by Carol Durand
Echo wrapped an arm around her despairing friend, murmuring soothingly and led her into the house, seating her on the overstuffed sofa. She handed Missy a box of tissue, and disappeared into the kitchen to whip up a pot of chamomile and lavender tea. Returning with two steaming mugs of the comforting brew, she gently encouraged her friend to let it all out and tell her what was wrong.
The two hadn’t really had a chance to catch up since Missy had started baking for the cast and crew, and Echo wasn’t one to read the newspaper or listen to the radio, so she’d been blissfully unaware of the heartache with which her friend had been dealing for the past few weeks. She shook her head in disbelief and shared in Missy’s pain as the story unfolded.
“But why was the officer at the hospital so mean to you?” she asked, baffled.
Missy’s tears had now turned to a numb, quiet grief. “I don’t know,” she half-whispered, unconsciously shredding a tissue in her angst.
“Do you think that they actually believe that horrible actress and think that you murdered Ian?” she asked quietly.
“Probably. Ivana is apparently convincing enough to have totally bamboozled Chas. He’s one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known, and he seems to have fallen for her, hook, line and sinker,” Missy said miserably.
“I doubt that,” Echo shook her head. “That man is crazy about you, sweetie. He’s not just going to toss aside everything that the two of you have for some Hollywood psycho,” she said, sipping her tea.
“It is hard to believe that he can’t see through her little fantasy world,” Missy admitted.
“Did you ever stop to think that he may be pretending to like her just so he can get some insider info?”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” she sounded skeptical. “I just hope that he’s okay.” Her eyes welled with tears. She couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to that amazing man. Even if he had fallen for Ivana Cherie, the world would be a darker place without him in it.
“I have an idea…” Echo said, putting her mug of tea down on the coffee table, and playing with Toffee’s ears. The dog had settled on Missy’s feet, picking up on her discomfort. Bitsy had taken up residence in her lap and was sleeping soundly.
“What?” Missy looked up hopefully.
“Well, you couldn’t know this, because we haven’t talked in a while, but I recently started seeing someone,” she smiled.
“Oh, Echo, that’s great, I’m happy for you,” her friend smiled wanly.
“Yes, it is, but that’s not the point,” she sat forward. “My new…friend is a reporter for the News Gazette. I bet he can make some phone calls and find out how Chas is – he’s pretty good friends with the Chief of Police,” she said excitedly.
Missy sat up straight. “Yes – call him, please!”
Echo got on her phone and told Joe, her new beau, what was going on. He promised to see what he could do, and told her he’d call her back when he had news. The two women didn’t have to wait long, within half an hour, Joe had called back to let them know that Chas was out of surgery, but still in Intensive Care. The knife had punctured a lung, which had subsequently filled with blood and collapsed. His condition was not yet stabilized, and doctors were saying that if he made it through the night, he might have a chance at survival. Might.
“I also have some pretty bad news,” Joe confided to Echo on the phone. L
Leaving Missy drinking a fresh cup of tea in the living room with the dogs, she wandered casually into the kitchen under the guise of grabbing a snack, but in reality so that she could talk to Joe with some degree of privacy.
“What’s the bad news?” she whispered, peeking out of the door of the kitchen to make certain that Missy hadn’t followed her.
The reporter hesitated, not wanting to have to be the one who broke this particular news. “There’s a warrant out for your friend’s arrest.”
Chapter 12
As painful as it might be, Echo knew that she had to break the news of the arrest warrant to her already distraught friend, in addition to the grim update on Chas’s condition. Missy absorbed the information in a state of shock. Too numb to react, she simply nodded.
“What are you going to do?” Echo asked gently, taking her friend’s cold, limp hand.
“I’m going to turn myself in,” Missy mumbled, staring into space.
“But, honey, you haven’t done anything!”
Missy slowly turned her lifeless gaze to her dear friend. “It really doesn’t matter anymore Echo. Chas could die, and if he does, I might as well sit in a jail cell and rot for the rest of my life. My heart will have died anyway,” she said dully, her grief more than she could bear.
“There must be something we can do. This isn’t right,” her friend insisted, scared at Missy’s numb acquiescence.
“No, it’s not right. It’s not right that one of the finest human beings on the planet might die. It’s not right that a sleazy little selfish actress is going to get away with murder, and it’s not right that my life might as well be over. It’s not right, but it’s reality,” Missy stood, resigned to her fate. “Will you take care of my babies for me?” she asked, tears beginning to flow as she kissed the furry faces of her beloved pets. Echo nodded, her own tears falling. “And let Cheryl and Ben know that the stores are now their responsibility until further notice,” she added, gathering her purse and keys and heading for the door.
“Where are you going?” Echo panicked.
“To say goodbye,” Missy said softly, closing the door behind her without a backward glance.
**
Missy drove to the hospital much more carefully this time, dry-eyed and determined. She didn’t want to get pulled over and arrested before she had one last chance to see the love of her life. It didn’t matter that he may have fallen out of love with her because of Ivana Cherie, it didn’t matter that the entire LaChance police force thought that she had killed Ian and tried to kill Chas, it didn’t matter that by going to jail, she would most likely lose everything she’d ever worked for. What mattered is that she needed to see that handsome face one last time. Chas might die, and she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him just once more. Even if he lived and she went to prison, she’d probably never see him again, she wouldn’t be able to bear the disappointment that would inevitably be in those deep blue eyes.
