by Gina LaManna
“What?” I froze, my left hand stilling on a pair of Daisy Dukes and my right on a knit crop top. “Why would she be dead?”
“Not her, particularly,” Cassidy said. “She’s just a scaredy-cat. She thought that whoever tried to kill Tennison might still be around. That they might come back for more. She told me that she doesn’t want to work for a movie where they’re waving real guns around willy-nilly.”
“I suppose that’s reasonable.”
“I still think she’s nuts for turning down the gig, but whatever,” Cassidy said. “That’s just me, and maybe I’m a little nutty.”
“Everyone who works in Hollywood is a little nutty.”
“Including you?”
“Including me,” I said, selecting the final piece for the outfit. I pulled it from the racks and showcased it to Cassidy. “What do you think?”
Her eyes lit up. “That’s perfect. Emma Lou will love it. The director will love it. I’m sure Ryan will love it, whenever he gets here. Any clue where he is, by the way? Did he come see you?”
I realized with a start that I didn’t exactly want to lay everything on the table for Cassidy. Not least of all because someone here was a murderer, and I didn’t know who just yet. I didn’t know who was listening, who was about to walk through the door. I had to keep my cards close to my chest.
I also realized that the news of Tennison’s death hadn’t seemed to hit the production set yet. It would soon, no doubt about it.
“I’m a little surprised you guys are still filming,” I said. “Considering everything that happened.”
“The show must go on,” Cassidy said. “But seriously. It’s what Tennison would’ve wanted. You know, I heard the director is already talking about flying Marcus Bowen out here to take over Tennison’s role. There’s no way Tennison will recover in time to keep filming.”
“Ah.”
“There’s a lot of money in this,” Cassidy said. “We all traveled here; we’ve got the permits and the props. And today we had the open call for extras. Did you see the turnout? We can’t just send everyone home. What would be the benefit of postponing production? It would only hurt everyone more than they’re already hurting for Tennison.”
I made a murmuring noise when she looked my way, since I was pretty sure Tennison couldn’t heal from being dead. But I didn’t want to be the one to break the news.
“We would have to cancel the whole movie, and as crass as that sounds, they can’t afford to do that. They’re hoping to submit to Sundance. You know, one of those smaller artsy films. But it’s still one that costs a lot to make. I don’t know if this is true, but I heard Ryan’s production team is one bad movie away from going under. So no pressure, but those outfits you’re pulling together better be banging.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course. Let’s see what Emma Lou thinks of this?”
“She’s tanning right now,” Cassidy said. “Take a ten-minute break. Go on out and introduce yourself to some people. I can show you the ropes if you want, or—”
“I remember the ropes,” I said quickly. “I’ve only been out of the game a few months. My memory doesn’t disappear that quickly.”
I slipped out of the trailer before Cassidy could change her mind. While it would probably be a good idea to introduce myself to some people, I had a more important task on my mind. As stylist for the production crew, I had a free pass to wander around the set and watch people, listen to conversations, see who was friendly with whom, and that might help me get some answers as to who had liked Tennison, and who might have wanted him dead.
Chapter 11
My first stop was the craft table. Because everyone knew that food brought people together, and craft services was a popular place. Unfortunately, as I made my way over to the long, plastic picnic table that had been set up under a tent, I saw the spread was quite dismal.
A few sandwiches that looked like they’d been picked up from Costco wilted under the breeze. Flies buzzed around a bowl of Sun Chips that were mostly broken into little pieces. A few precious bottles of water sat in a cooler with ice that had completely melted into a tub of water.
“Oh, excuse me, dear,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. “Could you hand me a sandwich and some chips? Quite the spread, isn’t it?”
I turned to find an elderly woman propped in a wheelchair beside me, an oxygen tank beside her. She wore poppy-pink lipstick that was smeared more on her face than her lips, but her smile was unmistakably bright as she shoved a bent paper plate in my direction.
“Oh, are you sure?” I asked. “It looks like... it’s been picked over.”
