A Knife to Remember jj-5

by Jill Churchill

  Jane went on sorting and Shelley continued turning socks into balls for a few minutes. "I'm also curious about the mysterious producers. I don't know how on earth that could connect with a murder, but it is odd."

  “Maybe it's not as odd as it seems to us. Way back when Paul was starting the fast-food outfit, there were a couple of people who were willing to invest in him, but didn't want anybody to know they were doing it." Shelley's husband had built up one tiny, floundering Greek food restaurant in the heart of Chicago into a nationwide chain in a little over twenty years.

  “Why not?" Jane asked.

  “Paul never knew. They just wanted it kept secret and he needed the money to get started and didn't question them. Nobody asked him to do anything illegal, so it didn't matter to him. It might have been some kind of tax dodge or hiding money to keep from paying alimony or anything. Maybe it's the same thing with this. And we don't know anything about the film business, Jane. Maybe it's common."

  “Still, it is a secret and secrets seemed to be Jake's special interest.”

  Jane gathered up an armload of the sorted laundry. "I'll be right back." As she headed for the stairs, she stopped and looked back. "Shelley, a horrible thought just struck me. We've mentioned this before but haven't considered it as carefully as we should have. What if this blackmail had nothing to do with Jake's death? Maybe the whole crew was being blackmailed, but somebody killed him for some other reason entirely?”

  14

  Shelley's outrageous lie about Jane's being a famous writer must have spread. Angela apparently didn't mind sharing the news. When Jane went back out in the yard — minus Shelley, who had an errand to run — wondering how she'd get anybody else to speak to her, she found George Abington looking for her.

  “Mrs. Jeffry, do you have a minute to talk?" he asked.

  “Uh — sure."

  “Let me get you a cup of coffee or a soft drink. Which do you want?"

  “If there's an RC over there, I'd be grateful to get my hands on it," Jane said.

  George rejoined her with her request and sat down next to her in Shelley's lawn chair. He was in costume, and made-up to look much older than he'd looked the previous day. Actually, he was made-up less, to look his real age. He wore graying muttonchop whiskers, a very realistic mustache, and a stiff-collared, turn-of-the-century suit. He must not have been wearing the punishing underwear because he had a bit of a paunch today. He looked like a prosperous Victorian banker. He sat down very carefully to avoid wrinkling the suit and set his hat down on the grass beside the chair.

  “I hear you're a very successful scriptwriter," he said bluntly. "I just wanted to ask you to keep me in mind for a role. I know the writer doesn't always have any say-so in casting, but suggestions that a role was created with a certain actor in mind can't hurt.”

  Jane liked this approach much better than Angela's oblique obsequiousness. "What kind of a role are you interested in?" she asked, feeling utterly at sea. If she were a famous writer — a fabulous leap of imagination — would this be a logical question or was she blowing her cover?

  “Anything. Anything at all to pay the taxes and mortgage," he said cheerfully.

  “You can't mean that. Even a villain?"

  “I'd be a hunchback child molester if the money was right," he said, then laughed at her surprised expression. "I don't know how many actors you know well, Mrs. Jeffry, but I'm the plumber kind."

  “What does that mean?"

  “Look, if I were a plumber, would I set myself up to only work on houses I felt were beautiful or had a sensible floor plan? Or worth more than X number of dollars? No. I'd work wherever I'd get paid. Same if I worked in a department store. I wouldn't say to a customer in the suit department that I didn't think his shape would do the reputation of my line of men's wear any good. I'd sell him the damned suit if he wanted it. Same with acting,in my mind. I'm an actor; that means I act. And if it means acting the part of a bartender with a facial tic, or a leading man, it's all the same to me."

  “Well, that's a refreshing attitude."

  “Not really. I think most people in the business feel that way, they just don't admit it. They dress it up in artistic crapola — you know, 'The role was small, but it gave me insights into the mind and soul of a waitress.' " He said this in a mocking voice surprisingly like Lynette Harwell's. "That's bullshit. Nobody can understand anybody else's soul. You just have to learn the lines and say them the way the director tells you to."