Taking a deep breath, she went in the back entrance of the hospital and took the elevator to the fourth floor, where Chas was being kept in Intensive Care. She exited the elevator into a sterile hallway with gleaming light grey floors and walls in a color of green that was supposed to be soothing. There was nothing soothing about the antiseptic smell and faint beeping of monitors. She strode past the nurse’s station as though she had every right to be there, turned a corner, and was met with a wall of black uniforms.
The policeman who had treated her so rudely in the surgical waiting room stepped directly into her path.
“Well, it looks like you’ve saved us the trouble of having to find you to take you to jail,” he sneered, towering over her.
Missy rose to her full 5’5” inches, refusing to be deflected from her course of action. Squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she looked the officer directly in the eye. “Believe whatever lies that you want to about me, I don’t care. Take me to jail in a few minutes, I don’t care. What I do care about is the man lying in that bed,” she gestured at the door behind the officer. “That man is the love of my life. He means more to me than anything, and if you have any semblance of a human heart at all, you’ll at least let me see him and say goodbye before you take me to jail for something that I didn’t do,” she said quietly, her eyes flashing. Her heart pounded wildly. She had no idea what she’d do if this belligerent cop denied her access to the last glimpse of her love.
“How dare you come in here and presume to make demands, you little…” the cop stepped toward her menacingly.
“Parsons!” a commanding voice barked at the adva
ncing officer. “Stand down.”
The supervisor put a restraining hand on the officer’s shoulder, then turned to address Missy, who was standing with her hands over her mouth in horror, looking past the two cops at the woman who had just emerged from Chas’s room.
Ivana Cherie pounced on Missy like a feral cat, tearing at her face and golden curls with claw-like hands and snarling like an animal. “You vicious wretch!” the actress screamed, trying to wrestle Missy to the floor. Parsons stepped in, roughly wrenching Missy away from the out-of-control diva, and cuffing her hands behind her back, as alarms began to sound in Chas’s room.
Chapter 13
Officer Parsons’ supervisor had taken over Missy’s arrest, for her own safety. She heard nothing while her rights were being read to her, merely nodding whenever his monotonous litany paused. She moved mechanically, ducking her head when told to sit in the back of the police cruiser outside of the hospital. Her hands were limp as she was fingerprinted and booked, and once in her holding cell, stripped of her personal belongings as well as her belt and shoe laces, she curled up on a concrete bench in the corner, knees to her chest, head down.
When she had been asked if she’d like to make a phone call, she’d silently shaken her head. Echo already knew she was headed to jail, Chas, if he was still alive, probably didn’t care, and Cheryl and Ben would be contacted by Echo in the morning. Ivana Cherie wouldn’t be getting her trio of cupcakes in the morning, and it was just as well. Missy couldn’t stomach the thought of the vile murderess, much less the sight of her. She knew in her bones that the diva had killed Ian, and stabbed Chas just so that she could blame it on Missy, but because of her stardom and put-upon air of innocence, everyone believed the actress’s story, even those who had been in a position to know better.
Tears stung her eyelids as she thought of Chas – his smile, his sincere blue eyes, his quick wit. She had missed him so much the past few weeks, but it had been prudent to avoid him so that she could do some investigating of her own, and now none of it mattered. She hoped that he recovered and had a good life, even after Ivana was tired of toying with him, but she grieved for the love that she had lost. It was ironic really, just when they’d become comfortable in their feelings for one another, fate had ripped them apart.
At some point, in the wee hours of the morning, Missy must’ve drifted off to sleep, scared and alone. She woke with a start as a nightstick clanged against the bars of her cell.
“Gladstone!” a policewoman called out, sounding bored. “Visitor,” she announced when Missy raised her head slowly.
A pale, thin man who looked to be in his mid-to-late twenties, with longish hair and a chin beard, stood nervously on the other side of the bars, and after emphasizing the rules for interaction, the policewoman left him alone, shifting from foot to foot.
“Uh, hi, Miss Gladstone,” the young man said, looking all around. He’d either never been inside a jail before, or perhaps had a really bad experience in one, he was clearly uncomfortable. When Missy merely stared at him blankly, he continued. “I’m, uh, Sebastian Nickles. I’m the props assistant for Whispers of Blood, and I…” he broke off when Missy stood suddenly and approached the bars, standing a few feet away, as though he might bite. “Uh, anyway, I never met you before, and I know that everyone is saying that you killed Ian, but um…I just wanted to say that I don’t think that you did,” he finished awkwardly.
“What makes you think that?” Missy asked warily in a faint voice.
“Because, I, uh, I think I know who did it,” Sebastian glanced about as though fearful of being overheard.
Missy’s eyes widened, her thoughts clearing for the first time since she’d heard that Chas had been in an accident. She moved to the bars and gripped them so hard that her knuckles turned white. “Who?” she whispered.
