“Yes,” said Carson, lifting herself from the desk and signaling that the meeting was now over. “I—we—will be happy to help you in any way possible. But as you say, it is late and there is a six a.m. call tomorrow, so I’m sure we would all be grateful for the opportunity to retire.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said the inspector. “Though I was wondering, or rather hoping you could . . .” He dug around in his suit pockets and produced a small notebook, which he flipped open. “Mr. O’Connor,” he said, finding the page he wanted. “Would you mind?” He offered Michael the notebook and a pen. “An autograph? For my wife Lucia. She is your biggest fan.”
“Soooo,” Steve Usher said when they all made their way out of the living room, “that wasn’t too bad, not too scary. I must admit that even after all these years I get a bit twitchy when the law is en prémisse. Patting the old pockets, don’t you know, wondering if I’ve disposed of the stash. Second nature, I suppose, after so many years of criminal behavior.” With the last two words he carved quotation marks in the air with his fingers, laughing in an all-inclusive way. “I remember this one time in Liverpool . . .” His voice trailed off as they all emerged into the night and clearly no one paused to listen. “Oh, well, so I’ll see you at five-thirty, then, Mercy. For a little meditation and a consult?”
“You will not,” said Mercy, stopping, then turning to face him. “Look, Steve, I appreciate you fulfilling some insurance requirement by being here and I’m happy to pay for you to have a little Tuscan holiday. But I think the less we see of each other, the better. You didn’t seem to do Lloyd that much good,” she added nastily.
“Mercy,” Angie admonished.
“It’s all right, Angie,” Usher said with a conciliatory hand over his heart. “I totally understand. Lloyd and Mercy were sharing a journey and Mercy’s feeling bitter, disappointed in her friend, perhaps even in me for not having been a better guide. Not surprising. But you know Lloyd made his own decisions. I urged him to turn down this project, to focus on his sobriety, and his new family, but he was determined, mostly”—here he placed the slightest, merest, most deadly of pauses—“because he so wanted to work with you, my dear.” The shot went home. Even from twenty paces, Juliette could see Mercy slouch, feel the heavy waves of guilt. “Of course, it is entirely your own decision,” he concluded. “I am completely at your disposal.” He made a small bow and began walking back to his room at the villa.
“She’ll be there, Steve,” Angie called. “Five-thirty sharp.” And with an impatient twitch, she thrust her iPhone into Mercy’s hand. Mercy glanced down and fury crossed her face, quickly replaced by resignation.
“You really are such a bitch,” she said, almost sadly, as she trailed away, “Mother.”
• • •
Whatever flame had been rekindled between Michael and Juliette seemed at least temporarily extinguished. Though he joined her in Casa Padua, their attempts to recapture what had moved them earlier in the evening were soon thwarted by the sound of muffled sobs coming from Mercy’s room. Why is she crying? Juliette wondered, distracted for a moment even from Michael’s mouth and Michael’s hands. Is it because the detective had shown up? What had been on Angie’s iPhone?
No, she thought firmly, I cannot fix that, I will try to fix this, and she closed her mind to everything not physically connected to him.
For a moment her efforts were fruitful, but then:
“Jesus,” Michael said, rolling onto his back.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Juliette said.
“No, you’ll just make it worse. And that’s probably exactly what she wants. Why are you even letting her stay here?”
“I don’t know,” Juliette answered, exasperated. “Because that’s what you do when someone is in the kind of trouble she’s in?”
During those weeks when she had finally given up drugs, Juliette, too, had wept for no reason she could have explained. And Alex, her first real boss, the man who gave her a job and a future, let her stay with him for almost a month. He never shushed her, never yelled or lectured. Instead, he had brought sugary tea and pieces of toast, homemade lemonade and scones. Juliette believed that Mercy wanted to get well. She was just too afraid to let go of the things that had fueled her life for so long. And that Juliette understood, even if no one else here did.
“Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable,” Michael groaned. “It’s like living with a child. Listen to her.” He motioned toward the closed door. “Through stone walls a foot thick. No wonder her mother pumps her full of sleeping pills. If she doesn’t stop, I’m going to give her a dozen Ambien myself. Oh, my God,” he said looking at his watch, “it’s past midnight and we’ve got a six a.m. call. She’ll be an extra hour in makeup already, just for her eyes!”
With another groan, he lifted himself out of bed and reached for his pants.
“You’re going,” Juliette said flatly.
“Darling,” he said, leaning over and kissing her. “You are lovely and miraculous but I will never sleep here. And I have to sleep. I am over fifty, you know, and we’ll be at it another thirteen hours again because somehow I sense my costar will not be in top form. You are certainly more than welcome to come with me, but sleeping will occupy most of the agenda.”
In the next room, Mercy’s sobbing took on a spasmodic quality and Juliette could hear drawers being pulled open, things falling to the floor as the girl searched for something. Michael drew on his shirt, then sat down and put on his shoes and looked up at her inquiringly.
“No,” Juliette said. “I should stay, I guess. Make sure she’s not in there washing down pills with tequila, or whatever did her in last time around. It was fun while it lasted,” she said, getting up and following him to the door.
“And will be again,” he said hurrying out the door. Watching him go, without a backward glance, Juliette fought the urge to follow. Instead, she padded up the stairs to comfort Mercy, who refused to explain why she was crying and did indeed quiet down the moment Juliette gave up and just crawled into bed beside her. Or maybe, Juliette thought as she, too, finally drifted away, it was just the Oxy finally kicking in.
Chapter Eight
THE FOLLOWING DAYS WENT by quickly, propelled by the tense and constant beat of the shoot. The sound of construction stilled only when filming began, and resumed the minute Golonski yelled cut. The rewrites were contant; they had gone through three shades of pink, four of green. Even the weather seemed anxious and uncertain. At times the air went brassy and lightning flashed at the edges of the steel-gray storm clouds.
Below, so much work was going on in so many places that Juliette, who had always prided herself on her ability to multitask, could not keep track of what was going on. Only the script supervisor, a woman in rimless spectacles who shadowed Golonski with an open script and a pencil, and the production manager seemed privy to that information, but they, like everyone else, were speaking in a language Juliette did not quite understand, moving in a pattern she did not quite recognize, and after a day or so she simply stopped trying.
“It’s impossible,” she said during another phone conversation with Devlin. “I mean, I thought what we did was complicated. But these people, they just whittle entire cities out of nothing. Seriously. They’ve managed to make this small corridor between the villa and the carriage house look like a city street. At least from a certain angle. And they’ve got electricians and carpenters who show up on time. Every day! Do you know how impossible that is, especially in Italy? It’s unheard-of. I keep waiting for them to get arrested for violating the Italian slacker law.”
Devlin chuckled appreciatively. “Carson Cooper understands that the main job of a producer is to produce,” he said.
“Oh, great, another Carson fan,” she said. “Do you know her? How is it I have never heard of her? She seems like a person I would have heard of.”
“We were . . . briefly acquainted,” he said. “In New York.”
“Oh, dear God,” Juliette said.
“So you slept with her. Of course you slept with her.”
“This was years ago, J.,” he said reassuringly. “Years. I believe her husband had just left her, and it was only one night. Or two.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Juliette put her hand to her forehead as if to prevent an image from forming there; was there any woman living with whom Devlin had not been “briefly acquainted”? “It’s none of my business. It was certainly not the purpose of this call. I was simply hoping you could tell me why the Roman police are suddenly reopening the Lloyd Watson case.”
In as few words as possible, she told him what Di Marco had said. “Meanwhile, Mercy keeps making these mysterious little comments about Lloyd being killed and I just wondered if you had heard anything over there.”
“I will certainly ask around,” Devlin said gravely. “And do tell Carson I said hello.”
Juliette ground her teeth and said nothing.
“And of course our dear Mr. O’Connor,” he added.
