by Nero Blanc
Martha looked at Sara. That single “dear” melted her every time, probably because Martha realized the term was truly and affectionately meant. “I can’t, Sar … It’s not my decision. I don’t own the joint.”
“I’ve given up the habit anyway,” Al interjected.
Four heads spun toward him in surprise.
“New Year’s resolution … for the wife.”
“But I was with you yesterday, Al,” Rosco chuckled. “Down at the station? You were smoking like a—”
“You haven’t heard of breaking resolutions on occasion, Poly-crates?” Nettled, or simply because he enjoyed ribbing his ex-partner, Al Lever took pains at mispronouncing the Greek name, turning the four syllables, po-lick-ra-tees, into a heavy-handed three that sounded like an order to a parrot.
“Have you kept this resolution even once since you made it, Al? Come to think of it, you quit last New Year’s, too, didn’t you?”
“Har har, Poly-crates … You won’t be acting so smug when your sweetie’s off in La-La-Land doing the rumba with Lance diRusa!” Lever took another slug of coffee; Martha immediately refilled the cup, uttering “I assume you’ll all be ordering the usual today: cheese omelet, extra fries for Big Al, there; a single poached egg for Sara, rye toast, no butter …” The list trailed off as Martha returned her concentration to Belle. “And you’re sure this Darlessen guy’s on the up-and-up?”
“I’ve got his fax right here. The address is a studio in Culver City. I called the number listed. It’s the real deal.”
“Wowie …” Martha cooed. “Belle Graham in a movie.”
“Well, not me, Martha.”
“I know. You said. Shay Henlee’s doing you. And Greg Trafeo’s playing Rosco? He’s cute, but he’s not Rosco …”
“Chick Darlessen said there was a bit of hitch with Greg Trafeo,” Belle cautioned. “I don’t know what that meant.”
“Yeah, but look at you Belle, you’re gonna be the show’s technical consultant—fancy salary, first class digs, one glorious week of all-star treatment.”
“According to Chick Darlessen.”
“Trafeo and Henlee …” Martha repeated in quiet awe while Rosco beamed at his wife. His pride in having an obvious talent like Shay Henlee play the part of Belle Graham was written all over his face.
“She’s not nearly as pretty as Belle, but still …”
“She’s tons prettier, Rosco.” Belle returned his loving gaze and the two were momentarily lost to the group, to the muffled shouts of Kenny the fry cook, to the clink of the cash register, the loud and soft voices of the other patrons, the comforting morning aroma of bacon and sausage, hash browns, eggs sizzling on a griddle, local maple syrup warming, and the soothing cinnamon scent of French toast browning in butter in a pan.
The three other members of the group allowed this intimate moment to pass before Martha spoke up again. “Let me see that fax, Belle.”
Belle handed it over. It was the cast list of Anatomy of a Crossword.
Martha’s shrewd eyes ran down the names. “Louis Gable … who knew that pompous old coot was still around? Plus he’s one of DeDero’s exes, too. Number four, I think, maybe … or is it five? I get so confused with that dame’s amours … Anyway, having Gable around will probably make things real dicey on the set. Nan’s not one to appreciate having her leftovers around when she’s on the warpath for her new soul mate … Dan Millray plays the victim? That’s sure a waste of his talent and looks, if you ask me … Carol Von Deney … Oh, she was to die for as the rich witch on that nighttime soap that folded last year … Andy Hofren. Now, he’s a curious choice for her husband—or anybody’s husband, if you ask me … Ginger Bradmin. What an absolute sweetheart! Too bad her marriage to Quinton Hanny didn’t work out …”
“Actually—” Belle tried to interrupt, but Martha was on a roll.
“… On the other hand, she’s definitely better off without Quint, especially now that he’s taken up with … No, wait, that fling’s over, too.” A sudden gasp put an end to Martha’s monologue. “Jes Nadema’s doing Big Al!”
Four pairs of eyes regarded her without comprehension. Unlike Martha, the rest of the Breakfast Bunch had not educated themselves regarding either personal relationships or performance credits of Hollywood’s current talent pool.
