by Dale Mayer
Richard was nothing like those two sorry excuses for men.
And such comparisons would bring up all kinds of stuff that she had wanted to keep hidden. Her mind made the leap, now wondering if Richard had found the other two people in Elena’s will.
When he came out to dress, his clothes now hanging in her closet, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard. “Did you track down the other two people in Elena’s will?”
He shot her a glance and said, “One of them but unfortunately also deceased.”
“Isn’t that a lot of deaths?”
“Three were pretty straightforward, a bad car accident and cancer,” he said. “The last one was a drug overdose.”
“Oh. That would be Kiddy,” she said. “That likely leaves only Kenneth.”
Richard looked at her in surprise. “You knew Kiddy?”
She nodded. “Kiddy was a childhood friend. Elena had said that, if she could ever do anything to help her, she would. But Elena figured she was well down a negative pathway. Kenneth was a foster sibling who helped her out, helped both of us,” she admitted. “That’s a time of life I have blocked out as much as I could.”
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what happened with Kiddy. She had a drug overdose during that epidemic of bad drugs a few years back. She was found on a street corner already too far gone to save.”
“That’s just so sad,” she said.
“And you’re right. We’re still looking for Kenneth Lively. Hopefully he isn’t dead too.”
“I hope not,” she said.
“On the other hand, if he is, you get everything,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb.
She frowned at him. “First of all, I don’t need it. Second, I don’t want anybody thinking that I’m behind this. And it’s not what Elena wanted.”
“Well, the lawyer is still working on all that.”
She shook her head. “Whatever.”
“Are you taking care of the funeral arrangements?”
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t mention it because I was waiting for the release of the body.”
“Which we can’t do yet.”
She nodded. “We’ll do a celebration of life,” she said with a sad smile. “A lot of body-painting artists have contacted me, and I think I’ll host a paint fest, and we’ll have cocktails and invite the art world. I will paint something that I painted on Elena to celebrate her life and her own accomplishments.”
He looked at her in surprise. “That sounds absolutely wonderful,” he said. “Can you do that, or will that tax you too much?”
“I feel like I need to,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s too taxing or not. I need to give her a send-off of some kind. And that feels right. She would have had fun with that.”
He nodded and smiled. “As long as you will too.”
“No,” she said cheerfully. “I will end up bawling my eyes out from one moment to the next. But I can’t bring her back, so it is what it is.”
“Good way to look at it,” he said. “Have you already set it up?”
“Anita has been working on it,” she said. “We’re dealing with it one step at a time, making all the prep in the background until we can set a date.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said, “but no promises of when that will be.”
“This investigation is more important,” she said, “and we can’t say goodbye to Elena until this part is done.”
“And you need to know that sometimes it doesn’t happen as fast as we want it to.”
“I don’t think it ever does,” she said, “because, if I had a choice, it would already be over with, and we’d have that asshole in jail—or better yet dead,” she said.
He nodded. He finished dressing while she watched.
“I guess I have to go to work too.” She yawned, pulled herself from the bedding, and said, “I really don’t want to.”
“It’s the polar ice one today, isn’t it?”
“Arctic Ice, yes, and I have to be there early.” She rotated her shoulders and neck, walked over and picked up a pair of leggings and a loose T-shirt. With her back turned to him, she quickly dressed. She knew he was watching her with great interest when she turned around, catching him in the act, and tossed her nightie on the bed. “Hey, I made the offer this morning, but you turned me down.”
He snagged her as she slid through the doorway, pulled her up tight, grinding his pelvis against hers, and said, “Hold that thought.” And he kissed her hard. Then he left her limp against the doorjamb as he headed downstairs. “Hurry up,” he said cheerfully. “We need to get some breakfast and get out of here.”
Almost an hour later she walked into the showcase room and studied the Arctic Ice painting now on full display, all the canvas covers removed, and the scaffolding taken away. She studied the corner that she wanted fixed and realized that it had been.
Frankie came up and said, his tone a little different, “Is that okay, or do you want to get up there and do more?”
She looked at it closely, then turned to look at him with a beaming smile, and said, “Thank you. I think that’s pretty good now.”
He looked relieved.
“Obviously you’re getting better,” she said. “I’m really thrilled.”
He gave her that sheepish smile and said, “I keep hoping I’m getting better, but I don’t think so,” he said.
“I’m sure you are,” she said.
“I can’t help but think you probably should have used Naomi for this. Although she might have been difficult and hard to deal with, at least she was a known factor. A new model will be somebody completely different in that aspect.”
“I don’t even know how to get hold of her,” she said. “That’s not my deal at all.”
“Right. I guess Anita calls her, huh?”
“Yes,” she said, “and I have no idea if that’s even an option, but I don’t want it to be an option. I just want to try the new people.”
