Celebrity in Death

9

Eve decided to reserve judgment on whether Marlo and Matthew qualified as idiots, innocents, or calculators. In the meantime, she kept Matthew cooling his heels in one interview room while Peabody contacted Marlo, requested she come into Central.

“We’ll take Julian while we’re waiting for her to come in,” Eve told her partner. “When she does, we’ll see what we see—or don’t. And we’ll see if pretend Roarke has any little secrets pretend Peabody sussed out.”

“I don’t like to think of her as pretend Peabody anymore. The more we find out, the meaner and crazier she gets. It’s like it’s bad enough fake Peabody got murdered, but now fake Peabody is a dead, blackmailing asshole on top of it. It’s depressing.”

“Yeah, it’s all really too bad for you.”

“Well, it kind of is. How am I supposed to enjoy the vid now, when I’ll be thinking how behind the scenes I was trying to blackmail McNab into bed, and the whole time he’s in love with you? And that maybe there’s a vid of the two of you all naked and sexy and—”

“Stop right there before I boot.”

“Hey! Maybe there’s a vid of fake Peabody and fake Roarke all naked and sexy. That would definitely make up for it. Maybe I can get a copy.”

“There’s going to be a vid of me tearing strips off your ass then using them to wallpaper my office. I’ll make copies for everybody. Get Marlo down here. I’ll start on Julian.”

Eve headed to Interview. Inside Julian sat, head in hands. When he lifted his face, he was pale, hollow-eyed, unshaven.

“I don’t feel well,” he began.

“Don’t look well either. Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in Interview with Cross, Julian.” She added the pertinent data, sat.

“I’m fasting,” he told her.

“Is that so? Is that a mourning for Harris deal?”

“A—no. I drank too much. Then the Sober-Up, the blocker, and I took a sleeping pill when I got back to the hotel. It’s all too much for my system. I’m taking nothing but clear liquids today, to flush out the toxins.”

“That’s one way.”

“Do I need a lawyer this time?”

“Do you want one?”

“I want to go home, go to bed. I want to wake up yesterday before all of this happened. It’s like a dream, a really bad dream.”

“You argued with K.T.”

“At dinner.”

“After dinner. Before the gag reel.”

“I did?” His eyes, bloodshot and dull, stared into hers. “About what she said at dinner? I was upset, embarrassed. Did I tell you already?”

“Some of it. How about when she came banging on your trailer door yesterday? What did she want then?”

“I … don’t remember.”

“Bullshit, Julian. You weren’t drunk then. I have a witness who saw her banging on your door. And she was angry, insistent.” The timing worked, Eve thought, and she was banking Peabody had heard Harris yelling outside Julian’s trailer.

“She was always angry about something,” he said with a shrug.

“She wanted you to claim you and Marlo were having an affair.”

“That’s just studio hype. It’s—”

“No, Julian. She wanted you to tell Matthew you and Marlo were screwing around behind his back. Matthew and Marlo are involved. Harris didn’t like it. She wanted you to help her break them up.”

“I didn’t know Matthew and Marlo were a thing.”

“Until?”

“Yesterday. When K.T. started raging about it. They’re really good at keeping it low. I could see it last night, when I looked for it. Up until then, I just thought they were friends. Maybe they had sex—it happens—but I didn’t know they were a thing.”

“Why would she expect you to do what she wanted, to tell Matthew Marlo cheated on him with you?”

“Hell if I know. And I wouldn’t. I like Marlo. I like Matthew.” Sincerity shimmered in his voice. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt them like that.”

“It didn’t bother you that Marlo preferred Matthew to you?”

“Actually, it was good to find out there was a reason she turned me down.”

“Not used to getting turned down, are you?”

“Not much,” he said, without a whiff of pride or shame. “I get a lot of sex. I like it. It’s fun, and after, I’m really relaxed. I’m okay that Marlo wants to be with Matthew. Somebody else will want to be with me, right?”

Hard to argue, she thought, with someone who seemed to think sex was as simple and available as a fizzy at the corner 24/7. And for him, maybe it was.

When Peabody walked in, Julian visibly winced, then looked down at the table.

“Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview. Thanks for coming in, Julian,” Peabody continued. “Do you want anything? Something to drink?”

He shook his head, then glanced at her. “Actually, could I have some water? I’m pushing fluids.”

“No problem.” Peabody recorded her exit.

“You didn’t want to let Harris in to your trailer yesterday,” Eve continued. “Why is that?”

“She was yelling. I didn’t want a confrontation.”

