Celebrity in Death

and obviously miserable, over a cup of coffee.
    “You’ve been read your rights?” Eve began.
    “Yes. She said it was for my protection.”
    “That’s exactly right.” Eve took a seat across from him. “Do you know what happened?”
    “What?”
    “You know Marlo and Matthew found K.T.’s body on the roof.”
    “Yes.” He shook his head as if coming out of a dream. “God.
God!
It’s horrible. I don’t know what to do.”
    “You’re doing it right now by talking to us. Were you up on the roof tonight, Julian?”
    “No—I mean, yes.” He sent Eve a pitiful look. “I’m confused. I had too much to drink. I shouldn’t have, but I was upset after that scene at dinner. I want you to know I wasn’t—I’d never try to, ah, start something with you, and right in front of you,” he said, appealing to Roarke.
    “But you would in back of me?”
    Julian actually went a shade paler. “I didn’t mean—”
    “Just winding you up, mate,” Roarke said, smile very, very cool.
    “Oh. Okay, I wouldn’t want you to think I’d hit on your wife. She’s fascinating—I mean to say I’m kind of fascinated, and playing you, it gets intense with Marlo. But I—and Marlo and I aren’t—not really. Just for work, for show. It’s just part of the deal. I mean, I would—they’re both beautiful women, but—”
    “Is that a requirement?” Eve asked. “Being beautiful.”
    “All women are beautiful,” he said and smiled for the first time.
    “Including K.T.?”
    “Sure. Well, she could be.”
    “And did the two of you start something?”
    “Not recently.”
    “What would be ‘not recently’?”
    “Oh, well, a couple of years ago, I guess. We had a little fun. And a couple months ago. She was feeling down, so I cheered her up.”
    “Did she want more cheering up?”
    He shifted, stared hard at his coffee. “The thing is, she didn’t really want that. She really wanted to complain about Marlo, or to get me to complain about her—Marlo, I mean—to Roundtree.”
    He looked up then, met Eve’s eyes with his own dull, bloodshot blue. “I wasn’t going to do that. She got bent over it, really hammered at me. I finally went to Joel and asked him to get her off my back. I didn’t like to do it, but she was really putting me off, and screwing with my focus. I guess it just bent her more. I don’t know why she has to be that way.”
    He looked away again, shook his head. “I don’t understand why people can’t just be nice, have a good time.”
    “Why did you go up to the roof tonight?”
    His gaze dropped again. “The view’s mag.”
    “Were you alone with the mag view?”
    He said nothing for a long moment. Peabody reached over, touched his arm, spoke gently. “Julian?”
    He looked at her. “She didn’t really look like you when she wasn’t made up. You have a prettier mouth, and your eyes are nicer. I like your eyes better.”
    “Thanks.”
    Though Eve saw Peabody’s color come up, her partner maintained.
    “Who was on the roof with you tonight?” Peabody asked him.
    “When I went up, she—K.T. was there. I didn’t want to talk to her, not when she was in that mood. We’d both been drinking. I didn’t want to talk to her.”
    “But you did?”
    “A little. I asked her why she’d acted that way at dinner. Connie went to all this trouble. It was our job to be friendly, to make sure all of you had a good time. But she just started up about Marlo, you, Matthew, everybody. I didn’t want to be around her, so I came back downstairs.”
    “You argued,” Eve prompted.
    “I don’t like to argue.”
    “But she did.”
    “It’s like she just can’t be happy. I don’t get that when there’s so much to be happy about. Look what we get to do for a living. Yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly it’s just fun. And they pay us a lot of money. Everything’s easier, it’s better when you let yourself be happy. It’s like she can’t.
    “Do you have a blocker?” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sober-Up always gives me a headache, a hangover, and makes me feel kind of dull. I don’t get like that if I just sleep it off. That’s what I was trying to do, just sleep it off.”
    Roarke took a small case out of his pocket, offered one of the tiny blue pills.
    “Thanks.” Julian smiled at Roarke. “I feel like crap.”
    “When were you on the roof with K.T.?” Eve asked him.
    “Tonight.”
    Eve thought Nadine’s assessment of Julian being a little dim hit