by J. D. Robb
“If you need to ask questions, again, ask one of us who isn’t trying to work. We’ve lost one of our cast members, we have the media and the paparazzi and the goddamn cops crawling up our asses. I’m going to finish this scene before—”
“You’re going to have the media, the paparazzi, the goddamn cops—especially me—crawling up your asses for a little while longer. There’s been another murder.”
The fury on Roundtree’s face died off into sick dread, while others on the set reacted with gasps, mutters, and oaths.
“Who?” he demanded, looking around swiftly, like a father doing a head count of his brood. “Who’s been killed?”
“A. A. Asner, a private investigator.”
Something like relief chased with annoyance took over, face, voice, the sweeping gesture of his hand. “What the hell does that have to do with any of us?”
“Considerable. Now we can arrange for me and my partner to interview the individuals we feel pertain in a manner that causes the least amount of time and inconvenience to your production, or we can shut this production down until we’re satisfied.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she could pull that threat off, but it sounded ominous. Roundtree went the color of overcooked beets.
“Preston! Get legal on the line, that asshole Farnsworth the studio stuck us with. I’ve had enough of this shit. Enough.”
“Mason!” Before Eve could respond, Connie rushed onto the set. “What’s going on here? You take a breath.” She pointed a finger at him. “I mean it. You take a breath.”
He looked as though he might explode first, but he took the breath, then another when Connie wagged that extended finger at him. His color cooled a few degrees.
“She wants to shut us down because some private dick got killed. I’m not taking any more of this harassment.”
“A private investigator? Murdered?” Something in Connie’s tone had Eve focused on her.
“A. A. Asner. I don’t think that name’s unfamiliar to you. I’m not looking to shut anything down, if I get reasonable cooperation. I’ve got a job to do,” she said to Roundtree who’d gone back to tugging on his red goatee. “We can both do our jobs, but mine comes first. That’s not negotiable.”
“An hour,” he told her.
“We’ll start with that. I need to speak, individually, to everyone who attended the dinner party.”
“Steinburger and Valerie aren’t here. They’re off dealing with this fucking mess. Nadine’s probably off somewhere writing another book about this fucking mess. Matthew’s not on the call list today.”
“Let’s get them here. The sooner we can get this done, the sooner we can get out of your ass.”
His lips twitched in what might have been a reluctant smile quickly controlled. “Preston.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Take an hour!” Roundtree boomed it out. “I want everybody back here and ready to work in one hour.”
“Nobody leaves the premises,” Eve added. “We’ll speak to the cast members in their respective trailers. Go there,” she ordered. “Wait. I need a place to talk to non–cast members,” she told Roundtree.
“I’ve got an office here. You can use it.”
“That’ll work. I’ll take you first.” She turned to Connie.
“All right. I’ll take you to the office.”
“I’ll follow up with you,” she said to Roundtree. “Then Preston. I want to know when the others arrive on the premises.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Preston said again, then scurried off.
“Peabody, why don’t you go after Preston, make sure everybody goes where they’re supposed to go. And to save some time, contact Nadine yourself. Get her whereabouts and so on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This way.” Connie, in sensible flats and casual trousers, led the way.
“Why are you here today?” Eve asked her as they exited the soundstage.
“Everyone’s on edge, upset, as is to be expected. I’m useful. The cast and crew can talk to me. I make a good wailing wall.”
“And you can keep your husband from imploding.”
Connie sighed, negotiated a turn. “Yesterday was grueling. In our business we’re used to the microscope of the media. But yesterday, even with buffers in place, was grueling. I don’t know how many contacts I fielded, or avoided, or passed on to Valerie. Not just reporters, bloggers, entertainment site hosts, but from vid people—actors, directors, producers, crew—who either knew K.T. or just wanted to know what was going on.”
She unlocked a door, stepped into a roomy office with a huge, deep sofa, a trio of generous club chairs, a shiny galley kitchen, a private bath.
“I want coffee. Would you like coffee? I’ve had too much already, but, well, it’s too early to start drinking, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t mind coffee. Black.”
“Mason feels responsible,” Connie began as she programmed coffee. “He won’t admit it, but I know him. We hosted the party, she died there. We’ve been annoyed and impatient with her, and he regretted casting her in this project. We both knew she was difficult, but she handled herself so well initially.”
Connie shook her head, passed a hand over the hair she’d pulled back in a casual tail. “She was so enthusiastic, so cooperative—at first. But in the last two or three months, it’s been a series of arguments, demands, frustrations, delays.”
“Makes it tough to work. Tough for Roundtree to keep it all going.”
“It does—did. He’s not one to suppress his feelings or thoughts—as I’m sure you’ve observed. So he made it very clear how he viewed her behavior. He swore he’d never work with her again. And now, of course, he won’t. And he feels responsible.”
“He’s not, unless he’s the one who drowned her.”
“He couldn’t.” Graceful, contained, Connie moved to the sofa, set both cups on the table that fronted it. She sat, folded her hands. “I want you to listen to me. He rants, yells, stomps, and snarls. He’d have blackballed her if he could—and that’s not out of the realm of possibility. But he’d never do physical harm.”
