Page 17 of Behind the Scenes

“I had a cook named France who was with me for two years. She didn’t come with me to New York, though. She’s still back in LA taking care of the house, along with a maid named Pam.”

“Any issues with either one of them?”

“No, none that I can think of. I loved France’s cooking. I’m going to miss it, in fact.”

“Did she know how much you loved her food?”

Alexis chuckled. “Yes. I used to tell her all the time, and she used to tell me how she made everything low calorie while still making it taste good. The woman was a magician in the kitchen.”

“Ever yell at either one of them? Ever chastise them in front of others?” Hunter asked with a knowing look.

“You’ve been here less than a day and I know you’ve heard me yell already, Hunter. Let’s assume I did, but I really don’t think my staff cares about that kind of stuff. I pay them handsomely, so there is that.”

He didn’t respond to her attempt at defending her behavior, and for one of the first times since she became famous, she didn’t like hearing herself say she yelled and screamed at people. True, she meant it when she said she needed a release from the rest of the world when she was in her own home, but his silence felt like judgment about the way she acted.

She didn’t like it at all.

As he wrote his notes, she said, “I know you probably think I’m some kind of spoiled prima donna because I’ve gotten excited a few times and let my emotions get the best of me. My staff understands I don’t mean anything by it, though. They know me well enough to know I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Uh-huh. I’m going to need to contact both of those women in LA,” he said without looking up from his notebook.

He said nothing more and just continued to jot down notes. Alexis didn’t like how his continued silence made her feel. She never meant to hurt anyone. Is that what had happened? Had she inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings and now that person wanted to hurt her back?

Finally, Hunter lifted his head and asked, “Two years ago means you had a different cook before? Who did she replace?”

“Shari Thompson. She left when she became pregnant.”

“What about employees when you and your husband were together?”

The mention of Jackson made her feel vulnerable and exposed, so she looked away and answered, “I’ll have to think about that and get you a list.”

As she prayed to God he wouldn’t continue to ask about that time in her life, he said, “Okay. That leaves how many other employees?”

“Just Carla and Lauren. Carla’s been with me for four years. She came on right before I got married. And Lauren’s been like my sister since first grade. Neither one of them would want to hurt me for the world.”

“So no problems with either of them?”

Alexis dropped her legs off the chair and sat up straight. “Absolutely not. They’re like family. They were there when I found out my husband was cheating on me. They were there when my husband and his girlfriend began showing up in the tabloids making me feel like a fool. They were there when less than a month after our divorce was final my husband married his girlfriend he’d been cheating with, a woman three years younger than me.”

Her emotions began to get the best of her, so she stopped talking and looked down at her hands in her lap. The last thing she wanted to do was let Hunter see how talking about what Jackson did upset her. She never talked about it anymore, but it still hurt to even say the words. If she could, she’d never say them again.

“Paul told me the first letter arrived three months ago, and since then, you’ve gotten one every week. Other than the package the other night, have there been any other packages in addition to the letters?” Hunter asked, thankfully moving on from the subject of her ex-husband and what he did to her.

“No. Just that one.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hunter stand to leave. “I’m assuming you handed the letters over to the police. Do you have copies of them, by any chance?”

Looking up at him, she shook her head. “No. We gave the police everything.”

Her head began to throb from the stress of thinking of all the people who might want to hurt her. Having her life put under a microscope yet again just brought into focus how unsafe she truly was, even in her own home.

It frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

“I’ll get them on my own then. Don’t worry. We’ll find out who’s doing this, Alexis.”

She smiled up at him and realized he’d used we instead of I, including her just as she’d asked him to earlier. Not one of the officers back in LA had ever made her feel like anything more than a passive target, a woman who could do nothing more than just wait until the next letter came and upended her life once again.

“Thank you.”

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