Kathryn Lilley - Makeovers Can Be Murder

The third book in the Fat City Mystery series, 2009

Everyone wants a body to die for.

Especially me. My name is Kate Gallagher, and Im a perfect size sixteen, which is an unper fect size for someone in my line of work. Im a reporter in TV news-a field where any female bigger than a size two is practically an endangered species. Zaftig gals like me are vulnerable members of the newsroom herd, so I have to spend much of my time beating off the News Barbies, who are constantly on the prowl for my job. In broadcasting, the law of the jungle is up or out, but for mostly cosmetic reasons (174 of them, last time I checked in with the scale), my career has stalled in my adopted hometown of Durham, North Carolina. For me the town might as well be called Fat City.

My body/career problems came to a head last summer when I was summoned to Beatty the Beasts office. Beatty is the news director at Channel Twelve Action! News. His favorite sport is torturing reporters with asinine assignments designed to jack up the stations perpetually sagging ratings.

Monday morning started off with a bang that week when Beatty eyed me across his desk and announced that he had a brilliant idea for an investigative series.

Quick-weight-loss scams-theyre a billion-dollar business. Beatty paused for dramatic effect. What are they? Who suffers? Whos ripping off Thunder Thighs?

He lobbed a glance at my hip zone and added, I want you on the fat-scam story, Gallagher. You know the territory.

I shifted in my skintight wiggle skirt, which Id bought fifteen pounds ago. Too many drive-through dinners and no-show sessions at the gym had left me and my skirt with more waddle than wiggle.

Well, Ive heard of a place where they claim to melt off cellulite, I said. First they slather you all over with some kind of cream; then they wrap you up in plastic and stick you in a sauna. Its just water loss, though-totally bogus.

Fantabulous. Thats a dynamite visual. Beatty raised his fingers in the air and twisted a pair of phantom knobs. I see you doing the story in a bikini. Youre being frosted with fat cream and shrink-wrapped.

I blanched. A bikini? I said. No way. I dont even own a bikini.

You can expense it. Weve got to see them slathering you in the cream, so that means bikini. The rest is up to you. I want a five-part series on diet scams for sweeps week.

When I didnt reply, his eyebrows shot up above the rim line of his aviator glasses, hairy protuberances that usually represented the leading edge of an ass-kicking squall.

Investigative stories are your beat, Gallagher, he said. But if you cant handle this one, Ill put Lainey on it. Shes itching to do a series. And Im sure shed have no problem wearing a bikini.

Lainey would prance naked on a catwalk if it meant promoting herself, I said.

Beatty yanked off his glasses and tossed them on the desk. In case you forgot, Gallagher, this stations ratings pay your salary, so spare me any yada yada about how you won the duPont Award and you only do serious news. We could use more people around here with Laineys attitude.

Ouch. Lainey Lanston was my newsroom rival and personal nemesis. Formerly a print reporter at the Durham Ledger, she had always dismissed TV news as lamebrain puffery-until the morning she showed up for her first day of work at Channel Twelve. Ever since then shed been breathing down my neck, trying to outscore me on getting lead stories. The fact that Beatty was calling Lainey by her first name meant shed already oozed her way into his good graces. A bad omen for me.

I gritted my teeth and said, Laineys completely wrong for this story-I already have some good sources. Ill do it.

When his eyebrows remained aloft, I added grudgingly, Okay, including the damned visual with the bikini.

Atta girl. Beatty flashed some teeth in a smile that might have been meant to be conciliatory. And give me your usual hard-hitting stuff, he said. Not like that piece of crap we ran yesterday about the escaped zoo tiger. We promote it as a killer, but then we show it holed up in a bush having kittens.

Cubs. Tigers dont have kittens.

Whatever. Another gesture dismissed me. They were milk-eaters, not man-eaters.

All you had to do was play up the happy-ending twist. That wouldve worked.

Hey, that woulda been fantabulous, he said with another show of canines. Maybe I should move you over to features.

Maybe its time for me to leave.

I fled from Beattys office and cut a path through the crowded newsroom, avoiding the curious stares of my colleagues. I knew they were dying to pump me for information about my closed-door session with the news director, so I took refuge in an editing booth.

I opened my cell phone and called Evelyn, a former desperate housewife turned delighted divorce. Evelyn was my friend and go-to gal for the latest scoop on fighting flab-wed met a couple of years back when we were both on a wacky fruit diet at one of Durhams residential diet clinics (aka fat farms). But unlike me, Evelyn had kept all of her weight off, and then some. She picked up on the second ring.

Oh my God, I can barely talk. Evelyns voice sounded agonized. Im dying my pubie hairs Sunset Blond. This stuff stings like a holy mother.

I think youre supposed to use a special hair dye for that, I said. Without bleach.

Ugh. No wonder. Ill just shave everything off.

Good idea. Why did you want to go blond down south?

To make the carpet match the drapes, silly, she replied. Tonights the big night with Liam-everythings got to be perfect.

Perfection is Evelyns holy grail when it comes to her body. She has her plastic surgeon on speed dial.

Over the sound of water being turned on, she continued, Liams coming over tonight to help me road test my brand-new breasts. With these D-cup babies hell think he died and woke up inside a centerfold, she said. And hopefully he wont feel the staples-I just had the surgery a month ago. Are you at work?

Yes, and I have a huge problem, I replied. My news director wants me to wear a bikini on the air for some stupid series about weight-loss scams. Can you imagine me baring this jelly belly on TV? Right now I cant even zip up my thin jeans. Seriously-Ive reached critical ass.

Evelyn made a soothing noise. Hon, youve got a fabulous hourglass shape, she said. And that gorgeous face of yours makes everyone jealous, including me.

My brain autorejected her compliment, partly because Evelyn has a much more forgiving attitude about her friends bodies than about her own. But it was more than that.

You have such a pretty face was a refrain Id heard ever since I was an adolescent-right before I heard Now, if you could just lose some weight

The net result was that Id wound up thinking that having a pretty face served only to draw attention to the flaws everyplace else. Like my hips.

I only have an hourglass shape when Im wearing my waist cincher, I moaned. And I cant wear a cincher with a two-piece.

If youre really worried, just go see Dr. Medina, Evelyn said. Hes one of the primo guys in the entire Southeast. Seriously-he did an awesome job on my breasts.

You mean lipo? Plastic surgery? A little quacking noise escaped from my throat. Yikes. Thats way too drastic.

But this isnt surgery. Dr. Medina has a new thermo-laser thingee that melts away the fat. It tightens your skin, too. And it takes only an hour-you can do it over lunch.