As she turned, the new model she had chosen for this job walked in. She looked excited and nervous. She waved and came racing over. “This is absolutely stunning,” she said warmly, as she looked up at the huge painting. “I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be when I’m done being painted.”
“You’ll see,” she said. “First, we’ll do the background colors on you, then I’ll line you up with the background art, so I can get an idea what I want to do on you. Then we’ll go from there.”
“Am I the only one?” she asked, staring up at the big painting.
“No, I have another one as well.” She smiled at Frankie, like she had a secret.
“Okay, good,” the new model said. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“You’ve done this before, correct?”
“Yes, I have,” she said, “of course. Just not … for you.”
“I’m the easy part,” Cayce said gently. “It’s the audience that makes it difficult.”
“I really like that part,” she said, “but I’ve never been in such a big production, like this. Will I be the one who takes the step out? I worry that, if I do it wrong, the surprise is gone.”
“If I do my job well,” she said, “you should be able to move restlessly up there, and it would just seem like the water moving around you. It’s one of the reasons why I’ll paint you where you are, so I can be certain that, if you can’t hold the pose very still for very long, it won’t look like anything other than the rippling water.”
“That sounds absolutely fabulous,” she said. “Will you have cameras and photos? Because I really want some for my own portfolio.”
“That won’t be an issue,” Cayce said. “So, go get ready, and I’ll meet you in that far corner of the room.”
“She’s got an innocence to her,” Frankie said, as she darted away.
“She absolutely does. There’s also a certain luminescence to her skin, and I’m looking forward to painting her.” Not to mention that her open and accessible
energy would be a joy to work with.
“And she was just one of the random ones?”
“We get hundreds of portfolio files sent to us,” she said. “She’s one of the four I initially picked.”
“You know something? Now I know why.”
She laughed. “I do know what I like. It’s just not always that easy to find it.” She looked over at him. “Now, what about you? Have you got work to do?”
“I do,” he said. “I’m working on the lighting, and I always want to make sure the lights are perfect, but I can’t finalize things until the models are mostly done.”
“Good thing you’ve got the lead on that,” she said. “My problem is that I know when the lighting is not right, but I don’t know how to fix it.”
He laughed. “That’s why we work well together. You go do your new model, and I’ll tinker with the lighting. I’m fascinated by what you said about the rippling water.”
“I’ll check back in a few hours,” she said, “and hopefully we’ll pull it off.”
He gazed at her, smiled, and said, “You always pull it off.”
*
Richard looked up as Andy approached.
“Somebody just called in to say that Naomi didn’t show up for a modeling job.”
Richard’s gaze narrowed, and he didn’t speak for a moment. “Naomi, Naomi?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Shit. Do we have an address?”
Andy held up a slip of paper. “Let’s go.” They bolted outside, and Andy said, “We need to find out if anybody has seen her.”
“Exactly.” They made it to her place within about twelve minutes. As they parked out in the street, they looked around. “This is a pretty high-class area for her, isn’t it?” Richard asked.
“Remember what Elena had for an asset base was surprising too,” Andy said.
“But it wasn’t her money, not originally at least,” Richard replied.
“She did make good money though,” Andy added.
“Do you think Naomi does?”
“I can’t imagine it,” Andy said. “Even if she did, how consistent would wealth be with a temperament like hers?”
“Who knows? Honestly, I’ve felt a little out of my league on this case in terms of knowing much about the people and the work involved.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Andy said. “Naomi’s been pretty upset these last few days, according to her agent who called it in.”
“Are we thinking she might have harmed herself?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “but who knows. We’ve seen stranger cases.”
“Absolutely.”
As they walked in and headed up to her apartment, they knocked on the door. There was no answer.
After another knock, somebody came out in the hallway and asked, “May I help you?”
They turned to look at a tall, slender, well-dressed male in his mid-thirties, staring at them with a surprised look on his face.
“Do you know Naomi?”
“Very well,” he said. “Why?”
“We have a report that she didn’t show up for a modeling shoot and that nobody can reach her.”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Naomi is prone to drama.”
“But doesn’t she need to show up for her shoots?”
At that, the younger man frowned. “Good point. She definitely needs the work, and she would never miss that. Not with what the lifestyle means to her.”
“What’s your name?” Richard asked. “And how do you know her?”
“Derek,” he said with a smile, reaching out and shaking their hands. “Naomi and I have known each other for decades. Do you want to go inside and check to make sure she’s okay then? I can do that,” he said, as he pulled out keys and inserted one into the lock.
“You have a key to her place?” Richard asked, frowning.
Derek looked at him. “It’s my apartment,” he said in a dry tone. “Naomi likes to pretend it’s hers. She does pay me token rent, albeit begrudgingly, but she’s constantly digging at me that it’s too high and that she should be paying less.”
“And what is too high?” Andy asked.