“What did she have to confront you about?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” He dropped his head in his hands again. “It was always something with her.”

Peabody came back, set a bottle of water on the table by Julian.

“What was she holding over your head, Julian? That was another ‘always something’ with her. What did she say she’d do if you refused to lie about Marlo?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Eve glanced at Peabody, nodded slightly.

“Julian.” Peabody reached out, and when she touched Julian’s hand, he pulled back.

“Sorry.” He glanced up, looked down again. “It—you—remind me.”

“But I’m not K.T. I’m not going to yell at you, or threaten you, or say things to make you feel bad. She did that. To you. To a lot of people.”

“I don’t know why some people can’t just be nice. Be happy.”

“She wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t nice. And she always looked for the bad side. Everybody’s got a bad side, or something they don’t want other people to know. She liked to find out, and then use that to make someone hurt, or to pressure them to do something they didn’t want. What did she find out about you?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Okay.”

“And it wasn’t my fault.”

“I believe you.”

“We were clubbing. I’d just landed the lead in Forgiven. It was mega, a career-maker, so a bunch of us were celebrating. We’d partied pretty hard all night. Drinking, illegals. I don’t do them anymore, but I did. Maybe a little zoner or Hype, something was always right there, like party favors. Women, too. Just there.”

“Forgiven. That came out about ten years ago. You were really young,” Peabody said in that same understanding tone. “Hardly twenty.”

“Twenty-three. It was a major break, a lot of money. We were all high from celebrating, and at this sex club. In and out of the privacy rooms, you know how you do.” He shrugged, drank some water.

“Sure,” Peabody agreed, though she didn’t.

“Then we went back to my place, and some of the women came so we could party some more. And two of them went back to my room with me. In the morning, they’re still there. We just passed out together after. And this guy’s at the door, and he’s screaming. How he’s going to kill me. One of the girls is his daughter. She’s sixteen. Both of them are fucking sixteen.”

He covered his face with his hands, rubbed hard before he dropped them. “How was I supposed to know? They shouldn’t have been in the club. They had bogus IDs, and they said they were twenty-one. I didn’t make them have sex with me. I didn’t force them. But I bought them drinks, I gave them illegals, I had sex with them. If I’d known they were only sixteen I wouldn’t have. I swear. They didn’t look sixteen or act sixteen, and they were in a sex club and all over me.

“He said he was calling the cops, having me arrested for statutory rape. Everybody’s screaming, and he slapped his kid. He really hit her hard, and he jumped me when I tried to stop him from hitting her again. My buddies dragged him off. The girls are hysterical. One of my friends is a lawyer, and he started talking all this legal shit about how the girls were going to end up in juvie, and this guy was going up for assault. It just got worse and worse.”

“What happened?” Peabody asked when he fell silent.

“I gave them money. A lot of money to make it stop. To make it go away. It was a long time ago, and I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong when I was doing it. But it would’ve ruined me. If I’d gotten charged with rape, I’d have been finished. It could still ruin me.”

“And K.T. found out.”

“That’s what she does,” he said, bitterly now. “She finds out. Then she puts the screws to you when it suits her. I never did anything to her, but she said she was going to leak what happened to the media. She even had the names of the guy and his daughter. She said I’d go to jail, and no studio would hire me again. It was almost ten years ago, and she said I’d go to jail.”

“Unless you played along with her and lied about Marlo?”

“Yeah. She said I had to tell Matthew we were screwing on the side, and give him details.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said no. I wasn’t going to do that to friends. And she said they weren’t my friends. Did I think either of them would go to jail for me? She scared me.”

He took another drink, a long one.

“What did you do?”

“I got ahold of my lawyer friend and told him what K.T. said. He said I should stall her, and he’d find out where the girl was now, what she was doing. He said I wouldn’t go to jail because there’s a statute of limitations thing, and I was okay there. But still, I didn’t want all this hashed around in the media. My friend said it was a good bet the girl and her father wouldn’t want all that coming out either, so it would be K.T.’s word against mine. But I should stall her, tell her I had to think about it until he looked into it a little.”

“Did you talk to her about it last night?” Eve asked him.

“I tried to stay out of her way. Then she pulled that bullshit at dinner. It was worse because I knew what she wanted me to say, to do. So I just kept drinking so I wouldn’t think about it. She cornered me, started on me again. I told her to just leave me the hell alone. I wasn’t going to talk to her about it with all those people around. I think I said something stupid about my lawyer looking into it.” He rubbed his head. “Or I thought it, and didn’t say it. I don’t know. It’s blurry. I drank too much.”

