He seemed to be heading right for them, but veered off toward another row of a few cars, where he set a large bag on the hood of a red Mustang convertible and pulled a key from his pocket.
He opened the trunk and Jane could see that it was almost full of bags and boxes. He adjusted a few things, and carefully wedged the bag in. Tim looked up at the slam of the trunk’s lid and called over to him.
“Gary, hey,” said Tim, waving.
The man had been so lost in thought, he started at hearing his name. When he looked up, his face was completely blank.
“Tim Lowry. Bix was taking me through the prop warehouse yesterday.”
“Oh man, sorry I didn’t recognize you.” The man in black walked over, his hand extended. He was smiling, but still looked a million miles away. “How’s Bix?”
Tim told him she would be in the hospital until after the arm surgery, but as far as he knew she would recover.
“Yeah, I called last night and talked to Skye. Sounded like she’s stepped up. Probably nice for her to be able to pay back and all.”
Jane was amazed that everyone who was involved with the studio assumed that everyone knew everything about everyone. She liked it.
“You think Skye feels she has to…you know…pay back?” Jane said, trying to sound casual and knowing at the same time.
“Bix has been taking care of Skye for fifteen years or so. Don’t you remember all those stories about Skye when she was on S and L? Sandy Pritikin tried to dump her from the show every season. When she was twelve and starting out, she was just a brat, but every year there was something else. She gained weight—you know puberty.” He lowered his voice. “Sandy pitched a fit about her eating her way out of show business and Bix convinced Sandy that they could handle it in a story line and be heroes for embracing real family problems and concerns in a comedy. Show won two Emmys that year. Writing and acting. Sandy’s portrayal as a sensitive and loving father won it for him. Well deserved, too. That jerk playing a nice guy was the acting feat of the century.”
Tim introduced Jane to Gary Check, the head of props for the studio.
“Yeah, Jane Wheel,” said Gary, nodding. “I’ve heard of you, right?”
Jane started to shake her head, but stopped herself, considering what Belinda St. Germaine might advise. Not to mention Detective Oh. Agree with everyone, Belinda had advised. Your agent can demand the change later.
“Maybe,” she said with a smile. If you listen more than you talk, you will hear more, is what Oh might advise in this situation.
“Yeah, you’re in a movie, or no…Bix is doing a movie about you…yeah. It’s not on the board yet, but I think I’ve seen some tags. You must have a go-getter for a designer.”
Jane squeezed Tim’s arm, hoping that he interpreted it as a warning not to mention that a bogus tag was what led Bix to opening the box
“What kind of stuff have they found for it?” asked Jane, trying to look like she might be a rising star or at least the kind of person a rising star might want to play. “Remember where you’ve seen the tags?”
“I see hundreds of those a day,” he said, shaking his head, then he laughed. “I do remember seeing a few of yours that cracked me up, though. We’re doing an inventory.” He sighed and ran his hand across his face. “We’re always doing an inventory. Too much stuff, not enough space…you know the routine. I’ve got some of my people weeding out a lot of the trash.
They filled three boxes with junk—lamp parts, broken glasses, scratched-up plastic dishes…just crap, you know. And the boxes were all by the door to be taken to the trash. Has to be disposed of properly, you know?”
Tim and Jane shook their heads. “Recycled, you mean?” asked Jane.
“Studio name is printed on the bottom of everything. Property of…you know. Nobody’s allowed to go through the dump-ster and take stuff.”
“What a shame,” said Tim. “What a treasure trove…movie and TV props…from the set of…”
“Exactly. Can you imagine the market for that stuff on eBay? People’d be running off to Target, buying up cheap can-dleholders, stamping the studio name on them, and passing them off as Gilmore Girls props. They probably do it already anyway.”
“You found a Jane Wheel tag in the boxes of junk?” asked Jane.
“Not in…Jane Wheel tags were on the boxes of junk. Somebody thought the throwaways were just right for your movie. What’s it about? Landfill?”
“Pretty much,” said Tim, nodding.
“What happened to the boxes?” asked Jane. Gary didn’t know about the tag on the box that exploded. These boxes could have been rigged, too. Jane looked at Tim. They would have to warn him. It didn’t matter how adamantly Jeb had warned Bix and the other members of the B Room off calling in the police, Jane couldn’t allow the risk of another explosion or fire at the studio.
“I went through them thoroughly, thinking one of the kids had missed something in there. Called Bix and Lou, and Lou sent a message back that we could go ahead and toss the stuff. Said the tagging was premature anyway. If they needed junk for a rummage sale, they could find it. You can always find junk, you know?”
They nodded. They knew. Back in their car, Jane watched Gary Check drive away.
“What do you think he was putting in his trunk?” asked Jane.
“Remains of his lunch,” Tim said,” or a bit of rejected inventory being disposed of into Gary’s house?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” said Jane. “Could you imagine letting any of that stuff go to the dump?”
“No. But we don’t really know. He’s in the middle of it all day. That’s the thing. If you work in the ice-cream store all summer, by August you don’t want any more ice cream,” said Tim.
“Whoever started that rumor?” asked Jane. One summer, between her freshman and sophomore years in college, her father, Don, had pulled a few strings and gotten her a job at an ice-cream factory in Kankakee, where she packed Popsicles and ice-cream bars eight hours a day. The old-timers had trained her and she had finally gotten fast enough to be ahead of the machine that delivered the frozen confections to be packed. She could grab a bar, tear off the wrapper and bite off half, throw the rest away, and be ready to scoop the next handful and stuff them into the box. All day long, scoop, stuff, eat, scoop, stuff, eat. At night when Jane returned home, exhausted and numb, Nellie treated her with grudging respect and the closest words to praise that Nellie had ever spoken to her.
