Almost True Confessions Read online

  Dedication

  To Jim again, always

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my very talented editor, Carrie Feron, for having the patience of a saint.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  P.S.

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Read On

  Also by Jane O’Connor

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Pen name for Josette? The answer was ten letters long.

  Staring at all the maddening blank squares in the puzzle, Rannie Bookman faced the fact that she needed a more meaningful goal in life than completing the Saturday New York Times crossword. The realization did not, however, compel her to put down the newspaper and take action, not even to the point of getting out of bed or casting off the flannel nightgown with a peanut butter and jelly stain on the sleeve that she’d been wearing for the past forty hours. It was almost three in the afternoon of what should have been a pleasurable tail-end-of-November day, weak sunlight filtering through the closed shutters of her bedroom windows. Yet all she wanted to do was pull the covers up over her head and hibernate. She swallowed hard a few times, testing to see if her throat hurt, just as she used to do eons ago as an excuse to miss school and stay in bed. And actually, now after the fourth try, her throat did feel a little scratchy.

  Was she, she wondered absently, the only person in the world who after coming within a hairsbreadth of dying wasn’t filled to the overflowing brim with renewed purpose, boundless energy, as well as a humbling sense of life’s beauty? Oh sure, for a while she’d felt like a walking, talking smiley-face emoticon. A heady—or maybe just wrongheaded—feeling of invincibility had lasted the entire time she remained the darling of the New York tabloids and morning news shows. Sitting with a camera trained on her, Rannie (“Just think Annie with an ‘R,’ ” she’d explain to interviewers butchering her name) would modestly recount foiling her attacker, a psychotic murderer, with nothing more than her Col-Erase blue pencil, the stock-in-trade of every copy editor. The TV hosts would look at all 102 pounds, five feet, two inches of her; shake their heads in wonderment; and pronounce, “It’s a miracle you’re here.”

  But now the media hoopla was over and her life was back to normal, no better or worse than it had been before. On the plus side: she had two almost-grown kids whom she adored—a daughter at Yale, a son in his senior year of high school; a really attractive man seemed to be falling in love with her; all the TV makeup people had said she looked thirty-three, not forty-three; and her three-bedroom apartment was rent controlled. On the minus side: she had two almost-grown kids who drove her crazy; the man in question was a recovering alcoholic with more old issues than National Geographic; she often felt she acted thirteen, not forty-three; and she still had no job.

  Ironically, the person who best understood her anomie was her ex-husband, an amiable underachiever whose life purpose was simply to play tennis every day under a clear California sky. “You’re still looking for meaning, Rannie?” he asked, incredulous. “Just live.” When Peter Lorimer started sounding deep, you knew you were in trouble.

  Simple truth: Rannie needed work to distract herself.

  It was now more than four months since she’d gotten pink-slipped at Simon & Schuster, all because of a mistake made by a junior copy editor and blamed on Rannie, his supervisor. Oh, it had been a beaut all right—an “L” missing from the last word in the title of the first Nancy Drew mystery, a title that was supposed to be The Secret of the Old Clock. All fifty thousand copies of the special gold-embossed “pleather” anniversary edition were destroyed, although some managed to pop up on eBay, selling for outrageous amounts.

  By now the freelance copyediting assignments that had been keeping her mind occupied and her wallet marginally full had dried up. And her part-time work as a tour guide at the private school her son attended had ended once the deadline for applications had passed. She had too much time on her hands; everyone was unanimous on that score—her kids, her boyfriend, her mother, her ex-husband’s mother. And since she was hardly sleeping, she actually had even more time to fill, especially those joyous hours between two and four A.M. when there are only two adjectives to describe life—bleak and pointless.

  Each night she’d awaken, bolt upright in bed, her scalp tingling, her heart galloping, after another ghastly replay of the rooftop attack that had nearly ended her life. But instead of relief that she was safe in bed, she’d be swamped by guilt. She was still alive only because she’d ended someone else’s life. She’d listen to her own heart beating and the fact that she’d stopped someone’s from doing that very same elemental act seemed impossible, horrifying, and wrong.

  “You are way overthinking this. Self-defense, Rannie. It was you or him. End of discussion.” This was what Tim Butler, who had once been a cop, kept reminding her, lately with an undertone of impatience. “Look, call me if you can’t sleep. I don’t care what time it is. I’ll come over and take your mind off crazy stuff.”

  Indeed he could. If not for all those wonderful sex-released endorphins, Rannie figured she’d probably be on an intravenous drip of antidepressants. And sex with Tim was fun, unpredictable, loaded with raw animal satisfaction. They’d meet, and all through dinner or a movie or some sports event at Chapel School, where Tim’s son also was a senior, she’d sit counting down the minutes until they were alone and she could grab him. Yet never once had she picked up the phone when the night terrors came stalking. She deserved the guilt; it was right to suffer over killing someone.

  “You say you’re Jewish. But in another life you definitely were wearing a parochial school uniform,” was Tim’s assessment.

