“How do we know that? I mean it, Shelley. There are more than a hundred people out there every day. Any six of them could be potential mass murderers."
“You're suggesting that six out of a hundred is some kind of national average? You know perfectly well you don't believe that."
“I didn't say I believed it. But it is possible."
“But it's more probable that it's one person."
“As far as I'm concerned, they can all kill each other off, so long as they go away. Sorry. I don't mean it. But I do wish they'd go away.".
“Jane, you're not thinking very clearly here. They're supposed to be finished tomorrow afternoon and have a wrap party tomorrow night—"
“Surely they'll call that off."
“Want to bet?"
“No, I don't think so. But what difference does it make?"
“Jane, Mel could be tied up investigating this thing for months! He can't keep the whole production in town. They're going to scatter like milkweed fluff by Saturday morning."
“Oh. I see what you mean. My weekend with him might be sometime next year."
“Right. And what you said about understanding their motives is dead-on, if you'll excuse the phrase. He looks on all those people as 'foreigners.' Almost 'aliens.' You and I don't understand them a whole lot better, but we're not thrown for quite such a loop as he is."
“I don't know, Shelley. I'd really rather stay out of it, I think. The police can't keep Mel chained to his desk forever."
“Jane…" Shelley began in a strained voice. "You can't stay out of this."
“I certainly can. I'm not terminally nosy, you know."
“That's not what I meant, exactly.”
Jane picked up the now empty coffee carafe and started rinsing it out. "What do you mean?" She put a hearty scoop of coffee into the basket.
Shelley didn't answer right away. "Well — I don't quite know how to say this, but there's something you're overlooking."
“Probably dozens of things, but what did you have in mind?" Jane poured cold water in the coffeemaker and pushed the button to start it brewing before she sat back down across from Shelley at the kitchen table.
“Jane, sooner or later — God, I hate to say this! Sooner or later Mel is going to question everyone about every conversation they heard Lynette Harwell have on this set.”
A faint alarm bell went off in the dim recesses of Jane's mind. "Yes?" she said warily.
“And one of her more 'public' conversations was with you and your son about her having had an affair with your husband. Lots of people might have overheard it. You and Mike both went off obviously upset, I assume. All of that is going to be in the record, from interviews with other people.”
Jane gulped. "But. . but. ." she sputtered. "I already told him all about it. And about Steve's leaving me. It's got nothing to do with all this."
“Before Lynette was murdered it didn't. But now it's theoretical motive for you to kill her. She did something awful to your child. Told him something you didn't want him to know."
“Mel wouldn't suspect me!"
“Mel-the-guy-you're-dating wouldn't suspect you, but I'm not talking about that person. Detective Mel Van Dyne would have to. At least 'officially.' Now, he'd be hard-pressed to take off a couple extra days to jaunt off with a suspect in an unsolved case."
“But nobody who knows me could think—"
“It's not a question of people who know you. It's the people who don't. Like Mel's boss, whoever that is."
“Oh, hell," Jane murmured. "You're right." "What's the matter, Mom?" Todd said from the doorway.
Jane smiled automatically. "Nothing at all, honey."
“You got any more of those brownies?"
“I've got another package of mix, if you can wait about twenty minutes," she said. "I'll call you when they're ready.”
She flung together a bowl of brownie mix while saying to Shelley, "Okay, let's think sensibly about this. General to the specific, I believe. So, what's a good reason for murdering somebody?"
“There isn't one."
“Not to us. But in theory."
“Okay. Greed comes to mind. Hate. Revenge. Fear. Jealousy. Ambition—"
“Whoa! One at a time, so we can eliminate the most unlikely. Hold it." She spritzed cooking oil on a glass baking dish and hastily dumped the mixture in. Once it was in the oven, she poured them fresh coffee and sat down.
“This is decaf, isn't it?" Shelley asked.
“Of course. If I drank the real stuff this late, I'd be cleaning the oven at four in the morning."
