Swimsuit Body (6 page)

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him, then?” I reply irritably.

“Um, could you take him?” She has the decency, at least, to look sheepish. “I'm staying at a bed-and-breakfast, and they don't allow pets. Besides, I have a million things to do. Calls to make. Greta will need my help with the funeral arrangements. And my uncle! He'll be beside himself. It's only temporary. I'll make other arrangements.” With that, she goes flying up the driveway, Bluetooth device glowing in her ear, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks! I'll be in touch!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I'm still feeling shaky, and it seems I have a dog to look after, so I decide to take the rest of the day off. I stop at the pet store in Harborview Plaza and buy dog food and a leash on my way home. I'm barely in the door before Hercules appears out of nowhere, morphing from tame pussycat into a flesh-eating zombie. With his back arched and fangs bared, hissing, he advances on the Yorkie. I bend to scoop up Prince, who's cowering at my feet, and scold my cat, “Is that any way to treat our guest? Honestly, where are your manners?” Hercules lets out another hiss.

It's been a long day, and it's not over yet.

The plan was to let my furry friends get acquainted, but Hercules has made it clear that's not going to happen anytime soon. I deposit Prince in the guest room that doubles as my office. “Trust me, it's for your own good,” I tell him when he starts to whine. I head for the kitchen and pour myself a glass of milk. I'm stirring in a generous slug of Hershey's syrup—chocolate milk is my drug of choice these days—when the phone rings.

“Ballard.” A gruff voice greets me at the other end. “What the fuck.”

Tom McGee. My erstwhile sidekick and self-appointed bodyguard.

“I see you've been listening in on your police scanner.” A former NYPD detective, he likes to stay abreast of police activity in Cypress Bay. There's no such thing as retired law enforcement, I've learned from him, only police officers who are no longer on active duty. His current job is as manager in residence of a self-storage facility, but he still keeps a finger on the pulse.

“Imagine my surprise when I found out you were involved in another homicide.” One of his sources at the station must have given him the fill. The brotherhood of the men in blue knows no jurisdiction. That's another thing I've learned from McGee. “Seems wherever you go, a dead body is sure to follow.”

“You make it sound as if I'm cursed. It's just bad luck is all.”

“Tell that to the press. Jesus, a movie star no less. Only you, Ballard.” I picture him shaking his ponytailed head.

“Are you suggesting I had something to do with Delilah Ward's murder?”

“Wouldn't dream of it. Or I might be the next corpse to turn up on your watch.” He speaks with a Bronx accent, which is as thick as mustard on a hot dog at Yankee Stadium when he's being a wiseass.

McGee and I were thrown together by a curious set of circumstances. We met the day I discovered my mother's remains at the self-storage facility he manages. When I learned he was a retired NYPD homicide detective, I enlisted his help in cracking the case, which had the local authorities seemingly stumped. He's stuck to me like glue ever since. I'm grateful to him because he saved my life at one point during the course of our investigation, but mostly he rubs me the wrong way. He's also frequently intoxicated, although he doesn't appear to be at the moment.

“Don't tempt me,” I growl.

He chuckles. “You have a soft spot for me. Admit it, Ballard.”

“Right. Because you're so lovable.” Like my cat.

“Detective Hard-on take you in for questioning?” he asks. I cringe at his crude nickname for Spence Breedlove. McGee seems to think Spence has a thing for me. Either that, or he finds it amusing that we hate each other's guts. Fortunately, he knows nothing of my history with Spence.

“I'm not a suspect. I'm just the person who found the body, purely by coincidence I might add.”

“Cops don't believe in coincidences. Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern.”

“So what does that make me?”

“A person of interest.”

“Thanks,” I reply, taking a swig of my chocolate milk. “I knew I could count on you to reassure me.”

“You want someone to hold your hand, you got the wrong number.”

“You called me,” I remind him.

“To warn you. The cops'll have the press crawling up their asses, and until they name a suspect, you've got a bull's-eye on your back. You were first on the scene, you own a gun, and it ain't your first rodeo.”

“Circumstantial. There's no evidence against me, and ballistics will show the bullet wasn't fired from my gun.” Even as I say this, I remain fearful. How far would Spence go to get back at me for destroying his most prized possession? There's no statute of limitations when it comes to guys and their cars.

McGee echoes my fears by reminding me, “They don't need a warrant to bring you in for questioning. They can make your life extremely unpleasant. But luckily you have me, so I wouldn't worry too much.”

“Worry?” I cry. “Now I'm totally freaking out.” McGee may be a former detective, but he's also a loose cannon. Make that an alcoholic loose cannon. I need him like a hole in the head.

