Looks to Die For (32 page)

“Yes, you were,” he said. “You didn’t know. And how could you?”

“I knew in my heart. I didn’t care about the police evidence and I still don’t. Screw Chauncey, screw the cops, screw anybody who doesn’t know you like I do.”

“I love you, Lacy. Having you believe in me means the world,” Dan said softly. Unconsciously, he started playing with the wedding ring on my finger, twisting the solid band back and forth.

“I love you, too,” I said. I kissed his cheek, tasting the salty tears, and licking them away from the corners of his eyes. But instead of letting the lovely moment pass unsullied, I added, “I just wish you’d told me a few things earlier. Like about Johnny DeVito.”

Dan leaned back and closed his eyes. “I plead guilty on that.”

I punched him lightly on the arm. “Don’t even say that word in this house.”

He smiled. “Okay, I plead being a typically arrogant man who figured I could handle everything on my own. Real men take action. They don’t lie on lounge chairs in the dark, crying to their wives.”

I kissed Dan’s smooth chin and slipped my leg over his. “You seem more real to me now than you have in a long time,” I admitted. “Real men make mistakes.”

“I’ve definitely made mistakes,” Dan said wearily. “Letting myself be blackmailed doesn’t put me in the Good Guy Hall of Fame.”

“But it shouldn’t put you in jail, either.”

Dan sighed deeply. “I haven’t been so innocent. You know that.”

“I do?”

“I saw that you went through the patient files in my study. And I don’t blame you, by the way.”

“I didn’t find anything incriminating,” I said, not sure where he was going.

“It’s okay. I can finally admit it,” he said, as grimly as if he were about to confess that he’d personally caused the blast that sunk the
Hindenburg
. “I was making payoffs to Johnny DeVito to protect my saintly image — when all the time I was doing what I said I wouldn’t do anymore.”

“Which is what?” I asked, worried.

“Face-lifts on famous actresses.”

“Ah yes, your covert operations,” I said, stroking his muscular arm. He was so solemn that I had to stifle a giggle. “Most surgeons would be bragging about them. Or calling Liz Smith to deny the rumors. Which, of course, is how you start the rumors.”

Dan sighed. “I couldn’t play that game. It didn’t fit my image of myself. But this is Hollywood. The more often I said no, the more in demand I became.”

“You think your surreptitious surgeries had anything to do with the murders?”

“Not a chance,” said Dan ardently. And of course he was right. “But they had a lot to do with making me feel like a fake.”

“So are all the secrets out now?” I asked.

“All of them,” said Dan.

“And I still love you.”

“Which amazes me,” he said softly. I thought he was going to start to cry again.

“Ashley would die to hear about your Very Famous Actresses. Makes her as cool as the boy in her class whose father won an Academy Award for sound mixing. You should get one for face fixing.”

In the darkness, Dan gave a little chuckle, and I felt him finally relax, leaning his body into mine. “I’m grateful to have you, babe. My world is falling apart, and you can still make me laugh.”

“We’re going to put it back together,” I said, kissing him softly on the lips.

Dan was quiet for a long time. Then he asked, “Do you think Johnny DeVito could have killed his girlfriend then framed me?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Tasha Barlow was involved with a lot of sleazeballs. But Johnny Dangerously was definitely near the top of the list.”

Chapter Fourteen

C
hauncey announced that
the judge had scheduled the pretrial hearing for April 13. The good news: we’d finally get to see the witness list and hear the full outline of the case. The bad news: the date was sooner than he’d hoped. The awful news I discovered for myself when I went to mark my calendar. Our lucky day was Friday the thirteenth.

I had a couple more people to talk to before then.

Gracie Adler, who lived in Apartment 5C, next door to Tasha and Nora, sounded a little shocked when I identified myself on the phone to her as “the wife of the Best Doc in L.A.”

She hesitantly agreed to meet — but didn’t want me in her apartment. “For obvious reasons,” she said, in a slightly high-pitched tone.

“Then I’ll buy you coffee,” I said. “How about the Starbucks that’s around the corner from you?” There was a Starbucks around every corner.

“You can never get a seat in there,” she complained. “Too many screenwriters. One cup of coffee and they think they’ve rented a table for the day. What are they doing on those laptops, anyway? They all want to write the next
Titanic.
I tell you, it’s a disaster.”

