The Reporter Read Free

obscenities with a Romanic timbre, as the nanny looked on in horror, and Gia hung
     on to her mother’s skirt and howled with terror.
    Then Debra let out a piercing shriek and fainted while the cops were reading her rights, having just told her that she was
     under arrest for the gunshot murder of her former husband, Jack Nathanson.

2
    M axi punched off her cell phone and dropped it into her purse. No surprise that she didn’t get any answers from the sheriff’s
     department—it was too early. Not that she could count on information from them ever, but it was worth a try. She’d called
     in the arrest to the news desk at Channel Six, and told the assignment editor that the pool camera had it all on tape. Debra
     was her friend, but news was her job. They’d have the story in minutes anyway. The entire media would have it, and it would
     be every station’s lead tonight.
    “Well,
this
show’s over,” Wendy hissed. “It’s anticlimax from here. Let’s get back to work, Max.”
    “We can’t leave till he’s in the ground,” Maxi whispered.
    “Oh. Sorry. My funeral etiquette’s rusty.”
    “I need to pay my respects to his widow,” Maxi said.
    “Yeah, congratulate her. She got off cheap.”
    “Stop it, Wendy. Someone will hear you.”
    “Okay, you go give your condolences to the final Mrs. Jack Nathanson, and I’ll get the truck and bring it around. I’ll pick
     you up by that tree over there,” Wendy said, pointing to a purpling jacaranda up on the road.
    As Wendy headed off to where they’d parked the news van,Maxi made her way toward Janet Orson. She couldn’t help wondering how Janet was feeling, as the man she’d married less than
     a year ago in a romantic ceremony on a moonlit beach in lush Saint Thomas was about to be laid to rest. Their nuptials had
     been written up everywhere, and featured on all the news and entertainment shows. Maxi remembered the night she had to voice
     over their wedding video on the Six O’clock News, while her coanchor sat next to her stifling snickers. It did seem weird,
     reporting on her ex-husband’s marriage. And tonight, even more surreal, she’d be reporting on her ex-husband’s funeral.
    Maxi tried to remember how
she
had felt when she’d been married to Jack for less than a year. Was she still in honeymoon phase? No, she wasn’t. Because
     fifteen minutes after the ceremony, it seemed, Jack had turned into a whole different guy. Maxi noticed it right away, maybe
     because she was a trained reporter. She just pretended she didn’t—until she couldn’t pretend anymore. But she had no idea
     how Janet felt today. Janet Orson was forty-three, beautiful, and highly successful. She’d made the long, steep climb in the
     entertainment business from studio stenographer to top talent agent, one of the first women who’d managed to break through
     the agency world’s rugged glass ceiling. She had justly earned the respect of the industry, and had amassed a fairly sizable
     nest egg for herself. On the day of her marriage to Jack Nathanson, she’d told the press that it was time she focused on her
     personal life.
    Though never married before, Janet had had hundreds of dates, escorts, one-night stands, and short-term liaisons, all chronicled
     in the trade columns—there had been no shortage of men on either coast who wanted to romance the stunning, powerful Janet
     Orson. And she’d had one very significant other, one long and well-publicized love affair with a talented, highly successful
     screenwriter whom she’d launched by selling his
Moon-doggie
, a charming little film she had believed in that grossed an astonishing 78 million domestic.
    Evidently she had believed in
him,
too. He was tall, dark, Adonis-handsome, smart, fun, attractive in every way. The two were an A-list couple for years, and
     they’d seemed perfectly suited and divinely happy, until he dumped her at the top of his career for a red-hot, pencil-thin
     blond actress half his