“Jes Nadema, the ex-pro wrestler …! Mr. I-take-off-my-shirt-in-all-my-close-ups! You guys must know who he is! He does all the ‘muscle man’ ads on TV … You’ve seen the jackhammer one? Where he gets a headache? Boy, did they ever goof on that particular bit of typecasting!” Martha pointedly moved her gaze to Al’s less-than-trim waistline while her laughter rose in a gleeful hoop.
“Very funny, Martha,” Al muttered.
Sara murmured a conciliatory, “Well, I think you should take the choice as a compliment, Albert. After all, the studio or whomever it is out there wouldn’t have—”
But Sara’s kind effort was also interrupted as Martha gulped back her own hoots of amusement. The sound she made was similar to someone choking on a large and dangerous object. “Me! I’m in it, too! I’m Madeline Richter! Madeline ‘Gorgeous Legs’ Richter! Hey, everyone, listen up!” Martha turned to the company at large, brandishing the fax as she did so. “Listen up, you all! Guess who’s playing yours truly in a TV movie? Madeline Richter, herself!”
At that moment, Belle who had taken Rosco’s hand, realized there was no stopping this particular train. Hollywood—or, in this case, Culver City—had apparently appropriated not only her life but everyone with whom she shared it. How could she possibly bring herself to disappoint her friends?
CHAPTER 4
True to Chick Darlessen’s promise, the invasion of the Polaroid People took place a mere thirty-six hours after Belle’s tenuous and apprehensive “yes” to the screenwriter’s request. The design team’s “one hour max” visit was heralded by the arrival of a luxury-size rental car. It roared up historic Captain’s Walk and lurched to a halt in Belle’s and Rosco’s narrow driveway. A second later, the vehicle’s four doors flew open, and five people of indeterminate gender spilled forth. Obviously, they ascribed to Darlessen’s credo that time was of the essence. All five members of the team wore tight black jeans; tight, black, quilted jackets; and rose- or blue-tinted glasses, and sported short, dark hair streaked mustard-blond, or vice versa. Opening the front door, Belle hadn’t a clue which person before her was male or female—or if, perhaps, the group was of a single sex. But she couldn’t have ventured a guess as to which sex. The hasty introductions didn’t help, either: Miso Lane (the only one to reveal a double name), Omagh, Chris, Randi, and Bret, each of whom proceeded to swarm into and through her house as if she were not the owner and resident but some insignificant being hired to turn a key in the lock of an uninhabited building.
It was unsettling to hear their comments as they began to either deride or coo condescendingly over the winter-battered wicker settee and table on the front veranda, the living room with her favorite secondhand-store treasures, the kitchen where they burbled about outmoded chrome appliances, mismatched cookware, and a refrigerator to which magnets actually stuck. “Sub-zero outside, but not in here, hee, hee. Oh, so quaint.” But it was in Belle’s office where the critique rose to new heights.
“A fantasy in black and white,” decreed Miso Lane, while placing palms to cheeks and bending backward slightly. By now, Belle had labeled him as male and the leader of the group. He concluded this authoritarian opinion with a loud and world-weary sigh that indicated he found the word-game motif more of a nightmare than a dream. On his orders, the others fanned out across the room, pulling reference books from the shelves, clucking over Belle’s various collections of poetry, her foreign language dictionaries, and her two sets of encyclopedias, then muttering about while rearranging her desk. Ogling and discussing the crossword she was constructing for Chick Darlessen, he was popping so many photos that the air whined with the sound.
Then the team rushed upstairs, snapping
away in the bedroom and bath while Belle trailed behind, worrying if the sink was clean enough, if she’d succeeded in vacuuming all of Kit’s fur from the rug, and, if someone decided to open a closet, how many haphazardly stored items would come tumbling out.
“Oh, look!” she heard one of the five squeal (Belle thought it was Randi). “A double bed! Isn’t that the cutest thing?”
“Well, a king would never fit up that weensy stairway, darling.”
“How do two people sleep in something that tiny?” It was Bret this time, Belle guessed.
“With a whole lot of cuddling, I’d say.” The comment (maybe it had come from Omagh) produced universal snickering in all but Belle, who stood in her bedroom’s doorway with a sick and unhappy ache growing in the pit of her stomach.
