Swimsuit Body (22 page)

The frozen smile worn by Olivia Harding tells me she's thinking the same thing that I am: Brent must have been with Delilah in her hotel suite at the time to recall the incident in such detail. I hear her mutter to herself, “The bitch deserved to die,” and feel a chill as if from a sudden draft.

“No one deserves that.” I speak in a low voice as Brent, who appears oblivious to his wife's displeasure, holds forth. “You know. Except Hitler if you could go back in time.”

“Excuse me?” Olivia turns to look at me.

“I'm just saying.”

She stares at me with her wide green eyes. “I'm sorry. What did you say your name was?”

“Tish Ballard. We met the other day on the set.” I refresh her memory.

Olivia's blank look gives way to a smile. “Oh, yes, I remember now. You were kind enough to walk me to my car after I twisted my ankle.” I'm stunned speechless. It was her marriage, and not her ankle, that had taken a bad turn that day, yet she seems to have erased the memory along with that of having unburdened herself to me. Is she putting on an act? Or is she really that crazy?

“Pardon me, ladies.”

I look up at the familiar voice from above, startled to find Ivy standing over me wearing the sage green uniform of the Shady Brook waitstaff and holding a steaming plate in each hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“What the hell is going on?” I confront Ivy when we're alone. We're in the ladies' room. I slipped away to meet with her in private as soon as she was on her break. “Are you and McGee in cahoots?”

“As if.” Ivy looks up from rubbing at a grease spot on her uniform shirt with a moistened paper towel. “I was as surprised to see him as you were. I guess he had the same idea that I did.”

“Which was what, exactly?”

“I figured you'd be safer if you had someone on the inside who was looking out for you.”

“Does Steve know?” I ask, feeling a dart of worry. For security reasons, no one was supposed to know about Operation Red Carpet, not even the restaurant's owner. Spence would be upset with me if he knew that I'd taken Ivy and McGee into my confidence. Rightfully so, I now see.

“No, but I heard he was short-staffed—apparently there's a bug going around—so I offered to fill in for tonight's dinner service.” Since Ivy and I had both waited tables at the Shady Brook Inn during high school, she has the experience. She looks up at me again, this time to grin. “Getting him to assign me to your party was a cinch. He knows he can count on me to be discreet.”

“Did it ever occur to you that someone might recognize you from when we visited the set?”

“You know as well as I do the waitstaff is invisible at functions like these.” Apparently such is the case at this one because no one has remarked on Ivy's presence thus far. I suspect it's also due to the drab colors of her uniform and the fact that her normally riotous hair is pulled back in a neat bun.

“Don't do anything to blow your cover, in that case. The last thing I need is to worry about you on top of worrying about my own survival.” Secretly, I'm glad she has my back, but I can't let her know that—she's prone to heroics. “Couldn't you have settled on a rerun of
Murder, She Wrote
?”

“Why should I sit home when I could be out having fun?” She pretends to pout.

“You wouldn't be sitting home if you hadn't screwed things up with Rajeev.” He and Ivy are talking again, but so far that's all they are doing. “Besides which, I didn't ask you to stick your neck out.”

Her grin fades at the mention of Rajeev, but she doesn't go there. She puts her hand on my arm, looking me in the eye as she says, “I'm your best friend, Tish. This is what best friends do.”

“You couldn't have sponsored me for an AIDS walk?”

“Since when do you go on AIDS walks? You always say you'd rather give by writing a check.” She watches as I pull up my pantyhose, and when I'm done, she says, with an amused expression, “Yeah. You definitely need me to watch your back.” She points behind me to where the hem of my gown is caught in my pantyhose, bunched up like an ostrich tail. We both crack up.

“Fine.” I relent, after our laughter has subsided and I've corrected my wardrobe malfunction. “But no heroics, please.”

“I have no intention of becoming a human shield,” she assures me.

“Some friend you are,” I say with a huff.

“I love you, Tish, but not that much.” She laughs and hooks her arm through mine as we exit the ladies' room, she to head back to her station and me to rejoin my party. “I'll signal you if I notice anyone acting nervous,” she whispers, and I feel a flutter of anxiety. The time has come for me to set my trap.

“Anything strike you as suspicious so far?” I ask.

“Other than some boobs that I'm not sure are real? No,” she says, then pauses, frowning in thought, before she adds, “There is one thing. … I don't know if it means anything, but your client, Mr. Russo, is here.” She motions toward the main dining area at the other end of the hallway.