He dropped his head into his hands again. “Connie’s right.”

“About what?” Eve asked.

“Drinking doesn’t make problems go away. Just because you can’t remember them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

To keep it rolling, Eve shifted straight to Marlo, and wondered if she should tell her fictional counterpart she was currently showing too many nerves for a cop. Instead, she read the data into record, dropped down at the table.

“You got here fast.”

“I was … already downtown.”

“Waiting for Matthew to finish up. Let’s save more time. We’re aware you and Matthew are involved, and hoped to keep the relationship private. We’re aware K.T. clued in, found the loft you and Matthew are using, and of her attempt to blackmail you with a recording of the two of you in an intimate situation.”

“You’re aware of quite a bit. I hope you’re aware that Matthew didn’t hurt her. We weren’t going to take her blackmail, bullying, and bullshit anymore, but we didn’t kill her.”

“She told you she’d hired a PI to break into your place, to plant a camera, to subsequently break in again to retrieve same. But you didn’t bring this information to the police.”

“No. It was private. Do you know how precious private is when you have so little of it? Besides, we didn’t know who she’d hired. If we’d gone to the police with the story, she’d have just denied it. How could we prove it? We decided that was how to handle the whole ugly mess. Prove it.”

“How?”

“Matthew agreed to meet her on the roof, but we were both going—with a recorder I had in my bag. We’d get her to talk about the break-in, the blackmail. Then we’d tell her to shove it. We’d have something to bargain with, you see? If she went public with what she had, we’d not only go public with her admission, we’d file charges.”

She nodded briskly, righteously. “Criminal trespass, extortion, sexual harassment. But when we got up there, she was in the water. She was already dead. Matthew—listen to me—he didn’t even hesitate. He went in after her. Despite what she’d done, what she threatened to do, he tried to save her. He tried so hard.”

Tears shimmered now along with the urgency in her voice. “He’d have saved her life if he could have. But we were too late. And now, we didn’t tell you all of this because we didn’t want the suspicion, the media nightmare, the fallout. We didn’t deserve it. We haven’t done anything but fall in love.”

“That’s nice for you, but you’ve also obstructed justice by withholding relevant information.”

“Fine.” She sat back, shrugged in a jerk. “Arrest me. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Where’s the recording K.T. had on you?”

“I don’t know.” Marlo all but spat it out. “Maybe it was all a lie, all of it. A bluff. She said she’d show Matthew a preview, so if she had it, she should have had it with her. But …”

“You looked for it.”

“All right, yes. Maybe that was cold and self-serving, but she was dead. We couldn’t do anything about that. And if you found the recording, who would you look at for her murder? And the recording would find its way to the damn media, you can count on it. So I looked in her bag, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t on her, or in the bag, or anywhere I could find up there. So I guess you can add attempted theft and compromising a crime scene to my list of sins.”

“It’s a bad time to cop an attitude, Marlo,” Eve said mildly. “Where’s your recording?”

“I just told you, she didn’t have any recording.”

“Not hers. Yours.”

“My …” Her face froze. The hand she lifted to shove at her hair dropped to the table. “My recorder. It was on. God, it was on the whole time. I got so focused on hers, I forgot. It’s in my bag. It’s still in my evening bag. Everything was so crazy and complicated and awful. It’s still in my bag, at the loft. I’ll go get it.” She shoved to her feet. “I’ll go get it, and you’ll see what happened. You’ll see we didn’t kill her.”

“I’m going to have two officers escort you back to the loft. They’ll bring the recording in. Just an aside, Marlo. We have an excellent EDD here. If it’s been tampered with, edited, screwed around with, we’ll know.”

“Good.” She squared her jaw, her shoulders. “Because it hasn’t been, so you’ll know that, too. I hated her. She was a sick, bitter bully. A manipulator who would have been happy to ruin my life. But I didn’t want her dead. I wanted her to know, and to live with the fact that I was smarter, stronger, and just better than she was. I wanted her to live with the fact that when the project was complete, I was going to show the recording I’d made to Roundtree, to the producers, and her life would be ruined. She’d have been lucky to get a part playing a housewife on an ad blimp. That’s what I wanted.”

“I believe her,” Peabody said when Eve assigned the officers to escort Marlo back to the loft. “It plays. It makes sense.”

“She’s an actor. Actors make fiction play and make sense. But yeah, I’m leaning in the same direction. So where’s K.T.’s blackmail preview?”

