Last Scene Alive at-7

by Charlaine Harris

  I left with a nice bulky bag and lots of news about Amina, since Miss Joe Nell and her husband were just back from a trip to Dallas to see Hugh, Amina, and their two-year-old, Megan, who was being taught to call me Aunt Roe.

  Spending money always makes me feel better, so I drove to my lunch engagement with Sally Allison with a lighter heart. Sally was waiting in the foyer of the restaurant, wearing her usual solid colors—today she sported a bronze silk blouse under a tan pants suit—and groping in her huge shoulder bag. She pulled out a phone and dialed while I watched. Holding up a finger to let me know she'd just be a minute, Sally told her adult son Perry to be sure to take his clothes by the cleaners that day. I raised my eyebrows, and Sally had the self-awareness to look a little embarrassed.

  "Once a mother, always a mother," she said after she'd hung up.

  "Let's get in line, unless you want to call someone else?"

  "No, I'll turn it off during lunch," she said bravely, and pressed a button. "When are you going to join the twenty-first century?"

  "I have a cell phone. I just don't turn it on unless I want to call someone."

  "But... but... it's to use!"

  "Not if I don't want to," I said.

  Sally clearly loved her cell phone and, since she was a reporter, I could see that it would be a valuable tool for her. But to me, it was just a nuisance. I got too many phone calls as it was, without arranging for a way to get more.

  Sally told me all about Perry's new girlfriend as we moved down the line. I got my tray from the stack, and my silverware, and ordered ice tea and beef tips over rice. I got my number and looked for a free table while Sally ordered. Beef ‘N More seemed quite crowded, and I wondered a little at that—but it was a popular place, especially with the noon business crowd.

  "See, these are movie people," Sally hissed as she unloaded her tray and put her receipt faceup where the waitress could spot it when she brought our food. "Isn't this something?"

  Even Sally, the toughest woman I knew, was dizzy with excitement about the damn movie. I remembered my good resolutions, and I managed not to look sour.

  "Where are they all staying?"

  "The Ramada out by the interstate, most of them," Sally said after she put down her little packet of sweetener and stirred the powder vigorously into her tea. "That Celia Shaw has the Honeymoon Suite. But the director—-Joel Park Brooks—is renting Pinky Zelman's house. I hope Pinky's asking a lot of money, because I bet it won't be in any great shape when he moves out." Sally looked a little pleased, as if the prospect of writing a story about the director's damage to Dr. Pincus Zelman's house was a treat Sally had in store.

  Clearly, Sally was seeing stories, stories just lining up to be written. What a bonanza this was going to be for the Sentinel.

  "Are you going to watch them filming?" I asked.

  "Every chance I get. And they've hired me as a consultant." Sally flushed with pride.

  "That makes sense. You did the best series of stories on the murders, after all." Those stories had nearly bumped Sally up to a bigger paper in a bigger city, but somehow it just hadn't happened. Now, Sally was in her late forties, and she no longer expected that someday she'd leave Lawrenceton, as far as I could tell.

  "Thanks, Roe." Sally looked pensive for a moment, her square, handsome face crumpling around the eyes and mouth. "At least," she said, less cheerfully, "now I can finally finish paying all Perry's hospital bills."

  "That's great." For the last few years, Perry had been doing very well, but I knew the bills for his treatment had been staggering. Sally had been whittling away at this debt. "Can we have a bill-burning, or some kind of celebration?"

  "I'd love it, but it would make Perry feel bad," she said regretfully. "He hates to be reminded of the cost of all that help I gave him. As if I grudged it. It was worth every penny."

  "Did Perry pay for any of it?" I regretted the question as soon as it left my lips.

  "No, it was my bill, and I paid it," Sally said, after a moment's hesitation. "And don't you say one word about it, Aurora. Perry's a young man; he doesn't need any burdens. He needed to put all his resources into the effort of getting well and staying well. And getting married!"

  I clamped my mouth shut. After a moment, I asked Sally how her chef salad was.

  And that was the way it went the rest of the meal. We stayed superficial.

