What You Don't Know, page 5
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Lani Jacobs: Exacting. That’s how I would describe Blair. Eccentric. We would go to brunch and everything had to be on a separate plate. I’m talking cheese on one plate, eggs on another, and so on. And then she’d eat each thing one by one. (Laughs). Waiters definitely hid when they saw her coming. Of course, she tipped really well, so at least she knew she was a pain in the ass, which says something. (Laughs). I was just happy with my little bowl of oatmeal and coffee.
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Kim Fletcher: Okay, sure, Blair gave whole new meaning to bat****, but on the other side of that, you wouldn’t find a more loyal person. She volunteered at the food depository two times a week, volunteered as a mentor with a community arts organization in the city, and in addition to writing a pretty big check, she was always running 5Ks to raise money for a local children’s cancer charity, and she volunteered in the pediatric cancer ward. She’d run errands for you if you were sick, brought donuts to the guys who serviced her car. Truly one of the most giving of people.
* * *
Lani Jacobs: It doesn’t matter who they were or weren’t. They didn’t deserve this.
11:45 a.m.
“Get in there.” Cookie sneered as she shoved Blair into the master bedroom, the door thundering shut behind her.
Blair grimaced as she stumbled, narrowly missing diving headfirst into the ivory shag rug. She whipped around in time for Cookie to grab her again and push her onto the California King. She trained the gun on Blair, her eyes flitting around the room as she swayed from side to side.
Blair racked the pendant of her necklace across the chain, before dropping the charm into her shirt to hide it as she let her own eyes zip around the room for weapons, an escape route, a way to overpower her captor. There were the two tall, clear vases of white roses, coffee table books stacked in the built-in bookshelves, decorative white ceramic bowls, the glass candle holders with the white pillar candles, the trio of heavy mirrored frames hanging on the pale gray walls. The floor lamps with the heavy metal bases.
Lots of glass. Lots of metal. Lots of ways to inflict damage.
“Hey!” the girl snapped at Blair. “I’m talking to you.”
“Don’t yell at me—”
The girl narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said, don’t yell at me. I’m sitting right here.”
The girl cocked her gun and rushed up on Blair, the cold, black hole mere centimeters from her temple. “Bitch, you don’t—”
“And stop calling me a bitch.”
The girl reared back. “Bitch, I will—”
“Stop it. Stop it! Just calm down, all right? Calm down.”
“You got a death wish?”
“All I’m saying is to calm down, okay?”
“I’m gonna show you how calm I am—”
“Okay, okay, just…” Blair gulped. “I’m sorry for screaming.”
The girl blinked and the gun wavered a bit in her hand before she lowered it, gum still snapping, eyes still narrowed.
“That’s better,” she said, straightening up, her eyes jumping around the room. “Tree said I got to tie you up. He said—” The girl patted herself down and pulled a roll of duct tape out of her jacket pocket. She cocked her head toward the straight back chair at the dressing table. “Get over there.”
Blair hesitated, her gaze flashing in the direction of the door.
“Don’t even think about it, bitch. You’ll be dead before your body hits the ground.”
Blair swallowed hard and eased her way to the chair, the dark barrel of the gun watching her. She sat down, looking up expectantly at the girl, who, instead of bullets, shot daggers into her.
“Put your hands behind your back,” the girl commanded, waving the gun around. Blair obeyed and the girl undid a strip of tape, tearing it with her teeth. She grabbed Blair’s hands, chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” Blair asked, her back tensing, more unease settling over her.
“You live in this big house, your husband say you got a Porsche and Mercedes and whatever in the garage and you ain’t got no ice?” the girl asked as she let Blair’s hands drop.
“Ice. What do you mean, ice?”
“Your rock, your piece, your ice?” She scoffed and shook her head. “I knew it. Your old man was lying before when he said you had a whole bunch of ice. Just trying to distract us.”
The heat of her necklace, hidden beneath her top, burned against her skin.
“Cookie—is that your name? Cookie? I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
The girl groaned. “Jewelry. Where’s your big rock, your big ring? You live in this big-ass house. Ain’t you supposed to have diamonds on every finger?”
