Looks to Die For

by Janice Kaplan

  Jack opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of lemon Poland Spring. “What do you mean Dan’s in jail?” he asked, saving me from any small talk.

  I took a deep breath. “Short version or long?”

  “Short.”

  “Two cops showed up at midnight, crashed through the house to find Dan, and then put handcuffs on him. One of them drew a gun and pointed it right at him.” I started shaking, my voice quavering at the memory. I sniffled a couple of times and put my fingers over my lips to stop the trembling. “They took him down to a squad car and to the precinct house downtown, where they locked him up. They won’t let me see him.”

  Jack, still holding on to the Poland Spring, wandered over to the other side of the kitchen and slid onto a bar stool. I followed him like a puppy.

  “What’s the charge?”

  I tried to form the word, but my lips wouldn’t do it. Instead, a shudder went through my whole body. “Some woman named Tasha Barlow,” I whispered.

  Jack furrowed his brow. “She’s bringing charges against Dan? What are we talking about here, Lacy? Harassment? Sexual harassment?”

  I felt my cheeks getting warm, but I just shook my head. Jack thought he was helping, offering the most dramatic charge he could imagine so I could just nod and not have to say the words. “Worse,” I said, my voice barely a croak. “She’s dead.”

  Now Jack glowered at me as if I’d started spouting obscenities. “Murder?” he asked.

  Again his voice was loud, and it was all I could do not to cover my ears so I didn’t have to hear him. I offered a barely perceptible nod and felt my eyes fill up with tears. “There’s an arraignment within forty-eight hours. But the cop said maybe we could get it in the morning.”

  “Jesus Christ. You know I’m not the one to handle this, Lacy.”

  “So tell me who is.”

  “Dave Liggett comes to mind. He’s defended a couple of big sex suits lately.”

  “And you’re thinking what?”

  “I don’t know. False accusations by a woman. This Tasha Barlow…” He paused and shook his head. “Forgive me, I’m not completely awake. I guess if she’s dead she’s not making any false accusations against Dan. Those had to come from somewhere else.”

  “Of course. False accusations. That’s what’s going on. Or mistaken identity. I’ve thought of that one, too.” That Dan could be anything less than one hundred percent innocent hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

  “Chauncey Howell,” Jack said suddenly, snapping his fingers “Best criminal lawyer I know. The best.”

  I liked the name. He sounded like he was from an old New England family, the kind that sailed over on the Mayflower. “Can I call him now?”

  Jack didn’t bother to look at a clock, he just picked up the cordless phone on the counter and punched in a number. We both waited.

  “Chauncey? Jack Rosenfeld. Sorry to get you at this hour on your private line. But I need your help on a murder case.”

  Murder case. Uttered coldly into the phone in the middle of the night, the words hit me like exploding land mines. I clutched my chest and reeled back. With panic rising, I grabbed my bag and pulled out my cell phone.

  Jack, done outlining the situation to Chauncey, looked up and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “You don’t need your mobile,” he said. “You can talk to Chauncey on this line.”

  Jack held out the receiver, but instead of taking it, I frantically pushed the menu buttons on my Motorola until the small screen displayed my cache of digital photos. Dan hugging me at the beach. Dan and Jimmy lying on the grass. Dan playing tennis with Ashley. Dan — my husband who couldn’t be a murderer. He’d eaten lasagna tonight with me and the kids, said I looked sexy in my workout clothes, and kissed me gently before he got into our antique four-poster bed.

  I snapped my cell phone shut. Next time I was able to curl up next to Dan, I’d know that according to the cops, I was sleeping with a killer.

  Chapter Two

  When I finally calmed down enough to take the phone, Chauncey Howell sounded coolly efficient, stunningly professional for someone asking questions of an unseen client-to-be in the middle of the night. We went over details for nearly half an hour before I hung up and agreed to meet him on the courthouse steps at 9:00 A.M.