  Chapter 2

  The ringing of the phone on her bedside table startled Rannie. Her hand emerged from the covers and groped for the receiver. Tim, probably, about plans for tonight.

  “Rannie? It’s Ellen.” Ellen Donahoe, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, always threw whatever freelance copyediting she needed Rannie’s way. “I have a job for you. A biggie. We’re on a crazy tight deadline. Can you do it?”

  “Yes! I’m sharpening blue pencils as we speak! I don’t care if it’s a tax code manual.” Rannie leaped from bed and shuddered as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Raging bedhead.

  “Oh, I guarantee it’s a lot juicier than that.”

  “You have the disk? I’ll come right now and pick it up.” With her free hand, Rannie brushed her dark baby-fine hair into its Louise Brooks–ish bob.

  Ellen didn’t. “You have to pick up a hard copy and the disk at the author’s apartment. She specifically asked for you, and she’ll send her limo to get you.”

  Limo? This was getting better and better. She sprinted toward the bathroom. “Who’s the writer?” The one author Rannie had dated, a guy whose depressing novels never ranked higher than a zillion on Amazon
, was always so strapped for cash that he’d mooch MetroCard rides off her.

  “Before I tell you,” Ellen went on, “you have to agree to a few ground rules. The author is pretty paranoid but justifiably so.”

  It flickered through Rannie’s mind that paranoia was by definition never justifiable; however, she held her tongue.

  “First, you have to sign a confidentiality agreement. You are to tell no one about the book or who wrote it.”

  “Fine.”

  “The manuscript can never be left laying around. When you’re not actually proofing it, when it’s not physically in your hands, it must be kept in a locked briefcase—the author’s got that for you, too—and the key must be kept on your person at all times.”

  On my person? Rannie could almost hear strains of the Mission Impossible theme music starting up. Was this a Mafia tell-all? Had somebody finally owned up to being the second shooter on the grassy knoll in Dallas?

  When Ellen finally divulged the writer’s name, all Rannie said was “No kidding!” Ret Sullivan had written several search-and-destroy biographies of high-wattage boldface names. She’d become a celebrity herself; in fact, stacks of a biography about Ret Sullivan were displayed in front windows of Barnes & Noble stores at this very moment.

  Ret’s books were always unauthorized and nasty as hell. And she had a blog called dirtylinen.com. Still, Rannie harbored a soft spot for Ret. Years ago, after copyediting Ret’s bio of Princess Di, Rannie received a lavish gift basket from a fancy Madison Avenue gourmet shop. How many other authors had ever bothered with even an e-mail of thanks? Exactly none.

  Ret Sullivan’s most recent book had torpedoed the career of Mike Bellettra, a beloved Oscar-winning actor. What nobody had known about, before Ret made it public knowledge, was his fondness for tween girls. The book was a runaway bestseller, but Ret Sullivan paid a steep price for the top spot on the New York Times nonfiction list. Bellettra lay in wait outside her Manhattan apartment house and when she appeared threw lye in her face. Horribly disfigured, Ret Sullivan had disappeared from view ever since, while Mike Bellettra landed in prison with a fifteen-year sentence.

  “Oh, God! What’s she look like now?” Rannie couldn’t help asking. Years ago Rannie used to see Ret in the S&S offices, and you couldn’t miss her, she with her retro black French twist, skintight jumpsuits, stiletto heels, and lips so red and Botox-inflated they looked like the plastic mouthpiece for Mrs. Potato Head.

  “She wore a ski mask every time I went to her apartment. She never goes out. And she won’t let friends visit, not that many are banging down the door. Sometimes she has her chauffeur drive her around late at night, just to get out of the house.”

  “That’s no life,” Rannie said.

  “Agreed. She was hoping for a face transplant like that woman whose face got chewed off by a dog. But every doctor told her the same thing: she wasn’t a candidate. And the stuff she dug up on Mike Bellettra was all true. Rannie, the guy was fucking preteens!” Ellen went on. “To tell you the truth, I like her. Always have. She’s a breeze to work with. Loves to yak. She accepts what she does for what it is. Doodoo of the rich and famous. I’d take her any day over some midlist novelist with delusions of artistic grandeur.”

  Rannie understood: for some writers, even so much as the deletion of a comma was cause for endless debate. “So who’s she skewering this time? Are there any Kennedys left she hasn’t already nailed to the cross?”

  “I’m not allowed to say, not until you sign the confidentiality agreement. But it’s someone interesting and not someone you’d expect.”

  Ellen was dangling a lot of carrots.

  “So how soon can the limo be here?” It was a quarter to four.

  “Let me call Ret. But listen, this is serious, Rannie. We have kept this project under total wraps. Up to now, I am the only person who has read the manuscript. In-house it’s just referred to as Book X. All the sales force knows is the book will be embargoed and that it’s going to be huge.”

  An embargo meant that absolutely no copies of the book could be sold before a specific publication date with legal repercussions for disobedient accounts. It was a pain in the ass for a publishing house to coordinate, thus embargoes were reserved for major news-breaking books, memoirs by former presidents, and publishing phenoms such as Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.

