Page 106 of Killer Body

“This may sound strange,” I say, “but her name isn’t really Julie Larimore. We can’t find a trace of her before she went to work for Killer Body.”

“I’ll be.” She frowns and nods. “Kind of sounds made up, now that I think about it.”

“Julie told someone she went to elementary school here. I know it’s a long shot, but I thought maybe I could find someone who remembers her.”

She closes her eyes. “So many pretty little girls. I run into them, those former students, around town, ages later, and I can’t see any of those little girls inside them anymore. They’re all used up.”

“Maybe if I showed you some photographs of Julie, it would help.”

I open the file and take out the promotional shots, along with a portrait and a couple of candids of Julie and Bobby Warren.

“She would have been a beauty, even back then. When did you say, late seventies?” She rubs her palm over her chin. “Looks like she’s frosted her hair. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? So, it would have been brown back then, right? What we used to call dishwater blond?”

“Probably,” I say, pushing away thoughts of Lisa.

“Son of a gun. If the hair were different—” She grabs the portrait, pulls it close to her face.

My arms prickle, and I realize I have to get off this bench right now. “Do you recognize her?”

She nods slowly, unable to take her gaze away from the portrait. The look in her eyes showers me with more chills. “The girl wasn’t lying about one thing. Her name was Julie, all right.”

Tania Marie

The photographer’s name was Garza, whether first or last, she didn’t know. He was the kind of man you could be alone with and forget he was a stranger. Part of it was his ability to remove any intimacy from the experience. He could tug her collar, moveher arm and look at her as if she were a piece of artwork in progress without making her feel violated.

Unlike the paparazzi, his goal was not to expose her, to reveal her flaws, but to uncover her. His dark hair and intense gray eyes made him good-looking, in an innocuous, preoccupied way.

Tania Marie felt comfortable with him at once and hoped to hell she was getting better at judging character. She hadn’t done badly with Jay Rossi, at least so far. She felt better knowing he was in the other room, although for a moment there, she was afraid he was going to march right in behind her.

He waited outside while Garza posed her on a stool so small she was certain she’d slip off of it.

“It’s not going to show,” Garza said, as if reading her mind. “It will just give us some interesting angles to play with. In a minute, I’m going to have you sit on the floor.”

Shit. That’s all she needed, to have her thighs spread out like butter on that black tarp. She held the gaze of the camera. Smiled. And even though it wasn’t showing, sucked in her gut.

He clicked and moved in, turning her head, ever so slightly, with his thumb.

“Do we have to do the floor?”

“I think it might free you up a little. Now, big smile. Good.”

He had a point; the floor did free her, whatever the hell that meant. With the camera pointed down at her, she felt less inhibited.

“Another smile, Tania Marie.”

For months, people with cameras had been asking her for smiles. And for months, she’d been running from them. Maybe Rossi was right, and it was time for her to take charge and tell her story, her way.

Garza seemed pleased with his efforts, and they made plans to meet the following week for an outdoor session.

“You don’t look too bad off,” Rossi said after they were outside.

She’d heard the termgolden complexionall of her life, seen it in beauty articles and on makeup containers. His was the first deeply burnished skin tone that qualified as the real thing. Golden. In this light, Rossi’s eyes were golden, too. And interested. Interested in her. That made the whole day worth it—to return to someone who actually gave a flying flip.

“It wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. Different from my usual experience with photographers.”

“That has to be a bitch.” He spoke in the same tough-kid voice he’d used when he told her he would have kicked that stranger’s ass at the tequila bar.

“You can’t imagine.”