“So, you know the night before Ian was murdered? Well, I was the one who was responsible for all the props, and I watched over them almost the entire time. We do that specifically so that accidents like this don’t happen,” he explained, his eyes darting back and forth between Missy and the door.
“What do you mean that you were there almost the entire time?” Missy asked, her voice scratchy with thirst.
“The Props Master was gone, looking for a saddle for like, the entire day, so I didn’t have any breaks or food or anything, so Ian came by and asked if anything, but I said no. He talked a little bit about you, he had a major crush on you,” the young man blushed a little. “He said that you had just left, and that he had been hoping that you could stay for the big shoot-out scene that was coming up.”
Ian’s crush was news to Missy, she thought that he was just being nice to her.
“So then Ian went to get some dinner before his big scene, and I was standing there, like, dying of hunger, and Buckman, the director, walks in,” Sebastian continued, speaking quickly.
“Was that unusual?” Missy was slowly returning to normal levels of interaction, her analytical brain coming back online.
“For him to come in? Yeah, definitely. He’s way above my pay grade. So he comes in and tells me I’m working way too hard, and he actually orders me to go take a break. I tried to push back, because I know that I’d catch hell, s’cuse my language, when the PM came back, if I even thought about leaving the props room, but Buckman wasn’t having it, so I took a ten minute break and when I came back, Buckman was gone.”
The door behind Sebastian opened. “Five minutes,” the policewoman who had brought him in warned. He nodded at her and waited until the door was closed again to continue.
“That left the props room unattended, I don’t know for how long,” he admitted, seeming embarrassed.
“Did you tell that to the police?” Missy asked, feeling a glimmer of hope.
“No way,” he shook his head vehemently. “I’d never get hired for another production ever again if it got out that I had made a rookie mistake like that.”
“But it wasn’t your fault – Buckman ordered you to do it, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. But if I told the police that, and they went after him and he didn’t do it, I’d really be screwed, pardon my language,” Sebastian worried.
“Sebastian,” Missy put her face through the bars. “If Buckman did it, you have the chance to catch a killer, and if it wasn’t him, then he may be the only person who can identify the real killer,” she insisted urgently, needing to get her point across before their time together ran out.
“Yeah, maybe,” he shrugged, uncertain and still uncomfortable.
“Sebastian, please. My freedom is at stake here and I’m innocent. You have to tell the truth, it’s important,” she implored.
“Uh…well, I…” he floundered.
“Time’s up!” the guard announced, holding the door open for Sebastian to leave.
“Tell them Sebastian, please!!!” Missy called after him, slumping against the bars when he left.
Chapter 14
Echo held Missy’s hand through the bars, tears streaming down her face. Seeing her sweet, innocent friend locked up like a dangerous animal was almost more than she could bear, but she came with potentially good news.
“So, Joe, you know, the reporter that I’m seeing, he went to the movie site to try to see what he could find out, because I told him what you had told me and he agreed that the whole thing sounded pretty darn fishy. Anyway, he met one of the security guards and struck up a conversation. Apparently, part of the evidence that they have that points to you as the murderer, is a check-in sheet that shows you arriving just before the murder, and leaving just after,” she said, speaking in low tones.
“But that’s impossible,” Missy exclaimed. “When I left that afternoon, I never returned that night!”
“Yup, I know. Joe got the guard to confess that Buckman, the director dude, had come by that night and demanded to see the check-in list. When the security guy gave him the list, he turned his back like he was just looking at it, but the guard could tell tha
t he was making marks on the sheet. He gave the clipboard back to the guard and said that if he told anyone that he’d asked to see the list, he’d never work in Hollywood again,” Echo explained.
“So, Buckman put the check marks by my name, making it look like I’d come in when I wasn’t even there,” Missy deduced. “But why would the security guard tell Joe all of this and not the police?”
“Well, at first, he was scared of losing his job, but when he found out that Joe wasn’t a policeman, he opened right up,” her friend smiled.
“Why would Buckman kill his leading man though, that makes no sense?” Missy was baffled.
“Actually, it makes more sense than you think,” Echo raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Buckman was in love with Ivana, and the way that she was guaranteed to get a major role in every one of his films was to string him along with promises that whenever she and Ian broke up for good, she’d be all his.”
Missy gasped. “Buckman killed Ian because he thought that Ivana would come to him once Ian was gone?” she was incredulous and furious at the senseless killing of her friend.
“Exactly,” Echo squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry, Missy.”
“But then, who stabbed Chas?” she said, eyes wide.
“Buckman. Think about it, with all the time that Ivana had been spending with Chas…” Echo noticed Missy wince at that. “Sorry…but Buckman probably thought that she had replaced Ian with Chas, so he wanted to eliminate him as well, and knew that Ivana would continue to blame you, so he’d never get caught,” she explained. “The police are probably finding out right about now that the fingerprints on the knife and the gun don’t match yours because you didn’t handle either of those items. Joe clued them in as to what the guard said, and they’re checking up on the story.”
“That, plus what Sebastian told me about what Buckman did in the props room should give them enough to go after Buckman,” Missy said, hope stirring within her at last.