This conjures an image of the actual hole in Delilah's head, and I feel the chocolate milk I just drank curdle in my stomach.

“Relax, Ballard, I got this.” McGee's voice sounds far away. “Just give me the facts.”

I take him through it, and he asks all the right questions. Was there any sign of a forced entry? Any evidence of a person or persons other than the victim having been at the house prior to my arrival on the scene? Did there appear to have been a struggle? I answer no to all of the above. “This may sound weird, but she looked … peaceful,” I say in response to the last question. “Which suggests the killer was either someone she knew and trusted, or she didn't see him coming.”

“What makes you think it was a he?”

“She was shot execution style. That's not something I see a woman doing.”

“A good cop never jumps to conclusions. You follow procedure—collect evidence, interview witnesses, do your door-to-door—then if the gods are smiling, the pieces of the puzzle start to come together.
Blue Bloods
it ain't. If you watched investigative work in real time, it'd put you to sleep.”

“Yet curiously you seem to miss the action,” I observe.

McGee has never told me the reason for his early retirement from the NYPD—though I imagine his drinking played a part—and he doesn't satisfy my curiosity on this occasion. He only grunts in response.

“Will I see you on Thursday?” I ask before we hang up. I go to the AA meeting held on Thursday evenings at St. Anthony's, the Catholic church where I used to attend Mass as a child. I never miss a meeting if I can help it. McGee's attendance is sporadic, usually determined by how much he's had to drink.

“Do I look like I need saving?” His standard response.

“Do I need to answer that?”

“Anyone needs saving, it's you, Ballard,” he says with a rasp, and I know he isn't referring to AA.

“Seriously, how worried should I be?” I ask nervously.

“Trust no one.” His words echo in my ears after the line goes dead.

I'd phoned Ivy on my way home with the news of the murder, and she's at my door within minutes of my hanging up on McGee. She throws her arms around me. “You poor thing. What a nightmare!” Later, when I pull out my iPad to show her what I downloaded from Delilah's phone, her eyes light up even as she cries, “Are you insane, woman? You are so dead if Spence finds out.”

“What he doesn't know won't hurt him.”

We scroll through Delilah's photos as we sit side by side on the green Morris sofa in my living room. “I wouldn't kick him out of bed,” Ivy comments as we study an image of Delilah's late husband, Eric Nyland, posing next to his twin-engine Cessna. The plane he went down in, I realize.

“Fine talk for a woman who's practically engaged.” I give her a mock scolding look, at which she grimaces, before I go back to studying the image of Eric Nyland. He was the quintessential man's man, at once ruggedly handsome and sensuous with bedroom eyes and a mouth that seemed designed for kissing … and not just on the lips. In another age, he'd be a dashing World War I aviator or a Great White Hunter. His lean, muscular physique looked to have been shaped by athletic feats, not pumping iron. Dark hair and almond eyes hint at a mixed-race heritage.

Hell, I wouldn't have kicked him out of bed either.

There are other photos of Eric: at the beach, carrying a surfboard under his arm; in the swimming pool at their house in Malibu; bare chested, holding a chainsaw and standing next to a sawed-off tree limb bigger around than he was. In the photos of him and Delilah together, they appear very much in love. I linger over a candid shot of them lounging aboard a yacht, wearing swimsuits, their faces flushed and their hair tousled as though they'd just surfaced from a tumble belowdecks. The look they're exchanging is so steamy, I can almost feel the heat.

Now they're both dead.

“It doesn't seem possible,” Ivy says, echoing my thoughts. “One minute you're welcoming her to Cypress Bay, the next she's floating facedown in the pool.”

“She wasn't in the pool. She was lying next to it,” I remind her.

“Right. I was thinking
Sunset Boulevard
.”

I shake my head slowly. “I can't believe she's gone. She was so … She just glowed, you know. She was sweet, too, for all my bitching about her diva ways. Who could have wanted her dead?”

“A rival actress who was jealous? Someone like the evil stepmother in
Snow White
. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all,'” Ivy intones in a spooky voice.

“Evil is the word for it. You'd have to be a monster to shoot a defenseless person in the head while she was asleep.” I shudder at the imagery.

“I wonder how long she'd been lying there before … you know.” Ivy's face is somber beneath her curls, which are gathered in a loose knot atop her head. She wears holey jeans and a T-shirt that says “Praise the Lard” with a picture of a pig on the front.

“The clothes dryer was still running, so it was between the time Esmeralda left and when I got there. Half an hour maybe? Enough time for the killer to slip in and out.”

