"What did you tell him?"
She looked at Jimmy, and her eyes were clear and sweetwater blue. "I told him to fuck off and die." She glanced at the stage. "Junk food!" Candy bars bumped into each other, startled. "I don't feel the danger! Threaten me! I want to feel it!" She turned back to Jimmy. "I saw the picture of you in this month's SLAP. I like a good scavenger hunt myself. What does a girl have to do to get invited to one of those parties?"
"I'll talk to Nino."
"Just like that? I always knew it was just a matter of meeting the right person." Chase smiled at him, and it was a shy smile, innocent as milk, but he could see her earlobes flush with blood. She riffed through the scrapbook, stopping at the "Chase and Heather" section. "As you can see, Heather and I were a couple of regular beach rats," she said, pointing out the two of them posing astride the bronze Seal Beach seal. "That last summer anyway." The following pages were filled with snapshots of the two girls lying on the sand, playing Frisbee, and frolicking in the waves. Chase looked younger, but Heather could have passed for eighteen easily-no wonder Walsh had been fooled.
"Where was that one taken?"
"Sunset Beach. We used to hit Sunset regularly. The best boys were there."
"What about Hermosa?"
Chase glanced at the stage, then back at Jimmy. "Couple weeks before-before she died, we started going there. Heather said she was bored with Sunset. I wasn't, but Heather, she always knew best."
"You must have seen Walsh's beach cottage on TV after she was murdered. Is that the area where you used to go?"
Chase nodded. "You wouldn't think such a small house could cost so much money. Do you have a house on the beach too?"
"How did you end up in that particular spot?"
"I don't know. Who remembers things like that? We just parked the car and started walking until we found a place for our towels." Chase tightened the knot in her shirt. "Heather probably was the one who decided. She was very selfish."
"You and Heather went to the beach together all that summer, but not on the day she was murdered."
"We were supposed to go to there together, but at the last minute Heather called up, said she was staying home. Just like that. Didn't even apologize. Like my feelings didn't count. Then she goes to Hermosa without me."
"After she was murdered, did you tell anyone about her changing plans?"
"Does Tom Cruise ever show up at those scavenger hunt parties?"
"Did you talk to the police about her changing plans?"
"No, but some man in a nice suit came by the house, said he heard that Heather and I wanted to be in show business. I thought he was an agent or a producer, but my father confronted him, and the man admitted that he was working for one of Walsh's lawyers. My father almost hit him." Chase shook out her hair, and Jimmy smelled her perfume. "Do you believe in guardian angels? Well, if it wasn't for my guardian angel, it would have been me murdered in that beach house that day, not Heather."
Jimmy stared at her.
Chase flipped through the scrapbook, her fingers knowing just where to go, right to the section titled "Chase's Beauty Pageant." The first page showed a younger Chase wearing a short evening gown and a bright yellow sash. "I was in the Young Miss Whittier pageant with Heather. She won, and I was first runner-up. I would have won, but my face broke out the night before, a real Vesuvius, and all the makeup in the world couldn't cover it up." She touched Jimmy's face. "Men-you can have a black eye, and it makes you look kind of sexy. But for a girl, any imperfection-forget it." She stared at her runner-up photo. "If it wasn't for those zits, I would have won, not Heather. Then it would have been me in the beach house with my head broken into pieces."
Jimmy was confused. "You think winning that contest got Heather killed?"
"We prefer pageant." Chase turned the page, scanning the photographs of herself and Heather, arms around each other, hugging for the cameras. "Why else would Garrett Walsh have made love to her? She was beautiful, but without that gold crown, she would have been a nobody."
"Chase, how would he have known she was Young Miss Whittier?"
"She would have told him, silly. That would have been the first thing out of her mouth." Chase turned the page, distracted now. Most of the photos in this section were of Heather. "I know that's what I would have done."
Jimmy had a headache. The Butcher-Darryl-beat him up with a basketball, Chase did it with conversation. "That last week did Heather seem different? Did she talk about anyone new that she had met?"
Chase shrugged, turned the page. "These are some bathing suit shots I had taken at a sportswear show. A lot of actresses got their start modeling."
"Was she more excited than usual? Buying lots of clothes, full of big plans?"
"You should have heard her going on about her new agent." Chase turned the page, smiled at her own photograph. "An L.A. agent. I got so tired of hearing her brag-"
"When did she get the agent?"
"Right after she won the pageant. You believe that? Nobody else ever got an agent for winning, not for Young Miss Whittier anyway. Like maybe you got a job modeling sportswear at the Tustin Mall or-"
"What was the agent's name?"
Chase tapped a photo of herself modeling lingerie, a wispy red bra and panties set. "Do you think I need breast augmentation? Be honest."
Jimmy could feel his heart pounding. "The agent. What was her name?"
"You think Heather would tell me? Probably afraid I'd steal her away. The only thing she told me was that her agent was a size twenty-four with big hair and lots of flashy rings. Heather thought that was so Hollywood." Chase smoothed down the corner of a curling photo. "She should have been my agent. If my face hadn't broken out-"
"Did Heather tell anyone else about this woman with the big hair?"
"Just her mother. It was like a big secret. She only told me so she could rub it in." Chase smiled to herself. "I guess I got the last laugh. That agent of hers never even came to Heather's funeral. I looked all over for a woman with a helmet head and lots of rings; I stopped a few that looked like they might be in the business and said I was seeking representation, but they looked at me like I was crazy. What a waste. I brought my portfolio and everything."
Jimmy stared at her.
"What? Like you wouldn't, if you were me?"
"Was this agent at the beauty contest? Maybe the organizers would-"
"I told you, it wasn't a beauty contest, it was a pageant, and no, the agent wasn't there. Heather said it was the photographer at the pageant, the one taking the official shots, who lined her up with the agent. If I had known that at the time, I would have been nicer to the little creep. And no, I don't know his name either. The way he was looking at Heather made me feel like I was just a porker in a dress standing next to her. Don't think she didn't love it too."
Jimmy reached for the scrapbook. "Please?" He turned back to the first photo, the eight-by-ten of Chase with her first-runner-up smile. "This is the official photograph, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"May I?" Jimmy had already started pulling off the photo, being careful not to tear the backing. COPYRIGHT BY WILLARD BURTON was stamped on the back.
"Geez Jimmy, what are you so happy about?"
Chapter 29
Helen Katz was already hammered by the time Holt walked into the Blue Grotto. She had staked out a prize booth in the corner farthest from the street and was slouched there by herself, smoking a cigarette under the no smoking sign. Her table was strewn with beer bottles and a near-empty bowl of salted peanuts. None of the other cops in the place came near her, clustering in twos and threes at the long bar, mostly men, but a few women too, the uniforms pounding on each other's shoulders as they watched the game on the overhead TV, or sitting in the other booths bitching about the day, the bosses, the gangbangers, the stupid civilians, the squad car with the busted springs. Katz was hammered, but she spotted Holt immediately. She wasn't the only one.