Body Copy - Michael Craven [22]
“No. In a month. Yes, now.”
She had that playful smile, the one she’d had when he’d first met her.
Michael Craven
“Well,” Tremaine said politely, “I was thinking of interviewing you here, then heading home for a surf.”
“You can go for a surf anytime,” Laurie said. “But I might not ever ask you to have a beer again.” She smiled again and said, “Come on, it’s a change of scenery. Plus, I have a joint.”
“You’re assuming just because I’m an old surf pro that I smoke pot.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good guess.”
She said, “Do you know a bar down the street called Brennan’s?”
“Been there many times,” Tremaine said.
“Well?” she said.
Having a drink with an attractive, mischievous, forty-something woman whom he was interviewing for a case could lead to trouble.
So Tremaine said, “I’ll meet you there.”
At the bar, a nice, dark little dive, three beers and one joint in, Laurie said, “You know, to find out who killed him, it’d be nice.”
“Nice?”
“I was very sad for a long time, I still am. But it’s been a year and I can think about it now without that feeling of shock. I’m curious; I want to know why. Who hated him enough to kill him? You know?”
“You said you never saw him outside of work . . .”
“No one really did. Roger and his wife, they were society people. Big shots, even for L.A.”
“Jack Sawyer told me that, said they hung around with the old-money crowd.”
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B O D Y C O P Y
“Right,” Laurie said. “Roger wasn’t from that world, but he could fit in anywhere, and he used his charm on those people to get their business. Bank clients. Things like that. But I did know Roger pretty well because he worked all the time, so I was around him a lot. He didn’t invite me down to the club, but when you’re around someone that much, you get a feel for them. And I liked Roger Gale. I really liked him. He was so smart.”
Laurie finished her beer and held her empty glass up to Tremaine to see if he wanted another. He did.
Tremaine said, “What about this guy Tyler Wilkes? Everybody seems to be talking about him.”
“He’s a poseur. A successful poseur but a poseur. No, not even successful, he was handed his agency by someone else who built it up. So he’s always fighting that. Tyler’s just one of the many creative directors in the business who was jealous of Roger. He’s into drugs supposedly, too. He might have thought that if he killed Roger he could be the ad king of L.A. That people would start to respect him.
That means a lot. There’s a lot a money in advertising.”
They sat there at the bar for another hour, talking about Roger Gale, to be sure, but moving off the subject, too.
Talking about other things . . . Life.
Tremaine looked at Laurie. Into her forties, but still really sexy. She’d kept her figure up, and the corkscrew blonde hair fit her just right. It was wild, like her. Tremaine found himself now not so much looking at her as checking her out. He imagined what she looked like naked, standing in front of him.
The beers—and the joint—were sending his mind in a different direction, clouding his judgment. He liked it.
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Michael Craven
Tremaine snapped out of his daydream and said, “Did you ever notice anything unusual about Roger?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, was there ever anything, anything, that struck you as odd? I understand he was an unusual guy to begin with, taking a job on a Ford assembly line and things like that. But, did you ever have a moment where you said, that’s interesting, even for him. It could be small, inconsequential, anything.”
“Yes and no,” Laurie said. “I got to work one morning really early. I was the first one in.”
“Even before Mary O’Shaughnessy?”
Laurie laughed and said, “I know, she’s such a climber.
Anyway, I found Roger in his office asleep. In the same clothes from the day before. He woke up, right as I walked by his office.”
“He’d slept there?”
“I guess. Now, we all worked late a lot. But we always went home eventually, even if it was five a.m. You know, go home, take a shower, come back around ten. That’s why I said yes and no. Because