Eve took a seat. “How about you?”
“Yes, I’m capable. I’ve thought about this. I think most of us are capable of killing under the right—or wrong—circumstances. I would be. I think I would be. I know I could happily have slugged her, then done a victory dance. I was that angry with her on the night of the party. I can only tell you I didn’t. I want you to find out who did, but I don’t want it to be anyone I care about. It’s hard to reconcile that.”
“Tell me about Asner. The PI.”
“You know about Marlo and Matthew.”
“And apparently so do you.”
“She confided in me yesterday. She told me everything—that they’d fallen in love, were sharing a place in SoHo, that K.T. found out, hired a detective. She told me about the recording. As I said, I’m a good wailing wall. It has to be the same detective who’s been killed. You wouldn’t be here asking questions otherwise. But I don’t understand it.”
“He had the original recording, and from what we’ve gathered, intended to sell it to an interested party.”
“The media.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who else? Marlo or Matthew?” Obviously exasperated, Connie threw up her hands. “I hope to God they have more sense than that, or that I talked some of that sense into them yesterday. Who cares?” She flicked the wrist of one lifted hand. “Yes, yes, the media would salivate, the blogs will bloat. The video would garner millions of hits. Is it unfair—certainly. Is it a terrible invasion of their private lives—absolutely. If you want fair and privacy, find another line of work.”
“That’s pragmatic?”
“It’s survival,” Connie said flatly. “I was furious for them, disgusted with K.T.—even though she’s dead. It was a horrible, unstable, selfish thing to do. But they’re two young, gorgeous, happy, talented people. And this is nothi
ng to get so worked up over. If the recording leaks, it leaks, then you deal with it. Someone like Valerie will take that ball and spin it.”
“Even if it leaks before the project’s finished, while Julian and Marlo are supposed to be the hot ticket?”
“That’s just nonsense anyway, isn’t it? Maybe it does boost the numbers, at least initially, but it’s nonsense. The numbers people latched onto this angle, partially because Marlo and Julian do have wonderful chemistry, and partially because the characters they’re playing are real people—a couple, a hot ticket, that the media and public are fascinated with.”
She smiled at Eve’s expression. “If you wanted to stay out of the public eye and consciousness, you should have found a different husband, and shouldn’t be so good at your work.”
A little hard to argue, Eve decided, with pithy common sense.
“Does your husband share your opinion over the nonsense?”
“He liked the idea of Marlo and Julian perpetuating a relationship offscreen. He felt it kept them in character for longer stretches. But he didn’t know about Matthew. I don’t think anyone did.”
“Where were you between ten and midnight?”
“Home. Yesterday was exhausting, and it wasn’t the time to go out and socialize.”
“Was Roundtree with you?”
“Of course. They shut down production for the day yesterday, for obvious reasons. And also to add to security. Added to it all was the problem of logistically shooting a handful of scenes that involved K.T. Mason, Nadine, and the scriptwriter holo-conferenced off and on during the day, working that out. After dinner, Mason went down to view and edit, to make some of the changes work more smoothly. I don’t think he came to bed until after two, then he wanted to be at the studio by six, for a breakfast meeting with Joel and two of the studio execs who’d come in from California.”
“What were you doing while he worked?”
“I put a droid on the ’links, programmed to get me only in case of emergency. I’d had enough. I read scripts in bed, or intended to. I think I must’ve gone under by nine.”
“So you and your husband weren’t actually together in the same area of the house during the time in question?”
Connie sat silent for a moment. “No. If you’re asking if either of us has an alibi, I’d have to say I don’t. I didn’t take any communications, didn’t speak to or see anyone from about eight-thirty until Mason took the script I’d been reading out of my hands and climbed into bed at about two this morning.”
“Okay. Thanks for the time.”
“That’s it?”
“For now. If you could send Roundtree in, we’ll keep this moving so he can get back to work.”
While she waited, Eve made notes, took a moment to poke around the office. The walls held numerous framed photos. Roundtree with various actors—some she recognized, some she didn’t. Of Roundtree on some outdoor location, high in a crane, baseball cap backward on his head as he scowled at a monitor. One of his Best Director Oscars sat on a shelf along with some other awards, and she noted a football trophy for MVP, from his Sacramento high school, in what she calculated would have been his final year.
Family photos sat on the desk, facing the chair.
He walked in, kind of lumbering, like a bad-tempered bear. “I’m supposed to apologize, but fuck that. I don’t like anybody coming on my set and telling me what to do.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“And if you try shutting us down, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”
“Then why don’t you take the stick out of your ass, sit down, get this done so we don’t have to face that issue?”
He bared his teeth at her, then grinned. “Fuck it. I like you. You piss me off, but I’ve been living with you for better than six months now. You’re a hard-nosed, hard-ass, hardworking bitch. I like that.”
“Yay. Where were you between ten and midnight?”
“Working. I’m a hard-nosed, hard-ass, hardworking son of a bitch.”
“At home. Alone.”
“I don’t like somebody breathing over my shoulder. We’ve got a goddamn problem. I have to fix it. I’ve got a cast and crew tied up in knots. Connie …” He dropped into a chair, and for the first time let the fatigue show. “She loved that fucking lap pool.”
