by Gail Bowen
“She does,” I said. “But Georgie is taking a personal day, so she’s off the grid.” To that point, Buzz’s smooth baritone had been warm and inviting, a charmer’s voice, but when he spoke again, there was a definite edge. “Surely, you’re able to get in touch with her.”
“I am,” I said. “Is this an emergency?”
“Ainsley collapsed at the columbarium service.”
My impulse was to be cooperative, but Georgie was planning her wedding, and I was determined to keep Buzz Wells away from her. “Has Ainsley been hospitalized?”
As the silence between us lengthened, I knew that wherever he was, Buzz’s fury was building and like Rumpelstiltskin, his tiny foot was itching to pound the earth in rage. “It’s a simple question,” I said. “Is Ainsley in the hospital?”
“She’s being cared for by friends.”
“So she’s in no danger,” I said. “When I see Georgie, I’ll have her call Ainsley.”
“Have her call me.” Buzz’s voice was coldly furious. “I’m taking charge until Ainsley recovers, and I need to hear from Georgie Shepherd asap.”
“Why?”
Buzz didn’t answer, but I did hear a definite sputter before he ended the call.
* * *
Buzz Wells’s headshot was still on my screen when Fawn Tootoosis called. Nominally, Georgie Shepherd was still the executive producer of Sisters and Strangers, but day to day, Fawn’s cool head and steady hand had been steering the project since Gabe Vickers’s death.
Fawn was uncharacteristically agitated. “Joanne, I may have put you in the middle of a difficult situation, and the least I can do is provide context.”
“If the situation involves Buzz Wells, I’m already involved,” I said. “He just hung up on me.”
Fawn sighed. “I am so sorry, Joanne. When Mr. Wells called, he demanded to speak to the executive producer; since Georgie wasn’t here, the receptionist put him through to me. He told me he needed to speak to Georgie personally about an urgent matter and that her phone was going straight to voicemail. I knew Georgie turned off her phone when the two of you were working, but Mr. Wells was so insistent that I gave him your number.”
“No harm done,” I said. “But Georgie’s not here. She had errands to run, and I’ve heard enough about Buzz Wells to know that, as Georgie’s friend, I should keep him away from her today.”
“That was probably wise,” Fawn said. “Joanne, Buzz Wells’s call might just be the tip of the iceberg. Would it be possible for you to come here so we can talk face to face? Hal Dupuis was with me when Mr. Wells called. He just shared some very unsettling information and, given the terms of your contract about Sisters and Strangers, I think you should hear what Hal has to say.”
“I’ll be at your office in ten minutes.”
“No, not here,” Fawn said. “This should be kept confidential. I have the keys to the writers’ room. Let’s meet there.”
* * *
When the Fine Arts building of the old University of Regina was gutted and reconstructed as a movie and TV studio facility, most of the classrooms remained untouched. Juxtaposed with the crayon bright, hard-edged brutalism of the renovations, the old classrooms with their blackboards, oak furnishings and segment head windows evoked a gentler age, and I had been pleased to learn that the room in which Roy Brodnitz and I would be working was one of the old classrooms. My memories of the buoyant beginnings of our collaboration had been shining, but the dark weeks of confusion, anger and fear after Gabe’s death had all but obliterated them, and that afternoon as I walked down the shadowy halls to the writers’ room, I was apprehensive.
Fawn and Hal were already seated at the old oak table when I came in. Hal rose, came over and took my hand. “After our time together at the all-departments’ gathering, I’d hoped we’d meet again soon,” he said. “And here we are. I wish the circumstances were more salubrious.”
My encounter with Buzz Wells had jangled my nerves, and Hal’s slow and melodious voice was soothing. “Whatever the situation, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” I said.
“I hope you’ll still feel that way after I’ve explained my role in all this,” Hal said. After Fawn and I exchanged muted greetings, Hal pulled out a chair for me, made certain I was comfortable and then, without preamble, he began. His first question blindsided me. “How much do you know about the financing behind Sisters and Strangers?” he said.
