by Diana Palmer
She smiled. “Thanks, Nick. I owe you one.”
He shrugged. “No problem. I’ve already told the boys to keep their eyes open for any suspicious vehicles around here.”
“Good idea. And keep that pasture where you moved the cattle under twenty-four hour guard, even if you have to pay somebody overtime,” she added firmly, inwardly grimacing at another expense they could ill afford. “Make sure he’s carrying a rifle, too.”
He nodded gravely. “I’ll do that.”
She hesitated. “And take pictures of the way the fence is right now, and save that wire where the cuts are,” she added as an afterthought. “If anything ever comes of this, we’ll need evidence.”
“You bet! I’ll put it in the equipment shed.”
“Thanks, Nick.” She wandered back up to the house. Maude was wrapping untouched slices of cake and grumbling.
“‘Can’t eat cake,’ she said. It’s got calories.” She glared at Crissy, who was smothering a grin. “And doesn’t drink coffee, because caffeine’s bad for you. They didn’t have time for it, anyway, and she gave our house a look that I’d have liked to push her off the steps for!”
“They won’t be here long,” she said comfortingly.
“That’s what you think! I heard that director tell Judd that it would take a couple of months for them to shoot the movie, and even then, that they’d probably have to come back to reshoot some scenes after they finished.”
That meant they’d be here until Christmas. She thought about Judd being around that model all the time, and her heart sank. It was worse than she’d ever dreamed it might be.
“That model was really playing up to him,” Maude was muttering. “Hung on him like a chain the whole time, smiling up at him, laughing with him. She’s stuck on him already.”
“And he’s stuck on her, isn’t he, Maude?” she asked quietly.
Maude reddened. “He’s married, honey.”
“He isn’t, to hear him tell it.” She sat down in the nearest chair. “Be a dear and hand me a cup of coffee. I’m whacked.”
She related her suspicion about the cut fence to a concerned Maude.
“You tell Judd?”
She hesitated. “No.”
Maude glowered at her. “That’s reckless. When I go to my sister’s on the weekends, you’re here all alone. The bunkhouse isn’t close enough for the men to hear you scream. You should tell Judd.”
“He didn’t believe me about the bull being poisoned, Maude,” she said, accepting a cup of black coffee with thanks. “And he isn’t going to believe the fence was cut deliberately, either.”
“Show him.”
“Even if I show him the evidence he still won’t believe me. He thinks I’m just trying to get his attention.”
Maude smiled. “You are.”
She shrugged. “That’s no secret. But I don’t tell lies.” She sipped coffee. “When are the film people going to start?”
“Tomorrow, bright and early.”
She choked on her coffee. “So soon?” she groaned.
“They want to get a start while the weather’s good. They’ve already moved into the Jacobsville Commercial Hotel, where they’ll sleep. They hired caterers to bring the crew breakfast and lunch out here, and the electricians have been talking in Martian to Judd about what they want to do with portable generators,” she added facetiously. She shook her head. “That director fella says they’re bringing in huge trucks to carry all their equipment, and trailers for the stars to use for dressing rooms and makeup. They hired Bailey’s Tour Service to bus the cast and crew out and back every day.”
“Are they bringing portable rest rooms?” Crissy asked hopefully.
“Judd told them they could use the ones in the bunkhouse. Won’t be any cowboys in there during working hours, except for the nighthawks, and nothing short of a tornado would wake Billy and Ted when they get to sleep.”
“Good point,” she mused, sipping coffee.
“The mayor is going to be in the film, along with the chief of police,” she added.
“Nice move, politically speaking,” she agreed.
“They’re going to do some of the shots in town. It doesn’t hurt to impress people before you start tearing up highways and causing traffic jams.”
Crissy grinned. “Maybe they’ll cause gout and get kicked out of town!”
“Not a hope. Too many people around here think they were born to be movie stars.” Maude shook her head. “It’s going to be a nightmare, darlin’,” she said heavily. “And that model...!” She wrinkled her nose. “She’d kill an asthmatic with the perfume she bathes in.”
Crissy’s dark eyes lowered. “And she’s beautiful.”
“She’s that.”
“No way I could compete with somebody like her,” Crissy said wistfully.
Maude turned around. “Judd’s known you most of your life,” she said. “You’re good, and kind, and you have a way of making a man feel special and tender. Besides that, there isn’t much that you can’t handle here, from cattle management to ranch improvements. You’ve got a good brain. Most men are attracted by beauty, but only if there’s something behind it to keep them interested. She’s a pretty face and figure with bad manners. Judd will see through her.”
“Think so?” She finished her coffee. “I’m glad I’m in school,” she said when she’d put the cup in the sink. “I won’t have to be around them much.”
“They’ll be shooting on the weekends, too,” Maude said hesitantly.
She turned in the doorway, frowning. “You said something about generators?”
Maude nodded. “To run all the lights they’ll be using in the house and the barn...”
Her face froze into a caricature of its normal self. “In the house? In my house!”
Maude grimaced. “Didn’t Judd mention it?”
“No!”