Then the cameras disappeared into black bags, and the crowd scurried back downstairs. “Who’s got the MapQuest info on Lawson’s?” Miso Lane demanded.
“I thought we could GPS it. Hello OnStar, it’s Batman!”
“I’ll take you there,” Belle offered. “After all, I’m the tech—”
But her suggestion was cut short by Miso’s brusque “Let’s get moving, then. We’re on the red-eye back to L.A. tonight. And Chick wanted me to be sure to—” The words vanished beneath the stamp of feet and the slamming of the front door.
“I’ll be back soon, Kitty. Be a good girl,” Belle barely had time to whisper before she hurried after them.
The photographic inspection and cataloging of Lawson’s interior was followed by an equally diligent examination of the Newcastle Police Department’s main facility—Al Lever’s office, the holding cells, forensics, the morgue. In each location, the design team members repeated their performance: snapping away at rooms, doorways, and objects as if they’d never seen a restaurant-size stove or the venting ducts in a forensics lab or a station house basement painted institutional green. The cops on duty, sturdy men and women with jelly doughnut—enhanced waistlines and blunt chop-shop hair styles, regarded the lithe and black-clad troop as if they were watching the exploratory foray of some potentially malevolent alien force.
Belle tried to ease the tension of the situation, repeating Darlessen’s explanations concerning designers and second-unit camera men, but her words were greeted by apprehensive and sometimes antagonistic stares. “They’re coming back?” was the most oft-repeated comment.
“Maybe,” Belle would answer. “But not this group … And they’ll only be shooting exteriors.”
“Shooting?”
“Filming. For the movie.”
“Right … Shooting …”
But Belle could sense this was no reassurance. As far as NPD was concerned, the only “shots” came from guns. And Miso Lane and crowd were none too happy when Al Lever insisted on going through every single one of their Polaroids and removing the photos he deemed sensitive to security or compromising to critical undercover personnel.
As for Lawson’s’—aside from Martha, who clucked tenderly over the band and tried, unsuccessfully, to insert herself in their photos—it was clear that the group was disrupting the local customers, and that any “second-unit” types would find themselves on shaky ground if they wished to return.
And then the team and Belle raced on to Sara Briephs’s impressive and ancestral home, White Caps, where the whirlwind of activity suddenly ceased.
“I’m simply delighted you could come,” Sara pronounced. She was “receiving” her visitors in her downstairs sitting room. Here the fireplace was aglow with birch logs, sending warmth and light spilling across the antique oriental carpet and the polished ball-and-claw feet of the Chippendale chairs and tables, over the silk-shaded alabaster lamps, the Chinese export porcelain, and the crystal vases filled with greenhouse flowers, and finally up into the proud face of the house’s invincible owner.
“You’ll take tea with me, I hope. Or something stronger on this dreary winter’s day. Sherry, perhaps?” Seated in a high-backed wing chair, her cane discreetly hooked on an armrest, Sara motioned to her elderly and stouthearted maid, Emma, who disappeared to return a few moments later pushing a laden tea trolley. A plate of warm shortbread cookies rested beside a stack of fresh scones, the traditional clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam resting in matching Wedgwood bowls close by. And yes, there was a decanter of dry sherry along with the requisite slim-stemmed glasses, as well as bottles of aged port and vin santo. “Belle, dear, will you do the honors?”
Miso Lane and his team were slack-jawed. Not a camera was in evidence.
“So lovely to have you here, Mr. Lane,” Sara continued in her modulated and aristocratic tone. “Although our chilly temperatures must seem quite an abrupt change from Southern California. I’ve only been to Los Angeles once, I must confess, but I was greatly taken by a panorama from the bluffs in a place called Pacific Palisades. A village, it was then, with charming little bungalows … I expect it’s gotten bigger since. But it did have the most spectacular views looking out over the ocean. I remember the blue seemed as sublime and shimmering to me as the Bay of Naples. I refer to Italy, naturally. The other Naples, the Floridian town, is pleasant, of course, but what can compare to la bella Italia? And then, I don’t fish or play golf.” She graced her speechless guests with a glowing smile while Emma proceeded to pass around the tea that Belle had poured. “Don’t forget to offer sherry and so forth, Belle dear. Oh, and Emma, be good enough to fetch something salty to accompany our fortified wines … perhaps, those herbed pecans and the cheddar wafers? I regret to say that we don’t have any Stilton at the moment. That and a glass of aged port is a custom I know you gentlemen are fond of. At least, the Anglophiles among you—” She nodded in Miso Lane’s direction who finally found the courage to interrupt.
