Reel Murder

by Kennedy, Mary

  Sandra showed up a few minutes later, talking animatedly to one of the grips. He was wearing black denim jeans and a T-shirt from Copper Canyon, a resort area south of the California border. “I’m telling you, you’ve gotta go back to Mexico,” she was saying. “How long were you there? If you were working the whole time, you probably didn’t get a chance to really look around.”

  He hoisted a length of cable from one shoulder to the other before nodding. “We only shot in Chihuahua for one night, and they put us up in some tourist rattrap. It had fake stucco walls and a plastic fountain, can you believe it?”

  “Ohmigod, it sounds awful!” Sandra’s squeal could have peeled paint off the walls.

  “It was. It looked just like the Mexican Village set at Universal studios.”

  Sandra gave him a knowing look. “Trojan Productions, right? That’s the trouble with these little indie outfits. They put you up in crappy places and they work you like a dog. Anything to save a buck, you know.”

  She suddenly spotted me and her features morphed into a grin. Instant personality change. It was like someone had pushed a button or she’d just swallowed a handful of mood stabilizers. “Although I really like the Seabreeze; that was a cool party last night, wasn’t it?” She was talking a little too loudly, smiling at him like her life depended on it.

  I had the feeling the Little Miss Sunshine act was all for my benefit, and I tucked the information away in my memory bank. Like all performers, she has a strong desire to be liked. Why else would she go into a profession where the chance of success was so small, and the odds of rejection so great?

  “That it was,” the grip said, edging away. “Catch you at lunch, hon.”

  “So what are we doing today, Maggie?” Sandra asked, widening her blue eyes, giving me a broad smile. She was dressed casually but revealingly in tiny denim shorts and a low-cut halter top. I wondered if she was going overboard on the amount of skin she was showing and then decided she was entitled. After all, she’d lost all that weight through strenuous dieting and exercise and she was eager to show off her new bod. Who could blame her? She looked terrific.

  “I thought we’d work on the script some more and go over some of your dialogue. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Cool!” She perched on the top of a picnic table and let her long, tanned legs hang over the edge. She was wearing four-inch espadrilles that made her legs look incredibly long and lean. It was hard to remember that this Gisele Bündchen look-alike used to be the “formerly fat actress.”

  “You’re a fan of Mexico? The Copper Canyon area?”

  She narrowed her eyes, just for a microsecond, and then quickly recovered. “Oh, you mean the conversation I was just having with Howie? We both love to travel. He got stuck in some tourist hellhole down there shooting a movie and I was just telling him about some attractions in the area.”

  “Sounds like you know the area really well.” I opened up my copy of the script and pretended to be absorbed in it. I could feel a slight change in Sandra’s body language, an almost imperceptible tightening of her core muscles, as she folded her arms and crossed her legs. A protective gesture, a defensive mode? Certainly a classically “closed” position.

  “You must have spent a lot of time there.” I smiled at her. She looked at me and her face stalled. I sensed a little wave of tension rolling off her but I acted like I was clueless. Something was definitely up; my radar was pinging. She still hadn’t said a word. “I’d like to go there sometime,” I continued. “I’ve never been south of Tijuana.” I made sure my voice was deliberately casual, smoothing out my tone. This is a trick I learned early on, dealing with anxious clients at my psychology practice.

  There’s a saying in psychoanalytical circles: “If there are two people in a room and one is anxious, the other one better not be.” Good advice for beginning therapists. If I kept my tone easy and conversational, they’d unconsciously mimic me and their own voices would slide down a notch or two.

  Except with Sandra it didn’t seem to be working; her whole body was vibrating with tension.

  “Well, I’m no expert,” she said a little too quickly. Her eyes landed hard on me and she sounded like she was still on high alert. “But I can jot down the names of a couple of hotels for you. I can think of a few nice places down there that don’t cost an arm and a leg.”

  “In Copper Canyon?” I made a note on a piece of scrap paper and I swear I saw Sandra flinch.

