Shooting on Location (Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Estelle Richards

  She gave Penny the float and turned on the movie. The opening credits began with the classic Simple Minds song, and Lisa found herself compulsively singing along. She looked over at Penny and saw that she was mouthing the lyrics, too.

  “How’s the float?” Lisa said after a minute.

  “A little strange, but not awful.”

  They watched as the parents and kids had their conflict-ridden opening sequences. Lisa thought back to her own high school self, always feeling misunderstood by her mother and idolizing her father. Funny how much a kid could miss about the adults in her life.

  “He wants to get back together,” Penny said.

  Lisa choked on a mouthful of popcorn. “What?”

  “He says he made a mistake and he wants to come home.”

  “Oh. Um. What did you say?”

  Penny laughed. “I told him that just because it’s a new year doesn’t mean everything can just get a fresh start. There’s no reset button in life.”

  “Hmm.”

  They watched the movie and munched on their snacks.

  “Oh, he is so cute!” Penny said.

  “Who? Emilio Estevez?”

  “Of course Emilio Estevez.”

  “Are you telling me you’d take Andrew, the bun-taping jock, over super-cutie John Bender?”

  Penny laughed. “Of course I would. Within two years max, that troublemaker Bender is going to prison.”

  Lisa took a deep breath and let it out again. “Like me? Your delinquent daughter?”

  Lisa looked around the room that now served as her living room, remembering it as it was when she was a kid breaking in with the other local kids. She had spent six months in jail for criminal trespass, although it was clear at the time that the real reason the judge had imposed that sentence and not something lighter like community service was that Lisa had refused to rat out the others.

  “Sorry, I forget about that sometimes.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Lisa said.

  They watched the movie in silence, soothed by the dialog they’d heard a hundred times and the characters they’d loved for years.

  “I always wondered what the punchline for that joke was,” Penny said, as they watched Bender fall through the ceiling.

  “Me too,” Lisa said. “But that’s one of the magic things about moviemaking: there doesn’t even have to be a punchline.”

  “It doesn’t seem right not to have a punchline.”

  “Guess not. Unanswered questions and all that,” Lisa said. “Um, speaking of unanswered questions, do you think you and Daddy will get back together?”

  “I don’t know, Lisa. Would you get back together with Dylan if he asked you to?”

  Lisa thought of Dylan’s face when he saw her talking to Kaden. “That’s different. We weren’t married. And we didn’t have kids.”

  “You were together longer than a lot of married couples.”

  “Yeah, but I’m with Mo now.”

  Penny smiled. “Yes, you are. He’s a sweet man. But are you saying that if you were single and Dylan came back, you would forgive his nasty little indiscretions and go back to him?”

  “Oh.” Lisa sighed. “I guess it just seems different when it’s your parents.”

  “It’s a lot to think about. But why don’t we just watch the movie, hmm?”

  “Ok, Mom.” Lisa watched the movie, but her mind wandered back to her time in LA with Dylan, the good times at first and then the terrible betrayal. Would she have taken him back if she hadn’t found Mo?

  Chapter 14

  Lou Chance walked into the café an hour before it closed for the day. Lisa came out of the kitchen at the sound of the front door’s bell jingling. She stopped short and wiped her hands on her apron when she saw her father’s bedraggled appearance.

  Annette was advancing on him with a wary smile and a ready order pad. Lisa waved her off.

  “Hi, Dad.” She opened her arms for a hug. He hugged her tightly, then slumped against her, resting his cheek on her forehead. He hadn’t shaved, and his whiskers prickled against her skin. She sniffed discreetly; he smelled like he hadn’t showered.

  “Want something to eat?” she said. “A muffin, a bagel, soup?”

  He sighed and let her go. “One of your muffins sounds great.”

  She turned to go to the kitchen and he followed in her wake.

  “Coffee?”

  “Maybe a decaf.”

