Done to Death by Charles Atkins Read Free Book Online Page A

grace and perfection, she was fabulously successful, wealthy, famous, but there were cracks. And this group of people trying to make something out of thin air. Shouldn’t they go home? Call it a day? For God’s sake, their boss had just been murdered. Apparently the killer was still at large. And without Lenore, how could there still be a Lenore Parks Productions? Why are they still here? And why are we here?
    â€˜OK.’ Barry broke the silence.
    Melanie voiced what they all were thinking. ‘Barry, do we still have jobs?’
    â€˜That’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t have an answer. But right now let’s do what Lenore would do … get the next new thing up and out there. So, the question we can answer is this.’ He looked at Ada. ‘How exactly do we turn antiquing into a blood sport?’

SIX
    R ichard Parks felt numb. He’d been escorted into the small family room adjacent to St Xavier’s chaotic Midtown Emergency Room. The words out of this strange doctor’s mouth were not making sense. Impossible. I was just on the phone with her.
    â€˜I’m sorry to tell you that your mother was dead on arrival. All attempts to resuscitate her were made. I’m very sorry.’
    Richard swallowed; his mouth was dry. ‘How?’
    â€˜There’ll be an autopsy, but it looks like a single gunshot to the back. She lost too much blood. I suspect the bullet hit her aorta or one of the major vessels to the heart. She would have felt very little pain.’
    â€˜Can I see her?’ He felt a tightness in his throat, and a welling behind his water-blue eyes.
    â€˜Sure.’ The doctor sounded uncertain. ‘But please, try not to touch anything. It’s …’
    â€˜Right.’ He tried to put words to the reality. ‘She was murdered. Someone murdered my mother. Unless … no, she’d never kill herself … and you said she was shot in the back.’ He looked at the doctor in his white coat over a polo shirt, the top button undone. ‘It was murder?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Dressed in an Armani suit, he followed the doctor through a set of electronic doors into the emergency room. He moved as though wrapped in a cocoon, not registering the sounds and the smells. None of this felt real, he didn’t feel real. Still trying to grasp what this doctor had just said. How could she be dead? They were just on the phone. He was doing what he’d always done, bailing out Rachel and minimizing the press. That was real, this … this could not be happening. And who … murder? Who? Faces from the past, angry producers escorted by security from their offices. Their belongings in a box, their hands clutching a multi-page termination document. Whole teams of LPP employees there one day and gone the next, generating anger, fury, often threats. ‘It has to be done,’ she’d say. ‘It’s not easy; it’s not kind; but it’s essential for the health of this organization.’ She likened her frequent purges to pruning. ‘It strengthens the tree. It creates shape out of chaos, it’s the cruelty that allows beauty to exist.’
    The doctor pushed open the door to a room with a sign ‘Trauma 2’. ‘Give me a second.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘On second thought, just come in.’
    â€˜Right.’ He saw kindness in the man’s eyes. Like Lenore, Richard had a talent for reading people. This doctor, who probably had fifteen years on him, was in a tight spot. He needed to be professional and compassionate, to allow a grieving son a last look at his mother. But he was aware too that he had a murdered celebrity in his ER and that these next few moments would be the last before the circus would begin.
    Richard entered Trauma 2 − at least they’d covered her. Even so, Mom would have hated this . Her hair was disheveled and still wet, her face doughy under the