Looks to Die For (10 page)

“Glad my little murder brought you two together,” I said, a little wounded.

“Oooh, Lacy, I’m sorry. That was insensitive. I shouldn’t be dating when you need me detecting.”

I sighed. “Of course you should. One of us should still have a social life, and your Tim sounds good. Not even taking you someplace that serves two all-beef patties on a sesame seed bun.”

Molly tittered. “Come on, darling, you’re on the right track, so get moving. Pull yourself together and go talk to Roy Evans.”

“How? Call him up and tell him I need to discuss a dead makeup girl he might have been screwing?”

“Tim could help,” Molly said, thinking out loud. “But wait, here’s a better idea. You do that column for
Abode
about decorating for the stars, right? Call Roy and say you want to write about him — and you’ll help redecorate his house.”

“The magazine’s not exactly mass market. Only about two thousand subscribers.”

“Keep that between you and the Audit Bureau of Circulation. All these second-tier guys have first-tier egos. They think they’re more talented than they are and that if they just got a little more press, they’d be on top.”

“I’m starting to think your sign should say ‘Molly Archer Psychology,’ rather than ‘Casting.’”

“It’s the same thing, believe me. I’ll have Ben give you the number. Call Roy. Say I suggested him for the article and let me know what happens.”

She blew me kisses and hung up. Her energy was contagious, so I spoke briefly with Ben, then dialed Roy’s number immediately, before I could lose my nerve. An assistant explained Roy had left for the day, but then I mentioned Molly’s name, and the day must have started again, because Roy Evans picked up. Five minutes of talk and he got the gist — then invited me over to his office.

“It’s silly that I’m here and you’re there when we could both be here,” he crooned. Not a bad line. And obviously not the first time he’d used it. I wondered if Tasha Barlow had fallen for it.

“Great. Give me an hour and I’ll be there,” I said with my new Molly-inspired mettle.

I quickly pulled on a gray Jil Sander pantsuit, adding only a Tiffany pin with a simple circle of pavé diamonds and pointy-toed pumps from Sigerson Morrison. Very professional and proper. By the time I was steering the Lexus down Wilshire Boulevard, I’d decided the getup was
too
proper. Roy Evans didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be impressed by an understated designer cut. Maybe I should make a pit stop at Neiman Marcus for a lace camisole.

But no. I wouldn’t get waylaid. How I looked didn’t really matter — the question was how I’d bring up Tasha Barlow in the middle of a decorating discussion.

In the heavy traffic, it took forty-five minutes to get to the security gate outside the studio. Once there, I pulled into the visitors line and waited patiently behind a stretch Mercedes, a BMW convertible, and the ultimate cheap chic — a Prius. When I finally inched up to the glassed-in security booth, the young uniformed guard took my license and checked it against his computer. Then he looked at me curiously and asked me to pop open my trunk.

“Why?” I asked, my heart pounding. Had the computer identified me as high risk — a murder suspect’s wife not allowed on the lot?

“You might have a dead body in there,” he said.

I felt blood drain from my face, and I dropped my head against the steering wheel to keep from fainting. My hands trembled, making a
rat-a-tat
attack against the console.

The guard leaned his smooth, innocent face into my open window. “Uh, ma’am, we check every car. That was a joke. I was trying to be funny.”

“If I want funny, I’ll watch Jay Leno,” I said, my voice raspy.

His thin eyebrows arched high into narrow half-moons. “I’m sorry, really. We’re not supposed to make jokes at security, so don’t tell anyone, please?”

I nodded. The cars in front of me had also opened their trunks, but somehow that hadn’t registered. Two bouts of paranoia in one day. The world wasn’t as absorbed with my story as I was.

I made my way from the sunny parking lot to the main building, trying to calm down and let the network aura work its magic. In the lush lobby, posters of the prime-time stars lined the walls, and I noticed that Roy Evans wasn’t among them
.
His fluff appealed to the audience, but probably not to the network image-makers.

A chic, excessively slim receptionist sent me up to the eighth floor, where another chic, excessively slim receptionist told me to take a seat. I perched self-consciously on an upholstered bench and flipped through two issues of
Variety
and one
Hollywood Reporter
before a miniskirted blonde with a cleavage-revealing shirt and thigh-high leather boots minced over to me.

