“I’m heading back. We’re supposed to break for lunch at one,” Penelope shouted over the dryer. Penelope slipped her iPhone out of the back pocket of her jeans to check the time. It was only nine thirty but she already felt like she had worked a twelve-hour day.
“Thanks for the orange,” Arlena said distractedly, still staring at the script.
Kelley mouthed “thank you” to Penelope as she left the trailer.
Penelope could always tell when the cast and crew had gone to work because the lot became very quiet, in stark contrast to when everyone was in between shoots, milling around, talking and laughing or meeting in the tent to eat. She knew the office staff was working in the production trailers, but other than that, it would be a ghost town until they finished filming. Penelope let the staff play music on the truck, as long as it didn’t bother anyone else, and she found herself humming along to some of the songs as she worked, overseeing the crew while they prepared lunch.
Penelope was deboning a large slab of salmon and using her knife to portion out pieces for lunch when the two-way radio clipped to the pocket of her apron chirped. “Catering, come in?”
Penelope wiped her hands on a prep towel before grabbing the radio and responding, “This is catering, go ahead.”
“Sal is requesting Penelope Sutherland report to set,” the voice said.
Penelope stared at the radio for a second, trying to figure out why the director of the movie would want the head caterer on the film on set. She pressed the button and said, “Do you need the craft table refreshed? Because I can get—”
“Negative. Not a craft issue. Sal wants to see Penelope Sutherland on set right away.”
Penelope looked at the radio again and back down at her salmon. She pressed the button again. “I’m on my way.”
“What’s up, Boss?” Francis said from behind her.
“I’m not sure. Do me a favor and finish this up? Five ounce fillets. Don’t weigh them, just eyeball it.”
“Sure thing,” Francis said, moving to the sink to wash his hands.
Penelope walked through the lot to the warehouse that the crew was using for the interior scenes of the movie. The set designers had created several spaces inside, designed to look like various rooms or locations. She knew from talking with Arlena the night before, and from glancing at the call sheet that morning that they were downstairs in the space they’d created to look like a coffee shop.
When Penelope entered the space, the script supervisor met her at the entryway to the coffee shop with an anxious expression on her face. “Penelope, right?” she asked quickly. When Penelope nodded she said, “What happened this morning?”
Penelope tried to figure out what she was asking. “What do you mean? Did something happen at breakfast?” She looked over the woman’s shoulder and saw Arlena watching them, also looking very anxious.
The young girl thrust a stack of script pages at her, which looked like the ones she’d been handed earlier outside of Arlena’s trailer. “Where did you get these?”
Penelope looked at the pages, noticing Arlena’s scribbled handwriting around the edges, where she’d made notes to herself. “I didn’t. One of the PAs handed them to me outside makeup.”
Sal Marco walked over and Penelope’s stomach dropped. He looked angry and that’s when she noticed everyone on the set was staring at her, and no one else was saying a word. “Who was it?”
“I’m not sure, he was bundled up and I only leaned out for a second. He said there were new pages for Arlena, that’s it.” Penelope looked at Arlena and held her palms up in the air. “That’s all that happened.”
Sal sighed and shook his head. “Now we’re behind, because someone has decided to play a prank on me. Where these lines came from I have no idea. I never approved any of these changes. It took us ten minutes to figure out why Arlena was getting all of her lines wrong. The kid behind the coffee counter with one line was doing a better job than my lead actress.”
Arlena said, “Sorry, Sal.”
“It’s okay, we’ll reset and start again.” Sal turned to Penelope. “You sure you didn’t recognize the guy?”
Penelope looked down at her shoes and put her hands on her hips, trying to remember. “I didn’t see his face, but if it was one of the assistants, I don’t know all of them by name.”
Sal stared at her and pulled the radio from his belt. Pressing the button, he said, “Have all of the interns and PAs report to set immediately.” He clicked off the radio and said to Penelope, “You’re going to point him out to me.”
The script supervisor watched him go and then turned to give Penelope one last shrug. It was her job to maintain continuity of the story during filming, so Penelope figured she got a good talking to by Sal before they figured out what had happened.
A few minutes later Penelope eyed the line of young people in front of her.
“No one will admit to delivering those phony script pages to Arlena,” Sal said. “Tell me who you saw and I’ll make sure they never set foot on another movie set.”
After walking up and down twice in front of them, Penelope said, “I can’t tell. It doesn’t look like any of them. He was taller, I think.”
Sal sighed, blowing out some frustration. “We’ve wasted enough time on this already. Let’s take five and start again.” He looked at Arlena. “Let’s do the scene like we originally rehearsed.”
Arlena nodded eagerly and the script supervisor rushed over, handing her what Penelope assumed were the correct script pages to refresh her memory.
Sal turned to Penelope. “You can go.”
Chapter 4
It was almost lunchtime the following day and Penelope was chopping flat leaf parsley to garnish a large tray of beautifully roasted salmon. She arranged lemon wedges around the edges of the tray and sprinkled the parsley, pressing on the fillets here and there with her finger to test for doneness. She had pulled one off to taste before plating them and she knew that they were perfect: medium rare and crispy on the outside. The kitchen truck smelled of roasted salmon, potatoes and fresh herbs, one of the best smells on earth, as far as Penelope was concerned.
