Beginnings and Ends (Short Story) by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page B

character as any she’d ever created for one of her screenplays.
    For the first time in her career—a crazy, seven-year ride that had started with a freak hit when she was still in film school—Jane was making a movie based on fact.
    And was getting death threats because of it.
    “I don’t want to have to be the ‘Party Girl Producer’ here in my own home,” she told her brother. Her feet hurt just from the idea of wearing J. Mercedes Chadwick’s dangerously high heels 24/7. Which she would have to do. Because her bodyguards would be watching her—that was the whole point of them being there, right?
    And no way would she risk one of them giving an interview after the threat was over and done, saying, “Jane Chadwick? Yeah, the Mercedes thing is just BS. No really calls her that. She’s actually very normal. Plain Jane, you know? Nothing special to look at without the trashy clothes and makeup. She works eighteen-hour days—which is deadly dull and boring, if youwant to know the truth. All those guys she allegedly dates? It’s all for show. The Party Girl Producer hasn’t had a private party in her bedroom for close to two years.”
    Patty knocked on the door, opening it a crack to peek in. “I’m sorry,” she reported. “They’ve set up a meeting here for four o’clock with the security firm they’ve hired—Troubleshooters Incorporated.”
    Jane closed her eyes at Patty’s verb tense.
Hired
. “No,” she said. “Tell them no. Leave off the thank you this time and—”
    “I’m sorry,”—Patty looked as if she were going to cry,—“but the studio apparently called the FBI—”
    “What?”
    “And the authorities are taking the threats seriously. They’re involved now—”
    “The FBI?” Jane was on her feet.
    Patty nodded. “Some important agent from DC is going to be here at four, too. He’s already on his way.”
    It was very clear to Cosmo that J. Mercedes Chadwick couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
    “You’re telling me,” she repeated, making sure that she got it right, “that there are thousands of people—tens of thousands—who consider Chester Lord, a little-known Alabama District Court judge who’s been dead since 1959, to be their personal hero?”
    FBI Agent Jules Cassidy nodded. “Yes, ma’am. They call themselves the Freedom Network. Chester Lord wrote a number of books and—”
    “This is a man who was über-conservative even for his time,” she pointed out. “There are rumors that Judge Lord looked the other way and allowed lynchings—”
    “I believe they refer to him as honest and old-fashioned,” Jules told her. “And his son, Hal, was a highly decorated war hero—you surely know more about that part of it than I do. But I can tell you one thing. Apparently these people are very protective of the memories of both father and son, and they’re not at all happy at the idea of you outing Hal in your movie.”
    Mercedes’s assistant had put a copy of the
American Hero
script onto the table in front of them, along with the warning that they could not take it out of this building.
    Like … what? They were going to sell it on e-bay? Or give a copy of the most provocative scenes to a tabloid like the
National Voice
?
    Cosmo flipped through it. It was the story of Jack Shelton and Harold “Hal” Lord—two young American soldiers who met in Paris in early 1945, toward the end of World War Two.
    Hal was a highly decorated war hero, and because he spoke fluent German, he volunteered to be part of an Allied team determined to find out whether Hitler’s scientists had succeeded in creating an atomic bomb. The movie alleged that Hal Lord was gay, but in total denial. He was not just in the closet, he was sitting so far in the back with his eyes shut, he couldn’t even see the door.
    Until Jack Shelton made the scene.
    “Hal’s own granddaughter has given our movie her blessing,” Mercedes pointed out. “If you’re looking for the sex, the first gay