“You are a canny idiot,” she said, laughing despite herself. “And I . . .”
“What? You what? You’ll be returning home as soon as the picture wraps? I am allowing myself to be encouraged by this sudden spate of phone calls, even if you are just pumping me for information.”
“Call me if you hear anything,” she said, laughing again.
• • •
Along with the business of making the movie was the business of running Cerreta, or what Cerreta had become during the past week, and that was one job Juliette did understand. Which was fortunate because many of the interns were suddenly expressing lifelong interest in filmmaking, jockeying for extra work or just hanging around with the crew, many of whom were very good-looking Italian men. Gabriel, now happily ensconced as on-site historical consultant, barely had time to notice that his interns had deserted him or that the farm manager had suddenly produced three lovely daughters, all of whom, miraculously, had head shots. Juliette was both amused and relieved. Not only could she revel in the sight of Gabe mesmerized by the business he so often disparaged, but this meant she could run things her way. She took full and shameless advantage of the film budget, ordering new linens, an upgraded refrigerator for the salami, and air-conditioning units for the chapel and library, which had always been prohibitively stuffy by early spring.
She hired some local women to clean and help in the kitchen, and offered one of the interns a job as guest-relations manager. Mainly, she wanted someone who spoke good English to answer the phones. Mercy wanted a massage therapist, Michael needed a facialist “who really understands steam,” and Juliette found, to her alarmed surprise, that a small army of day spas had cropped up around the more touristy hill towns like San Gimignano. The woman she finally hired was also a licensed aromatherapist from Rome who did facials, waxing, and nails, and, as luck would have it, who also knew a former nurse who performed colonics.
“She has her own facial mister,” she told Michael, “which is apparently the hallmark of a true professional. And the Romans practically invented steam.”
Soon some of the local merchants got wind of the shoot and trucks full of cheese and pastries, leather goods and silk, perfume and local pottery began making their way up the road, turning the courtyard into a tailgate market day. Angie spent two hours picking through the handbags that filled one white van before announcing peevishly that she wanted one made by a certain Sienese cobbler named Marcello whom she had read about in Condé Nast Traveler, and why hadn’t Juliette invited him to Cerreta already, since Angie had noticed that Juliette’s bag had been made by him?
Without missing a beat, Juliette summoned Marcello, who was bearded and handsome, with two gold earrings like a pirate, and caused quite a stir as he made his way through the courtyard. Angie apparently wanted new shoes as well, along with a purse like Juliette’s and an Italian leather bag for Usher, to replace the ratty wool satchel he carried with him. Silent and smiling, Marcello made his way from one trailer to the other. Michael was next, then Golonski; Mercy spent so much time cloistered with him that for a moment it looked like the Sienese cobbler would shut down production until he agreed to come back the next day.
“That’s what I imagined Roberto would look like,” Mercy sighed as he drove away, referring to the sixteenth century painter Michael was playing. “So young and handsome; he’s even handsomer than Lloyd.” She was standing in the wardrobe trailer with the costume designer and two assistants pinning and stitching her into a silver evening gown. Juliette saw them exchange the exhilarated glances of “gossip received” and she wanted to slap them. “Oh, Juliette,” Mercy said teasingly, “of course Michael’s wonderful and he’s making the movie so much more . . . interesting. But just imagine the shoemaker in a linen tunic and leather breeches. Marvelous. God,” she said, twitching herself away from the busy hands, “maybe I should sleep with him instead. That would drive my mother absolutely insane.”
