by J. D. Robb
Eve calculated another solid twenty minutes before they finally made it to the main floor where Julian sprawled on one of the sofas in the living area.
“I was afraid of that.” Connie sighed. “He was well on his way to a good drunk by the end of dinner.”
“He hit the wine pretty hard,” Eve confirmed.
“He was embarrassed by K.T. at dinner. Julian tends to drown embarrassment and upset. I’d apologize for her behavior again, but, well, she is what she is.”
“No problem,” Eve assured her.
“We can see that he gets home safely,” Roarke told her.
“Thanks.” Connie gave the sleeping Julian a look of motherly indulgence. “But I think we’ll just leave him there to sleep it off. No point dragging him out to his hotel. Just let me get your fabulous coat.”
“And the resemblance continues to diverge,” Eve said quietly. “You can hold your liquor better, and I’ve yet to see you curl up hugging a pillow like it’s a teddy bear.”
“And hopefully never will.”
“I absolutely love this,” Connie said as she came back carrying Eve’s coat.
Just as Eve saw the first real glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, Matthew Zank, dripping wet, came bolting out of the elevator. Marlo, pale as wax, stumbled out in his wake.
“On the roof. On the roof. It’s K.T. It’s—she’s on the roof.”
“I think she’s dead.” Marlo sat down on the floor, eyes fixed on Eve. “She’s dead. She’s dead up there. You have to come.”
“Stay down here.” She rounded on Connie. “Don’t let anyone leave until I check this out.”
“I—no—it must be a mistake,” Connie began.
“Maybe. Just keep everybody here.”
With Roarke, she stepped into the elevator. “Are you fucking kidding me?” was her first comment.
“Roof level,” Roarke ordered. “Maybe she passed out drunk like Julian.”
“Let’s hope, because it annoys the shit out of me to investigate a death at a dinner party where I’m a guest.”
“It doesn’t happen often.”
“Once is plenty.”
They stepped out into a lounge—another fire simmering, low sofas plumped with pillows, a mirrored bar with an open bottle of wine sitting on it.
The glass doors to the roof terrace whispered open at their approach. When they stepped across the terrace, through another set of auto-doors, the scent of night and flowers filled the lap pool dome.
She felt a flutter of breeze, glanced up.
“Dome’s open a little,” she noted, and wondered if it had been that way all evening.
Drenched, K.T. lay faceup beside the sparkling blue water of the lap pool. The staring eyes were Peabody-brown, and gave Eve a hard moment.
She crouched to check for a pulse. “Shit. Not only dead, but going cold. He pulled her out. Or he pushed her in, drowned her, then pulled her out. Either way, he moved the damn body. Shit!”
“She looks too much like our girl at the moment.”
“But she’s not. You’d better go get our girl, and a field kit if you’ve got one.”
“In the limo.”
“Good. Tell McNab to secure the house—nobody leaves—and to find out if there’s any security running up here. Don’t let anybody but Peabody come up.”
“All right.” He looked at the body a moment longer. “A bad end to the evening.”
“It sure was for her.”
As Roarke went down, Eve took her communicator out of her stupid little purse and called in a suspicious death. Then fixed her recorder on the narrow strap of her party dress.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, on record,” she began.
Broken glass, she noted, and a puddle of red wine, likely from the bottle open on the bar inside.
“The victim is visually ID’d as K.T. Harris.”
She filled in details for the record: the location, the reason for the victim’s presence, the names—including her own and Roarke’s—of the other people in attendance.
“Broken glass and spilled wine here. I observed an open bottle of wine inside the attached lounge.” She stepped to the side, noted a topless pedestal. “Six herbal cigarette butts in this receptacle. The victim’s purse is on the table here, opened.”
She crouched, careful not to touch until she could seal up. “I see lip dye, a small black case, an undetermined amount of cash, and a key card. The victim is wearing the dress she had on all evening as well as the jewelry, the wrist unit. Her left shoe is in place, bunged up on the heel. I see the right one at the bottom of the pool.”
She turned, deliberately blocking the body when she heard Peabody come out.