He sat, tugging his goatee, brooding. “I surprised her with it a couple years back. Had it done when we were back on the Coast. She loved to swim, and she uses it every day we’re in New York. Every morning, even if she’s working and has a six A.M. call, she uses the pool first.”
He trained those sharp blue eyes on Eve, and the anger and bitterness came clearly. “Do you think she’s going to be able to do that now? Go up there, enjoy her morning swim? She feels responsible for what happened to K.T.”
Eve angled her head, thinking how Connie had said the same of him. “Because?”
“She laid into K.T. after dinner. She planned the party, right down to the goddamn mints. It was her idea to have the whole stinking thing, and now she’s sick about it, and trying to hold up for everybody else. That’s who she is.”
He rolled his shoulders back. “Now what the fuck is this about some PI, and what’s it to do with any of us?”
“Harris hired Asner to plant cameras in the loft Marlo and Matthew are living in, in SoHo.”
His brow beetled. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”
Eve laid it out for him, or as much as she wanted to lay out. And watched him absorb, chew on, spit out until he shoved to his feet and prowled the office.
“Idiots. Bunch of idiots. What the hell do I care if Marlo and Matthew want to screw like college kids on spring break? Christ’s sake. And I swear to fucking God on a mountaintop, if that stupid, selfish, crazy-ass bitch wasn’t dead I’d strangle her.”
He kicked his desk, a sentiment and gesture she understood as she was prone to the same.
“Why the hell didn’t you arrest this Asner asshole?”
“I would have, but it’s hard to book a dead guy.”
“Shit.” He dropped into the chair again. “What a fucking mess.”
“How much damage would the recording do, if it leaked?”
“How the hell do I know? You can’t figure the public. You just do good work, try to pick good people, good scripts, then throw the dice. It’ll be embarrassing, for Marlo and Matthew, and for Julian, but that won’t last. It’ll make the studio look stupid, at least to those who know how they fabricate some of the hype. Other than that, it’s still rolling the dice.”
Peabody poked her head in when Eve sent Roundtree out.
“Want an update?”
Eve crooked her finger.
“Nadine’s still a little pissed she didn’t latch onto the Marlo/Matthew connection before you did. She wants exclusives right, left, and sideways. She contacted everybody we’re talking to via ’link yesterday, and actually managed to get into Julian’s hotel room—with his permission—for a one-on-one in the afternoon. She didn’t have much to add, which I figured was what you wanted me to find out, but she’s digging like a terrier.”
“Good.”
“Preston’s alibied. I verified. He and Carmandy were in her room until after midnight. We can check hotel security on that, but it feels solid.”
“All right.”
“Matthew’s in the studio, was actually in his trailer. He and Marlo came in together this morning. Steinburger and Valerie are also here. They’ve been in his office working on spin and media angles.”
“Why don’t you take the lovebirds—separately. Then Andrea. I’ll take Valerie first, then Steinburger, round it out with Julian.”
“Works for me. I’ll get Valerie on her way.”
Eve busied herself with more notes, linking names with lines until Valerie clipped in on her important shoes. She wore an earlink, had a pocket ’link, and a PPC clipped to what Eve supposed was a fashionable belt. She carried two go-cups.
“Mango sm
oothies,” she said, setting one on the table. “I thought you might like one. Now.” She sat, crossed her legs. “How can I help you?”
“You can start by giving me your whereabouts last night, between ten P.M. and midnight.”
Valerie held up one finger in a one-moment gesture, and unclipped her PPC. “Let me check my calendar. It’s cross-checked, of course, in my memo book. I have that in my briefcase in Joel’s office. I holoed with reporters on the West Coast until ten. I believe my memo book will have that conference ending at approximately ten after the hour, as it ran over a bit. I had a meeting scheduled with Joel at ten-thirty. I believe we brainstormed and handled a variety of issues until about one this morning.”
“And where did you conference and meet and brainstorm?”
“At Joel’s pied-à-terre. I stayed in the guest quarters last night to simplify the situation.”
“Situation?”
Valerie maintained her pleasant, slightly smug expression. “K.T. Harris’s murder is a situation.”
“At least. Are you and Joel Steinburger sexually involved?”
“No. That’s insulting.”
“Insulting because you’re no longer sexually involved? Because I have two different statements verifying you had been previously.”
“It’s no one’s business, and not at all pertinent. Mr. Steinburger and I are not involved in the way you imply.”
“But you were?”
“Briefly. Several months ago. We ended that phase of our relationship amicably, and work together. Nothing more.”
“Uh-huh. And last night, you and Mr. Steinburger worked together in his pied-à-terre, from ten-thirty until one.”
“That’s correct. I conferred with my assistant, as I recall. All of us are putting in considerable overtime.”
“On the situation.”
“Yes.”
“How are you handling the Matthew-and-Marlo-as-lovers portion of the situation?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Tell me this. How much overtime did you put in on K.T. Harris while she was alive?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, how did you spin, cover up, keep quiet, her addiction problems, her threats, the blanket dislike for her on this project?”