Blair blanched as she rubbed the pad of her thumb against the thin, barely perceptible band of diamonds encircling her ring finger. She preferred this simple ring, what Malcolm jokingly referred to as her weekday ring. He’d bought it for her when Farrah was two, tired of seeing her wear her wedding ring only on occasion. Flashing the twenty-carat, square-cut stunner he’d slipped on her finger on their wedding day made her self-conscious and just this side of nervous, feeling it made her a target, the irony not lost on her at all in this moment. She reserved wearing the ring for special nights out—date nights, charity events, the endless football obligations that came with being a legendary Hall-of-Famer’s wife—any time she’d be on Malcolm’s arm. She’d planned to wear it tonight.
“I do have jewelry. Lots of it.”
“Yeah, right.” The girl folded her arms across her chest, her eyes fluttering over the dressing table and the nearby dresser. “I don’t see no jewelry box.”
“Honey, when you have the kind of jewelry I have, you don’t keep a jewelry box. You keep a safe.”
“What? Where?”
“In the closet.”
The girl’s head whipped around to the walk-in closet, then back to Blair. She grabbed Blair’s arm and leaned down until she was inches from her face. “You better not be playing me—”
“Oh, I’m not playing, trust me.” Sweat drenched her armpits. Her shower. She’d taken a quick one this morning before her run, like she always did. She’d come upstairs for her post-workout shower then gone back downstairs for her phone from the kitchen counter.
Her phone. The panic button.
She wanted to smack herself. She should have stayed upstairs for that second shower. She would have heard the noise from upstairs. She would have run down the hall to Farrah’s room, hit the panic button on her phone, called 911. Anything. They could have hidden in the closet or under the bed until the police came.
If only.
She took a shaky inhale and moved toward the closet. Cookie stepped in front of her, the gun hovering just inches from Blair’s chest.
“Give me the combination.”
“It’s fingerprint activated. It will only open for me.”
The girl seemed caught off guard by the steeliness in Blair’s voice, blanching a bit.
“All right,” she said, seeming to back down. “But don’t forget I got a gun and I will blow your brains out, you make one move. Just one.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Blair closed her eyes briefly as she walked toward the closet. She glanced at the balcony, the frenzied, reckless thought of bolting for it skipping across her mind. It was just far enough up that even if she were to somehow get over the balcony, once she made contact with the concrete below, she’d likely crush enough bones in her body to make the whole thing pointless. And she couldn’t risk it. Not with Farrah in the clutches of that nasty punk, and Malcolm God knew where.
Blair sniffed as her fingers danced nimbly over the digital keypad of the Traum safe installed in her colossal walk-in closet. Blair could hear the girl’s heavy breathing behind her, the gum chewing becoming quieter, yet somehow more pronounced, as she no doubt took in the plush surroundings of a closet that was likely bigger than the girl’s own bedroom.
Blair pressed her fingers against the console and the safe popped open, revealing rows of shiny wooden drawers. Her hands shook as she removed a few of the drawers and set them on the island in the middle of the closet. All of the girl’s bravado and belligerence was gone, as she hung back in the doorway, shyness and awe clouding her harsh features.
“Here.” Blair plucked a sapphire and diamond ring, a birthday present, out of its snug perch and held it out toward the girl, who hesitated in the doorway. “It’s yours. All of it. Take whatever you want.”
With faltering steps, Cookie inched her way toward Blair, her eyes transfixed by the hunk of glitzy stones. She reached out a wobbly hand and tugged it from Blair’s fingers, her gum chewing halted. She turned the ring over in her hands repeatedly, her eyes wondrous black orbs.
“Really?” the girl said, her eyes shooting up to Blair. “You’d really let me have this? Just like that.”
“I already told you, yes.”
The girl continued to stare as though she expected Blair to yank the rug out from beneath her. Finally, she slipped the ring onto her finger and let out a small cry as she admired the stone against her dark skin. She held up her hand to admire it before spinning around a few times like Cinderella at the ball. She laughed and came to a stop, never taking her eyes off the ring.