“Just think, if you'd shown up sooner …”

“Let's not go there.” I start to tremble, and Ivy puts her arm around me until I stop shaking.

We go through Delilah's text messages. Most are exchanges between Delilah and her “people”: her agent, Sarah Fineman, regarding various projects that Delilah was either considering or that Sarah thought would be perfect for her; her manager, Chuck Newcomb, about a personal appearance she'd been booked to do in Denver; her publicist, Lisa Devour, about the wording of a press packet bio. There's also a text exchange between Delilah and a woman named Greta Nyland, who had to be related to Delilah's late husband, regarding a charity event she and Delilah were organizing, and between Delilah and her personal assistant, Brianna, confirming this or that appointment—with the stylist, manicurist, massage therapist, personal trainer, dog groomer, you name it. One text from Brianna reads,
Your usual suite at
Hotel du Cap for Cannes?

I consider the message from director Karol Bartosz saying he was en route. He could have gone to the house, shot Delilah, and been making his getaway, assuming it was him in the black Escalade I spotted.

There's a text from Brent Harding, the former TV actor with whom she made one picture, a thriller set in London, and was slated to do
Devil's Slide
. It was sent the day before yesterday.
When can I see u? We need to talk
,
he texted
. Talk about what?
I wonder. Had his and Delilah's relationship been more than professional?

“It could have been any one of them. … Or none of them.” Ivy echoes my thoughts.

“We won't know until the cops make an arrest. Unless it's me they arrest.”

Ivy's eyes widen. “You're not serious!”

“McGee seems to think I'm a person of interest. And I wouldn't put anything past Spence Breedlove.”

“You really think he still has it in for you?”

“Apparently, not all of us have moved on.” I recall his hostility toward me at the crime scene. “Which is why I'm covering my ass. I need an alternate theory in case he tries to pin the murder on me.”

Ivy motions toward my iPad. “I don't see anything here that looks suspicious. Not counting creepy pet photos.” She refers to the image of Prince in a doggie tux.

“Her assistant must know where all the bodies are buried. So to speak,” I'm quick to add. “We can enlist her.”

“We?” Ivy brightens. “So we're really doing this?” Typical of her, she's excited about the prospect, apparently not having had her fill of murder and mayhem—which included at least one brush the law, a close call at the wrong end of a shotgun, and my near death at the hands of a psycho—when we were investigating my mother's case. “But why would she want to help us?”

Just then, I hear a scratching noise from the hallway and the muffled sound of Prince whining. My cat is pacing back and forth outside the closed door to my office, tail twitching. Ivy gives me a questioning look, and I sigh as I get up to lock Hercules in my bedroom so I can let Prince out.

“Brianna owes me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I recite the Serenity Prayer along with the others in attendance at the AA meeting on Thursday evening of the following week. The basement social hall at St. Anthony's, with its chipped paint and scuffed linoleum, fluorescent lighting and metal folding chairs, is hardly conducive to serenity, but I'm surrounded by my brethren, and there's strength and hope in that.

After the reciting of the prayer, there are various announcements and the distributing of chips—for thirty days, ninety days, ten years—the latter being a ceremony that takes place monthly, and which I always look forward to, even when it's not my turn to receive a chip. I look around me and see mostly familiar faces. People who have come to seem like family … if family is the disparate, quarrelsome bunch seated around the table at Thanksgiving that makes you wonder how you could possibly be related to them. There's the woman called Mustang Sally, who was in and out of homeless shelters and state-run drug rehab clinics before she got sober; Junior R., a former gang member, with his shaved head and Latin Kings tat; Sue Ann G., a blond-bobbed soccer mom, looking sporty in Lululemon yoga pants; Matt L., who did time at San Quentin, where he found Jesus … I watch the speaker for tonight's meeting, Jim O., shuffle to the podium. Jim had thirty years of sobriety before he got hooked on painkillers while recovering from hip surgery. If he can go out, it can happen to any of us. That's why we're here. To be reminded.

McGee and I head for the refreshment table after the meeting. He had decided to grace us with his presence after all. Better yet, he doesn't smell of alcohol. He's his usual charming self, however. “You look like shit, Ballard,” he observes as I pour myself a cup of coffee.

“You would too if you hadn't slept in a week.” Between the nightmare images that keep me awake at night and the press calling at all hours, I haven't had more than four hours of continuous sleep in the eight days since I discovered Delilah Ward's dead body. I stir a spoonful of sugar into my coffee and help myself to a chocolate-chip cookie, homemade, naturally—Sue Ann was in charge of refreshments for this week's meeting. “Last night, I was woken at three a.m. by a reporter calling from L.A. I don't remember what I said to him, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't fit for print.”