  “Not just Copper Canyon, the whole area,” she hedged. She blinked, licked her lips, and swallowed hard. Sandra was really feeling the heat and I had no idea why. The tiny muscles around her mouth tensed, and her eyes clouded with some negative emotion. Fear? Shame? I wasn’t sure.

  It was a fleeting look, totally unconscious, but I caught it anyway. It’s called a microexpression, a flash of emotion that reveals what an individual is really feeling. Microexpressions can appear on their own, or sometimes they show up right in the middle of a fake expression, but they’re only there for a flash. It usually takes a trained eye—or someone with really good instincts—to pick up on them. “There’s Monte Alban,” she said quickly. “I would definitely recommend it.”

  “White Mountain?” I asked, calling on my limited Spanish.

  “Yes, it’s very pretty; amazing scenery. And there’s Palenque in the northern Chiapas; it’s a famous Mayan site. And of course, the Chihuahua al Pacifico Railway.”

  I couldn’t figure out why Sandra seemed uncomfortable when I’d asked her about Copper Canyon. Was it my imagination or was she trying to steer me away from the topic? And why did Copper Canyon sound so familiar to me? Was it a popular location for indie films? Had I read about it in People magazine? Or heard of it in a Dateline documentary? I made a mental note to ask Mom if she’d ever heard of it. The name was nibbling around the edges of my mind like a hungry squirrel and I found it hard to concentrate on anything else.

  Nick, as usual, came through with the goods. A couple of hours later, I met him at Gino’s for a quick lunch before heading to WYME. Gino’s Trattoria is one of our favorite spots; it’s a cute little place close to the station, just two blocks from the Cypress Grove Gazette building. Nick was waiting for me and had already grabbed one of the popular patio tables.

  Gino’s reminds me of that Billy Joel song about an Italian restaurant, with its red-and-white-checked tablecloths and photos of long-dead opera singers lining the walls. The new outdoor patio area is a winner, featuring a handful of cozy wrought-iron tables topped with striped umbrellas in the colors of the Italian flag: red, white, and green. But best of all, the food is terrific, the prices are reasonable, and the service is fast. No wonder it’s a hit with the Cypress Grove business crowd.

  Nick half stood up and I waved him back to his seat. He was wolfing down an antipasto tray probably designed for six people and he pushed it toward me when I sat down across from him. I raised my eyebrows at his offering. All that was left was a handful of black olives, half a marinated artichoke, and a few pieces of wilted lettuce.

  “How’s the movie biz?” he asked, just as a server, a cute blonde named Terri, plunked a frosty mug of draft beer in front of him. I tried not to look at it too longingly and ordered an iced tea before she darted away. The beer looked tempting but I had a show to do that afternoon.

  “It’s crazy making,” I told him. “You know that expression, ‘it’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there’? That’s what a movie set is like. It’s a lot of chaos followed by hours of downtime. Hurry-up-and-wait, they call it.”

  “Lola certainly loves it.”

  “She does. I was thinking about that today. She loves being on camera, loves being on the set—she practically absorbs the atmosphere through her pores. She always comes home energized, even after a fourteen- or fifteen-hour day. Maybe you have to be an actor to really get a buzz going. I have to tell you, being a script consultant just doesn’t do it for me.”

  I filled him in about the Guita
r Heroes and my work as a script doctor. “I still can’t believe those yahoos got paid big bucks to write the script.”

  Nick’s eyebrow twitched upward. “And that someone actually thought they did a good job.”

  “Exactly. Thank God Hank Watson has more sense.”

  Nick speared one of the remaining olives before he tried to catch Terri’s eye as she zipped by with a pitcher of lime-colored margaritas. “I’ll tell you my favorite quote about the movie business. Here’s a hint; it’s by William Goldman. You’ve heard of him, right?”

  “Of course. Everyone’s heard of William Goldman. He wrote the screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man. And he wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read about the movie business.”

  Nick smiled. “And after decades in the business, what did he have to say?”

  “He said, ‘Nobody knows anything.’ Mom uses that quote all the time. She loves it. It sums it up perfectly.”