“If you can’t handle this, I need to know. It’s understandable. It’s acceptable.”
“I didn’t drink that much. I was too nervous and excited. But I took a Sober-Up anyway.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Peabody moistened her lips, and the girls-on-display quivered a little. “I can handle it.”
Saying nothing, Eve stepped aside.
“Oh …” Peabody’s eyes went wide, a little glassy. “’Kay. Maybe I need a minute.”
“Take what you need. Go inside, tag the bottle of wine on the bar. Roarke’s bringing up a field kit. We need to seal up before we get started. I called it in. We’ll have some uniforms to secure the area.”
“Got it.” Peabody stepped back inside.
One scenario, Eve thought, as she studied the scene, the body: Harris comes up to smoke, drink, stew. Slips, thanks to drinking and the mile-high heels, takes a header into the pool and drowns. A simple, stupid accident.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
“Could be an accident,” she said when Peabody came out again. “Too much to drink, risky shoes, oops. The water’s only about three feet deep. She goes in hard, hits her head.”
“She was knocking them back steady during dinner.”
“So, maybe an accident. Take a look around outside the pool dome, see if you can find anything that indicates she had company up here.”
“Okay, but I’m fine now.”
“Good.” She nodded as Roarke walked out with the field kit. “Seal up, see what you can find.”
Eve opened the field kit. “What’s the temperature down below?” she asked Roarke.
“McNab’s got it under control. He has everyone, including staff, in the living area. He said unless you wanted it otherwise, he’d shift the staff to the kitchen once the uniforms arrive.”
“That works. Vic is confirmed as K.T. Harris,” she said for the record when she pressed the woman’s thumb to her print pad. “Caucasian female, age twenty-seven—got a couple years on Peabody.”
“You’re looking for differences.”
Eve shrugged. “Being dead’s a big difference. TOD twenty-three hundred.” She frowned at her wrist unit. “That would be shortly after the screen show started, I think. People were going in and out before and after. We talked to Roundtree awhile right after, but I wasn’t paying attention to the time.”
She closed her eyes a minute, took herself back. “He put us up front. I don’t remember seeing her after we sat down.”
“She was in the back. I noticed because I intended to avoid her, or see that you did.”
“Our backs were to the room. She could’ve left, come up here after it started. No blood visible.” She took her sealed hands over the head. “Feels like a knot back here, a small laceration.”
She reached in the kit for microgoggles just as McNab came out.
“Four uniforms reported, Lieutenant. I had them …”
He trailed off with every ounce of color leaking out of his face as his eyes tracked over the body. “Jesus. Jesus.”
“She’s older,” Eve said matter-of-factly. “Her bottom lip is thinner, her eyes are rounder. Her feet are longer, narrower.”
“What?”
“The victim is K.T. Harris, twenty-seven, actress.”
“Dee.” McNab grabbed her hand.
Peabody gave a little yelp. Eve figured he must have crushed bone against bone before he just pulled her against him, pressed his face to her hair.
“What the—oh. I know. It gave me a major jitter, too. I’m all good. See.” She gave his ass a quick squeeze—something Eve decided, given the circumstances, to ignore.
“McNab, status.” Eve pushed to her feet, and once again angled herself to block the body. “Detective McNab, give me the status.”
“Sir.” He could have passed for a corpse himself under the moody blue lights.
“Eyes on me,” Eve snapped. “Look at me when I’m talking to you. Report.”
“We took the staff—household and the outside catering team—into the kitchen. The rest are in the living area. Two uniforms on each group. They’re asking a lot of questions. Except for Cross. He’s still passed out, and I thought it best to just leave him that way until you advised otherwise.”
“Good enough. Go down, send one of the uniforms on the staff up here to secure this area. You replace him, and start getting names, contacts, and statements. How many have we got?”
“Three household staff on duty tonight, ten catering staff.”
“Okay. Peabody, give him a hand with that. What about security up here?”
“I asked Roundtree. They don’t have cams up here. Security cams on the entrances, but nothing internal or here on the roof.”
