Celebrity in Death

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