  In addition to Catherine's old car, there was a black Taurus parked in my driveway. The rental company must specialize in Tauruses. Tauri? Sitting on its gleaming hood was Robin Crusoe.

  I got out of my car slowly, uncertain about how I felt about seeing Robin again after all these years. I'd forgotten how tall he was, at least six three. And he'd filled out quite a bit. I remembered Robin as being weedy thin when he'd lived in my mother's townhouse. His hair was as bright a red, and his mouth as quirky, and his nose was the same sharp beak. He was wearing dark glasses, which he whipped off and stuck in his pocket as I approached. He stood—and stood, and stood. I put the Great Day bag on the ground, and kept walking toward him, and he held out his arms. I walked right into them. I wrapped my own around him.

  Robin said, "I didn't know if you'd throw something at me or not."

  "It was a toss-up," I admitted. I leaned back to look up at his face. "I've been brooding and pouting."

  He smiled down at me, and I smiled back. It was hard to resist smiling at Robin.

  "How was L.A.?" I asked.

  Robin's mobile face darkened and all of a sudden he seemed ten years older. "Unbelievable," he said. "I learned a lot. The thing is, I didn't want to know most of what I learned."

  "You'll have to tell me all about it." I recalled his changed circumstances, his relationship with Celia Shaw. "If you have any free time, that is." I released him and stepped back.

  "Will you show me your house?"

  "Yes." I unlocked the door and punched in the security code. I half-expected Robin to say something about the security system, but he must have gotten accustomed to them while he lived on the West Coast.

  "Catherine!" I called. "I'm here with a friend."

  "Hey, Roe," she called from upstairs. "I'm just about done."

  Robin looked at the bright kitchen, done in cream with orange touches, and went into the hall, admiring the built-in bookcases and the hardwood floors. The den, which was warm in dark blue and deep red, drew a compliment, and the dining room and living room got a nod. There was one smallish bedroom downstairs, and he glanced in its door.

  "What's upstairs?" he asked.

  "Two bedrooms and a small room Martin kept his workout stuff in," I said.

  "I'm sorry, Roe," Robin said.

  I kept my gaze averted. "Thanks," I said briefly. "Would you like to see the patio? We added it on after we moved in, and I wonder sometimes if it wasn't a mistake."

  As I was about to open the kitchen door, the cat flap vibrated and Madeleine wriggled through. "I've never seen that fat a cat," Robin said, clearly impressed. "Is this Madeleine?"

  "The one and only." I'd inherited Madeleine after Robin left Lawrenceton, but I remembered writing him about the big orange cat.

  The patio forgotten, Robin bent to hold out his hand to Madeline. She glared at him after she sniffed it. Pointedly, she turned her back to him and waddled off to her food bowl. It was empty, and she sat in front of it with the air of someone who could wait all day. She would, too. I got out her kibble and filled her bowl. When food was in front of her Madeleine ignored the rest of the world, and she dove in as eagerly as usual.

  Catherine came downstairs, her feet heavy on the treads. Catherine was the most consistent "help" I'd ever had. Mostly women came to work for me, showed up on time at first, and then drifted on to some other job. Sometimes they'd tell me; sometimes they just wouldn't show up. Cleaning houses is not for everyone. It's not high-paying, at least in Lawrenceton, and some people seem to feel it's degrading. So I was grateful for Catherine's consistency, and I tried hard to be a good employer.r />
  "I'm fixing to leave," she said, after I'd introduced her to Robin. "You need to get some more Clorox and some more Bounce sheets. I put it on the list on the refrigerator."

  "Thanks, Catherine," I said.

  "See you next time."

  "Okay."

  We were never going to be best friends, but at least our exchanges were always civil. After she'd left, I poured some iced tea for Robin and we went into the study, den, downstairs room—I'd called it all three. There was a red leather couch with its back to the window. Robin settled on that, so he'd have plenty of room for his long legs. I had a low, comfortable armchair that allowed my feet to sit firmly on the floor. We looked at each other a little anxiously, not knowing what to say next.

  "Are you very unhappy about the movie?" he asked abruptly.

  "I was. I'm still not exactly thrilled." I took a deep breath, exhaled. I was making an effort to be honest, with a little tact thrown in. "But the town is very excited, and the money will be good for its economy."

