Voices in the Wardrobe

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Maybe she’s got relatives I don’t know about,” Charlie told the patronizing voice in her head. Maggie had a brother and a sister. The sister in Michigan got stuck with the care for their ailing mother for so many years she no longer spoke to her siblings. The brother ran dive boats for tourists in Hawaii. Maggie’s last communication with either of them had been at their mother’s funeral. It was not cordial. “Maybe her friends at work will help out some more.”

  A featured article on Mitch Hilsten graced the Union-Tribune as well, rife with “filmspeak” that some reporter had picked up on TV or at a conference like this one. Moira Moriarty, dusky, smooth, and perfect, oval face, oval eyes, looked so tiny standing between Mitch Hilsten and Samuel Houston who would play the gutsy CIA agent. He was in the process of growing one of those short beards that encircle the mouth. Mitch was not very tall—five ten, eleven at the most. Moira was very small and her leading man could appear very leading in contrast.

  Moira would certainly look the part of a beautiful Bedouin princess—did Bedouins even have princesses? Didn’t matter. The real problem was that Moira was, in real life, an Irish Jew from the Bronx and though coaches had trained most of the accent out of her speech, traces lingered. Charlie had visions of movie theaters blowing up all around the globe.

  Jane of the Jungle was the CIA agent’s fond term for her and already her real name was being linked romantically with both Sam Houston and Mitch Hilsten. Made good press. There was also a smaller picture of Charlie and Mitch squinting in the exhaust of the metallic blue Dodge Ram as the valet roared off outside Le Crustacione de la Mer night before last. “But the famous actor-turned-director continues to dine with his previous girlfriend, Charlie Greene, a Hollywood agent, at C & M on Wilshire.”

  On this morning’s panel were Charlie, the two sharks, Sarah Newman—a story editor from Troll Productions—and Dr. Howard moderating. Attendees packed the sizable room and stood against the walls in back and some sat in the aisles. Keegan Monroe sat front row center. On one side of him sat Jerry Parks, the reporter who’d chased Charlie through the halls and pebbled paths of the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol yesterday and written the article on Judith Judd in this morning’s paper.

  On the other side of Keegan, Kenny Cowper/Kenneth Cooper smirked up at her. All she needed now was for Mitch Hilsten to walk into the room and she’d wet her tuxedo.

  The assembled consisted mostly of males, probably eighty percent or more. The moderator’s questions centered almost exclusively on how to circumvent the security at agencies and studios to get material inside to be considered. The sharks proudly announced the lack of security at their offices. They worked solo with an office assistant for scheduling, did their own reading, and were not tied down by agency-like procedures. They agreed on most everything, but treated each other with loathing and disdain.

  Sarah explained she had an assistant and accepted only agented material. Charlie explained hers was a small agency where she was the lone literary agent and others handled actors, speakers, minor athletes, commercial artists, even some ministers and circus performers. She had an assistant and two outside readers and they were all months behind. The readers culled most of the material, sent the rest to Charlie’s assistant who culled most of the rest, and she saw maybe two percent of the original submissions. Out of that she might take none or perhaps find a home for one.

  “You must understand the supply far outweighs the demand, and that most of the writing in Hollywood is assigned. I spend much of my time handling the latter, like Keegan here. The chances against my selling your screenplay are astronomical. But every now and then I can sell you on the basis of what you send me. I can rarely, but sometimes help you become one of those assigned to write or help to write a screenplay. And sometimes I’ll send the writer’s work on to a small independent film maker who might not make anybody any money but who might gain the writer some credits upon which to build a career.”

  “That’s why you want an independent agent. With me your dreams are safer,” said one of the sharks.

  “With me, your checkbook is safer. Remember the showbiz cliché, don’t give up your day job. Writing is showbiz, not art. A very few manage to make showbiz art as Keegan did with Open and Shut. It took many years of hard work and a lot of luck, even for him.”

