“You really don’t want to know, Julie.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
We endured several more minutes of music beaten to a sodden pulp before a new voice came on. Male, deep.
“This is Truc. Marissa A. French worked here but as a float.”
“Meaning?”
“She had no contract but agreed to be available when someone was needed to fill in on a shift.”
“On-call.”
“Yes.”
“How often did that turn out to be?”
“No idea, sir. That would require going through like a year and a half of data.”
“Giant hassle, huh?”
Truc said, “Let me see what I find.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Julie told me she got killed, I want to do what I can.”
“Thanks, Truc. Here’s my number.”
When the line went dead, he turned to me. “A float. Okay, let’s look at her social media.”
I’d been working my phone and showed him the results.
He said, “Thank you, Oracle of Delphi.”
The camera adored Marissa French and she reciprocated.
Her online presence was extensive and chiefly photographic. Hundreds of images, some selfies, some taken by others. Sometimes she’d posed with men and women her own age, the most common position, grinning, drink in hand, the background always a blurry crowd scene.
But most of the collection consisted of solos of Marissa French.
That might fit with not much by way of “friends.”
Despite all the images, she’d named only four.
Tori, Beth, Bethany, Yoli.
Short blond hair, long blond hair, long black hair, a pile of red waves. Each woman svelte, pretty, wearing full makeup and clothing that advertised fitness.
Never photographed as a group. Each of them stood next to Marissa in party scenes. Center screen reserved for Marissa.
As I kept looking, I realized the same went for men. Always relegated to the sides.
People as props?
Milo screen-shot the four names along with accompanying photos and emailed the lot to his desktop. The computer began chiming receipt and we returned to examining what was shaping up as Marissa French’s sadly brief legacy.
The photos fit into three categories.
Marissa posing on the beach in a bikini or topless with arms folded across her chest.
Marissa perched on sun-splotched hilltops in shorts and tees, hair blowing strategically.
Marissa crouching in what appeared to be a forest, looking entranced by pinecones, ferns, and stones and wearing tight western shirts, denim short-shorts, and boots with heels that mocked the notion of hiking.
What seemed to be modeling poses. But modeling’s about more than beauty and for all Marissa’s good looks, she projected a limited emotional range — smile or pout — and none of the results had produced anything better than what the DMV robot had accomplished.
A rare burst of prose followed the photographic display:
I’m available for movie work, here are my credits. xoxoxoxo M
No agency listed, just an email address.
Then the “credits.”
During the past eighteen months, Marissa French had worked as an extra on four TV pilots and three low-budget horror flicks.
Milo said, “Heard of any of them?”
I shook my head.
“Same old story, poor thing.”
I said, “Maybe she worked as a float to be available for auditions.”
“Which never came through.” He scrolled quickly through several more screens, came to the end, and was about to click off when his eyes widened.
The final photo was time-stamped Friday, eleven thirty-four p.m., and featured Marissa French in a minimal red dress with side cutouts that exposed a tight waist and a violin curve of hip.
Standing with a man. This time, not an age peer, not even close.
Mid- to late-forties and nothing prop-like about him. Unlike every other photo in Marissa’s collection, she’d given up center stage and was edged so far to the right that her left arm was out of the frame.
Easy for her companion to fill space. He was tall enough to stand well above a five-five woman wearing four-inch heels, and broad, with piled-up shoulders and a muscular torso running slightly to flab.
Middle-aged but dressed younger, in a black, scoop-necked Pink Floyd T-shirt with high-cut sleeves that emphasized bulky arms. A diamond or something pretending to be glinted from his left earlobe. A chunky gold chain dangled to the hem of the scoop.
A pug-nosed, meaty face was improbably tan where it wasn’t booze-flushed. A toothy, borderline-rodent smile was a tribute to the excesses of cosmetic dentistry. Black hair was buzzed nearly invisible at the sides, the top a curly thatch lubricated to gleaming. Framing the capped teeth were thick lips bottomed by a triangular, black soul patch.
His left arm was tattoo-sleeved. His right, un-inked, was slung over Marissa French’s bare shoulders in a casual display of ownership. Nothing in her body language said she’d signed on voluntarily. Glassy eyes said she wasn’t equipped for protest.
Both he and Marissa held oversized martini glasses filled with something red. His smile was triumphant. Hers, pathetic.
Milo said, “Joe Beef looks like he’s bagged a trophy. She’s not into it, why’s she standing for it?”
I said, “Look at her eyes.”
He studied the image. “Yeah, she is kinda hazy.”
“His size fits the video and so does the time frame.”
“Partying close to midnight and she’s dead before three.”
I said, “He takes her to his place or somewhere else where he can control the scene, makes sure she’s incapacitated. She was dumped naked so he likely did his thing or tried to. At some point, she stopped breathing so he got rid of the problem.”
Milo’s eyes swept back and forth between the two faces, alternating between revulsion and anger. Ending with a long look at the grinning man and cherry-sized lumps running up and down his jaw.
“Bastard. Who are you?”
Chapter 4
Neither of us had noticed the older man anywhere else in the photo dump but we reviewed the images anyway.
Nothing.
Milo said, “All the other shots, she’s the star of the show, loving herself. She lets down her guard for a sleaze like this?” He shook his head. “Maybe he’s been criminally sleazy before, I’ll send this to Brand Leary in Vice.”
As he typed, I said, “No shots with other men during the past week.”
“She and Beef had a thing?”
“Maybe not romance,” I said. “She could’ve let down her guard because she thought he had something to offer.”
“Like what?”
“A speaking part.”
“The old fake-Hollywood-honcho deal? She could be fooled that easily?”
“Getting nothing but crowd scenes for a year and a half can sap your confidence. If he happened to show up when she was feeling vulnerable, who knows?”
“Sheep, say hi to Wolf.” He frowned.
“Or,” I said, “she’d already given up and decided to switch gears. To me he looks like a guy with a porn vibe. Washed-up actor turned producer, director.”
“Hmm. I guess a girl with her looks could make some decent short-term money. So what, last night was an audition that went bad? Let’s see what her besties have to say. At the least, maybe one of them knows how to reach her family so I can do what I hate.”
Learning the full names of Marissa’s female friends proved easy. She’d posted their names with links to their own social platforms.
Long blond hair was Victoria “Tori” Burkholder, twenty-five, an “aesthetician” at a salon in Sherman Oaks.
Short blond hair was Elisheva “Beth” Halperin, twenty-four, assistant chef at a French café in Encino.