“Just the living room and the kitchen,” she said gently. “They’re going to need to change a few little things here and there...they’re paying extra for it!” she interrupted herself to say quickly when Crissy started turning red in the face.
“Judd said they could do that?” she groaned.
“We need the money, he told me,” she said softly. “It’s only for a little while, Crissy. Just a little while. It’s a lot of money.”
“And we’re going under without it, I know that” came the miserable reply. “It’s just that I didn’t expect anything like this. It’s...like an invasion! We won’t have any privacy!”
Maude nodded. “I know, but we’ll get through it somehow. Just get out of the way and let it roll over us,” she advised. “In other words, darlin’, take the money and run. It’ll be over before you know it! Honest!”
* * *
It wasn’t. Crissy came home from classes the next day to find the driveway completely blocked, to keep curiosity seekers out. There were five or six cars parked on the side of the dirt road that led up to the ranch, and people had spread blankets on the buffalo grass, using binoculars to watch the movie crew while they ate snacks. There were half a dozen trailers, two flatbed trucks, at least two tractor-trailer rigs, and what looked like a small army of people carrying equipment.
Crissy couldn’t forcibly move the tractor-trailer rig that had the driveway blocked, so she had to leave the pickup truck there and walk the half mile to the ranch house. Arriving at the steps, dusty and sweaty and tired, she was stopped at the steps by one of Cash Grier’s men working security.
“Sorry, Miss Gaines,” the officer said apologetically, “but they’re shooting a scene in the living room right now. You can’t go in this way.”
She turned without a word and went toward the back of the house. On the way, she tripped over a huge bundle of extension cords and almost went headfirst i
nto a camera setup just outside the kitchen window. If Judd had been anywhere on the place, she’d have tossed her books straight at his head.
Inside, a soundman was working with a boom while two total strangers, a man and a woman, sat at her kitchen table with empty cups while lighting men hovered with meters and tapes and portable lighting equipment.
Maude motioned her to the back hall and dragged her into her own bedroom. “We have to be very quiet,” she whispered. “They’re shooting one scene in the living room today.”
“When will they be through?” Crissy asked.
“Well, they started just after you left this morning. They’ve already shot it ten times,” she began.
Crissy groaned audibly.
“The boom showed up in one scene. Then somebody coughed in the next one. The model flubbed her lines three times because she didn’t sleep last night on account of the train running so close to the hotel. Then the leading man tripped over that old Persian rug you won’t throw away because your mother loved it, and after that a light went out...”
“I want to move to Alaska today,” Crissy said in a pitiful tone, putting her books aside to sit down heavily on her bed.
“But the director thinks they can finish it by suppertime,” Maude concluded.
“And this is just one scene,” Crissy thought aloud. “My gosh!”
“It’s bound to get easier as they go along,” Maude assured her. “Things are always hard at the beginning.” She frowned. “I don’t know about the fights, though.”
“Fights?”
“It seems the lead actor doesn’t like the assistant director. They worked together before and had a bad fight over a woman. The actor lost. So now the actor is giving the man fits and refusing to do scenes his way. Miss Moore doesn’t like the assistant director, either, and he hounds her unless Judd is around. The writer is having to come down here, too, because the actor says he’s not doing the scene in the barn the way it’s written. He says his part is stupid and Tippy Moore gets the best lines. He says his contract guarantees him as many lines as she gets.”
Crissy shook her head. “What sort of changes are they making to my house?” she asked.
“Just a little new furniture and rugs and curtains and stuff, on account of, in the movie, the heroine redecorates the hero’s house for him.” She brightened. “They’re redoing the kitchen, too, and we get to keep all the stuff they use for props!”
“What if we don’t like it?” Crissy wanted to know.
“We’ll like it,” Maude assured her. “The director told Judd they’d get all new appliances for the kitchen, too. Tippy Moore’s going with him and the prop man and some assistant cameraman to pick them out. She said it needed a woman’s touch.”
That was disheartening. It was Crissy’s house, not Tippy Moore’s. She should have had some input into purchases. But nobody cared for her opinion. She felt as if she’d landed in hell. It couldn’t get any worse. It just couldn’t. She had to try to think of the money. They needed it so badly.
Maude patted the younger woman on the back. “Buck up, now. It’s only for a little while. She’ll go away and he’ll get his mind back where it belongs.”
* * *
By the end of the week, Christabel had figured a way to get breakfast eaten before the tour bus rolled down toward the barn with the actors—by getting up before daylight. She groaned at the number and size of the trucks and trailers scattered around, and the number of support people that it apparently took to make a movie. There was sound equipment, cameras, rails to support moving cameras, huge reflectors and fans and booms. It looked like an invasion of technicians, and Christabel couldn’t wait to leave.
She gathered up her books and darted out the side door to the old pickup truck she drove to school. It had belonged to her father, and was one of the few things she owned free and clear. It was old, and it needed a new paint job, but it ran very well, thanks to Nick.
