“Mim, please have a seat,” he said. “You want something to drink? Coffee or water?”
“No. Thanks.”
He dropped back into his chair, smiled. “Graham called about three minutes after you did.”
“Did he?”
“It’s a Tailhook issue as much as it’s an issue for you.”
“I’d think it’s more for me.”
“He said you’d say something like that. But you’re still part of Tailhook.” He extended an open hand. “Did you bring it?”
I hesitated, then pulled the folded sheet from my pocket and handed it to him. Chapel unfolded the paper and looked it over, then raised his gaze past it and looked me over in much the same way, and though there was nothing reductive or objectifying in the gaze, I couldn’t look at him while he did it, and so settled on the view of Mount Hood out the window instead.
“Is it possible that the photograph is a fake?” Fred Chapel asked. “Could someone have edited your head from a publicity shot and then grafted it onto the body of someone else?”
“It’s me.”
“You’re positive?”
“If it’s a fake, they’re working from an original,” I said, shrugging out of my jacket. His look was quizzical, then turned to slight alarm as I began pulling off my overshirt.
I let him worry while I got my arms out of my sleeves, leaving the shirt around my neck, revealing the tank I was wearing beneath. I turned in the chair, left and then right, showing him each of my arms. “The ink’s the same.”
“You’ve had shots showing the tats,” he said, musing as I got my shirt back in place. “Could be whoever did this just edited the tattoos, as well. Doesn’t seem likely, though. Can I ask where you got this copy?”
“My brother gave it to me this morning.”
“Did he say how he got it?”
“Someone e-mailed it to him.”
“Your brother has friends e-mailing him pictures like this of his sister?”
“I think this was a friend asking if he knew about this, rather than saying, hey, your sister’s got a great rack.”
He didn’t smile. “Do you know where the friend got it?”
“Mikel—that’s my brother—said it was off of some pay site, one of those ones that does naked-celebrity pictures.”
“Do you know the name of the site?”
I shook my head. “But I can give Mikel a call, he’ll know.”
“Maybe later. One of my assistants is looking on-line right now. When he gets back to me we’ll want to determine if the sites are the same. Let’s assume for the time being that the picture really is of you, and not a fake, then.”
“I’ve never posed nude for anyone,” I said.
“Never?”
I just looked at him.
“Maybe for a boyfriend, for fun? Or as something romantic between the two of you?”
“You’re confusing me with Vanessa. She’s the one with all the boys. I’m the one who sits in the hotel room with a guitar in her lap and crap on the TV.”
Chapel grinned. “You’re keeping your sense of humor, that’s good.”
“Am I? I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“You mean more questions? Sure.” I freed a cigarette and stopped myself from lighting it long enough to get a nod from him.
He took an ashtray from a desk drawer and slid it over to me. “You have any idea when or where the picture could have been taken?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in over one hundred hotel rooms this past year, easy. It’s not a dressing room, I’m sure of that. I can’t remember ever being totally naked in a dressing room. In my undies, yeah, but not in the buff.”
“So you think it’s from the tour?”
“It must have been.”
“Do you take drugs?”
The question surprised me, but only a bit. “I did a few on tour.”
“You understand why I’m asking?”
“You’re worried that there might be pictures of that, too.”
“I’m not judging you here, please understand that,” Chapel said. “This is all confidential, between us, unless you tell me you’re going to commit a crime. That happens, I’m obligated to act.”
“Not planning on it.”
“Always good to know. So this is between the two of us. But I want to be prepared if more pictures surface, maybe showing things you’d rather the world didn’t see.”
“I never did drugs alone,” I told him. “Parties sometimes, or with Click, but never alone.”
“What about sex?”
“What about sex?”
He gave me the professionally reassuring smile. “I hear you rock stars get a lot of it.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“You never took a groupie backstage or back to your room?”
“Wasn’t my thing. Van’s thing, sometimes Click’s thing. Never my thing.”
“Are you gay, Mim?”
I stared at him.
“Like I said, I’m not judging. Just asking. I told you Graham called.”
I fidgeted, feeling the heat come back, rising along my neck. “Yeah.”
“I asked him a lot of these questions, too, just for background. He says he remembers you taking a groupie back to the hotel when you were in Montreal. He remembers it because it was the only time he can recall it happening. He also remembers it because it was another woman.”
“I don’t remember doing anything like that.”
“It’s important, because if you took someone back to your room, I’m less inclined to think that’s a setup, rather than you going with a groupie to her house.”
“Well, it never happened,” I said. “So you don’t really need to worry about that.”
Chapel stared at me, then nodded slightly, as if willing to let it go for the time being. “All right, could the picture have been taken with your permission and you just forgot about it?”
I crushed my cigarette out, lit another one. I didn’t want to get bitchy, but I felt it, and I knew it was in my eyes.
“I understand you drink pretty heavily,” Chapel said. “That’s why you’re on hiatus.”
“That’s why Van says I’m on hiatus.”
“I understand that there were a couple of instances on the road where you passed out.”
“I never missed a gig. I never couldn’t play.”
“Would you call it passing out or blacking out?”
I snorted smoke at him. “There’s a difference?”
“When someone passes out, they don’t do anything else. When someone blacks out, they don’t know what else they might be doing.”
“Sometimes I black out,” I admitted.
“So it’s possible you could have had a blackout on the road and someone could have taken these shots then?”
“No.”
“You sound awfully certain considering that you wouldn’t be able to remember.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because when I drink like that, I drink alone. Consequently, I black out alone.”
That stopped the questions for a few moments. Chapel’s hand went to the folded photograph on the desk, almost idly, caressing the edge with his fingers. Then he leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk.
“These are our options as I see it. Further action, or possible action toward prosecution, will require discovering who took the picture, and how. I can get a TRO against the Web site, as soon as it’s identified.”
“TRO?”
“A temporary restraining order.”
“I don’t want temporary. I want it stopped for good.”
“A TRO is the first step in any injunction, so we’ll have to start with that. It won’t be a problem, you’ve got multiple grounds—appropriation, right to publicity, public disclosure of private facts, even emotional distress. The TRO will force the site to take the image down. Then there’s the issue of damages.”