A Perfect Obsession

“It started about six months ago,” Kevin told Kieran. They were seated in the office at Finnegan’s again; she was behind Declan’s desk while Kevin sat on the sofa by the wall. He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, but rather away, as if he were seeing the past play before him like a movie reel. “We were working on the Lilith music video.” He looked over at Kieran then, his expression apologetic. “I was a shirtless hunk. She was one of the recognized beauties. The song hit the charts at number one. The video claimed awards, too.”

Kieran nodded. She was proud of Kevin’s achievements, even when he was playing eye candy.

“I’ve seen it. It’s a good video. Though, honestly, I’m sorry, Kevin, I watched it for you. I didn’t even notice Jeannette Gilbert.”

He winced, and Kieran remembered that the dead woman had been someone he loved.

“There was a lot of filming for flashes of each beauty in the three minutes and twenty-eight seconds of the song,” Kevin said. “If you saw it again...”

“Of course.”

“So, we started talking on set. We just had so much in common and so much not in common. She was fascinated by our family and couldn’t wait to come to Finnegan’s. She has cousins and, contrary to what they write, she loves them...loved them, but...”

“But her parents died and she grew up with an aunt?”

Kevin nodded. “Her aunt had four children. Their father had passed away, too, and Jeannette’s aunt was remarried to a worthless piece of trash. He couldn’t see feeding another mouth. Jeannette spent her formative years hearing about being a burden and being told that she was going to have to get out on her own early, because they weren’t going to feed her forever. Anyway, she wasn’t a mean or bitter person. She bought her aunt a house in Brooklyn when she had the money to do so. But she loved that Declan ran this place now and that the rest of us had other work, but that we all helped out here. I guess she always wanted a real family—one where she was unconditionally welcome.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kieran said. Images of Jeannette Gilbert in death kept flashing before her eyes. “Kevin, how serious was your relationship? How often were you seeing one another?”

He hesitated and then shrugged. “At first? I thought it was going to be a one-night stand. Not on my part—I was like a starry-eyed kid. I couldn’t believe she’d even looked at me. I tried to maintain some dignity, but I figured I might have been a novelty to her, entertainment for that one night. And she had to leave the city for a work project. Anyway, when she was back, she called me and we started seeing one another. I lived for every chance to be with her. And she wasn’t keeping quiet because she was ashamed or anything like that. She wasn’t even trying to pretend that she was attainable to the zillions of men and boys drooling over her. She wanted something good and private, something...normal. Then one day I couldn’t reach her. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew she’d come to me when she could. We both knew that we wouldn’t always be able to contact one another. There were events that had to do with our professional lives. But then...then I heard...” He stopped speaking for a minute, and she watched his eyes fill with tears.

Before they could spill over, he continued. “I didn’t think that Oswald Martin had done her in, either. She didn’t hate him. He didn’t follow her every move. That was some writer’s imaginative speculation. But I did wonder if it was some kind of a publicity thing because she was about to become the face of one of the biggest new cosmetic firms to launch in the past twenty years. This is so, so...wrong!” he finished on a breath.

Kieran wanted to hold her twin and comfort him. She was afraid that the door was going to open any minute. While she knew that Kevin loved his brothers and would happily share this with them, keeping this on a need-to-know basis was best right now.

Declan or Danny couldn’t inadvertently spill information they didn’t have.

“Kevin, where did you two see each other?” she asked.

“My place,” he said huskily. “No one pays attention to my place. I saw her at her apartment only once. It was with a group of people. She invited me to a reading, a show that may or may not make it to Broadway.”

“But you stayed after.”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t something anyone would have noticed. There were a number of actors there. She was friendly and nice to everyone. Her work reputation was amazing. She was never cross with a single makeup person, lighting person, cameraman...anyone.”

“You’re telling me that absolutely no one knows that you were seeing her, that this actually started six months ago, but no one knew?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” he said.

Kieran pondered that. “Kevin, trust me, someone knew,” she said. “Someone saw you together somewhere.”

