I almost wished I hadn’t brought it up. A kidnapping for ransom somehow seemed preferable to a crazed fan. Money as a motive was more straightforward than trying to imagine what a stalker had in mind. In either case, we needed to figure out who this man could be. Just then, Nelson, the film's director, came into view. I nudged Jack, to make sure he noticed him.
"Nelson, can we speak to you for a minute, please?" Nelson hustled over to join us.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Mara says Georgie’s description of the man she saw delivering coffee today sounded familiar to her. He's a big man, about six feet tall, heavy set, with curly brown hair. Have you seen anyone fitting that description hanging around on Soundstage 4 in the past few days?”
"Burly, Jack. Georgie says he's a big, burly guy. I like that word better than heavy set." Jack looked at Mara and raised one eyebrow. She shut up.
“Either way, that description applies to a whole segment of the male population in California, Jack. We’ve hired plenty of men like that to serve as extras. You can have a look at the footage we've collected so far, Georgie, since you’ve been face-to-face with him. Maybe we caught him on film if he’s one of our extras. We can set you up with the video on a computer or in a viewing room if you’d like. You're welcome to join us in the morning when we’ll review the bits and pieces of footage from today. Then you can stay and watch the rest. That footage includes multiple takes, and shots of the same scene taken from multiple camera angles. There’s extra footage, too, from outtakes.”
“Okay, if Jack and Ralph haven’t figured out who he is by tomorrow morning, count me in.” I needed to be playing amateur detective about as much as I needed a hole in the head. Still, doing something countered the urgency I felt about finding Brigit. I was having the same kind of "if only" moment Todd had expressed earlier. Could I have helped prevent Brigit's abduction if I had given into the impulse to go back and check on her? Nelson's voice jolted me out of my "coulda-shoulda-woulda" moment.
“We hire as many guys like the one you described, off screen as on, I’m afraid. See, there’s a man who fits your description, now. It’s hard to tell if his hair is curly or not since he’s wearing a hat, but it’s brown. He’s certainly big and burly, too.”
Nelson was correct. From the back, the man he was pointing at resembled the one I had seen in the hallway outside Brigit’s room.
“Karl, get the guy with you to turn around, will you? Georgie wants to have a look at him.”
“Nelson, that's not necessary. I’m sure the man I’m looking for is long gone.”
Karl did as Nelson asked. The man with him stopped and turned around. Even with part of his face obscured by the Swanderling he carried aloft, I could tell it wasn’t the man I had seen wheeling the coffee cart.
"Thanks," I said. He and his puppet-laden companion went on their way and disappeared around a corner.
“Karl always has a guy like that hanging around. Those things feel heavy after a while. Karl uses hired hands to do a lot of work on set arranging and rearranging his creatures, too. All above-board, union guys, so not thugs hired off the street. Same with the extras, too.” He might have had more to say, but a new commotion cut him off. We heard a crashing sound, followed by a shriek, and then a series of epithets.
“You idiot! I’m going to kill you!” The big burly guy who had been assisting Karl came running. On his heels was Karl, the puppet master, sprinting after him. Up above his head, Karl held what looked like a human leg in his hands.
“I didn’t do it! You’d better stop this maniac before I flatten him. It’s not my fault that weird swan thing fell. I didn’t even touch it.”
“Karl, stop this instant!” Max shouted from where he sat a short distance at that lunch table that was still set up. A uniformed officer came running from that corridor outside the dressing rooms.
"Drop it, Karl," Jack said wearing an expression I recognized as exasperation bordering on disbelief.
“Do as he says, Karl. Tell us what’s going on,” Nelson added in a weary tone.
I’d hear more about this at dinner, for sure. The officer with Jack wore an incredulous look. Jack’s buddies were going to get an earful from the stunned young police officer who continued to gape at that very human-looking leg even after Karl lowered it to his side.
“This idiot trashed my Swanderlings,” Karl said, huffing and puffing from anger and exertion. “He pushed one of them into the others. It’s carnage, sheer carnage.”