  Sometimes Mom and I try to outdo each other, coming up with a list of the world’s worst movies. To qualify for a “worst movie award,” the movie has to have truly abominable acting, a weak script, bad casting, and schlock production values. You’d be surprised how many movies make the cut.

  “You look at certain movies”—I shook my head helplessly—“and you wonder how they ever got made. You picture a bunch of studio execs sitting around in a Development meeting, saying, ‘What a terrific idea! This will kill! Totally kill!’ And then they find someone crazy enough to put up money for backing and they scramble to get A-list stars onboard, because after all, everyone knows you have to have a name star to carry a movie . . .”

  “And sometimes even that doesn’t help,” Nick said.

  I nodded. “And then you put together the bad script, the awful acting, and the cornball premise and everyone’s surprised when the movie tanks.” I scrunched my chair over a little. Gino’s was filling up rapidly with the lunch crowd. One of the servers had dragged out another umbrella table and was struggling to set it up next to ours.

  Nick gestured with his fork. “Case in point. Here’s one of my choices for worst movie. See if you can top it.” He locked eyes with me. “The Waterboy.”

  The Waterboy! That god-awful Adam Sandler movie. This would be hard to beat, but I was going to give it my best shot.

  “Patch Adams.”

  Nick groaned. “I was going to use that as my first choice.”

  “But you didn’t. So that means I’m winning.”

  “Not yet, you aren’t.”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed in thought. “How about Battlefield Earth, which is a close tie with Armageddon. I’m giving you two for the price of one.”

  I thought about this for a moment. Nick was better at this than I’d thought. “Glitter?”

  He shrugged. “The Mariah Carey epic? Yeah, that’s got to be up there in the top ten. And how about A Knight’s Tale? Do you remember the dry spaghetti shooting out of the jousting rods? The prop guy told everyone it would look really cool on film. It was supposed to look like wood splintering at the moment of impact. And of course, all it looked like was—”

  “Dry spaghetti!” A beat. “I loved Keith Ledger, though.”

  “Dirty Dancing? Remember that line about putting Baby in the corner?”

  “Yeah, but I loved Patrick Swayze.” I always hate to pan a movie if I love the star.

  “Maybe I just don’t get girlie movies,” Nick said finally. I figured this wasn’t the time to tell him I’d worn out my DVD of When Harry Met Sally from playing it so many times.

  I glanced at my watch. I needed to find out as much as I could about that mysterious Mexican retreat before heading back to the station. “So tell me everything you know about Copper Canyon.” I fumbled in my purse for a notebook and pen.

  “Planning a little Botox or a mini face-lift?” he teased. “I think you’re a little young for it, but it never hurts to start early.” He leaned across the table and patted me playfully under the chin. “Hmm, maybe a touch of tightening would help in the chin area. I think I see a bit of softening along the jawline.”

  “You do not!” I started to swat him with my menu and then stopped as his words sunk in. “Wait a minute—plastic surgery? I thought we were talking about a resort area in Mexico.”

  “Copper Canyon,” he shot back with a grin. “They’ll do the works. Anything you ask for, face-lifts, acid peels, and total body lifts. A certain star went there for implants, but not the usual kind. She wanted to have a derriere like Jennifer Lopez. They’ll do anything you want there; they’d probably screw your head on backwards, if you paid enough.”

  “I hope you’re kidding,” I told him. “You mean Copper Canyon is—”

  “The top cosmetic surgery center in Mexico.” Terri drifted by again, and we ordered fast: chicken alfredo for him, spinach ravioli for me. “It’s a mecca for the A-list types in Hollywood.”

  “How do you know these things?” I always am amazed at the breadth and depth of Nick’s knowledge; his youthful face and boyish grin are deceiving. He may look like someone’s kid brother, but behind those cool green eyes lies a first-rate mind, always on the lookout for the next big story.

  “One of my pals with NBC did a piece on medical tourism last year. Mexico is one of the hottest places, with top docs, or so they say, and the price is right.” He paused to spear a piece of marinated artichoke. “You haven’t been living in a cave, so I suppose you’ve heard of all this?”