When she wasn’t procuring goods and services for the cast and crew, Juliette was trying to run interference between Golonski and Gabe. On his second night at Cerreta, Golonski tried to lecture Gabe about his various environmental credentials, which included, apparently, trips to the rain forest, the Sudan, and to view melting ice caps in Antarctica, all of which he narrated in life-or-death heroic detail. Beyond asking the director what he estimated his personal lifetime consumption of jet fuel to be, Gabe kept his mouth shut. But when Golonski later began a conversation that seemed to place him as the founder of the slow food movement in California, Juliette had to bodily remove her cousin from the area. That evening, as everyone was gathering for dinner, a shrill scream shot through the dusk; in a few moments, Golonski appeared at a dead run, spluttering something about prehistoric beasts. Juliette looked accusingly at Gabe, who raised his shoulders innocently enough. After a few minutes of Golonski almost incoherently describing the sight of a herd of enormous clanking creatures shuffling across the road, comprehension dawned.
“Oh,” she said. “They’re just porcupines.”
“But they were huge,” Golonski said. “As big as sled dogs, and they hissed and”—he shivered—“rattled.”
“It’s their quills that rattle,” Juliette said sympathetically, while Gabe shook with silent laughter beside her, “and they do hiss. They are bigger than you think.”
“Especially if you’ve only seen them in cartoons,” Gabe said. “You should just be grateful you didn’t run into any wild boars. They can kill a man, you know. One of our interns,” he added, with a perfectly straight face, “lost his leg last year. I never leave the villa without my .45.”
After that, Golonski never ventured anywhere without two young personal assistants on either side—“boar bait,” the crew came to call them.
Juliette rarely saw Michael; he was either on set working or in his trailer reading, in makeup or wardrobe. He didn’t eat breakfast, was too preoccupied to talk at lunch, and often was too exhausted even to show up at dinner. One night Juliette knocked on his door, and when she entered, he looked up from his script as if he didn’t know her. Even in those moments when he was just sitting between takes, while his stand-in took his place, O’Connor was either furiously marking up his script or so lost in thought that it seemed out of the question to approach him.
“Maybe I could have dinner with the stand-in,” Juliette murmured to Gabe as they stood for a moment in the villa’s library looking out the window down at the day’s set. Chris, a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick dark hair, had flown over from Los Angeles; he was O’Connor’s regular stand-in.
“He’s probably a much nicer guy,” Gabe said. “Though he needs to get a real job. Who on earth are these people anyway? Mercy’s stand-in looks like she’s fifteen and she’s got half the camera crew wrapped around her little finger. If Carson’s not careful, she’s going to have a statutory rape case on her hands, now that the police are officially installed here in little Los Angeles. Is the aromatherapist still around? Our detective looks like he c
ould use a little ylang-ylang for energy.”
“He does not appear to be going anywhere soon, does he?” Juliette said, glancing over at Inspector Di Marco, who was engaged in amiable conversation with Joseph Andrews. It had been three days since the detective began “revisiting” the cast and crew’s memory of events preceding Lloyd’s death, and he seemed to have no problem waiting hours on end for whomever he wanted to speak with next.
“Dev says the insurance company pushed the police to reopen the case,” Juliette continued. “They don’t want to pay out for accidental death, so they’re trying to get it changed to suicide. Apparently somebody called in an anonymous tip about the forensic evidence. Not enough to change the verdict, but enough to pressure the Roman police into sniffing around. Or so,” she finished, faltering a bit, when she saw the look on Gabe’s face, “Devlin says.”
Her cousin shook his head. “I thought you guys were in the hotel business. But whenever you talk about Devlin you make him sound like a combination of the Buddha and Remington Steele.”
“Remington Steele?” Juliette snorted. “Jesus, Gabe, when was the last time you watched television? Devlin has an interesting past—”
“By which you mean he was once a drugged-out thief, too?”
“No. By which I mean . . . well, I don’t really know what exactly I mean. Let’s just say he’s had a past that makes him very tolerant of other people’s life experiences. You would be amazed if you knew the background of some of the Pinnacle staff. Seriously. They make you and me look like model citizens. Dev says he has the most trustworthy staff in the business because they all actually understand the consequences of betrayal.”
Gabe shot her a look of keen appraisal. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just nice to see that you are capable of loving a man who isn’t a bloodsucking egomaniac. Platonically, at least.”
The Starlet Page 14