Gemma Goldstone died on Friday at 12.37pm when her Aston Martin V8 Vantage crashed over the Hoover Dam. It was just three days before the long delayed, state-of-the-art Colorado Bridge bypass was due to open.
News like that spreads around the world within minutes; the headlines harsh and filled with excitement
“Glamour Queen of Talent dies in horror crash”
“Final Curtain for the lady with the Midas touch”
“Crisis as multi-million-dollar Miracle Mile show threatened.”
Etc. etc.
And that was just what happened, but despite the Hoover Dam tourists’ blurred cell phone images, uploaded to the Internet within the hour, the news that it was Gemma who had been killed could not be confirmed immediately. No matter how frantic or voracious the media might be, the police were not releasing the victim’s name until next-of-kin were informed.
Next-of-kin was Gemma’s husband, Josh. But he was not at any of the celebrity couple’s homes in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, London or the South of France, nor at the offices in London, Vegas or New York. Nobody knew where he was and nobody — to start with at least —noticed whether or not there might have been a passenger in the royal blue Aston Martin.
People often didn’t notice Josh; he was more of a peaceful space than a person. Someone once described him as “slippery” but that wasn’t exactly it. He just sometimes wasn’t there.
Gemma’s entourage never took much notice of the husband; he was the quiet accessory who accompanied their Matriarch everywhere. He had to be tolerated because, let’s face it, she operated better when he was around and he was the only one who could deal with the occasional tantrum, which could shake the building with its violence. He had to be present for every public or TV appearance as her support and her Muse; without him, she was uncomfortable and prickly. Exactly what he actually did with himself at other times — apart from getting slightly in the way of course — nobody knew. Wasn’t he some kind of a landscape designer or something? Some years ago, some bright spark had called him “the Gardener” which about summed up his status and the turnover within Gemstone Inc was so high that very few of them nowadays realized that actually was his surname. Everyone called him “Mr. Goldstone” and if he ever bothered to contradict, no one took any notice.
Staff didn’t stick with Gemma for long; they didn’t quarrel, they just moved on to even bigger and better things. There was never a whiff of controversy: she was the opposite of a jinx; self-esteem bred in the air around her. Not that she would suffer fools gladly (and those tantrums were legendary) but that was just it: Gemma was a legend; an icon, loved worldwide — and rightly so because she was a ball of golden energy, talent and, unexpectedly, kindness. Gemma Goldstone was exceptional and she expected her staff to be the same. She would always say that she needed the talent to be better off-screen than ever it was on-screen. In fact, efficiency was the bare minimum required to work for Gemma. If you put a foot wrong there would always be dozens of production wannabes begging to take your place.
But if you fulfilled her criteria for an outstanding employee, once you had paid your dues, any other media company would go down on its knees to headhunt you and you were guaranteed to go far.
That was, it seemed, everyone except Josh. He didn’t even have style despite the couple’s money and superstar status. His shoes were slightly scuffed; his shirts always seemed crumpled on his lanky body and he looked as though he wore clothes from Wal-Mart. And, my dear — his fingernails! People in Gemma’s world noticed that kind of thing. Okay, the nails in question didn’t actually have dirt in them (as a real gardener’s probably would have) but Josh obviously had never seen a manicurist in his life even though Gemma traveled with her very team of beauticians. And per-leez don’t mention the color of his teeth! What was going on with that? Appropriate flouncing would indicate group opinion of a man who had access to everything but chose not to use any of the tools provided to make himself look good.
Gemma, on the other hand, was exquisite on every level. A touch of Botox, of course, and a little lipo-suction. And, of course, breast enhancement. But nothing else was needed yet — she was only 36 and at the peak of her physical attractiveness. Not beautiful exactly but pixie-faced and arresting with just the right way of looking up at you through her eyelashes and just similar enough in attributes and charitable works to be compared with the long-lamented Princess Diana. Some commentators even speculated that Gemma had filled the long-empty hole in the hearts of those who sought a human icon in order to worship the Divine Feminine. Gemma herself snorted with derision in private and cooed modestly in public when confronted with that one.
