Secrets in Death (In Death 45)

“I’ve no reason to speak to your wife about this. Unless you killed Larinda Mars.”

“I haven’t killed anyone. I’ve done some stupid things, careless, reckless things in my life, but I’ve never killed anyone. She was blackmailing me.”

“For?”

“Before I met DeAnna, I did those stupid, careless, reckless things routinely. I reveled in doing them, in shocking people—particularly my family. Spoiled, entitled.” He shook his head. “If I drank, it was with the purpose of getting drunk. If I used, it was to get as high as possible. Every time. I wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict. I used substances, and people, because I could. I was going nowhere, and that’s just where I wanted to be.

“Then I met DeAnna. There are moments, there are people, who change your life, who save it. DeAnna changed mine. Saved mine.”

“She would have been a bright light on Broadway when you met her,” Roarke calculated. “A star, full of talent and promise.”

“Yes. Gorgeous, talented, a shining prize in the box. And I thought, I’ll have one of those.”

He pressed his lips together in a show of self-disgust.

“That’s just how I thought of it. She wouldn’t be had, not DeAnna. She saw me for what I was—careless, callous—and blew me off. That posed a challenge, so I pursued. I got nowhere with her,” he said with a small smile. “I began to see her not as a shiny prize in the box but a puzzle. Then as a person. I wanted to prove something to her, and to myself. I found a play.

“An old friend of mine had a play, and couldn’t get anyone to look at it,” Bellami explained. “I looked. And I asked DeAnna to look. She did, and she talked to my friend, met with him, with me. We worked. I worked, for the first time in my life, really. And that was a revelation. I was good at it, actually good at it, and I liked being good at it. I began to mend some fences. I began to live a life. I produced that play, and it did all right. It didn’t shake the theater world, but it did all right. I produced another, and it did all right. My friend wrote another play, a really good one, and working on it, asking for DeAnna’s input, we, well, found each other. She fell in love with me. I was already in love with her. We built a life, we’re building a family. She helped me earn the trust and respect of my parents again, of my grandparents, my sister. She helped me earn respect for myself.”

“All that’s in the past,” Eve said. “How could Mars b

lackmail you about things your wife, your family, really anyone who cared to look, already knew?”

“A couple months ago—early December—DeAnna took a weekend with a couple of her college friends. She was so tired, so worn-out, and this trip—a retreat, a health spa just a short drive out of the city—came highly recommended. Her doctor approved, in fact, he told us it would do her a lot of good. The night she left I went downtown to see a singer we were considering for the new play. We—my friend and I—wanted to see how she performed in front of an audience. We met at the club, and halfway through the first set, he got tagged. The person identified herself as a nurse at Clinton Memorial, and said his mother had taken ill. Not an emergency, but she’d been given some medication and had asked them to contact him, to ask him to come and take her home. She gets terrible migraines, and if one triggers she can get very ill. He had to go, and I decided to stay, see the rest of the show, told him to tag me if it turned out to be more serious.

“I remember listening to her sing, watching her—imagining her in the part. I remember I started to feel … off. Mildly dizzy even sitting down, a bit queasy. I remember leaving cash on the table because I wanted to get out, out in the air.

“The next I remember, I woke upstairs, in my own bed. A raging headache, the smell of booze-sweat, the taste in my mouth. I remember those mornings very well.”

Pausing, he stared down at his hands. “I’d had one brandy—one. I wanted a clear head to rate the performance. And I rarely have more than two drinks, ever. I don’t remember leaving the club or getting home or going to bed. I had never had a blackout, not even when I abused everything that could be abused. I told myself either the brandy or the quick meal I’d had before had made me ill. But … I could smell perfume on me—stale perfume, and not my wife’s. I ignored it, I pushed it away and showered it away, and…”

“You think you were drugged.”

“I know it.” Eyes fierce now, he jerked his head up. “I know it now absolutely. But even back then? I spoke with my friend later that day and he was furious. He’d gone to the hospital. His mother had never been there. No nurse had contacted him. He went to his mother’s apartment, and she was fine. They—someone had wanted me alone. At that time we both thought it was just some sick joke. I even thought it might have been pulled off by one of the crowd I used to run with. It would be something we’d do for a laugh.”

“And now?” Eve prompted.

“I agreed to meet Mars, as she’d hounded me. She’d started to insinuate I’d want to know what she knew—before everyone else knew. It’s a reality of my industry, that playing ball with her sort has to be done—to an extent. So I met her at the bar. She warned me to be careful how I reacted, what I said. ‘It’s crowded, isn’t it,’ she said. A lot of people here. A lot of people to gossip. She showed me a vid. She had a video of me, and two women in the bed I share with my wife. We were … in my wife’s bed.”

He’d gone pale and closed his eyes, struggling for composure.

“I would never—I love my wife. I would never do that to her. I’m not that person anymore. I told her—Mars—that it never happened. It was faked. She said it could and would be verified, and to add to that, she had witnesses who saw me leave the club—she had the name, the date, the time—with those two women. Drunk and fondling them. Getting in a cab together.”

“What about your house security?”

“I checked that the morning I woke up, after the club. I wanted to see when I got home, in what sort of condition. It had been turned off, by remote. By my code. Barely an hour after J.C., my friend, got that tag. Tonight, Mars said she knew DeAnna was very delicate, very fragile, how upsetting it would be for her to have to face this terrible gossip, this awful proof of my infidelity. How it would ruin my reputation, too, one I’d patched together. It would show everyone, including my wife, I was still a user, still a fraud.

“Then she turned and smiled at the waiter. I couldn’t even hear what they said to each other. My head was full of noise. I wanted to reach across the table and snap her neck. Just break it like a twig. She leaned toward me, still smiling, and said nobody had to know. She was good at keeping secrets—for friends.”

He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Sorry, I need some water.”

“Why don’t I get that for you?” Roarke rose. “The kitchen?” He gestured toward the back of the house, got a nod.

“How much did she want?”

He sat back, eyes closed. “She said friends do favors for each other. She’d do this one for me, and I’d pay her back. I didn’t raise my voice. I was screaming inside, but I didn’t raise my voice. I said I hadn’t done this. She’d set me up. She sat there, smiling, sipping her drink. Said the video would prove I did, and who’d believe she’d set me up, someone with my history? It would be eight thousand this month. I was stunned at how little, then she explained. Next month six thousand, the following seven, and we’d vary the payments. Didn’t I want to write this down? I just sat there. She…”

He trailed off when Roarke came back with a tall glass of water, iced. “Thanks. Thanks. God.” He drank, breathed, drank. “She said if I fed her other secrets, good information, that would lower the payment for that particular month. It would be my choice: cash or information. And no one would ever see the vid, no one would ever know. My wife would be blissfully ignorant of my deception, we’d have our sweet little babies and go on as we were. As long as I paid.