Scavenger hunt

Chapter 28

"Say star." Chase Gooding cocked her head against Jimmy, impaling him with her smile. "Staaaaar."

"Star." Jimmy blinked as the Polaroid flashed and spit out a photo.

"Thank you," said Chase Gooding, taking the photo and the camera from the boy. "Back on stage now." She clapped her hands. "Wings on your feet, fly, fly!" She watched him scamper down the aisle of the tiny theater, one eye on the developing photo. "Vegetables, from the top! Broccoli, with feeling this time!"

Rows of children dressed as broccoli, carrots, and asparagus marched raggedly across the stage, singing about vitamins and beta-carotene, and all Jimmy could think of was that he hadn't dropped acid in years, but his daily life had become increasingly psychedelic. "Your mother sounded strange when I asked if Chastity was there," he said.

"That's the name she and my father came with up. Chastity. Yuck. I changed it to Chase when I went into show business."

"Like the bank?"

Chase beamed. "Most people don't pick up on that. Not consciously anyway, but my name works on their subconscious. They associate me with money and power."

"It worked on me. I saw you, and I wanted to take out a loan."

"Is that a joke?"

"I guess not."

The two of them sat in the back row of the Little Stars of Tomorrow theater, a 120-seat auditorium in a strip mall just off the freeway in Whittier, the lobby dotted with photographs of kids dressed as pirates, flowers, and elves. Chase was currently directing a play for the local elementary school on healthy eating and nutrition, which meant that all eight food groups were wearing Velcro sneakers and braces.

It had been a couple days since he had confronted Samantha Packard, and she still hadn't contacted him. He didn't blame her. There was no way to prove she was the good wife, not yet, but that didn't mean he couldn't start looking into Heather Grimm, find out how she had ended up on Walsh's beach that day.

Jimmy had had gone through an old Whittier High School yearbook at the library and found a photo of the Thespians Club at the time of her murder. There were twelve girls in the club. "Such a waste," Mrs. Gifford, the Whittier drama teacher, had said when he asked her about Heather. According to the teacher, Heather and Chastity had been best friends, smart and pretty and always in contention for the lead in the school play. She said the last she had heard, Chastity was still living at home with her parents. Jimmy had checked; her parents' number appeared on Walsh's phone records. Jimmy had called immediately; he had introduced himself and said he was working on an article about Heather. He offered to meet with her after work, but she had insisted he attend today's rehearsal.

Chase was twenty-four now, but she hadn't changed much from her yearbook photo, the classic California girl: long-legged and tan, a slim, fresh-faced blonde. She wore white shorts and a man's white dress shirt, with the tails loosely knotted around her midriff. It had probably taken her a half-hour to get the knot to lie so perfectly above her belly button. The Monelli twins would have hated her.

Chase reached under her seat, pulled out a thick scrapbook, and put it on her lap. An Entertainment Weekly cover had been pasted on the front of the notebook, with Chase's face superimposed on Julia Roberts's as she accepted the Academy Award. She tapped her photo with a fingernail. "See it, dream it, be it-that's my motto."

"You got my vote." Jimmy wasn't humoring her-you had to bet on long shots to have any hope at all. If you ever considered the odds against you, no one would get out of bed in the morning-the whole world would be hiding under the covers.

Chase checked the Polaroid of her and Jimmy as she flipped through the scrapbook, stopping at a section titled "Chase and VIPs." She swiped the back of the photo with a glue stick and carefully affixed it next to a Polaroid of herself standing beside Hugh Hefner in a nightclub, the bunny king waxy and cadaverous, his fake teeth blinding.

"I feel honored."

"I recognized your name as soon as you called. I have a subscription to SLAP." Chase turned the pages, showing off photos of herself with Erik Estrada, Heather Locklear, the Channel 13 weatherman, Regis Philbin, Vince Vaughn, Ronald McDonald, Johnnie Cochran, and the woman who played Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "I have subscriptions to twenty-three magazines, although actually they're in my dog's name." She laughed. "That way when the bills come, I just throw them away, and they can't do anything about it."

"Clever."

"Do you know Tom Cruise?"

"Ah, no."

"How about John Travolta?"

"Afraid not."