Trashed creations had become the theme of the day. That dress and now the puppets. Karl was on the verge of hysteria as Imogene had been earlier about the destruction of the dress she had designed. Karl intended to make the perpetrator pay.
“It’s a disaster, Nelson. All my work.” Jack stepped in to restrain Karl who had lunged for the much larger man once again.
“I didn’t do anything. Those critters shifted and fell as if they were alive or something.”
"Liar," Karl seethed. His teeth bared, I waited for him to start snarling like a Rottweiler.
“Hang on, Karl," Max said, as he stepped into the fray, leaving that table where Imogene, Todd, and a couple of other cast members looked on. "Nelson and I will come with you and see what’s happened.”
“Not him! He’s fired! I should never have allowed anyone but Frank to assist me.”
“If you want Frank to help you, let’s find Frank.”
“Just get this jerk out of here!” Karl shouted.
“Mara, will you get security to escort this gentleman out of the building?”
“No, you don’t. I’m signed on to work for another month. That’s not fair. I’m calling my union rep,” the man said, raising his voice.
“Georgie, will you get someone at HR to pay him, please? For the entire month.”
“Sure. Is your name on file with HR already, or on a roster here somewhere?” I asked Karl's angry hired hand. Nelson intervened.
“Thanks, Georgie, but I have all that information. I’ll see that he gets paid, Max,” Nelson said.
“He doesn’t deserve to be paid! Wait until you see what he's done. There’s no way I can keep to the demanding schedule you’ve set for me!” Karl was screaming again at the top of his lungs. Security guards came running until they saw that a police officer was already in the room.
“Let’s go see what you need to clean this up, okay, Karl?” That was Max again, speaking as the voice of reason as the madness continued. That angel on his shoulder was earning its wings today.
Jack was growing impatient. I could imagine that he was finding it difficult to understand people screaming in horror at the sight of a damaged dress or a broken puppet, with a man being shuttled to the hospital, fighting for his life, and a young woman missing. Jack reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. Clearly, a sign that he was struggling to keep his cool.
“Max, it seems like you and Nelson have this under control so Jack can get back to his investigation. Where is Imogene?” I asked. She was no longer at that table. My day was slipping away and I wanted to get Mara out of there before she could aggravate Jack again.
“Imogene wasn’t feeling well,” Gloria said. “She went home, which is what Brad and I are going to do. Nelson, will you email us the new schedule once you have this latest catastrophe under control?”
“Sure. Don’t I always? I have a couple of rewrites for the script, too.”
“There sure are a lot of them on this set, aren’t there?” Mara muttered
“Rewrites?” I asked.
“No. Catastrophes.” Mara responded.
9 No Dead Bodies
Miles and Ella met me at the door. Ella floated up to the table top, with a greeting that was a cross between a meow and a purr. Miles joined her, his extra girth shaking the table when he nailed the landing. Or maybe it was his booming voice that rattled the table!
In any case, both cats had plenty to say to me. Ella chattered, uttering a series of sweet little meows as if asking me how my d
ay had gone. I dropped my keys in the bowl on that table, put my bag down, and scooped up a cat in each arm. My cats rumbled as I cuddled them.
Ella, still new to the household, was ready to settle into the crook of my arm for an extended hug. Miles, on the other hand, knew the drill. After touching noses and a head bonk, he dove for the floor. Making his way around the kitchen island, he paused, looked over his shoulder and bellowed. Ella sprang from my arms to follow Miles. I grabbed my bag off the floor and tagged along after the cats, now walking, side-by-side, down the hallway to my bedroom with their tails straight up.
I glanced into a guest room near the kitchen. We had removed the bedroom furniture, and Jack had begun to set it up as a home office. After our wedding, Jack was moving in with me. That decision had already caused his buddies in the police department to rib him about marrying up and his plans for becoming a kept man. That pretty much ended the conversations we were having about retirement.