  “I’ve heard they had some experimental treatments for serious diseases, and some new cancer treatments down in Mexico. And maybe some supplements. I think I heard about senior citizens going over the border to get cheaper meds.” I scrunched up my face, trying to remember the details of an exposé I’d seen. “But I didn’t hear anything about cosmetic surgery. Was there some scandal down there?”

  “More than one. Quite a few. Mostly to do with phony meds being passed off as the real thing. The cosmetic surgery angle is something different.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s huge. Supposedly they have world-class cosmetic surgeons, operating in high-tech hospitals that look like spas. They do eye lifts, face-lifts, laser treatments, everything. And you can live it up during your recovery and pretend you’re at Sandals. Five-star oceanfront resorts, along with twenty-four-hour nursing care. You can have mojitos and pedicures with your IV drips. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Interesting.” I thought about Sandra. She seemed to know a little too much about the place. Did she have some connection with a hospital or doctor down there? Maybe she’d bought some special supplements to induce weight loss and the whole I did-it-through-diet-and-exercise number was a scam?

  “And of course there’s bariatric surgery,” he added. Nick’s voice was casual, but I nearly dropped my pen.

  “Bariatric surgery?” I suddenly had a mental flash. “You mean gastric bypass? Why would anyone go to Mexico? It’s a big operation and we do that here. They do it all across the country at major medical centers and teaching hospitals.” I shook my head, bewildered. “It has some pretty serious risk factors; it’s nothing to fool around with.”

  “Yeah, but it’s much cheaper to have it done in Mexico. It only costs seven grand or so down there. And they say they do the same techniques American doctors use; lap band, tummy tucks, and everything else you can think of.”

  “Wow,” I said softly. “I guess I can see why some people would go there to save money. But it seems like they’re taking a chance.” It still sounded risky to me. Why would you want to economize on surgery?

  “It’s not only the bargain rates that are the big draw,” Nick said. “It’s the privacy. That’s why they cater to celebs. You’re not going to have stringers from the National Enquirer taking shots of you coming out of a surgery clinic if you’re miles away from civilization. Think about it. If you were going to have a face-lift, would you rather have pa
parazzi stalking you at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, or would you rather stay at a five-star hotel in Mexico and come back looking years younger? And with no one the wiser?”

  “I see your point.”

  “So who’s had a face-lift?” Nick asked.

  I shook my head. “No one I can think of. Just trying to put the pieces together.”

  We split the bill and prepared to leave when Nick tapped me on the arm. “Hey, check out the guy in the linen suit and black shirt. Isn’t that Frankie Domino?” He gestured to the mafioso type I’d seen on the set of Death Watch my very first day.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s him.” Frankie Domino had been sitting alone at a tiny table at the end of the patio and we’d never noticed him. There was an empty bottle of Heineken beer in front of him, and as we watched, he stood up, tossed a bill on the table, and exited Gino’s.

  “Interesting,” Nick said, edging me forward. “Let’s walk by that table. I want to see something. Just act natural, okay?”

  “Act natural? What’s with the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” I protested. “So the guy came in to have a beer on a hot day; no big deal, right? He has terrible taste in clothes, but that’s not a crime.”

  “Just look straight ahead and keep walking,” Nick ordered. As we passed the empty table, Nick looked down and gave a low whistle. “A Benjamin, just as I thought.”

  “A Benjamin?”

  “Ben Franklin,” Nick said. “He left a hundred-dollar tip.”

  “Wow.” I was taken aback. “He must have gotten really good service.” I glanced at the back of the mobster who was walking rapidly down Front Street. It suddenly dawned on me that I must be missing something. “Frankie Domino is a good tipper and this is significant—why?”

  “Maggie, you should be able to figure this out.” He did a small eye-roll, his mouth quirking in a smile. “He didn’t wait for the check and he tosses a hundred-dollar bill on the table. That’s what mobsters do. Classic wiseguy behavior. So my instincts about this guy were right.”