  “What if you've got a lousy director?”

  He shrugged. "Then you get a lousy movie. There's lots of those. But lousy or not, I've paid my kids' school fees, so what do I care? You'd be amazed how many rich actors there are that you've never heard of. Sometimes the really bad roles pay the best."

  “You've got kids?" Jane asked, surprised. She'd never thought about any of these people being parents. Or going to the bathroom or doing anything else ordinary and human.

  “Sure. I've even got a grandchild. A gorgeous little girl named Georgina, for me. Wish I had a picture along to show you. She's a doll."

  “I'm confused," Jane said. "These aren't Lynette Harwell's children, are they?"

  “Lynette? Have a baby?" He laughed. "No. Lynette wouldn't ever share a spotlight with a child, much less risk getting stretch marks. She'd have been the kind of mother who would make Joan Crawford look like Mother Teresa.”

  He shifted around getting more comfortable, apparently happy to settle in for a long chat. "No, these children are from my first marriage. My wife was a dress extra and I was playing one of sixteen thousand Roman legionnaires in an old epic. Just a couple dumb kids, although she wasn't half as dumb as I was. Now Ronnie's a fat granny married to a retired dentist in Encino. He was an orthodontist to stars' kids and made a bundle. Ronnie still keeps a hand in the business, but not as an actress."

  “But you were married to Miss Harwell, weren't you?"

  “For about a minute and a half. We weren't together long enough to even use up the leftover wedding cake in the freezer before she'd gotten her claws into Roberto. And he didn't last much longer."

  “Isn't it awkward working with them?”

  Someone walking by him tripped and sloshed some coffee. George quickly picked up the costume hat he'd set down next to the chair and checked it for spots. Satisfied it was unharmed, he said, "Not for me. Roberto's unhappy with it, but that's his problem. He hates me. I think he feels that I deliberately unloaded shoddy goods on him. It wasn't deliberate, but she sure is shoddy."

  “You really dislike her?"

  “Mrs. Jeffry—"

  “Jane. Please."

  “Jane, in a business that attracts and creates gigantic egos, hers towers over everyone else's.

  She's truly the only totally self-absorbed person I've ever known. To the point of psychosis, I believe. If you asked her what a mailman does for a living, she'd say he brings her mail. It would never cross her mind, such as it is, to imagine that anyone else gets mail, except those few she might write to. I honestly believe she'd have trouble understanding the truth if you told her. She must know there are millions of people in the world, but to her they're divided into fans of hers and those half dozen pseudo-people who aren't. I blame Olive as much as anybody."

  “Olive? The older woman who's always with her?"

  “Yes. Poor old Olive is both the perpetrator and the victim of the Ego That Ate the World. Lynette treats her like shit, but Olive seems to thrive on it. Do you know, when Lynette and I were first married, Olive actually expected to sleep in the room with us?"

  “You're kidding!"

  “I'm not kidding. And it gets worse! Lynette couldn't quite grasp why I objected," he said, shaking his head in wonderment. "I got Olive out of the bedroom, but I always suspected she was sleeping across the doorway in the hall, like a medieval serf. She was an actress herself once. Not a very good one, I'd guess."

  “I can't imagine that."

  “Lynette told me she was, but it is h
ard to picture. If I'm remembering right, she was one of those 'born in a trunk' kids. Too late for vaudeville, of course, but the parents were in some kind of touring company — a country and western road show maybe — and dragged her around, sticking her in their act, until she was a teenager, then she got away from them by becoming a nanny to Lynette's family. Lynette's mother was one of those real remote high-society types who only wanted to see the kids all spilled up for five minutes before dinner and it was Olive who filled Lynette's mind with the idea of acting. Olive found the teachers, took her to dancing lessons, made sure she got braces on her teeth, harassed the booking agents, set up her retirement fund for all I know. And created an egomaniac. Oh, well. To each his own, I guess.”

  Interesting as this might be, it wasn't shedding light on the immediate problem. "So, you've played all kinds of roles then?" Jane asked.

