Celebrity in Death

8

Dressed in traff ic-stopping red, her hair in glinting gold waves rather than Mira’s subtle sable, Andrea Smythe sat at the scarred table in Interview. She wore bold black hoops at her ears and a sparkle of black stones forming an elongated heart at the hollow of her throat.

She tipped her head with a smile when Eve and Peabody entered.

“It’s satisfying to know our set designer was so accurate. This looks very much like what we’re using.”

“Not much to design,” Eve commented. “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Smythe, Andrea, on the matter of Harris, K.T. Case number H-58091.”

“So formal.”

“It’s not black-tie, but we take murder pretty seriously around here. We appreciate you coming in.”

“It seemed the wise choice, given the circumstances.”

“You’ve already been informed of your rights and obligations. Do you need me to read them to you again?”

“No. I have an excellent memory.”

“That should help.” Both Eve and Peabody took their seats. “Do you have anything to add to your statements from last night? Any corrections or changes to same?”

“No.”

“Would you like anything before we get started?” Peabody asked her. “Coffee? A soft drink?”

Andrea smiled again. “You’re to put me at ease while your lieutenant keeps me on edge. It’s a good rhythm. I think Marlo and K.T. captured it well for the camera. Not perfectly, but very well. I’m fine, but thanks for asking.”

“This isn’t a scene,” Eve reminded her. “There’s no script. And the body is very real.”

“I’m aware. Should I have played the part?” Andrea lifted her shoulders. “Worn mourning black, put on my solemn face? I could call up a tear or two. But black’s not my best color, and it’s no secret K.T. and I weren’t close. I’m sorry she’s dead. I’m sorry, philosophically, that death is part of life, and I think—outside fiction—murder is a fucking coward’s game. A selfish, self-serving fucking coward’s game. Other than that, her death means little to me.”

“Inconvenient though, isn’t it? Given the shooting hasn’t wrapped?”

Andrea lifted her shoulders again, crossed her legs. “Her scenes were nearly done, and Roundtree will find a way to work around her. He’s a brilliant and innovative director.”

“And there’s the boost from the media buzz.”

“True enough. It’s the nature of the beast. The machine will make a great deal more out of K.T. dead than they did—or would have—out of her alive. Ironic, isn’t it? She’ll finally have all the fame and attention she craved. She only had to be murdered to get it. And that’s unnecessarily cold,” Andrea added with a sigh. “Even for her. I’m sorry I said that.”

“You’ve made it clear you didn’t like Harris, found her personally and professionally … difficult’s the word that keeps coming up. Is that accurate?”

“Bloody bull’s-eye.”

“You and she had the occasional confrontation?”

“Occasional. I doubt there was anyone working on the Icove project who escaped a confrontation with K.T. Again, the nature of the beast.”

“You’ve been forthcoming about the tone of your relationship with the victim, your feelings about and toward her. That’s why I have trouble understanding why you haven’t been forthcoming about the argument you had with her last night, shortly before she was murdered.”

“Did we argue last night?” Andrea spread her hands and smiled. “I couldn’t say. We exchanged unpleasant words so often, they blur.”

“I don’t think so. Not with that excellent memory of yours. I think an argument with her, on the night she was murdered, would stick with you.”

“She’d been deliberately rude at dinner, upset Connie. I told her she was a flaming git, deserved to be tossed out on her considerable ass. She’d been drinking enough to tell me to fuck off. That was about it, and hardly made any impact with me.”

“Again, I don’t think so. If it had been that simple you wouldn’t lie and evade. That tells me it was more—more personal, more intense. Word is she usually avoided you, but last night the two of you were seen having a heated discussion—one you failed to mention in your statement. One you’re lying about now. What did she have on you, Andi? What was she shoving in your face?”

Andrea looked Eve dead in the eye. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“See, that just makes me wonder more. What happens when I start wondering, Peabody?”

“When you start wondering, you start digging. When you dig, you tend to find things people want to stay buried. A lot of things,” Peabody added. “Sometimes they don’t have anything to do with the case, but once they’re uncovered, they have to be picked over.”

“Yeah, and when you start uncovering things, you have to ask more questions, talk to more people. And the media’s got its collective ear to the ground. In fact, I have a media conference this afternoon. Who knows what questions might come up?”

“Now who’s threatening whom?” Andrea demanded.

“It’s not a threat. It’s an outline. The more you try to cover up, the more I’ll dig. I’ll find out, and it’ll be messy.”

Leaning back, Eve rocked a little on the back legs of her chair. Andrea’s foot—shod in red with a slender black heel, had begun to jiggle.