  She fetched the coffee and muffin and ducked into the smallest room, the library. It was empty except for the shelves of books and the ghosts of beloved characters from those books. She sat at a little table by the window. Outside, she could see a set of paw prints where Mama Cat had stalked through the snow on her daily rounds.

  Lou sat across from her and took the coffee, inhaling deeply and then sighing.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Lisa eyed his rumpled clothes. It wasn’t like her father to be sloppy or unshowered. He used to tell her that a tidy appearance was a sign to the world that you knew which foot to step off with first.

  “I’ve ruined my life,” he said.

  Lisa blinked, not sure what to say. After an awkward pause, she ventured, “This sounds like the kind of conversation where I’d like my own coffee. Give me a second.”

  She quickly got up and went into the kitchen. She made herself a large mocha and grabbed a muffin before coming back and settling at the table once again.

  She took a bite. “Ok,” she said with a mouthful of tasty crumbs, “go on.”

  “I never should have left your mother,” he said, looking sorrowfully out the window. “She’s smart and beautiful and together. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You know, I don’t know what you were thinking, either,” Lisa said. “I mean, you two were together how many decades? But then off you go and get together with her sister, of all people!”

  She hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but the thought of that betrayal still made her temper flare up.

  “I know. I know.”

  “How did it even happen?” Lisa said, asking the question she’d wanted answered for months.

  “It was stupid,” Lou said after a pause. “I had just retired. All those years as band director, and now I was at home all day. I found myself waiting for Penny to get home after work, pacing around the house like a puppy waiting for its master. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Lisa murmured, drinking her mocha.

  “It was late summer, just before the school year started, and I was feeling restless and unmoored. Maybe I should have asked to go back and teach again, or offered to volunteer or something.” He looked out the window again, eyes unfocused as he remembered. “I wanted to go hiking. The weather was perfect. I mapped out the route and packed up the gear. It felt like an endless wait for her to get home. She had a showing early, but I thought she would be done in time to take that hike. But the hours went by and she was still at work. By the time she got home, I’d passed through excited to worried, to anxious, to angry, to stupid and self-righteous.”

  Lisa nodded, silently encouraging him to continue.

  “When she came in, I yelled at her, accused her of caring more about work than about me, accused her of wanting my heart condition to kill me. It was a big fight, and I stormed out full of self-pity. I ran into Olivia at the bar. She listened to my petty complaints, made me feel like the center of the world for an hour.”

  Lisa knew the way Olivia could make a person feel that way. She had a way of intensely focusing all her energy on you that could be intoxicating.

  “It kind of snowballed from there. Olivia went hiking with me. And then we,” he stopped and looked up, as though suddenly aware of who he was talking to. “Uh, things changed between us. I thought I was falling in love.”

  “Well, I have to tell you that sounds terrible,” she said. “You and Mom were supposed to be that couple that makes it, not the one that stumbles. I don’t know, I gues
s I just never thought you could split up.”

  Their eyes met for a moment and then they both looked away. Lisa looked outside. The light was starting to change, a subtle shift from the brightness of full daylight toward the blue and gold of late afternoon.

  Lisa stood up. “I have to get back to work, Dad.”

  His eyes pleaded with her. “Do you think your mother will give me another chance? I just—”

  “Dad.” Lisa waved her arms in a band director motion meaning to stop the music. “Dad!”

  Lou closed his mouth and snapped to attention.

  “Sorry,” Lisa said. “I can’t fix this for you. I want you and Mom to get back together. I really would love that. But I don’t control Mom’s feelings.”

  “What am I going to do?” Lou said.

  “I don’t know,” Lisa admitted. “But unless you want to wash my dishes or mop my floors, you’re going to have to leave.”

  Lou’s shoulders slumped. “Ok.”

  Lisa gave him a quick hug. “Left foot first,” she said.

  “Stay on the beat,” he responded.

  *

  Lisa rolled up her sleeves and got to work on a big batch of Good Morning muffins. The scent of clove and orange zest made her smile. Mama Cat rubbed against her shin.