“Where I come from, I don’t get much in the way of Hollywood food,” the woman said. “If I’m gonna be an extra, I want to experience all of it. The good, the bad, the flies.”
“And where are you coming from?” I plopped a sandwich onto her plate, picking off the worst of the wilted lettuce. Then I grabbed the last three chips that weren’t complete dust. “Far away?”
“Oh, just the nursing home,” she said furtively, glancing behind her. “I’m not supposed to be here, but I had my thirteen-year-old grandson help me out with my motorized chair. He added a little turbo action that really gets me cooking. You won’t tell anyone, will you? Are you one of the stars?”
“Not a star,” I said. “A stylist. Your secret’s safe with me. Any chance you know someone named Ethel?”
“That’s me,” she said proudly. “Ethel Louise Schroeder. Has word about my appearance already spread? Am I famous already?”
“You could say that,” I said. “You’re famous in my book.”
“Great,” she said. “Are you going to style me? I could use some fresh looks for when I retire back to the nursing home. Harry the Hairy has been sending me some signals, if you know what I mean. I’d like to look my best.”
“Harry the Harry?”
“No, Harry the Hairy,” she said, spelling the latter out for me. “He’s got a full head of hair. That’s a rarity at my age.”
“I can help you out with that. Are you here as an extra?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get into character for weeks.”
“What’s your character?”
“Old woman number three,” she said. “It’s been a challenge to get into character seeing as I’m not all that old.”
I glanced at her white hair and her oxygen tank. “Gotcha.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” she said. “Age is just a mindset.”
“Amen, sister.”
Ethel Louise Schroeder glanced at me and laughed. “I like you. Wait a second, I know you.”
“I live here,” I said. “I’m not from Hollywood.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re the one who moved here from Hollywood a few months ago.”
“Yes, actually. That’s correct. I just meant I didn’t come for the movie.”
“Aren’t you a stylist?”
“Long story,” I said. “Anyway, how’d you know who I am? Did you see me at my mother’s store?”
“No, the magazines,” she said. “I follow all of them stars magazines. Me and Zelda have a weekly powwow about who’s dating who, who’s wearing what, that sort of thing. Helps keep us young. I mean, our dating scene is filled by people with names like Harry the Hairy. It’s not like I’m looking for Chris Hemsworth at this stage in my life.”
“Ah.”
“But I won the bet,” Ethel Louise Schroeder said proudly. “Me and Zelda put our desserts on it. Looks like that sucker will be donating her cake to me for a week.”
“Not again with the bet,” I said. “I can’t believe it’s reached the nursing home.”
“What bet are you talking about?”
“Uh, what are you talking about?”
“I was referring to the bet me and Zelda had going on about who would be dating who from this production crew,” she said with a throaty cackle. “We were pretty sure it’d be a mess.”<
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“A mess?”
“Well, Ryan Lewis was coming to town, and he’s... well, you know,” she said, glancing up at me with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “You dated him.”
“I sure did.”
“He also dated Emma Lou.”
“So I heard,” I said.
“That’s gotta be awkward,” Ethel Louise Schroeder said candidly. “You styling Ryan’s ex-girlfriend?”
“I suppose you’ve got a point.”
“But also, maybe it’s not awkward,” Ethel said with a pout. “She moved on pretty quickly. I’d bet Ryan is mad. Is Ryan mad? Seems like she dumped him for the other one.”
“The other one?”
“The one who got shot. Tennis.”
“Tennison,” I said. “He and Emma Lou were dating?”
“Well, the magazines said they weren’t. But sometimes, I cheat a little bit,” Ethel Louise Schroeder admitted with a devilish gleam. “I follow this gossip column from Hollywood that has all the inside scoop. They post spoilers to The Bachelor and the Kardashians, and they talk about who’s dating who, who had plastic surgery. It dishes on everything. It’s super trashy. That’s why you can’t tell Zelda I subscribe to it with my supersecret AOL account.”
“I think the bigger problem is you still have an AOL account,” I muttered, low enough so she couldn’t hear. “You found something that said Tennison and Emma Lou were dating?”