  Robin nodded, and seemed to want to change the subject. He started playing "How is?" and we went down a list of names rapidly. It was an unpleasant surprise to me to find how long it had been since I'd seen some of the people Robin asked about. There seemed no excuse for it in a town the size of Lawrenceton.

  "Tell me about your husband," Robin said out of the blue.

  I sat and stared at my hands for a minute. "Martin was ... a senior executive at Pan-Am Agra," I said carefully. "He was older than me by almost fifteen years. He was a Vietnam vet. He was very... dynamic. He had done some shady things in his life. He was always looking for that to come back at him." He loved me deeply. He was fantastic in bed. He was extremely competitive with other men. He was domineering even when he didn't think he was being so. He really listened to me. He broke my heart. I loved him very much, though our marriage had loose edges and rough patches. All this.

  "I know you must have some hard times," Robin said quietly. "My mother lost my dad earlier this year, and she's been struggling."

  I nodded. Hard times, indeed. "I'm sorry about your dad," I told him, and for a minute we sat in silence.

  "Are you going to marry the actress?" I asked brightly, trying to get us back on a less dangerous track. "I saw you-all's picture in the magazine."

  "You can't believe the stories about me and Celia," he said. "At one time they had some truth to them, but not any more. We're just barely friends, now."

  I raised my eyebrows at him, making a skeptical face.

  He grinned. "No, really. She's full of ambition, she's really young, and she's got different priorities. Since she won the Emmy, in fact... well, the only reason she's doing this project is because she'd signed on for it prior to her win." He looked like a different man when he said this, older and harder.

  I gave his disenchantment a moment of respectful silence. Then I asked, "So, what did you want from this visit to me?" He must want something, I was sure.

  He paid me the compliment of not protesting he'd just wanted to see me again. "I want you to come to the set, at least once. I want you to see this being filmed, read the script."

  "Why? Why on earth would you want that?"

  "Because I want you ... to approve. At least, not to hate it so much."

  "Does it really matter to you?"

  "Yes." Robin was dead serious.

  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why my approval made any difference at all. But what did I have to lose? I wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow until late afternoon.

  "Okay, Robin. I'll come tomorrow to observe for a little while."

  "Great," he said, brightening. "I'll set it up."

  Chapter Four

  You would've thought the circus had come to town.

  It was the biggest mess I'd ever seen, but I was pretty sure that was because I didn't understand what was happening. There were people everywhere, standing in clusters talking seriously or buzzing busily around the area that had been delineated with sawhorses. A sizeable number of the cast and crew found time to stop by a table laden with bagels and fruit and coffee, a table supervised by a stout, auburn-haired young woman in a white uniform with "Molly's Moveable Feasts" embroidered on the chest.

  It appeared that Robin himself was barely tolerated on the set, which surprised me. No one seemed pleased to see him or gave him more than a nod. Writing fame was no guarantee of special treatment here.

  "How come they're not happy to have you on the spot?" I asked.

  "Writers are just a pain on the set," he explained. He didn't seem at all ruffled or surprised by the indifference shown him. I couldn't believe that Robin was being herded into a corner and practically treated as if he were invisible. To me, writers were the most important people around. I noticed that I was invisible by extension, and that was fine with me.

  I only dared talk to Robin in whispers. I tried to figure out what I was seeing, and after a while I asked him to interpret the scene for me.

  "That's the director," he said in a low voice, nodding toward a tall, gawky man with five earrings on one ear, a shaved head, and an irritating black goatee. He was wearing an absolutely conventional oxford-cloth shirt and khakis, not only clean and pressed, but also starched. Somehow, with the shaved head and goatee, the shirt and khakis looked odder than a Limp Bizkit tee shirt and cutoffs would have. "His name is Joel Park Brooks, and he's smart as hell. That's his assistant, Mark Chesney, to his right." Mark Chesney was as sunny as Joel Park Brooks was grim, and he was wearing exactly the same kind of clothes. It just didn't look like a costume on Mark Chesney.

  "Who's that?" I indicated the graying, rough-looking man I'd seen with Starlets One and Two yesterday.