He flashes me a snaggletooth grin. “Next time, try shutting off your phone.”

“What if it was one of my renters calling to say the house was on fire?”

“That's what the fire department is for.” In his Levis and desert-camo jacket with his brown hair scraped back in a ponytail that looks like something fished from a drain, McGee would appear to be just another lost soul at an AA meeting if not for his eyes.
Cop's eyes
, I think as I watch them survey the room, lighting briefly on a group of people chatting animatedly over by the bookcase that holds the prayer books for Sunday services (nothing like talk of a celebrity death to liven up a meeting). “Your detective friend making any progress?” He helps himself to coffee and a cookie.

“With me or the case?” I quip.

McGee studies me as he noisily slurps his coffee. “You don't look like you're getting any.”

I sigh. “You're right about that, sadly.” Not only have I not had sex in a while, Bradley and I haven't Skyped in over a week, not since I told him about my gruesome discovery. He's currently incommunicado while the infantry unit with which he's embedded is on the move.

I step aside to make way for Brenda T., a middle-aged woman with cropped gray hair. She's a professor at the university who teaches a women's studies course, and she's what's known in AA as a “high bottom,” meaning she got sober before she hit rock bottom—in her case, after she'd had too much to drink at a faculty party. As opposed to “low bottom,” which would be me.

“As for the case …” I move out of eavesdropping range. “Spence won't tell me squat. All he does is ask questions. He keeps having me go over and over it, like he thinks I'm lying or something.”

“I know a good lawyer if you need one.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Don't even.”

His expression turns serious. He takes a bite out of his cookie and chews thoughtfully. “He's gotta be getting pressure from the top. In a high-profile case, each day that goes by without an arrest the DA sees his career go up in smoke. Which means putting the screws to the chief investigator.”

“Then Spence is getting it from both ends. He said the movie people were impossible.” It's the one bit of information I gleaned from him. “For everyone he questions, he has to wade through six layers of
their
people.” I have some sympathy, from my dealings with Brianna. “What, do they think they exist on some exalted plane and can't breathe the same air as us regular folk?”

“I wouldn't know, but he seems to be breathing just fine.” McGee points toward a tall man conversing with a group of people across the room. He looks to be around my age, midthirties, and is wearing wraparound shades and a Giants ball cap, pulled low over his forehead, a common disguise at AA meetings, worn by those seeking to hide the fact that they're hungover. As if that ever fooled anyone. Before I can ask McGee what he means, I gasp in recognition.

“Oh, my God, is that—?”

“Laserman. In the flesh.”

I thought the guy looked familiar when I noticed him slipping in the door shortly after the meeting started. Now I know why. He's Liam Brady. Star of the mega blockbuster
Laserman
, about a middle-school science teacher who develops superpowers, in the form of laser beams with the strength of military-grade weaponry, as a result of an accident involving a linear accelerator. It made Liam a household name and spawned two sequels. The picture he's currently making is
Devil's Slide
, which is why he's here in town. “I didn't know he was one of us,” I remark.

McGee gives me a look that seems to say
Speak for yourself
.

“It's a miracle he's managed to keep it under wraps,” I continue. These days, it seems a celebrity only has to stumble walking out of a nightclub in order for rumors that he or she was under the influence to go viral.

I watch Liam Brady back away from his groupies—there's no other word to describe the women who are pressed in around him, their faces aglow—and slip through the doorway to the floor above. On impulse, I follow him. As I step from the passageway at the top of the stairs, the familiar scents of the sanctuary, a mixture of beeswax candles and incense and furniture polish, bring back memories of when I used to come here on Sundays with my family. The sanctuary is dimly lit, except the spot where the exterior lights shining through the stained-glass windows illuminate the lone figure seated in a front-row pew. Liam took off his cap, I notice, but he still wears his sunglasses.

“Not now. Sorry, love,” he says wearily when I slide in next to him, without so much as a glance in my direction. He speaks with an Irish brogue, not the midwestern accent he uses when playing Laserman, a.k.a. Danny Miller from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Liam is from Dublin. On a late-night talk show, I once heard him talk about the rough neighborhood he grew up in. “
Angela's Ashes
it was.” Delivered in a light tone and not elaborated on, the remark explained the rough edges that are part of his appeal. He's the Bradley Cooper of the working class.

“I don't mean to bother you. I just wanted …”

“What? My feckin' autograph? A quote for your bloody rag?” He turns to face me, pulling off his sunglasses. His cobalt eyes flash with an intensity that causes me to pull back like I've been burned. “Or have you come to share your tale of woe? If you have, I can't help you.”

