Swimsuit Body (14 page)

“Please. I'll have my assistant email you the particulars. Oh, and I insist you come as my guest.”

“I'd love to. Will your wife be joining us?” I didn't even know he had a wife until Brianna told me. I'd never seen her with Bartosz in any of the photos of him at awards ceremonies and various A-list events. Apparently, she's a zoologist who studies elephants in Southeast Asia
.

“Sadly no. Edith is in Thailand for the summer.” His regret seems genuine.

Bartosz assigns one of his lackeys to us, and then he and his assistant director head over to the three-sided log house, where the actors have gathered and the crew is busy setting up for the shoot. We settle in our canvas chairs with the bottles of Evian the production assistant brought us, then a voice calls “Roll sound!” and seconds later “Roll cameras!” The scene we're watching is between Liam Brady and his costar, Taylor Ramsey, who play the parts of the newlyweds in
Devil's Slide.
I'm amazed by how natural they seem. Apparently oblivious to the lights and cameras that surround them, they share a passionate kiss, one that involves tongue, I can reliably report. Taylor is working hard to shed her squeaky-clean image from when she was a Disney star.

I'm less enthralled after sitting through multiple takes. Brianna wasn't exaggerating when she warned us that filming could be tedious. There's an interminable wait between each take while the director and his AD confer with the actors and each other, the set stylist takes photos that are used to ensure every detail of the set looks exactly the same from take to take, and the actors get their hair and makeup touched up. I'm standing to stretch my legs when I hear a door bang shut over by the trailers. I turn to see a tall, brunette woman exiting Brent Harding's trailer in a hurry. I'm guessing the woman is his wife because she's hugely pregnant. She appears upset.

I follow as she moves toward the parking area. “Excuse me?” I call after her. The ground over which she's waddling at a fast pace is pocked with gopher holes, and with her big belly and the high-heeled ankle boots she's wearing, I'm worried she'll fall and hurt herself. She comes to a halt at the sound of my voice and turns to face me.

“Are you fucking him, too?” she snarls.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I stare at the pregnant woman in surprise while she glares back at me, sparks of sunlight shooting from the enormous sunglasses she wears. Finally, I find my voice. “Um. No? I just thought … I saw you leaving and you looked like you could use some help. Are you all right?”

“Do I look all right?” she chokes out.

“You look pregnant, actually.”

“You noticed, huh? More than I can say for my husband.”

“Hi, I'm Tish Ballard.” I step forward, extending my hand, from which she recoils, as if it were a petition I had thrust at her to sign, before she finally takes it. “And you must be Mrs. Harding.”

“That would be me.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Brent doesn't know I'm here. I was going to surprise him. But the surprise was on me instead.” With that, she bursts into tears.

I take her arm. “Let me help you to your car. Where are you parked?” She leans into me, weeping silently. When we get to the parking lot, she can't find her rental car, she's so distraught. Finally, I think to thumb the key fob, and we follow the flash of lights to a white VW Passat. I get her settled in the driver's seat, then dart around to jump in the passenger side before she can drive away.

Her weeping subsides at last and she reaches into her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and pulls out her phone. “I found this in his trailer.” She shows me a text she forwarded from Brent's phone. A selfie of the spiky-haired blonde wearing a saucy smile and little else. The message reads,
Sneak preview of what ur getting tonite.
The blonde's name is Tara.

I can't think of anything to say. The image says it all.

“I should have known,” she says. “I was the other woman when he was married to his first wife. A leopard doesn't change its spots, right? Back then I was the hot babe. Now look at me.”

“You're still beautiful.” I'm not just saying it to make her feel better. She's gorgeous even with her face blotchy from crying. She'd taken off her sunglasses, revealing hazel eyes fringed with dark lashes. Tawny hair falls in loose curls over her shoulders, and her cheekbones could cut glass. She's also at least half her husband's age, which has to be around sixty, given that Brent was in his early thirties when he starred in
Steele Case
.

Mrs. Harding waves away the compliment. “My friends tried to warn me. They said he'd do the same to me, but I thought I was special. That he loved me too much to ever cheat on me.”

“I'm sure he does.” I don't know that for a fact. It's just what women say to each other.

“No. They were right. He's a dog. And I'm fat and ugly.” She starts to cry again.