“You can't fool me, Jane. You wouldn't clean an oven if somebody held a gun to your head."
“Maybe not. Okay, I think we can eliminate hate as a motive."
“You do? I'd have put it top on the list. They all seem to hate each other."
“But that's just it. Hate and jealousy both seem natural to most of the people we've gotten to know out there. Cavagnari hates Lynette, so much so that he also hates George Abington for giving her up to him, but he literally works himself into a sweat directing her in a great performance. Lynette hates George Abington, but is convincingly madly in love with him when the camera is rolling. Everybody hates Jake, but speaks well of his particular skills. Likewise everybody seems to hate Lynette, but they fall down praising her when she gives a good performance. It looks to me like hate and jealousy are somehow natural parts of the process. Maybe even necessary parts. An element of emotional 'pumping up' or something."
“Okay, I'll accept all that. Cross off garden-variety hatred. Tentatively. The one I'd eliminate is greed. At least in the case of the principal suspects. They must all have lots of money and I can't imagine how any of them would benefit from either Jake's death or Lynette's."
“Theoretically Butch might have benefited by Jake's death," Jane said.
“Not really. All Jake's props probably belong to his heir now. And that's not likely to be Butch. All Butch has from Jake is the credit that accrued to him from being assistant to a master. That's his whether Jake is alive or dead."
“I don't think for a minute that Butch could have killed anybody, but just for the sake of argument, Jake could have been getting ready to fire him or bad-mouth him. I think we talked about this before. But supposing the same person murdered both of them, what possible reason could Butch have for getting rid of Lynette Harwell?"
“None that I can see," Shelley agreed. "The onetime I saw him speak to her, it was all 'yes, Miss Harwell, no, Miss Harwell, ma'am.' He all but held his hand over his heart and swooned because she'd deigned to speak to him."
“So we can eliminate Butch?"
“I wish you'd stick to one method. We were talking about motives, not suspects. Check your brownies.”
Jane turned the pan around so it would cook evenly and sat back down. "Okay, we were talking about greed. We have no idea who Jake's heir might be, unless it's Angela Smith."
“I can't quite feature Angela giving up acting to be a property master. But she might have meant to sell the props to somebody."
“Anybody else who's already a property master would have their own and somebody like Butch, trying to break into the business, wouldn't have any money. Besides, I got the impression that a property master located props rather than owning a warehouse full of them."
“You're probably right. We're really hampered by knowing so little about the film business. Let's ignore Jake for the moment. What about Lynette?" Shelley suddenly laughed nervously. "Who would have thought, a week ago, that we'd be sitting here talking about Lynette Harwell as if she were somebody we actually knew!"
“To our sorrow," Jane said glumly. "Well, Lynette was probably loaded. George Abington told me that even bad roles often pay well and she has been working steadily on bad roles for a lot of years."
“Maybe poor old Olive killed her for her money," Shelley offered.
“Are you kidding? Lynette took her for granted. I'll bet she didn't even pay her a decent s
alary. I can't imagine her making Olive her heir.”
Shelley nodded. "That would be like making a carpet your heir, wouldn't it. Lynette seemed to take all that adoration as her just due. What about Lynette's family? Maybe somebody on the set is a long-lost brother."
“George said she came from a rich, social background. Well, that's how she got Olive. She started out as Lynette's nanny. I imagine the rest of the family is well off."
“New motive. Ambition?”
Jane waved this away. "The movie is almost done. How could killing either of them further anybody's career?"
“This movie is almost done. But what about the next one? I wonder if Mel could find out if either of them was contracted for a job after this.”
Jane sipped her coffee and thought about this. "Possibly. That makes me think of Jennifer Fortin."
“Me, too."
“Maisie said she was supposed to have wanted this role badly. Maybe Lynette had another good role coming up that she beat Jennifer out of? When Jennifer saw or heard what a great job Lynette did on that last scene, she might have felt she had to clear her out of the way or she'd never have a chance. They look somewhat alike. They're about the same age, and each has one Oscar for agreat performance. Maybe the way Jennifer saw it there were certain roles that either of them could play and Lynette was going to get them all from here on."