"Oh, poo." Her perfect mouth grimaced for just a moment. "I'm a born-again Christian, but I've heard that Scientology is the most popular religion in Hollywood. I wanted to know if it would be worth it for me to convert. Career-wise speaking, I mean."

"Maybe we could talk about Heather. I can ask around about Scientology for you when I get back to the office, see if it would be a good career move."

She touched him on the wrist, the scrapbook sliding across one bare leg. "That would be so sweet." She glanced toward the dancing vegetables. "Junk food! Enter stage left!" She waited until a group of candy bars and chocolate chip cookies had trundled onstage before turning back to him. "Now, where were we?"

"You were going to tell me about you and Heather. Mrs. Gifford said that the two of you were best friends."

"The very best." Chase patted her heart to prove it.

"You have a lovely tan. Did you and she used to go to the beach together?"

"Even though you don't know Tom Cruise or John Travolta, I bet working at SLAP you still must meet lots of famous people."

"A few."

"That's what I thought. You know, it's so interesting you calling me up about Heather after all these years. You won't believe who I got a call from just a couple of months ago. Take a guess."

"Garrett Walsh."

She slapped his knee. "You cheated." She growled for him. It was kind of cute. "Can you believe that man actually called me up and wanted to get together? After what he did to poor Heather? Can you believe that?"

"Did you get a photo of the two of you?"

Chase slapped his knee again, harder this time. "I'm going to have to watch my step with you-you're a smart one." She flipped through the scrapbook to a section titled, "Chase's Brush with Death," and there was a Polaroid of her touching heads with Walsh, the two of them preening for the camera. "I thought he was making a comeback, but look at those clothes of his. He smelled bad too." She brushed the photo with a finger. "I look good though, don't I? You'd think I was having a grand old time with him, but you'd be wrong. That's acting. I have an associate degree in theater arts from Orange Coast College. Four-point-oh average too." She smoothed the page of the scrapbook. "Garrett Walsh asked if I used to go to the beach with Heather, just like you did. He wanted to know if we had ever gone to Hermosa before, and whose idea it was."

"What did you tell him?"

She looked at Jimmy, and her eyes were clear and sweetwater blue. "I told him to fuck off and die." She glanced at the stage. "Junk food!" Candy bars bumped into each other, startled. "I don't feel the danger! Threaten me! I want to feel it!" She turned back to Jimmy. "I saw the picture of you in this month's SLAP. I like a good scavenger hunt myself. What does a girl have to do to get invited to one of those parties?"

"I'll talk to Nino."

"Just like that? I always knew it was just a matter of meeting the right person." Chase smiled at him, and it was a shy smile, innocent as milk, but he could see her earlobes flush with blood. She riffed through the scrapbook, stopping at the "Chase and Heather" section. "As you can see, Heather and I were a couple of regular beach rats," she said, pointing out the two of them posing astride the bronze Seal Beach seal. "That last summer anyway." The following pages were filled with snapshots of the two girls lying on the sand, playing Frisbee, and frolicking in the waves. Chase looked younger, but Heather could have passed for eighteen easily-no wonder Walsh had been fooled.

"Where was that one taken?"

"Sunset Beach. We used to hit Sunset regularly. The best boys were there."

"What about Hermosa?"

Chase glanced at the stage, then back at Jimmy. "Couple weeks before-before she died, we started going there. Heather said she was bored with Sunset. I wasn't, but Heather, she always knew best."

"You must have seen Walsh's beach cottage on TV after she was murdered. Is that the area where you used to go?"

Chase nodded. "You wouldn't think such a small house could cost so much money. Do you have a house on the beach too?"

"How did you end up in that particular spot?"

"I don't know. Who remembers things like that? We just parked the car and started walking until we found a place for our towels." Chase tightened the knot in her shirt. "Heather probably was the one who decided. She was very selfish."

"You and Heather went to the beach together all that summer, but not on the day she was murdered."

"We were supposed to go to there together, but at the last minute Heather called up, said she was staying home. Just like that. Didn't even apologize. Like my feelings didn't count. Then she goes to Hermosa without me."

"After she was murdered, did you tell anyone about her changing plans?"

"Does Tom Cruise ever show up at those scavenger hunt parties?"

