“So, Veronika doesn’t own the house?”
“I knew it, ” Dana mumbled.
“Goodness, no. She just rents a room. She moved in a few months ago. That place had been going south long before then.”
“Do you know the landlord’s name?”
“Ask her yourself, ” she said. “She just got home a few minutes before you pulled up.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime, and, uh, tell that nice young gardener fellow I said hi.”
I eyed Veronika’s house as the woman closed her door and went back to her cable-guy vigil. A lot of friends, huh?
“Maybe we should go pay our condolences to the landlord, ” I suggested.
Dana followed as I picked my way over the moist lawn and up the gravel-lined pathway to the front door. The home itself was a pale adobe-colored stucco, with white columns flanking the front door and large, flowering birds-of-paradise in glazed planters on the porch. The front windows were all closed and shaded behind heavy curtains. Unless you knew someone was inside, there’d be no way to tell.
I rang the bell beside the imposing front door and waited while footsteps approached from inside. Two seconds later I heard the sound of a lock being thrown and the thick door swung open.
“Yes? What do you want?”
I stared, blinking as I took in the woman’s liposuctioned thighs encased in tiny spandex shorts, her obviously man-made chest barely contained by a little red crop top, and those familiar collagen-enhanced lips, the likes of which I’d last seen six feet high on a billboard above the Taco Bell on Pico.
Jasmine.
Chapter 10
Jasmine put a manicured hand on her hip and raised one eyebrow (which, of course, due to regular Botox injections, did little to change the expression on her placid face). “Well?” she asked.
I swallowed. “Hi, Jasmine.”
She cocked her head to the side, one finger twirling a lock of dyed red hair. “Do I know you?”
“Maddie, ” I supplied.
Still nothing but a blank stare on Porn Star Bar-bie’s face.
“Maddie Springer. Richard’s ex-girlfriend.”
More blinking. “Oh, right. You’re the chick who stabbed that girl’s implant.” She crossed her arms protectively over her double Ds. “What do you want?”
“We, uh, we’re friends of Veronika’s, ” I said, stretching the truth just a little. “Your neighbor said that you lived here together?”
“She was my tenant. I own this place.”
Dana did a low whistle. “Business must be very good.”
Jasmine smiled (which, with her highly lifted face, was something akin to the Joker in Batman). “Very. I’ve got a billboard up on Pico.”
“I noticed, ” I mumbled. “Veronika rented a room from you?”
“More like worked for me. I run a twenty-four-hour Web cam. Veronika was one of my girls.”
Mental forehead smack. “Veronika was a cyber-sex girl?”
Jasmine frowned. (Or tried to. See Botox reference above.) “It’s not just cyber sex. Yes, we do some private chats, but mostly we just let the cameras run and go about our daily lives.”
“And men pay three ninety-nine a minute for that?” Dana asked, peering into the house over Jasmine’s bony shoulder.
“Well, we’re naked most of the time.”
Aha.
“You’re awfully nosy, ” Jasmine said, planting her hands on her hips again. “What’s all this about?”
“We’re helping the police investigate Veronika’s death, ” I lied. Hey, the police were investigating; we were investigating-it was almost like we were working together.
“Veronika was killed on the set, not here. Besides, I saw on Extra that Mia was the real target anyway.”
“Maybe, ” I hedged. “But we’re looking into all possible leads.” Wow, that sounded official. Finally, all those hours of watching Law & Order were paying off.
“Well, I didn’t do it, ” Jasmine said, crossing her arms protectively over her boobs again. “I’ve got nothing to hide. Everything we do here is perfectly legal. See for yourself.” She stepped back to allow us entry.
I admit, curiosity got the better of me. I’d never been inside a real live den of iniquity before.
As we stepped into the marble-tiled foyer, I realized that the inside of the house was even more decadent than the outside. To the right lay a sunken living room lined in plush red velvet sofas. A black-lacquer coffee table sat in the center of the room, in the corner a matching bar, fully stocked with colorful bottles. The walls were painted in deep reds and burgundies, and the windows were all covered in heavy curtains, though bright, strategically placed spotlights on metal stands blazed throughout the room.
And in each corner, mounted into the ceiling, were white Web cams, little red lights blinking on each of them.
“Are those on?” I asked.
“Always, ” Jasmine responded.
I resisted the urge to cover my face.
Two girls walked past us, into the living room (both clad only in their itty-bitties), sat down on one of the sofas, and started to play a game of Go Fish.
“Seriously, guys pay for this?” Dana asked.
Jasmine smirked. “And girls. I cleared three mil last year.”
I was so in the wrong business. “Three million?” I gasped out. I looked over at the Go Fish players, wondering if they needed a third.
“What can I say? Sex sells.”
“So, Veronika worked here for you. Doing what? Playing”-I gestured to the two girls. One was taking her top off now. Apparently it was strip Go Fish-“cards?”
Jasmine nodded. “Among other things. I gave her room and board free, and her hours were flexible, so she could go on auditions. Most of my girls are aspiring actresses. Of course, when she landed the gig as Mia’s stand-in, it cut into her hours here some, but she worked nights. I gotta get my beauty sleep, you know.”
“Do you know if Veronika was seeing anyone special?” I asked. “Maybe a boyfriend?”
Jasmine puckered her collagen-enhanced lips. “Veronika kind of kept to herself. Not real friendly. Unless, of course, the cameras were on her. I remember she did bring this one guy home once. After that she started getting the same guy logging in to watch her every day. I figured maybe it was a boyfriend.”
“When was this?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers.
“I dunno. About five months ago. Maybe four. But like I said, he’s logged in every day since then.”
“What about since Veronika’s been gone?” Dana asked.
Jasmine cocked her head to the side. “Once or twice, I think. Mostly just quick stints. Nothing longer than a couple of minutes.”
“Any way you could find out this guy’s name?”
Jasmine shook her head, her red hair whipping across her cheeks. “Nope. All our transactions are done through a secure online payment system, Pay-Mate. The clients enter their credit card information, the company tracks their online time, then sends me a check. It’s all anonymous. The clients can’t find us, and we don’t know who they are.”
“Well, surely someone at PayMate must have his personal info then?”
“Someone, ” Jasmine replied. “But it ain’t me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work. You can let yourselves out.”
With that, Jasmine walked into the living room to join the rousing Go Fish game. She stripped off her spandex shorts to reveal a pair of Brazilian-cut panties so skimpy they left little to the imagination as to what else might be Brazilian on Jasmine’s body.
Dana and I quickly ducked out the front door and down the pathway to her borrowed Porsche.
“So, ” she said once we’d settled in, “how do we get to PayMate’s records?”