“Maybe it was a bluff.”

“I don’t think so. What interests me is why the killer took it. For another dose of blackmail, or for protection? After we get this damn media conference behind us, we need to head over to the vic’s hotel room. If she had part of the recording with her, the whole shot’s somewhere else.”

“I could take the search now while you do the media deal.”

“Nice try, Peabody.” She checked her wrist unit. “Let’s go get it over with so we can get back to doing what we actually get paid to do. I want this PI if he exists,” she added as they walked to Central’s main media room. “If he exists, he got paid. If he got paid, we can track it through the vic’s financials.”

“Maybe a cash deal. PIs who break-and-enter don’t like leaving a trail.”

“Maybe cash, but it would’ve been recent, and substantial for the trespassing. She had to find one who’d do it. We’ll find him.”

“He’d have checked the recording, to make sure he had something worth taking to the client.”

“Oh yeah. And odds are he made himself a copy for insurance. A PI who’d do this kind of sleazy domestic work probably specializes in same. It’s what she’d be after. With his client dead, he’s got two choices. He destroys the evidence, cleans up anything that he feels connects him to a DB—or he tries to cash in on the recording. I think with what we’ve got, we can finesse a tap on Marlo’s and Matthew’s ’links.”

“You don’t think they’d come to us if they got squeezed again?”

“They didn’t the first time, which is weight on getting the warrant. Meanwhile we want a thorough search of K.T.’s hotel room, her trailer, do a search for any safe boxes rented in her name—or yours.”

“Mine? Why—oh.” Peabody puffed out her cheeks. “In case she used that to cover herself.”

“I bet they have IDs—the cop characters. Prop badges to flash for the vid. Easy to use that to rent a safe box. It’s what I’d do. We’ll check the banks and rental facilities near the hotel. She’d want quick access if she stashed it away.”

They went into the prep area of the media room where Kyung waited.

“Timely,” he congratulated. “Is there anything you need or want before we begin?”

“To make it fast,” Eve said. “We’ve got a couple of new leads we need to get on asap.”

“Anything you want to share with the media?”

“No.”

“All right then, we’ll stick with what we’ve already discussed. There’s water on the table. You’ll be—”

“I’m not sitting at a table,” Eve told him.

“All right,” he said without missing a beat. “We’ll set up a large podium. I’ll give the media the rules of the road, introduce you both. You’ll take questions for about fifteen minutes. When it’s time, I’ll cut it off, and you’re done, free to pursue your new leads.”

He had a way, Eve decided. The podium appeared without delay. Kyung took his place behind it to make the announcement. He managed to do so with smoothness, friendliness, and sobriety all at once.

When he stepped back, Eve moved forward with Peabody just behind. Questions careened out instantly, shouted, overlapping, clashing. Eve simply stood, silent, scanning the crowd.

Full house, she thought, with most of them jumping out of their seats, hands raised. Cameras aimed like laser rifles.

She recognized Nadine’s usual camera operator, but Channel 75’s ace was noticeably absent.

Smart, Eve decided. You couldn’t get the story if you were the story. She imagined Nadine had arranged with Kyung to observe from one of the rooms honeycombed through the media center.

“K. T. Harris was murdered last night at approximately twenty-three hundred hours.”

Eve didn’t bother to pitch her voice above the fracas, ignored several shouted commands to speak up. “Her death occurred during a dinner party,” she continued in the same tone, “in the home of Mason Roundtree and Connie Burkette, and attended by several individuals connected to the in-progress vid adaptation of Nadine Furst’s book based on the Icove investigation.”

She gave it half a beat.

“Detective Peabody and I will take questions pertaining to this matter as long as said questions aren’t shouted at us by a roomful of reporters behaving like bratty children on a school field trip. You’ve got one,” she said to one of the reporters who dropped back in his chair, shot up a hand.

“Gralin Peters, UNN. As you were on the scene at the time of the murder, have you interviewed all attendees, and do you have any suspects at this time?”

“All individuals in the household at the time of Ms. Harris’s death were interviewed and gave statements immediately after the body was discovered. At this time we are reviewing those interviews and statements, doing follow-ups, and actively conducting the investigation. We can name no suspects at this time.”

“How does it feel knowing K.T. Harris, who was playing your partner in this vid, was murdered while you were right downstairs? BiBi Minacour, Foxhall Media Group.”

“It feels the same way it does when someone’s murdered anywhere in New York. It feels as though I need to find out the identity of said killer, gather evidence against him or her, and make an arrest.”

