Celebrity in Death

would kill her. We like drama, and we’re lying when we say otherwise. We feed on it. But not like this.”
    “Do you have specific problems with her? Personally?”
    “Oh, let me count.” She shoved at her hair in a way Eve found oddly familiar to her own impatient gesture. “She hated me.”
    “For any particular reason?”
    “Again, let me count. I’ve had an Oscar nomination. I didn’t win, but I’m an Academy Award–nominated actor—and that was a pisser forher. She let me know she knew I’d slept my way to that part. I’d dated the screenwriter—before he wrote it, before the casting, before any of it, but we had dated, and we’d stayed friends. She considered that whoring my way to an Oscar nod. I was hogging the screen time in this project, pushing Roundtree to diminish her role and so on and so on. She cornered me tonight, right before the gag reel. She wanted to know how I’d feel when the media got wind I was blowing Roundtree, Matthew, and Julian. She said Connie knew all about it, and Nadine would be leading off with a segment on how I sucked my way to every part on the next installment of
Now.”
    “How did you respond to that?”
    “I told her to go fuck herself. That was the last thing I said to her. ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself, K.T., because nobody else wants to.’” She squeezed her eyes shut. “God.”
    “If someone said that to me, I’d want to punch them—at minimum.”
    “If I’d been in character, I might’ve punched her.” After letting out a breath, Marlo stared at Eve, eyes miserable. “Then I guess I’d feel worse than I do now.”
    “Okay, that should do it for the moment. You can go home. Ask Connie to come in before you leave.”
    “That’s it?”
    “For right now.”
    “Will you tell us when you know what happened?”
    “Yes. I’ll be in touch.”
    Marlo got up, started for the door. “We are suspects, aren’t we?” she asked Eve.
    “You researched the part. What do you think?”
    “That you think K.T. was murdered, and one of us did it.” Marlo shuddered. “I keep waiting for someone to yell ‘Cut.’”
    “She doesn’t like knowing the last thing she said to a dead womanwas ugly,” Mira commented. “She didn’t like her, and quite a bit, but she also felt the victim was beneath her. She found her crude, pathetic, and as ugly as that last comment.”
    “And a potential threat to her reputation.”
    “You don’t believe Marlo’s having affairs with Roundtree, Julian, and Matthew?”
    “Not with Julian or Roundtree, but she’s having one with Matthew.”
    Surprised, Mira sat back. “Why do you think that? I didn’t get any sort of indication from either of them of that sort of interest.”
    “No, they’re good. That’s going to be an issue here. Actors, and good ones. They’re keeping it quiet. But I have to figure two people aren’t leaving a party—the lights, the drinks, the laughs, to go dangle their feet in a lap pool on the roof unless they want a little alone time. And he’s out there waiting for her, when he could’ve gotten the hell out of here.”
    She drummed her fingers on the table. “I could be wrong. But he talks about how she helped him, how she cried; she talks about how he worked and worked to bring the vic back.”
    “Because they’re in love,” Mira speculated. “And see each other as heroic.”
    “Might be.” Eve reached for the recorder again as Connie came in.
    “Before we begin, could I get either of you anything?”
    “We’re good,” Eve told her.
    “Could I ask if I can have more coffee served—maybe some food—to the others? It’s hard to wait out there.”
    “Sure.”
    “Why don’t I take care of that?” Mira rose, touched Connie’s arm before the hostess could protest. “Sit down, Connie.”
    “I don’t know what to do,” Connie said to Eve.
    “I’m going to ask you some questions, and I’ll keep it as brief as Ican. I’m recording, and reading everyone their rights, just to keep it clean.”
    The strain showed as Connie nodded her way through the procedure, as she linked and unlinked her fingers on the tabletop.
    “Why don’t you tell me what went on between you and K.T. when you took her away from the table?”
    “I told her, in very clear terms, that she’d watch her mouth and behavior in my home. If she spoke that way again to any one of my guests, I would have her taken out, and she’d never be welcome back.”
    Connie looked away, firmed her lips.