Murder Take Two

by Charlene Weir

  All the hot lights and all the people made for a room with no air flow and no oxygen. It was unbelievably stuffy. Fans or air-conditioning weren’t possible, they made noise. The temperature was a hundred twenty degrees. Everybody, including Yancy, was dripping sweat. Hell couldn’t be worse.

  “I can’t make sense of this movie,” he said to Clem. Trying to track the plot was something to use the center of his mind for while the edges all around worried whether his mother had stumbled into a homicide.

  “It doesn’t need to, it’s about Laura wiggling her ass.”

  God had been more successful with the sunrise than Fifer was with this scene. Take after take went wrong. Laura flubbed her lines, then Nick came in late on a pickup. Then it was going great and one of the crew dropped a hammer that made Laura jump. Then a camera jammed, then the sound was wrong and after that the lighting was off. Once everything was going perfectly until Laura sneezed. Everybody broke up.

  “Cut,” Fifer said. He spoke quietly to Laura, she nodded. He said something to Nick, then went back to his position behind the camera. “Let’s try it again.”

  “Roll cameras.”

  “Speed.”

  The young woman with the slateboard said, “Scene ninety-two, take nine,” and clapped it.

  “Action.”

  The actors tried to figure out how to get through the night without getting killed. Take nine did it. Also take fifteen. At that point, Fifer called a lunch break; everybody split. In a hurry.

  The caterer had set up in a room on the first floor, the original purpose of which Yancy couldn’t figure. Library maybe, but there were no bookshelves.

  A chicken sandwich and bottle of foreign water later, he stayed on his feet by moving; if he stopped he’d be gone. It was very odd to see one room all fitted out with plush furniture, thick carpets, knickknacks, sculptures, pictures, and fresh flowers, and the next was bare with cracked plaster, spiderwebs, and dirt.

  Up the staircase and at the end of a hallway, voices came from the corner room. Nick Logan and Fifer were inside. Only half the room had been completed; the far end had a highly polished wood floor, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with books, burgundy leather chairs around a long wooden table, and a large, highly polished wooden desk. This was the office of the head honcho in a megabucks company. In his hand, Nick had pages of the latest script changes.

  He scanned them, mumbling as he did so. He put in pauses and gestures, walked the length of the room, and leaned over the desk.

  “Nick,” Fifer said quietly, “this is a cop who’s been framed for murder. They’re tired of him bothering them, they want to get rid of him.”

  Nick nodded. He read the script again, then went through the scene speaking the lines carefully, using the pauses and gestures, shifting his weight and building anger. Then he did it again.

  The concentration of effort showed. Yancy began to appreciate why Nick was considered a good actor.

  In the afternoon when Fifer shot the scene, a rich powerful man sat behind the desk. Yancy leaning against a wall hoped he wouldn’t drop over asleep and ruin the take. Nick went through the lines and moved step by step while the lighting was set up.

  When Fifer got to the actual filming, Yancy felt he could do the scene himself. Nick’s voice jolted Yancy wide awake. It carried such raw emotion that hairs stood up on Yancy’s arms. As Nick stalked the man with white hair, every bit of him yelled killer, no matter how furiously he cried, “Frame up!”

  The menace in his face sent the CEO cowering back. At the scene’s finish, the room was absolutely silent.

  Two ticks went by and then Fifer said, “Beautiful, Nick.”

  Beautiful, Yancy echoed in his mind and was left with the feeling Nick Logan was capable of murder if the stakes were high enough.

  * * *

  Blue. Dark blue. Laura my beloved. The universe is dark blue. I’m coming. Just be patient. I’m following him. The universe will provide the right moment. I’ll be ready. The gun belongs to me.

  * * *

  The next day was taken up by love scenes with Nick and Laura, both half naked, tumbling around in bed. Yancy wondered how two lovers felt portraying make-believe lovers with a roomful of people looking on. Or two ex-lovers who were feuding playing current lovers. It boggled the mind. These two did it with a lot of electricity.

  By the time Fifer called wrap, it was nearly seven o’clock. Yancy was just as quick to speed off as the rest of them. A fourteen-hour day that started at five A.M. made quitting seem a fine idea.

  With escape in mind, he put the squad car in reverse, had an arm over the seat back, and was looking out the rear window when he heard Clem Jones call him. Black gauze draped her from shoulders to ankles like a shawl, she was a costume who couldn’t find a party.

  “Hey.” Both hands gripped the open window. “Would you do something for me?” A ragged note under her words didn’t sound like the usual nasty Clem.

  He didn’t look at his watch. “If I can, certainly.”

  “Take me someplace for dinner. Someplace I won’t be recognized.”

  With her appearance she’d be recognized everywhere. For a full second, he considered saying no. Then duty prevailed, it was his job, she looked right on the edge, and besides, he felt sorry for her. He tried to come up with a place that would be dark and empty.

  “Please,” she said, apparently thinking he was about to refuse, which with Serena waiting he’d certainly like to do. She wouldn’t be happy when he was late again.

  He got out of the car, went around, and opened the passenger door for her.

