Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(40)

“Thank you for your time. We may need more of it.” Eve rose. “Peabody, you have this. I’ll be speaking with Nadine Furst.”

Now Bebe’s lips curved. “I hoped you would be. I respect your relationship with Nadine, as I respect her. I’ll be very disappointed in her if she doesn’t talk you into an exclusive.”

With a shrug, Eve started for the door, stopped.

“I get the impression you’re just not all that surprised someone killed Mars.”

“She made her living on glitz and glamour with one hand, and on dirty little secrets with the other.”

“‘Dirty little secrets’?” Eve repeated, turning back.

“Exposing the affair of some wholesome screen star, or the illegals use, the taste for underage bedmates. She could damage the glossy image—and did when she dug up the dirt. It’s why the viewers clung to the screen—for the gloss and the dirt. She could be fearless in exposing icons. It’s not surprising someone violently objected. Icons have fans, after all, and the word fan is short for fanatic.”

Interesting, Eve thought as she left. And an angle. Blackmail hit stronger for her, but a fanatic wasn’t a bad alternate.





9

“Take the reporter—the Metro beat reporter—and hang tight for her legal to clear the warrant,” Eve told Peabody. “Make sure Mars’s office is locked down—add a seal to it.”

“On that.”

They split off with Eve heading toward Nadine’s territory.

Nadine didn’t just rate an office. As a top-flight screen reporter, one with her own top-rated weekly show, a bestseller, and an Oscar-nominated vid under her belt, she claimed an office, another for her admin, and an array of cubes for her research and production teams.

Eve wouldn’t deny that having a friend—and one she trusted—with that sort of media clout didn’t hurt.

She got as far as the admin, a sharp-looking, pint-sized redhead wearing an ear ’link, carrying a handheld, and working with fast fingers on a mini tablet.

“Hey. Hold.” She tapped her ear ’link, shot up a finger to signal Eve. “Nadine had to get to makeup. She’s got about twenty before she needs to be on set. I can get somebody to show you the way.”

“I remember it.”

Eve veered off, past more offices, an open area filled with desks, alive with screens, another huddle of cubes. People rushed in a dozen directions, urgency in every step, talking incessantly, to each other, on ’links, into recorders.

A media version (less weirdly dressed) of EDD.

Corridors narrowed, snaked into an area packed with racks jammed with clothes, shelves stacked with shoes where someone plied a puffing steamer over a black suit jacket.

She wound her way to makeup.

Reflected in the mirrored wall behind the long counter, Nadine sat in a high-backed swivel chair, fully draped in a blue cape, eyes closed as she mumbled to herself.

To Eve’s annoyance—she knew it—and considerable unease, Trina stood in front of Nadine, swiping a brush over Nadine’s cheek.

Trina said, “Yo,” and gave Eve a slit-eyed stare in the glass that increased the unease.

Nadine’s eyes popped open. “You’re late,” she snapped.

“Gee, I must’ve lost track of time while I was strolling along Fifth Avenue window-shopping.”

Obviously not amused, Nadine, snarled, “You’re not the only one with an agenda or a timetable.”

“I’m the only one with a DB in the morgue.”

“I’ve got to be on screen talking about it in under twenty. I need that one-on-one.”

“And I need information. Do you want to waste time bitching or get down to it?”

“Save the bitching and the rest,” Trina ordered. “I’ve got to do your lips.”

Nadine stared hard at Eve in the mirror, but kept quiet as Trina used some sort of pencil thing to outline Nadine’s lips.

Why did she have to draw what was already there? Eve wondered. Who came up with that rule?

“Decent coffee in the AC,” Trina said as she worked. “Going with a dark rose,” she continued to Nadine. “Matte. You don’t want a big punch or fussy for this, right? Serious lips, not glam.”

Eve got coffee while Trina mixed color from three different tubes on a white square. She applied the blended color with a brush. Stepped back, tilted her head in a way that had Eve wondering why the piled-up tower of red-swirled black hair didn’t tumble off her head.

She squeezed something clear onto another square, used yet another brush, and painted it over the lip color.

Eve couldn’t see any difference.

Working briskly, Trina smooshed yet another brush into almost invisible powder, swirled it over Nadine’s entire face, snatched up a bottle of something, and spritzed what looked like a vapor over that.

She said, “Check it,” and whipped the cape away.

In her somber yet stylish black suit, Nadine studied herself in the glass. “Trina, you’re a genius.”

“Fucking A.”

“We can do the setup in my office,” Nadine began, but Eve simply shook her head.

“Badge first. What was your relationship with Mars?”

“Oh, for Christ’s crying sake.”