“These are ready,” she said to Francis. He knelt down so his shoulder was level with the steel countertop and slid the tray onto it. He stood up and headed out of the kitchen truck and into the catering tent to place the fish on the serving table where the first of the crew had already lined up. They were also serving lemon and herb roasted chicken and veggie lasagna accompanied with roasted butternut squash, new potatoes with rosemary, wild rice and mushrooms and Brussels sprouts roasted with garlic. As always there were five cold salads to choose from including arugula and goat cheese, mixed baby greens, an Italian salad with Romaine lettuce, radicchio, and plain old iceberg for those crew members who preferred a basic salad.
Penelope walked up and down behind the long food tables as the guests came through, serving themselves from the steam tables and iced down salad bar. She loved watching the reactions of the diners when they saw her food for the first time. She had to admit it was fun to see what her more famous guests thought, the actors, directors and producers, but she also loved cooking for the teamsters, carpenters, grips and production office employees.
“Good job, Penelope.” Sal had noticed her behind the line as he came back over for seconds.
“Thanks, Sal. Glad you enjoyed it,” Penelope said. “Do you have any requests this week? Maybe I can make up for what happened earlier.”
“Sal, don’t make her do any extra work,” a thin blond woman strolled up behind him, her plate piled high with fresh spinach and a few strawberries.
Sal waved his hand at her. “This is my wife, Paige.”
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Marco,” Penelope said.
“You too. Thanks for lunch,” Paige added before popping
a strawberry into her mouth and walking to one of the dining tables. She had a dog-eared paperback tucked under her arm with different colored sticky notes marking various pages. “Sal, I made some notes on dialogue I wanted to show you.”
He nodded at her quickly and then turned his attention back to Penelope. “You think you could do Italian one night? Maybe on Friday, kind of a celebration of our first week finished?”
“Sure. Let me work out a menu.”
“I know you can cook. Hopefully you can make a nice marinara for us.” He scooped some baby red potatoes onto his plate next to his second helping of chicken.
A faint police siren sounded in the distance, which wasn’t unusual in New Jersey on any given day, but after all of the police activity in her life recently, Penelope tilted her ear towards it. The radio hooked onto Penelope’s back pocket and the one clipped to Sal’s belt both came to life at once. One of the production assistants spoke nervously over the crackling walkie-talkie.
“On set EMT has been called to Main Street location. There’s been an accident. One of the principals is down.”
A crowd ran from the lot towards picturesque Main Street in South Point, New Jersey. Large spotlights up on tall stands and a tent set up for Sal’s team blocked the sidewalk. Traffic had been diverted from the street during a three-hour window that day for the crew. Several members of the crew milled around nervously in the middle of the street, but they were all looking in the same general direction.
Penelope ran alongside Sal who kept saying “Are you kidding me? Oh shit.” He was squeezing the radio tight in his fist, his knuckles white against his thick red fingers.
Penelope could see a group of people gathered around someone lying on the ground in the middle of the street. She tried to see who it was through the various arms and legs blocking her view.
“It’s Arlena,” Sal said hurriedly, picking up his pace.
Penelope sped up, shoving her way past a few crew members standing by one of the cameras. She vaguely noticed a group of onlookers standing on the curb on the other side of the traffic barricades, gawking at all of the activity. A few of them had their phones out, recording the scene. The movie cameras were in position but it didn’t look like they were rolling.
“Arlena!” Penelope shouted as she made her way to her friend lying prone in the street, her head propped up on a crumpled tan blazer. Penelope’s heart thudded through her sweater and her legs had turned rubbery. Sam Cavanaugh, the famous actor and Arlena’s co-star, was holding Arlena’s hand. Penelope could tell from his matching pants that it was his suit jacket wadded into a ball under her head. He was on his knees, his face inches from Arlena’s, whispering softly to her as she lay motionless, her legs and arms flat on the pavement. On the other side of Arlena were the movie’s two on-set EMTs. The lead EMT, a tiny woman with blond hair, was holding up Arlena’s eyelid and shining a small flashlight at her pupil.
“What the hell happened?” Sal shouted.
Several members of the crew stepped forward and started talking at once.
“Came out of nowhere…”
“…mowed her down from behind…”
“…she didn’t see him coming…her head hit the ground…”
The lead EMT brushed her bangs out of her eyes with the back of her latex-gloved hand. “Bring me a long board and a cervical collar,” she said to her assistant. He jumped up and hurried to the ambulance, grabbing the items she requested. When he returned, she took the collar from him and carefully placed it around Arlena’s neck. Then the two of them moved her onto the narrow board, being careful not to jostle her. Sam released Arlena’s hand right before they hoisted her up and rolled her into the back of the idling ambulance. Sal and Penelope stood by his side, Sal resting a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“We’re taking her to the Medical Center over on Baker Street. Want to rule out a concussion,” the EMT said. “She has a welt here, probably the point of impact.” She indicated a place just above her own hairline. “Could be only a bad fall but when they lose consciousness, we have to check them out to be safe.”
