Looks to Die For (26 page)

Dan looked at me in surprise. “Exactly.”

I put my arms around my husband. My eyes were filling with tears, and I buried my face in the crook of his shoulder. Ironic that Dan had done his best to avoid a minor scandal — and ended up with a major one. “This explains everything, honey — including all the evidence in the murder case about how you were at the victim’s place more than once. Now I get it. Don’t you see? You were meeting Johnny in Tasha Barlow’s apartment. She was his girlfriend.”

By midafternoon, Dan and I were plopped on the couch in Chauncey Howell’s office, holding hands and smiling secretly at each other. Finally an explanation that made sense. Confession was good for the soul, and it had also been good for loving sex on the shower floor.

But Chauncey wasn’t nearly as excited.

“Interesting story, but I’m not sure what it gets us,” Chauncey said. “Do you have any proof Johnny DeVito was blackmailing you?”

“He didn’t give me any receipts,” Dan said briskly. “But let’s see. I made some transfers from my account and then took it out in cash. I guess that should do it.”

“You took out cash?” Chauncey asked scornfully. “All that proves is your wife was buying big-ticket antiques again and trying to avoid the sales tax.”

“I haven’t bought anything in months,” I protested. “Or weeks, anyway.” At least days. Was he counting the 1940s Dresden dessert dishes I’d bought on eBay? They hadn’t even been shipped yet.

“I’m just giving you a sample of what a prosecutor might say,” Chauncey explained.

“I have the emails telling me where to go and how much to bring,” Dan reminded him.

Chauncey grimaced. “Emails telling you to bring money to Tasha Barlow’s apartment, including the night she died. The DA could say it was the price you were paying for the night.”

“But that’s not true,” Dan said.

Chauncey shrugged and I rolled my eyes in frustration. To me, it all added up as neatly as Bill Gates’s checkbook. But Chauncey was seeing holes bigger than the Bush deficit.

“Thirty thousand is a lot for a tryst,” I said, finding a flaw in Chauncey’s objection.

“There was only five thousand in the envelope the police found,” Chauncey said, consulting his notes again. In Dan’s Hollywood circle, five thousand was what a producer might spend at Spago for a night of truffled pasta and vintage Dom Perignon with a few friends. And the fee wouldn’t be out of the question for a night of wild but discreet sex.

Dan nodded. “Five thousand’s all he’d asked for. The previous two times were the same.”

Chauncey drummed his fingers on his desk. “I can understand why you might have kept the blackmail quiet at first — hoping it would just go away. But why didn’t you tell the police about it the night you were arrested?” Now Chauncey wasn’t pretending to be the prosecutor — he really wanted to know.

“Because the connection didn’t occur to me.” Dan covered his eyes briefly with his hand, then rubbed the bridge of his nose in chagrin. “I’d brought cash to Johnny DeVito in a scuzzy apartment in West Los Angeles. A young actress died in a place near the ocean. It didn’t click until Lacy realized it was the same place.”

Chauncey nodded and then, softening his tone slightly, said, “Look, I’m not saying this can’t help. The case against you is circumstantial. And given your blackmail story, we can at least suggest different circumstances. Let’s go through it one more time.”

Dan grimaced but plunged in. At the first payoff, Johnny DeVito had met him in the apartment and counted the envelope of cash before letting Dan go. He’d promised Dan they were even now. But then came the demands by email. Dan was instructed that someone would buzz him into the building, and he should come up to apartment 4C. The door would be open, and he should leave the envelope of cash on a table in the front hall. At the last drop-off, he found a note on the table when he got there, asking him to wait for about twenty minutes. He should have something to drink while he waited and make himself comfortable. If nobody came, he could leave. Dan paced around the apartment and flipped through a newspaper. He got a glass of water and blew his nose a couple of times. After about thirty minutes, he left, figuring Johnny would just come by later to get it.

“So Johnny was in Tasha’s apartment that night, too,” I said to Chauncey, in case he hadn’t thought of that.

“Or else he wasn’t,” Chauncey said, frowning. “The envelope was still there when the body was found.”

“My God, Chauncey, isn’t this obvious?” I was practically shrieking. Why didn’t he get this? “Johnny was blackmailing Dan. He knew Dan would be at the apartment that night for the payoff. So he killed his girlfriend — for whatever reason — and framed Dan. It’s obvious. End of story.”