“Detective Peabody! Detective Peabody! Jasper Penn, New York Eye. Is it difficult for you to investigate the murder of the woman who played you in this vid and who resembled you so closely?”

“It’s an unusual situation, but no, it’s no more difficult than any other investigation.”

“Why aren’t both of you considered suspects? Loo Strickland, Need to Know.”

“We have alibis,” Eve said and earned a quick roll of laughter.

“But you and the victim argued publicly shortly before her murder.”

“That’s inaccurate. The victim made an unfortunate comment during dinner. I commented on her comment. I met the victim once, earlier that day on the set, very briefly. As the victim was late for the dinner party, then seated at the opposite end of the table from me during the meal, we did not have an opportunity to converse, and, in fact, this brief byplay was the only time the victim and I interacted, though indirectly.”

She started to take the next question when Strickland called out again. “What was her comment, and your response?”

She considered ignoring him, then figured someone else would ask. “You don’t ‘Need to Know’ as neither have any bearing on the investigation. Again, we didn’t speak directly, and there were many comments, responses, conversations before, during, and after the meal. It was, after all, a social occasion.”

“Lieutenant! Doesn’t having a social connection with not only the victim but other members of the cast and crew—including Marlo Durn, who’s playing you in this project—pose a conflict for you?”

“First, I only met Ms. Harris, Ms. Durn, and other members of the cast and crew yesterday morning, and this dinner party was the first social contact. So ‘social connection’ is a stretch. If either my partner or I believed the contact, the unusual connection would in any way influence or impede the investigation we would not be heading said investigation. K.T. Harris is our priority now. We stand for her.”

“Someone took her life,” Peabody said. “It doesn’t matter who she was, what she did for a living, whether she was a stranger or a friend. Someone took her life, and Lieutenant Dallas and I will use every resource of the NYPSD to identify her killer and see that Ms. Harris has justice. Those of you only looking for gossip are wasting our time. Time we need to spend doing our job.”

“But the circumstances are unusual, as Lieutenant Dallas stated herself,” someone called out. “You’re investigating the murder of an actress who would speak and act as Detective Peabody. During the course of the investigation you would interview and investigate the actors who speak and act as Lieutenant Dallas, as Roarke, as Detective McNab, Commander Whitney, and so on.”

“Murder’s hardly ever usual,” Eve said. “And I’m betting it never feels usual for the victim or the friends and family of the victim. Actors,” she continued. “Playing roles. The victim is not Detective Peabody. Marlo Durn is not me. I expect Ms. Durn will continue to portray other characters, both real and fictional, as I intend to continue to investigate murders and murderers. Right now, my focus, and my partner’s focus is on K.T. Harris. She’s ours now. My partner explained that very well. The Hollywood hype?” Eve added. “Play it up if that rocks you, if it bumps your numbers. I figure it’s your job. So, do your job. I’m going to do mine. Peabody.”

She stepped back from the podium, turned to walk out while more questions hammered at her back.

“Not quite as discussed,” Kyung said quietly. “But very good. Celebrity drives this train,” he added. “Hers, yours, the others at the dinner.”

“I’m not a celebrity.”

“You are, and you’ll just have to deal with that. On your own, as the wife of a wealthy, powerful man, as the central character in a best-selling book—and screen adaptation. Actually, while the celebrity is the juice, it may give you more room and freedom on the priority. On the investigation. Many of these stories will chase the star angle. If the victim had been just anyone drowned at a party, there’d be no particular interest. For a time, the interest will be on her, you, the others who are stars, not on the workings, the nit and grit of what you’re doing about her death.”

“That’s a point. We’re going to get to the nit and grit now.”

“Good luck with it. And Detective Peabody? Very well done. Very well done indeed.”

“Thanks.” She cleared her throat as she walked with Eve. “I didn’t even know I was going to say anything until I was already saying it. It just seemed like nobody really cared she was dead—murdered. Just that she was murdered during the shoot, while we were there, while she was playing me. It just wasn’t really about her at all.”

“No, it wasn’t. Kyung’s right. Let them play that up, roll around in it. We’ll do the caring.”

“Even though she was a bitch.”

“Even though. Contact McNab, get him to start looking through her financials, see if he can find anything that connects to the PI. We’ll take it to the vic’s hotel after we get Marlo’s recording.”

“You know what would happen if it leaked? The recordings—either or both?”

“Yeah, so let’s make sure we keep it plugged.”