Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Rochelle
“So tell me everything about the part.” Back in the house, she’d managed to let go of Jesse long enough to ask the question. Her head spun with plans. She’d have to up her workout routine, get rid of her ass, make sure it could be photographed from any angle.
“It’s television, of course,” Jesse said.
“Nothing wrong with that. Television is what made me. That and Clenbuterol.”
“The three-week miracle. You won’t need it for this.”
He’d insisted she take Clen before and pretended not to know she still did now and then.
She’d never even known what it was until he explained that, in addition to being an asthma medication, they could melt body fat at amazing speed.
Sure, they stopped working after three weeks, but that was all it took.
“Are you sure I won’t? At least it’s not a steroid, and in case you don’t remember, I lost nine pounds in ten days the last time.
That’s why that baby sold more copies than any of the others from the jiggle series, thank you very much.
” She pointed at the poster beside the refrigerator.
Had she ever looked any where close to as sexy and in control as that girl?
“I said you won’t need the Clen.”
He went to the refrigerator door and filled a wineglass with water, frowning as if trying to decide what to say next. Worried about Megan, she knew, as was she.
A basket of popcorn sat on the counter. It was the only food she trusted, and she planned on rationing out the entire bowl to herself today, through the night, until they met Megan’s plane and had her home safely with them.
At the moment, she’d like to shove the whole thing into her face by the fistful.
“Stop playing games, Jesse. I want to hear about the damned part.”
“I’m not playing games. I’m just trying to think.” He sat at the counter, patted the stool beside him, but she was wired too tight to sit.
“The part,” she repeated. “Tell me about it. How much thinking does that require?”
Bitch mode, but she couldn’t help it. He was expecting far more patience than she could deliver.
He nodded, acknowledging the jab.
“It’s a drama, based loosely on real life, ripped from the headlines, they call it. A spokeswoman for a national weight-loss program is missing, and three women vie for her position.”
A shudder passed through her, but no, she couldn’t think that way. Opportunity was opportunity. She needed to accept it, be grateful for it. “Tell me about the three women.”
“One’s divorced, a royal of some type. One’s been dumped by a media figure, and one’s an actress.”
“Just an actress?”
He sipped his water. “An actress with a weight problem.”
“Weight problem?”
An image of Shelly Winters, whom she’d met when she was just getting started, emerged in her mind.
Shelly—gritty, tough and wonderful—had been a rarity, a fine actress who put her gift before her self-image.
A large woman. Rochelle wasn’t a large woman; she just had a big ass, a problem ass, okay?
If she played an actress with a weight problem, people would notice and figure it out.
All they’d see when they looked at Rochelle McArthur would be what Rochelle saw.
Her ass. And her career would be over, if it wasn’t already.
She got in Jesse’s face, every muscle in her body tensed. “No one has ever said I had a weight problem, and no one but you and Blond Elvis has ever known about the fucking Clen.”
“Of course not,” Jesse said. “It’s television, remember?”
“I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“How you feel about it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Car-ley Steel’s playing the actress. She doesn’t have a weight problem, either.”
That one stopped her like a clanging bell inside her head. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed,” she said back to him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He’d flipped the switch in her brain. Now it was too late. She’d gone straight to bitch mode again. “Carley Steel with her Botox and her boobs, who brands herself the new Rochelle McArthur. I’ve seen you looking at her. How could you let her have this part?”
“I’m not in casting, babe.” His gaze was even, untroubled. “And there’s nothing wrong with looking, if it’s all I do. I’m no Bobby Warren, you know.”
The remark stung, as he had intended. Cruelty was always his best defense. She forced herself to look away from the penetrating gaze, and wondered if he was telling the truth, wondered also if he looked—as he put it—at Carley, and now Princess Gabby, because he didn’t like what he saw at home.
She leaned against the counter. The exercise that usually energized her had left her drained.
She couldn’t ignore the waves of nagging anxiety.
Something was wrong here. Jesse’s deliberate motions, even the way he held the glass of water, were too calm, like a doctor who had to tell a patient the illness was fatal, not an agent imparting good news to his client, wife or not.
“So, if I’m not playing the actress?” she began.
“You wouldn’t want that role, anyway. She’s over the hill.” Then, looking up at her, “By Hollywood’s standards, anyway. Besides, she’s the killer. It wouldn’t be good for your image, considering the similarities to real life.”
Carley Steel, over the hill? Rochelle didn’t think so.
She faced him at the bar, so close she could smell the popcorn’s now suddenly repugnant scent. “Who the hell am I playing, Jesse? Just tell me.”
Another sip of water. She wanted to smash the glass on the tile floor.
“The actress has a mother.”
He said it tenderly, his voice husky, the way it used to be when he said he loved her. “She’s important to the story line, and it’s a great part.”
For a moment Rochelle couldn’t react, couldn’t move. She’d heard him wrong. She had to have heard him wrong.
“The mother?”
He nodded, sadness, maybe even embarrassment pulling down the corners of his mouth. “It will give you a chance to stretch.”
“I’ve been stretching my whole damned life.” She slammed her fist on the tile counter, knocking the basket of popcorn onto the floor in a shower of white. “I’ll die before I play Carley Steel’s mother.”
“Your choice.”
Avoiding her tantrum, he looked down into the glass.
She’d be a laughingstock. They’d talk behind her back, say she was losing her looks, her figure. They’d point out the broadening of her ass.
“Never,” she whispered.
Jesse got up, poured more water. “You know what happens when you turn down roles.”
“I don’t care what happens. I will not do it. I will not.”
He opened the freezer, staring inside for a moment, looking far younger than he deserved in his jeans and taut torso beneath his polo shirt. Just when she was about to ask what he was doing, he pulled out a six-inch, foil-wrapped package.