“That's all perfectly logical, but I don't buy it," Shelley said.
“No, me neither," Jane admitted. "Oh! The brownies!”
When the kids had come and gone, stuffed to the gills with starch and chocolate, Jane said, "I'm still puzzling over the mysterious producers."
“Not again! Jane, why do you keep coming back to that?"
“I don't know. It just seems like it ought to be important. And I have that peculiar feeling that I know something that I don't know I know. Something Katie said when she was making up stories about those clothespin dolls made it come to mind. I wish I could remember what she was talking about at the time."
“Maybe you're right," Shelley said. "There must be a huge amount of money involved in making a movie. And money can be a good motive for murder. As good, or rather, as bad as any other." She glanced at her watch. "Oh! It's after ten! Paul will think I've run away from home."
“Paul's back?"
“Just this evening. Watch me to my door, will you?”
As Shelley opened her kitchen door and waved at Jane, she called out, "Think about those dolls when you go to sleep. Maybe your subconscious will work on it for you."
“My subconscious went on a winter cruise to Bermuda seven years ago and never came home," Jane shouted back.
20
Unlike Jake's death, which hardly seemed to make a blip in the progress of the movie, Lynette's got to everybody.
The cast and crew were once again on the set, looking madly busy as the sun rose; this was, after all, the last day and there was much that had to be done. But the mood had changed. Jane could tell that much just from looking out the window at the scene behind her house. The morning was overcast and occasionally the sky spit drizzle, adding to the glum mood. People went about their work with heads down, or glancing over their shoulders furtively when anyone approached behind them.
The press had arrived in ravening hordes. Lynette was well-known; her death was real news. Local papers and television stations sent crews, and all the wire services had gotten the word and also sent people. The police and movie people for once cooperated and banned all the press from the set. A police guard, augmented by private security men and women, was set up to prevent outsiders — including the gawkersfrom coming any closer than the street. When Jane had first looked out her front window that morning it was like a reverse parade crowd: instead of mobs standing on the curb looking toward the street, they were standing there trying to see between the houses to the set. It was truly unnerving.
It was more alarming trying to get out to take the kids to school. Jane couldn't have expected any of the car pool drivers to even get on her street. Nor would she have let the kids out of the house to run to their cars if the car pools had made it. She decided to take everybody herself in one trip.
They all got in the car in the garage and as Jane backed the station wagon out she was nearly forced to run over people to get them out of the way. She had the windows rolled up and the doors locked, but they tapped on her windows and shouted questions. Mike, sitting tense and white-faced in the front seat with Jane, gave one reporter a rude gesture which Jane pretended not to notice. Katie and Todd huddled together in the backseat, genuinely frightened.
“They'll all be gone by tomorrow," Jane said, trying to sound calm and reassuring, even though she was deeply shaken. "Would you all like to go from school to your grandmother's this afternoon and spend the night there?"
“Thanks, Mom. Yeah," Katie said, her voice trembling.
“Me, too," Todd said. "I don't like these jerks." "I'll go home with Scott, okay?" Mike growled. "All right. I'll pack up stuff for you all. I promise, by tomorrow morning, we won't even know any of this happened.”
As they got away from the neighborhood, everybody felt better. On a whim, Jane suggested breakfastat McDonald's since everybody had been too excited and upset to eat at home. The kids thought this was great, especially the idea of getting to be late to school with a note from Mom to explain it.
By the time she finally delivered them to their schools, she felt confident that the trauma of the neighborhood invasion had been smoothed over. But she had to go back. For a moment she considered just stopping by the library for a bunch of good books, then checking herself into a nice motel to read and lounge all day, but decided that wasn't the responsible thing to do. Besides, she was just plain curious herself as to how everybody on the set was going to take this new development.