“Here, just—” Blair took out more drawers and plunked them onto the island: earrings, bracelets, necklaces, watches. She placed them side-by-side, like a jeweler hawking her wares. “Just take it. Take it all.”
The girl’s eyes lit up as she realized she was being given permission to raid the candy store. She moved in for the kill then stopped and frowned at something in the bottom of the safe that caught her eye.
“What’s that?” She pointed to the pink Barbie doll box on the bottom shelf. “You a grown-ass woman. What the hell are you doin’ with a damn Barbie doll?”
“Oh.” Blair scoffed as she bent down to retrieve the box. She looked at it for a moment before glancing at the girl. “It’s me.”
“What?” The girl snatched the box out of Blair’s hands. “What do you mean, it’s you?”
“I used to be in a singing group. Back in the day.”
“No way.”
“I mean, Jesus, look at it. It’s obviously me, my face.”
The girl eyed the hot pink box, her gaze shooting from Blair to the smiling, plastic doll trapped behind a wall of cellophane. She held the box up next to Blair’s face.
“Damn … that is you. How you get to be a Barbie doll?”
“I was in a girl group and we each got our own Barbie doll.”
“Which group?”
“It was called Captivate. We had a bunch of songs. Back in the day.”
“Like what?”
“‘Morning’ was one—”
“Oh, wait, wait, wait … that’s you? ‘Morning?’ That Playa Brown remade and that—oh snap. Didn’t Sharpie D just have it in that song from last year? Man. Damn near everybody done sampled that.”
“Yeah.” Blair shrugged wearily. “A lot of people like that song.” She bit her bottom lip, her eyes flicking over to the jewelry. “Aren’t you going to look through all of this, figure out what you want?”
“So you got all your money from singing then, right?”
Blair folded her arms across her chest and took a few deep breaths to calm down.
Malcolm would say just play along.
“No. I mean yeah, a lot of people made a lot of money, but none of us girls, the singers, really did.” Blair shook her head. “Just a little bit, really.”
“Come on now. You had all these hit songs, got a damn Barbie doll and you telling me you ain’t make no money off of it?”
“You have to pay everybody else before you get paid—managers, agents, the record label—whatever is left over has to be split three ways.”
Jesus. What the hell am I doing?
“I don’t believe that,” the girl said. “I thought you was gonna tell me you was a damn millionaire from that.”
“I never made any money from it. I mean, I made some, but not like Madonna money.”
Keep her talking, I guess. Is that how this works?
The girl leaned against the corner of the dresser. “So where’s all your awards and stuff, huh? All your pictures and everything? I know you must got like a room or something with all of that.”
Blair pursed her lips. “That’s really the only thing I kept.”
“So you don’t have anything? Nothing?”
“I gave most of it to my sister.”
The girl shook her head. “Man, if I was a big-ass star, I wouldn’t be giving up any of it to be no housewife.”
Blair rubbed her wedding ring, the metal slick and warm beneath her still-trembling fingertips, hoping the girl couldn’t smell the fumes of fear and desperation she was certain rolled off her in unrelenting waves.
“Don’t be so sure.”
Pop Princess
Dreena Harrison Grace, Captivate, 1986–1987, Registered Nurse: I first met Blair at her audition for Captivate. Me and Gwen were already in and they were still trying to fill the third slot.
* * *
Gwen Majors, Captivate 1986–1990, President and CEO Manhattan Realty: Oh my God, we auditioned with like, I’m not kidding, hundreds of girls. Hundreds. Maybe even thousands. Blair was literally like the last girl to come in but right away, Dreena and I knew she was the one. She was kind of cool and a little edgy and the three of us totally hit it off.
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: For groups like this, you have to be the total package. The looks, a style of some kind, you have to be able to dance. And of course, you have to be able to sing. You have to have a personality—I mean you can’t be like a robot up there on stage singing. Like I said, total package.
