“I can see that.” Mom had already told me all about continuity, but I could see that Maisie was proud of her job and seemed to enjoy talking about it.
We both watched while Hank conferred with the deeply tanned lighting director who’d argued with Adriana earlier, and then there were several sound checks. When Hank was finally satisfied, he waved to the AD. I heard a soft click as a camera slid up next to me, sidling into position.
“That’s Jeff Walker,” Maisie said, pointing to a fortyish actor standing a few yards down the beach. “He’s plays the killer. We’re going to open with a tight close-up on Adriana, and then Jeff is going to walk right into the frame for their dialogue.”
“Stand by, quiet everyone,” Jesse, the AD, yelled through a bullhorn. He glanced at the group of extras who were watching the filming from behind the rope. It was surprising how many people were on the set. Maybe fifty or sixty, I guessed, including all the techies and the wardrobe mistress, plus the hair and makeup artists. And I knew there were a couple of dozen administrative types, toiling away back in the production office.
Funny, but I didn’t see Mom anywhere. I knew she wasn’t in this scene, so I figured she must be checking out her wardrobe or catching up with old friends. There was a low buzz of conversation that suddenly wound down, and now the only sound was the humming of cicadas, signaling another hot day in south Florida.
“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Maisie said to me.
“Stand by to cue Jeff,” Hank said.
“Uh-oh,” she suddenly muttered under her breath. “Wait a minute. We’ve got a tiny problemo.” She leaned over and whispered something to Hank Watson.
He nodded, his lips twitching with annoyance. “Adriana, we need to have you tuck your hair behind your left ear, not your right. That’s the way it was where we left off after the restaurant scene.” He glanced down at a notation in blue Magic Marker written in Maisie’s script. “You were driving to the pond and your hair was tucked behind your left ear.”
“Oh honestly,” Adriana grumbled. She sighed dramatically and flipped her hair behind her left ear as directed. “Can’t these people get anything right?” A young girl in jeans rushed up to Adriana and whipped a hairbrush out of her back pocket. She made a tiny adjustment to the actress’s hair and then scampered out of the shot.
“Good work,” Hank said in a low voice to Maisie. “Glad you caught that.”
“And I’m sweating like a pig,” Adriana continued in a loud voice. “What is it, a hundred and fifty degrees out here?”
Like magic, two techies dragged a long cable across the sand and a gigantic fan materialized, as powerful as a wind machine, sending a cooling breeze over Adriana. The techies glanced back at Hank Watson, ready to cut the fan the moment they began filming.
“Quiet on the set, everyone.” The AD admonished an extra who had picked that moment to tear open a bag of potato chips. “No noise, no talking, no cell phones.” Once again, a hush fell over the crowd; they seemed to be caught up in the excitement of the moment.
“Pond scene, take one!” I nearly jumped as a production assistant moved into the shot and snapped the clapboard just a few feet away from us.
I watched Jeff Walker and decided he was handsome in a square-jawed Hollywood sort of way. I’d seen him in some B movies, all forgettable, all straight-to-video. I knew he was getting himself psyched up for the scene. He’d closed his eyes, and he was shaking his hands at his sides and blowing out small puffs of air, as if he was trying to throw off some muscle tension. I’d seen Lola do exactly the same thing before her scenes.
“A-n-n-nd . . . action!” Hank Watson shouted.
“I didn’t think you’d show up,” Adriana said, moving slowly toward Jeff, who’d begun walking down the beach at the same moment. A cameraman was tracking her, gliding along beside her with his camera mounted on a little miniature railway track.
A myriad of emotions crossed her face—anger, uncertainty, and a touch of malevolence. “In fact, I was convinced that you’d had second thoughts and that—”
“Cut, cut!” Hank shouted, leaping out of his chair. “Adriana, you’re moving way too slowly. Jeff hit the mark and you didn’t. You’re gonna have to speed it up, so you both hit the mark at the exact same time.” His expression was tight and his tone brittle.
For the first time, I noticed someone had scratched a giant X on the sand. Apparently that was the mark Hank was talking about, and Adriana was at least six feet away from it.
