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“I’m all ears,” Eve told him.
“She said I had to dump Marlo—and make it a hard dump. And I had to pick up with her where we left off, only she’d be calling the shots. She wanted a big media announcement on how we’d fallen in love on the set. Who does that?” he demanded. “Who wants somebody who doesn’t want them?”
“And if you refused?”
“She was going to put the video on the ’Net. And she had guys lined up who’d talk about how Marlo had sex with them—all kinds of weird sex.”
The anger seemed to drain out of him, and he said, quietly, “I think she’d lost her mind. I swear to God, I think she’d just lost her fucking mind.”
“When did she give you the ultimatum?”
“God.” He scrubbed at his face. “The day she was killed. That morning. I said I didn’t believe her. She said I was making a fool of her, making her a joke, and nobody got away with that. She said she’d give me a preview that night, so I could see she had the goods.”
“Did she ask you to meet her on the roof, Matthew?”
“She told me I’d better meet her. I told Marlo. I wasn’t going to. I was going to handle it on my own, but one of the things we promised each other was to be up-front. No pretenses, no game playing. So I told her. We decided, screw it. It’s our life, right? And like you said, we’re free to be with each other. Being team players doesn’t mean letting some crazy bitch call the shots. Plus, if she had a vid, and made it public, we’d press charges.”
He heaved out a sigh, shoved his drink aside. “Marlo was all over that, maybe it’s being inside a cop’s skin for the last few months. But she said if K.T. paid somebody to break into our place, set this up, and she used it this way, we’d damn well see her ass in jail—and if the producers, Roundtree, the public, the media didn’t like it, well, screw them, too.”
“But the two of you went up to the roof,” Eve reminded him.
“Yeah. We had this plan. We went up earlier, before dinner—just to take a look around, sit down, and talk it through. We decided we’d go up together, confront her, make her threaten us again, talk about the PI and the camera, all that. Marlo had a recorder in her purse. Then we’d tell K.T. if she followed through, we’d take the recording to the cops. Maybe people would get off watching the two of us in bed, but they’d get off big-time when K.T. Harris went to jail for blackmail and accessory to... I don’t know. Marlo had a whole freaking list.”
“And how did that go over with Harris?”
“It didn’t, because she was dead when we got up there. Look, I argued with her earlier in the evening. I asked her to forget all this, just grab some sanity and back off before it went too far to handle. And she grabbed my crotch.”
He tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling. “Jesus. She grabbed my balls, and said, ‘I’ve got you by these, baby, and you’d better remember it.’”
He took a breath, looked back at Eve. “We should’ve told you. We should’ve told you everything straight out, but it all seemed so... huge. And we didn’t have any proof. After we realized she was dead, after the CPR didn’t work, Marlo looked through K.T.’s purse.” He winced. “I know that sounds cold, but she was dead, and we wanted to... How would you feel?” he demanded. “How would you feel if a bunch of strangers sat around watching you and Roarke in bed, or you and McNab?”
“I’d probably want to cause harm to the person responsible.”
“We were going to. Marlo’s way—your way. But there wasn’t any vid or any part of one in her bag. She must’ve been lying all along. I don’t get it. I swear to God, I don’t know why she’d lie. Maybe she thought I’d just cave, then when I didn’t she had to save face. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe you’d had enough. You got mad, and you pushed. Who’d blame you? After that, it just happened so fast. Impulse and rage. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, didn’t mean for her to drown. You just wanted the video, wanted to protect yourselves, your privacy, the project. But then you didn’t get her out in time.”
“No. No. No. She was in the pool, facedown, when we got up there. We didn’t even think of the video until... I tried. We both tried. Everything happened exactly the way we told you. We left out the blackmail, the threats. But it happened exactly the way we said. I swear to you.”
“Including Marlo going up with you, with a recorder on her?”
“Yeah. Like I said, we were going to—” The light seemed to dawn, like a switch flicked. “Jesus Christ, we’re idiots. We’ve been so... We’ve got a recording. Marlo turned it on when we started up. We tested it first. We have a recording.”
Chapter 9
Eve decided to reserve judgment on whether Marlo and Matthew qualified as idiots, innocents, or calculators. In the meantime, she kept Matthew cooling his heels in one interview room while Peabody contacted Marlo, requested she come into Central.
“We’ll take Julian while we’re waiting for her to come in,” Eve told her partner. “When she does, we’ll see what we see—or don’t. And we’ll see if pretend Roarke has any little secrets pretend Peabody sussed out.”
“I don’t like to think of her as pretend Peabody anymore. The more we find out, the meaner and crazier she gets. It’s like it’s bad enough fake Peabody got murdered, but now fake Peabody is a dead, blackmailing asshole on top of it. It’s depressing.”
“Yeah, it’s all really too bad for you.”
“Well, it kind of is. How am I supposed to enjoy the vid now, when I’ll be thinking how behind the scenes I was trying to blackmail McNab into bed, and the whole time he’s in love with you? And that maybe there’s a vid of the two of you all naked and sexy and—”
“Stop right there before I boot.”
“Hey! Maybe there’s a vid of fake Peabody and fake Roarke all naked and sexy. That would definitely make up for it. Maybe I can get a copy.”
