Body Copy (24 page)

Again Latham gave a dramatic pause and said, “That was a long time ago—but not that long ago—and if I’m not mistaken, I was in Seattle visiting my mother. I went and stayed with her for a couple weeks, she was sick.”

Tremaine, usually, would have stopped this particular line of questioning here. He wouldn’t normally have bad-gered the guy. He would have just looked at him and thought about his answer a bit. But he really felt like pressing this guy. He wasn’t going to get the letters and confront him, that might scare him and cause him to really clam up.

But, subconsciously, Tremaine might not admit this, he was trying to force this lead, this Dean Latham lead, into being something.
Come on, baby, be something that helps me.

So Tremaine pushed him and said, “I don’t suppose you can prove that—that you were out of town.” Tremaine was a little surprised at his accusatory tone. A little ashamed that he showed a small glimmer of frustration.

Latham said, “I could probably dig up the tickets. I’m a frequent flier freak. Want me to look?”

“No,” Tremaine said, he didn’t want Latham getting too nervous, too concerned about him. “If you find them, call me.” Tremaine handed Latham his card and stood up.

“Thank you for your time, Dean. I appreciate it.”

“I hope I was helpful. I don’t feel like I really provided you with anything.”

Tremaine walked over to the door and turned around.

He said, “You were helpful, Dean. Just talking to me, that was helpful.” Tremaine paused and said, “By the way, what movies have you produced?”

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Tremaine could see Dean Latham’s face contort a bit to betray some pleasure. Like, finally, you asked . . .

“The most famous one is
Turnaround
.”

Tremaine nodded and smiled and said, “Good flick,”

then said, “Thanks again for your time,” and left.

241

C H A P T E R 3 4

Tremaine got home at about seven. He sat in the Cutlass, the sun was low now, it was barely light out. He didn’t get out, he just sat there, thinking. Thinking, why is this guy Dean Latham lying? Why is Latham, like the stripper from the karate place, playing dumb when it comes to people I’m pretty damn certain they’ve had contact with?

The stripper with Roger Gale, Latham with Kelly Burch.

Are all these people intertwined in some grand conspiracy?

What is it? What am I missing?

Tremaine sat still in his car. It was quiet. His cell phone rang, startling him.

Without looking at the incoming number, Tremaine said, “Hello.”

“Yeah, Donald, it’s Dean Latham.”

B O D Y C O P Y

Tremaine shifted in his seat.

“Dean, what’s up?”

“I found my old plane tickets. I was right. I was in Seattle that week.”

Tremaine didn’t answer right away.

“Did you hear me?” Latham said. “Did we break up?”

“We didn’t break up. I heard you.”

“Well, do you want to see the tickets? Do you want to come back by?”

“Not tonight,” Tremaine said. “I tell you what, if I need to see them, I’ll give you a buzz.”

“All right then.”

“Thanks for the call, Dean.”

“No problem. Hey,
Turnaround
’s gonna be on TNT

next month. You should check it out.”

“I’ll try,” Tremaine said.

He clicked off the call.

Tremaine went inside the trailer thinking about this eccentric former movie producer Dean Latham. Now the guy’s calling him with proof that he was out of town at the time of both murders. It seemed a little convenient, his calling right after Tremaine left, suddenly having found the tickets. Was this some gamesmanship, Latham trying to play the innocent? Or maybe, Tremaine thought, Latham knew Kelly but didn’t kill Kelly.

Tremaine sat down at his desk and got online to IMDb.

com, the Internet Movie Database. You could find everyone’s credits who’d ever had anything to do with a movie, from stars to writers to directors to extras. Tremaine looked up Dean Latham, producer.

There were his credits.

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Hasn’t done anything for a while. Tremaine scanned all of them, all the movies Latham had produced. There was
Turnaround
, and three other movies Tremaine had never heard of:
Big Boy
,
Aliens in America
, and
Faster
.

