Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Rikki
Back to Santa Barbara. Glad to be here.
Hello, sterile room; hello, upside-down glasses on ink-blotter paper coasters. Welcome, queen-size bed.
Staying away from the day-to-day of the Voice and the Valley is almost preferable to facing those routines without Lisa.
I don’t know what to make of the accusations against Jesse McArthur or the way Lucas reacted to them.
His concern was to save Bobby Warren any pain.
He phoned Bobby on his cell and woke him from a nap.
Relieved that he hadn’t witnessed the finger-pointing interview, he explained what had happened and agreed to set up an appointment with Rochelle for today. Right now. Which is where I come in.
The interview with Bobby is going to have to wait. I’m not about to miss this opportunity with Rochelle.
The Killer Body offices are decorated with more care and thoughtfulness than Bobby Warren’s home, and I wonder if that’s because they are his home.
He and Lucas have the views, on opposite ends of a long hall of shiny parquet covered with a Persian rug so tight and finely toned that it must have taken many Killer Body memberships to finance.
Ellen, Lucas’s assistant, has the office in the middle.
She’s already at her desk as I pass. Across the office from hers, a large room contains about six, seven desks, all occupied by people with what could very well be described as killer bodies.
Bobby Warren hires workaholics, Lucas said.
Don’t these people have lives away from here?
Don’t they have something better to do on a Saturday morning?
“Can I help you?” Ellen stands in the doorway I’ve just passed on my way to Warren’s office. Her voice is as friendly as her smile, but I know she’s playing monitor again.
“Lucas knows I’m here,” I say.
She crosses her arms across her white knit top. “He hasn’t come back from Los Angeles yet.”
“Actually, he got in late last night.” I match her well-mannered tone. “We both did.”
“Oh.” Is that a flush spreading along her cheekbones?
“Yes. He told me Rochelle was meeting with Mr. Warren at seven-thirty, and that I could interview her after that.”
“Okay, then.” She gives me a too-cheerful smile for this time of morning. “Why don’t you step in the reception area until she and Mr. Warren are finished, and I’ll have someone get you some coffee while I give Lucas a call.”
Her point is not lost on me, couched as it is in high school cheerleader perkiness. After this, I won’t need the coffee.
She starts back for her office, and the heavy door to Bobby Warren’s office opens.
Out steps Rochelle. For the moment before she spots me, I see her face as it really is, the thin lips twisted into a pained line, her body, depleted and too thin except for the distracting breasts.
A black bra strap has slid along one shoulder of her tanned arm.
When she sees me, she instinctively straightens and pulls it up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Lucas said I could talk to you.”
She pauses between me and the closed door of Warren’s office, and her eyes look trapped. “I thought it would be a phone interview.”
“I’d rather talk to you in person.”
“I have an appointment.”
“This won’t take long.” I launch into my questions without negotiating further. “What was Bobby’s reaction to what happened last night?”
“He’s fine with it.” Her voice is huskier than usual, as if she’s been doing a lot of talking since Crosby’s show last night. Or a lot of smoking. “You know how I feel about Mr. Warren. I—”
“Love, love, love him,” I say.
“Whatever.” She’s not at her best today, ready to snap. “Mr. Warren respects my ethics, because, as I’m sure you know, he is also an ethical person.”
“And your husband? How ethical is he?”
“Hold on a minute, lady.” I’d heard she was a bitch in her heyday, and I see it flashing in her eyes right now. “Who the hell are you to insult my husband?”
“I’m just trying to understand how he could have made offers to both Tania Marie and Gabriella Paquette in order to help you land the spokesmodel job.”
“We don’t know that he did.” She reaches into her purse, shoves her sunglasses into her disarray of hair. “If you want to talk, we can do it on the phone.” She darts past me toward the elevator.
I take off after her.
She’s inside, slamming her finger against the lobby button when I pull the doors apart and scoot inside.
“I’ll tell Bobby Warren,” she says.
“And I’ll tell him you didn’t cooperate with his marketing director’s request.”
“Somebody should have notified me. I made another appointment.”
“There’s just one thing I want to know,” I say. “Then we can finish up on the phone, if you like.”
“What’s that?”
“About Julie Larimore. You introduced her to Mr. Warren, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“You told me the night of his party.”
“It’s no secret.” She shrugs. “Basically, I got her the job.” The elevator doors open.
She strides out, into the lobby. Its glass windows reflect a jacaranda-studded street and buildings with adobe tile and exteriors so white they could have just been painted yesterday, a place stuck in a time warp, as perhaps is the man who owns the view.
At the door, she turns to me, and I feel, more than think, lioness. Her mass of brittle blond hair is almost that fierce, and even with the fake contacts, the rage in her eyes makes me wonder which of us is the stalker and which the stalked. “Is that all you wanted? Am I free to go now?”
As if I or anyone could keep her anyplace she didn’t want to be.
“All I need to know is whether you and Julie Larimore were friends.”
“I told you I as much as got her the job.”
“But you didn’t tell me if you liked her.”