“Mr. Russo? Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. I never forget a face.” I recall that I introduced Ivy to Russo when we ran into him at the Trader Joe's near his house a while back. “And those rumors about him must be true.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He's with a guy in a rubout suit.” She pulls me to the end of the hallway where we can see the table at which the two men are seated.

It's Russo all right, and the man he's with is the wiseguy from central casting: midforties and built like a Subzero with a low brow and dark hair that's slicked back goombah style, wearing a shiny gray suit and an open-collared pink shirt that displays the gold chain glinting on his furry chest. Russo's muscle? If so, is it a mere coincidence that he's dining with Russo tonight … or are they plotting something together? Could Russo have gotten wind of Operation Red Carpet? I suppose it's possible, though I can't think what his angle might be in interfering it.

Lost in thought, I don't see Liam until I almost bump into him as I'm headed back to the party, after Ivy and I have parted ways. He had gone outside for a smoke when I went to use the restroom. “We have to stop meeting like this. People will talk,” he murmurs seductively as he falls into step with me.

I pause to smile at him. “And what will they say?”

He gives me a sly smile and leans in to whisper, smelling of cigarette smoke and expensive aftershave, “That I'm making a play for Karol Bartosz's woman.”

“I'm nobody's woman.” Sadly, this is true. I'm separated from Bradley by an ocean and he seems in no hurry to be reunited with me, which makes him my boyfriend in name only.

“More's the pity.” Liam shakes his head. “I must say, you look very sexy in that gown.”

“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Brady?” I run my finger over a row of pleats on his tuxedo shirt.
There's one sure way to find out if he's gay or straight
, I think, lowering my eyelids and tipping my head back invitingly.

Liam cups my chin, and his cobalt eyes lock onto mine. Then my only thought is,
Holy crap. I'm about to be kissed by the world's biggest box-office star
. My lady parts stir to life. But before I can get too excited, he drops his hand and takes a step back, saying, as if with regret, “I still have some scruples, love. Not many, but enough to know where my bread is buttered.” The closest we get to a PDA is when he puts his arm around my waist as he escorts me back to the wine cellar.

The mood at the table is more relaxed now that the solemn portion of the evening is behind us. As we dine on duck breast and wild-rice pilaf, eggplant three ways for the vegetarians, Rick has everyone in stitches with a funny anecdote about a trained chimp that went AWOL during the making of his most recent beer-and-bong comedy. “They found him raiding the closet in Sierra's trailer.” He winks. “Best-kept secret in Hollywood. Not even his trainer knew.”

I seize the opportunity to bait my trap. “If only animals could talk. Imagine what Delilah's dog would say—the only witness to her murder.” I pause a moment, as if debating with myself whether to go on, before I add, in a confidential tone, “Actually, he may not have been the only witness.”

My “revelation” is met with gasps and startled exclamations. Bartosz stares at me from the head of the table, his gaze dark and impenetrable. “If you know something we don't, perhaps you would care to enlighten us, Tish.”

“I may have seen something, I'm not sure. I was in shock at the time, so my mind was kind of a blank when the police questioned me. But lately I've been getting these … I don't know what to call it exactly … flashbacks, I guess.”

“Flashbacks?” Jillian's eyes widen.

“Just bits and pieces. Nothing you could call an actual, you know, memory.”

“Do the police know about this?” Brent asks sharply.

“Yes. I'm working with them to—” I break off. “Look, I shouldn't be discussing this. They asked me not to. It's just … I can see how much you all cared for her. I want you to know it isn't hopeless.”

Brianna stares at me with narrowed eyes as if she can see through my ruse.

“So you're saying you may have caught a glimpse of the killer before he fled?” Brent leans forward on his elbows. His face has all the animation of a bank robber's mask, but his eyes glitter with avid interest as they fix on me. He doesn't seem aware of Ivy reaching past him to refill his wineglass. I notice she's been liberal with the pouring of the wine tonight.
In vino veritas.

“Possibly.” I put on a troubled look, which isn't entirely an act. I can feel the food I ate inching its way back up my throat, I'm so nervous. “I should know one way or the other after tomorrow. Detective Breedlove arranged for me to see a psychiatrist who specializes in hypnotherapy,” I explain. “She works mainly with kids who've been sexually abused. She helps them recover their memories, and we're hoping she can do the same for me. I'm told she has a very high success rate. Thanks to her, a number of those abusers were convicted and sent to prison.”