Then Tremaine looked up Kelly Burch, the failed, dead actress. There were two Kelly Burches listed. Tremaine clicked on the first one, an actress from the 1920s, and evidently a pretty successful one. Not a star, but a character actress, a substantial list of credits, old black-and-white movies, some of which Tremaine had seen and liked. She’d made it, this Kelly Burch, one of the lucky ones. Then he clicked on the other Kelly Burch. Not much information, no picture, not even a date of birth—or date of death—and only one credit to her name, as an extra in a movie that came out four years ago called
Continental Drift
. This was probably the Kelly Burch who had been murdered. This was probably the Kelly Burch Tremaine was interested in.

But this information, an extra in
Continental Drift
, didn’t help him.

Hmm, Tremaine thought. Hmm.

He got some Maker’s out of the cabinet, got some rocks out of the fridge, poured himself a bourbon on ice. He put on Derek and the Dominoes,
The Layla Sessions
, and sat down in a big leather chair next to his desk.

The hot booze and the ice, it was an amazing combination. He sat in the chair, refilling as necessary, listening to Eric assault his ax. Then he lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and went into the blackness.

Next morning, the first person Tremaine called was a woman named Sally Kasmin. Sally was an old client and 244

B O D Y C O P Y

a sort of friend. She was a senior development executive at Paramount Pictures. She’d hired Tremaine some time back because people in her office suspected that someone was breaking in to get an advanced look at some of their projects. Their suspicions were correct; Tremaine caught a couple hired guns from a rival studio in the act, and that was that. The people who hired them went to prison. Did twelve months in a white-collar lock-up.

Sally was beautiful and single. Tremaine had never slept with her. Shame about that. Was that why they were still friends?

“Sally Kasmin’s office,” her chipper assistant said.

“Donald Tremaine calling for Sally.”

A few seconds later: “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Sally, how are you?”

“I’m good, Tremaine, I’m good. It’s been a while, but you know, I was just thinking about you the other day.”

“Were you in the shower?”

Sally laughed that Sally laugh. It was loud—it was amazing. She probably thought his little quip was funny, but her laugh made him feel like it was
really
funny. She was good, this one.

“I need a favor,” Tremaine said.

“Anything, babe.”

“I need to find out if an actress was in or was an extra in one or more of the following movies.”

“Okay, what are they?”

“
Turnaround
,
Big Boy
,
Aliens in America,
and
Faster
.”

“Sure,
Turnaround
was pretty big. Who’s the actress?”

“Her name is Kelly Burch. That’s Kelly with a y.”

“Is this about Neil Franks? He directed
Turnaround
.”

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Michael Craven

“No. I’ll tell you later what it’s about.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You’re right. So, when will I hear about Kelly?”

“End of day, maybe.”

“Can I take you out for a drink to say thanks?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I know this great little place called my trailer.”

Sally laughed that Sally laugh.

The next call was to Indio, California, information. Indio was a desert town about twenty-five miles east of Palm Springs. But it didn’t have the vibe of Palm Springs—the pink sweat suits, the Rolls-Royces, the enormous glasses.

It had its nice parts, but much of this small desert community consisted of unglamorous houses on bleak, sun-pelted streets. A town where it was so goddamn hot much of the time that you could only stand, mouth agape, and try not to melt. Or go inside, zip up the blinds, and sit in the AC.

If you had AC. And the people, they were different from the Palm Springs crowd, too. They were sun-beaten, crazy almost, roaming the hot streets in a zombie state.

“What city and state please?”

“Indio, California.”

“Name.”

“Angela Coyle.”

Kelly Burch’s sister.

Tremaine got the number. And the address. He got in his car and headed straight east on the Ten.

On I–10, Tremaine cruised through West L.A., through downtown—wonder what that bad ass karate guy is up 246

B O D Y C O P Y

to—then through the little towns that border downtown proper on the east side, then into the brown, bleak desert.

As he got past the clusters of towns outside the city limits, the landscape started to open up, and it was beautiful in its stark, monochromatic way.

Hot as shit, though, really incredibly hot, but stark and apocalyptic and interesting.