  “Just about anything you could imagine," George answered easily. "College profs, garbage collectors, sheriffs—"

  “What about porn movies?" Jane asked quickly before her nerve failed.

  George's head snapped around and he stared at her for a long minute before saying, with a laugh, "So the lurker's been gossiping to you!"

  “Lurker?"

  “Yeah, whoever was eavesdropping on Jake and me told the police and I guess is spreading the word far and wide.”

  Jane prayed her face wasn't as red as it felt. "Oh, surely not," she said.

  “Don't be embarrassed about knowing," Georgesaid in a kindly manner that made Jane feel even worse. "It's not something I take out billboards about, but it's not such a deep secret. Sure, I did a couple porn movies way back when. My wife had some kind of expensive female troubles after our second kid was born and we were on the brink of welfare. It was a job. And my wife approved. She even vetted the contracts. She was always good with stuff like that.”

  Jane decided, since she was playing the innocent, she might as well play it for all it was worth. "What do you mean about Jake? What's Jake got to do with it?"

  “Jake was trying to blackmail me. Stupid waste of time, but Jake was good at wasting time." "Blackmail you into what?"

  “Into trying to get that little chippy Angela Smith into a scene with Lynette and me. As if Roberto would care what I wanted. Ridiculous. Jake was really scraping the bottom of the barrel when he got to me."

  “Do you think he'd tried it on other people? The blackmail, I mean."

  “If he had anything on them, yeah, probably." "But you don't know who else he tried it on?" "No idea."

  “What did you mean about his wasting time?"

  “Just that he has — had a reputation for being a niggling perfectionist. It was his gimmick. He's shut down work for hours getting some damned trivial piece of something exactly right and as often as not, it wasn't even in the frame anyhow, but it got everybody bowing and scraping to him as a master."

  “So he wasn't good at what he did?"

  “Oh, he was good all right. But no better than a dozen others in the business. He just invented this mystique about himself and a lot of people bought it. The more of a bastard he was, the more the 'legend' grew. Well, it worked for him."

  “Angela believed in the legend."

  “Well, she would. She's his niece."

  “His niece!"

  “Yeah, what did you think?"

  “She said he was trying to seduce her.”

  George laughed. "Then that lie was the only good bit of acting she's ever done. Angela Smith's shoulder blades are rubbed raw from sleeping around. She's normally a hopeless excuse for an actress. My daughter took some acting lessons once and ol' Angela was in the class. Angela got to be a legend herself for sheer awfulness."

  “I wonder what else she lied to me about—" Jane said.

  She wasn't able to pursue this, however, as a production assistant burst through the "doorway" in the scenery just then and said, "Oh, Mr. Abington! I've been looking everywhere for you. Mr. Cavagnari wants you for a run-through. And Mrs. Jeffry, you can let your dog out now for" — she consulted her watch—"seventeen minutes.”

  Jane met up with Shelley while she was dragging Willard out to his dog run. "Learn anything while I was gone?" Shelley asked, pitching in and pushing on Willard's back end.

  “Yes, that Angela Smith lied to us. At least George Abington says she did. Unless" — she looked up at Shelley—"unless George Abington lied to me, too.”

  15

  As the morning wore on, the whole atmosphere seemed gradually to become electrified. A photographer from People Weekly magazine showed up with an assistant who was ruthlessly snagging people to interview, and a whole crew of individuals from "Entertainment Tonight" arrived on the scene and got underfoot in creative ways. These outsiders made a difference in the mood of the set. Crew members who had previously appeared practically comatose bustled around looking busy and vital. Grips hauled things about in an intense, frantic manner, calling out, "Look out! Coming through!”

  Jane caught up with Butch Kowalski briefly when he was having a short break at the craft service table. "How's your hand?" she asked.

  “I'd almost forgotten about it," he admitted. "It's fine." He was slathering mayonnaise on a piece of bread.

  “You'll ruin your lunch."

  “Oh, I won't have time for lunch today," Butch said, slapping slices of ham on the bread.