Greta's eyes shine with excitement. “I've been praying for a break in the case. This could be it!”

“Don't get your hopes up just yet.” I'm careful not to overplay my hand. “We'll see what comes of it.”

“Oh, man. The dude's gonna fry.” Rick mimes a death-row electrocution, rolling his eyes back in his head and jerking his body around in his chair. Gallows humor in aspic. This time no one laughs.

Rick's girlfriend gives him a vaguely disgusted look from under her wispy black-and-blue bangs. “The death penalty isn't exercised in California. Not since 2006,” she informs us in a low, husky voice that's completely at odds with her birdlike appearance. I realize this is the first time I've heard her speak.

Silence descends again. There's just the clink of plates being cleared from the table and the sigh of air from the vents that keep the cellar at an even, cool temperature. Then a female voice cries, “Nobody move!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I freeze, expecting to see a gun. Instead, I see Jillian Lassiter drop to her knees. “I lost a contact lens!” her muffled voice calls from under the table where she's crawled. Irina and Rick, who are seated on either side of her, join the search. There's a muffled “ouch” as they bump heads. One of them knocks against a table leg—Rick from the seismic shudder that overturns my water glass. As Ivy rushes in with a napkin to mop up the spill, I see Brent Harding slip away out of the corner of my eye, his wife following suit a moment later. I don't think twice before I go after them.

I ignore the questioning look McGee shoots me as I fly by him. There's no time to explain. I have to keep the Hardings in my sights, and Brent is moving at a fast pace, Olivia trailing at a discreet distance. At first, I had thought they were planning to meet in private—perhaps to plot my imminent demise—but that doesn't appear to be the case. Brent seems unaware that he's being followed. I watch him turn into the service passageway at the end of the hallway, shadowed by Olivia. The usual cacophony of kitchen sounds assails me as I hurry after them—voices shouting in two languages, pots clattering, pans sizzling. I almost collide with a busboy carrying a plastic bin of dishes when I step out onto the deck … just in time to see Olivia descending the wooden steps to the path that leads to the ravine, along which Brent now strides. I note that she's amazingly light on her feet for a woman who's eight months pregnant, with twins no less, and I wonder what her secret is—yoga? Pilates?—as I follow behind, careful to stay far enough back so as not to be noticed. The mingled voices of diners from above grow more faint, and the rushing water of the creek at the bottom of the ravine grows louder as I make my way down the terraced steps of the path, guided by the glow from Brent's cell phone up ahead.

His shadowy figure emerges from the shadows of the trees into the moonlit clearing where the path ends. The clearing, which looks out over the creek, is where Shady Brook's outdoor events, primarily weddings, are held. The greenery here is tended and the grass is bordered in flowerbeds. A white Victorian-style gazebo sits on a rise at the water's edge. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more romantic spot for a wedding. After dark, it's apparently the ideal spot for an assignation.

“Tara?” Brent calls softly.

The slender figure of a woman steps from the gazebo and walks to meet him, their elongated shadows blending into one as they embrace. A tender moment that's cut short when Olivia bursts into the open with a cry so primal it raises the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. She might have been a wild beast charging its prey. She streaks across the clearing, faster than I would have imagined a heavily pregnant woman could move. Except beasts don't carry guns. I feel a lurch of panic when I see the small pistol she pulled from her handbag—I wondered about the unfashionably large purse when I noticed it earlier in the evening—which she points at Brent and the spiky-haired blonde. They freeze, holding themselves as still as the stone statue of a pair of lovers that stands behind them. I hang back at the edge of the clearing where I'm hidden from view. My heart is beating rapidly, and I seem to have sprung a dozen new pulse points. Fortunately, I have my phone with me. I use it to signal the cops, if they're not already on their way.

“You lying sack of shit!” Olivia snarls at Brent. “I should have known you were lying when you swore it was over. Every fucking word out of your mouth has been a lie since day one.”

“Baby, please. Give me the gun. Before somebody gets hurt. Then we can sit down and talk this over. I can explain everything.” Brent speaks in a calming voice, not letting his panic show. I never thought much of him as an actor, but his performance is worthy of an Oscar.