  “You sure know how to put a damper on enthusiasm,” Kenny Cowper, a.k.a. Kenneth Cooper, said as he caught up with her in the hallway after she’d finally escaped the auditorium and handed out the business cards of the outside readers—only their PO boxes printed on them, hoping they didn’t up and quit on her. “I mean, why did you come if you weren’t looking for writers?”

  “Only for Keegan. Most of my writers are freelance advertising types, if truth be known.”

  “They work for ad agencies.”

  “The good ones have their own agent to see they don’t get screwed.”

  “You are such a negative person. How can you represent anybody?”

  “It’s called survival, Cowper.” She may have been depressing but she’d turned down too many lunch invitations to count, requests for home and office phone numbers, or for her assistant’s at second best. During the question and answer sessions she and Sarah had been barraged with the issue of why weren’t they worried that they’d miss the script of a lifetime—worded in many different ways.

  Sarah had summed it up nicely. “I’m more worried I’ll be crushed under the weight of all the submissions I get from agents. Most of my successes come from acquiring film rights to books and letting others hire the screenwriters.”

  The moderator and the sharks snuffled, rolled their eyes. But it was Sarah and Charlie who took the longest to make it to the back of the room to the hallway and they met again in the ladies. “I had to come because of Keegan, but who talked you into this?”

  “My sister married Grant Howard, the leader of this show,” the story editor answered from the stall next door. “I’ve wormed my way out of it for five years, but got caught this time. Did you notice not a word was mentioned that my office is in NYC? Not on the West Coast? I thought you’d blow the whistle on me.”

  “What kind of doctor is Grant Howard?”

  “Nobody ever says and if you ask you get that look and don’t try again.”

  Out at the sink and paper towel dispensers, Charlie asked, “Did you get any feeling for The Rites of Winter?”

  “You know, I just read it when I saw you were on the program. It’s not for us, but you might try Uranus. They’re planning a cable series for the older folks—forty, fifty somethings. It might be a fit.”

  Now Charlie walked along beside her towering author from Iowa, bemused at the fact that someone at one production company would suggest another for something the first rejected. Could Sarah be moving? Was she being fired/downsized?

  Charlie walked. Kenny sort of minced to keep down with her. He had to be six four if he was an inch—and that boy had some inches.

  Charlie!

  Well? “So what are you doing at this conference? Are you going into screenwriting now?”

  “Why should I tell you? You haven’t sold the Myrtle book yet.”

  Actually, you know I think I might have. “There’s some interest, Kenny. Have you continued with it? I mean past the proposal stage?”

  “I’ve finished it, Charlie.”

  Their first mistake was to stop in the middle of the hall and turn toward each other. She, looking way up, trying to stop the satisfied smile breaking her face just as a professional stole a still shot that would complicate her life for a long time to come.

  Oh, boy.

  Nine

  “Whoa girl, you drive a Dodge Ram? Who’d a thought?” Kenny drove his rental, a bright red something-to-ruther.

  He’d been explaining to her why he was at the conference and trying to lay a guilt trip on her for not returning his calls. All the while Charlie was hurrying out to the parking lot, intent upon rushing to the Sea Spa, and postponing him, w
hen she saw more cameras and the ferret from the Union-Tribune sniffing around her truck.

  So, planning to tell her client to shove off, midway through the sentence Charlie changed to, “Kenny? Where’s your car? I need to make a fast getaway.” Studs are suckers for that kind of talk.

  When they were nearly there she thought to mention they’d need to eat before they reached their destination. Charlie couldn’t believe it when he pulled into a Carl’s Junior for lunch. Kenny was a sometime health nut. “But this is junk food.”

  “I’m on vacation. So why that heart-stopping smile when I said I’d finished the Myrtle book? You know, I haven’t felt that good since my mommy told me I’d passed potty training.”

  “I have a nibble on the proposal.”

  “Who?” he said around a loaded burger.

  “Pitman’s.” She tore her burger into ragged halves and passed one over to his side of the table, sneaking a couple of his fries in return. “I just found out Friday. You must have had a boring winter in Iowa to finish it this soon.”

  “They turned down the last one after nibbles.”