  “A bit of tuna, you say? Of course.” She got a small dish out and gave the sweet black and white cat a little treat. Mama Cat purred while she ate.

  With the ovens full of muffins and more trays waiting to go in as soon as the previous batch was done, Lisa went into the library. She browsed the shelf of mysteries she kept for her regulars to borrow and pulled out a book with a broken spine and a cat on the cover. She sat at the little table by the window and tried to read while she waited for the muffins to bake.

  The book was one of her favorites, but her eye kept wandering off the page and over to her phone. Had Mo called and she’d missed it? She put the book down and checked for messages. Nothing.

  She tried to read again, but it was no good. She grabbed the phone and called him. Before it could ring, she stabbed at the End Call button.

  Lisa heard in her mind again how he’d questioned her response to Kaden’s come-on. She didn’t want to be in a fight with Mo, but at the same time, she didn’t want him to think he could suggest something so vile about her with no effect.

  She put the phone on the table and resolutely picked up the paperback again. Before she could read two sentences, the phone rang.

  She grabbed it and answered. “Hello? Mo?”

  “This is Sam,” the AD said in a testy voice.

  “Oh. Hi, Sam. What’s up?”

  “You didn’t respond to the emailed call sheet.”

  “The emailed… Oh, I guess I haven’t looked at my email today.”

  He sighed. “Working with these small town small-timers,” he muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Will you be on set tomorrow to deliver the craft service or not?”

  “Yes. Of course I will.”

  “Good.” He hung up.

  Lisa used the phone to check her email. Over one hundred unread messages waited for her. This was why she didn’t enable the notifications; too stressful to have all that hanging over her. She found Sam’s email and looked at the call sheet. It would be another early morning on set. She squinted at the scene description.

  “Huh.” They were going to shoot more of the big shootout scene. She shook her head. Show business was a heartless endeavor. No matter what happened, the show must go on. Or that was what was drilled into the head of every actor from the first moment they stepped foot on set.

  She left both the phone and the book on the table and went into the kitchen. She was going to need a lot more muffins for the following morning.

  In the kitchen, Lisa prepared more muffin batter and thought about the shootout. How had Kaden come to be shot and killed when the guns and ammo were supposed to be props? From what Toby had said, it didn’t seem like the police believed it was an accident. But if not an accident, had someone murdered Kaden Nicolini? Who would have a reason to kill the handsome actor with a budding career? She thought of the people on set. She’d only spent a few days with them, but it felt like she knew them. Some of them were brusque or self-important, but were any of them capable of cold-blooded murder? Of course, she knew one person on the crew very intimately. Dylan. He was apparently the shooter. Could he have had a reason to kill Kaden? And if so, had she ever really known him at all?

  Chapter 15

  Lisa cleared up the last crumbs from the big basket of Good Morning muffins she’d brought to set before the crack of dawn. Not one muffin was left.

  The light was fading, which meant the shooting day was nearly over. Lisa looked around at the movie crew. She could see that others were also sneaking glances at the director, waiting for the end of the day to be announced. The energy on set felt different without Kaden there. Most of the crew had exhibited a grim professionalism. They would do their job, no matter what.

  Dylan was grimmer than most. When he was on camera, he said his lines and made his motions. Lisa knew his face, though. She could see how miserable he was.

  “Cut!” Gavin yelled.

  The mood of the set shifted, as everyone waited to see if he would make them go again.

  Gavin nodded at Sam.

  “We’re wrapped for the day,” Sam yelled.

  Lisa opened the trunk of her car to pack up her gear. All around her, the rest of the crew was packing things in, as well.

  Dylan walked up to Lisa’s car. “Can I help you with that?” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she said, shoving things into the trunk.

  He stood silently until she looked at him.

  She sighed. “Fine. Grab that box. Put the napkins and utensils in it.”

