Beware Beware (13 page)

I rang the doorbell, and after half a minute, I heard the muffled metal sound of a turning lock. The door opened just enough to let me know it could be pushed, not a crack of visibility for the photographers waiting outside.

I slipped through the narrowest entrance I could manage. Willow Hemingway was waiting ten feet inside, watching me with a dull curiosity in her eyes.

“You're Jamie's friend,” she said, her voice flat and raspy.

I nodded and tried not to stare.

She was a beautiful woman, her features so smoothly unimpeachable I would have believed they were computer generated. She was a blond, of course, and she had the kind of wide blue eyes that occupied billboards across the world. Her nose was small with a sharp, thin-skinned bulb; full lips pouted over a dainty chin, slightly dented in the middle like soft fruit pressed by a thumb. I might have seen her face in a magazine when I was young and felt ugly and inadequate with my small dun eyes, my dark lank hair.

At this moment, her looks were compromised, though not by much. Her skin was stretched and her eyes shot red with the residues of an angry cry. She wore makeup, but only a little—only to camouflage, unsuccessfully, these very effects. A black silk robe hung on her fragile frame. Even with its soft shimmer and its short hem, it had a rumpled blasé look, the millionaire actress's equivalent of sweatpants.

“Come in,” she said, and led me out of the foyer.

The house was magnificent and overstated, far enough over the top to veer back toward tasteless. Chandeliers dripped from high ceilings, and a winding marble staircase climbed toward a glazed atrium. Every piece of wall displayed either some tapestry or painting or mounted pottery, or a framed portrait of Joe or Willow. The number of these was astonishing, and in most other situations, it would have taken some effort to suppress a laugh.

I followed her to a living room where she installed herself on an oversize couch draped in brocade. She indicated the other side with a panning motion, and I sat down.

“Who are you supposed to be, exactly?” she said, the question delivered without rising intonation.

“You talked to Jamie, right?”

“He said you were working for him, and that I should see you to help him, but why?”

“Jamie's the—” I closed my mouth and started again. “What have you been told about your husband's death, Ms. Hemingway?”

“Just call me Willow, please. Don't make me sound so dusty.”

“Any relation, by the way?”

“To Papa?” She floated a smile that was meant to be ambiguous. “There's some relation, but it isn't clear where.”

“So what have you been told?”

“Something about my great-uncle, a bad marriage maybe.”

“Sorry,” I said, a little embarrassed. “About the other thing.”

She sighed and pulled at a handful of her hair. “Not a lot. The police officer in charge of the case is this fat dykey chick. I think she hates me.”

I was tempted to say I wondered why, but I held my tongue. “Have they mentioned anything about foul play?”

“They've danced around it. Maybe they think I killed him. They'd
love
that.” She nodded toward the front of the house, where reporters and paparazzi buzzed in squirmy discontent. “They'd call me the Black Widow. I'd look amazing on trial.”

I didn't doubt it. “So Jamie—”

“Yeah, so what's the deal? Why is he in trouble?”

“Well if Joe was murdered, it looks like Jamie's the favorite suspect.”

She rubbed one eye with a sharp knuckle and laughed. “Jamie! Murder Joe!”

“I work for a private detective. Jamie hired me to find out what really happened.”

I watched her, to see if she would pale or tremble. If I wanted to clear Jamie, I needed some alternate suspects, and she was a more likely candidate than the average chump on the street. She didn't flinch, though it occurred to me, almost reflexively, that she was an actress.

“Poor Jamie,” she said.

“Do you know him well?” I asked.

“Pretty well. He comes here often, and he's always so sweet and helpful.”

I wondered whether there was a flirtation between them. Jamie was good-looking, even next to Joe, and he was closer to Willow's age. I kept the wondering to myself.

“I'm sure he appreciates you seeing me. As do I. It must be a tough time for you.” I paused and tried to sound sincere, even though the feeling was there. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

She nodded. “It's been hard. Joe was an asshole, but he was still my husband. I can't believe I don't even get to yell at him anymore. If someone really killed him, though, I'm sure he had a good reason. Fucking Joe. I wonder what he did this time.”