“Until today, I knew nothing, but my son-in-law, Charlie D, who hosts Charlie D in the Morning, has been curious about how quickly the entire project came together, and this morning, he told me he’d learned where Gabe Vickers got the seed money to finance the series.”
Fawn and I were sitting across from each other with Hal between us at the head of the table. As I delivered my précis of Charlie D’s report, I watched their reaction. Hal’s eyes were downcast and his shoulders slumped. Clearly nothing I said was news to him. But my words were having an impact on Fawn. She and Hal were friends, and the looks she cast him as I spoke were anxious. When I finished, Fawn tented her long expressive fingers. “So Gabe robbed Peter to pay Paul.”
Hal nodded. “I haven’t heard that expression since I was a child,” he said. “But that’s exactly what happened, and I made it possible.”
Fawn touched Hal’s arm. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “Hal, you’re a fine person.”
“Thank you, but what I did was wrong. At the time, it seemed like justice. Gabe Vickers did me a great kindness once, and Buzz Wells harmed someone I love. I was given a chance to redress the balance, and I took it.” He fell silent, seemingly gathering his thoughts. Under the overhead light, Hal’s shaved head gleamed, brown-gold as a tiger eye. Finally, he stood and began to pace and to talk.
“Last December, Gabe Vickers called and told me he needed to move on the series quickly. Gabe’s principal concern was the actor he wanted to feature in the series, Vale Frazier. He believed the part he had in mind for her would be her breakout role, but the character she would play was in her early to mid-teens, and Vale was already eighteen. Time was of the essence. Gabe had put together a strong cast and crew package to take to potential investors, but he needed seed money, and he needed it fast.”
“And he came to you for money?” I said.
Hal’s laugh rumbled from somewhere deep inside. “If I’d had it, I would have given it to him gladly. Thanks to Gabe I earn a very comfortable living, but I didn’t have the kind of money he needed.”
“Hal, I don’t mean to pry,” I said. “I’m just trying to get the full picture here. You said Gabe Vickers did you a great kindness. I never saw that side of him.”
“It was there.” Hal returned to his place at the table. “I didn’t learn about the darkness in Gabe until I came to Saskatchewan. Since then, like you, Joanne, I’ve been trying to reconcile the person who saved me with the person who committed such unimaginable acts.”
Fawn’s expression was strained. “How did Gabe Vickers save you?”
“When no other producer would touch me with a ten-foot pole, Gabe hired me,” Hal said. “I was twenty-three when I had my first big success on Broadway. It was a heady time. I was a wunderkind, the golden boy that everybody wanted.
“But as the poet said, ‘Fame is fickle food/upon a shifting plate.’ I was hired as costume designer for an expensive, ambitious, elaborate show, and the morning after the show opened, I was finished. The reviews were excoriating, and my costumes were singled out as emblematic of everything that killed the production: its pretensions, its excesses, its absurd aping of other designers’ work. And just like that, my phone stopped ringing. The silence lasted for over a year.”
“You’ve never told me about this,” Fawn said.
“It was a painful memory,” Hal said. “But then Gabe called and hired me for a small off-Broadway show he was producing. The play was set in 1919, the year after t
he Armistice was signed, and centred on Adelaide, a nineteen-year-old nursing volunteer at a rehabilitation hospital, and two of her patients: a young soldier who’d been blinded, and one who’d been crippled. The only set was the sunroom of the rehabilitation facility. The budget line for costume design was in the low four figures, but I was determined to honour Gabe’s faith in me, and I produced the historically accurate, unexceptional wardrobe that the script demanded. There was one bright spot. When the two young soldiers see that Adelaide is becoming mired in the pain and hopelessness of her work, they chip in and ask her to buy a dress that will make her happy.
“She chooses a deeply vibrant red dress with a full chiffon skirt and when she dons it to show the young soldiers, she twirls and says, ‘This dress makes me feel as if I’m dancing in a field of poppies.’ The show takes its title from that line, and the playbills and advertising for Dancing in Poppies featured a striking photograph of Adelaide in a field of poppies with her skirt swirling gracefully around her. That photograph restored my reputation, and my phone began to ring again.”