  He helped her put things away and then stood watching her again.

  “What is it, Dylan?”

  “I don’t know what to do, Lisa.” He wasn’t talking about packing up the craft service supplies, which were now entirely stowed in her car.

  “Well, I’m not really the person you should be asking.” She became aware that several of the crew had slowed their progress and were busy eavesdropping.

  “Lisa, please. Please? I heard about that thing last fall. How you solved a murder.” His voice dropped to a whisper that brought her back to the pillow talk they’d shared in happier times. “They think I did this. Help me.”

  She looked him in the eye. “You were the one holding the smoking gun.”

  He held her gaze, his eyes pleading. She’d known that face nearly all her life. She shrugged. “Fine. I’ll look into it.”

  *

  Driving back to the Folly, Lisa thought about Dylan’s request. Did he really think she was some kind of crime-solver? Or was it more a case of being someone he knew how to manipulate? In all their years together, she’d loved him and trusted him. When he betrayed that trust, he broke her heart. Now, she owed him nothing.

  She gripped the steering wheel tightly, imagining Dylan getting karmic retribution for that betrayal by going to prison for murder. There was a tiny part of her that relished the notion of revenge.

  Lisa’s shoulders slumped as the voice of her conscience screamed at her for that nasty bit of imagined revenge. She’d been in jail. She knew what it took from a person to be locked up. There was no way she would ever let someone she’d cared about go to jail without cause, no matter how much he’d hurt her. She would find out the truth, no matter what.

  Little flurries of snowflakes danced in front of her headlights as she pulled up in front of the Folly. She squinted at the dark house. Was that someone sitting on the porch?

  Lisa parked the car and approached the house, phone in hand, ready to dial for help. The figure sitting on the porch stood up and stamped its feet. At the motion, Lisa’s heart rate went back down as she recognized who it was from the body language.

  “Annette, what are you doing here?”
>
  Annette trotted across the courtyard and threw her arms around Lisa. “I am so sorry,” she said, hugging her boss tightly. “I would stay if I could but my mom is just so unreasonable.”

  “You would… What are you talking about?”

  Annette let out a little sob. “My mom is making me quit.”

  “Quit?” It took a second for the word to make sense to Lisa. “Quit as in quit working at the coffee shop?”

  She felt Annette’s nod against her coat.

  “But why? Is it your schoolwork? We can change your hours if we need to.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Annette sighed and turned away, mumbling something Lisa couldn’t hear.

  “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. What is it?”

  “It’s because of Kaden,” Annette said, staring at her feet.

  “Oh.” Lisa didn’t know what to say. She’d felt guilty for bringing Annette to the movie set the day of the shooting. Now it sounded like her guilt was well-founded.

  “I told her it was nothing, and she just wouldn’t listen to me!”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing,” Lisa said. “Seeing something like that, it’s not good for you. Maybe your mom’s right.”

  “She’s not!” Annette yelled. “You have to talk to her, get her to understand.”

  “She’s your mother,” Lisa said gently. “Maybe she understands already.”

  “Oh, really? And is your mom right about everything in your life?”

  Lisa opened her mouth to answer but closed it again, thinking of all the ways she and Penny disagreed on the running of Lisa’s life.

  “See? I need this job. I want to save up for college. Please, just talk to her. You’re an adult. She’ll listen to you. Nobody listens to kids.”

  The cold wind tugged at the collar of Lisa’s coat. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. Do you need a ride home?”

  “No. I’m supposed to be at Emily’s, studying for a math test. Thank you!” Annette skipped down the driveway and into the darkness.

  Lisa sighed and popped the trunk on the car, ready to unload her supplies for the night. She really didn’t want to go talk to Annette’s mother, but after promising, she knew she had to. It was bad enough to feel the guilt of having inflicted a murder scene on the teenager. Adding to the guilt by breaking her word would be intolerable. Still, it would be rude to call at dinnertime. Better to wait until tomorrow.