“Why shouldn’t Jeff be the one to speed it up?” Adriana retorted, her expression stony. She put her hands on her hips, her body language challenging. “Do you know how tough it is to walk with my damn high heels sinking into the sand at every step? I almost fell on my ass.”
Maisie snickered next to me, and quickly covered it with a fake cough.
“Look, Adriana, if Jeff walks too fast, it ruins the scene,” Hank said with heavy patience. “You just have to walk faster, just pick up the pace a little. Let’s try it again, okay? From the top.”
Hank sat back down and whispered to Maisie, “If she moved any slower, you could harvest her organs. I think she’s doing it deliberately.”
“This is par for the course,” Maisie said quietly. “Typical Adriana behavior.”
“I know. I must have been out of my mind to hire her,” Hank muttered, running his hand through his silvering hair. He saw me watching him and managed a grin. “Oops; you didn’t hear that, Maggie. Dealing with actresses is giving me gray hairs. You’d think after all these years, I’d be used to it.” I knew he was putting a good spin on things because I was there; he didn’t want me to go back to WYME and talk about trouble on the set.
“Don’t worry; I didn’t hear it.” I smiled to reassure him.
During the next take, both Adriana and Jeff hit the mark at the same time.
“Thank God,” Maisie whispered under her breath. I noticed she was following the dialogue, running her index finger under each line. I glanced down and saw some stage directions coming up at the bottom of the page: Jeff pulls out a gun. Maisie had hilighted that line in blue and underlined it several times.
Adriana was mouthing some lines about money, and I gathered that her character had been blackmailing Jeff. She jabbed him in the chest to emphasize a point and then her eyes widened with fear when he pulled out a gun he’d tucked into the waistband of his pants.
“No!” she screamed. “Jeff, don’t do it!! We can work this out.” She took a step backward, lifting her hands in front of her, palms up, her expression pleading.
It looked like Jeff was wielding a Beretta from where I sat, but of course, I knew it was only a harmless prop gun, designed to look lethal. He wouldn’t be shooting real bullets. In fact, a prop gun wouldn’t even take a real bullet. Instead, a harmless wad would be expelled from the gun followed by a sharp retort, just like the sound of a real gunshot.
Mom has acted in a lot of thrillers and she told me that if the prop gun didn’t sound right, they would simply add a gunshot to the audio track after the filming was completed. The magic of Hollywood.
Jeff was mouthing some cliché dialogue like, “Can it, Adriana. I’ve had enough of your silly games and I’m never going to pay you another penny.” He gave a maniacal laugh, pointed the gun at Adriana, and fired at point-blank range. The noise was surprisingly realistic and I flinched. I thought I smelled a faint scent of powder in the air, but maybe that was just my overactive imagination at work.
Adriana reacted perfectly; she clutched her chest, her eyes rolled back convincingly in her head, and she collapsed on the sand. Interesting. She was a much better actress than I’d thought. She’d managed to fall like a rag doll and her legs were splayed out at odd angles. Adriana is so vain I would have expected her to fall in a more graceful pose, but maybe I’d misjudged her. She played the scene convincingly, like a pro.
“A-n-n-nd . . . cut!” Hank yelled. “Nice work, guys.” He turned to Maisie. “Let’s get rolling
on the party scene. Jesse needs to get about twenty extras in dressy clothes. Or maybe fifteen, if we shoot around them. I think the best way is to—”
“Hank,” Maisie said urgently, clutching his arm. “What’s going on down there?” She pointed to the water’s edge where Adriana was lying still motionless. Jeff had started to walk away, but turned back, puzzled, when he realized Adriana wasn’t making any move to get up.
“Hey, Adriana,” Hank called. “Quit playing possum. Didn’t you hear me yell ‘cut’?” He started to laugh but the sound caught in his throat.
Jeff peered at Adriana and bent down to touch her neck. He yanked his hand back as if he’d been tasered. “Hank! Get an ambulance. There’s something wrong. She’s unconscious. I’m not even sure she’s breathing.”
