Looks to Die For (25 page)

Grant shrugged. “No, but it’s not such a big deal. Everybody does it. I mean, not everybody hacks as well as Jake, but he’s a genius at this.”

“The genius could end up in jail. Hacking’s not a joke.”

“Dad being charged with murder’s not so funny, either,” Grant said adamantly. “So that makes it okay, don’t you think? You’ve got to figure it’s like stealing bread to feed a starving child. Maybe it’s against the law, but it’s the right thing to do.”

I tried not to smile. Grant was smarter than he had a right to be. And given my own little escapades in the past few days, how could I quibble with him about ethics? Maybe you had to act badly sometimes to do good. Just like that dude Aristotle said.

“So what’d you find?” I asked, shuffling through the pages and looking at the computer-printed lists of phone numbers. “Who did she call?”

Grant looked pleased to be on practical ground again. “She called a lot of people, including Johnny DeVito about a million times. But here’s the thing, Mom. She never called Dad. Not a single phone call from Dad or to Dad, for as far back as Jake could find.”

I tried to be thrilled that Dan hadn’t chatted regularly with a dead girl whom he said he didn’t know. At least phone sex wasn’t part of the equation. Grant leaned over the table and pulled out the last page of the pile. “Don’t get mad, Mom, but once Jake had Johnny DeVito’s numbers, he figured out how to get his records, too. And are you ready for this?” He grinned at me triumphantly. “A while ago, Johnny called Daddy three times. He called Dad’s cell phone and his office phone. Dad called him twice. Most of the calls were short, but there were a lot of them.”

I looked at Grant helplessly. “Honey, I don’t know if that’s such a good fact to know.”

Grant shrugged. “Facts aren’t good or bad. They’re just facts. You know Mr. Morland’s credo — it’s all interpretation.” He got up from the table and grabbed his backpack. “But I think it’s really something, don’t you?”

With a little wave, Grant blew out of the house to head to school, and I sat at the table, stunned.

So Dan and Johnny DeVito had talked on the phone. One way or another, Dan knew Johnny and Johnny knew Dan.

And then something clicked.

Johnny DeVito, sitting next to me in the car, holding his knife and growling at me.
I saw what your husband did to my Tasha. I should do the same thing to you.
His low, threatening tone had sounded familiar. It was as if I’d heard his voice before. I had — and now I knew where. On the answering machine in Dan’s study.

Without so much as a bottle of Windex for a cover story, I raced down the hall and burst into Dan’s private office. The digital readout on the answering machine showed zero messages, and when I hit the
PLAY
button, I got silence. Dan had erased everything. But it didn’t matter, because I heard the tape again, playing in my head. Johnny’s voice.
Nothing has changed, Doctor. I know what you did. You’ve just got more reasons for silence.

Doctor. Anybody might call Dan that, but the title would come naturally to a patient. And wouldn’t that make sense? The scars on Johnny’s face had been nagging at the edge of my brain. Maybe Johnny had come to Dan, hoping to be healed. Who better to remake a disfigured face than the man world famous for facial reconstruction?

I opened a closet and found the boxes of patient records Dan had sent home, shoved to the back behind a pile of newspapers. Grant had worried that they contained a bomb — but I was hoping for a bombshell. Without much hesitation, I fell to my knees and ripped into the cartons, cutting my finger on the cardboard and breaking a nail on the strapping tape. Who cared anymore. The first box didn’t turn up anything, nor did the second. I was just giving up on the third box, too, when I noticed some manila envelopes lying on the bottom, each sealed with a red tab that said
PRIVATE
:
DO NOT OPEN
. I rifled through, then snapped off one of the seals. Wow. “Private” didn’t begin to describe it. Had Dan really done a face-lift on famous alabaster-skinned movie star Naomi Kind? And done it when she was only thirty-five? Forget the murder mystery, I could sell this little tidbit to the
Star
and make a fortune.

I broke open a few more of the
DO NOT OPEN
packets and gasped at the names. One famous actress after another. Julia Ross. Helen Holmes. Christy Thames. They could have paid him in Oscars. In between the facial reconstructions that had made his reputation as the Saint of Hollywood, Dan had been busy doing a breast lift here and an eye nip there. Who knew? Certainly I didn’t. Did the AMA really mean doctor-patient confidentiality to include wives? It was hard to know which was more impressive — my husband’s surgical skill or his skill at keeping secrets.

