Undercover with the Undead

by Susan Harper

  Felicity nervously tapped her fingers against her laptop as she attempted to make sense of it all. The last person who saw Eleanor, as far as Felicity knew, had been Jasmine. The two women had been hanging out together at the party. Felicity thought back to the day before at the coffee shop. Jasmine could hardly make it from one side of the shop to the other without running out of breath. Surely a woman that far along in her third trimester would not have been able to one-up Eleanor with just a knife?

  “One more puzzle piece,” Felicity said and snatched her phone, calling up Kenneth on his personal cell.

  “This is Kenneth,” the man’s voice sang.

  “This is Felicity Overton,” Felicity said. “We need to meet.”

  “Can you meet me on set in half an hour? I’ll have time then,” he said.

  “I’ll be there,” Felicity said and thanked him before hanging up. Felicity hopped up and hurried to get dressed. Her mind was putting the pieces together as she threw on a top and a pair of jeans. She even took the time to put on a bit of makeup and pulled her hair back before grabbing the keys to her van. She headed downstairs where she saw her mother in front of the television doing yoga in some leopard print pants that made Felicity anxious. “Mom! What are you doing?”

  “Working out,” her mother said as she stretched her back.

  “It’s amazing I never had to go to therapy,” Felicity grumbled.

  “Where are you off to? I thought this was your day off?” the woman asked.

  “I think I might have found something for the case. I’m heading to talk to Kenneth,” Felicity said.

  “Ooh! Me too!” her mother exclaimed and acted as though she was ready to walk out the door.

  Felicity cringed. “Um… How about you throw some actual clothes on…or, you know what, why don’t you just let me handle this one, Mom? You finish your…yoga…thing…”

  Her mom laughed. “Am I embarrassing you?”

  “Just a little,” Felicity said.

  “Fine. I’ll be here if you need me,” her mother said, returning to her yoga mat in the living room.

  Felicity headed outside, but when she opened the door, she smacked a ladder with the door as it swung. “Yahk!” was the strange noise her father made from the top of the ladder. He gripped the roofing, and Felicity hurried to stabilize the ladder before the man lost his footing and tumbled down.

  “Dad! What are you doing?” Felicity squealed as she closed the door behind her with her foot and held onto the base of the ladder. The man took a moment to balance himself, and he exhaled in relief that he hadn’t nose-dived onto the porch. Felicity could feel her heart racing after nearly causing her father a serious fall—but, honestly, he really should not have had the ladder so close to the side door that everyone used anyway. Not without telling everyone what he was doing.

  Her father anxiously climbed back down. When he was on level ground again, he held his hand to his chest. “I thought I was a goner for a second there. Thanks for holding the ladder steady for me, sweetheart.”

  “Why are you up on the roof?” Felicity asked scornfully.

  “I was planning to go fix a patch on the roof,” he said.

  Felicity felt rather puzzled by this. “But…you’re not living here. Mom is. You two are splitting up. Why are you fixing her roof?” He didn’t answer, just shrugged. Felicity simply rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Dad. Look, do me a favor, call Jack. He’s off work today and bored out of his mind because his girlfriend is at school. At the very least, the man can hold the ladder for you or even be the goofball at the top while you hold the ladder for him. Don’t climb up on a roof by yourself while Mom is inside and can’t hear if you fall. Okay?”

  “Okay, okay, fine,” he said. “I’ll call Jack.”

  “Thank you,” Felicity said, shaking her head. “Don’t scare me like that again, all right? I thought you were going to fall on my head!” She laughed and kissed her father’s cheek before heading down the driveway. “I’m heading to town. You need anything?”

  “I’m good,” he said.

  “Do NOT get back up on that ladder until Jack gets here,” Felicity warned her father as she climbed into her event van. She started the engine and sped out of the driveway, eager to head back into Senoia to meet Kenneth. They had a lot to discuss.

