Free A Death In Beverly Hills by David Grace Page B

flat, then I end up in here." Travis shook his head.
    Have you forgotten that your wife and baby are dead ? Steve wondered. He sat perfectly still, offended into silence and realizing for the first time the immense gulf between Tom Travis's view of the world and that of normal people, that everything Travis heard and saw was distorted through the prism of his own celebrity. Steve turned back to his notes.
    "Tom, you told Kaitlen Berdue that you had had an argument with your wife the day she disappeared. How big an argument was it, I mean was it the typical husband-wife stuff or was there screaming and shouting?"
    "Where I come from screaming and shouting is a normal husband and wife stuff," Travis said, smiling. Steve just stared at him. "Yeah, okay," Travis continued, "no flying plates, nothing physical. Look, it was a constant thing with her the last couple of months. I put it down to hormones and her being fat. She'd get on my case and I'd tell her to get off. She'd say something and I'd tell her to go to hell. She'd call me names--"
    "What kind of names?"
    "Jeeze, we gotta get into that?"
    "Think of me like your doctor."
    "What kind of names?" Tom muttered. "Okay, 'fool', 'jerk', 'lazy self-centered bastard', 'narcissistic, lazy, self-centered, bastard'. I thought that last one was just plain redundant," Travis said with a thin smile.
    "Then what?"
    Travis scowled. "Then I'd say some things." Steve stared and finally Travis continued. "I'd remind her that it was my house and my money that paid for it and if I wanted to sit on my butt in my own easy chair that was my right. I'd remind her that I started out with nothing, moving furniture, pumping gas, that I'd gotten into the business risking my neck doing stunts and that I'd earned every dollar she was spending. Then she'd scream some more, and I'd want to punch her lights out but I wouldn't. I learned that in anger management. When I started to feel like that, like hitting her, I'd just got out. Went to the weight room or hit the pool or, like that day, I took off to pound the dune buggy against the desert.
    "So, yeah, okay, we argued, but I never touched her. I just left. I didn't put her in the back of the Hummer. I didn't take a shovel with me. I didn't bury her in the desert. I was pissed off, sure. But, like I said, I put her behavior down to her hormones being out of whack because of the pregnancy. I figured once she had the baby, she'd go back to normal."
    How many women are there on the jury? Steve wondered.
    "Tom, I know you've been asked this a hundred times, but I've got to go back to it. Who could have done this? It wasn't a robbery. It wasn't a sex crime. The odds of this being a random serial killer are like billions to one. Someone wanted Marian, or you, dead. Who could it have been?" Travis sat immobile, staring at his distorted image in the steel table top. "How about Kaitlen Berdue?" Steve asked a moment later.
    "Kaitlen couldn't swat a fly. She doesn't have it in her."
    "She sure did a number on you. Have you heard the tapes she made for the cops?"
    "Yeah, I've heard them. They took advantage of her."
    "Tom, the main reason you're on trial" Greg broke in, "is those tapes. They inflamed the public and turned everybody against you. If we don't find some evidence pointing to someone else, they're going to get you convicted. If she could set you up that way, is it that long a jump to thinking that maybe she had something to do with your wife's death?"
    Travis kept his head down, slowly shaking it from side to side. "I lied to her," he said finally in almost a whisper.
    "What?"
    "It's my own fault. I lied to her, all that shit about Marian being a lesbo." Suddenly, Travis looked up. "This is all confidential, right, attorney-client privilege?"
    Greg and Steve gave each other a quick look and Markham nodded.
    "Okay, well, the truth is that I was in love with her, Katey. I figured I'd wait until the baby was born and when Marian was back on her feet,