* * *
Bridget Johnson: Actually, not a lot of people know this, but Blair and I auditioned together on a lark. I saw a flyer somewhere and thought it would be fun. We couldn’t believe it when Blair got picked. It was so exciting and the truth is, I don’t think I could have handled all that traveling and everything. It was perfect for my sister.
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Kiki Downs, DJ, Music Box TV (MBTV), 1982–2000, Host of Dance City, Video Live, and Club Dance, et al., Current CEO of Kick It Productions: Captivate came straight out of the beatstyle movement in New York City in the early to mid-eighties, which was hardcore electronic dance music with heavy bass. It kind of picked up where disco left off. Captivate was one of those producer-driven girl groups that were so prevalent back in the mid-to-late eighties. Skinny Ralph Gomez and Ollie “Slick” Parma were pioneers in the beatstyle sound and had massive club hits with one-, maybe two-hit wonders. Jo Jo Mars, Kenny X, folks like that. They were looking to crossover to the pop charts and hooked into this idea of a girl group with long-term, mainstream appeal, so they put Captivate together. “Keep Me” really is one of the classics of the beatstyle sound. I mean you can’t talk about any “Best of Beatstyle” or “Definitive Songs of Beatstyle” lists and not include “Keep Me.”
* * *
Dreena Harrison Grace: We hit out of the gate. Like on Friday, Blair joined the group and on Saturday, they had us in the studio recording “Keep Me.” Everyone knew it was going to be a hit. It was that good. First, the clubs started playing it, then radio. “Keep Me” went top five dance in the States and top twenty in the UK and Australia. But in Germany it was massive. Massive. Went to number one there for something like three months. When we got booked on a six-month club tour of Germany—none of us even had a passport—they had to rush that through. That tour was crazy. They loved those hot pink wigs we used to wear—that was Blair’s idea—they loved everything about us. Our style, our voices, our personalities. Everything. Everywhere we went, people went nuts, like Beatlemania.
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Gwen Majors: We were three nobodies and overnight, we were stars. We did all the dance shows, talk shows, radio shows, music video shows—everything. Photo shoots, red carpets, magazine covers, music videos. We worked six days a week and slept all day on the seventh for pretty much a year straight. It was insane.
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Bridget Johnson: I actually worked for Blair a little bit during those early days. It was exciting and exhausting all at once. We traveled around the world, meeting all kinds of fans and celebrities—royalty, even. Like I said though, that life really wasn’t for me, so I quit after a while.
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Jenny Valentine, Captivate 1987–1991, Five-time Grammy Award-winner, Fifteen Billboard #1 Records as a Solo Artist, Named “Bestselling Recording Artist of the New Millennium”: After about a year, Dreena decided to leave to become a nurse and get married and I got the call to be in the group. The minute I met the girls, it was just, boom! Instant. I mean, I was singing in a disco cover band and had one foot on the deck of a cruise ship for a six-month gig when I got the call. I was thrilled to be in the group. Got me the hell out of Miami and kept me off that cruise ship (Laughs).
* * *
Gwen Majors: We went on for three more years and really, that lineup of me, Jenny and Blair, was our peak, what’s considered the classic lineup of Captivate. We had some amazing success—a string of top ten pop hits, more dance number ones, each one bigger than the last. Crazy popular overseas.
* * *
Then the endorsements came—we had a soft drink deal, a tennis shoe, and Barbie dolls. A frickin’ Barbie doll. That all sounds great, and don’t get me wrong it was, but the reality was, we were bringing in money for everybody but us—the record company, the producers, our management—everybody was making money off our backs. Everybody. Our managers are living in penthouses and driving Jags and I could barely afford my little roach-motel studio in the Bronx—not that I saw it more than two months out of the year. I was driving a Toyota that the label leased for me. I’ve got the number one record in the UK, just came off a sold-out world tour where I’m opening for The Kids, the biggest boy band in the world at the time, and I’m driving a Toyota. Not that there’s anything wrong with Toyotas (laughs)—I bought my daughter one for her sweet sixteen. But you know what I mean. Everyone thinks, “Oh, you’re this big star, you must be making all this money,” and that was just not the case.