“Mr. Evans can see you now,” she said importantly, draping a well-manicured hand on her hip. “I’m his assistant, Spring.”

I wasn’t sure if Spring was her name or the only season she worked, but I followed her as she flounced down the long carpeted hallway. She definitely had a spring in her step, and maybe one in her hips — the only explanation for how they swung so vigorously from side to side.

“Ah, La-cy Fields.”

A broad-shouldered man in a sleekly cut three-button suit stepped out of his office, pronouncing my name slowly in an alluring baritone.

“Ms. Fields, let me introduce you to Roy Evans,” said Spring somewhat pointlessly, sidling a little too close to her boss.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Roy, oozing charm as he reached for my hand with both of his. His fingernails had been manicured and he had an oversized gold signet ring on his little finger. His face still bore traces of bronze pancake makeup. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed he’d recently been on the air.

“Come in,” Roy urged, taking my elbow and steering me into the office. He gave his assistant a wink that I wasn’t supposed to see, then firmly closed his door. As I sat down, I realized he had the blinds closed, the lights dimmed, and a CD playing softly in the background. He’d set the scene — though I wasn’t sure for what.

“Do you like this song?” he asked, pausing to listen. “Norah Jones, brand-new. She let me hear it last week when I interviewed her. That’s what I most love about my job, if you want to know — I get to meet everybody.”

I didn’t really want to know, but I nodded anyway.

“And now I get to meet you,” he said, with a sincere — or maybe not — smile.

I cleared my throat. “I’m delighted to finally meet you, too,” I said, as if instead of learning his name a few hours ago, I’d been a fan forever.

“I can’t blame you,” he said, without any trace of irony. “I talk to people and they never forget me. Courtney Love. Sting. Madonna. I interviewed them, and now they’re all chums of mine. Real buddies. They send me Christmas cards every year.”

No finer proof of friendship. I wondered if he ever got a lemon cake from Mrs. Beasley’s, too.

“I know some of the greatest talents in the world,” Roy continued, sounding thoroughly impressed with himself.

I nodded admiringly. My fears about what I’d say during this meeting had already disappeared, because clearly I wasn’t going to have to say anything.

“Let me show you this interview,” Roy said, grabbing a tape from his desk and strutting over to pop it into the VCR. “Have a minute to watch?”

“Of course,” I said. The screen flickered on, revealing a scratched image of Roy interviewing Jennifer Lopez, who was dressed in a simple white shirt, her long hair tumbling over her chest.

“You looked beautiful at the Golden Globes last night,” Roy was saying to her, sounding more like an infatuated boy than a network reporter.

“It was nice to see you in the press tent,” Jennifer said. “You gave me such a warm smile.”

Roy stopped the tape and turned to look at me. “That’s Jennifer Lopez.
J. Lo
. Talking about my warm smile. How’s that? Should I play it again?”

Without waiting for an answer, he hit
REWIND
and then
PLAY
, crossing his arms and staring triumphantly at the small screen. I could swear his lips moved this time when J. Lo was talking.

“I’ve been seeing stars at awards shows for years,” Roy said now, clearly pleased with himself. “When a beautiful actress walks by, I grab her and whisper, ‘You’re going to win tonight. I know you are.’ The losers never remember what I said, but the winners always come back later and say, ‘Oh, Roy! How did you know!’”

I laughed. He laughed. Okay, we’d bonded. Roy Evans wanted to talk about himself and I was willing to listen.

Roy regaled me with two more stories about fabulous moments in his career (one involved being hugged by John Travolta, who, as far as I knew, hugged everyone), and then he finally paused for breath.

“Enough about my career. We should talk about you. And what you want to write about me.” Coming from anyone else, that would have been a bad joke. But Roy was serious. He could move the spotlight only so far. “I understand you’re a star decorator and a decorator to the stars.”

“I’m a decorator, but my clients are the only stars,” I said, knowing immediately what Roy needed to hear. “
Abode
has me write about famous people with great style.”