Chapter 6
“What the devil—” Hank began, but Maisie leapt out of the chair before any of us could react and raced down to the water’s edge. By the time Hank and I reached her, Maisie had grabbed Adriana’s wrist and then placed two fingers on her throat. She kept her fingers there for a long time and then slowly looked up at us, her face pale in the harsh sunlight.
I noticed that a dark red patch was spreading from Adriana’s chest to her collarbone—a concealed packet of fake blood, I decided. They call them squibs in the movie business. The actor presses her hand to her chest and the thin plastic packet explodes, leaking blood everywhere. The blood looked frighteningly real as it trickled down her neck and then spilled onto the grayish sand around the pond.
“Hank—” Maisie said, as he knelt down next to Adriana in the sand. I noticed her eyes were blurring with tears and her voice was trembling. “She’s unconscious. I think . . . I think she’s dead.”
For a moment, no one moved.
All of us just stood there, frozen in place, like a freeze-frame from one of Hank’s movies. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Maisie yanked out her cell phone and dialed 911, the AD came rushing over with a beach towel, which he insisted on putting under Adriana’s head, and Hank Watson turned an unflattering shade of ash gray. He was still kneeling on the beach, and he covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.
“They’re on their way,” Maisie said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “We should probably put up a screen, or at least keep people from gawking.”
Hank looked up then, just as the extras and techies were edging forward, caught up in the real-life drama playing out on the shoreline. “You’re right, Maisie.” He stood up, suddenly back in control. “Jesse,” he yelled to the AD, “get some rope lines set up and keep everyone as far back as possible.” He turned to a pair of production assistants. “Take my Jeep,” he said, throwing them the keys. “Go to the north entrance to the pond, where we came in. Watch for the ambulance, so you can wave them over here.”
I was surprised at how cool he was under pressure.
“The blood,” I whispered to Maisie. “That’s fake blood, it comes in one of those little packets, right?” I realized that I hadn’t seen Adriana press her hand to her chest to break open the packet. Either she had done it surreptitiously, or the packet had exploded when she fell to the sand.
Maisie bit her lip and shook her head. “No,” she said in a strangled voice. “We didn’t bother using squibs in this scene because we were going to use a long shot. The audience would see Adriana’s face in a tight close-up and then a long shot of two figures from a distance, and then it would . . . fade to black.”
Fade to black. How ironic.
Adriana already looked very dead, even though only a few minutes had passed. Her skin had taken on a telltale bluish-gray tinge and her jaw looked slack.
“So it’s real blood?” I was struggling to keep my voice on an even keel. I felt a lump the size of a walnut moving slowly up my throat and I swallowed hard. My nerves were jangled and my thoughts were scattering in a million directions. I’d run into a lot of unsettling things in my practice, but seeing death up close is always unnerving.
“I’m afraid so,” she said quietly. “Adriana was shot. But how?”
She stared up at Jeff, who looked shell-shocked, still holding the gun, his right arm hanging limply at his side.
“I think you should put the gun down,” I said quickly. Hank started to reach for it, and I stopped him. “Evidence,” I reminded him. “The fewer people who touch it, the better.”
“It can’t be loaded,” Jeff said slowly. “That’s impossible. It’s a prop gun.” He stared at the shiny barrel, bewildered. “I’ve used these a dozen times.” His voice was flat, robotic, like that of someone playing an android in a sci-fi flick. Shock, I decided.
He laid the gun carefully on the beach towel, just as an ambulance came tearing across the beach followed by two black-and-whites with lights flashing and sirens screaming. Half of Cypress Grove would know something had happened at Branscom Pond today. The other half would find out tonight on the six o’clock news. Cyrus would be over the moon; Adriana’s death would be a ratings bonanza.
I wondered if Nick Harrison had already left the set and headed back to the Gazette offices. He must have, I decided, or he’d be here with his notebook, angling for an exclusive. And where was Mom?
“They didn’t know the gun was loaded,” Mom said in a cheesy, movie-trailer voice, “until the star ended up dead!”