Olivia gives a shrill laugh. “You think I'm stupid? You think I don't know what's going on?” Tara starts to whimper, and Olivia snaps at her, “You mean nothing to him. I hope you know that. He'll toss you aside like a gum wrapper when he's done with you. Though I ought to save him the trouble.” Olivia advances a step, and I hear the click of the safety on her gun. Tara lets out a terrified shriek and ducks behind Brent, who sidesteps her, unlike his alter ego Casey Steele, who never hesitates to throw himself between a bullet and a woman in peril.

“Baby, sweetie, please.” He extends his arms towards his wife in supplication. “Look, I know I screwed up, and you have every right to be angry. But I swear it's not what it looks like. I came to tell Tara it was over.”

This is news to Tara apparently. She whirls around to confront him, her hands clenched into fists. “You
asshole
.
You told me you were getting a divorce. You told me we'd be together. Your wife is right. You
are
a fucking liar.” She starts pummeling him with her fists.

Olivia barks out a laugh. “Well, well. Seems you've stepped in it, dear.”

“Baby, please …”

“He'd be doing you a favor if he dumped you,” Olivia says to Tara. “Too bad you won't be around long enough to find that out for yourself.” She raises the gun to take aim.

“No!” Brent cries in a belated show of gallantry as he takes a lurching step toward Olivia with his arms still outstretched. “Sweetie, please, I'm begging you. Don't do anything you'll regret.”

“Too late,” she snarls. “I have nothing
but
regrets. My biggest one? That I married you.”

“You want a divorce? Fine. I'll give you whatever you want—the house, the condo in Aspen, the money, you name it.” He sounds desperate. “Just don't do this. You don't want to go to prison, do you? Think of our babies. I know you don't want them growing up without a mother.”

“Like you care. Where were you when I was suffering through those infertility treatments? When I was throwing up all day every day with morning sickness? I had to
email
you my sonogram. Because you were too busy fucking Delilah to go with me to the doctor's. She's another one,” Olivia spits out. “She pretended to be my friend. But it was only so I wouldn't notice what was really going on. You know what? I'm
glad
she's dead. I only wish I could have made her suffer like she made me suffer.”

“Liv, what are you saying?” Brent stares at his own wife as if she were a stranger. I hardly recognize the glowing mother-to-be who'd been on his arm earlier. The woman pointing a gun at him, her face distorted with rage, might have been her evil twin. “You didn't—”

“Kill her?” Olivia gives a shrill laugh. “Yes, I killed her. I put a bullet in her head and I smiled when I did it. Just like I'm going to put bullets in you and your little friend here.”

I stifle a gasp as I crouch in my hiding spot. Her confession comes as no surprise, but hearing it causes my stomach to wrench. I think about sixteen-year-old Olivia, who didn't get the help she needed after she was expelled from school for threatening another girl—or who was possibly beyond help even then—as I look at the woman she's become, all grown up and crazier than ever. I can't wait for the cops to get here, I realize. I have to stop her before she hurts someone else. But how? I don't have a weapon at my disposal, and I'm not going to risk my own life to save Brent's or his girlfriend's. I'm not that noble. I do have one advantage, however. I know how to talk to a crazy person. I've had lots of practice.

“Olivia?” I call from the shadows. “It's me, Tish. Why don't we go inside where we can talk. Just the two of us, like we did after you … um, twisted your ankle. You can tell me all about it.”

Startled, Olivia swings around awkwardly at the sound of my voice, and the gun goes off—I don't think it was on purpose; she's shaking all over in her agitation—sending bits of bark flying at me like shrapnel as the bullet buries itself in the tree trunk behind me. I drop into a crouch, my heart hammering, my breath whistling in and out of my lungs. Time seems to stand still for a beat before Olivia shrieks, “Go away! Leave me alone! This isn't any of your business.”

“You're right, it isn't,” I call out, after I've regained some measure of composure. “But, believe me, I know what you're going through. I know what it's like to be so mad at a guy you'd do anything to get back at him, even if it hurts you as much as it hurts him. I once torched a guy's car.”

This gives her pause. “You … You did?”

“He totally had it coming.”
Or so I thought at the time
. “But still. It was wrong, and I've regretted it ever since. It only made the situation ten times worse. Don't make the same mistake I did.” Never mind she'd already racked up one victim, namely Delilah Ward, and possibly others.

“Listen to her!” shrills Tara in a frantic bid to save herself. “He's not worth it! Why ruin your own life when you could divorce him and take him to the cleaners? I … I'd even testify against him in court if it came to that. I can't believe I fell for his lies. I wish now I'd never met him!”

“Women. You're all alike,” Brent grumbles loudly.