“I just wanted to say I'm sorry for your loss.” He and Delilah had been friends, I learned when he made a public statement after her death—his words sounded heartfelt, unlike those of other celebrities who seemed to be using the tragedy to showcase their latest projects—and were possibly romantically linked as well. Their chemistry onscreen was undeniable. Liam and Delilah had made a movie together,
Return of
Laserman
, in which she played his female sidekick-slash-love interest, Phantasmagora, and they were to have shared top billing in
Devil's Slide
.

“Why? Did you know her?” he asks in a mocking tone.

“I'm the one who found her.”

“Jesus.” He stares at me as if seeing me for the first time. His Black Irish features, curly, dark brown hair and blue eyes in a face saved from bland handsomeness by a hawk nose and cheeks faintly pitted with old acne scars, are prominent. “For the love of … Why didn't you say so?”

“You didn't give me a chance. Tish Ballard.” I extend my hand.

His face relaxes in a smile as he shakes my hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Tish Ballard.”

“How long have you been in the program?” The standard question for newcomers.

“Coming up on six months. Two and a half years before that,” he answers.

I nod in understanding. Relapse is more common among AAers than not. We all struggle, and many of us fail. “Either it was the best kept secret in Hollywood, or you liked to drink alone.”

He chuckles as though I've said something amusing. The force of his magnetism—akin to the superpowers possessed by Laserman—is such that I have to concentrate in order to keep from becoming a simpering groupie like the ladies who cornered him earlier. “With me it was drinks all around, and I was always the last to leave a party. What saved me from public disgrace was that I was too big to fail. Too much money riding on my sorry arse. Whenever one of my drunken antics was leaked to the press, the suits did what they do best: They paid to have it buried.”

“I'm guessing you don't have a lot of enemies either.” I'd heard of stars having their careers ruined through a combination of their own misbehavior and their being universally loathed by their peers.

He shrugs. “We'd murder our own mother in her bed for a percentage of the gross, but we look out for our own. Glass houses and all.” I must appear taken aback by his casual mention of murder, because he says, in a mild voice, “I didn't kill Delilah if that's what you're wondering.”

“I wasn't.” Liam doesn't seem the homicidal type, although I've been fooled in the past.

“We were in rehab together. We'd known each other for years before that, but I didn't get to really know her until then. That's when you get the true measure of another, is it not? When you stand naked and shivering, stripped of all your lies and excuses.” I smile at his theatrics, and also in understanding: The first time I shared at an AA meeting, I felt as if I'd been stripped, not just of my clothes, but of my skin. “We used to stay up nights talking. We'd both known the mean streets growing up, so we had that in common, too. After rehab, we went to meetings together. For a while.”

“Until she stopped going.” He confirms my guess with a nod, wearing a sorrowful expression.

“We argued about it. She told me to fuck off. I told her she was a feckin' idiot,
that she was throwing her life away, and I wasn't going to stick around to watch. Fateful words as it turned out.”

“She didn't die of the disease,” I remind him.

“True.” He turns his gaze to the teak crucifix that hangs over the altar. “May the bastard burn in hell. The killer,” he clarifies when I look startled. We sit in silence for a minute, then he collects himself with an audible exhalation and stands. “Well, it was nice chatting with you, Tish Ballard.”

I stand to shake his hand. “Likewise.” On impulse, I ask, “Listen, do you want to grab a bite to eat?” Lest he mistake my intention, I add with a wry smile, “I promise no selfies.” It's not bragging rights I'm after but to learn more about Delilah. Maybe he knows of someone who had a motive for murdering her. With Liam, a fellow drunk in recovery, I have an in that Spence doesn't.

“Alas, I have to be on set first thing in the morning, so it's early to bed for me.” He places his hand over his heart, theatrically, though he seems genuinely regretful. In the old days, we'd have made good drinking buddies.

I look at him in surprise. “Oh. I thought … So soon?”

“What did you expect? Black armbands? Flags flown at half mast?”

“No. A hiatus maybe.”

Liam gives a hollow laugh. “Any crying that's done won't be on the studio's dime. We make all the right noises, sure, but even Karol, who claims to have loved Delilah like a daughter, won't let sentiment get in the way of financial considerations.”

“It seems so … cold.”

“Make no mistake. We're all alike and a bad lot at that. We differ only in our ability to disguise it.” He dons his cap and slips on his sunglasses, and with that he takes his leave. I watch him make his way down the aisle before he disappears into the shadows at the back of the church.