  I normally need eight hours of sleep to function, but I hit my pillow for barely two and woke up feeling alert, every throbbing muscle and nerve ready to spring. I dashed downstairs to have breakfast with Grant and Ashley before they left for school. Amazingly, despite my having woken Ashley, they’d missed all the late-night goings-on, and they were completely oblivious to what had happened. I took exactly one minute to decide that I’d leave it that way.

  Ashley’s outfit this morning included a purple corduroy shrunken blazer, a teeny-tiny pink T-shirt, and Citizens of Humanity jeans slung so low on her hips that jeans and tee would never have the chance to meet. She’d pulled a pink-and-purple Pucci scarf through the belt loops and snaked a sparkly pink wire bracelet around her wrist. Unlike Grant, she wasn’t much at getting top grades in school, but she definitely got them in style.

  “If you want a lift, I’m leaving now,” Grant said to her, finishing off his orange juice and putting his empty cereal bowl in the sink. “I have a midterm and I don’t want to be late.”

  Ashley nibbled thoughtfully at the edge of her all-natural breakfast bar and picked at the drizzled frosting with her pink fingernail. I willed her to go with Grant, but my extrasensory persuasion didn’t work. “Too early for me,” Ashley said. “Mom can drive me later.”

  Grant half rolled his eyes. “Mom’s dressed like she has a meeting this morning. For the extra ten minutes, you can give her a break.”

  Ashley laconically turned toward me, slowly taking in my Chanel suit and estate jewelry. “That true?”

  “Yes, but I can take you on my way. Though it’s probably more fun to go with Grant.”

  “Ugh. Going with Grant is ho-o-o-r-r-ible,” she said, drawing out the word with her mouth wide open. At least she hadn’t pierced her tongue. “But if you’re too busy for me, fine. Don’t worry.” In one smooth motion, she stood up, grabbed her backpack, and stormed out to Grant’s Jeep Cherokee, slamming the back door behind her.

  Grant unfolded his lanky six-foot frame from the chair and turned his smoky gray eyes toward me. “I do this for you, Mom, not her. You’ve got to admit she’s a bitch.”

  “More like a teenage girl who doesn’t know how to behave around her big brother’s friends,” I said. “She’ll be okay. Hey, good luck on your exam.”

  “Thanks.” He slammed the door, too, and for a moment the house reverberated with the shock of their departures.

  Upstairs, I checked on Jimmy, and when I saw he was sound asleep, I told our housekeeper, Eloise, to wake him as soon as I left so he could get on the bus for kindergarten.

  “He only likes when you wake him,” she said disapprovingly.

  True enough. But I simply couldn’t face Jimmy this morning. Too young to know how to ask for explanations, he needed them provided. How could I confront the wide eyes, the puzzled look, the morning smile warped by a trace of fear? Right now, I didn’t have any explanations for him about what he’d seen last night.

  “I have to leave,” I said feebly.

  I drove to the courthouse and at 8:45 took a position on the steps with the street in view. As Jack had described him, Chauncey Howell was a one-man dream team — glib, smart, and unbeatable in a courtroom. I pictured John Roberts crossed with Johnnie Cochran and kept a lookout for a tall, handsome defender in an Armani suit who would no doubt be emerging from a white chauffeured limousine.

  Which is why I never would have spotted him if he hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Lacy Fields?”

  I swung around and found myself face-to-face with a short, sprightly man in a seersucker suit, standing a step above me.

  “I’m Lacy.”

  “Good. I’m Chauncey Howel
l.”

  He extended a hand for me to shake, and I noticed that his nails were nicely buffed, but his fingers were ringless and his watch looked like a Timex. His wire-rim eyeglasses had clip-on shades and the thick briefcase at his side, navy blue Cordura, sported an L.L. Bean logo. Heaven knows I’m not a snob, but I figured all top-notch L.A. lawyers were like Jack Rosenfeld, carrying their drafts and documents in butter-soft Gucci, except on days when they decided to go Coach leather casual.

  Trying to get my bearings, I said, “I figured you’d be coming from the other direction. I had my eye on the street, assuming you’d be coming up.”

  “I came down. I’ve been inside the courthouse for a while.”

  “Have you seen Dan?” I asked eagerly.