He should have kept his mouth shut. With a growl, Olivia turns on him. At which point he belatedly mans up and launches himself at her. She doesn't go down easily, though. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, you can make that times two with the pregnant Olivia. She transforms into a hissing, spitting wildcat. They grapple briefly, and he wrestles the gun away from her before finally shoving her away from him and onto the ground. A second later, another shot rings out, and this time it's Brent who goes down. The spiky-haired blonde screams. Olivia starts to wail.

I hear voices and turn to see several figures racing in my direction along the path. In the moonlight that penetrates the shadows of the trees, I'm able to make out a stocky man, another man and a woman trailing behind him at a short distance. It's Russo's goon in the lead, I see when he bursts into the clearing. I assume he was the one who shot Brent, since he's holding a gun. Seconds later, the other man and the woman appear, identifying themselves as police officers. They must be the undercover cops from the way they're dressed, like a couple on a date.

“You okay, ma'am?” Russo's goon helps me to my feet with a meaty hand clamped around my arm, while the cops rush to tend to the injured Brent.

“Yeah,” I answer shakily. “But I'm not so sure about him.” I point to where Brent lies motionless, cradled in his wife's arms as she rocks from side to side, keening. You would never know to look at her that she'd been holding him at gunpoint a minute ago and threatening to blow a hole in him.

“He'll live,” the goon assures me. “It's only a flesh wound.”

I watch the female cop, a slender brunette, pry Olivia from Brent, allowing her partner to assess Brent's injuries. The wounded actor stirs feebly as he regains consciousness. Olivia is sobbing hysterically, while Tara shrieks at the top of her lungs, “Arrest her! She killed Delilah and she was going to kill us!”

The EMTs arrive on the scene along with a pair of uniforms. Brent and Olivia Harding are taken away, he on a stretcher and she in handcuffs loudly professing her innocence. “I wasn't going to shoot him! And I didn't kill Delilah! I only said that to get back at him. I didn't mean it! I'm not a murderer. Do I look like a murderer?” No one appears to be buying her story, least of all me.

The plainclotheswoman takes Tara inside for questioning. The plainclothesman questions me and Russo's goon, whose name is Dom and who, it turns out, isn't a goon but Russo's nephew and chief of security at his casino. Which explains why he was packing. He heard the shot fired by Olivia, after he'd gone outside for a smoke, and came running. Except what he witnessed was very different from what actually occurred: an altercation between a man and a pregnant woman that ended with the man standing over the woman, brandishing a gun at her as she lay whimpering on the ground. Dom, a former cop, did what he was trained to do: He disabled the “assailant,” in this case Brent, by pumping a bullet into his leg as soon as he had a clear shot. “Christ, if I'd known …” Dom shakes his head, wearing a pained expression. “Poor bastard.”

I recall the shocked look on Brent's face—I wouldn't have believed him capable of such an animated expression if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes—when Olivia confessed to the murder of Delilah Ward. Seems I'd been wrong about one thing: He hadn't been covering up for his wife. Which means that Olivia had an accomplice, presumably the same person who broke into my house the other night. What I don't know is why she wanted me dead or who drugged me the night of Bartosz's party. I'm pondering this when we run into Russo as we're headed back inside. After I tell him what happened, he squeezes Dom's Hormel ham–size bicep, exclaiming, “Good man.” Never mind Dom shot and wounded an innocent man. To me he says, “Now the poor girl can rest in peace.” I realize he's talking about Delilah, and relief washes over me, knowing I can finally rest in peace as well—in my own bed.

Phones glow on the deck, those of diners calling or texting the shocking news of Olivia Harding's arrest and the wounding of “Casey Steele.” By tomorrow, the story will have gone viral, complete with YouTube videos. The whole world will know who shot Delilah Ward. McGee accosts me, scowling, as soon as I step inside. “Christ, Ballard. How many times I gotta tell you? Never—”

“Go in without backup,” I finish for him. “I know, I should've listened.”

“Next time, maybe you will.”

“There isn't going to be a next time.” I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the chill I seem to have caught. “I'm staying out of trouble from now on.”

McGee gives a scornful snort. “Good luck with that.”

I go in search of Ivy and find her doing double duty, having taken over for another waitress, who fled in panic when she heard the gunshots. Ivy pauses to hug me tightly as she's hurrying to the kitchen pass. “Tish! Thank God you're all right. So is it true? Is Olivia under arrest?”