“That’s a lovely story,” I said. “I understand why you wanted to help Gabe. How did the opportunity come about?”
“That story is far from lovely,” Hal said. “And I’m ashamed of my role in it. My sister, Stella Delacroix, is a writer. Six years ago she wrote a pilot for a television show called Broders’ Annex. It was based on the neighbourhood Stella and I grew up in — Black, working class, aspiring. Buzz Wells was hired to executive produce, and he signed himself on as showrunner. Stella’s a strong woman, and she’s not easily cowed, but from the beginning, she felt that Wells was determined to break her. He ignored her ideas, demeaned her and shunned her. My sister stuck it out to the end of the first season. Then she quit. The show ran five seasons. The situations and plot lines changed, but for all that time, the characters and relationships Stella created for the pilot were the heart of the series.”
“Clearly that was a violation of intellectual property laws,” Fawn said.
“I’m sure it was,” Hal said. “But that kind of case is in the courts forever, and Stella wanted to close the door on Buzz Wells.”
Fawn’s hands were clenched into fists. “Is your sister still writing?”
“She is,” Hal said. “For one of those teenage werewolf shows. The show’s doing well, and Stella’s happy enough. To be honest I think she’s been over what Buzz Wells did to her for quite a while. But I’m her big brother . . .”
Fawn’s smile was understanding. “And you weren’t over it.”
Her warmth seemed to raise Hal’s spirits. “No, I wasn’t, and over the years, I’ve kept an eye on what Wells was up to. His gambling problem was well-known and before Christmas I heard that he was heavily in debt and his creditors were breathing down his neck. I knew Wells was producing a new series, and when Gabe told me he needed start-up money for his new project, I asked around about the status of Wells’s series. Wells was vulnerable. I described the situation to Gabe, and he took it from there.”
“By convincing Buzz Wells’s creditors to put pressure on him.”
Hal nodded. “And you know the rest. In return for the money Wells’s creditors handed over for Sisters and Strangers, Gabe gave them shares in Living Skies Productions. He wasn’t worried about buying the shares back. He knew The Happiest Girl would be a hit, and when the money rolled in, he could buy back the shares, and no one would be the wiser.”
“But Buzz’s timetable wasn’t as flexible as Gabe’s,” Fawn said.
“And here’s the kicker,” Hal said. “The people who invested in Buzz Wells’s series are still expecting it to go ahead. The Happiest Girl won’t be bringing in money until the end of the year. Buzz needs money now.”
“And Ainsley Blair owns a good chunk of Living Skies and has access to the development money for Sisters and Strangers,” I said.
Hal looked stricken. “Joanne, I hope you know that I never anticipated this outcome.”
“I know that,” I said. “And I’m grateful we had this talk. Forewarned is forearmed, but I wish I knew what we’re armed against. Until Buzz Wells makes his move, all we can do is speculate. If Buzz arrives in Regina with Ainsley, we still don’t have anything. He’ll be a paragon, the model ex-husband rushing to the side of his former wife in her time of need. And the cherry on the cheesecake — Buzz Wells has the professional skills to be of real use to his ex.”
“So we watch, wait and feel helpless,” Fawn said.
“We’re not helpless,” I said. “Fawn, you’ve seen my option contract. Any time we have proof that Buzz Wells and Ainsley are acting against the best interests of the production, I can have the contract nullified. But that’s a game of chicken I don’t think any of us want to play. If I kill the project, Living Skies and the Saskatchewan film industry will take a huge hit in lost revenue and jobs, Roy’s final project will go down in smoke and, selfishly, a story that matters to me will never be told. We have to do everything possible to keep the situation from reaching that point.”
Chapter Fourteen
Shortly before noon on Thursday, Darrell Bell’s silver Ford passenger van pulled up in front of our house. Georgie and I had been working on the script all morning, and we went together to greet Darrell and Ben Bendure.