Chauncey looked at me solemnly. “I hear you, Lacy, I do. And I wish it were that easy. But we’ve checked out Johnny DeVito very carefully. He has an alibi for that night. He wasn’t even in town.”

I looked down and smoothed my softly pleated Zac Posen skirt. It might have been a little young, so just to be safe, I’d paired the pastel print with a sophisticated white Celine jacket. But right now I wouldn’t have felt protected in a snowsuit.

“Dan, let me point out something else,” Chauncey continued, tapping his fingers on the desk. “If the prosecutor buys your story of the pay-offs, his scenario goes something like this: You got to the apartment and Johnny DeVito wasn’t there but his girlfriend was — waiting in a skimpy peignoir. You were angry at Johnny and wanted to send a message, so you killed her.”

Dan and I looked at each other, but this time neither of us was smiling.

“Whose side are you on?” I asked Chauncey.

“Yours,” he said. “Unequivocally. But a defense has to explain the evidence. All of it. Dan’s story gives him a reason for being at Tasha’s apartment, but if he continues to claim he never saw the woman, we’re stuck. For example, how do we explain the neighbor who heard Tasha scream, ‘Stop it, Dr. Fields, stop it!’”

I felt my spirits sinking faster than a Chicago Cubs fan before the World Series. I stood up. My head was hurting and I’d had enough. “By the way,” I said to Chauncey, putting my Fendi bag over my shoulder, “if Johnny DeVito has an alibi for that night, where was he?”

“Working,” Chauncey said. He glanced through a thick file of papers, then closed it and pulled out another one. Finally he found what he wanted. “Since he got out of jail, your Johnny’s been picking up jobs as a stagehand. Or a grip, I guess it’s called these days. This was a commercial for Honey Twists cereal and they were on location in a small town in Nevada for most of the day and night. Plenty of people can confirm. Including a hotshot producer named Julie Boden.”

Chapter Eleven

W
hen I called Sammie,
she said her boss wouldn’t be in all week — she was out in Rainbow Basin, just north of Barstow, producing another Mars-lander Buick commercial.

“Julie’s a genius,” Sammie raved. “She got Jessica Simpson as the talent this time.”

Calling Simpson “talent” seemed like a stretch to me, but then Sammie was young.

“How about Roy Evans?” I asked. “Is he doing this one?”

“No. Julie fired him.” Sammie hesitated then cleared her throat. “Did you know the police identified the body that was on Roy’s car? It’s really strange, Lacy. She’d been roommates with that other girl who died. The one you asked Julie about. How weird is that?”

“Odd,” I said, not adding that the whole situation had become even odder than Sammie knew.

“But the police say someone dumped the body there while Roy was in the club,” said Sammie. “Julie triple-checked that. Roy’s off the hook.”

“Except for the little matter of the drug charge.”

“Oh, that.” Sammie sighed. Then, parroting what she’d no doubt heard from Julie, she said, “It was just an ounce and this is Hollywood. Everyone does it. Roy’s famous — or semifamous — and he has a good lawyer. He’ll get off.” Good thing Sammie came to California, because she’d never have learned all that at Vassar.

“So have you and Julie been busy with a lot of shoots?” I asked, changing the subject.

“You bet,” said Sammie enthusiastically. She reeled off the names of three products they were promoting, including Honey Twists, and I asked when they’d shot the commercial for that one. She gave me two dates — one of them the day Tasha had died.

“I heard that was a long day of shooting,” I said carefully.

“Day and night and part of the next day,” said Sammie brightly. “Can you imagine trying to get six five-year-olds to say ‘Twists are my favorite tweat!’ without spitting up their cereal? I’m surprised the whole crew’s not still there.”

“Do you know if a guy named Johnny DeVito was working as a grip?” I asked.

“I haven’t heard of him, but I’ll check.”

I heard her clacking on her computer, and in a moment she said, “The director didn’t have his name on the crew list. But Julie must have hired him separately, because she put him on the credit sheet.”

That was a new one — an executive producer handpicking her grips. I thanked Sammie for her help, then hung up and called Molly.

“The police say Roy’s not a suspect in the notorious White Lotus murder,” I said when I got her on the phone.

“Who knows?” Molly said quickly. “My friend Tim’s still conducting his own investigation. Ever since Rathergate at CBS, the networks don’t believe anything unless it’s signed by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

I laughed.