“That’s too bad. We’ll want to review what they’ve got, eliminate any possibility of an intruder. Let’s use the dining area for interviewing the owners and guests. Go ahead and get Matthew Zank in there—alone. I’m right behind you.”
Eve waited until they’d gone, with Peabody slipping her hand back in his. “It’s not going to turn out simple.”
“No?”
“It could be an accident. Except the shoe she’s still wearing is scraped up on the back of the heel. And a slight bruise on her right cheekbone.”
“You think she was dragged in?”
“I think it’s possible she was dragged, then rolled in. Or she could’ve scraped it up, bruised her face in a fall.”
“You don’t think so,” Roarke observed.
“No, it looks like drag marks. It looks like her face bumped against the pool coping on a roll. But even if it was an accident, we’ve got a corpse that looks uncomfortably like one of the investigators, a houseful of Hollywood—along with a reporter—and a media machine that’s going to eat it like gooey chocolate.”
“And the primary investigator is the star of the show.”
Eve shook her head, glanced back at the body. “Right now I’d say she has top billing.”
Downstairs she asked Roarke to do a quick review of the security discs, then walked into the living area. Everyone started talking at once.
“Stop. Sit. I’m not going to be able to answer any questions at this time, so don’t waste your breath. I can confirm K.T. Harris is dead.”
“Oh God.” Connie put her hands over her face.
“Until the ME examines the body I can’t give you any more than that. I’ll be talking to each of you individually.”
Andrea held a shot glass. She tossed back the contents, eyed Eve with steady interest. “We’re suspects.”
“I’ll be talking to you,” Eve repeated. “Doctor Mira, if I could have a moment.”
“Of course.”
Mira rose from her position on a sofa, followed Eve out of the room.
“What’s your take? Just a quick thumbnail of reactions.”
“Is it homicide?”
“I can’t tell you. Really can’t. It has earmarks of an accident—or. So until that’s determined, we’ll proceed as if it’s or. What’s your take?”
“Individually and as a group, they’re upset, nervous. Connie’s managed to hold on to her role as hostess. Roundtree had her, and everyone else, half convinced Harris had just passed out like Julian. The producer and the publicist huddled together awhile. He wasn’t happy—well, several weren’t—when McNab confiscated all ’links. But no one caused any trouble. Matthew and Marlo were the most shaken, but as they found her, that’s to be expected.”
“Maybe you could sit in on the interviews, at least for now.”
“If you think I can help.”
“It’s a weird, fucked-up situation. You’re a shrink. That’s your area. Weird and fucked up, right?”
The tension on Mira’s face dissolved with her laugh. “I suppose it is.”
SHE STARTED WITH MATTHEW AT THE DINING room table where they’d all shared a meal. A low centerpiece of white lilies and short candles replaced the food and dishes, and a gray T-shirt and sweatpants replaced Matthew’s suit.
“Connie gave me a change of clothes. They have a home gym and she keeps some workout gear for guests. McNab said it was okay if I changed. My clothes were wet. Marlo’s, too. Wet. She changed, too.”
“No problem. I want to record this, and just to cover everything, I’m going to read you your rights.”
“Been a while.”
“Sorry?”
“I got arrested for drunk and disorderly and underage drinking when I was seventeen. One of those ‘the parents are away so let’s party’ deals at a friend’s. Too loud, too stupid, and I mouthed off to the cop. A thousand-dollar fine, alcohol school, and three months’ community service. I got grounded for three months on top of it.
“Sorry,” he added and scrubbed the heels of his hands over his face. “That doesn’t mean a damn, does it? I’ve never seen anyone dead before. I’ve been dead, killed people, held my dying sister in my arms—on-screen. So you think you’ve got it, but you don’t. No matter how good they are with the makeup, the lighting, the angles, it’s not the same.”
His breath hitched in and out. “She was so white. And her eyes …”
“Would you like some water, Matthew? Some tea?”
He looked at Mira with such gratitude. “Can I get tea? Is that okay?”
