Coldwater. Diana Gould

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      “Set against Hollywood’s darkest side, Diana Gould’s gripping debut novel introduces the next great kick-ass suspense heroine. You’ve got to meet her.”

      —JERRILYN FARMER, #1 Los Angeles Times Bestselling and Macavity and Lefty Award winning author of Madeline Bean Mysteries

      “A fast-paced, suspense-filled page-turner...Diana Gould knows Hollywood from the inside out, and her cinematic storytelling had me invested from page one thru to the end. Couldn’t put it down!”

      —KATEY SAGAL, Sons of Anarchy and Married with Children

      “Coldwater is a terrific thriller with an uncanny feel for the crazy world of Hollywood deals, the larger-than-life characters, and the steep price of a life ruled by addiction.”

      —MARY MURPHY, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider

      “Not only a gripping and compelling read, but a poignant and inspiring story of recovery.”

      —MEREDITH BAXTER, Family Ties and author of Untied

      “Diana Gould’s debut novel is so entertaining you won’t even realize she is leading you through the dark side of Hollywood towards truth and light.”

       —PARABOLA

      “Coldwater is a vivid and harrowing picture of life among Hollywood’s rich and powerful, young and old alike. Secrets that tear families apart are brought to light as a vicious murder is investigated. Diana Gould, herself a screenwriter, has done an excellent job.”

      —G. THOMAS GILL, author of Dog Island

      “...a taut and gutsy debut novel, with clean, brilliant writing. I look forward to more from this author.”

      —SUE ANN JAFFARIAN, best-selling author of the Odelia Grey and Ghost of Granny Apples mysteries

      Copyright © 2013 by Diana Gould

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews.

      Gibraltar Road

      A Vireo Book

      an imprint of Rare Bird Books

      453 S. Spring St, Suite 531

      Los Angeles, CA 90013

       www.gibraltar-road.com

       www.rarebirdbooks.com

      9780988931244 (trade paperback original)

      9780988931265 (ebook)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012951098

      Gould, Diana, 1944-

      Coldwater: a novel / by Diana Gould.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978 0 988931244

      ISBN 978-0-988931265

      1. Motion picture studios--Fiction. 2. Television broadcasting--Fiction. 3. Alcoholism--Fiction. 4. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)--Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories, American. I. Title.

      PS3607.O8844C65 2012 813’.6

      QBI12-600207

      The author gratefully acknowledges permission to include a selection from In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Permission granted by Random House, Inc.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

       For those who still suffer in and out of the rooms

       In a dark time, the eye begins to see...

      —Theodore Roethke

      CHAPTER 1

      I’ve spent so much of my life afraid of the wrong thing. Lying awake, fretting what-ifs. My boyfriend will leave me. This headache is cancer. We’re in production and on location: What if it rains and we can’t make the day? As if fear were a protective shield that could ward off disaster. I’m pregnant. The show I’m working on will be cancelled. Preemptive worrying: what you dread won’t happen if only you agonize first. The pilot won’t sell. I’m HIV-positive. Why didn’t I insist on a condom? Then, when it doesn’t rain, you aren’t fired, positive, or pregnant, it’s a plus, not a neutral; you’re not only free, you’ve accomplished something.

      What you fear rarely happens, so worry and be safe.

      There’s only one thing wrong with that plan.

      Sometimes what happens is worse.

      That night, what I was afraid of was being late on a script. We’d been prepping off an outline for two days; the messenger was coming at six a.m. to bring the script to the director. I’d run out of coke. I couldn’t write without it.

      I was a writer-producer, show-runner of a TV show I’d created, two months past my thirty-first birthday. Five years before, I’d been a reporter on the metro desk of a newspaper in San Diego when I’d met Jonathan Weissman at one of those “How to Break into Television” panels. I’d had an idea for a series; he liked the idea, and he liked me. He helped me develop it, and in the process, we fell in love. I moved in with him and his young daughter, Julia. Eventually, miraculously, we sold our show, Murder Will Out, about a crime reporter turned private eye named Jinx Magruder.

      Now two thirds into our second season, I was having trouble with a script that was already late. I’d called my dealer, Zeke, and asked him to come over, but his car was in the shop, and he said I’d have to go to him.

      Jonathan was in New York for the upfronts—the week in May when the networks chose their fall season. It was the nanny’s night off. I was alone in the house with Julia.

      I stood in the doorway to Julia’s room. Julia was not yet thirteen. Sleeping, she still looked like a child; although the fragile beauty of her movie-star mother was emerging as she grew to womanhood. Her hair was splayed over her pillow, an old and tattered Piglet doll nearby, not held, but there, a talisman of the childhood she was leaving behind, sidekick for the journey to adolescence ahead.

      What to do? Wake her and take her with me? Leave her in the car while I run in, score, and leave? Or leave her alone and asleep.

      What would I say? “I need to get drugs. I can’t write without them. Just wait in the car while I go in and get them.”

      Julia was old enough to be left alone. Wasn’t she? Ridiculous to still need a nanny at her age, but with two working parents on a series that demanded eighteen hour days, it helped to have someone who could drive and fix meals. But Julia could be left alone, couldn’t she? Besides, she was asleep. What could happen? It wouldn’t take me more than—what—twenty minutes. This time of night? No traffic? There and back in...forty-five minutes, tops. Better than waking her and taking her with me, having to explain where we were going and why.

      I knew Jonathan wouldn’t approve. But he was in New York. And he didn’t have to write the script.

      You’d have to be a writer to understand.

      What if I left her and a fire broke out? Or a burglar broke in? A rapist, the Manson family,