“And then I’ll wonder if you didn’t take that argument up on the roof for more privacy. Maybe it got more heated, maybe it got physical. You shove her. She hits her head. There’s blood. She’s unconscious. You’re so pissed. The bitch just wouldn’t quit. She got in your face. You’ve had enough. What’s one more shove, this time into the pool. She deserved it. She fucking asked for it.”

“No one deserves to be killed, and you’re a bleeding loon if you think I’m going to tumble for the hard sell. I didn’t kill her. I never went up to the roof last night. And I have nothing more to say to you.”

“That’s your right. We’ll dig, and we’ll find, because now I know whatever you and the vic got into last night mattered. It scares you.”

“She didn’t scare me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I do.” Eve leaned forward. “You think because you’re in the public eye, the media’s already broadcast everything there is to know or find out. Not even close. If you stole an ice pop when you were six, I’ll find out. If one of your husbands skimmed on his taxes, I’ll find out. If one of your kids cheated on a spelling test in grade school, I’ll find out.”

Andrea leaned forward in turn, and once again met Eve’s eyes dead on. But this time they held fury. “Leave my children out of this.”

There, Eve thought. Weak spot.

“You’ve got a son about the age of the victim.” She glanced at Peabody.

“Cyrus Drew Pilling, age twenty-six. Only child with second husband, Marshall Pilling. Married October of ’34, divorced January of ’36. No children with first husband, Beau Sampson, married June ’30, divorced April ’32. Twin girls with third and current husband, age eighteen. Married Jonah P. Kettlebrew, September ’40.”

“My family has nothing to do with this. I don’t appreciate these goddamn insinuations.”

“I bet your family’s visited the set. Maybe Harris made a play for your son—or your husband. Hell, maybe she wanted to try out a couple of girls. Maybe one or all of them caught the ball and ran with it. That’d be a pisser.”

“That’s a filthy thing to say, and about decent people. People you don’t even know.”

Eve stood, planted her palms on the table, crowded in. “I will know them. That’s your choice. It was personal between you and Harris, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the work, her bitchiness. It was personal. It’s all over you.”

“I’ve taken care, and worked hard to protect my children, to keep them out of the public eye. I’m not going to let you expose them to this ugliness because you’re shooting fucking craps.”

“A lot of police work is a crapshoot. Was Harris messing with your family, Andi?”

“It had nothing to do with my family. My family of record.” She passed a hand over her brow, back into her hair as she studied Eve, then Peabody in turn. “Are we wrong about you? Am I now in the position of trusting the words on the page as to who you are? If you’re a woman—if you’re women—of integrity?”

“This one’s got a medal for it,” Eve said, gesturing to Peabody. “But, I guess, it’s a crapshoot.”

Andrea managed a strained laugh. “It was about my godson. He’s like one of my own. He’s a couple years older than Cy, and they’ve been friends since birth. Dorian’s mother and I go back to grammar school. We’re family.”

Eve sat again. “Okay.”

“He’s a good boy, young man. But a few years ago he got in some trouble. He came to California looking for a break, as so many do. He stayed with us awhile, and I was able to get him some work. But he … he was young.”

“Okay,” Eve said again. “What kind of trouble did he get into?”

“Too many parties, too many people able and willing to provide him with illegals. There was nothing we could do, nothing his mother could do. Over a year, nearly a year and a half, he spiraled down. We bailed him out of jail. He’d go to some meetings, then back to the clubs, to the parties, to the street corners. He stopped getting work.”

“It’s hard,” Peabody said gently, “when someone you love hurts themselves, and you can’t stop it.”

“Yes.” Andrea steadied herself. “It’s bloody brutal. He stole or prostituted himself to get the next fix. He lied and schemed and … I felt responsible. He’d come to me, so bright, so shiny and young. Then I barely recognized him in what the drugs made him. A liar, a thief, a cheat. A violent young man. One day, it caught up with him, and the dealer he’d stolen from beat him nearly to death. He was almost …”

She trailed off, shook her head. “In any case, the police contacted my son. Dorian had Cy’s ’link number on him. Hitting bottom they call it, for good reason. When he could walk again, Dorian went into rehab. I knew a place with an exceptional reputation. A discreet place in Northern California. It brought him back, helped him find Dorian again.”

“How did she find out?”

“She was there. Fate is a cold, hard bitch.” Bitterness crackled in the words. “K.T. was in the same place, at the same time. They attended group together a few times, and Dorian held nothing back in group. As I said, it brought him back. He lives in London where he’s a solicitor. He’s engaged to be married, a lovely girl. They came to New York for a visit a week or so ago—and to the set, of course. She recognized him. And seeing our connection, thought it would be amusing to suggest how it might be if the media got wind of the story, of the trouble he’d been in.”

