Swimsuit Body (13 page)

Bradley looks even more ragged than I do, and it's only 8:30 in the morning where he is. Disheveled, with smudges under his eyes that aren't dirt. He explains that he's in a yellow zone near the Pakistan border where IEDs and sniper fire have everyone on edge. I'm worried for his safety, but I'm also worried about my own. After I tell him about what happened last night, he shakes his head in disbelief. “Tish, only you could make a combat zone seem like a walk in the park.”

My nerves frayed, I find myself snapping at him. “It's not like I asked for it. If it weren't for my crazy brother, I would have been home instead of getting drugged at a party. I wouldn't have a killer after me!” In the military there's a term for it: FUBAR—Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Bradley's face creases in sympathy and he reaches out as if to touch me. It's moments like this I feel every mile that separates us. “I'm sorry, babe. I wish you didn't have to go through this alone.”

“I'm not alone. I have Ivy and McGee and—” I stop myself before I can say Spence's name. “Never mind. What's that noise?” I can hear muffled explosions in the background.

“Mortar shells,” he informs me, grim faced, then turns to speak briefly to another man who entered the room just then. “Babe, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut this short. We're being evacuated.”

“Be safe,” I tell him as I always do.

“You too,” he says, and the screen goes dark.

You know how you know that a situation is fucked up beyond all recognition? When you're thinking you might not have a future with your boyfriend because one of you will soon be dead.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brianna arrives early the next morning, just as I'm returning from walking the dog. I unclip his leash and he dashes to greet her, jumping up and down, doing his bouncy-castle thing. “Looks like he's found himself a home,” she says as she bends down to pet him.

“He's not staying,” I reply gruffly.

“They seem to be getting along.” She watches as my cat emerges from the living room to pad toward us.

“Stockholm syndrome.”

“Well, if you decide to keep him …”

“I won't.”

The truth is I've grown fond of the little guy. I scratch behind his ears before giving him a rawhide bone to chew. I've taught him to use the cat door for when he needs to go out, and he and my cat seem to have arrived at an understanding. As long as Prince steers clear of Hercules, he's permitted to roam freely. “Be good,” I call to my cat nonetheless as I'm headed out the door.

I climb into my Explorer, ready to visit the movie set, and am pleased to see Ivy sitting in the backseat. I'd asked her to join us—Brianna's uncle said she could bring as many guests as she liked—but Ivy hadn't been sure she could get the time off work. “Parker practically pushed me out the door,” she reports. “He wants me to text him from the set.” Parker Lane, her boss and the owner of the Gilded Lily, is celebrity obsessed. For him, the Holy Trinity is Barbra, Bette, and Cher.

“Text him photos, you mean.”

“But of course,” she replies in a phony French accent.

Brianna starts the engine. She's dressed in a fitted herringbone blazer over a striped blouse, a camel A-line skirt belted in faux alligator the same tobacco shade as her calf-length boots. I wonder if I should have worn something nicer than the jeans and ribbed turtleneck I have on. I'm reassured when I see Ivy's Dr. Martens peeking from under the long skirt that covers her ankles.

After stopping at the Bluejay Café for coffee and muffins, we head into the hills northeast of town to pick up McGee, who will act as my eyes and ears. When we arrive at the self-storage facility where he's resident manager, we find him smoking a cigarette outside the office below his living quarters. He's been trying to quit and claims he's down to two a day. He drops the cigarette he's smoking and grinds it out with his shoe before climbing in back. “I didn't inhale,” he says with a grin when I raise my eyebrows at him.

“What's with the
Miami Vice
look?” I pass him a coffee and the bag with the last of the muffins. Instead of his uniform, he wears off-white chinos and a cream linen blazer over a Hawaiian shirt.

“When in Rome.” He pries the lid from his coffee. “And no, I'm not packing.” Forewarned about the tight security on the set, I told him to leave his gun at home. “What you have here, Ballard, is a lean, mean fighting machine. Anyone fucks with you girls, he'll be on the ground before he sees me coming.”

“Who are you calling ‘girl'?” Ivy lightly punches his arm.

He smirks at her. “Would you prefer ‘little lady'?”

“You're disgusting.”

“Kids, behave yourselves,” I call back from the front seat.

On the drive up the coast, Brianna instructs us in the manners and mores of La-La Land. “Don't expect them to remember you from the party,” she tells me. “They won't. Even if you had a deep and meaningful conversation with them. Even if they had their tongues down your throat.”

Even if they drugged me?
I don't voice the thought. I haven't decided whether I can trust Brianna not to blab to her uncle. Instead, I groan and say, “Please. I just ate.”