  "That's the head cameraman, Will Weir. He's worked everywhere," Robin said admiringly. "He's easy to work with, they say, and very good."

  "Is that Celia?" Starlet One had come out of a trailer and was striding toward the churchyard. She was recognizable only by her walk, as far as I was concerned. Her hair was tame, her makeup looked very moderate, her clothes were definitely more modest than yesterday's outfit. As I watched, she stumbled on something on the sidewalk, and righted herself with a little jerk. Joel Park Brooks didn't seem to notice, but the cameraman—Will Weir, I reminded myself—frowned as he observed the misstep.

  "Yes," Robin said, and he didn't sound glad, or unhappy—any reaction I would have expected from someone seeing the woman he'd dated until fairly recently. He sounded... worried, concerned. Odd. After all, anyone can stumble. I am no graceful swan myself.

  Celia hadn't closed the door to her trailer, which was a sort of queenlike omission. I saw the wind blow in and ruffle the pile of papers on the floor, so I stepped closer to take care of the door; and, also, just to satisfy my curiosity. I saw a couch inside the tiny room, a little table sitting by that, and on top of a pile of what seemed to be a manuscript and some library books was an Emmy... the real, bonafide statue. I wondered if Celia would let me hold it, because surely I'd never in my life set eyes on one again. But Robin was looking at me strangely, so I swung the door closed.

  Robin pointed out the producer, a wild-haired burly man dressed all in black. "Jessie Bruckner. He's going to be catching an afternoon plane back to L.A.," Robin told me. I had heard of Jessie Bruckner, so I was properly impressed. People seemed to be moving around more purposefully now, and Joel Park Brooks was shouting directions at top speed, so apparently something was about to happen. I was so engrossed in the scene around me that I didn't register my stepson's presence for a while, but then I noticed him waiting by the door of the church, dressed in a conservative suit and tie. He was wearing faux glasses and carrying a Bible. In character, I assumed.

  "Who's Barrett playing?"

  "Bankston." Robin looked down at me to see if I thought that was funny, and I managed a smile. Of course, the real Bankston Waites had never worn glasses, or carried a Bible, as far as I could remember. He had gone to church, but not this one. Oh well, I guessed accur
acy mattered only so much.

  Fleetingly, I thought of how much Martin would have relished his son working in Lawrenceton. Then I thought of how happy it would make me if I never had to speak to Barrett again.

  When I turned my attention back to what was happening around me, I could see that the actual area the cameras were trained on held no one but actors. Everyone seemed to be at his or her workstation. An amazing amount of food had vanished from the service table, and the stout young woman in white was cleaning away the remnants. She smiled and waved at Robin as he glanced her way.

  Silence reigned. As two well-dressed extras took their places on the sidewalk facing away from the church door, I glanced up at Robin to see him absorbed in the scene before me. He draped a long arm around my shoulders as if that were automatic. I stood stiff and frozen, my own arms crossed across my ribs, trying not to be ridiculously self-conscious about a casual gesture.

  At the director's signal, the scene began. It appeared this was supposed to be a Sunday morning, right after church was over. A silver-haired man in priest's robes was standing to the right of the open door, shaking hands as "parishioners" came out. So warm and caring did he look, so saintly was his bearing, that he practically reeked of goodness. The couple already in the churchyard stepped briskly past the cameras. One or two other people came down the church steps. Then one of the "churchgoers" swatted at a wasp, and Joel Park Brooks called the action to a halt.

  "Again, without the swatting!" he called, and the actors obediently went back into the church. The couple resumed their place on the sidewalk. The priest's aura of Godliness wavered and then snapped back into place as the action began again.

  This time, Celia Shaw (the "me" composite) and Chip Brodnax (I gathered he was the Robin character) made it out of the church. They were positioned in the foreground, while the church emptied behind them.

  "I hope you enjoy your stay in our little town," Celia told Chip. Her accent was generically southern. I rolled my eyes, all to myself. Why can't Hollywood comprehend that there are regional accents in the south, besides Cajun? "Lawrenceton's always been so quiet, so safe," she drawled.