Briefly, Toscana wondered what it must be like always to have people watching you. Not being able to take a walk in the park or run into the drugstore without someone gawking at you and telling friends that you bought a laxative. There was a price to fame. Suddenly, he was very grateful for his relative anonymity.
"Have you been to this spa before, Miss Sullivan?"
"Yes, sir. Several times."
"So you knew Mrs. de Vries?"
"Yes. I knew Claudia quite well." She had already decided that she might as well tell him. He would find out anyway. "Claudia is, ah, was, my aunt. She was my mother's sister."
The detective swiveled around to look at the pictures of the dead woman. In the lifeless face it was hard to see any resemblance at all to the beauty who sat before him.
"If you are looking for a family likeness, Detective, I'm afraid you won't find it. You see, my birth parents gave me up."
"Well, I'm sorry for your loss," said Toscana solicitously. "Have you told your mother about her sister's death?"
"No. That isn't necessary. My mother and father were killed in an automobile accident last year."
Toscana was a bit flustered and struck by sympathy for her.
"Would you like a cigarette, Miss Sullivan?" he offered clumsily.
Lauren smiled weakly. "As a matter of fact, I would. I try not to smoke. It ages the skin, you know. But I think a cigarette would be nice right now."
Toscana pulled a cigarette halfway out, held the pack across the table toward the actress, and flicked his lighter for her.
She held the cigarette between her beautiful, tapering fingers and inhaled.
The fingers. Toscana stared at her fingers. They were long and delicate and somehow expressive. And familiar.
He had seen other hands that looked like Lauren Sullivan's. He just couldn't quite remember whose.
But it would come to him.
Just feet from where Claudia de Vries's body had been found, Christopher Lund lay beside the crystal clear water in the pool house. He prayed that Claudia's death would be the end to his financial problems.
Christopher took his job as Ondine's manager very seriously. Ondine's income dictated his income. Booking the lucrative modeling assignments was only part of it. Christopher had to make sure Ondine was well rested, showed up on time, looked her best, and had the energy necessary to project whatever the client wanted her to project.
The magazine spreads and runway work at the fashion shows of the top designers paid very well indeed. So well that Christopher's fee, fifteen percent of Ondine's gross earnings, paid for his spacious loft in SoHo, a beach place in Amagansett, a trip or three to St. Maarten each winter to get away from the gray coldness of Manhattan, and a Range Rover and the four hundred dollars a month it cost to garage it in New York City. His recreational cocaine use had grown to an everyday thing, and that ate up his money as well.
He thoroughly enjoyed his lifestyle and all the trappings of success. He was young and ambitious. He wasn't about to be giving up a thing-in fact, he wanted more. He wasn't getting any younger, and it was time to be thinking about acquiring wealth, like some well-chosen art and stocks, not just spending conspicuously.
All of this took money. And Ondine was his cash cow.
He didn't fear her overexposure. The more magazine covers Ondine appeared on, the more billboards she smiled from, the more restaurant openings, movie premieres, or parties she attended with the paparazzi snapping blindingly, the better he liked it. She was a star, and the more the public was aware of her the more powerful she became. Christopher drove her relentlessly.
At twenty-two, Ondine was still young, but the window of opportunity for the big bucks was relatively short. She was at the top of the profession now, but that could change anytime. There were always new, younger women coming along, eager to join the ranks of the supermodel. The public was fickle and, Christopher believed, had a short attention span. The new sensation was always just around the corner. There was no telling how long Ondine's time would last.
As Ondine's business manager, all the money flowed through Christopher. The companies that hired Ondine to tout their products made the checks out to The Lund Agency. Christopher, after taking out his fifteen percent, cut the checks to Ondine.
But Ondine paid little attention to bookkeeping. She trusted her business manager and was not inclined to concern herself with the mundane details of banking. When Ondine had started making real money, Christopher had suggested that he make the deposits into her back account and keep track of her funds, neglecting to mention that he would have the power to withdraw money as well. He suggested that he take over having her tax returns prepared as well. Ondine had been only too happy to agree. Accounting bored her.
Almost imperceptibly, Christopher had increased his take on each modeling assignment. There were all sorts of ways to defraud her, and he rationalized his actions to himself with the knowledge that Ondine was still making an obscene amount of money for merely standing in front of a camera while he was busting his hump managing every aspect of her career.
The deal he had made with Claudia de Vries was especially lucrative. At least it had started out that way. Claudia had wanted to bring Phoenix Spa to another level. Not content with the spa's solid reputation, she wanted it to join the list of America's most exclusive spas. She thought Ondine could help her reach her goal, and Claudia had been willing to pay handsomely to realize her dream.
When she had first contacted Christopher about Ondine doing a spread for a glossy Phoenix Spa brochure, Christopher had convinced Claudia that her plan was too limited. Ondine was too huge a star to lend her famous name, face, and body to a mere brochure for a small spa in the Virginia hills. If Claudia wanted Ondine, she was going to have to think big and pay big.
The Lund Agency drew up a sophisticated advertising campaign and Christopher presented it to Claudia. She loved the ideas but not the price tag. So they scaled back the plan, finally agreeing that Ondine would come to Phoenix and be photographed amid the natural and man-made beauty. The photographs would be used exclusively in advertisements running in the fashion magazine that reached more readers around the world than any other and whose subscription base was the sophisticated, discerning readers Claudia wanted to attract.
Christopher would be able to take care of it all, he promised Claudia. He would choose Ondine's wardrobe, book the best photographer, and deal with the businesspeople at Elle, making sure that the artistic ads were well placed. Elle's base rate for a single full-page in black and white was sixty-five thousand dollars. Color cost seventy-five thousand. But Christopher impressed Claudia, saying he knew that if Phoenix Spa committed to running an ad in every issue for a year, Elle would negotiate a better price. Christopher tried to get Claudia to spring for the prized "second cover," which actually consisted of the back of the front cover and spread over to the next page. But at over eighty thousand dollars a pop, Claudia wouldn't swallow the idea. She said she had to draw the line somewhere, and budgeting almost a million dollars for the Elle ad placements was already keeping her up at night.
Christopher made two big demands. Ondine's modeling fee had to be paid up front and in cash if Claudia wanted to cut Ondine's two-million-dollar price almost in half. And Claudia was not allowed to discuss anything with Ondine. Christopher claimed he didn't want his prize model to be bothered with any of the details of their business plan. He protected Ondine from the business aspects of her career, he explained.
Claudia, eager to get on with her journey to international success and save a million dollars, agreed. The spa owner invited Ondine and her manager down for a complimentary visit and, starting on Halloween Day of last year, began paying Ondine a total of $1,025,000. She paid the money directly to Christopher Lund and then marked the amount carefully beside Ondine's name in her spa records.