“Speculation,” she said. “It wasn’t confirmed until they came here. Because I have an inside source. A spy, if you will.”
“Um, you have a spy?”
“I sure do,” she said proudly. “My granddaughter, Ellen Louise Schroeder.”
“Oh, really? And what did she discover?”
“She’s working part time as a maid at the Blueberry Lake Inn,” Ethel said, leaning closer to me. “And guess who stayed there the night before last?”
“I thought everyone from production was staying at the hotel,” I said, puzzled. “Their parking lot has been full all week. Not to mention, they wrote an article about it in the paper.”
“Exactly,” Ethel said with a wink. “Everyone is staying at the Blueberry Lake Hotel, right here in town. Which makes tons of sense. And makes it all the stranger that someone from Los Angeles would book a room at the Blueberry Lake Inn, way on the outskirts of town, for two weeks during production.”
“Are you sure they’re from production?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Ethel, but with all this talk of spies and bets and insider sources, I had to wonder if her imagination didn’t get a little wild and start running away with her. Not that I blamed her. She was obviously feeling so cooped up in the nursing home that she’d had to stage an escape with the help of her grandson’s Lego skills.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Ethel said. “There’s no other explanation. My guess is it was Emma Lou and Tennison.”
As Ethel dove into her wilted sandwich, I considered the potential developments she’d laid out before me... if there was any truth to them. While she crunched through the three Sun Chips I’d salvaged, I calculated the timeline in my head. Supposedly, Ryan and Emma Lou had broken up before production began filming. Had Emma Lou gone and jumped right into bed with Tennison, then tried to keep it quiet?
If so, why had she tried to keep it quiet? Merely out of respect for Ryan? I wondered if there wasn’t more to the story. There was most definitely a tangled web being woven across the set of the film.
In addition, the news actually raised additional concerns about Ryan and whether he’d been telling me the full truth. Was it possible that Ryan had been lying the whole time? I supposed it was possible that he’d found out about Tennison and Emma Lou and had gotten angry.
Maybe he’d gotten so angry he’d had the germ of an idea to plant a real gun instead of a fake gun, knowing that Emma Lou wouldn’t notice. Maybe he’d only been trying to scare Tennison away—not kill him.
Which would make quite a bit of sense. The chances of Emma Lou actually shooting Tennison without knowing she held a loaded gun were fairly low. The idea made more sense to me than most others at this point, and that thought made me depressed.
On the other hand, there was the chance that one of my first instincts was right. That Emma Lou had actually planted the gun herself. Had she and Tennison had a fight? Could she have gotten ahold of a weapon, switched it out, then feigned shock and horror when it actually fired? She was an actress by trade after all. It wouldn’t be difficult for her to pretend. And it would throw everyone for an unexpected loop.
I sighed. There were just too many unknowns. As I watched Ethel Louise Schroeder fold her plate in half, then tip it into her mouth and brush the Sun Chips dust into her mouth, I had an idea.
“You said your granddaughter works at the Blueberry Lake Inn?”
“Ellen Louise Schroeder,” she said with a proud nod. “Only sixteen, that one, but she’s a hard worker. Saving up money to buy a motorcycle.”
“Oh, yikes.”
“Takes after her grandmother, that one,” Ethel said proudly. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, if someone booked the room for two weeks,” I said. “That means they probably haven’t checked out yet. Is there any way I could head over to the inn and take a quick peek at the sign-in log? Maybe they saw something that could confirm your suspicions. Maybe your granddaughter could even help me out?”
“I can do you one better,” Ethel said. “My daughter, Harriet Louise Schroeder owns the place. Harriet Louise Schroeder is Ellen Louise Schroeder’s aunt.”
“Lots of Louise Schroeders in the family.”
“Well, it’s a family name.”
“I gathered that,” I said. “It’s very nice.”