Nobody really bought Lynette's death as a suicide although a few were still trying to romanticize it as such. "She must have known she could never do better than yesterday," Jane overheard somebody saying. "She wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, I think.”
But most of the cast and crew were uneasy, obviously feeling threatened that a murderer was among them. It was odd, Jane thought, that Jake's death, which was so unmistakably a murder, hadn't made them nervous, but Lynette's demise, which might (in spite of Shelley's and Mel's instincts) have been suicide, frightened them all. Jane supposed it was because in a strange way suicide is scarier than murder. We can lock ourselves in our houses and hide from killers, but there's nowhere to hide from ourselves.
Shelley was already outside and had been eavesdropping. "What's up now?" Jane asked her in a hushed tone.
“Olive arrived a while ago, looking like a corpse herself, poor old thing. I guess she came to pick up Lynette's things. The rumor is that there was a ring in Lynette's dressing room that wasn't hers."
“Whose was it?"
“The gossip mill says it was Angela's." "Interesting. I wonder how Angela explains that."
“Apparently she can't. The word is that she says she kept it in her purse and didn't even realize it was missing until the police asked her to identify it."
“Not very likely," Jane said. "Even if it was in her purse and just fell out, it fell out in Lynette's dressing room and that's very damning. Angela is connected to Jake, either as his girlfriend or his niece, but did she have any previous connection with Lynette?"
“I can't find anybody who knows of any," Shelley said.
Jane glanced around, noticing that the weather had cleared and was promising to turn into a very nice day for their final scenes. Suddenly she saw somebody who made her nearly scream. She damped it down to a squeak. "My God! I thought that was Lynette!”
Shelley looked where Jane pointed. Jennifer Fortin was in conversation with Roberto Cavagnari. She was dressed in the same costume Lynette had worn the day before and had her hair fixed in the same style. She looked astonishingly like the dead actress.
“How creepy!" Shelley exclaimed. Sh
e left Jane gaping and went to chat for a minute with some extras standing around the coffee urn. When she came back, she said, "They had some long shots to do of Lynette and George. Jennifer is filling in. Didn't they do that in Jean Harlow's last movie?"
“Oh, yes. I remember seeing the scenes that were supposed to be Harlow at a racetrack or something. All three-quarter shots of the back of her head. But it was somebody else because Harlow had died. I see how it's necessary, but it's still nasty.”
Jane learned a little more about it when she went to fix herself a cup of coffee. The producers' representative was using the phone as she stood a few feet away. He punched in a long set of numbers. So it's long-distance, Jane thought to herself.
“Yes, hello. Is V. J. there?" he asked. "Yes, Claude here. Just checking in. It's a zoo, as you could guess. No, Roberto says he can finish by four as long as the security people keep the press out of his hair. They're getting ready for the long shots of scene nineteen.”
He paused, listening. "No, Roberto must have called Fortin. She's doing them. Didn't even ask for credits. Just scale. My guess is she's sucking up to Cavagnari. Oh, sure I did. I don't let anybody near here without a signed contract. Not to worry.”
Jane got very busy picking over the donuts as if which one to choose were a life-and-death decision. Not that she needed a donut, but she wanted a reason to stay in place.
“Listen, Veronica, everything's really all right, given the mess," the young man was going on. "We didn't need Harwell today except for the long shots. And the kid doing the props is fine. Don't worry about the press. I'm just sorry we're getting all this attention now instead of closer to the release date. Now, I've got a problem with George's home ticket. It's for the wrong day. Could you get it straightened out at your end? Uh-oh, a reporter's got hold of Olive. Gotta go!”
In fact, several reporters had gotten through the security cordon and had hold of Olive. Or perhaps she had latched onto them. Jane's heart ached for the older woman, who looked pale and ill. Her eyes were red and her face blotched and she was hanging onto an assortment of canvas bags and dresses on hangers, which made her look like a refugee fleeing a disaster with all her worldly goods.
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