TITLE: A CHANCE AT THE MOON
AUTHOR: LINDA LEE GREENE
GENRE: ROMANTIC THRILLER
One
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C
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olumbus, Ohio, October 7, 2002—The broad tree-lined avenues leading to the courthouse in the heart of downtown Columbus were crammed bumper-to-bumper with cars of spectators blowing their horns and thrusting middle fingers at one another through open windows. Traffic cops were busy maintaining order. The trial of the person charged the year before with the fatal shooting of one of the city’s most prominent citizens, businesswoman and philanthropist Inez Montoyo, was the enticement for the swarm. Ms. Montoyo’s daughter, acclaimed Broadway and Hollywood actress Olivia Montoyo Simms, was to give her testimony on this the opening day of the proceedings, and was the prime quarry the C’bus citizens had in their sites. It was the job of Nicholas Plato and his twin brother Tobias to shield her from the throng. As the watch on his wrist marked off minutes perilously close to the slated time of the commencement of the trial, Nicholas was growing concerned about whether or not the driver of their limousine would get them to the courthouse on time.
The
judge thwacked her gavel on the little pad on her desktop and opened the trial
officially. “Crack, crack, crack,” like gunshots the sound brought the room to
attention, and Olivia jerked in the chair beside Nicholas. Just like Judge Judy on TV, Nicholas thought to himself, and then
he gathered Olivia’s pale cold hands in his large palm and felt her settle into
his reassuring touch. He had been worried about the skills of the limousine
driver needlessly, as it turned out. The man had pulled some maneuvers that
could have won him a spot as a stunt driver with a Hollywood movie studio, and
had delivered them to the designated entrance of the building with time to
spare. At that point, Nicholas and Tobias had worked for Olivia as her personal
bodyguards for more than a year, duties that required their presence 24 hours a
day, under her roof, and at her beck and call. The brothers occupied a separate
wing of her home in a posh suburb of Las Vegas, a sprawling ranch she had
purchased a few weeks after the death of her mother on July 13, 2001. Later
that same year, she had sold her flat in Manhattan and her home in Los Angeles.
She appeared content to set roots in Las Vegas, leaving behind her acting
career, it seemed, as well.
Having
to be practically nose-to-nose with the assassin for the first time since the
murder, and reliving its retched details in the courtroom testimonies, of
course proved worse for Olivia than the awful anticipation of it had been. It
was an age-old story of an aggrieved employee taking revenge on his employer. A
guilty verdict was brought in late that afternoon. Olivia elected to return to
Las Vegas that same evening rather than staying in town and visiting with
relatives and friends, some of whom had positioned themselves among the
courtroom spectators and had exchanged glances and nods with her throughout the
long day. A shaken Olivia and her solicitous bodyguards boarded the private jet
one of her wealthy cronies had provided for their roundtrip flight, and departed
Columbus as nightfall swallowed the horizon. Upon takeoff, she lowered the
shade on the jet’s window that gave view below of the tight cluster of
buildings and streets alight with the late hour, and wished never to be called
back to her hometown again. She put the thought of Columbus and the trial out
of her mind, and wondered if “Nicky” and “Toby,” as she called her bodyguards,
would be up for a late-night jaunt to one of the casinos upon their arrival in
Las Vegas. She pulled the vial of pain pills from her handbag, shook two of
them into her palm, and popped them into her mouth—no chaser required. His
tired grunt preceding his movements, Tobias pushed out of the seat next to
hers, found a bottle of water in the jet’s galley kitchen, and delivered it to
Olivia, its top twisted open. “Thanks,” she said, and then took a delicate sip.
Cupping her hands over her aching belly, she laid her head back and closed her
eyes.
All
through the following months, the tragedy cloyed with little letup in Olivia’s
psyche. As July 13, 2003, the second anniversary of her mother’s death, drew
near, Olivia’s body had long been displaying undeniable indicators of her
soul’s reckoning with her, most notably in chronic abdominal distress and
changes to the left side of her lovely face, in a drawn corner of her mouth, a
sleepy eye, a narrowed nostril, features faintly askew as if she had recovered
imperfectly from a slight stroke. Oddly, rather than detracting from her beauty,
the imbalance in her face rendered her beguiling in a way different than before,
fascinating in the way a freeway pile-up transfixes onlookers, both of them
having death, or at least, mayhem in common. There was more to it than that,
however. Loss was plain to see in her face, as was guilt from time to time—yes,
guilt, because a determined vein of speculation threaded through the population
as to whether or not she had had a hand in shaping her mother’s death, with or
without intention. The investigation of the case had revealed that Olivia and
her mother had been estranged from each other for several years, only to have
reached a truce in the months prior to the murder. A sidebar to the situation
was the fact that the murderer had been Olivia’s lover when she was only
sixteen, a relationship to which her mother had put a stop. While Olivia had
managed to put it behind her and move on with her life, the boyfriend had not
done so, it seemed clear. That he had stayed on as an employee of Madam
Montoyo’s after the fact unleashed rampant conjecture regarding the meaning
behind it. Subsequent to the murder, the issue pricked Olivia like a thorn in
her conscience now and then, but usually languished there, unexamined, and
therefore, unresolved, as indeed it remained an unanswered tidbit among
followers of the case.
In
the face of all that had transpired, the essential life lessons the tragedy had
to teach Olivia seemed to have failed to penetrate her conscious mind, at least
in the aspect of amending her behavior, apparent in a stubborn ignorance or defiance
unmistakable in the backward thrust of her shoulders, the high tilt of her chin,
and her nightly pursuit of Las Vegas distractions. There was no hint that her
best self would win in the end, due in no small way to her reliable attraction
to risk-taking. Her youth and her penchant for recklessness had paid off big
time in the past, markedly in her determined, meteoric rise in the film
industry while still a teenager, but with the murder and its consequences, life
had placed heavy odds against her.
The
stakes notwithstanding, it had to be played out. It had already begun—something
had been building in the atmosphere, something of moment, some extraordinary event
about to be set in motion—some deciding factor. Like air pressure rising,
clouds banking, seas roiling in advance of a menacing storm, it churned around
Olivia. Nicholas understood that it had long been decided that he and Tobias
would play supporting roles to her central one in the coming affair. In wary
expectation, Nicholas waited in the wings for the remaining actors to appear.
Lights! Camera! Action!
