“Mrs. Zachary?” Pauline asked.
“Speaking,” the voice said coldly.
“I’m Pauline Kingsley,” she said. “I understand your daughter told you to expect a call from me?”
“She did,” the voice said, still cold as ice. “Though I’m not sure we have anything to talk about.”
“We have quite a bit to talk about, Mrs. Zachary,” she said. “My interest is the same as yours in this matter. I wish to keep these vicious and unfounded rumors about your daughter out of print in that sleazy rag. I don’t know if I will be successful at this. The First Amendment gives these tabloid journalists an awful lot of wiggle room when it comes to printing speculation and innuendo. But if I am to be successful in this venture, I need information.”
“What kind of information?” she asked.
“Tell me exactly what that reporter said to you on the phone,” Pauline said. “Word for word if you can remember it.”
“How does that help anything?” she asked. “And how do I know you’re really looking out for Meghan? Your Jake Kingsley’s sister, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she confirmed. “I am also a part owner of KVA Records, which is co-owned by Jake, Celia Valdez, and Bill and Sharon Archer. I am also Laura Kingsley’s manager. And I am also a practicing attorney at law and member in good standing of the California Bar. I graduated from Stanford School of Law and have been knee deep in the music industry for the past thirteen years now. My interests are to protect and defend the interests of KVA Records and everyone associated with those who operate under that label. Your daughter is an employee of my brother and his wife, who are also my business partners. Therefore, it is in my interest to protect her from defamation because that defamation also extends to Jake and Laura. Does that make sense?”
“Uhh ... I’m not sure,” she said, a little doubt creeping into her voice now. “How do I know you’re not just trying to keep Meghan from telling her side of the story.”
“What is her side of the story?” Pauline asked.
“Well ... she says that what the reporter is saying is not true,” she said.
“That’s because it is not true,” Pauline said. “Your daughter is not lying to you.”
“How do I know that though?”
“I don’t know how to answer that for you, Mrs. Zachary,” Pauline told her. “Do you trust your daughter?”
“Of course I trust her!” she said. “Meghan has always been a good kid. She maybe lost her way a little over the last few years, but she’s never been in any kind of real trouble and always does the right thing.”
“I have met her,” Pauline said, “and she is a very nice girl. Jake and Laura both enjoy having her work for them and Caydee absolutely loves her. Now, my question is, if you trust your daughter in all of these other things, why don’t you trust her when she says that nothing is going on?”
“I ... I want to trust her,” Mrs. Zachary said, “but your brother has such a horrible reputation! He’s been accused of being a Satanist, of beating his wife and girlfriends, and of having sex with anything and anyone. Would you want your daughter living with him?”
“Yes, I would,” she said. “He is, in fact, listed in my will as the person who will assume custody of my daughter in the event of me and her father’s premature death. But I know my brother. You do not. You are basing your opinion of him on the very sort of tabloid journalism that is now threatening to defame your daughter.”
“I don’t know what to do here,” she said, sounding miserable now.
“Look, Mrs. Zachary,” Pauline said. “I’m not here to try to convince you that Jake is a saint. He really is not. He has his human flaws like everyone else. But don’t you think that if he was a violent, sadistic Satanist who wanted to have sex with your daughter, she would have picked up on that by now? That she would have left his employ in disgust and got as far away from him as she could? That she would want to talk to this reporter about how horrid it is working for Jake Kingsley?”
“Uh ... well ... I suppose,” she said softly.
“Again, this comes back to whether or not you trust your daughter. When you talked to her, did she sound like someone in an abusive situation? Did she give you the impression she is not free to leave if she wants to?”
“He’s paying her a lot of money,” she said. “More than a standard nanny should be making. Maybe she feels she needs to stay to keep earning that money.”
“He’s not paying her that much more,” Pauline said, “but you are correct. He is paying her well for the position. That is how Jake operates. He pays his employees very well and treats them very well because that instills loyalty and promotes longevity. There is nothing more to it than that.”
She sighed. “This is all just so distressing,” she said. “I wish Danielle would never have given your brother Meggie’s number.”
“What’s done is done,” Pauline said simply. “Now we must address the situation at hand. Will you please tell me exactly what that reporter said to you?”
She hesitated a few more moments and then sighed again. “All right,” she said. “It’s not like there is much to lose anyway. He told me he was working on a story about an alleged sexual relationship between Meghan, Jake, and Jake’s wife. He said the allegations are that she was hired specifically because she was an attractive young girl who needed money and would be willing to have sex with the two of them in addition to undertaking the duties of nanny. He said that some of Meghan’s friends had even expressed concern that she was not staying in the position voluntarily, that once she became aware of what the Kingsleys were really like, that she wanted to leave but they are keeping her prisoner up in the house.”
“I see,” Pauline said. “And, knowing your daughter as you do ... you believed that?”
“Well ... it is not like Meghan at all, of course, but with Jake’s reputation ... and ... well, I’m her mother! When someone tells you something like that you have to at least consider it might be true!”
“A fair point, I suppose,” Pauline said. “Did he name any names?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he tell you the names of any of the people who are alleging these things?” she asked.
“No, he just said they were sources he had contacted in town and some of Meghan’s friends.”
“But he did not tell you which friends?”
“No,” she said, “and, truth be told, Meggie doesn’t really have all that many friends. Not close ones anyway. She’s never had anything like a best friend. She’s always been a little bit of a homebody.”
“That’s kind of what I figured,” Pauline said.
“Are you saying that he’s making all this up?” she asked.
“Not in the strict sense of the word,” Pauline said. “What he undoubtedly did is to go trolling around the town and probably at the Cal Poly campus, trying to find anyone who even remotely knew who Meghan was. It’s not that hard to do now that the town knows she is working for Jake. And then he simply askes those people—who likely do not even really know your daughter on a personal level at all—what they think is going on. These people spew out gossip that they have heard or perhaps made up themselves, and the reporter writes it down and considers it a source. And that is how he will cite those sources in his story: ‘Someone who knows Meghan,’ ‘A close friend of Meghan,’ ‘A friend of the Zachary family.’ That is pretty much how tabloid journalism works.”
“That is terrible!” Mrs. Zachary cried.
“Yes, it is,” Pauline said. “And that is why a good portion of the world believes that my brother is a Satanist, that he is a wife-beater, that he threw a girl off a boat once, that he snorts cocaine from butt cracks, that his child might have been conceived at an orgy and that he is not actually the father, and, if I cannot put a stop to it, that your daughter is his sex slave.”