  “New editor. This one could be different.” Charlie met this creature last October when she and her mother traveled to Iowa on family matters. And she learned more about family than she’d ever wanted to know. Charlie had grown up thinking she’d been adopted from an agency in Boulder where she was raised and her daughter born. She and Libby had dark, almost black eyes in stark contrast to their light hair, Libby a platinum blonde and Charlie’s hair with more of a bronze shade. But when Charlie visited Myrtle, Iowa for the first and she vowed last time, she found at least a fourth of the people there had the same color eyes—including Kenny Cowper who wrote under the name of Kenneth Cooper.

  “Nice old Iowa” had been something of a surprise. And so had Kenny Cowper.

  “So tell me again why you are at this conference?”

  “I thought an exposé on charlatans in the entertainment industry might be a possible article. And I thought it would be fun to hand deliver a completed book manuscript to my new agent.”

  “You’ve already got an assignment for this article.”

  “Right. But you get to check out the contract. I have divorced Jethro Larue for good.”

  As Kenny had predicted, Jeth Larue, a fairly formidable New York literary agent, had not liked Kenny’s proposal for a book dealing largely with the conundrum of nursing homes and those who dwell interminably and helplessly within. Jeth had a mother so incarcerated whom he couldn’t bear to visit and found the whole subject distasteful. He was also of the age where he was the next generation up for this lovely existence.

  Kenny’s title for it was The Curse of Myrtle, Iowa, the United States, and The Developed World. Neither he nor Charlie thought that would be the final title but both were too involved in the problem it posed to think up the perfect one and Charlie figured this title would entice enough curiosity to get a close examination. If accepted, it would be his fifth published book, plus he had credits as an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald and at least ten article credits with major news magazines.

  Plus which he was way more than presentable, too way more, and the guy could pitch, an indispensable asset in an industry in which major decision makers too often have little inclination to read. Agents and editors read what their assistants pass on and then must pitch to higher levels to wheedle contracts. That’s one of the reasons why new material is often presented as similar to the latest bestseller or star in a genre or category. Plus, the stud had business savvy. His first agent didn’t know the half there. Kenny’d been born and raised in Myrtle, moved to Florida, and returned to save its only pool hall. He’d renamed it Viagra’s. It was a hit.

  “Does that sudden photo op back at the Islandia mean I get my picture with you in the paper instead of Hilsten tomorrow?”

  There was only one official San Diego sheriff’s car in the parking lot at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, but quite a few other cars. And when Charlie and Kenny entered, after ignoring Dashiell the gatekeeper, the place seemed to be humming. No one at the front desk or in the office, or in Maggie’s room, but they followed sound to find her in a mirrored gym on the pool level sweating out an exercise-dance routine to the rhythms of Swank Swill with twenty-five, maybe thirty others. Unlike the screenwriters’ conference, all but three of those participating here were female.

  “Thought you said the place was almost closed down by the murder.” Kenny inspected the weightlifting and torture machine room next door through the windows. “They got some cool stuff here.”

  Raoul had a few sacrifices in the pool and several others sat on the side watching. Maggie’d waved at them from the distressed line in the gym. Charlie said, “Let’s go find either the VanZants, the law, or Luella Ridgeway. Maggie’s smiling so I’m not rescuing her yet.”

  “You don’t make a lot more sense than my last agent.”

  They found Detective Solomon in the auditorium with Caroline and Warren VanZant.

  “Well, here’s our famous Hollywood agent. In my minuscule experience of such things, I thought agents kept a lower profile. Our Union-Tribune is usually more immune to celebrity. And who is this gentleman?”

  “I’m her bodyguard.” Kenny Cowper bent to smile sardonically upon them all.

  “He’s one of my authors, Kenneth Cooper,” Charlie said. “Caroline, I just saw Maggie and she seemed happy. Have you adjusted her drugs some more?”

  “Drugs?” Solomon looked away from Kenny to study the Spa’s proprietor.

  “Medications,” Charlie corrected and tried to smile with conviction.

  But Caroline VanZant was still torturing her neck looking up at Kenny. “Kenneth Cooper? The author?”

