Looks to Die For Read Online Free PDF Page B

victim.”
    I reached for the photo but Chauncey didn’t let go, so I leaned over to study it. I expected a surge of emotion, but nothing came. And what should I feel anyway? My sentiments were as tangled as the rhymes in a bad Hallmark card.
    “Where was she from?” I asked after a moment.
    “She grew up in Idaho and moved to Hollywood about six months ago.”
    The picture revealed a young woman with high cheekbones, a pert nose, and straight blond hair that curled slightly toward her chin. But any suggestion of fresh-faced innocence was hidden under several layers of makeup. Her large, wide-set eyes had been doused with heavy mascara and smoky liner to make them seem sultry, and thickly applied lip gloss gave her a pouty smile. These eight-by-tens were typically called head shots in the trade, but the deep V cut of her blouse and its revealing cleavage made this more of a chest shot.
    “Do you know anything about her?” I asked Chauncey.
    “Not yet. I have two people on my staff working on a backgrounder this morning. They should have something in a few hours.” He pushed the picture closer to me. “Nothing at all strikes you?”
    Something about the face seemed almost too perfect, like an artist’s rendition of a struggling young actress. “I suppose I could have met her at a party and not remembered. A lot of young women in Los Angeles look like that.”
    “A lot of those women see plastic surgeons,” Chauncey said. His voice was mild, without much inflection, but the words knocked me back as forcefully as a thrown rock. Trembling, I looked again.
    He was right that the woman in the photo hadn’t achieved that all-natural look on her own. I recognized the signs, starting with the cleavage: tiny shoulders, flat chest, then breasts leaping out like over-ripe grapefruits. No Wonderbra could be responsible for that. But it wasn’t Dan’s style. Even in the days when he regularly did cosmetic surgery, he refused to do breast augmentation and railed against implants. He didn’t think silicone was bad just for a woman’s health — he worried a lot more about what it did to her self-esteem.
    My eyes wandered up to the face. The lips might have had a collagen injection or two, and a scalpel had probably been involved in sculpting the tiny nose. But that wasn’t my husband’s handiwork, either. Dan insisted on features with character, and this nose looked like it had been stamped out from a Hollywood cookie cutter.
    “You’ll obviously ask Dan,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “But I’d be very surprised if she were a patient of his. Anytime.”
    Chauncey put the picture back into the envelope and carefully slipped it inside his briefcase.
    “Just a few more questions,” he said. “First, you mentioned your three children. I need their names and ages.”
    “Grant’s sixteen. Ashley’s just turned fourteen. And Jimmy’s five. But they won’t be involved in this, will they?”
    “Only in the sense that the judge will be setting bail for your husband this morning. Dan obviously has ties to the community, but it’s helpful to establish close family connections. You and Dan are the parents of all the children?”
    “Yes.” I felt my voice quavering and stared at a crack in the step. “We got married very young and had Grant and Ashley quickly, while Dan was still in medical school. By the time Ashley was eight, Dan had a well-established practice and we decided —”
    “It’s okay.”
    I glanced up and saw Chauncey Howell smiling at me. “You don’t have to justify having children,” he said. “It’s just that with the age difference, I didn’t want to have any surprises.”
    “No surprises,” I said. “They’re all ours and they were all planned as carefully as a Carnival cruise.”
    Chauncey laughed briefly, then turned serious. “One more thing, Mrs. Fields. And think about this before you answer. Have you and the doctor had any marital problems lately?”
    “No.”