Palm Springs was about two hours, Indio about two and a half. But Tremaine was already at the windmills, about a half-hour west of Palm Springs; he was making good time. It had been seventy minutes at the most. Windmills everywhere, an enormous stretch of them. Tremaine drove down the singular stretch of freeway, the Ten, that ribbon of black through the tan desert. And windmills everywhere. Everywhere. Massive, modern, white windmills as far as he could see. Spinning all at different paces, and just massive, huge. When the road would get close to one, it was almost unbelievable how big the blades were, spinning round and round. Round and round. The desert wind propelling them.

If you weren’t careful—and Tremaine wasn’t being careful right at this minute—you could freak out. Yeah, looking out on that brown landscape, with the rock formations and the sun high in the sky and the big, freakishly large windmills spinning and spinning, round and round, hypnotizing you, making you almost hallucinate, your senses not used to this surreal vision.

Holy shit
—he was on the wrong side of the road.

Tremaine lit a smoke, the windmills now in his rearview, thank God. Still spinning though. Even tiny in the rearview, they could take you to that hallucinatory place.

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Michael Craven

Now he was passing though Palm Springs, the desert giving way to some greenery, some palm trees—granted, all brought there and planted, but it was a nice change after those wild-ass windmills.

For a long time, Tremaine didn’t understand the allure of Palm Springs. Didn’t understand the appeal of roasting in the sun all day, then going to high-end chain restaurants with a bunch of middle-aged to old red-faced rich people who were swilling booze, wearing shorts and weird golf shirts, talking golf and about tennis and golf and real estate. And golf.

He didn’t understand that you’d go to some places and, in hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat, there were tables and chairs
outside
with devices set up that sprayed you down with very fine water pellets to cool you off so you wouldn’t pass out. Like elephants at the zoo getting hosed down in the summer.

That’s how these people lived. It was so hot you’d have to be sprayed with water constantly just to sit somewhere.

And then, ridiculously, the only thing anyone talked about was how hot it was. Tremaine would always say to these people, “I have an idea about how to deal with this heat.”

And they’d say, “Yeah, how?”

And he’d say, “Go the fuck inside.”

But over time, Tremaine got it. Got the appeal of the desert lifestyle. It was decadent, it was about pleasure and camaraderie. There was something otherworldly out here with the brown land and the cacti and the rocks and the roadrunners. Sitting in the heat by the pool getting wasted all day. It was like you were on another planet—it was dif-248

B O D Y C O P Y

ferent and the culture demanded that you luxuriate. So people did.

It’s almost like the heat slowed people down, got them in a more relaxed mood, got them to let go.

And then eventually you just bought in. Bought a thin, light blue terrycloth jumpsuit, got way too sunburned, bought some enormous glasses, went to big, loud, expensive restaurants, and just got tanked.

If you had dough, that is. If you didn’t, this desert life just kind of made you nuts.

Palm Springs was in his rearview now. And the glam-our was in his rearview, too. He was now in Indio, in a sad little section of this desert town where people got wasted, sure, but it was in their basements, working their meth labs, or sitting on a street corner somewhere huffing gaso-line.

Tremaine called Angela Coyle. She answered.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Angela?”

“Who’s this?”

This woman was rough, Tremaine could hear it. This wasn’t Eveyln Gale, not even close.

“My name is Donald Tremaine. I’m a private investigator.”

“What do you want?”

Really defensive. But not with an aristocratic edge. With a poor edge, a defensiveness born out of something real, not born out of what people would think at the club.

“I was hoping to talk to you about your sister, Kelly, just for a few minutes.”

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Michael Craven

“Nothing to say. She’s dead.”

Man, this lady was harsh.

“Five minutes, Angela. I’m in Indio. Can I come by?”

Tremaine pulled down her street. A side street off the main drag through town. Treeless, pelted by heat, bleak.

Her house sat too close to the road, was institution gray and looked paper-thin. Tremaine could picture it rolling and bouncing in the wind across the countryside like some massive tumbleweed.

Tremaine got out of his car as Angela Coyle opened her door. She was thin and blonde, and he could see Kelly in her face, somewhere down in there. Her skin was scratched. Tremaine had seen that look before and had always wondered, how does that happen? How does someone get a big scratch on her face? Did Angela have an angry-ass cat?