I went over to the woman at the desk and pointed to the posters. “Former clients?” Not for one second did I think so, but I wanted to score some brownie points to get her cooperation.
The woman gave me a flat don’t-bullshit-me look. She scanned us, then shook her head at me. “You, I can’t use. Too old and I’ve got enough brunettes.” Her eyes landed on Alex. “You, I might be able to do something with. You do underwear?”
“We’re not models.” I introduced us and told her why we were there.
Her eyes slipped back to Alex. “Too bad.” She moved some papers on her desk. “I don’t get involved in my models’ personal lives, so I don’t know who Paige’s friends were.”
“Can you tell us anything about her last shoots? Who she worked for the most?” Alex had found a couple of photos on Paige’s Facebook page that looked like they’d been taken at shoots. One of them showed Paige with two other models, but she hadn’t given their names.
The woman tapped some keys on her computer, then pushed up her glasses and peered at the monitor. “She did a lot of work for HipHot.com. And it looks like we sent her out with Amaya Horrigan more than anyone else.” She looked up at us. “Anything else?”
Alex gave her a smile so warm it would’ve bent steel. “Do you know how we might get in touch with Amaya?”
The woman looked from him to me. I thought she was going to tell us she wasn’t a dating service, but she tapped a few more keys on her computer, then pulled out a business card and wrote something on it. She held it out to Alex. “That’s the number I use to get ahold of her. And our number’s on the bottom-in case you change your mind.”
We were on the sidewalk thirty seconds later. I’d hoped for more, but I couldn’t say I was sorry to be out of that stink hole. “At least it was easy.”
Alex made a face and handed me the card. “And sad and disgusting.”
We got into the car and I pulled up Amaya’s bio. A pretty, dark-skinned girl with long, straight hair, her head tilted to one side, smiled back at me. “She looks like one of the girls in that model photo on Paige’s Facebook page.” When Alex stopped at a red light, I showed him the photo.
“Yep, that’s one of them.”
I called Amaya. No answer. I left her a message saying we needed to talk to her about Paige. I didn’t tell her we were working for the defense. No reason to overwhelm her with information. I felt my stomach rumble. “I’m hungry. Want to hit Pinks?” Pinks is a little family-run stand that makes the best hot dogs in the world. And their chili dogs and hamburgers are a religious experience. I’ve never seen the place without lines down the block.
“Just hearing the name made my mouth water.”
We were almost there when my phone rang.
THIRTY-TWO
It was Amaya. “Are you that lawyer? The one with the dad who-”
“Yeah.” Silence. “Don’t hang up. I’m not out to dig up dirt on Paige. I just have a few background questions.” More silence.
Finally, she spoke. “I hadn’t seen her in at least a month. I don’t know how I can help you.”
“That’s okay. Where are you?”
“At work. Spikes. It’s on Melrose.”
I knew the place. It was a skull-and-dagger-style clothing boutique. And it was close. “Want to meet us at Pinks? I’m buying.”
“Be there in ten.”
The magic of Pinks.
Alex and I got in line. I was next up when Amaya got there. She was even prettier in person. I’d have thought she could do a lot better than the Models Inc. agency. But what did I know?
We all got chili dogs and bottled waters and found a table at the back of the little shack. The dogs were too good to let conversation get in the way, so we ate first. When we’d finished, I asked Amaya how well she knew Paige. As it turned out, they weren’t super tight.
“I always liked to go out on calls with her because she was human, you know? It’s pretty competitive, and most of the girls will chew you up and spit you out for a job that basically pays pennies. But Paige was cool.”
“Did you know any of her boyfriends?”
“Just Marc, and I’m not really sure he was her boyfriend. He worked for Super Talents. She met him at a shoot.”
“So Marc was a model?” Amaya nodded. “What did Paige say about him?”
Amaya wiped her mouth. “Not much. I just got the feeling they were pretty close because I did a shoot with them a few months ago. They seemed pretty… relaxed around each other.” She sighed and stared off to the left. “So sad what happened to him.”
I leaned forward. “What?”
“He drowned. They just found his body a few days ago. It washed up onshore down by the Colony.”
“The Colony in Malibu?” Amaya nodded. “Do you know Marc’s last name?”
“Palmer. I just read it on the Internet. I only had the one shoot with him, but…” Amaya paused. “I feel like a jerk for saying this, but it didn’t surprise me that much when I found out he was dead. Paige said he was a hard partier, and when I met him, I could tell, just by the way he talked.”
“Why? What’d he say?”
Amaya shrugged. “Just talked about how high he’d been the night before, about how the party went on for, like, two days.” She shook her head. “Party for two days? And the night before a shoot? That’s crazy. I never even drink a glass of wine the night before a shoot. You can get so bloated and puffy, you know?”
“Yeah, I hate that. Did he say who he was partying with? I take it, it wasn’t Paige.”
“No, Paige never did stuff like that. She took the job seriously. He didn’t say who he was with. But the way Paige reacted, it was obvious that was Marc’s MO. Paige just kind of laughed it off, said Marc was lucky he had good genes.”
Alex had been scrolling on his phone. Now, he showed the screen to Amaya. “Is that him?” Amaya nodded.
It was a professional head shot of a very handsome-actually, pretty-young guy who had a sexy smile and black hair that fell over one blue eye. His right shoulder was to the camera, and he was looking into the lens through long, dark lashes.
A name and a face. Great. Except we couldn’t talk to him. It figured. “Did you ever hear Paige talk about a guy she called Mr. Perfect?”
Amaya frowned and shook her head. “But really, we didn’t talk about our personal lives. I think the only reason she said anything to me about Marc was because I was there at the shoot with them.”
I kept at it for a little while longer but got nothing else useful. I thanked Amaya and let her go. She headed out the back door that led to a parking lot, and I watched her weave her way through the cars. Marc and Paige, both friends, both dead, and pretty close in time. I might be able to do something with this. “Look into Marc Palmer. See if any of his friends knew Paige. But don’t make it your life’s project. If it doesn’t pan out in a day or two, let it go.”
Marc hadn’t turned up in any of the discovery I’d gotten from Zack, so he was probably a fringe player. We didn’t have time to waste on distant maybes.
As we headed for Alex’s car, my cell phone rang.
It was Michelle. “Have you seen the news?”
“No, we’ve been out partying with supermodels, remember?”
“They found Jenny Knox. She’s dead.”
THIRTY-THREE
I stopped abruptly, and a young kid on a skateboard almost rammed into me. It took me a second to process what she’d said. “Hang on, let me get in the car so I can put you on speaker.” When we were settled in the car, I asked, “Where’d they find her?”
“In the morgue.”
“What? How long has she been there?”
“About a year. She’d been strangled to death. Her body had been found in a dumpster.”