To use one of Ben’s favourite expressions, he appeared to be “in the pink.” His snowy beard was neatly trimmed, his complexion was ruddy and his eyes were bright. He was wearing his favourite outfit: a long pocketed khaki vest, an Oxford cloth shirt, roomy slacks and walking boots, soft with wear. His ivory handled cane was clearly a necessity, but as we walked to the house after the introductions, Ben was nimble.
It was a soft spring day, far too lovely to eat inside, and Taylor and I had set the picnic table for lunch. I poured everyone a glass of iced tea and led the way to the patio. Taylor was working in her studio at the edge of our property. She was fond of Ben, and Darrell had been her mentor, confessor and art dealer since she sold her first painting. As soon as she heard their voices, she came flying across the lawn, arms outstretched, but before she reached in for the hug, she checked her t-shirt and jeans. “You’re safe,” she said. “No wet paint. Hug tight.”
Georgie had volunteered to bring lunch. When I said I didn’t realize she cooked, Georgie raised an eyebrow. “I don’t,” she said. “But craft services does, and they not only deliver, they pick up the dirty dishes.”
Zack had a client meeting, so there were just the five of us at the table, but it would have been difficult to find a more congenial group. True to her word, Georgie was a Ben Bendure groupie, and her perceptive comments and questions about The Poison Apple had him glowing. Ben had queries too, and his interest in how we dealt with the complexities of the relationships between the Ellard family and the Loves opened some new possibilities for Georgie and me.
In addition to being a successful gallery owner, Darrell was a gifted landscape artist whose ability to capture the light and the wind of the big prairie space had earned him a reputation that went far beyond Saskatchewan’s borders. There would be sixty candles on his next birthday cake, but tall, husky and affable, Darrell always seemed like a prairie boy to me, and at lunch as he and Taylor chatted about the art she was creating for Sisters and Strangers, Darrell displayed a boyish curiosity about what went on behind the scenes of filming a series.
As I listened to them talk, I was surprised at how knowledgeable Taylor was about not only set decoration, but also about lighting and photography. Initially, Taylor had visited the set of The Happiest Girl because she was taking a class in anatomy, and Roy Brodnitz felt she could learn a great deal about body movement from watching the dancers whose actions would serve as models for the movie’s computer-generated images.
When she continued to spend part of every day at the production studio, I assumed she was drawn to the set by her growing friendship with Vale, but seemingly, the ar
t of filmmaking had also been an attraction. Taylor had always been fascinated by process — anything from preparing lasagna to building an inuksuk. As she told Darrell about what she’d learned of the processes behind the making of a movie, our daughter’s dark eyes shone and her long-fingered hands, so much like Sally’s, never stopped moving.
The party was animated, but when lunch was over and it was time to look at Sally’s self-portrait as the sole student of the Academy of One, we were subdued. Darrell had packed the painting carefully, and as he removed the final layer of bubble wrap and set the painting on our dining room table, only Taylor and Georgie looked directly at the canvas. Darrell, Ben and I were all watching my daughter’s face.
Her expression revealed nothing as she examined the painting of Sally at fourteen lying on the hood of a yellow convertible in a blatantly sexual pose. Behind her a motel stuccoed in hot pink offered vacancy. We were all silent, waiting for Taylor’s response. When it came, her words were a surprise. “Jo, tell me what I was like when I was that age.”
I took a breath. “Well, except for the fact that you were already a working artist, you were a normal fourteen-year-old. You, Isobel Wainberg and Gracie Falconer were inseparable. You and Isobel went to all Gracie’s basketball games even though you both hated basketball. You had sleepovers every weekend. You giggled a lot. You had secrets. The three of you always had a project. You made personalized scents for all your friends. The Wainbergs, the Falconers and your dad and I took turns driving you downtown every week so you could feed the feral cats. And when you were fourteen you decided you wanted to have a ‘rustic Halloween party,’ and I drove you all over the countryside so you could choose the perfect pumpkins.”
“Which weren’t as perfect as the pumpkins Martha Stewart had at the rustic Halloween party in her magazine,” Taylor said. “You told me that Martha’s pumpkins were probably airbrushed.”