  “I knew I could count on you. Gentleman to the core.”

  He sighed. “You know a whole hotel full of people. You could get any one of them to take you to dinner.”

  She slid in, he closed the door and went back to the driver’s side. “What would you like to eat?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.”

  Right. The Best Little Hare House in Kansas was loud and full of truckers. She’d probably start a riot. Poppy’s Pizza? A student hangout. And she’d probably want something like kiwi and squid pizza so she could sneer when they didn’t have it. The Blind Pig? He got it, Perfect Strings. He made a right, cut through town, and got on the Interstate.

  “Everybody’s looking at me,” Clem said darkly when they walked in.

  “Nah.” Of course, she was right. Locals didn’t see very many people with purple hair decked out in black gauze and white face paint. Nonlocals were media folks and they were on the lookout for somebody like her. This place had been a mistake.

  A waitress with a long black skirt seated them in a booth and handed them each a menu.

  “I need to make a phone call,” he said.

  “You need somebody’s permission?”

  “You need to change your attitude or I’ll leave you right here.”

  “Sorry.” She opened the menu and stuck her face in it.

  She really was feeling low. Sorry wasn’t in her vocabulary. He found the phone and called his sister.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re not coming. You have to work.”

  “I’ll be a little later is all.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Sure.”

  “Espresso,” Clem said with disgust when he slid into the booth.

  “What did you want? Moonshine?”

  “Yeah. Local color.”

  “Wrong color. You’re sixty years too late.”

  She asked the waitress for a glass of wine. He ordered iced tea.

  “You don’t even drink?” Clem sneered.

  “Shove it.”

  “You aren’t your usual sweet self. Phone call go badly? Who was it? Girlfriend?”

  The drinks arrived and he took a gulp. “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Deliberately irritate people.”

  “Oh, that. It’s just my personality. It goe
s with funny faces.” She crossed her eyes and made her mouth go up and down like a retarded fish.

  He smiled. “Good for a laugh, and it keeps people standing on one foot.”

  “What?”

  “They never put the other one down to get a step closer.”

  “What are you? Some kind of closet psychiatrist?” She glared at him, started to make some smart remark, then just sat there with her priorities all confused.

  “Want to try a little dinner talk? Did you go to California to get into the movie business?”

  “We call it the industry. I’m an only child. My mother was a housewife. They don’t make them much anymore. You know, at home baking cookies when you get there from school. Dad out in the big world earning a living.”

  When the waitress came for their order, Clem asked for another glass of wine.

  “What do you want to eat?” he said. She looked on the way to getting drunk and he wanted to get food down her.

  She picked up the menu. “I don’t know. Anything.”

  “Bring her spaghetti and meatballs,” he said.

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Bring me spaghetti and meatballs. Bring her spaghetti.” He handed back the menus.

  “What did your father do?” He eyed the media people. So far none had approached.

  “Movies. What else?”

  “Actor?”

  “Art director.”

  Before she finished answering his question about what that was, big platters of spaghetti arrived with Clem’s wine and a refill of iced tea.

  “Did you ever want to be somebody else?” Clem poked a fork at her spaghetti.

  “Like who?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anybody who seems to have it all in control.” She broke off a chunk of bread and crumpled it on her plate. She sipped wine. “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” She started to laugh and it got caught somewhere.

  “Were you a close friend of Sheri Lloyd’s?”

  “No. She had a hard time when she was growing up. I know that because she was always wanting to ‘dialogue.’ Get it out in the open. Huh. She was always trying to be somebody else, because her life was so yucky. She wasn’t very smart.”

  Clem’s eyes got blurry; she pressed the heels of her palms against them as though to hold back tears. “She probably didn’t even know why.”

  Reporters at the next table were comparing information. One asked, “Did you get a picture of the hotel room?”

  “No. Cops wouldn’t let me in. I got an interview with a local though. She said the death was God’s punishment. Have you ever noticed the people on God’s side like lots of blood with His punishment?”

  Clem placed her fork on her plate, folded her napkin carefully and placed it neatly beside her fork, and said in a very soft and careful voice, “I have to get out of here.”

  He took one look at her, beckoned the waitress, and mimed scribbling on his hand. When the check came, he threw money down, got up, and took her elbow. She held herself totally stiff, as though one misstep and she’d shatter like fine china. He steered her to the squad car and helped her in.

  “To the hotel?”

  “No. Drive.”

  With longing regrets for his spaghetti, he drove north and kept going. The sky was getting darker, stars were beginning to pop out and the moon, just past full, was covered by thin clouds. He took back roads, past barbed-wire-fenced fields of wheat and milo, over easy hills and down to the river at a spot three miles below where they’d been filming. He stopped and cut the motor.

  For a second quiet took over, then sounds filtered in, the rush of water, the tick-tick of cooling metal, and the rustle of wind through the trees. The water, a dark slick endlessly moving, reflected a veiled moon, and minutes later a bright moon when clouds slid on. His mother always said this spot was magic, a place of healing. He didn’t know about healing, but it did provide a spot to catch up and regroup, gather the wherewithal to carry on.