I laughed, but Gracie had missed her own joke.

“I don’t know how the place makes any money,” Gracie added ominously.

Rather than discussing the java company’s business plan, I offered another suggestion. “How about meeting at Holistic Haven?” I asked. “It has a nice tea lounge.”

I gave her the address in Santa Monica, and when I arrived five minutes early, Gracie was already seated at one of the blond-wood tables — even the furniture in L.A. was bleached — negotiating with the waiter.

“A plain Earl Grey,” Gracie requested, putting down the two-page menu of teas, which outlined their country of origin, herbal contents, and benefits for vigor and vitality.

“Ours is an unusual Earl, with a trace of bergamot,” said the swishy young server, as pompously as if he’d picked and dried the tea leaves himself. “Some people find it a bit smoky.”

Gracie looked at the menu again. “So what’s good?”

“I’d recommend the Lotus, which provides the inner radiance and essence of lotus flowers. Or Zen Zinger, the rarest green teas and herbs in an enlightening blend.”

“Enlightening blend or enlightened blend?” Gracie asked.

“Perdón?”
asked the waiter, who didn’t look particularly Spanish. Maybe he was hoping to costar with Salma Hayek.

“I just wondered if it’s the tea that gets enlightened or me.”

I smirked but the waiter looked confused. Good bet that he hadn’t aced the grammar section of his SATs.

“I’ll have the Lotus,” I said.

“Make it two,” said Gracie, handing back the menu. “I could use some inner radiance.” She’d caught my smirk and now gave me a little wink. “Some outer radiance, too.”

In her midseventies with slightly stooped shoulders, Gracie Adler was probably a couple of inches shorter than she’d been a decade or two ago. But she still had a zesty spirit about her and a sparkle in her eye. She looked like a woman who enjoyed life instead of worrying about it. Her arms were lightly tanned from hours outdoors and her face looked comfortably lived in, with smile lines around her lips and expressive crinkles on her brow.

“How’d you know about this place?” she asked me.

“I come here for the spa treatments once in a while,” I said. “The tea lounge is just to get you in the mood.”

“I’ve never had a spa treatment,” Gracie admitted. “Think I’d like it?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, inspired. “We can talk while we’re being rubbed with honey and wrapped in apple-and-milk paste.”

“Sounds like something I cook for Easter,” Gracie said, but she followed me to the back room and didn’t object when I asked to charge two facials. The treatment menu was even longer than the tea list, but Gracie settled on the oatmeal-jalapeño exfoliating scrub followed by the cucumber-cream skin-moisturizing special.

“Better food here than most restaurants I go to,” she said.

We sat on comfy chairs across from each other while the attendants rubbed our faces with the scrub — I had a feeling it wasn’t Quaker Oats — then put on soft sitar music, telling us to relax for ten minutes while the beautifying mixture did its magic.

But calming down wasn’t part of the plan for today.

“Do you mind talking about the night Tasha was killed?” I asked Gracie when the attendants had left us alone again.

“You paid for this, so you’ve got me for the next twenty minutes,” she said, leaning comfortably back.

“Look, I’m a little desperate,” I said. “My husband didn’t kill Tasha Barlow. He was at the apartment for a reason, and it wasn’t to see her. We can explain all the evidence, except for one thing. The screaming you heard.”

Gracie didn’t say anything. She started to scratch her nose, but came away with a handful of all-natural, all-organic scrub.

“How come you noticed him that night?” I asked.

“I had a cold, so I was home, feeling sorry for myself,” Gracie said slowly. “I’d forgotten to send back my Netflix and I didn’t have a movie to watch. And what rubbish on TV. How do people sit through that garbage?”

I laughed. “I agree. You just don’t seem like the type to be spying on your neighbors.”

“No, I’m not. Stay busy and you can’t feel sorry for yourself, is my motto,” Gracie said. “I was resting in bed, but I had on a tape of a concert from my grandson in New York. He plays the trumpet in his middle-school band.
Fanfare for the Common Man
.”

I laughed. “Listening to middle-schoolers massacre Copland has to qualify you for extra points in heaven.”