The last time we discussed retirement, I could tell those remarks had set Jack’s male pride and his sense of self-reliance on edge. Retirement is tough for most men who have so much of their identity wrapped up in their jobs. In almost thirty years at Marvelous Marley World, I’d seen them struggle—some who had hung on past retirement age or when health concerns signaled they should take it down a notch. Given that Jack was about to “marry money,” as the wise guys at work teased him, retirement was off the table for now.
I’m no better. Maybe because I never had a husband or children, I have a lot of myself tied up in my career, too. During that last conversation, I had acknowledged the conflict I was experiencing about ending my career.
"I feel torn about retirement, too,” I had said. “My plate is full—if you’ll pardon the pun about my role as Director of the Food and Beverage Division. There has been such turmoil at Marvelous Marley World in the past few months. My leaving would add more. With all the new hires and Max’s latest projects, it feels selfish to consider retiring. Under normal circumstances, I don’t accept a position unless I expect to stick it out for three years—five, preferably.”
“These certainly aren’t normal circumstances, Georgie. If you leave, it will be more disruptive than normal. I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t given much thought about your situation. It makes perfect sense for you to be concerned. You haven’t even been on the job for a year yet. They’re probably still getting used to the whirlwind you create wherever you go. Or, I should say, getting used to you all over again since you spent so many years working your way up in the Food and Beverage Division before you took that detour into Public Relations to get away from Mallory. I’ll bet you haven’t even cleaned up all the damage from Hurricane Mallory, have you?”
“I am doing my best to restore order. That probably has created a windstorm of some kind, given that I had to move quickly once a forensic audit showed us where there were problems with money.”
“Whirlwind Georgie is way better than Hurricane Mallory any day. I’d testify to that under oath. Everything always takes more time than you imagine.”
“How about this, Jack? Let’s make it part of our marriage vows—just between us—that we’ll lighten the load a little by taking all the vacation days coming to us. Not just the ones we plan to use for our honeymoon, but every single one every year until we do retire.”
“It’s a deal,” he had replied immediately. “We should seal a vow like that with a kiss, don’t you think?”
“I do,” I had replied. The memory of that kiss stopped me in my tracks. A booming command from Miles reminded me that I had no business dilly-dallying over past conversations with Jack. He would be here soon enough, and that kiss would be more than a memory.
“First things first,” I muttered as I moved down the hall with my feline escorts to change out of my work clothes. We had so much to do. It was a relief not to have to think more about retirement for now. Getting married was turning out to be no small feat. Today’s events had thrown yet another monkey wrench into my efforts to make progress. Not the one that had originally sent me scurrying to find Max. The thrower-of-the-monkey-wrench, Imogene, had been apologetic about the whole hoop skirt issue when I tracked her down by phone later.
I had expressed my willingness to remove my dress from her to-do list, but she wouldn’t allow me to do that. Imogene had assured me she could get the dress I had in mind designed in no time. With a few modifications to the one she had made for Gloria, a master dressmaker at Marvelous Marley World could sew it. In less than two weeks, I’d have a dress ready for a fitting. I believed her when she told me not to worry about what to wear on my wedding day.
With the dress problem solved, so I hoped, the biggest monkey-wrench-thrower turned out to be me. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing amateur sleuth. I had plenty to share with Jack when he arrived. Questions, too. I felt excited about the prospect of talking to him about his day. Would our dinners together always be filled with such anticipation?
Jack had already told me that he wasn’t free to discuss most of his cases—not all of them involving homicide as it turned out. He was rather closemouthed, except when it came to mischief and mayhem involving Marvelous Marley World. Somehow, I seem to have landed in the middle of the mess each time there had been trouble at the Cat Factory.
“Here we go again,” I said as I pulled our dinner from the refrigerator. Luckily, for me, I had made dinner ahead of time since I had let my snooping activities keep me longer at work than planned. Jack loves pasta. My make-ahead dish of farfalle pasta with chicken breast and artichokes in a vinaigrette is one of those dishes that you can serve hot or cold. I think it gets better if all the flavors get to set overnight and you eat it cold, like a pasta salad. All you need is crusty, warm French bread, and you have a meal. Dessert, too, of course. Tonight, it was a bittersweet chocolate sorbet I had also made ahead. A low-fat way to get my chocolate fix.