A cigarette appeared out of some fold in her robe, and she lit it with a silver lighter. I thought about going for one of the Lucky Strikes tucked away in my purse, and decided against it.

“I understand he had a rocky relationship with his son Theodore.”

Willow was not quite ten years older than her stepson, and I doubted they knew each other very well. I was genuinely curious to hear what she had to say about him.

“Oh that poor child,” she said. “Believe me, I told Joe he should be nicer to him. But it's not
all
Joe's fault. Theodore's mom is such a damn space cadet, how else was he supposed to turn out?”

“What do you mean? How did he turn out?”

I sat at attention, half expecting to hear about school expulsions, a troubling history of violence.

“I just mean he's such a”—making a megaphone out of one hand and whispering across her thumb—“
loser
.”

“Do you think he could've…”

“What, killed Joe?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Better him than Jamie.”

The way she said “better” struck me as particularly cold, but I realized I'd thought the same thing. Then again, I wasn't married to the dead man.

“I feel bad for him, but he was always a little shit.”

“Do you know if he ever threatened your husband or anything like that?”

She shrugged. “Nothing like that that I know of. You know I only met the kid one time, right?”

I wondered how on earth she expected me to know that, but I didn't say so.

I watched the white smoke rise from the end of her cigarette and moved to another line of inquiry.

“Did he have any enemies?” I asked.

“Oh, tons, I'm sure.”

“Any you know by name?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I probably know several, but it's hard to know who likes him and who hates him, even among his ‘friends.'” She used air quotes there and rolled her eyes. “Comes with being famous, I guess. People hang around even if they wish you'd fall off a roof, or fade away.”

“Joe had lots of these friends?”

“We both did. I still do, I guess. So many people have called or texted or written on my wall or whatever, and I'm sick of it. It's like—sure, maybe some of them mean well, but I don't even
know
most of these people. They're not concerned. They're curious. They want me to make them feel special. They're fame vultures.”

I nodded and listened as she complained about her fame. She wanted me to know that she suffered, and there was a certain relish in her voice as she listed these woes. “But not Jamie?” I asked.

“No. Jamie's the real deal. He loved Joe. Which is why I know you're not going to turn around and vomit this conversation to
Us Weekly
or whoever's waiting for you outside.”

“The party at The Roosevelt Thursday night—were you there?”

“Of course not. Joe didn't believe in inviting his
wife
to
parties
. I don't do blow anymore, and I'm not some chick he can go after and hook up with, either.” She sighed heavily, her lips parted, pouty and thick. “Sometimes I wonder why he bothered to marry me.”

“How did you meet?”

“We worked together. On
Hot Air
.” She smirked. “Have you seen it?”

“No, sorry, I haven't.”

“Terrible movie. Even I know that. Anyway, I played his sidekick. We got terrible reviews. People said we had no chemistry.” She laughed bitterly, and I could picture her reading online message boards and getting very angry. “But we were great together offscreen. Joe romanced me, really did his best to sweep me off my feet. I was so flattered I fell in love with him. We got married after four months.”

It was clear enough that the honeymoon didn't last, but I let her tell the rest of the story.

“He was so wonderful those first months. I've read the tabloids, I know what people say about me, but I was so in love with him. I hadn't been in love like that since I was in high school.”

A film of tears formed over her dry red eyes.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“No.” She sniffled and tilted her head to catch the one tear big enough to roll out, a wet bead that dispersed on a red fingernail. “I'm glad we had at least that. I'll try to remember at least that.”

I nodded.

“The night he proposed, he had this party at this house with, like, thirty of his friends. We hadn't been dating that long, so I hadn't met a lot of them and I was just starstruck.” She catalogued the guest list, and I recognized most of the names. “And they knew who
I
was, and it was just incredible. Then Joe opened this incredible champagne and, with everyone looking, he gave this incredible speech and got down on one knee. I didn't stand a chance.”