  A young man suddenly yelled at him from the break in the scenery. Butch turned and watched theother young man make some gestures, then laid his half-constructed sandwich down and gestured back with his still-bandaged hand.

  Jane watched this, fascinated. "What was that all about?"

  “Huh? Oh, we're setting up for an important scene and Ted wanted to know about where to put some stuff."

  “Who's Ted and why all this," Jane said, imitating Butch's hand motion.

  “Oh, Ted's an intern. Getting school credit for helping Jake. Now for helping me. And the sign language is what Jake made everybody who worked for him learn. Cuts out a lot of yelling across the set. Jake hated yelling. He said it was an undignified way to work.”

  And that kind of attitude probably added to the "mystique" that George Abington was talking about, Jane thought. "How are you doing on your own?" she asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Jake had everything laid out to the littlest detail, so I'm just following his directions, but it's kinda scary anyway. If there's something missing or wrong today, I'm in big trouble without Jake to tell me how to fix it."

  “You'll do fine," Jane assured him.

  He was gulping down the sandwich now, his mind obviously on the important work ahead, so she left him alone.

  Jane looked around for Shelley, but couldn't spot her anyplace. Maisie, however, waved her over to where she was using an unexpected bit of leisure to rearrange her first aid kit. Maisie's springy dark hair looked electrified, but whether it was from the humidity or neglect, Jane couldn't guess. "Hi, Jane," she said, ticking off small boxes of gauze on a checklist.

  “What's with everybody?" Jane asked. "There's suddenly a different mood.”

  Maisie finished her chore and closed the box her equipment was in. "Oh, partly it's the end of the film hysteria. It sometimes happens that way. But mostly it's because there's an important scene this afternoon that calls for everything in the book. Cameras panning on tracks, lots of extras, different scenery, possibly a special effect if the 'rain man' can get his rain machine fixed. There's some kind of problem with the hydrant the water's supposed to come from."

  “So is that why the magazine and television people are here?"

  “No, they're here on the scent of blood. Jake's. Hoping there might be a spectacular arrest. It's the one kind of publicity nobody wants."

  “But I haven't even seen the police," Jane said, meaning she hadn't seen Mel all day even though she thought she'd noticed his little red MG parked way down her block. But with all the extras' cars clogging the street, she couldn't be sure.

  “Oh, they're here in dr
oves. Roaming around on the set, driving everybody mad. The police can't seem to grasp why everybody's going on with a silly movie in the face of murder and Roberto can't grasp why the police keep interfering in an important thing like a movie for something as trivial as murder. I wouldn't be surprised if Roberto doesn'tend up in jail himself eventually on a charge of tangling the wheels of justice or something."

  “Maisie, who do you think killed Jake?" Jane asked, imitating George Abington's apparent bluntness.

  “I can't imagine," Maisie said, not the least surprised by the question. "I really can't. I don't know anybody who didn't find him offensive, but there's a lot of people in this business who make a life's work of being offensive and they don't end up murdered."

  “But Jake was blackmailing people. That's a considerable step up from 'offensive.' "

  “Was he really? I'd heard gossip this morning. To be honest, Jane, I don't put much credence in blackmail as a motive. Not with actors anyway."

  “What do you mean?"

  “Well, actors love to talk about themselves, get `reputations,' be closely involved in scandals. Not all of them, of course, but most of them will tell you their life stories at the drop of a hat. They never get tired of hearing about themselves, even if it's from their own lips."

  “So I've noticed."

  “So it's hard to blackmail a performer. And especially so nowadays. It used to be that a charge or alcoholism or homosexuality could destroy a career, but these days it's the 'in thing' to share their most intimate secrets with the public. Anybody who's anybody has been in drug rehab. In fact, I understand there's quite a hierarchy of places to go for it. Some of the rehab units even have their own publicist handing out 'star-studded' lists of former patients."

  “So is nothing worth keeping a secret?"

  “You tell me. Willie Nelson has told the world about his tax problems. Everybody on the screen or stage wants to talk about their infidelities and brushes with the law."

  “I guess you're right."