“After what happened to you, I hope Tim finds a reason to keep Roy off the air for good,” Molly said loyally. Then, lowering her voice, she asked, “Did the cops question Dan about the body?”

“Not yet. I keep waiting for Reese to show up, but he hasn’t.” Since we were on the phone, I didn’t add that I’d taken the Lexus to a car wash in a busy section of downtown L.A., asking to have every inch cleaned, shampooed, and deodorized. Instead, I gave Molly a brief recap of what I’d learned about Johnny DeVito being on Julie’s payroll.

“It’s fishy, but I don’t think Julie would make up that alibi, do you?” Molly asked. “Too easy to check. With that face, people would remember if they saw him on the shoot or not.”

“Okay, so let’s say it’s legit. What’s the possible connection? Why would Julie Boden hire a scarred ex-con as a grip?”

“I’m clueless,” Molly said. “Let’s see, even assuming Julie was sleeping with Roy and Roy was sleeping with Tasha and Tasha was sleeping with Johnny, that’s still three degrees of separation. I don’t see where it adds up, unless they were all screwing together in a happy foursome.”

“Too nauseating even to consider,” I said. “But Julie Boden’s shooting in the desert this week. She knows something. I’m going to track her down.”

“You’re not going alone! Way too dangerous.”

“The only thing dangerous about Julie Boden is her withering glance.”

“Not so,” Molly parried. “She’s a star in an ad agency, so she’s a master at stabbing people in the back. Ruling with an iron fist. And don’t forget her killer instincts.”

“She can’t hurt me with a metaphor.”

“Forget it, darling. I’m coming with you.”

We argued back and forth, but I knew Molly always got her way. This was the woman who’d just convinced HBO that the sexy young tabloid queen Lindsay Lohan was the right actress to play a wizened, toothless Aztec warrior in the new series
Cortez
. I didn’t stand a chance.

I called my friend Jane Snowdon to ask if she’d mind picking Jimmy up after school.

“Not a problem,” she said. “And Jared’s dying to have someone for a sleep-over. Can I keep Jimmy until tomorrow?”

“Deal,” I said, not sure if I should feel relieved or guilty.

By late afternoon, Molly and I were settled into her Range Rover, heading east on I-10. By the time we turned north onto I-15, I relaxed a little, secretly glad to have Molly with me. We drove through Barstow, a town built in 1886 by the Santa Fe Railroad to house a train depot and hotel. Nothing much had changed — now the town had a train depot and a lineup of cheap hotels. As we sped past, I noticed two vans and an array of expensive cars in the parking lot of the Best Western and guessed the advertising team was staying there. Either that, or the hotel had the finest dinner buffet in town.

Just a few miles farther on, we hit the real desert and the scenery changed dramatically. The paved road ended and layers of sandstone and sediment rose in mysterious shapes around us. Huge slabs of stone tilted at precipitous angles and brilliant colors splayed across the wavy terrain. In the tumultuous landscape, a spectacular upheaval of rock cut by millions of years of wind and water, I looked around for a gift shop or information center, but we were alone.

I gazed out on rocks that were a stunning blaze of orange, red, and green in the setting sun.

“It really does look like we’re on Mars,” I said.

“That’s because every sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen was shot here,” said Molly, slowing down a little on the dirt road. “The Mojave Desert is Hollywood’s idea of the Red Planet.”

I laughed and looked around. “Who needs the Hubble telescope when we have all this?”

“Much cheaper to get here, anyway. You’re supposed to be able to find a lot of fossils, too,” Molly said. “The sixteen-million-yearold kind. The place was once teeming with mastodons and camels and rhinos.”

“Now it’s not even teeming with ants,” I said. The only signs of life were a few far-off Joshua trees growing like sentinels on the canyon walls.

And two Homo sapiens sitting underneath one of them.

Molly spotted the couple, too, and she pulled the car over to the side and stopped. “I don’t see any commercial shoot going on,” she said.

“Maybe they finished for the day. I noticed the equipment vans in the parking lot back at the Best Western.”

“We’ve come this far, we might as well enjoy the scenery,” Molly said, getting out of the car. “You see things much better around here if you hike instead of drive.”

We trudged slowly up the steep hill, the slippery soil giving way under the rubber soles of my Tod’s moccasins. Despite the stunning and vast terrain, both of us kept our eyes focused on the couple under the tree.