“That sounds special,” I said. “Did you know it was coming?”

“Not at all. I mean, it was stupid of me to say yes, but you know,
George Clooney
was there.”

I almost smiled. “The key to any successful proposal.”

“I'll never forget that night. No matter what he did after, Joe got that right.”

I tried to picture a room filled with faces from movies, and I had to admit, I couldn't claim immunity to the disorienting vapors of fame. Talking to Joe Tilley's widow about her A-list dream life injected me with some strange, heady sense of self-importance. I didn't like it.

“So what happened after that?”

“We got married, and again—
everyone
was there. You can see my wedding photos if you look online. Some photog must have wedged himself in the bushes. We were trying to be discreet, you know? Anyway, after the honeymoon—we stayed in a castle in Bordeaux. After the honeymoon, things started going south.”

She frowned, and her shoulders slumped in a crumbling way that said she'd had a drink or two since morning.

“There was this one night. We got in a fight because he flirted with a waitress while we were at dinner. He said I was being crazy, but he touched her hip. The far hip. So like, his arm had to go across her back.
That
, in front of your
new wife
, who's already way younger and more attractive than you—sorry, it's true though. Anyway,
that
is crazy. Ugh, sorry, this wasn't the point.”

She dropped her head and raised her eyes, staring at a blown-up photograph of Joe hung up on the opposite wall. It was a good portrait, a close-up of his head and shoulders, taken when he was in his twenties. Next to it was a portrait of Willow, and motionless, silent, side by side on this wall, husband and wife were the same age and, suspended in that false dimension, they made a gorgeous couple.

“So after this fight, we're just sitting in bed. We've both been crying, and there's snot all over our covers. He's wearing this stupid fucking burgundy kimono with a dragon on it that I just—maybe I'll burn that thing or put it in a shrine now that he's dead. He loved that thing and it was so terrible. Anyway, there's snot all over that, just shining. And I don't even remember who says it first, but we agree that we've made a huge mistake.”

She took a long smiling drag on her cigarette and released smoke with a dry, punching laugh.

“And then we stayed married. Because I don't even know. We were embarrassed? We made such a big deal out of everything. He proposed in front of George Clooney! And plus, I was Joe's third wife and he'd already gotten plenty of grief about that. Talk about red flags, right? Oh—you should talk to
her
. His ex. She hated Joe more than I ever did.”

“He had two ex-wives, didn't he?”

“Yeah, but he married Flora Rae young and they parted on okay terms almost twenty years ago. She's like a Buddhist monk or something now. Bald head and everything. She lives in Taiwan or Thailand, one of those.”

“So tell me about the other one. What's her name?”

Her mouth opened and her tongue showed gray and pink like something dying. “Abby Hart.” There was snide disbelief in her tone. “You can read all about her on Google.”

I almost laughed—the third wife was proud of the second wife's fame. I made a note to read tabloids on Joe Tilley and his ex-wife, who did sound familiar.

“Willow, I'm going to ask you something personal.”

“Do you want to know who I'm fucking?”

I raised my eyebrows and put up my hands, then brought them back down again. “Yeah, I guess. I was planning to be more delicate about it, but yeah.”

“That dyke cop asked me already,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I'm not seeing anyone, and I guess I should count myself lucky for that.”

I sat quietly for the next hour as she recounted her romantic history, her blue eyes probing mine whenever she dropped a full name. I was starting to get restless, and at a logical pause in the interview, I asked to use the restroom.

The guest bathroom was the size of my bedroom and much more opulent. The sink was a deep, tall bowl of veined black marble that received water with remarkable quiet when I washed my hands. Guest towels sat stacked in a ceramic tray, thick, monogrammed things that were nonetheless meant to be disposable. The mirror on the wall was ripped out of the Evil Queen's boudoir, a huge oval of glass with a heavy, ornate border. As I looked into it, I felt like a sloppy tourist who'd wandered into a fancy hotel just to relieve herself.