Miles and Ella were happily devouring their evening snack when Miles suddenly went on point. He bellowed just as I heard my garage door opening. I had given Jack a clicker and a key to the house, so he could come and go as he needed while moving items from his condo. The storage space in the garage was rapidly filling up. A happy sight. Every inch taken up by Jack’s belongings made our life together feel closer, and more real.
When Jack stepped into the kitchen, the three of us were waiting. Jack took the bait immediately, pulled me close and made me glad we had decided to keep our engagement short. Two jealous Siamese cats could not bear being left out of the hugging and kissing. Ella stretched as far as she could from her perch on the table near the door. She pulled at Jack’s arm. Miles used his preferred method of communication and roared his demand for attention. Jack accommodated them both, and then followed me to the kitchen sink to wash up for dinner.
“How was the rest of your day?” I asked as I led him into the dining room where dinner was waiting.
“No more major incidents at Marvelous Marley World—which isn’t always so marvelous, by the way.”
“You figured that out, too, huh?”
“All by myself. See what a bright guy you’re marrying?” Jack smiled in a way that instantly boosts my spirits. “Ben Davies is still alive, so that’s good. For a homicide detective, a day that ends without a dead body is sometimes as good as it gets. Our dinner together is way better,” he said as we seated ourselves near the French doors in the dining room with a view of the Pacific Ocean shimmering in the moonlight.
I understood what he meant, savoring a moment of domestic bliss that a year ago would have been unimaginable. The house seemed full when Jack was present and empty when he was not. How difficult Brigit’s absence must be for Todd, I thought.
“Todd must be a wreck. I take it no one has tried to contact Todd or Max or anyone else about Brigit’s abduction?”
“No. The longer we go without a ransom demand, the less likely this is about money.”
“Did you ask Todd about the conversation I overheard
when Brigit was on the phone? Was she being tested for drugs? Could this be a drug deal gone wrong?”
“Todd didn't know anything about a test of any kind and was emphatic that she does not use drugs. She’s a health freak—his words, not mine. He claims you caught her at a difficult moment. Brigit does sometimes pour herself a stiff drink or two when she’s upset. They have a deal that Todd’s going to quit smoking, and she’s going to give up drinking.”
“They both blew it today, then, with Todd’s confession that he was sneaking a cigarette when he said he was on his way to her dressing room.”
“Yes. It's not that surprising. Those are hard habits to break. Any luck finding a picture of the man you saw with that coffee cart?”
“No. Mara went through the online stories about Brigit’s stalkers. She even called the firm that represents Brigit to see if they knew anyone fitting his description. Brigit had told Mara that Katherine Dempsey, one of the office assistants working there saves every bit of creepy email, notes, weird gifts, marriage proposals, and other odd things like that. The assistant was friendly enough, but not helpful. She did say there hadn’t been any recent incidents reported by Brigit or anyone else. If you want your investigators to go through that file, you’re welcome to do it. Brigit’s agent, David Ludlow, sounds like a real piece of work, as you now know. I hear he turned up and pitched a fit about the fact you hadn’t contacted him the moment Brigit went missing.”
“How’d you hear about that?”
“News travels fast at the Cat Factory.”
“I guess so.”
“The truth is, I was worried about Imogene, so I tracked her down. When she took my call, she was still at Soundstage 4 and happened to be within shouting distance when David Ludlow made his dissatisfaction known. Not the first time he’s stormed in there irate about something, if what Imogene says is true.”
“Yeah, Max chewed him out for being as high maintenance as the talent.”
“That is the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? Who’s higher maintenance than Max? Although I must admit, he was more angel than devil today, wasn’t he?”
Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery Box Set Page 32
