Page 85 of Killer Body

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 notthestory.” 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 whoJulie Larimore really is, we might be able to figure out what happened. And if it’s big enough—”

“You can bring down Killer Body?”