I do my best to comfort her. “You're not ugly, and you won't be fat much longer. And just think, pretty soon you'll be a mom. How awesome is that? Congratulations, by the way. I hear it's twins.”

My words seem to have a calming effect. She gives me a watery smile as she strokes the mound of her belly. “I always wanted to be a mom.” Then, as if realizing belatedly that she was baring her soul to a perfect stranger, she says, “My name's Olivia. What did you say yours was?”

“Tish Ballard. And if it means anything, I'm sorry. You're right, it sucks.”

“Please tell me you're not having sex with him,” she says plaintively.

“God, no
.
” I bite my tongue before I add that I find Brent repulsive. “I don't do married men.”

“You're a better person than me, then.”

“No, I'm not. I've made my share of mistakes. That just didn't happen to be one of them.”

“Some would say I got what I deserved.”

“You can't think that way.”

Olivia stares sightlessly ahead as she continues to stroke her belly. “She's not the first.”

“Oh?” It comes as no shock to learn that Brent Harding was fooling around with someone else—or more than one woman—before spiky-haired Tara, but for Olivia's sake, I act surprised.

“He swore there was nothing going on between them, that they were just friends. And like an idiot, I believed him. The whole time we were trying to get pregnant, he was fucking
her
.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Delilah.” She spits out the name, bringing her gaze back to me. Now I am shocked. Delilah and Brent? Ugh. “When they were filming that picture together in London? I flew in one weekend and noticed they seemed awfully chummy. He claimed he was helping her through a rough patch. It was right after Eric died when she was Jackie fucking Onassis. What could I say?”

“Maybe he was telling the truth.”
What about Prince Harry?
And why Brent if she could have His Royal Highness?

“Well, she's dead now so we'll never know, will we?” Olivia slips her sunglasses back on, but not before I see the blaze of hatred in her swollen eyes. “Maybe she got what she deserved, too.”

I rejoin the others after I've seen Olivia Harding off. We're given a tour of the set, followed by lunch with the cast and crew. It's 12:30 by the time we leave. I quiz Brianna on the drive back to town.

“Why didn't you say something?” I ask, annoyed that she didn't tell me about Delilah's affair with Brent.

She replies, with a shrug. “It was just a fling. It didn't mean anything.”

“Hello. Your former employer was murdered! You don't think the fact that she was sleeping with a married man might've had something to do with it? His wife seemed pretty angry about it.”

We pass a bicyclist, a young man in a helmet and blue Lycra bike shorts, pedaling alongside the highway. I notice that Brianna doesn't cut a wide berth like you're supposed to. The bicyclist veers onto the shoulder as we whiz by, wobbling a bit on his bike as if blown by the back draft. “I'm surprised she found out,” Brianna remarks. “The affair was over by the time the film wrapped.”

“Would this be when Delilah was doing Prince Harry?”

“I told you …”

“Right. Like I believe she spent the weekend with Britain's most eligible bachelor and they didn't have sex.” Brianna's ensuing silence tells me I'm not wrong. What else has she lied about?

“Delilah was doing Prince Harry?” Ivy pipes up excitedly from the backseat.

“It would appear so,” I reply.

“The thing with Brent …” Brianna begins. “They'd known each other forever. Eric was the stuntman for one of Brent's pictures, and he and Brent became friendly. The three of them used to pal around together. After Eric died … I think Brent kept his memory alive for Delilah.”

“Who ended it?”

“Neither, as I recall. It simply ran its course. No hard feelings.”

“Yeah, except now she's dead.”

“It's not as if Brent killed her,” Brianna says dismissively.

“We don't know that,” rumbles McGee from the backseat.

I recall the murderous look in Olivia's eyes. “Maybe it was his wife.” I tell them about the angry woman caller who left a message with Esmeralda in the days before Delilah was shot. “If it was Olivia Harding, she could have followed up with a surprise visit.” And paid her respects with a bullet.

“Didn't you say she just got here?” Ivy asks.

“That's what she said, but for all we know, she's been in town all this time.” Olivia could have traveled here by car, so her name wouldn't appear on a passenger manifest, then swapped her own vehicle for a rental car. “If she wore a disguise and stayed at a motel under an assumed name …”

“Please.” Brianna still isn't buying it. “The affair was months ago, and from what Olivia told you, she didn't just find out about it. Why wait all this time to kill Delilah?”