  “Not yet. That comes next. I’ve been chatting with the district attorney and getting a few things arranged.” He patted his striped tie. “The DA hasn’t given me much information, and I’ll have very little time with your husband before the hearing. So you and I need to talk.” He studied me carefully, taking in my pale aqua Chanel suit with the large gold buttons, and the cream-colored silk shell that peeked out from underneath. The matching aqua sandals had seemed a bit much for the first court appearance at my husband’s side, so I’d opted for a pair of Valentino taupe pumps. I knew not to carry an Hermès bag — everyone said that if Martha Stewart hadn’t flashed that vintage Birkin in court, she might have gone scot-free.

  Chauncey Howell pointed to a step. “Only seat I can offer you at the moment.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  He shrugged and said, “Not a lot of time before I have to get back into court, so I’ll get right to the point. I’ve gone over most of what you told me on the phone, but I’m going to ask you to repeat some of it. What I need is everything that the police did and said from the time they knocked on your door last night.”

  I suddenly felt overwhelmed. “I’ll sit after all,” I said, kneeling down to brush the grime off the edge of a step. Chauncey leaned over and handed me a yellow legal pad.

  “You want me to write what happened?” I asked.

  “No, I want you to tell it to me. The paper’s for sitting on. The step’s not that clean.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” I plunked the pad onto the step and carefully lowered my Chanel-ed bottom onto it. Chauncey Howell perched just above. “Everything the police said,” I repeated. “Well, here goes.”

  I tried. A few stray thoughts wandered through, but for the most part, I managed a pretty straight narrative. Chauncey seemed to be listening, but he never took the pen — a Bic Clic, as far as I could tell — from his vest pocket. Either his memory never failed or I didn’t say anything worth remembering.

  Still, when I finished, he said, “Nice job. You’re a good witness.”

  “Will I have to say all that today in court?”

  He smiled wanly. “No, Mrs. Fields, you’re not testifying. In fact, it’s just an arraignment, so there’s no reason for you to be in the courtroom at all. The DA will present the charge, we’ll plead innocent, and the judge will set bail. I’m trying to handle it as quickly and quietly as possible. It would be nice to have Dr. Fields out of court before the press catches wind of the case.”

  I nodded mutely, surprised that I was able to feel so much confidence in a man in a seersucker suit.

  Chauncey reached into his bag and took out a large manila envelope. “Next question,” he said. “The name Tasha Barlow. Or Theresa Bartowski. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said quickly. “I’ve been brooding about it all night and it might as well be Jane Doe. I have no image.”

  But he did. Chauncey took a picture out of the envelope and held it out for me, a standard eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy, the kind every determined young woman in L.A. takes with her on auditions.

  “Is this —”

  “Yes,” Chauncey said quickly. “The murder victim.”

  I reached for the photo but Chauncey didn’t let go, so I leaned over to study it. I expected a surge of emotion, but nothing came. And what should I feel anyway? My sentiments were as tangled as the rhymes in a bad Hallmark card.

  “Where was she from?” I asked after a moment.

  “She grew up in Idaho and moved to Hollywood about six months ago.”

  The picture revealed a young woman with high cheekbones, a pert nose, and straight blond hair that curled slightly toward her chin. But any suggestion of fresh-faced innocence was hidden under several layers of makeup. Her large, wide-set eyes had been doused with heavy mascara and smoky liner to make them seem sultry, and thickly applied lip gloss gave her a pouty smile. These eight-by-tens were typically called head shots in the trade, but the deep V cut of her blouse and its revealing cleavage made this more of a chest shot.

  “Do you know anything about her?” I asked Chauncey.

  “Not yet. I have two people on my staff working on a backgrounder this morning. They should have something in a few hours.” He pushed the picture closer to me. “Nothing at all strikes you?”

  Something about the face seemed almost too perfect, like an artist’s rendition of a struggling young actress. “I suppose I could have met her at a party and not remembered. A lot of young women in Los Angeles look like that.”