“My stash,” he said. “We’re both feeling a little stressed right now. How about a cigarette, baby?”
It was that or dinner. It was still early. She had plenty of time to make a decision.
She put out her hand.
“Fire me up, Scotty. Just don’t tell the fans.”
Rikki
When did I become obsessed with Julie Larimore?
It’s the interviews, I think, trying to hear her voice through the answers on the page.
Her favorite color: white. I knew only one other person with white as a favorite color.
Lisa. Her favorite beverage: water. Her favorite singer: Diana Krall, especially Krall’s remakes of Nat King Cole songs like “A Blossom Fell” and “Maybe You’ll Be There. ”
How could two people be so similar? They couldn’t, I think with a chill.
Lisa, too, must have pored over these articles.
She must have hated her own life so much that she tried to absorb Julie Larimore’s.
Why hadn’t I known? Why hadn’t Aunt Carey known?
Or had we known and tried to hide the truth from ourselves?
Hamilton and I sit on the patio of my motel, the files spread out on the round table with our coffee cups and Hamilton’s ashtray.
I’ve told him I think there’s some enormous, cosmic fire alarm that will go off if it detects cigarette smoke in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, but he makes it clear he’s not up for my humor this early on a Monday morning.
I’m not sure I can read another word. Each interview brings back Lisa, makes the loss fresh and raw again, flooding me with more questions.
“You’re putting in too many hours on this.” Hamilton gives me a look of assessment, his eyes a watery hazel in the sunlight.
“I don’t have a choice, Den. There’s got to be something here that will tell us who she is.”
“Only your buddy Lucas Morrison can do that.”
A sad tugging within reminds me of the momentary hope I’d felt with Lucas, the beginnings of trust. But then the anger sets in again. “The more information I have, the less he’ll be able to lie,” I say.
“Want me to stick around and go with you?”
I feel it’s a test. He’s fishing, trying to figure out if I want to be alone with Lucas.
“If you’d like to,” I say. “Depends on how soon you need to leave for home.” He lights a cigarette. I’ve made him nervous. I watch him blow a translucent stream out into the clear day. “Den?”
“Yeah?”
“I think we ought to break the story about Julie Larimore.”
He scowls down at his cigarette, then back up at me. “We don’t even know for sure it was Julie Larimore on the phone.”
“I heard the voice mail. It was definitely her cell phone.”
“So, what you observed was Bobby Warren calling Julie’s cell, not Julie calling Bobby, right?”
“It’s still a story.”
“But not the story.” He smashes out the cigarette and gets up, moves his chair out of the sun, closer to mine. “I suggested you take time off. I thought you needed it, and I still do.”
“What would I do with time off?” My voice chokes out the words. Hamilton frowns as if to say he told me so. “I have to do this, Den, and I’m close. If I can get Lucas to tell me who Julie Larimore really is, we might be able to figure out what happened. And if it’s big enough—”
“You can bring down Killer Body?”
“Maybe not bring them down, but expose them.”
“Make them pay for what happened to Lisa? Give your aunt the revenge she wants?”
“Why not? And it isn’t revenge. It’s closure.
That’s all she wants.” I realize how crazed I must sound to him.
I never should have told him about Aunt Carey, never trusted him with my feelings.
“Okay,” I say in his face, so close I can almost taste the cigarette he’s just smoked.
“I may have started out that way, but I feel compassion for Bobby Warren, and there are things I like about Lucas, too. The fact remains that someone is trying to harm the women Bobby’s considering for Killer Body spokesmodel. ”
“Harm or frighten?” he asks.
“Good question. Either way, there’s a story there. And now Julie’s called Bobby. That’s part of the story.”
He leans back in the wrought-iron chair, apparently unconvinced. “So, why print it now?”
“To keep readers focused on the story?”
“Why else?”
To keep Killer Body in the news, I think. Damn, is Hamilton right? Is my interest in this story motivated by revenge? Suddenly I can feel the sun on my face, too hot and unrelenting. I put my head in my hands, feel the heat on my skin.
Hamilton touches my bare arm and I jerk up, meeting his eyes. “It’s too damned hot out here.”
“Talk to Lucas Morrison.” His voice is low, yet harsh. “See what you can find out. After that, we’ll get together again and decide what to do next.”
“About the Larimore story?” I ask, knowing better.
“That and the rest of it.”
“Den, please don’t make me take time off.” He narrows his eyes, the lines around them carved deep, as if etched in clay. “Please, please let me stay on this story,” I say.
He looks away, then gets up, scraping his chair on the concrete.
“Let’s talk about that later, okay? After you’ve heard what Morrison has to say.”
I can take gruff from him. I can take pissed off. But I can’t take pity. Immediately, I regret pleading. The only thing that works with Hamilton is what he saw in me from the day he met me, back when I knew what I wanted.
I yank my chair out, too, facing him. “My guess is Lucas has plenty to say, and I’m the one person who can get him to say it.”
“That’s more like it.” His tough face goes tender on me, and I’m reminded again what attracted me to him in the first place. I know he feels the tug, as well.
“What is it?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Just thinking.” Then, with a grin, “Like maybe I should apply for a job writing obits, anything to get out of being your boss.”
“I was thinking about that opening in features,” I confess.
“No, you’re ideal for this.”
“You mean it?” I ask.
“Yeah, I mean it.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “When we—when I applied for this promotion, I had no idea you and I were going to—”
“I know that, Den.”
“Sometime down the road, once you’re finished with this story, you and I need to sit down and have a talk.”
I feel myself break into a smile. Even if it never happens, just the fact that he’s said it, thrills me to the soul. “I hope we can do that,” I say.