"Did you talk to the police about her changing plans?"

"No, but some man in a nice suit came by the house, said he heard that Heather and I wanted to be in show business. I thought he was an agent or a producer, but my father confronted him, and the man admitted that he was working for one of Walsh's lawyers. My father almost hit him." Chase shook out her hair, and Jimmy smelled her perfume. "Do you believe in guardian angels? Well, if it wasn't for my guardian angel, it would have been me murdered in that beach house that day, not Heather."

Jimmy stared at her.

Chase flipped through the scrapbook, her fingers knowing just where to go, right to the section titled "Chase's Beauty Pageant." The first page showed a younger Chase wearing a short evening gown and a bright yellow sash. "I was in the Young Miss Whittier pageant with Heather. She won, and I was first runner-up. I would have won, but my face broke out the night before, a real Vesuvius, and all the makeup in the world couldn't cover it up." She touched Jimmy's face. "Men-you can have a black eye, and it makes you look kind of sexy. But for a girl, any imperfection-forget it." She stared at her runner-up photo. "If it wasn't for those zits, I would have won, not Heather. Then it would have been me in the beach house with my head broken into pieces."

Jimmy was confused. "You think winning that contest got Heather killed?"

"We prefer pageant." Chase turned the page, scanning the photographs of herself and Heather, arms around each other, hugging for the cameras. "Why else would Garrett Walsh have made love to her? She was beautiful, but without that gold crown, she would have been a nobody."

"Chase, how would he have known she was Young Miss Whittier?"

"She would have told him, silly. That would have been the first thing out of her mouth." Chase turned the page, distracted now. Most of the photos in this section were of Heather. "I know that's what I would have done."

Jimmy had a headache. The Butcher-Darryl-beat him up with a basketball, Chase did it with conversation. "That last week did Heather seem different? Did she talk about anyone new that she had met?"

Chase shrugged, turned the page. "These are some bathing suit shots I had taken at a sportswear show. A lot of actresses got their start modeling."

"Was she more excited than usual? Buying lots of clothes, full of big plans?"

"You should have heard her going on about her new agent." Chase turned the page, smiled at her own photograph. "An L.A. agent. I got so tired of hearing her brag-"

"When did she get the agent?"

"Right after she won the pageant. You believe that? Nobody else ever got an agent for winning, not for Young Miss Whittier anyway. Like maybe you got a job modeling sportswear at the Tustin Mall or-"

"What was the agent's name?"

Chase tapped a photo of herself modeling lingerie, a wispy red bra and panties set. "Do you think I need breast augmentation? Be honest."

Jimmy could feel his heart pounding. "The agent. What was her name?"

"You think Heather would tell me? Probably afraid I'd steal her away. The only thing she told me was that her agent was a size twenty-four with big hair and lots of flashy rings. Heather thought that was so Hollywood." Chase smoothed down the corner of a curling photo. "She should have been my agent. If my face hadn't broken out-"

"Did Heather tell anyone else about this woman with the big hair?"

"Just her mother. It was like a big secret. She only told me so she could rub it in." Chase smiled to herself. "I guess I got the last laugh. That agent of hers never even came to Heather's funeral. I looked all over for a woman with a helmet head and lots of rings; I stopped a few that looked like they might be in the business and said I was seeking representation, but they looked at me like I was crazy. What a waste. I brought my portfolio and everything."

Jimmy stared at her.

"What? Like you wouldn't, if you were me?"

"Was this agent at the beauty contest? Maybe the organizers would-"

"I told you, it wasn't a beauty contest, it was a pageant, and no, the agent wasn't there. Heather said it was the photographer at the pageant, the one taking the official shots, who lined her up with the agent. If I had known that at the time, I would have been nicer to the little creep. And no, I don't know his name either. The way he was looking at Heather made me feel like I was just a porker in a dress standing next to her. Don't think she didn't love it too."

Jimmy reached for the scrapbook. "Please?" He turned back to the first photo, the eight-by-ten of Chase with her first-runner-up smile. "This is the official photograph, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"May I?" Jimmy had already started pulling off the photo, being careful not to tear the backing. COPYRIGHT BY WILLARD BURTON was stamped on the back.

"Geez Jimmy, what are you so happy about?"