  “A lot of those women see plastic surgeons,” Chauncey said. His voice was mild, without much inflection, but the words knocked me back as forcefully as a thrown rock. Trembling, I looked again.

  He was right that the woman in the photo hadn’t achieved that all-natural look on her own. I recognized the signs, starting with the cleavage: tiny shoulders, flat chest, then breasts leaping out like over-ripe grapefruits. No Wonderbra could be responsible for that. But it wasn’t Dan’s style. Even in the days when he regularly did cosmetic surgery, he refused to do breast augmentation and railed against implants. He didn’t think silicone was bad just for a woman’s health — he worried a lot more about what it did to her self-esteem.

  My eyes wandered up to the face. The lips might have had a collagen injection or two, and a scalpel had probably been involved in sculpting the tiny nose. But that wasn’t my husband’s handiwork, either. Dan insisted on features with character, and this nose looked like it had been stamped out from a Hollywood cookie cutter.

  “You’ll obviously ask Dan,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “But I’d be very surprised if she were a patient of his. Anytime.”

  Chauncey put the picture back into the envelope and carefully slipped it inside his briefcase.

  “Just a few more questions,” he said. “First, you mentioned your three children. I need their names and ages.”

  “Grant’s sixteen. Ashley’s just turned fourteen. And Jimmy’s five. But they won’t be involved in this, will they?”

  “Only in the sense that the judge will be setting bail for your husband this morning. Dan obviously has ties to the community, but it’s helpful to establish close family connections. You and Dan are the parents of all the children?”

  “Yes.” I felt my voice quavering and stared at a crack in the step. “We got married very young and had Grant and Ashley quickly, while Dan was still in medical school. By the time Ashley was eight, Dan had a well-established practice and we decided —”

  “It’s okay.”

  I glanced up and saw Chauncey Howell smiling at me. “You don’t have to justify having children,” he said. “It’s just that with the age difference, I didn’t want to have any surprises.”

  “No surprises,” I said. “They’re all ours and they were all planned as carefully as a Carnival cruise.”

  Chauncey laughed briefly, then turned serious. “One more thing, Mrs. Fields. And think about this before you answer. Have you and the doctor had any marital problems lately?”

  “No.” I said it much too quickly, and caught Chauncey glancing at me keenly over the tops of his wire-rims. I took a breath, then said, “We’ve been married a long time and we still love each other. Dan
laughs at my jokes and I listen to his stories. We have a good, normal family life. I mean, what happened last night is crazy. Out of the blue. It’s got to be a mistake, Mr. Howell.”

  Chauncey adjusted his eyeglasses, pushing them back with two fingers. “I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion,” he said slowly, “but I’ll be honest. You need to be prepared. Your husband’s not a movie star, but he’s a well-known, well-respected figure in the community. The Los Angeles police don’t need more bad publicity. They wouldn’t have gone this far without evidence.”

  My stomach clenched. “Don’t you think it’s all just a bureaucratic mistake?” I asked. “A nightmare out of Kafka? An innocent man arrested and caught in an inexplicable system. You have to untangle this.”

  He glanced at his watch and then stood up, a small man towering over me. “I’m going to do the best I can, believe me. Right now, I need to go inside and talk to Dan so we can get the bail hearing done.” I felt glued to the concrete, too weak to pull myself up next to him, so I just shielded my eyes against the sun and tilted my head up as Chauncey continued. “With luck, nothing has been leaked about Dan’s arrest. It’s a bad idea for us to play this out in the press until we have a position. You can bet the police have their statements all ready for the news conference. I’d just like to put that off as long as possible.”

  I crossed my arms over my gold buttons and suddenly understood Chauncey Howell’s understated appearance. He didn’t want to call attention to Dan — or himself — today. I felt slightly embarrassed by my flashy designer suit and thought of explaining to Chauncey that I’d been trying to look the part of supportive - woman - behind - the - man - in - court. But the instinct that had seemed so on target in my bedroom this morning looked awfully foolish in the harsh, yellow-hazed morning light of the courtroom steps. This was real life. Murder. And I was acting like an extra on One Life to Live.