of his car at the Sunset Marquis. He looked like he had a whole life with her, and they both looked happy whenever they were together. Tallie suddenly wondered if she had let him down in some way, if she complained too much, or wasn’t as much fun, or was too tired after working too hard. Or was she too old since the girl was so much younger? Why had he done this to her? She had to fight back tears as she looked at the photographs. It nearly broke her heart to see them, and he looked like he loved the little boy.
“There is a previous history here as well,” Meg went on, looking slightly apologetic. She could see how shaken Tallie was, and had known she would be. This was like being brought into the doctor’s office to be told you had cancer, instead of getting a phone call to say you had a clean test. There was nothing clean about this. Hunt had been cheating on her with this woman for a year. For an entire year, he had lied to her, and been sleeping with someone else. And in the photographs he looked happy and in love. And the girl was gorgeous and thirteen years younger than Tallie.
“In the course of our investigation, we were told that he had another involvement before this, with another woman. We have a full description of her, but no photographs. We can research it further if you like, but I don’t think it’s necessary. He also met her at the Chateau Marmont and Sunset Marquis several times a week during their involvement. He’s been a regular in both places for several years. The woman before this one was mid to late thirties, blond, very beautiful, very sexy, looks like an actress. They were involved for approximately three years, and her first name is Brigitte.”
As she said it, Tallie nearly threw up on the desk. She stared at Meg in disbelief and horror, as the investigator handed her a glass of water. Tallie took a sip and set it down on the desk, and looked at Meg blindly as she went on.
“It sounds like it was your assistant, from everything we heard about her.” It also explained the credit card charges Brigitte had signed several times at the two hotels until a year ago. Either she had been careless, or maybe she’d gotten to the hotel first, and since Tallie never looked at the bills, she had never expected her to see them, until Victor’s recent audit. And it had stopped a year ago when Hunt got involved with the other girl. And God only knew how many others there had been. “All our sources say that their affair stopped when he got involved with Miss Morissey, and supposedly Brigitte is very angry about it. In addition, although your assistant makes a great deal of money, she has a considerable amount of debt, her credit is not flawless, and you appear to be her only source of income. All of those records are not available to us since we’re not a government agency, but we saw nothing to suggest she gets money from her family. And she spends a