But I’d had enough of secrets now. I threw all the red-sealed envelopes on the ground and tore into them. Either I’d find the information I wanted or I’d gather plenty of good gossip to tell Molly. She deserved it. After what she’d done for me last night, a scoop on secret surgery was the least I could offer.

The file I wanted wasn’t there. No matter how many times I pawed through the pile, I couldn’t find any envelope carefully labeled with Johnny DeVito’s name. I sunk down, looking at the mess I’d made, and tried to calm myself. New theories started swirling in my head. If Dan had done little nips and tucks on all these other actresses, might he also have treated Tasha Barlow? She didn’t seem famous enough to make the list. But ten minutes ago I wouldn’t have believed that Dan knew Naomi Kind from anyplace except the Doctors of Courage charity ball, where she’d presented him with an award. Pretending she’d never met him before that night made her an even better actress than I’d thought.

I tossed a few of the files back in the box but didn’t bother putting them neatly away. Resolutely, I marched up the stairs, fingering the phone lists that I’d shoved into the pocket of my robe. Time to stop pretending.

I heard the shower running and slipped into the bathroom, which was thick with steam.

“Honey?” I called out.

No answer. Dan couldn’t hear me over the rushing water.

I waited for a moment, then untied my Hanro wrap robe and let it drop to the floor. I didn’t need an interrogation room to talk to my own husband. I pulled open the beveled frosted-glass door and stepped inside the shower.

Dan looked up, startled.

“Hi,” he said, uncertainly.

“Hi.”

I tried to smile. “Um, want me to wash your back?” I asked. Wasn’t this cozy. Husband and wife lathering up together. Well, maybe not cozy, since the shower stall was about the size of a standard room at the Hilton.

Dan looked at me like I was crazy, but I took the washcloth from its hook, rubbed it over the thick cake of L’Occitane verbena soap, and stepped around so I was standing behind him. I stroked the washcloth in firm, wide circles around the ropy muscles in his broad, tensed shoulders.

“Feels good,” Dan said, rolling his head as if trying to ease a crick in his neck.

“It’s supposed to,” I said. It was going to be easier to unsnarl the knot in his neck than the knot in my stomach. I put down the washcloth and used both hands to massage his back, pivoting my thumbs along his spine and spreading my fingers over his trapezius muscles. Or maybe those were the latissimus dorsi. Good thing he was the doctor, not me, since I could never remember anatomy.

But I knew enough about body parts to realize that with the warm water beating down, Dan was getting heated up. That hadn’t been the point, but if his excitement was rising, maybe his defensive instincts would start dropping.

“I have a question for you,” I said, still ministering to his firm flexors.

“Shoot,” Dan said.

“What do you know about Johnny DeVito?”

The name landed like a shot of cold water — the ultimate anti-Viagra. From my position behind, I couldn’t see Dan’s face, but his back stiffened and he pulled away from me.

“Why do you care?” he asked.

“Because something’s going on with you and Johnny DeVito,” I said, “and because I’m afraid of him. He left a menacing message at our house. He threatened me with a knife — a long story that I’ll tell you later. He might have killed Tasha Barlow. He might have killed her roommate. If he’s a friend of yours, I don’t think he’s a good influence.”

Dan took a few steps over to the granite ledge that ringed the shower and sat down.

“He’s not a friend,” Dan said, looking stricken. “I met Johnny DeVito many, many years ago. It was ancient history. Then he called me out of the blue.”

Dan stopped.

“Why did he call?” I asked.

Dan shook his head and rubbed the back of his hand against the morning stubble on his chin. “Lacy, I know things are tough but talking about this isn’t going to help. Forget about Johnny DeVito. Let’s just try to preserve our relationship, okay?”

I flipped my now wet hair back from my face. “You can try to preserve it, but if we don’t talk, it’s a little late. Sort of like trying to save the Parthenon. Haven’t you noticed? It’s already crumbled.”

Dan gave a wry smile.

I came over and sat next to him on the ledge, thigh to naked thigh. In other circumstances, it might have seemed sexy, but right now we were both stripped bare of anything but fear and uncertainty. Maybe there was something intimate about that, too.

