“Right, but you still had to plead to a charge of escaping from custody. After that, there was a series of attempts on the life of Ed Eagle, culminating in a knife attack by a killer you hired, which left Mr. Eagle in critical condition in a Santa Fe hospital.”

“I had nothing to do with that!”

“Are you saying that Ed Eagle staged a nearly fatal knife attack on himself?”

“Of course he did. I’m not taking any more of this!” Barbara got to her feet and began ripping the wires from her body.

“Well, there’s a great deal more here,” Pam said, holding up her clipboard. “I guess I’ll just have to continue without you.”

The camera followed Barbara as she searched for a way out of the room, then Hugh Gordon appeared, breathless and red-faced. “This way!” he shouted, and the two of them made their escape from the studio.

Pam turned back to the camera. “In the absence of Mrs. Barbara Grosvenor, let’s go through the rest of her history, which culminates with the explosion of Ed Eagle’s jet airplane at Santa Monica Airport a few days ago.”

Occasionally consulting her notes, Pam went on.

Chapter 48

Everyone gathered in the early evening for a drink in Stone’s living room. Hal Henry, an old Hollywood hand in his sixties, regaled them with stories of the town’s golden years and held them rapt. Then Dino and Viv arrived with their guests, who turned out to be the police commissioner of New York and his wife, Dorothy. Stone knew them well, and was happy to see them. They were almost ready to go in for dinner, when Fred came into the room. “Telephone call for Ms. Keaton,” he said.

“You can take it in the study,” Stone said. She knew the way. Everyone chatted for a bit, then Ann returned. “Ed,” she said, “you’ve gotten very lucky with 60 Minutes: a segment they had planned to show this Sunday had to be held up while they sort out some legal problems and they were going to air a rerun, but the Pamela Hale interview from San Francisco came in and blew them away.”

“That’s wonderful news,” Hal said. “You don’t get on that show on short notice unless you have something special.”

“They’re doing a rough cut of the footage as we speak, and they want to come here tomorrow morning, show you the rough cut, then interview you on camera.”

“Fine with me,” Ed said.

“They’re going to make two segments of the two interviews,” Ann said. “The first segment will be softball questions from Pamela, allowing Barbara to get everything out of her system. That will be the interview her publicist wanted for her. The second segment will be taken from the last half of the interview, followed by the interview with you, Ed.”