  Chapter 13

  Felicity arrived on set, and she was blown away by how eerie it looked. They had done a lot of remodeling since Felicity had been there for the party, and it looked like something straight out of Night of the Living Dead. She smiled; now that she was finally caught up on the show, she felt a little fan-girlish walking onto set and getting a sneak peek of what the next season was going to look like. Just wait until I tell Natalie what I did today, Felicity thought with a smirk.

  The set was starting to give her goose bumps with the boarded-up shop windows, occasional fliers predicting doomsday, turned over vehicles, and general looks of horror such as random splatters of fake blood. “So creepy,” Felicity muttered under her breath, and she asked for directions to the trailers, explaining she had a meeting with Kenneth.

  They radioed it in to make sure she was not a stalker—evidently that was a recurring problem on this set. Once the people she was speaking with were able to confirm she was actually supposed to be there, a kind prop guy escorted her across the set toward the trailers. “What do you think of the set?” he asked.

  “Horrifying, but I love it,” Felicity said. “You guys really go all out on this show, don’t you?”

  “We try. So you’re the PI that Kenneth hired, then?” he asked.

  “I am,” Felicity said. “And hopefully I have some information for him that could help.”

  The man knocked on the door of a trailer, and Kenneth answered it with a smile. “Miss Overton, so glad you made it down here so quickly. Come on in. Thanks for walking her here, Randy.”

  Felicity thanked the man as well before heading into the small trailer. It was a bit cramped, and frankly, she was surprised that one of the writers would have such a small trailer. He seemed to sense what she was thinking, and he laughed. “Only the big shot actors get the good trailers.”

  “Gotcha,” Felicity said with a slight giggle as he invited her to sit in a chair next to his work desk.

  He sat himself down at the desk and propped one leg up on his opposing knee, crossing his arms as he did so. “Okay, Senoia’s Nancy Drew, lay it on me. What do you got for me?”

  “It’s too early to tell for certain, but I believe that Jasmine—Max’s wife—might somehow be connected to Eleanor’s murder,” Felicity said.

  “Jasmine?” Kenneth asked. “The extra? The very pregnant girl? I don’t think she would be able to kill Eleanor. Not the way it was done, at least. It would have taken a lot of strength, don’t you think?”

  “I agree,” Felicity said. “But I still think she might be involved.”

  “Why is that?” Kenneth asked. “The police are investigating Phillip and Alisha.”

  “I was as well,” Felicity said. “But I don’t believe they knew that Eleanor was spying on them. They seemed legitimately surprised when I broke the news. I know they’re actors, but I felt like they were sincere. Ronnie seemed confident that neither of them knew either, and there’s really no reason for him to want to protect either of them. So, I started digging around a bit more. Your directors and writers replaced all of Jasmine’s parts this last season with Eleanor.”

  “Well, yeah,” Kenneth said. “But Jasmine had seemed very understanding about that. She even helped Eleanor rehearse that speech in the last episode.”

  “Really?” Felicity asked and leaned back in her seat. “Because losing an opportunity like that scene would seem pretty devastating to her career. The episode seemed to be setting her up as a more prominent character for this next season, and losing that just because you’re pregnant had to be a difficult blow.”

  “Well, yes, but this sort of thing happens in television. We had to take her ou
t of those scenes because we didn’t want one of our extras to be pregnant,” Kenneth said.

  “And you say she was really understanding?” Felicity asked, feeling as though she had hit yet another dead end for a moment.

  “Absolutely,” Kenneth said. “Jasmine had been a huge fan of the show long before she was cast as an extra. She read the book series that started the whole thing. You should have seen her walking around set with Max when he became an assistant director. He’s the one who got her a job as an extra. Bugged the casting team to put her in the show. And don’t get me wrong, Jasmine is a fabulous actor! We were wanting to expand on her character last season, but the pregnancy got a little in the way of that because it was just out of sync with what we were going for. But, I already spoke with her recently about us using her more next season.”

  “You say Max was really adamant about getting her on the show?” Felicity asked.