It was half an hour later, and all of us were on edge. Cops were swarming over the set, just like this was an episode of CSI; crime scene tape had been put up; and Adriana’s lifeless body had been whisked away by the medical examiner.
Mom waited a beat (perhaps expecting a smattering of applause) and then looked around the makeup trailer where the Cypress Grove PD had gathered us for interrogations. They had immediately divided us up into groups, and I was sitting with Maisie, Mom, and Jesse, the AD. I glanced at my watch. I had to leave the set in exactly forty-five minutes, or I’d be late for my afternoon radio show.
I knew that Hank Watson and Jeff were stashed away somewhere in another trailer. And no one was allowed to leave the set. All the grips, the principals, the extras, and the crew members had to be interviewed. The police would record their names and addresses along with their whereabouts at the time of Adriana’s death.
And of course the Big Question: who had a reason to kill her? This was the time for all the professional jealousies, petty feuds, and long-standing grudges to float to the surface, like the algae on the surface of Branscom Pond.
A monumental task, but I knew this was standard police procedure and I wondered which detective would be assigned to see us.
I caught myself wondering if it would be Detective Rafe Martino, and my heart did an annoying little flip-flop. Rafe and I have had an on-again, off-again relationship since I solved a murder case a couple of months ago. A New Age guru was poisoned after he appeared on my WYME talk show, and I had to step in to clear my roommate’s name.
Rafe and I have an ongoing argument whether forensic psychology (which he calls psychobabble) trumps good solid detective work. Our relationship is like a rubber band, sometimes stretching far apart, sometimes springing back together, always quivering with tension. Maybe that’s what keeps it so exciting.
“Lola, please,” Maisie said imploringly. “Maybe it would be better if we don’t talk at all.” She looked pale and shaken as she sat twisting her hands nervously in her lap.
“Accident . . . or murder?” Lola continued in a sepulchral tone. “You decide.” She paused. “I think I like that one better, actually. I can see that line scrolling across the screen before the opening credits, can’t you? As the great John Gielgud used to say, ‘less is more.’ ”
I sighed. Mom is incorrigible. She can never resist being the center of attention, even when she’s in the middle of a murder investigation. Less than an hour had passed since Adriana’s death and she was already caught up in the drama of it all.
“Maybe that nice young man will be assigned to us,” she said with an overly bright smile. As usual, her uncanny m
ental radar was kicking in, and she seemed to be reading my mind. “Detective Martino. Maggie solved a crime for him once before. He’s handsome enough to be a film star,” she said to no one in particular. “With the right agent and the right property, he could go far. Look at Dennis Farina. One day he’s a Chicago cop and the next day he’s a movie star.”
At that very moment, the nice young man appeared in person. All six feet of hunky detective, looking like a million bucks. He was wearing a crisp white shirt that showed off his Florida tan, and his dark hair was boyishly falling over one eye. He wears it a little long, at least compared with other cops I’ve known, but maybe detectives have more leeway.
He closed the trailer door behind him and scanned the room. A little smile played around the corners of his mouth when he saw me, softening his chiseled features and adding to his attractiveness.
“Dr. Walsh,” he said formally. “Ms. Walsh,” he added, spotting Lola.
“Detective,” Lola chirped, flashing a saucy smile.
Rafe had just finished introducing himself and explaining that he and his colleague were going to ask a few questions when there was a timid knock on the metal door. Opie walked in. He banged his head on the low door frame and instantly turned beet red. I glanced at Rafe’s exasperated face and stifled a laugh.
Opie is my nickname for Officer Duane Brown, a fresh-faced, gangly cop who looks about twelve years old in his blue serge uniform. He could have stepped straight off of Aunt Bea’s front porch in Mayberry.
“Officer Brown will interview”—Rafe paused to look at his notes—“Maisie Curtis. Along with Jesse Hamilton.” He turned to Opie. “Miss Curtis is the script supervisor. She saw the shooting. Mr. Hamilton is the assistant director. You can interview them both next door at the production office. Room B is available. Just get the background information. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
Reel Murder Page 5