“There are exceptions, of course,” she goes on. “But as a rule, unless you're making them money or you can offer them a part, or you're one of them, they have no use for you.” I flash on Brent Harding making out with the spiky-haired blonde who is not his wife. If he forgets he had his tongue down her throat, he'd be doing her a favor. “My friend Anna? She hooked up with this guy at a party, one of the actors on the TV show where she works. When she ran into him on the set the next day, he acted like he didn't know her. Anna thought he was just blowing her off, but it turned out he really didn't remember her. Why should he? She's just a lowly production assistant.”

“That's harsh,” comments Ivy.

“Was he drunk when they hooked up?” I ask.

“Is your friend hot?” asks McGee.

Brianna replies, “No, he wasn't drunk. And as for my friend, that's totally beside the point.”

“Not if you're a guy,” says McGee, unrepentant.

Brianna picks up speed to pass a VW Bug plastered with political bumper stickers, then doesn't slow down. I find myself stepping on the invisible brake at my feet, still on edge after my close call the other night. It's a foggy morning and visibility is poor, the lighthouse up ahead a sketchy outline amid the fog. I ask about Brent Harding. “Does his wife know he's cheating on her?”

Brianna shrugs. “Probably, if she's like most Hollywood wives. They turn a blind eye as long as it's not too blatant because they know what it would mean if they got divorced.”

“What?”

“They'd lose the perks that come with being Mrs. So-and-So—the invitations to A-list parties, the red carpet events, the prime tables in hot restaurants, and the courtside seats at Lakers games.”

“I would think she'd be more worried about being a single mom,” I say.

“With what she'd be getting in child support, she could hire a nanny, but that's not what matters. In La-La Land, it's all about status. If she's like the others, she's scared of becoming a nobody.”

“She wouldn't be a nobody. She'd just be who she was before she became Mrs. Harding.”

“Olivia Harding was a cocktail waitress when she and Brent met.”

“Something wrong with that?” Ivy pipes up from the backseat, sounding defensive. Occasionally, she gets customers at the Gilded Lily who don't know that she is an artist and treat her as a mere shopgirl.

“Not at all,” says Brianna. “Except it was a gentlemen's club. Need I say more?”

We turn off the highway fifteen minutes later, heading east toward Salema. The fog thins as we travel inland, and I see the morning sun peeking above the hilltops in the distance. Day laborers toil in the artichoke fields, but when we get to the village, the storefronts along the main drag are shuttered except for the coffee shop. Soon, we're in deep countryside, where we see more cows than people. We turn onto an unpaved road, where we're stopped at a checkpoint half a mile or so down. I recognize the guy who asks for our IDs as the bull-necked security guard from the other night. We're waved through after he sees that we're on his list. There's another checkpoint when we arrive at the set, where a security guard waves a metal-detector wand over us while another guard circles my SUV with his bomb-sniffing dog. Finally we're free to enter the parking area.

The set is spread over roughly three acres, a minimetropolis plunked down in the middle of nowhere in which monster trailers serve as offices and the landscape is composed of cameras and equipment, banks of computers, standing lights, and props. Thick electrical cords snake over the ground. Crew members are either rushing around or busy at some task. A three-sided log house ringed with lights and cameras stands at the center. As we walk alongside a row of trailers, I quickly notice a pecking order. Each is assigned to a different actor, I see from the names taped to the doors, with the largest belonging to the biggest names. Liam Brady's, not surprisingly, is the granddaddy of them all. By chance, he emerges, bare chested and wearing jeans, as we're passing by.

“Tish Ballard, as I live and breathe,” he greets me, slathering on the Irish brogue. His cobalt eyes crinkle with good humor. “If I didn't know better, I might think you were stalking me.”

I smile. “That would be a first—stalking by invitation.” As he stands before me in all his glory, his ugly-handsome face gilded by the morning light, it doesn't seem possible that he could be a killer.

“My uncle's invitation,” Brianna chimes in.

After Brianna has made the introductions, Liam invites us in for coffee. “You won't want to be drinking that swill.” He nods toward the catering truck where coffee urns and steam trays sit on the long tables that have been set up outside. McGee and Brianna decline the invitation and head off in different directions, Brianna to look for her uncle, McGee to visit with his brethren, in this case the men in black, most of whom are retired cops. Ivy and I follow Liam into the trailer.

I step into a seating area that's more spacious than my living room. It opens onto a small but well-appointed kitchen at one end that has a fancy espresso maker like the one I bought for Delilah's use. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee permeates the air. Liam motions for us to have a seat, then goes in back, returning a minute later wearing a chambray shirt. Except he's left it unbuttoned, so I'm still finding it hard not to stare—you could tenderize a steak with those abs.

