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 It
is at the Santa Barbara police station that appears for the first time
Lisa DiNapoli. With her younger sister Emily, she comes to pay the bail
to release her alcoholic father from prison. She then falls on her older
sister Celeste, whom she had not seen for years. The reunion is rather
cold, Lisa accusing Celeste of having abandoned her and Emily years
earlier to a not-loving and authoritarian father. To redeem herself,
Celeste proposes to Lisa and Emily to settle in her apartment and leave
the family home.
Lisa,
with her strong and pretty smart character, is hired as a secretary at
the new law firm Capwell & Capwell. It is Mason, the boss, who hires
her one evening when, drunk again, he does not realize what he does. But
even without experience of secretarial work, Lisa learns quickly and
quickly proves herself. Especially in helping repeatedly Mason to cover
his alcoholism to his fiancée, Julia. A real complicity gets
established between the secretary and her boss, Lisa taking even on
herself to lead one night Mason at an alcoholics anonymous meeting. Lisa
makes then the revelation that she is herself a former alcoholic. She
explains the reasons for her fall to Mason on a night when, in full
blues, she is near to plunge, locked alone in a squalid hotel room. At
the time, she was the mistress of a married man who, despite his
promises, has always refused to leave his wife for her. From
there, Lisa has sunk into alcoholism. Proud
to be out of it, she accompanies Mason to a withdrawal treatment which
allows him for a few months at least, to abandon his excesses, thereby
earning Julia's gratitude. It's
just after Julia and Mason's wedding that Lisa starts behaving
suspiciously : she makes secret phone calls, searches in Mason's
personal files... It
turns out that Lisa is involved in the attempt by businessman Robert
Barr to buy the Capwell Enterprises. Robert, who is the man whom
Lisa once loved until becoming an alcoholic, has made her his spy with
Mason. Giving up to his demands, she even goes until hiding a bottle of
alcohol in her boss' office to tempt him. But her duplicity is
discovered by the psychic Sandra Mills, and Lisa feels that her
deception is coming to an end. When
she discovers that Robert turns away from her for Gina Capwell Timmons,
she decides to stop working for him. Finally confused by Mason,
she confesses her betrayal and helps Mason by giving him advices to
fight Robert. Fired from the law firm, she leaves the town, leaving a
simple letter to her sister Emily. Although
we will no longer be seen, Lisa will be heard twice in the following
months : on the phone with Emily at Christmas 1989, then the following year, always on the phone, where she is said
shattered while learning that Mason has plunged in alcohol again...
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