“He’s very talented,” she said loyally. “Though I told my grandson I didn’t really like the drummer. It sounded to me like there was a lot of banging that didn’t belong.”

“Was that before or after you saw Dan’s car?” I asked, remembering that Gracie had identified the
BESTDOC
license.

“Before,” said Gracie. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Something about all that banging made me get up. I looked out the living room window, and that’s when I saw the car, with your husband just getting out. He walked to the front door of the building, hit the buzzer, and came in. I couldn’t see him after that, of course. I turned off the music and went back to bed. I think I fell asleep then.”

“Tell me more about the banging,” I said. “Do you think it could have been something from next door mixing with the music? Not the drummer?”

Gracie started to answer, but the attendant came in then to gently rub our faces and then remove the mixture. My face was tingling and I noticed that Gracie’s was flushed red. I hoped she wasn’t allergic to jalapeño. Fortunately, the cucumber application was cooling — even though Gracie was getting heated up.

“I hadn’t thought about the banging that way,” she said, slightly agitated, once we were waiting in our soothing soaks. “But you could be right. It sort of didn’t make sense to me at the time, and I guess it’s been nagging at the back of my mind.”

“You could listen to the tape again when you go home,” I said mildly.

“I will,” she said firmly.

“Was it a long time before you heard the screams?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “As I said, I fell asleep. My phone rang, and when I answered, nobody was there. And a couple of minutes later I heard someone screaming, ‘Stop it, Dr. Fields, stop it!’ Then, ‘Stop it, Dan!’ and ‘Stop it, Dr. Fields!’ again. Maybe three or four times.”

“Did she sound hysterical?”

“She sounded loud.”

“You knew it was Tasha?”

“I knew it was a woman next door. When the police told me Tasha had been murdered, I was able to identify the voice.”

I paused for a long time. “Would you say Tasha was an extremely polite young woman?”

Gracie shrugged. “You know girls today. They’re so wrapped up in themselves and how they look that they can’t even remember to say hello. Her roommate, Nora, was a little friendlier. She’d ask how I was doing. Once or twice when she was going to the grocery, she knocked on my door to see if I needed anything. I’m not so old I can’t take care of myself. But it was nice of her.”

I thought about it. “I don’t know, Gracie. Maybe growing up in Idaho gives you good manners, but it doesn’t make sense to me. ‘Stop it, Dr. Fields’ is what I’d yelp if my husband were tickling me too much. Here someone is strangling the girl, and she’s saying his name over and over? It’s like a bad script in a made-for-TV movie.”

“Are you suggesting I’m making this up?” Gracie asked. She picked up a soft white chamois cloth from the counter and started wiping her face. “An old lady looking for attention and pretending to hear things?”

“Not at all,” I said. I hoped my voice was more soothing than the cucumber mask, which was starting to make my nose itch. “But imagine you were being attacked. What would you do?” I jumped out of my chair and lunged at her, hands tensed in front of me like I was ready to grab her neck.

“HELP!” she shrieked.

“Exactly,” I said, stepping back.

“HELP! STOP! NO! DON’T DO IT! HELP!
FIRE!
” Gracie screamed, still terrified by my attack. She leapt up from her chair and started to rush across the room.

“Gracie, it’s okay!” I hollered. “I was just pretending! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

She stopped and looked at me like I was crazy. And then she got it. She walked slowly back to her chair just as two attendants and the swishy waiter hurried into the room.

“What’s happened?” asked one, panting slightly. “Something wrong?

“Our facial masks are all-natural and chemical-free,” said the other attendant hastily. “You couldn’t be having a reaction.”

“I’m fine,” said Gracie. “We were just reenacting a crime scene.”

They hesitated, but then shrugged. Clearly this wasn’t the strangest thing that had ever happened in a treatment room.

The waiter looked around. “I thought I heard ‘Fire!’ That’s why I rushed.”

“You did,” said Gracie, pleased with herself. “An old trick. It’s supposed to get people’s attention better than ‘Help!’ Apparently it works.”

The waiter stamped his foot, gave a little snort, and marched back out. I whispered to the attendants that they could go, too — we’d take off the moisture masks ourselves.

I wiped the cucumber off my face, then splashed on some cool water. Gracie did the same, then sat very still in her chair. She was a smart woman. Enlightened and enlightening, in fact.