“Was she blackmailing you?”

“No. Taunting me. She understood it upset me, unsettled me, as little else she could say or do would. Dorian made restitution for that period of his life. Why should she want to expose him, his family, his fiancée to public shame? To hit back at me, of course.”

“Did you go up with her to the roof? Did she push and push, Andi, until you finally pushed back?”

“No. No,” she repeated. “During the argument you’re talking about, I told her to do her bloody worst, that I’d make sure the media knew how they’d come by the information, and she’d be the one digging out from the shit storm. I’d talked to Dorian that morning, and I’d told him what was happening.”

Her eyes filled, but she blinked back the tears. “He told me to stop worrying. To stop letting her bully me, and use him as a cudgel. He’d told his girl everything long before he’d asked her to marry him. He’d given the partners at his firm full disclosure during the hiring interview. And he’d only be sorry, should she follow through with the threat, if it embarrassed me.”

This time she didn’t manage to blink back the tears. “It wasn’t about being embarrassed.”

“You wanted to protect him,” Peabody murmured.

“I’d done such a poor job of it before. But he didn’t need me to protect him. So when she started on me about it at the party last night, I said everything I wanted to say. The upshot of which is, fuck off, you ugly cunt. Those were the last words I spoke to her, and I’m not sorry for them. Not in the least.”

When they’d ended the interview, had Andrea escorted out, Eve sat another moment. “Do you buy it?”

“Yeah. The facts can easily be verified. The rehab center, the timing, if they were both there and so on. It would be stupid to lie about it.”

Eve nodded in agreement. “Let’s verify anyway.”

“You don’t buy it?”

“I’d say the odds are good she had a godson who was in the same rehab as K.T., that they went to group together. That K.T. recognized him when he came to visit the set.”

“So we bump her down the list.”

“No, we don’t. I believe ‘fuck off, you ugly cunt’ were likely the last words Andi said to K.T. Harris. But she may very well have said them to her on the roof, right after she rolled an unconscious Harris into the pool.”

“Aw, man.”

“Family’s the weak spot, and Harris zeroed in, stuck a shiv in it. So, yeah, maybe Smythe pushed back—Go on, spill it, bitch, and it’ll be worse for you. Harris is drunk and aggressive, and they take it up to the roof. Smythe doesn’t want this confrontation public. It escalates. Hell, maybe Harris got physical first, but when Harris goes down, Smythe’s enraged, had her fill. Drags Harris into the pool, mops up the blood, and goes down for another drink. And the world, as she sees it, is minus one cunt.”

“Do you really think she could do it?”

“I think she’s got the balls for it, yeah. I don’t know whether she’s got the cold. But she stays on the high side of the list.”

They took Matthew next. He struck a casual note with a dark green shirt over a lighter tee with jeans and high-top skids. He jumped on Peabody’s offer of a drink, opted for a citrus cooler. He studied the two-way-mirror wall, shifted his butt on the chair.

“I always wondered what it felt like in one of these rooms. It feels nervous. Like the air’s just a little too thin.”

“Do you have something to be nervous about?” Eve asked him.

“When a cop wants to talk to you in a room like this, you’re going to be nervous. That’s part of it, right? The interviewee is already a strike down at the plate.”

He took a swallow of his cooler. “Do you think I can get a look at EDD while I’m here? I was setting that up with McNab before … before.”

“I’ll check with Captain Feeney.” Casual dress and attitude, Eve thought. She’d play on that. “How are you doing, Matthew?”

“Okay. No, not really. She was dead when I pulled her out of the water. I know it’s probably stupid, but it hit me later. She was dead when I pulled her out, when I gave her CPR, mouth-to-mouth. She was dead the whole time. My head keeps going back to that. Not that I tried, but that she was dead the whole time.”

“And the two of you had once been intimate.”

“Yeah. I knew the shape of her body, the feel of her skin, her mouth. And last night, I touched her, put my mouth on her. And she was dead. But she … felt the same. I can’t get past it.”

“You said last night you hadn’t been involved sexually for several months.”

“That’s right.”

“But she wanted to be.”

“I think she just wanted what she couldn’t have. Some people are wired that way. Maybe.”

“It had to put you on the spot, especially since you were playing lovers.”

“I wouldn’t say she made it easy, but she had a lot of ambition. She wouldn’t screw up the work to screw with me.”

“You said she wrecked your trailer.”

“Yeah.” He took another swallow. “Had to be. She didn’t even want me or care about me that way—not really. She just …” He shrugged. “I should’ve let her break it off. Looking back, I wish I’d held out until she dumped me. Then she wouldn’t have stayed so pissed.”