“She pays me twelve hundred a month,” he said.
The two men exchanged glances, then looked at him.
Derek nodded. “She has a sense of entitlement. I could easily get twice that for this place.” He opened the door, and they stepped inside to see an absolutely gorgeous apartment, very artistic looking, very contemporary.
“This is your place?”
He nodded. “The apartment is mine. The furniture is hers.” The furniture was just a shade less luxurious than the rest of the place.
“What is her money situation?”
“Right now, it’s really sad. She can’t afford to have lost the job she was offered or to be late for another.”
“But she is very temperamental and known to cause issues. Has she been fired from sets before?”
“Unfortunately, all the time.”
“So maybe you can tell me why you’re still friends then?” Richard asked him.
Derek looked at him in surprise. “My friendship is not dependent on her financial or mental or emotional status,” he said. “We were friends in kindergarten. That hasn’t changed.”
The two detectives stood here in the landing.
Derek said, “I’ll be right back.” He walked toward the bedroom, calling out, “Naomi, are you here?”
The detectives studied the main area, opened the front closet door, looking for something to say that she had been here recently. They walked into the kitchen to find a mess, not terribly surprised. A take-out container, an empty bag, a plate. Forks.
When Derek came out, his strides were long and purposeful, and a worried frown crossed his face. “She’s not here.”
“Maybe we could check her bedroom?”
He waved them through. “Yes, of course.”
They walked into the bedroom to see the bed was also a mess, with clothes on the floor, clothes on the chairs.
Sounding apologetic from behind them, Derek said, “She was never a neat person.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“She is mean, and other than the fact that she is greedy, jealous, arrogant, and of the opinion that no other woman can do what she can do when it comes to modeling, she hated Elena with a passion, and she hates to see others succeed with an almost equal amount of passion.”
“Do you know why?” Andy asked.
“I’m sure you can guess, Detective,” Derek said in a hard voice. “I have no illusions about who and what Naomi is. I still don’t. The fact of the matter is that she is who she is, and that will never change.”
“Why are you friends?” Richard asked again.
“Because I’ve known her for such a long time, I’ve seen her evolve,” he said. “It’s almost amusement at this point. She’s like an accident ready to happen.”
At that, Richard winced. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”
“No, it probably isn’t,” he said, “but it’s the truth. Just like the fact that she is only friends with me for what I can do for her.”
“And what is it that you can do for her?”
He laughed. “Well, this apartment for one. And I brought her the Chinese food the other day because she hadn’t eaten.”
“Is she that broke?”
He nodded. “When she is broke, she lives a very dangerous lifestyle.”
At that, something else clicked in Richard’s head. “Meaning the attack at the bar the other night?”
“Yes, and it’s not what you’re thinking,” Derek said. “It’s not that she’s prostituting herself. But she’s a very adept thief. She is offered lots of opportunities.”
“That can get very dangerous,” he said, “and it also completely opens up a suspect pool for our missing-person problem right now.”
“She also has a tendency,” Derek said, taking a deep breath, “to disappear for days a
nd weeks on end, particularly if she’s gone on a bender, when she gets very sick and depressed.”
“So, we don’t have any idea if she’s missing or if she just chose to walk away.”
“Exactly. The fact that the agent called you is something that is unusual in itself.”
“I think it was only because we had recently spoken to him,” Andy said.
“That makes more sense,” Derek said.
“I was wondering if she’d lost some major opportunities because of this or not?” Richard asked.
“All the time,” he said with a grimace. “I’ve been seriously considering just breaking off my almost daily contact because she’s on such a self-destructive path. But it felt wrong.”
“And your relationship all this time has been just friends?”
“Yes,” he said, “just friends. I’m gay,” he said, “so we’ve never been lovers. I never ever went in that direction.”
“And who is your partner currently?”
He looked a little startled at that question, but he answered readily enough. “Benjamin,” he said. “Benjamin Haskell.”
Richard nodded. He wasn’t sure what the hell was bothering him, but something was. Maybe it was that little bit of dark energy that he kept seeing, and the fact that he was even seeing it really drove him nuts because a part of him didn’t want to. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to see more of it, and he couldn’t or didn’t know how to. He tried to shift his position to look the way he had originally started this extended aura sight the other night with Stefan, but that didn’t work either. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing at all.
“And how has your relationship with Naomi been lately?” Andy asked.
“It was normal,” he said. “I keep my distance, but I’ve always been there if she needed me.”
“How does she get along with your partner?”
“She has never gotten along with any of my partners,” Derek said. “I think she considered them competition for herself.”
“So not just women are competition to Naomi?”
“When she loves, she loves deeply. I am hers in her mind, though whether she loves me or not, I don’t know,” he said. “But I am deemed hers, so anybody else in my world is somebody she has to compete with for attention.”