At Eve’s nod, Mira rose again. “I’ll see to it.”
“I can’t seem to get warm. The water was a little cold, I guess. And the … Sorry,” he said to Eve again.
“Have you got something to be sorry for?”
“I’m not handling this very well. I thought I was good in a crisis, but I’m not handling it.”
“You’re okay.” She set up the recorder, read off the Revised Miranda. “You got that, Matthew? You understand your rights and obligations?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What were you and Marlo doing on the roof?”
“We went up for some air, to hang for a few minutes.”
“And what happened?”
“Her feet hurt. Marlo. She said her feet hurt, so I said she should take her shoes off, stick her feet in the pool. We were going to just sit on the edge of the pool awhile. We were laughing about the gag reel when we walked into the dome. We didn’t even notice her for a minute. Seconds, I guess, it was just a few seconds.”
Mira came back out with a tray, a short pot of tea, some cups. “Coffee?” she said to Eve.
“Thanks. What happened then?”
“Marlo yelled. She saw her first, I think, and she yelled. I didn’t think. I just jumped in. I didn’t think. She was facedown, and I—we got her out.”
“Marlo got in the pool?”
“No. No.” He sipped at the tea. “I pulled K.T. to the side, and Marlo helped me get her out. She was heavy. I did CPR. I was a lifeguard in high school and college, so I know how to deal with a drowning victim, but she was gone. I couldn’t get her back. Marlo was helping me, and crying, but we couldn’t get her back. We ran down to get you. We should’ve called nine-one-one from the roof. But we ran down to get you.”
“Did you see anyone else up there, or on your way up or down?”
&n
bsp; “No. Well, we saw Julian passed out on the couch, and Andi was coming out of the powder room off the foyer. Then we took the elevator straight up.”
“Do you know anyone who’d want to hurt K.T.?”
“Jesus.” He squeezed his eyes tight, drank more tea. “She can be hard to get along with, and when she drinks too much she’s harder still. If there’s friction on the set, she’s usually the reason because the rest of us just get along. But no, none of us would hurt her this way. She’s shot most of her scenes so we’d be away from her anyway before much longer. Just have to tolerate her through the media rounds.”
“Did you have any problems with her, specifically?”
He stared down at his tea. “I don’t know what to call you.”
“‘Dallas’ works.”
“Dallas.” He took a long breath. “We went out a few times. It was months ago, before we started production, before I had the part. And she wasn’t drinking when we hooked up. She wasn’t drinking when she got the part either, and Roundtree went to bat for her with the money people. She had to audition, and that didn’t sit well, but she nailed the character—and she put in a word for me. She helped me get a reading for McNab. They were looking at somebody else, but she helped me get a reading, and I got the part. It’s a break for me. Then we stopped going out.”
“Because you got the part?”
“I know it could look that way. And she liked to think that. Liked to think I’d just used her to get a foot in the door.”
“Why else then?”
“Okay.” He rubbed his hands over his thighs, then set them on the table. “We had fun at first. We only went out for about three weeks, and it was fun. And we worked on the auditions together, and it was good. We were good. Then, when she got the part, she started drinking. Really drinking. And she got, well, possessive and paranoid.”
“How so?”
“She wanted to know where I was every second. Where I was, what I was doing, who I was with. Or if she wasn’t tagging or texting me, she’d just show up where I was. If we were having dinner and I smiled at the waitress it was because I wanted to fuck her, probably was fucking her. You know how she acted at dinner? She’d do the same sort of thing in public.”
He picked up his teacup, circled it in his hands. “It was embarrassing, infuriating. She accused me of cheating, lying, using her if I wasn’t paying enough attention. We only went out for a few weeks, like I said, and it wasn’t serious. Not for me, and I didn’t think for her. Then she got scary serious. She’d come by my place in the middle of the night to see if I was with somebody else. She’d start getting physical—shoving, slapping, throwing things. I told her I was done. We were barely into preproduction when she tried to have me fired. I had to go to Roundtree and lay out the whole mess. He backed me up, said it wasn’t the first time she’d gone off that way.”