“They were doing another picture together. It must have made Olivia crazy thinking of them on location together. Plus, she's hormonal. I know how I get when I'm PMSing. I could totally kill someone.”

“She didn't snap in the heat of the moment. This was carefully planned and executed,” Ivy points out.

“The cops are thinking it was a professional hit,” McGee agrees.

“I still don't see it,” Brianna says, shaking her head. “A jealous wife goes after her ex with a baseball bat or runs him over with her car. She doesn't hire a hit man.”

“She would if she was a sociopath.” I turn to McGee. “Could you have one of your people do a background check?” By “people” I mean his vast, extended family back east, most of whom are in law enforcement. “See if Mrs. Harding has a criminal record or a psychiatric history.”

“I'm on it,” he says, pulling out his phone. “I'll see what I can dig up on Casanova, too.”

I smile. “Casanova, huh?”

He explains that Casanova is the code name given to Brent Harding by the security detail on the set, information he gleaned from the guard he'd chatted up, a retired cop named Jimmy O'Rourke. “Standard operating procedure with VIPs. Like with the Secret Service, only this ain't POTUS and FLOTUS. Seems Harding's got his you-know-what in more than one honey pot.”

“I would have thought Brent's stud-muffin days were over,” Ivy says with a sniff.

“The thinking is that he must have a big—”

I groan. “Please. Spare us.”

“—supply of Viagra. Get your mind out of the gutter, Ballard.” McGee gives a wicked chuckle.

I feel my cheeks warm. “What else did you learn?”

“O'Rourke says it ain't just hanky-panky. Harding is hard-core.”

“Meaning …?”

“He's into the kinky stuff. Keeps a set of handcuffs and a riding crop in his trailer.”

In my line of work, I've seen it all, from porn mags and DVDs to sex toys that included whips and handcuffs, so I'm hardly shocked. I only comment, “Personally, I don't see the appeal.”

“Not to mention he's
old
,” Ivy pronounces with disgust.

“He may be old, but he's also Casey Steele.” Brianna explains Brent Harding's enduring appeal. “Men who are icons never get old when it comes to scoring with women. Look at Mick Jagger.”

“Mick Jagger is Mick Jagger,” I say. “Besides, he still tours.”

“
Steele Case
is in syndication, and don't forget his Jack Dawson movies.” Brianna refers to the string of action flicks in which Brent Harding starred as a Texas Ranger named Jack Dawson before he began dyeing his hair and putting his cosmetic surgeon's kids through college. “He has a following. Why do you think my uncle cast Brent in this picture?”

Brianna's rhetorical question hangs in the air. I still don't see the appeal, but I can't dispute the fact that Brent Harding has no trouble getting laid, even at his age. The same goes for Karol Bartosz, and he's even longer in the tooth than Brent. Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac, I suppose.

Outside, the sky is clear. The fog from earlier in the day has receded and forms a thick, gray band along the horizon like a rolled-up carpet that'll be unrolled again once the party's over. We're passing the state beach at Waddell Creek, where monster waves pound the shore and surfers dot the swells beyond the breakpoint. There's just one flaw in my theory about Olivia Harding, I realize: She wasn't at Bartosz's party, so she couldn't have been the one who drugged me.

Lost in thought, I don't notice we've arrived back in town until I look out and see that we're driving along Pacific Avenue, where the sidewalks are thronged with shoppers and sightseers, and flowers bloom in the tubs that sit outside the stucco storefronts painted in sherbet shades. I spy Ivy's boss, Parker Lane, in the front window of the Gilded Lily as we drive by; he's rearranging the window display, which he does at least once a week. The sign on the surfboard that's propped outside Hang Ten Surf Shop advertises a sale of ten percent off all merchandise.

I hear the muffled sound of my ringtone from inside my Tumi bag. My heart leaps into my throat when I pull out my phone and see Spence's name on the caller ID. Is he calling with the results of my blood test? If so, the news won't be good. Because there's no test to determine whether any drugs in your system were ingested voluntarily or not.

Spence's voice is low and tense. “Where are you? We need to talk.”

“I just pulled into town. What's up? Can you tell me over the phone?” My heart starts to pound at his dire tone. I wonder if it might have something to with my errant brother.

“I'd rather not. Meet me at the park across from the station.”

“Okay, but—?”

“I'll be there in ten,” he says before hanging up.