  Clem sat motionless, looking down at the water. Abruptly she hit the door handle and jumped out. She moved so fast, he was left scrambling and cursing. If she fell, hurt herself—

  She simply stood on the bank gazing up at the night sky. “She was just a joke to them, those reporters. They just—” Clem shook herself like Elmo after a bath. “I didn’t even like her, but at least I knew her—” She looked at him and smiled, a crooked little smile of sadness.

  In a second misery took over and she wrapped her arms around his neck, gulping and booing all over his uniform shirt. He let her sob, didn’t say a word, didn’t give encouraging pats on the shoulder. When she was done, she’d be mad at him, but right now she needed something to cling to and he obliged, holding her tight to let her know she wasn’t alone, but not intruding on the spasms of damp misery.

  When it ended, she was quiet with her arms around his neck, face on his chest, leaning heavily against him, all energy spent. Occasionally a ghost of a hiccup escaped. The night sounds crept around them, tree leaves tossed as the wind picked up, the heedless river rippled on. There was an eerie cry of an owl, the whine of mosquitoes, and the rustle of small hunters in the low ground growth.

  21

  Wind blew in from the north pushing a bank of clouds and bringing the temperature down so fast Yancy could almost feel it drop. Rain was coming. He could smell it. Wind whipped through the Cherokee’s windows as he goosed the accelerator to take the hill, trying to catch up for being two hours late. Lightning flickered behind the clouds, too far away to hear thunder, making the radio crackle.

  As soon as the Cherokee’s nose hit the driveway, Serena appeared in the doorway, a silhouette against the kitchen light. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “I told you I’d be here.” Heavy lazy drops slapped down as he trotted to the house; they felt good on his face and arms. The rain wasn’t ready yet; it would take its own good time.

  “You’ve also been known to call and say you can’t make it.”

  “I’m here. Go.”

  In the dark living room, his mother sat at the window with Elmo at her feet. When he bent down to kiss her cheek, the dog extended a friendly poke with his muzzle.

  “Peter.” Her fingertips gently ran down his cheek.

  “Don’t you want some light?”

  “I suppose.” The sudden light made her blink. “You look tired.”

  “It’s been a long day.” He jerked off his tie and unbuttoned the top button.

  “You and Serena have had a lot to cope with over the years.”

  Dropping to the couch, he rested his head back. “What are you talking about?”

  “I wasn’t exactly a conventional mother.”

  “That’s true.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “I’ve been thinking—trying to think. It’s so hard when I can’t concentrate. A few seconds and then my mind—skitters. Remember when you used to skip rocks on the pond? It’s like that. Jumping around so I never get anyplace. Frustrating—”

  He pulled himself forward and leaned his arms on his knees to study her face—tears glistened in her eyes. “Hey,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry, Peter. All those years—when you were little, you and Serena. I’m sorry it was so hard for you. I was selfish. When you’re young, you don’t think. I never had any relatives. My parents died, and then I didn’t have any family at all. I decided to make my own. I never thought how hard it would be for you and Serena.”

  Elmo, hearing the sad tinge in her voice, whimpered and put his head in her lap. She stroked his ears and eyebrows. “It’s still hard for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your crazy mother, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know how I could have been so selfish.”

  “I’ve always been proud of my crazy mother.” For the most part that was true.

  She smiled. “Well, Serena hasn’t.”

  “Girls are more delicate.”

&
nbsp; “Both of you put up with so much. Don’t think I don’t know.”

  “We had everything we needed.” Except for food, he thought, and some way to fit in with other kids. That was hard, being different, being laughed at. It got him in a lot of fights, which she never could understand, but there were things he had that they didn’t. Through her eyes, he was given magic. He had Shakespeare for breakfast, and flowers unfolding in the moonlight, saw birds and animals living lives of heroism.

  “Will you take care of Elmo, Peter? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to Elmo.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.” This mood worried him. She’d always been loony, but she was happy with it, not despairing like this. “Don’t worry.”

  “Poor Peter. You always had to take care of things.”

  “Mom, what—?”

  She dropped her hand over the arm of the chair and Elmo laid back down, planting himself just under her fingertips. “He’s been restless this evening. I don’t know what’s bothering him. He keeps pacing around, and barking.”

  Her mood, Yancy thought.

  “Tell me what happened in the movie business today,” she said.

  He gave her an account of his day, starting at five A.M. at the river.

  “The actress who got killed—I can’t remember her name. Who killed her?”

  “No solution yet. The chief is walking around with fire in her eyes and ice in her voice.”

  “What’s the name of the movie?”

  “Lethal Promise. Don’t ask what it’s about because I don’t really know.”

  “A promise that shouldn’t be made? Which you should never do, by the way. I hereby absolve you of any promise which shouldn’t have been made. Except the one about Elmo.”

  “I’ll keep only promises that need keeping.”

  She smiled. “You’re a good boy, Peter. You deserved better, you and Serena. I love you and your sister more than life itself. I didn’t know— Only looking back do I realize—”

  Her voice was so thin with sorrow he wondered if she were seeing a particular memory.