Sal nodded. Penelope felt sick to her stomach and didn’t quite trust her legs to stay steady. “Should I go with her?”
The EMT shook her head. “It’s not necessary. We’re taking precautions. She’ll probably have a bad headache and a bump on her head. Like I said, I’d like the doctor to rule out anything more serious.” With that she turned on her heel and climbed into the back of the ambulance. Her assistant shut the door behind her and jogged over to the driver’s side door, hopped inside and quickly drove away with Penelope’s best friend and Sal’s leading lady tucked away inside.
“Christ. I cannot believe this is happening today,” Sal yelled, letting his anger overtake his worry. He spun around to glare at the mostly silent crew, still gathered in a loose huddle near the scene of the accident. Penelope and Sam stood dazed where the ambulance had been. Sam’s face was white underneath his tan camera makeup and he twisted his crumpled jacket in his fists.
“Sam, what happened?” Sal asked him, turning back to his leading man, grasping his muscular bicep. Sal spoke gently, trying to shake Sam from his shock and get him to focus.
“Ah, um…” Sam searched for words, not looking directly at them but all around instead, like he was trying to find his words on invisible cue cards. “We were running lines, walking our cues and then,” he drifted for a second, “and then she got run over by a golf cart. It’s crazy because I heard it speed up behind us right before…”
“Who was it?” Sal urged.
Sam held his palms up. “I didn’t see a face, whoever it was had on a ski mask, and the back window was covered with something, like black plastic, maybe a garbage bag, so I couldn’t see after they passed.”
“Someone ran over my leading lady and no one knows who it was?” Sal was shouting again now. “Do you know how much money this is costing me?”
The crew members seemed to shrink, shoulders sagging as they glanced at each other for an answer.
“You,” Sal waved over the Key Grip.
A thin man in a puffy jacket reluctantly walked over to Sal.
“You were hanging the camera?” Sal waved at a small crane on the other side of the street that held a camera, rigged to film a tracking shot.
The grip nodded, screwing up his blond features. “Yeah, Sal, but I didn’t see what happened. It was over in two seconds…I saw the cart hauling out of here. It was one of ours, though, that I know for sure.”
“How did you not see what happened? You had a bird’s-eye view of the street.” Sal paced angrily back and forth, clenching his fists. “The barricades are up. They were rehearsing, the street was cleared of traffic and there was no one else around. And what? Someone decided to drive through my movie? Not only that, but drive through and hit my lead actress and not even stop to see if she’s been injured?”
“I’m sorry, Sal,” the grip said. “I wish I could tell you what happened.” He glanced at his fellow crew mates, most of who were attempting not to make eye contact with him.
Sal laughed darkly, shaking his head. “You know what? If Arlena is not back here one hundred percent fine and ready to work tomorrow, I’m holding all of you personally responsible.” Sal stomped away angrily from his crew.
“Sam, are you okay?” Penelope asked, raising a hand to touch his shoulder but pulling back at the last minute.
Sam looked at her, still dazed. “I guess so.”
“Do you think someone did this on purpose?”
Sam nodded quickly. “I heard the cart speed up, and then they went even faster to get away. Didn’t stop or hesitate once.”
Penelope’s stomach did a slow turn. “Someone on the set, then,” she mumbled to herself. “Someone was aiming for her.”
Chapter 5
“Ouc
h. Ouch. Ouch.”
Penelope could hear Arlena’s voice coming from a room at the end of the hall. They were on the top floor of South Point Medical Center, in the most private room the facility could offer. The rubber soles of her Doc Marten boots squished against the linoleum floor as she made her way through the quiet hallway towards room 608. She had Arlena’s large Marc Jacobs tote bag slung over one shoulder and her long black coat draped over her arm. She’d grabbed them both from Arlena’s trailer before she’d left for the hospital.
“Ouch!” Arlena said once again. Penelope poked her head into the room and saw a short Indian man in a white coat pressing gently on Arlena’s scalp in different places. A plastic badge that read Dr. Amit Singh was clipped to his jacket pocket. Arlena’s shiny black hair was fanned out on the pillow and she had dark red lipstick on. If Penelope hadn’t known about the accident she might think Arlena was filming a scene for a medical drama on Lifetime.
“Miss Madison, you’re going to be fine,” Dr. Singh said. “I’m releasing you back to work tomorrow. I’d like you to go home now and rest until then.” His voice was soft and had a soothing lyrical quality to it.
“But we’re filming until eight tonight and it’s—”
“Tomorrow, Miss Madison. I don’t want you to run the risk of falling if you become dizzy and faint. You could reinjure yourself. Rest now and you’ll get better sooner.” He gave Arlena a stern look. His phone began to buzz in his pocket and he pulled it out to glance at the screen.
“I can take you home,” Penelope said from the doorway.
Doctor Singh glanced up at Penelope. “Good. You will take her home and make sure she rests. No disco clubs tonight.”
Murder on a Silver Platter (A Red Carpet Catering Mystery Book 1) Page 3