Just as she opened the truck door, she saw Judd drive up at the front steps. Her heart raced and she hesitated. But just then, he got out of his SUV and went around the hood to open the passenger door. The redheaded model climbed down beside him, laughing up at him with that smile that had graced half a dozen magazine covers. Christabel smiled wistfully, and climbed into her truck.
As she drove away, she saw Judd’s arm slide around Tippy Moore’s thin shoulders as they walked toward the barn where the film crew was waiting for her. So much, she thought, for her pitiful dreams.
* * *
The days dragged while the film crew worked. Fortunately school took up most of Crissy’s time. When she was home, she was out with the men, supervising the various seasonal projects that had to be completed before winter set in. She didn’t bother trying to dress up or wear more makeup or change her hairstyle from its customary bun on top of her head. It was impossible to compete with a beautiful woman like Tippy Moore. She wasn’t going to get caught trying.
Not that Judd noticed her very much. He was busy at work because of the ongoing investigation into the murder in Victoria. Cash had been keeping her informed about the investigation. Most Texas peace officers knew about it, because of the way the victim had been killed and abandoned. Cash thought it had the ritual look of a personal vengeance killing because of the mutilation and the way the victim’s body was displayed after death.
“They’re not making much headway on the case,” he told Crissy while they talked one Saturday afternoon beside his patrol car next to the front door of her house. “They haven’t even got a suspect.”
Inside the house, the kitchen was occupied by lights and cameras and a hundred thick electrical cords hooked up to a portable generator that looked as if it could power every light in Jacobsville.
“Maybe it’s one of the Clark brothers,” she said, only half facetiously.
He didn’t smile, as she’d expected him to.
“I was kidding!”
He still didn’t smile, but it wasn’t because of the subject at hand. He was looking over Crissy’s shoulder and glaring as if all the hounds of hell had suddenly been loosed in the yard.
“Did you come to arrest Miss Gaines?” came a honey-sweet voice from behind Crissy. “It can’t be for speeding, not in that deathtrap of an old truck she drives!”
Crissy turned and glanced at the model. Tippy Moore was dressed to the hilt in a sweeping white circle skirt with a tiny blue bodice and a wide blue belt. She was wearing extremely high heels, and her long, wavy reddish-blond hair was in a lovely tangle around her beautiful face. She smiled up at Cash with that stunning radiance that made her face leap off magazine covers with such vitality. She propped her hands on her hips and tossed her hair, obviously right at home with any man who came near her.
But Cash didn’t seem to be impressed. In fact, he became instantly, actively hostile. He glared at the woman with pure malice.
Taken aback at his response, Tippy laughed, a sound like the tinkle of silver bells, and tossed her hair again. “Cat got your tongue, Mr. Policeman?” she teased.
Cash’s dark eyes narrowed. He gave the woman an appraisal that would have done justice to a cattle auction and his attention went right back to Crissy.
“How about a burger and fries?” he asked her with a tender smile. “You can ride in my car and I’ll let you play with the siren.”
Crissy chuckled, unspeakably delighted that he preferred her to an international model. “I’d love to. Can I come as I am?” she added, indicating her faded, stained jeans, and the old T-shirt she wore with dirty boots. She’d been helping the men move cattle to a new pasture.
He shrugged easily. “You look fine to me.” He gave Tippy a speaking glance. “I appreciate a real woman who doesn’t look like a painted dress-up doll.”
Tippy flushed red, whirled on her heel, almost unbalancing herself, an
d started back toward the house.
“Why the hell would a woman wear heels that high when she can’t even walk in the damned things?” Cash asked loudly.
Tippy walked faster.
Crissy took Cash’s arm and pulled him toward his patrol car.
“Let’s go before she gets into the gun cabinet,” she said in a stage whisper.
Grier flashed her a grin. “Spoilsport.”
* * *
They sat in a booth at the local café and Cash told her more about the investigation.
“They don’t have a clue who committed the murder,” he said. “Or why. She was raped, and murdered brutally with a knife, in a way I won’t even tell you about. But she had no enemies and no associations with any criminals.”
“They’re sure it wasn’t her husband?”
“They’re sure,” he said. “He was so shaken when they found the body that he had to be hospitalized,” he added quietly. “I’ve never seen a man like that in my life. It gets worse,” he added through his teeth. “She was three months pregnant. It was their first child.”
“God almighty!” she whispered. “How horrible.”
“Her husband doesn’t even know if he wants to keep the ranch,” he added. “A rancher named Handley was leasing land from him to raise bulls on, but all his bulls got poisoned.”
Her eyebrows went up. “That’s where Fred Brewster’s bull came from,” she murmured thoughtfully. “His and ours were from the same sire.” She frowned. “Fred’s bull died, I heard.”
“Could have been coincidence,” Cash said, but he was making mental notes.
She was frowning. “Our fence was cut, where our young bull died, and one was cut where we had some cows get out. I examined the cuts in both fences myself and had them photographed,” she told him. “They were the same. I’m convinced that Jack Clark did it, but when Nick checked with Duke Wright, he doesn’t have a black truck with a rust spot and a thin red stripe...”