“Mrs. Briephs … ma’am … With your permission, would it be acceptable for us to take a few photographs of your home?”
“But, of course, young man! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Snap away! But tell me first, are you intending to replicate White Caps on your studio set?”
Miso looked to the others who returned his dazed gaze. “I don’t know if it’s possible, ma’am. All these beautiful, old things—”
“Oh, come now!” Sara laughed. “The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me I’m also too much of an antique to be duplicated.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Nan DeDero’s playing—”
“So I’ve heard,” was Sara’s acerbic response. “I’ve also been informed that she is less than ladylike in her off-stage demeanor.” Then the doyenne of White Caps waved the team ahead with a gracious smile. “Don’t let me detain you. You have an assignment, I realize. Emma will conduct any of you who wish it to the second floor. Although I believe you’ll find have sufficient material downstairs.”
Miso’s response was an unexpected, “We’ll just finish our beverages, ma’am, if that’s acceptable?”
“Of course! Of course! Take all the time in the world. My home is yours,” Sara replied while the other members of the team turned startled eyes toward their leader who continued to slowly sip at his tea as if he had all the time in the world. It was quite obvious none of them had witnessed such peaceable behavior before.
Accompanying the group to their car at the conclusion of the visit, Belle had a strange and not altogether comforting experience. Miso Lane’s canvas bag slipped from his shoulder and fell on the broad, marble entry steps. The cameras were already packed for travel, but his photographs went flying: shots of her home, of Lawson’s, of Al Lever’s office, of the morgue, and holding cells. In none of these pictures was there a human face or torso, not even one half-glimpsed or out-of-focus. But within this cache, Belle suddenly caught sight of a large number of Polaroids of Sara, all quite obviously taken when the subject was unaware of being photographed. “What are these for?” Belle began as the team’s leader bent to scoop them up.
“A great face. You don’t see many like that.”
“But you didn’t ask her.” Belle
wasn’t sure why she said this. Given Sara’s expansive personality, she would have readily acquiesced to a request to pose for candid portraits.
“Hey, we gotta get a move on,” Miso said by way of a reply. He dumped the photos in his satchel and gestured to the others who jumped into the car.
“But you—” Belle repeated.
“But I what?” Lane turned to her, his features suddenly hostile and tense.
Belle didn’t answer. The words that came to mind would have made Sara sound enfeebled, in need of protection, old.
“A face is a face. You don’t own it. I don’t own it.”
“Such lovely young people,” Sara said when Belle reentered the house. “Curious names, however. I expect they may have invented them themselves. Don’t you agree? Omagh is an Irish town, of course, so it’s conceivable that parents might call a child after a place … But Miso is a type of soup … Japanese, I believe …”
Belle nodded, distracted and still curiously uneasy.
“He looked like someone, didn’t he, Belle? The Lane boy? Other than himself, of course. I can’t think who … Oh, well, my poor old brain isn’t always as sharp as I’d like.” With that, she turned on her cane and began walking with cautious grace back into the depths of her house. But before leaving her guest, Sara offered a final word of advice. “Take good care of yourself out there, Belle dear. Remember, we want you home safe and sound.”
CHAPTER 5
Belle was in the midst of preparing a plate of deviled eggs when Rosco came home that evening. In times of crisis, this was her favorite therapeutic food. She was so engrossed in the soothing chore of scooping hard-cooked yolks into a mixing bowl, adding a pinch or so of dried English mustard, and popping in some healthy dollops of mayo and a couple of spoonfuls of capers that she didn’t hear the front door open or Kit’s delighted yips as she greeted her favorite male companion of the two-legged, we’ll-go-for-a-walk-in-a-minute variety.