  “Yeah, he thought it would make her happy,” Max said.

  “Is it possible—”

  Kenneth interrupted Felicity before she could complete her thought. “Max,” he said, suddenly becoming pale. “I had almost forgotten. The last episode aired a while back. He had been on edge for months while last season aired and he kept seeing that Jasmine’s scenes had been taken out. And, when that last episode aired and he saw that we had used Eleanor instead of Jasmine for that final scene, well, he had expressed his dissatisfaction.”

  “Was he really angry?”

  “Hard to tell how angry someone is when they just send you a few text messages on a subject, but he didn’t sound pleased at all,” Kenneth said and then suddenly covered his mouth as though he’d just had a disturbing epiphany of some kind. “Oh… Max…he did a course on zombie makeup.”

  “And Eleanor was done up in zombie makeup,” Felicity said. “Post-mortem. Probably to the killer…a sign that she should have been killed off on the show. Why would an assistant director take a course on zombie makeup?”

  “A lot of other crewmembers did. I did too… We were short-staffed one season. We just learned how to do some basic stuff for when we did horde shots. The detailed stuff was left to the professionals, but Max took that same course,” Kenneth said, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “Surely it wasn’t Max. Max always seems like a gentle man… He is so in love with Jasmine, you know?”

  “So in love that he would kill a woman he deemed responsible for a bump in her career?” Felicity asked. “So in love that he would kill a woman who took his wife’s place on her favorite show?”

  Kenneth seemed almost shaky now. “I was behind that decision. I was the one who pushed to have Bridget—I mean Eleanor—replace Jasmine in all of those scenes.”

  “Oh dear,” Felicity said. “Okay, I need you to relax. Tell me, does Max know? Does Max know that you’re the one who made that call?”

  “He absolutely does,” Kenneth said. “It was no secret. I told the directors, both leads, and assistant directors like Max in a group meeting that Jasmine needed to be pulled from those scenes. That she would have to hold off after the baby was born before we expanded on her character.” Then Kenneth practically slapped himself on the forehead. “Oh, for crying out loud, I even asked Jasmine in front of Max how long she thought it would take to lose her baby weight!”

  Felicity shook her head. You don’t ask a woman that, especially not in front of her husband! “How did Max respond to that?” Felicity asked.

  “Like any decent husband would. Told me to shove it,” he said. “But Jasmine understood. It’s the job, you know? It’s not like we just go around telling our female actors to lose a couple of pounds. Phillip is on a serious workout regimen to keep him looking good for the camera. I certainly wasn’t trying to single Jasmine out because she was pregnant. We worked with her a lot early on in her pregnancy to cater to what she needed, and she was just an extra.”

  “But Max did get upset?” Felicity asked.

  “He did,” Kenneth said, and then suddenly he turned pale—almost ghostly.

  “You all right, Kenneth?” Felicity asked, sitting upright to meet his eyes.

  “Remember how I told you I had several meetings today?” he asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have one with Max in ten minutes,” he said, shaking slightly. “He sounded really upset… He called me this morning, telling me he needed to talk about something urgent. You don’t think he’s coming here… You don’t think he’s after me now, do you?”

  “I certainly hope not,” Felicity said. “I’m going to call Jack and let him know what’s going on and see what he thinks we should do.” Felicity pulled out her phone and quickly dialed Jack’s number.

  The man grumbled on the other line. “Thanks for having your dad call me.”

  “Did he have you working on the roof?” Felicity asked.

  “Oh, we finished that. Now he has been working in the yard,” Jack retorted. “What do you need?”

  “We think we have a suspect,” Felicity said. “Max, the assistant director. And if he is our guy, then we think he might be on his way to the set to possibly kill Kenneth.”

  “Felicity, please tell me you’re not at the set,” Jack said.

  “I’m at the set in Kenneth’s trailer,” she said.

  “I’m on my way there now,” Jack said, sounding annoyed. “You think you could work one case without putting your life on the line? Honestly… I’ll call the police and alert the chief. You just get the heck out of there, all right?”