  “Never heard of him,” Solomon said. “Now if we can get past the celebrity thing here, I want to know again exactly who was where when Judith Judd died. Not the clientele, I’m talking staff, you, your son.”

  “Sorry, talk to you later,” and Charlie motioned the author out of the room and down the hall to the eddy-pool deck where every pool was filled with Jacuzzi bubbles, suffering cucumbers, bubbling brooks, and thunder in the distance. Charlie finally recognized what was so strange about Solomon’s appearance: he had no eyebrows.

  Dashiell squinted suspicion from the palms at the head of the pools. Charlie ignored him and walked to the windows, looking for Luella among the paths and plantings and cottages below. There was a long sweep of sea and she even got a glimpse of an edge of the famous marina. She didn’t know “sea talk” but there was apparently an inlet or something at the north side of this promontory or point, whatever, that allowed the gentling of the swells that crashed against its end.

  “You got a problem with that?” Kenny Cowper said behind her and she turned to see him leaning over Dashiell.

  Charlie caught herself before she said, “Kenny, leave it.”

  She’d watched this dog food commercial one of her clients had snared, too many times. It was about training dogs to stop inappropriate behavior of all sorts apparently but when used to keep a dog from Pooch Svelte, it elicited a snarl from a Chihuahua, a Doberman, and something shaggy in between.

  She led her author off by the arm, but the bald jerk brought them both up short. “He’s a sex addict. Be careful, Miss Greene.”

  And good old Kenny had to turn around and retort, “Oh yeah? Well, she’s a pervert.”

  And several sufferers made the mistake of trying to sit up and bend tight seaweed wraps and cucumbers to get a look at such an extraordinary couple and the eddy pools were much disturbed.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” Charlie groused when they walked outside among the sheds and paths and cottages. She’d seen some people wandering out here when she’d slipped upstairs to check Maggie’s room. Luella’s bag was still there and her Lexus in the parking lot.

  “Wait a minute—is this the spa where that lady doctor was murdered?” Kenny asked now.

  “Yeah, and m
y friend Maggie found her and when I got back she said she did it because she wanted to die. She’s gone wacko on us.”

  “Did she kill the doctor?”

  “She’s suicidal, not homicidal. And on and off. Depression and prescription drugs. Screwed-up hormones.”

  “Rough.”

  “I was going to take her back to the Islandia with me, but now I don’t know.”

  “I’ve heard women are pretty much ruled by their hormones. Must be really rough for women like you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Kenny started off down a path to a row of small, mostly one-room cottages with porches. He looked in windows, tried some doors—the investigative reporter in him perking up. Most of the cottages appeared empty of furnishings. Two had wicker chairs on the porch that the wind had blown over. The sea breeze smelled wet and salty, tried to tug her hair from its navy blue tie down. The sun was dry and hot and forced Charlie to unbutton her tuxedo jacket. That reminded her of the other Tuxedo in her life and in her house and the effects of Science Diet mixed with Diazepam.

  “You know that blouse is illegal?”

  “Be careful, it’s easy to get lost out here.”

  “Tell me about it. There’s not a straight path to anywhere, inside or out. Is there a point to that, I wonder? This sure isn’t Iowa.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You know you send mixed signals?”

  Charlie was happy to hear her cell go off in her purse. She could turn her back on him. It was Ronald Dorland, a fairly new client with a book out last year. He’d had some minor success with filmwriting assignments before that and was astonished when she answered instead of her voice-mail message. He couldn’t understand the first royalty statement for his book.

  “You don’t want to know,” Charlie told him.

  “But I do. I took it to my accountant, Charlie. He didn’t understand it either.”

  “Join the crowd. Let’s see, that would be Bootstrap, a subsidiary of Wonderhouse who just merged with Dallywood, a subsidiary of Sherman/Sturtz just bought out by a German brewery whose name I can’t pronounce whose parent company makes titanium nuts and bolts and body parts for repairs.” Charlie should know, she had one of their plates implanted in her neck. “And itself part of a conglomerate specializing in diversification run by a management firm—SORRI.”