  “Stay where you are, Rannie. I’ll call you right back.”

  Ellen was as good as her word. Rannie was barely out of the shower before her cell rang again. The limo was on its way.

  And it wasn’t just a limo! Rannie could hardly believe her eyes when a caramel-colored Rolls-Royce rolled up Broadway to 108th Street, in all likelihood the first ever to grace her very ungentrified neighborhood, which her daughter had dubbed LoCo for Lower Columbia U. There was something that didn’t compute about seeing such a majestic vehicle with the El Yunque Beauty Parlor as backdrop. Too bad neither of her kids was home to see this.

  Rannie waited until the liveried driver had opened the door for her before she slipped into the luxe interior, with a muted “thank you,” in a tone that she hoped approximated the upper-crust whisper of Jackie O.

  “So where are we headed?”

  When the driver answered, “Sixty-Nine East Sixty-Ninth Street,” Rannie had to stifle a giggle; even Ret’s address had a salacious ring. Then she leaned back, savoring the subtle smell of soft leather, in a pale shade of caramel, two bud vases containing a single rose at each rear window and a built-in minibar with crystal decanters and glassware. “Nothing bad can ever happen in here” was what all the accoutrements seemed to guarantee, and Rannie figured that for someone who’d been doused with lye and left scarred for life, no matter what Ret Sullivan had shelled out for this baby, it was worth it.

  A legal-size envelope with Rannie’s name on it was tucked into the magazine rack in front of her. The confidentiality agreement. Rannie read it over. The standard no-blabbing stuff. So she signed in triplicate and called Ellen.

  “I’m in the Rolls. I’m signed, sealed, and about to be delivered. So spill.”

  “Okay. The book’s about Charlotte Cummings.”

  “No! You’re kidding.” At Charlotte Cummings’s one-hundredth birthday celebration, the mayor declared her a New York City landmark. She was the patron saint of a certain circumscribed Manhattan—the well-bred, moneyed Manhattan where everyone had been old, old friends since their days at Chapin or Brearley (the girls) or St. Bernard’s (the boys) and where all the inhabitants, including Rannie’s former mother-in-law, were on a first-name basis.

  The most remarkable thing about Charlotte Cummings, besides the obscene wealth of her second husband, Silas, was that she’d outlived all her old, old friends. Recently Charlotte Cummings had been as reclusive as Ret Sullivan, ill health finally catching up with her.

  But what dirty linen could Ret possibly air on the likes of Charlotte Cummings? That she once had purchased a knock-off designer ball gown? That she had hosted a dinner party with the fish forks and spoons in the wrong spots?

  In far too short a time, the Rolls-Royce glided through Central Park, over to the East Side, and, at Sixty-Ninth Street between Madison and Park Avenues, Rannie reluctantly emerged from the posh cocoon. What stood before her was a postwar white-brick apartment house, set back with microterraces at the corners of the top floors. She had expected, after the Rolls, a grander residence. But probably the board of any exclusive co-op would let out a collective screech at the idea of a neighbor with enemies like Ret Sullivan’s. Can’t have lye ruining the lobby woodwork, after all.

  Rannie gave her name to a concierge in a headphone set, who was perched behind a wraparound counter. He tapped four buttons on a console and blinked, waited, then tried the number again before saying, “Ms. Sullivan must not hear the phone. But it’s okay. She called a little while ago saying to let you up.”

  At the bank of elevators, Rannie watched the digital race of red numbers to see which of the four elevators w
ould reach L first. Then soundlessly and speedily she was whisked to the twenty-sixth floor: 26J—that’s where she was going. Signs with arrows for apartments A–K directed her along a warren of maroon-carpeted hallways periodically punctuated with Marriott-style abstract paintings on the walls. To Rannie, hell could be a never-ending version of this. Of course, according to Ellen, Ret stayed hermetically sealed inside her apartment and thus rarely saw these hallways. . . . Poor woman, Rannie thought once again as she reached the front door of 26J. After all, plenty of writers dished out bucketloads of dirt—look at Kitty Kelly. None of them wound up like Ret. Rannie arranged her features in a neutral expression and buzzed. Please, please, let Ret’s ski mask be in place!

  Rannie buzzed again and waited. Then she rapped on the door, hard. She thought she heard noise inside the apartment. “Hello? It’s Rannie Bookman. Your copy editor.”

  Still no response. Rannie hit the buzzer for an annoyingly extended time. The high-pitched drone could wake the dead. Futilely, she jiggled the doorknob, called out Ret’s name again. What if she was hurt, unable to get help? Quickly Rannie retraced her steps through the labyrinth back to the elevators and down to the lobby, where she reported the locked, unanswered door to the concierge.

  “Sometimes she takes naps,” he said in a suggestive way that put invisible quotes around naps. Was the implication that these afternoon snoozes were drug induced? “Maybe come back later,” he added.

  No way. She wasn’t leaving empty-handed. “Look, I’m here to pick up an important package. And what if something’s happened to her? I heard noise inside. You need to check.”