Chapter 30
THIRTY
Rochelle
“Damn it, Blond, I’m desperate.” Rochelle gulped her water bottle, shivering as the air teased the sweat from her flesh.
“Then, that’s another reason.” He held his ground, intent in his tiny white trunks, unconcerned with the attention he was attracting.
Most of the women at the club, more than usual for a Saturday morning, had found excuses to amble by and check him out at closer range.
“Desperation is the worst reason for getting involved with the toys.”
“What was your reason?”
“Competition.” He pulled a shirt over his head. His sprayed hair emerged unscathed.
“My point exactly. Don’t tell me you weren’t desperate.”
“You got me on that one.” He opened his own bottle of water. “I knew I’d only be doing it for a certain period of time.”
“My situation’s exactly the same.” She made herself speak slowly, as he did, forcing the agitation to remain beneath the surface.
“You’re in good shape. If anything, you’re too thin.”
“Have you looked at my ass?”
“Of course. You think I’m dead? I never miss an opportunity to look at your ass.” His soft-spoken drawl failed to calm her as it usually did.
“Then, tell me the truth.” She turned her back on the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
“Most of that’s the fabric of your pants.” He pinched her butt. “You could maybe tighten it a little more, but you can do that with the lunges.”
“I don’t have time for lunges. The spokesmodel’s going to be named any day now. My husband—” She couldn’t put those fears into words, not even to Blond Elvis. “You said you could get toys.”
He nodded. “Lasix injections are the fastest way. You can lose ten, fifteen pounds like that. It’s a diuretic used for congestive heart failure. There are side effects, though. Your legs will cramp up.”
“I don’t care about frigging side effects. What is it, Blond? What do you want from me?”
“A reporter tracked me down,” he said. “Her name’s Rikki Fitzpatrick. She was here when you called.”
“So?”
“I can’t afford to get dragged into some scandal. I can tell she’s not the type to back off. Cute as hell, but a real bulldog.”
“All she cares about is what happened to Julie Larimore.”
His expression lost some of its tenseness. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, Shel.”
“You think I’m so stupid that I’d take chances with my own body?” Her voice was steady now, the pleading and the fear buried in the iciness of the bitch voice. “You want me to be fat? You want to look at a client of yours and know, in your heart, she’s a lard ass?”
“You’re not fat, and you’re not stupid. I know you respect your body. It’s not that.”
“What then? Surely, you don’t think I’d ever reveal to anyone where I got it? You couldn’t have so little trust in me, not as close as we’ve been.”
“I trust you.” He spoke in a low voice. It never failed. Rochelle the Bitch always got what she wanted, when the real Rochelle could not.
“The toys,” she said.
“We need to discuss dosage.”
“Sure thing.”
“And you can’t say a word to anyone.”
“You know I won’t, Blond.”
He looked over his shoulder and smoothed the shellacked sweep of hair across his forehead. “Come on, then.”
She’d won. At least, Rochelle the Bitch had won. As she followed him to the lockers, she caught a glimpse of her ass in the wall mirror. She must have been out of her mind to wear white.
The toys would soon be hers. And not a moment too soon.
Rikki
We’re almost there, and I’m still trying to deal with the look I got from Lucas when I left, as if he knew something I didn’t.
I’m also trying to figure out what to say to Blond Elvis, how to scare him enough to tell me the truth—about Lisa, about Julie.
Hamilton leans back in the passenger seat and says he’s going to put on some music.
Instead, my CD case in his lap, we talk nonstop about Killer Body and Julie Larimore.
I tell him everything except the nagging suspicion I’ve had since I woke up at after three in the morning, sweat-drenched and chilled to the bone.
I can’t say anything until I have more than intuition to go on.
But I do have more. I have Tania Marie’s convincing story, her impassioned eyes haunting me with their guileless honesty.
I have what Lucas revealed about the Killer Body code of ethics and what it would cost Julie Larimore to break it.
Hamilton calls me a “lead foot,” but I know he’s okay with my driving. He seems relaxed, as if he’s gotten a good night’s sleep, and I think, with only a little remorse, that whatever he did after he left the casino must have been good for him.
Our first stop after leaving the harbor is Roberta Matlock’s gallery in Los Olivos.
She’s as drifty as she was the first time, moving back and forth between clarity and ambiguity.
She greets us, carrying a large magnifying glass.
With her gray hair spread out over a long black tunic, she looks like the Good Witch in a fairy tale.