He shrugged. “She was with actors all the time. Posing at parties, openings, fashion shows. I don’t think anyone would have noticed me over anyone else.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Kevin, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. How serious did you two get?”

“We both knew we loved our careers. Sometimes it’s bad when two people are actors, or models, or in that kind of world. Egos clash. But maybe we were different enough. I really love acting. I take the underwear commercials or whatever because I see them as a stepping-stones. Jeannette didn’t love it so much. She loved art and images and what a good photographer could do with her. But we also wanted to make sure that our relationship worked. We weren’t making any real commitments until we’d been together at least a year. She was famous—I’m not. She wanted to make sure that I could handle that. Maybe she wanted to make sure that I didn’t want to use her, either. You know, fake a real love just to use her for more exposure and better parts. If we made it a year—trusting one another, still wanting one another, ready to deal with the whirlwind as a couple—then we’d put our relationship out there.” He paused. “She used to tease me. Said it would be the coolest thing in the world if we were secretly married here. At Finnegan’s.”

“Oh, Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that you kept all this from me. And for so long! I’m your twin.”

“Well, you’ve kept a fair amount from me, too, at times,” he reminded her.

“Sometimes I don’t talk because I’m professionally not able to do so,” she replied.

“What do I do?” he asked her. “Just step up now and tell the truth?”

“That’s probably the best. You can talk to Craig. He’ll believe you. You know that.”

Kieran started, hearing the doorknob twist. Then there was a bang on the door.

“Hey, what’s going on in there?”

It was Danny, the “baby” of the family, younger than Kevin and Kieran by a little more than a year. He was the wild child of the family, now a respectable tour guide for the City of New York, though, of course, he could still get into a great deal of trouble. Always with the best of intentions, of course.

Kieran stood quickly and opened the door. “Did I lock it?” she murmured.

Danny burst into the room and flipped on the TV. “This is so sad and so crazy!” he said. “Imagine, that poor girl found in Le Club Vampyre! And now... Wow! The bad boy of the silver screen stepping up and offering a huge sum of money for information on her murderer. Brent Westwood! You’ve got to see this news conference. It’s Brent Westwood saying that he was Jeannette Gilbert’s secret lover!”

* * *

It was past nine. Craig was getting ready to head home from the office, and he’d told Mike and McBride to do the same. But his office door opened.

“You might want to hold on just a minute!” Mike said, stepping back in.

“What—”

“Put the TV on. Any news channel,” Mike said. He’d already gone for the remote that controlled the screen on the far wall of Craig’s office.

Light and sound filled the room.

A man stood at the front of the New York field offices of the FBI, surrounded by a sea of reporters, all jockeying to get better positions with their microphones.

Craig recognized the guy; it took him a minute to know why.

Then he realized quickly that it was Brent Westwood, aging star of stage and screen. He was an exceptionally well-muscled man, an “action hero.” Craig remembered that he’d halfway paid attention to a slice of life news piece recently that had talked about the beautiful people of “yesteryear” who were still working hard at their craft, even if they weren’t getting the leading roles they’d once enjoyed.

The actor listened to a question from a reporter and answered it gravely.

“You had to know Jeannette to understand,” he said, the right amount of pathos in his voice. “She was, at heart, a shy girl. She wanted what we had to be special. We’re both public figures, but we didn’t want our relationship to be public. It was something so private, of the heart.”

“Weren’t you worried when she disappeared?” someone shouted.

“I’ll be honest. I thought it was a publicity venture, directed by those controlling her career,” he said, not mentioning any names.

“But wouldn’t she have told you?” another reporter asked.

“In this field, we have to be very careful. I knew that she’d tell me what was going on as soon as she felt that she could. Was I worried? Yes! But I knew that the police—New York’s finest—were working on finding her. I feared their anger, really, when she surfaced. I never expected that they would find her...as they did.”

He put a hand in front of his face, as if shielding himself from more questions—and as if hiding his tears, as well. “Please, I’m beside myself with grief, but I’m here to see if there is anything at all that I can do to help in the investigation into her death. This is...”