  “Whatever you say,” Felicity said, hanging up the phone. “My cop buddy Jack is headed this way, and he is calling the police. But it would be wise if we get out of here right now before Max shows up, just in case he really is our killer.”

  “Okay,” Kenneth said, hopping up from his seat, quite eager to get as far away from the set as possible.

  As he and Felicity were scooting toward the door, there was a knock. “Hey! Kenneth! You in there?” Max’s voice called. “We need to talk!”

  Chapter 14

  Not taking any chances, Felicity motioned for Kenneth to step away from the trailer’s door and placed a finger on her lips to encourage silence. “Kenneth! Man, you in there?” Max called, sounding slightly more irritated than he did the first time he called for him. Felicity pointed toward a window on the back of the trailer, and Kenneth anxiously nodded.

  They tiptoed over, and together, they forced the window up. Felicity motioned for Kenneth to go out first, and she heard him land just as the door was suddenly flung open. Felicity jumped, and she slid away from the window to make sure she didn’t appear suspicious. “Felicity?” Max asked as he abruptly entered the trailer. “What are you doing here?” He looked angry and incredibly flustered.

  “I had a meeting with Kenneth,” Felicity said. “But he’s a no-show.”

  “What were you two meeting about?” Max asked, eyeing her cautiously. The man’s shoulders seemed tight, and Felicity noted he had one hand behind his back, as though hiding something.

  “The case,” Felicity said, her heart pounding.

  “You found anything?” Max asked. “Do you know what happened to Eleanor?”

  “No,” Felicity said. “Still looking into Phillip and Alisha.”

  “Really?” Max asked, now stepping into the trailer. “Because Eleanor was spying on them, right? That means they have motive, right? Especially Alisha.”

  “Right,” Felicity said. “So, I think I’m just going to go.” She slipped by Max, her breathing becoming increasingly heavy. Max turned as she went for the door, obviously trying to keep her from seeing what it was he had behind him. “I’ll see you around, Max. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get this whole thing straightened out soon.” Felicity managed to slip out of the trailer, and she hurried around back, where she saw Kenneth hiding out behind another trailer waiting on her. Well, at least he didn’t ditch me, Felicity thought. She scurried over to him, remaining wary of the trailer.

  “Are you all right?” Kenn
eth asked in a whisper.

  “I’m fine, but we need to go,” Felicity said.

  “Did he say anything?” Kenneth asked.

  “No, but he seemed very frustrated,” she said. “And I’m not sure, but he might have a weapon on him.”

  “Then let’s get off-set. Your friend is calling the police, right?” Kenneth said, stepping out from behind the trailer where he had been hiding.

  “Yeah,” Felicity said, turning on her heels. She glanced up and saw Max staring at them from the window of Kenneth’s trailer. “He sees us,” she said and snagged Kenneth by his sleeve. “Move.”

  From the distance, Felicity could see Kenneth’s trailer shake slightly as Max bolted for the exit. Felicity followed on Kenneth’s heels as he turned down a street, taking them into the heart of the show’s intricate apocalyptic set. Of course, Felicity thought as they rounded the corner, stepping into the doomsday atmosphere that was perfectly fitting for their fleeing from a potential killer.

  “Come in here,” Kenneth said, ushering her between two of the buildings. Felicity could see that only one building was actually a building; the second had no back and was merely a front held up by a wooden structure. “Quiet.”

  “Hey, Kenneth!” Max’s voice called down the empty street of the set. “I thought we had a meeting?”

  The two of them peered out of the window of the half-building, and they could see Max walking down the street, glancing in either direction while swaying what looked like a large cutting knife he had probably snagged from his kitchen. Felicity wondered if it had been the murder weapon used against Eleanor. At this point, that assumption seemed very likely.

  “You know, I was really just wanting to talk about Jasmine,” Max called. “About what her role was going to be this upcoming season, but it seems like you don’t want to talk!”