Roy nodded, unfazed at being put in the “famous people” category and probably pondering his great style. Since his office looked like it had been furnished at OfficeMax with a little help from Staples, I was pondering it myself.

“I’d love to be in the magazine,” he admitted, in what seemed like his first spontaneous comment so far. “But I’m in a new condo and it’s pretty empty.”

“Empty is perfect. Just what I was hoping for,” I said, improvising. “I can help you decorate, and then we’ll reveal the wonderful results in the magazine.” The fact that I’d come up with this plan on the spot didn’t make it any less brilliant.

“A before-and-after?” he asked dubiously. “Isn’t that about you, not me?”

“All I do is take your personality and express it in your surroundings,” I said, catching the tone in his voice. “For you that might be
rich
leathers and
handsome
accessories.” I paused to let the
rich
and
handsome
sink in. “When your friends visit, they’ll admire your great taste and never dream you had a decorator — unless you want to tell them about me, of course.”

He nodded. “I like your style. Let’s do it.”

I stared at him for a moment, startled by what an easy sell this had been. But then I nodded and said, “Well, good. When do you want to get started?”

“Right now works for me,” he said. “Only one condition. We have to do this fast. When I see something I want, I have to get it immediately.”

That obviously applied to more than furniture, but I said, “Not a problem. I know a lovely store on Robertson Boulevard that delivers fast. We can go tomorrow, look around together, and I’ll get on track.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Roy banged his palm against the desk to seal the deal. Our conversation was almost done, and I’d gotten so absorbed in the decorating discussion that I hadn’t managed to bring up Tasha Barlow. No smooth transition now. Oh well, we still had tomorrow.

Roy stood up and came around to the other side of his desk “You’re terrific, Lacy, I can tell already. We’ll enjoy working together.” He took my hands in his again and gave me the warm, J. Lo–approved smile. Ah, yes, he was good.

“We’ll have some fun,” I said.

An obvious exit line, but Roy didn’t let go of my hands. Instead, he looked down thoughtfully and wrinkled his brow ever so slightly. “Lacy Fields,” he said, as if thinking about my name for the first time. “Are you by any chance related to the Dan Fields I read about in the paper? The murder suspect?”

I took a quick breath. “He’s my husband, actually.”

“Really?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I mean, not unfortunate that he’s my husband, but unfortunate what’s happened.”

“I knew the victim,” he said, dropping his silky voice almost to a whisper. “She worked here.”

I gulped, stunned that we’d hit on the topic that had driven me to visit Roy Evans in the first place. I pulled myself together. “It’s an awful situation, but Dan had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry about the victim. Was she…a friend of yours?”

“Not really. I just knew her. We worked together sometimes.” He finally let go of my hands and looked carefully at me. “What’s going on with the investigation?” he asked casually.

“The police are pulling together all their evidence — whatever that may be. Our lawyer has detectives trying to get to the real story. At the moment it’s all kind of hazy. I just know Dan’s innocent.”

“How did your husband know Tasha?”

“I’m not sure he did.”

Roy didn’t say anything. That was an old trick of interviewers — leave a long pause and somebody would rush to fill it in. But I didn’t have anything to add so the silence lingered in the room. Finally I put out my hand and said, “I hope you’re still willing to work with me. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Roy said.

I left his office and managed to get down the elevator, through the lobby, and into the parking lot before I started trembling. However anxious I’d been about being recognized by the deli clerk and the security guard, it never occurred to me that Roy Evans, network reporter, would know who I was.

Had he made a lucky guess? Or was it more than luck?

I suddenly felt my knees wobble and grabbed onto a red Porsche convertible to keep from falling over. Sure, Molly Archer’s name carried a lot of weight and, yes, Roy Evans seemed so publicity-hungry that he’d eat a
People
magazine on rye for lunch. But he’d asked me to be his decorator in a heartbeat, and while I had a good reputation, I wasn’t exactly hosting
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
. Roy Evans, master manipulator of conversation, had steered our talk around to Tasha Barlow. Maybe the stunningly self-involved star had the same motive for the meeting that I did — he wanted to get information about the murder.

Because possibly we both knew the police had arrested the wrong man.