“You can tell what I’ve been doing,” she says with a laugh. “Didn’t realize how much stuff I’ve collected.”
“You haven’t found the news story yet?” I ask.
“Not yet. I’ve been concentrating on the yearbooks. Once I remember her name and the dates she was in my class, it will be easier for me to find the newspaper. It just takes a heck of a long time.”
I accept a cup of tea from her. Hamilton declines. I can feel his doubt, even when Roberta tells us she remembers where Julie and her sister were raised.
“It was sold years ago,” she said. “The current owner is renting it out.”
“Do you know who lives there now?”
She shakes her head. “He’s not a patron of the arts, I’m afraid. I’ve seen him a couple of times at the market.”
“We could drive out there.” It’s Hamilton’s way of telling me he wants a smoke and an excuse to get out of here. In the car, he fumbles for a cigarette, lights up and pulls down the window. “We can find the story faster ourselves.”
“You never know,” I say.
“Are you sure a little girl named Julie ever shot her father?” he says. “Are you sure the child that Matlock woman remembers was really Julie Larimore?”
“No,” I admit. “But even a possible lead is better than no lead at all.”
Having had his fix, and knowing how much I hate it, he tosses the cigarette out the window.
“Have you smoked forever?” I ask.
He flashes me a sour look. “For about six months when I was fifteen. Then, after my divorce. It’s only temporary.”
“That’s good.”
“You ever try it?”
“Are you kidding? My aunt would have strangled me.”
Remembering the stem perfectionism in which Lisa and I were raised, I shudder.
Aunt Carey wants me to find out what really killed Lisa, what caused her to get in such terrible shape that she died from a heart attack.
If I told her what I suspect—that Lisa’s compulsion, like my running away with the first boy who looked at me, was an attempt to escape herself—she’d think I’d lost my mind.
We turn off Grand Avenue and find the address on the mailbox easily.
The red barn-type building sits off the road guarded by a large tree on each side.
We park on the street side of the trees, before a boulder-lined path.
I stare at the house and try to imagine Julie Larimore growing up in it.
Impossible. Not that it’s bad, just ordinary: a red bam of a house with white-framed windows and porch supports.
“So,” I say to Hamilton. “I guess I just walk right up to the door and announce who we are and what we want.”
“Won’t be the first time,” he says.
Some strangers are helpful when you knock on their doors in the middle of their weekend. Others are not. The man who lives in the red bam is one of the latter.
Maybe I’m judgmental, especially in these hawkish times, but there’s something about camouflage gear that unnerves me. Thus, I’m not surprised when this guy, clad from cap to toe in it, doesn’t warm up to us.
“Can’t a man cut his grass in peace?” he demands. “I don’t have no money to donate for whatever it is you’re collecting for.”
“We’re newspaper reporters,” Hamilton says. “We’ve heard that Julie Larimore might have grown up in this house.”
“Who?” His voice echoes the same cigarette rasp of Hamilton’s, only multiplied by many more years of nonstop puffing.
“Julie Larimore,” I repeat, “the spokesperson for Killer Body. She’s disappeared.”
“I heard about that.” He pulls off his cap, scratches the gray stubble on his head. “I’m just the tenant. Been here about a year. I hope they find that little girl.”
“She lived here as a child,” I say. “Perhaps your landlord might be able to give us more information.”
His gaze takes me in as if for the first time. “I’ll help anyone who asks, but not no newspaper, and not you, lady.” He moves forward, leading with his hip, as if imagining a rifle balanced there. “Get off my property before I call the cops.”
Hamilton touches my arm, to let me know he’s here. Then he steps in front of me, confronting the creep. “There’s no need for that.”
“Then get out of here.” He looks at me, eyes narrowed to two glittering pricks of light. “I hate reporters.”
I start to give the son of a bitch a short lecture on what I hate. Before I can decide if he’s worth my rage, the door slams in my face.
Hamilton grabs my arm. I shake free. My impulse is to smash my fist into the door.
That’s the horror of being degraded in a time that’s supposed to have outgrown it.
Every instance feels like the first one.
Instead of wearing you down, each assault provokes you, kick-starts your anger, all over again.
I’m a woman. I’m a reporter. And this asshole doesn’t trust me.
I force myself to stay put, turn off the Sexist Pig Channel in my own mind, block out Mr. Camouflage and head down the walk, Den Hamilton behind me.
“Rikki.”
“Not now, Den.”