She presses her lips together, fighting a smile but not successfully. “Do you really think I can answer that, when you probably have a tape recorder in your purse?”
I lift my bag from my shoulder, unzip and open it, showing her the contents.
I need to make a decision, fast, and I wish Hamilton were here to advise me of the wisdom of what I’m going to say.
Or maybe I’m glad he’s not here. Maybe what I’m after isn’t about the newspaper or my story, at all.
But it’s too late to consider my motives now, the magic words on my lips.
“Off the record.”
“Are you serious?”
“Off the record. Were you and Julie Larimore friends?”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” The lioness look returns, and she is in my face again. “Don’t make the mistake everybody else does. And don’t judge me—” she shoves her chest at me “—by these.”
“I’m not judging you by anything except your answers. You know I can find out whatever I need to. I never give up. If you can make my job easier for me, I’ll keep what you tell me off the record.”
She moves close enough that I can see the filmy circle of her contacts, feel her breath in my face. Mint first, then, yes, the unmistakable scent of a smoker. “Contrary to what you may have heard, no one was friends with Julie Larimore.”
The hoarse honesty of her voice shoots chills through me. I was right.
“She criticized Princess Gabby in an interview after those photos of her were printed, and I don’t even know what she did to turn Tania Marie against her. Again, no one was her friend.”
“Not even Bobby Warren?” I ask.
“I won’t discuss Mr. Warren with you. Not on the record, not off, not over or under. He made the right decision for his business, and Julie’s done a great job for him.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I’m really tired. My husband’s waiting outside.”
“You’re not the only one who hates her,” I say.
The smile spreads. She nods. “I know.”
“Why?”
She leans close to me, and her cigarette breath overpowers the fading mint, the too-strong perfume. “You ever meet a perfect person?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, meet Miss Julie. She’s smug and sanctimonious, but she thinks she’s earned the right because she’s perfect. And she is, damn it. Perfect skin, perfect shape, perfect voice, perfect dedication to her job.”
“What else?”
“Off the record?” Her stare is greedy; she doesn’t want to stop. I remember Hamilton telling me that all an investigative reporter needs to do is find an angry person for a source.
“Yes, off the record.”
She turns away from me, says it to the wall.
“I thought she’d be grateful for my help.
Instead, she stabbed me in the back, tried to make Bobbo distrust me, made unflattering statements about me to the press.
And they say I’m a bitch?” Then, still looking at the wall, she says, “I have to leave now.”
“I’ll walk out with you.”
I hate to admit it, but there’s something almost likable about Rochelle, something you have to dig for underneath all of the makeup and, yes, the anger.
“Another off the record,” I say. “Why are you always so ready to attack?”
She digs the glasses out of her hair, shoves them over her eyes. Jesse drives their Lexus up to the sidewalk, and I can sense her relief. There’s no parking place, however, and he drives down the street, away from us.
“Why am I such a bitch? Admit it. That’s what you’re asking.”
“No, it’s not.” I join her outside, beneath a jacaranda, still green, not yet in bloom.
“You know how the lofty princess says everything she doesn’t like is so California? Well, I am California, honey. I’m every battle every woman in this state and this industry ever fought. If a man my age had fought the battles I have, you’d call him a war hero, or maybe like Bobbo, a pioneer.”
“Maybe.” I start to say more, but the Lexus pulls up to the curb and Rochelle brightens. “I have to go,” she says. “Call me if you need more. I don’t want to appear uncooperative.”
She’s like a pendulum, swinging from anger to the media cooperation I’m sure Bobby Warren insists on.
I walk with her to the car. “You’ve been very helpful,” I say.
“Call me if you have any questions.” She’s focused on her husband now, moving like a sleepwalker toward the car.
Every time I see Jesse McArthur, I’m struck by the same thought. He doesn’t look married. All scrunched-back ponytail and photogenic smile, he leaps out of the car, runs around to open the door for Rochelle.
For one moment, outside that open door, she tilts her face to his, and I think, no, they can’t really be going to kiss.
But it’s something else, some shared exchange of emotion that maybe only people who have been together as long as they have can share.
Whatever it is, it changes what I think about both of them.
I want to move forward, to ask more questions, but I hear someone calling my name. I turn.
Ellen stands outside the door, holding up a cell phone. She joins me on the sidewalk and gives me her cheerleader smile. “There seems to be some confusion,” she says. “I have Lucas on the line. He’d like to talk to you.”
“Hi, Lucas,” I say, smiling back at her as I press the phone to my ear.
“What the hell is going on? Ellen says you told her that I gave you permission to interview Rochelle McArthur this morning.”
I’m aware of Ellen’s inquisitive eyes, the fact that she, as well as Lucas, is waiting to hear my excuse for this intrusion into their safe little world.
“I lied,” I say.
“You lied? Why would you do that? I thought we were getting along.”
“I had to, Lucas. And I’ll explain why when I see you.”
An exasperated sigh. “And when might that be?”
“Right now, if that works for you.”