“The way you talked last night made it sound as if she was obsessed. In fact, I believe you used that term.”

“I don’t know.” His gaze, green as his shirt, flicked to the two-way glass again. “I guess, sort of. I think she just didn’t like not being the one calling it off. When I think about it,” he continued, “she had more grease than I do, career-wise. She could’ve pushed to have someone else cast as McNab. Maybe she figured we’d hook up during the shooting, then she could dump me. I don’t know. I don’t even know why I’m thinking about it. She’s dead.”

“It couldn’t have gone over well with her when you and Marlo started sleeping together.”

His face went blank, utterly, as he set down his drink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know you’re sleeping with Marlo Durn, or you don’t understand the term?”

“Listen, I don’t know where you got that information, but—”

“Are you denying it?” Eve flattened her voice. “Because lying to a police officer in Interview doesn’t go over well. It just makes us all suspicious and pushy.”

He hesitated, shifted. “My relationship with Marlo doesn’t have anything to do with K.T.—or anybody. It’s personal.”

“You and Marlo romping on the sheets doesn’t have anything to do with a woman who, by your own statement, was obsessed with you? Stalked you? Vandalized your trailer? Does that fly for you, Peabody?”

“It doesn’t even get off the ground.” Peabody’s tone, her expression radiated soft sympathy. “I’m sorry, Matthew. It’s awkward and uncomfortable when you have to talk about private business, but if you try to avoid and evade, it just looks bad. The way I see it, you and Marlo are both adults, both free to, you know, enjoy each other.”

“You’d think,” he muttered. “It doesn’t have anything to do with K.T.,” he insisted. “We were done, over—finished before Marlo and I even met.”

“But K.T. didn’t want it to be done, over, finished,” Eve prompted.

His tone, his face hardened. “That was her problem.”

“She made it yours.”

“She was a pain in the ass, okay? A serious pain in the ass even before she found out Marlo and I were together. It just got uglier once she found out we were.”

“When was that?”

“A couple of weeks ago, I guess. She went to Marlo’s trailer, got in her face about it, told Marlo a bunch of crap about me, how I was just using her, and how she—I mean K.T. and me—how we were still making it. We weren’t. We did some publicity, some photo shoots where we were in character. That’s just part of the job, but we weren’t seeing each other. In fact, it got to the point were I could barely stand to do a scene with her.”

“Did that confrontation cause friction between you and Marlo?”

“No. Marlo didn’t buy in to K.T.’s bullshit.”

“But it upset you,” Eve pressed.

“Yeah. Okay. When Marlo told me, I got pissed. And okay, I got into K.T.’s face about it. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve listened to Marlo and just let it go, but I didn’t. I told K.T. to kiss it, and stay the hell out of my personal business. To stay away from Marlo off the set. She tried to play me, telling me how Julian and Marlo were screwing around. How I could ask him; he’d tell me.”

The temper showed now, in his face, his body, his voice. “I told her she was pathetic. And hell, it was like a flashback, with her screaming and crying and threatening to ruin my life, my career. All I did was make it worse.”

“Define worse.”

“Marlo and I got this loft. It belongs to a buddy of mine, outside the business. He’s away for a couple months, and we’re using it. We’ve been careful, using disguises to come and go, keeping it quiet.”

“Because of Harris?”

“No. Well, that, too. But the suits and the publicity machine really want to play up the Eve/Roarke/Marlo/Julian angle.” He managed a wan smile. “Just not as sexy if Eve and McNab are hooked up.”

“You’re putting me off, Matthew.”

Now his grin came quick, easy. “See? Marlo and I are team players. And the fact is, this project’s a big break for me. We decided to keep it private—for that, and because we wanted it to be. It’s easy to get caught up in that machine, then you’re hearing or reading about how you’re this or that, or she’s doing whatever. We just want a chance to see where this goes without the hype and the circus. I know a lot of people figure it’s just Hollywood, and actors hit up for shagfests instead of the real. But it feels real with Marlo. The first time I met her … I’ve never felt about anybody like this. We just want a chance. So we’ve been keeping it quiet for us, for the project.”

“K.T. found out about the loft.”

“I guess we got a little careless. I know it seems stupid, putting on a wig or dressing up just to go home—and it is. But at first it was fun, too. But I guess we slipped up somewhere. Coming to the end of the project, thinking we were nearly there. She must’ve followed me. It’s the only thing we could figure because she knew all about the loft. And she said …”

His color came up, and he lifted his drink, gulped some down. “She said she had pictures. That she’d made a vid of the two of us. In bed.”

“From inside the loft?”