What this megastar didn’t have in physical stature, she had in buckets-full of magnetism and simmering fire. She was a media phenomenon; a power-ball of energy, sometimes even traveling back and forth across the Atlantic every single week when both the Las Vegas-based Miracle Mile and her own X-rated, mega-successful late-night British chat show were in production.
Right now it was holiday time, twelve weeks before the re-start of auditioning and just time to begin slowing down on the personal appearances, the book signings and the charity galas and to begin thinking about gearing up again. Time to hone the diet, check out a startling new hair color and style and pull focus before beginning a new season of spotting the extraordinary performers that her show always found, to the continuing amazement of the whole of the Western World. The Miracle Mile had been Gemma’s idea and it remained Gemma’s not only because she owned the brand and was majority shareholder of the global entertainment franchise that ran it but also because of her style and wit and her ability to choose co-judges who complemented her perfectly. Not only could Gemma scent the very aura of talent in the smallest mouse but she could make even the rejected candidates laugh with her precise and profound assessment of exactly why they were useless.
In the end, it was one of Gemma’s fellow judges on The Miracle Mile, Sam Powell, the former PR and media executive, who found Josh — or, perhaps more accurately, definitively located him as lost. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police called at Sam’s Hacienda-style home in Spanish Hills with a “routine enquiry” to see if he knew where Mr. Goldstone might be. There had been an accident, they said, but no details were being released as yet.
“Josh is with Gemma!” said Sam. “I spoke with her this morning — when she was on her way back to Vegas from Phoenix. They were in the car together.”
“What time would that be, Sir?”
“About twelve, I guess.”
“And was Mrs. Goldstone driving?”
“Yes, it was her beloved Aston Martin. Look — what’s happened?”
The sergeant sighed. It was a big story and it was going to break soon whether they found the husband or not. Now it looked very much like they weren’t going to find him alive.
“Mrs. Goldstone’s car was in collision with a pick-up on Highway 96 in Nevada just on the Hoover Dam.”
“Oh my God! Is she alright?”
“Mrs. Goldstone’s car went over the barrier and into the lake, Sir. We have no more than that right now.”
“Jesus Christ.” Sam fell backwards against the wall; sweat beads forming on his face. “Jeezus!”
“And you are saying that her husband was with her? Are you sure, Sir?” the officer asked.
“Jesus Christ!” Sam’s mind was reeling. “What? Yes, yes. She said so.”
“Thank you Sir.”
“Wait — wait. Have they found her?”
“A woman’s body has been found, Sir. We have no formal identification as yet. We need to find someone who could identify her as soon as possible.”
“Oh God. You’d better take me there. Jesus wept. I can identify her. Oh Christ...”
“Thank you Sir. There’s a car outside.”
Sam looked at the tiny, empty body, its cold, elfin face strangely blank, white and totally unscathed. She would have died swiftly, they said, from multiple injuries to the spine caused in the collision and, if not then, as soon as the car hit the water.
He nodded, curtly, holding back unexpected emotion. “That’s Gemma.”
They offered him terrible coffee from a vending machine. “Don’t you guys know that you can get machines now with coffee that tastes like coffee?” he said, irritated but craving the caffeine and throwing the obnoxious mix down his throat as though it were a shot of tequila. The grimace that followed was familiar to anyone who knew him — Sam Powell was known as much for his hard drinking and high life as for his TV personality. Tequila was his drink of choice and there was a running joke that when he bit the lime afterwards it was the fruit that reacted to the bitter taste of Sam.
“Jeez, I never thought I’d end up family,” he muttered as he ransacked his cell phone address book for people who needed to know the news before it hit the headlines. He gave seventeen names to the police to deal with; the remaining six he called himself.
Outside the mortuary, the press was already lining up. The accident itself was news but Sam’s involvement and the cell phone footage of the Vantage were quite enough evidence with which to go live: the story was breaking all over the world.