“Thank you very much,” she said. “Well, I have this phone here that I don’t know how to work. But Harriet Louise Schroeder programmed her name, along with her brother’s name and my grandchildren’s names into here. Maybe if you could help me find them, we could probably text them right now.”
I held out a hand. Ethel plunked her phone into my palm. It took twenty painstaking minutes and another sandwich before she got the hang of it. I had to postpone my work with Cassidy twice, but it was important.
“How’s this look?” Ethel asked, holding the phone up to me.
ETHEL LOUISE SCHROEDER:
DEAR DAUGHTER (HARRIET LOUISE SCHROEDER),
PLEASE HELP OUT THIS NICE YOUNG WOMAN, JENNA MCGOVERN. SHE’S HELPING ME WITH SOMETHING AND I DO BELIEVE SHE’S WITH THE POLICE, THOUGH I SUSPECT SHE’S UNDERCOVER AND CAN’T SAY SO. YOU CAN TRUST HER. SHE GOT ME A SANDWICH. SHE’S COMING OVER TODAY.
P.S. PLZ VISIT ME IN THE NURSING HOME AND BRING ME AND ZELDA THE BROWNIES THAT THE DOCTORS WON’T LET US EAT. I’LL PAY YOU. AND I’LL CONSIDER ADDING YOU BACK INTO THE WILL.
“Okay, well, that’s...” I read it over once more. “Great use of the word PLZ instead of please. Very tech savvy. Not sure you need the bit about sandwiches, but—”
“I need it,” Ethel informed me. “Go on and show me how to send.”
Reluctantly, I showed Ethel where the send button was. A second later, there was a bit of a commotion from the set, and I turned to see all the extras being called into place.
“That’s me,” Ethel Louise Schroeder said. “Want an autograph?”
“I—” I hesitated as Ethel scrawled her signature on her used paper plate, then handed it to me. “Well, thank you for that.”
Then Ethel motored away, and I was left holding her garbage. I had to wonder if Ethel was really as delusional as she let us think or if she was smarter than the rest of us. With a smile, I tossed the plate into the trash and decided on the latter.
I found Cassidy and told her I needed an hour off to tie up my affairs before I could begin full-time work on the movie.
“Fine,” she said. “You’re lucky Emma Lou loves her outfit. This scene should take a couple of hours to get right. Just be back before we start on the next one. And
you’ll probably have to stay late tonight to get everything in order.”
“About staying late,” I said with a wince. “I do have plans for tonight. Sort of a...”
Cassidy shot me a gaze.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll reschedule.”
“Good idea.”
I ducked away from the set, keeping out of sight from Matt and my mother and everyone else involved in the movie. Or so I thought. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I realized I’d grossly underestimated one person.
“Hey.” Allie stood before me. She tapped one platformed, sparkly boot before me impatiently.
“Hey, you,” I said lightly. “How’s it going?”
“Looks to me like you’re investigating,” Allie said. “I’ve got my crime-solving boots on over here, just waiting around for the word, but I see you’ve dropped me for your Hollywood friends?”
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “I got a job.”
“A job?” Allie shook her head. “Jenna, you can’t call crime solving a job. Nobody pays you. You’re just sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, like I do.”
“No, an actual job on the film set,” I said. “Their stylist quit, so I’m helping out.”
“Oh,” Allie said. “That sounds like your mom will be mad.”
“I’m making a good chunk of money. Plus, I made a deal that we get to use some clothes from her shop. She’ll even get a credit at the end of the movie.”
“In that case, work away,” Allie said. “I’m pretty sure she’d sell you to the production team for that sort of publicity.”
“But I have been asking around a little on the side,” I admitted, feeling a pinch of relief that I could bring someone into the loop on my theories. I was getting a little overwhelmed going around and around with the same ideas in my own head. “And I have an errand to run after I talk to my mom. Are you in?”
“Am I in?” Allie looked at me with a grimace. “I was never out. But, in order to be the best assistant I can be, I could use some fuel. I see you have three muffins there.”
I handed one over.
“Now, we’ve got a deal,” Allie said. “Where are these boots taking us?”