“She said she found my swipe and code when she broke into my trailer. How she’d cloned it. And she hired this private investigator to set up a camera in the bedroom, over the closet. Maybe she was blowing smoke, maybe not. But she knew stuff about the loft, the colors, the setup. And when we checked out the security discs, there were a couple of blank areas on two separate days.”

“That must’ve been upsetting.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you could call it upsetting.” His hand fisted on the table, then relaxed, reached for his drink again. “I wanted to kick her ass, okay? I’ve never hit a woman in my life, but I wanted to hurt her. But I didn’t. You know what she said?”

“I’m all ears,” Eve told him.

“She said I had to dump Marlo—and make it a hard dump. And I had to pick up with her where we left off, only she’d be calling the shots. She wanted a big media announcement on how we’d fallen in love on the set. Who does that?” he demanded. “Who wants somebody who doesn’t want them?”

“And if you refused?”

“She was going to put the video on the ’Net. And she had guys lined up who’d talk about how Marlo had sex with them—all kinds of weird sex.”

The anger seemed to drain out of him, and he said, quietly, “I think she’d lost her mind. I swear to God, I think she’d just lost her fucking mind.”

“When did she give you the ultimatum?”

“God.” He scrubbed at his face. “The day she was killed. That morning. I said I didn’t believe her. She said I was making a fool of her, making her a joke, and nobody got away with that. She said she’d give me a preview that night, so I could see she had the goods.”

“Did she ask you to meet her on the roof, Matthew?”

“She told me I’d better meet her. I told Marlo. I wasn’t going to. I was going to handle it on my own, but one of the things we promised each other was to be up-front. No pretenses, no game playing. So I told her. We decided, screw it. It’s our life, right? And like you said, we’re free to be with each other. Being team players doesn’t mean letting some crazy bitch call the shots. Plus, if she had a vid, and made it public, we’d press charges.”

He heaved out a sigh, shoved his drink aside. “Marlo was all over that, maybe it’s being inside a cop’s skin for the last few months. But she said if K.T. paid somebody to break into our place, set this up, and she used it this way, we’d damn, well see her ass in jail—and if the producers, Roundtree, the public, the media didn’t like it, well, screw them, too.”

“But the two of you went up to the roof,” Eve reminded him.

“Yeah. We had this plan. We went up earlier, before dinner—just to take a look around, sit down, and talk it through. We decided we’d go up together, confront her, make her threaten us again, talk about the PI and the camera, all that. Marlo had a recorder in her purse. Then we’d tell K.T. if she followed through, we’d take the recording to the cops. Maybe people would get off watching the two of us in bed, but they’d get off big-time when K.T. Harris went to jail for blackmail and accessory to … I don’t know. Marlo had a whole freaking list.”

“And how did that go over with Harris?”

“It didn’t, because she was dead when we got up there. Look, I argued with her earlier in the evening. I asked her to forget all this, just grab some sanity and back off before it went too far to handle. And she grabbed my crotch.”

He tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling. “Jesus. She grabbed my balls, and said, ‘I’ve got you by these, baby, and you’d better remember it.’”

He took a breath, looked back at Eve. “We should’ve told you. We should’ve told you everything straight out, but it all seemed so … huge. And we didn’t have any proof. After we realized she was dead, after the CPR didn’t work, Marlo looked through K.T.’s purse.” He winced. “I know that sounds cold, but she was dead, and we wanted to … How would you feel?” he demanded. “How would you feel if a bunch of strangers sat around watching you and Roarke in bed, or you and McNab?”

“I’d probably want to cause harm to the person responsible.”

“We were going to. Marlo’s way—your way. But there wasn’t any vid or any part of one in her bag. She must’ve been lying all along. I don’t get it. I swear to God, I don’t know why she’d lie. Maybe she thought I’d just cave, then when I didn’t she had to save face. I don’t know.”

“Or maybe you’d had enough. You got mad, and you pushed. Who’d blame you? After that, it just happened so fast. Impulse and rage. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, didn’t mean for her to drown. You just wanted the video, wanted to protect yourselves, your privacy, the project. But then you didn’t get her out in time.”

“No. No. No. She was in the pool, facedown, when we got up there. We didn’t even think of the video until … I tried. We both tried. Everything happened exactly the way we told you. We left out the blackmail, the threats. But it happened exactly the way we said. I swear to you.”

“Including Marlo going up with you, with a recorder on her?”

“Yeah. Like I said, we were going to—” The light seemed to dawn, like a switch flicked. “Jesus Christ, we’re idiots. We’ve been so … We’ve got a recording. Marlo turned it on when we started up. We tested it first. We have a recording.”