“A lot of people are risking their lives for you,” I said bluntly. “Molly dragged a dead body out of my car. Grant and Jake hacked into two Pac Bell accounts. I’ve been tied up twice. All that, and you can’t risk telling me what happened with Johnny DeVito?”

Dan blinked his eyes as if I were spouting Swahili, but instead of asking what I was talking about, he said, “It was many, many years ago.”

“You mentioned that.”

Dan pursed his lips together, and then he seemed to make a decision. “Okay, here goes.” He took a deep breath. “Johnny DeVito showed up at my office very late one night, maybe fifteen years ago. I didn’t know who he was, but his face was a bloody pulp. Chunks of skin were hanging down, his nose was practically cut off, and his scalp was ripped away from his forehead. I told him to go to a hospital, but he wanted me to sew him up. He figured the police would be checking hospitals.”

I made myself stay quiet, even though I was stunned.

“I kept saying I wouldn’t help him,” Dan continued, “but he threatened me with a gun. And then he waved a huge wad of cash at me. Back in those days, all that money meant something, Lacy. My parents weren’t giving us anything. You were pregnant and I was just starting out in my practice. I took it and did the best I could.”

“That doesn’t sound so awful,” I said in a small voice. “Maybe you wouldn’t do it now, but it was a tough situation.” Aristotle again.

“I shouldn’t have done it then, either,” Dan said. “I figured out pretty fast that Johnny DeVito had been in a knife fight. You know the old joke about someone leaving a bar brawl with a black eye and saying, ‘Yeah, but you should see the other guy’? Well, in this case, the other guy was dead.”

“Who was it?”

“Some drug dealer. They were both high and who knows what they fought about. I told Johnny to come back in a few days so I could change the dressings, but he never did. A week later, he called to say that one side of his face was dripping pus. No big surprise that it was infected. He needed massive doses of antibiotics.” Dan slammed his right fist into his cupped left hand. “I could have done something if he’d come in. I told him it was going to scar.”

Dan seemed more upset about the surgery taking a bad turn than anything else.

“Keep going,” I urged.

“Not much more,” Dan said. “I wanted to call the police at that point, but I’d have been arrested as an accomplice. Eventually, the whole thing faded away. Johnny went to jail on some other drug charge years later. Frankly, when I heard about that, I felt better. But then he got out. We’d never had any contact until he called me. He wanted his money back from the surgery.”

Despite myself, I laughed. “Had you given a lifetime guarantee? I thought only L.L. Bean did that.”

Dan looked down, his face a study in misery. I stood up and turned off the water, then got a soft Turkish towel for each of us. Dan draped his across his knees, and I tucked the fluffy fabric around my waist.

Dan shrugged. “What was I going to do, Lacy? Johnny DeVito’s a skank, but a smart skank. He knew how far my career had come. Knew about my reputation. And I was worried that he wanted to destroy all of it. I couldn’t prove that he’d killed someone, but he was ready to spread the story that I’d ruined his face.”

“You had an explanation.”

“Which wasn’t going to play out very well in this town. Not with my clients.”

I nodded. I couldn’t argue with that.

“I arranged to give him back his thirty thou,” Dan continued. “All cash. He didn’t position it as blackmail — just that he wanted to go straight and it was tough getting work the way he looked. He said this was cheaper for me in every way than a malpractice suit. I should have known better, because instead of going away, he just ratcheted up the pressure.”

“To do what?”

“Give him more money. After the first time, he started sending emails telling me where and when to show up with cash. I went twice more. God, Lacy, I should have told you. Or called the police. Or someone. I think I would have, but then this wild murder charge came up. I didn’t think that announcing I was paying off an ex-con was going to help anything.”

I thoughtfully raked my fingers through my wet hair, tucking a clump behind my ears.

“Where did you meet Johnny? For those drop-offs?” I asked.

“His place,” Dan said.

“A fancy house with a Mediterranean patio?” I asked.

Dan shook his head. “More like a dive of an apartment in West L.A. One of those standard cheap rentals you despise.”

“Brown tweed carpet and ratty brown sofa with bright orange pillows,” I said. “Bamboo TV stand and a chipped Formica table.”

“Good description. I guess those places all look alike,” Dan said with a small smile.

“They do look alike,” I said, feeling my heart pounding. “But this particular one — any chance it was apartment 4C in a building that figured that number belonged on the third floor?”