“Black as the devil's heart,” he says as he serves us espresso in dainty porcelain cups with slivers of orange rind.

“And you had me at hello.” I bat my eyes at him. But my attempt to flirt with him fails to get a reaction. Either I'm not his type, or he's playing for the other team. He seems charmed by Ivy, however.

“You remind me of a girl I knew in Ireland,” he says, sitting down next to her. “Megan O'Reilly was her name. Raven curls and blue eyes like yours. Had all the boys eating out of her hand.”

Ivy looks more amused than flattered. She's used to having men flirt with her. “That must be why Irishmen have silver tongues,” she says, and he throws his head back with a roar of laughter.

Talk turns to Delilah, after Ivy has expressed her sympathies. “She was a complicated creature,” Liam says. “Smart with money and a fool with men. She could be hard at times, and gentle as a mother's touch at others. If she loved you, you got all of her. But you didn't want to be on her bad side.”

“I wonder if she was killed by a friend who felt betrayed … or who she'd threatened to betray.” I hint at the fight Liam allegedly had with Delilah. “Do you know if she had a falling out with anyone?”

Liam gives me a sharp look. “What makes you think it was one of us?”

Someone tried to kill me the night before last.
“Usually it's someone the victim knew.” I keep it vague.

We're interrupted by a knock on the door. A bearded young man pokes his head in to announce, “They're ready for you in makeup, Mr. Brady.”

We follow Liam outside. “Stick around and you can watch them film my scene,” he says as he's leaving us. “Try not to get too excited, though. Can't have you passing out from the sheer thrill of it.”

I don't understand what he means by that until Brianna explains, when we catch up to her over by the catering truck where she's eating scrambled eggs and bacon from a paper plate, “They do a million takes, and there's usually a long wait in between. Seriously, it's like watching paint dry.”

Ivy says to me, “Don't tell Parker. I don't want to burst his bubble.”

“Did you find your uncle?” I ask Brianna.

She points to where Bartosz is conferring with the assistant director over by the trailer that appears to be his office. “I spoke with him already, so he knows we're here. I was just getting a bite to eat while I waited for you guys.” She grabs my arm, whispering, “He said he wanted to talk to you about something. He's probably going to ask you out, so be prepared.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I reply, my stomach doing a flip.

As we head in that direction, we pass redheaded Jillian Lassiter, her braless boobs bouncing in the sweater she wears. Brianna murmurs, “She's slept with everything that moves and some that don't.” She points out a baldheaded man, ancient but ambulatory. “He's the reason she has a career.”

“Who is he?” Ivy asks.

“Werner Baumgarten. Head of the production company.”

We run into Brent Harding, who appears even more bizarrely well preserved in the light of day than he had the other night at the party. His face is waxy where it's stretched taut and his eyes are tipped at the corners. I wonder if he uses Grecian Formula on his mustache as well as his hair; both are a shade of brown that I associate with mink coats. He seems to recognize me but not in a good way. As he and Brianna stand chatting, I notice he keeps glancing over at me as though I'm making him uncomfortable. Maybe he remembers seeing me on the deck at the party and he's wondering if I snapped a picture of him making out with the blonde who isn't his wife.

Bartosz greets us warmly when we finally reach him. Once again, I'm struck by the air of power he exudes. He's several inches shorter than me, but I'm scarcely aware of the difference in our heights. In the safari shirt he wears, with his snowy cockatoo's crest and thick, black eyebrows, he seems a throwback to the Golden Era of Hollywood. “Bree tells me you ran into some trouble on your way home the other night,” he says to me after we've exchanged pleasantries and Brianna has dragged Ivy over to meet David. “I'm delighted to see you're still in one piece.”

“It wasn't that big a deal.” I figure if Bartosz was the one who drugged me, it's best he not know that he nearly succeeded in killing me. “I was pulled over, but the cop let me off with a warning.” It's not the whole truth, but it's not a lie exactly. “Brianna said there was something you wanted to speak to me about. What can I do for you?”

“Ah yes.” The older man's look of concern gives way to a smile. “I was hoping you could recommend a restaurant for a dinner party I'm hosting next week. One with a private dining room.”

“The Shady Brook Inn,” I reply without hesitation. “It's the only one in town with two Michelin stars, and it has more than one private dining room. They're usually booked pretty far in advance, but I'm friendly with the owner, so if you want, I can call and see if he can fit you in.”