Body Copy - Michael Craven [77]
“Thank you for your time, Dean. I appreciate it.”
“I hope I was helpful. I don’t feel like I really provided you with anything.”
Tremaine walked over to the door and turned around.
He said, “You were helpful, Dean. Just talking to me, that was helpful.” Tremaine paused and said, “By the way, what movies have you produced?”
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B O D Y C O P Y
Tremaine could see Dean Latham’s face contort a bit to betray some pleasure. Like, finally, you asked . . .
“The most famous one is Turnaround.”
Tremaine nodded and smiled and said, “Good flick,”
then said, “Thanks again for your time,” and left.
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C H A P T E R 3 4
Tremaine got home at about seven. He sat in the Cutlass, the sun was low now, it was barely light out. He didn’t get out, he just sat there, thinking. Thinking, why is this guy Dean Latham lying? Why is Latham, like the stripper from the karate place, playing dumb when it comes to people I’m pretty damn certain they’ve had contact with?
The stripper with Roger Gale, Latham with Kelly Burch.
Are all these people intertwined in some grand conspiracy?
What is it? What am I missing?
Tremaine sat still in his car. It was quiet. His cell phone rang, startling him.
Without looking at the incoming number, Tremaine said, “Hello.”
“Yeah, Donald, it’s Dean Latham.”
B O D Y C O P Y
Tremaine shifted in his seat.
“Dean, what’s up?”
“I found my old plane tickets. I was right. I was in Seattle that week.”
Tremaine didn’t answer right away.
“Did you hear me?” Latham said. “Did we break up?”
“We didn’t break up. I heard you.”
“Well, do you want to see the tickets? Do you want to come back by?”
“Not tonight,” Tremaine said. “I tell you what, if I need to see them, I’ll give you a buzz.”
“All right then.”
“Thanks for the call, Dean.”
“No problem. Hey, Turnaround’s gonna be on TNT
next month. You should check it out.”
“I’ll try,” Tremaine said.
He clicked off the call.
Tremaine went inside the trailer thinking about this eccentric former movie producer Dean Latham. Now the guy’s calling him with proof that he was out of town at the time of both murders. It seemed a little convenient, his calling right after Tremaine left, suddenly having found the tickets. Was this some gamesmanship, Latham trying to play the innocent? Or maybe, Tremaine thought, Latham knew Kelly but didn’t kill Kelly.
Tremaine sat down at his desk and got online to IMDb.
com, the Internet Movie Database. You could find everyone’s credits who’d ever had anything to do with a movie, from stars to writers to directors to extras. Tremaine looked up Dean Latham, producer.
There were his credits.
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Hasn’t done anything for a while. Tremaine scanned all of them, all the movies Latham had produced. There was Turnaround, and three other movies Tremaine had never heard of: Big Boy, Aliens in America, and Faster.
Then Tremaine looked up Kelly Burch, the failed, dead actress. There were two Kelly Burches listed. Tremaine clicked on the first one, an actress from the 1920s, and evidently a pretty successful one. Not a star, but a character actress, a substantial list of credits, old black-and-white movies, some of which Tremaine had seen and liked. She’d made it, this Kelly Burch, one of the lucky ones. Then he clicked on the other Kelly Burch. Not much information, no picture, not even a date of birth—or date of death—and only one credit to her name, as an extra in a movie that came out four years ago called Continental Drift. This was probably the Kelly Burch who had been murdered. This was probably the Kelly Burch Tremaine was interested in.
But this information, an extra in Continental Drift, didn’t help him.
Hmm, Tremaine thought. Hmm.
He got some Maker’s out of the cabinet, got some rocks out of the fridge, poured himself a bourbon on ice. He put on Derek and the Dominoes, The Layla Sessions, and sat down in a big leather chair next to his desk.
The hot booze and the ice, it was an amazing combination. He sat in the chair, refilling as necessary,