The truck-driver, Frank Morrison, was dead too, his neck broken like a stick in the impact. Frank’s truck didn’t go over the impossibly high wall but its contents — boxes of crisps and cocktail snacks — did. They floated pathetically over large areas of the lake all that day with all the accessible ones being salvaged by tourists before the police cordoned off the entire area. After that, they sank, slowly and dismally, to be investigated without much enthusiasm by fish and small crustaceans.
Police examined the truck and found that the brakes had failed for no apparent reason; it had the appropriate service history; the driver’s body tested negative for alcohol and drugs; there was nothing to apportion blame. It was just a freak, impossible, stupid accident.
Gemma’s face was on every front page in the Western World every day until the funeral and her presence lived on perpetually, across Internet forums, conspiracy sites and tribute websites. In the first week after her death, Josh was sometimes in the picture too. Gemma would have said herself that the coverage was the best she had ever had. She had never actually written the long-planned autobiography but her brother Paul, who lived in London, England, arrived at the Goldstone’s Los Angeles home within 48 hours of her death and brought in a team of researchers and ghostwriters. Together they started working through Gemma’s own notes and the contents of her computer. A book contract was a foregone conclusion with publication being set for as soon as possible, ready to compete with a rash of unauthorized biographies.
Gemma had been a phenomenon. She had risen from what most people chose to see as humble Jewish beginnings (but which were actually perfectly comfortable lower middle-class) in London to become a dancer, briefly a singer in an all-girl band and then a talent agent. The girl bands she promoted were tacky, it’s true, and hardly ever lasted more than one album containing three hit singles, but who minded that when the money kept rolling in and there were always more ingénues who were queuing up to become the next, greatest thing?
Gemma’s great coup was to be the first one to take talent-seeking TV back to the tradition of vaudeville, opening doors to both old and new-fashioned acts alike and the first to take the show to Las Vegas. The theatres and casinos in Vegas always needed new stars and The Miracle Mile provided them in bucket-loads. And Vegas had fallen on the idea of its very own talent-seeking show where nothing was too glitzy and nothing too outrageous. The Miracle Mile was followed up by Miracle Camp for teenagers each summer, touring shows and a year-long Las Vegas-based series of concerts, circus gigs and theatrical extravaganzas from that year’s contestants. Gemma’s company, Gemstone Inc, was now as integral a part of the Las Vegas profit-making machine as any of the casinos, its conscience salved by Gemma’s billion-dollar children’s charitable foundation.
Others, of course, followed her — the world was flooded with talent shows — but there was no one like Gemma and nothing with as much kudos as The Miracle Mile.
She was married, all the time, to her childhood sweetheart. Their 15th anniversary renewal of vows was featured in Celebrity Star magazine (which re-decorated their Las Vegas house for free and donated five million dollars to the charitable foundation). Gemma looked golden and glorious in a series of designer outfits with her husband in the background looking vaguely bemused and uncomfortable. He had been shoehorned into designer clothing, which made him feel ridiculous.
Josh was always the boy next door, the son of an American who worked at the US Embassy in London. He was her rock, Gemma said, her best friend, her reality-check. Professionally, he was an academic and theologian and an expert in ancient languages. He had even written a textbook on Bible translations, which was published by Oxford University Press and read by virtually nobody. He probably even had a PhD in something obscure but nobody ever called him Doctor.
Josh worked somewhere in Unicef at the start of Gemma’s fame but, once the roller-coaster of talent shows took off, he didn’t need a job and Gemma wanted him by her side wherever she went. There was never a sniff of scandal on either side.
They dredged the whole of Lake Mead but, although they found his wallet, suitcase and cell phone, Josh’s body was not found. Sam swore blind that Gemma told him he was with her; the hotel staff in Phoenix confirmed that they had left together in the car that morning; CCTV confirmed that a man looking very like Josh was in the car moments before the crash (raising a lot of understandably awkward questions as to why he hadn’t been noticed the first time anyone looked). He had to be somewhere. But he was not.
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