“At least now you know what work is,” she’d say. “You’re not sitting around reading like a lazy bum.”
And what did Jane do each night after being nurtured by Nellie’s version of maternal concern? She ate ice-cream bars. If the work hadn’t been so physically demanding and if it hadn’t been the hottest summer on record so that her appetite for anything besides something cold vanished, she would have gained fifty pounds. Just thinking about it now gave her a taste for an Eskimo Pie.
“I don’t get why somebody tagged the boxes of junk. I mean, the box that got Bix was placed in the aisle of Depression glass…where she would look if she was in the prop shop. And anybody who saw the passes for the day would know that Bix was going to bring a guest through,” said Tim.
“Wait a second,” said Jane. She found the phone number of Bix’s hospital room and dialed. “I want to find out if Lou Piccolo was a writer in the B Room. Nobody’s mentioned him as a…No answer. Skye is probably in the family waiting room, but I don’t want to call and ask her and end up telling her about Lou over the phone.”
Jane told Tim to drive directly to the hospital.
“ We won’t beat the B Room there, I’m sure they’ve already set up camp. It’s odd, isn’t it, how they move as a pack?” asked Jane.
“More than odd. Spooky. How did you ever date that guy Jeb Gleason? He’s one step away from telling everybody to drink the Kool-Aid.”
Jane would have liked to defend Jeb, but right now she couldn’t think of anything about him that was
defensible. In college, he was handsome and charismatic. He gave off a kind of smoky cool—dry ice. Steamy, but cold. All irresistible qualities to a girl from Kankakee, Illinois, in a twentysomething campuswide world.
That was it. It was still college here in L.A. Jane realized what irritated her about Jeb and the crowd surrounding Bix was that, in a very short time, she could see them as a clique…a campus or sorority or a fraternity clique. They all buzzed around Jeb as the leader, and they all stuck together. Last night, in Bix’s hospital room, they were all pairing off to go home, watching over each other. Or just watching each other. Didn’t they have families or other lives? They had worked together on a successful show years ago. Why were they still going to the Pasadena flea market together on weekends? No spouses? No children? No real-world commitments? Did working in Hollywood mean you never had to grow up?
Tim drove to the hospital and on the way, since she wasn’t needed for navigation, Jane tried to put together the pieces to the puzzle in front of her. Someone rigged a box in the prop shop that was baited for Bix with a Jane Wheel tag. A gaggle of television writers, joined at their hips, were being threatened by someone. Someone connected to them was murdered at the Pasadena City College Flea Market.
“Who would target a group of television writers?” she asked Tim.
“Disgruntled television watchers?” said Tim.
“If that were the case, we could cut the population of this town in half. Gosh, my dad would have killed the writers who killed off Edith Bunker if he’d had a weapon and if he’d ever bothered to read the credits and find out their names.”
Jane tried to play Detective Oh and ask the next level of question. If she could figure out why, she would know who. Bix and Lou…and maybe, if everything Louise had told her was true, Heck, too, had been the targets so far.
“Tim, you said your name tag was ready for you at the prop warehouse, right?”
Tim nodded and made a left turn onto a one-way street which led to the hospital parking lot.
“Did Bix have a name tag?”
“No, I don’t think so. I had something like a visitor’s pass. There was a sheet out on the table that said I was the guest of Bix Pix Flix.”
“Not just Bix?”
“It was the whole company name.”
“Why have we been assuming that the box was intended for Bix? Could have been Lou who opened that lid. We know now somebody was out to get him,” said Jane.
“The Depression glass. All the shakers in the office. Bix would go down that aisle where the box was planted,” Tim said, swinging the Volvo into a parking spot.
“How do we know the shakers belong to Bix? The first editions are Lou’s. In his office, he had paperweights and letter openers. He was a pack rat. We assumed the glass was Bix’s, but why? Men collect Depression glass, don’t they?”
“Of course,” said Tim. “A client of mine, this guy Sheldon who used to be a dealer? He and his wife have the most extensive collection of green glass I’ve ever seen.”
Jane took a deep breath. She had been viewing all of this through only one lens. She had made the assumption that Bix was a target, but what if it was Lou all along? Jeb’s reaction upon confronting the late Lou Piccolo was hardly that of a grief-stricken friend. Perhaps the whole B Room cabal wanted Lou dead for some reason and Bix was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jane hoped they would get to see Bix before everyone else arrived. She didn’t relish being the one to tell her about Lou Piccolo, but that would be a small trade-off for getting the answers to a few questions without the entire B Room as the audience and bodyguards. And if Bix was still groggy, Jane would talk to Skye. It was clear to Jane that Skye’s loyalty was to Bix more than to the group. And if she had been pacing all morning in the family waiting room, she would be ready for some company.
Jane and Tim stopped outside Bix’s room and listened. There were voices, low and solicitous. Of course the group would be there. They had probably raced over directly from the flea market. Jane tapped lightly on the door and opened it. Skye looked up from where she was sitting in the chair next to the empty bed. She had a knitting project sitting in her lap, something loopy and soft in lavender and pale yellow. The person to whom she had been speaking was just behind the door. Jane turned and saw a man with black curly hair wearing a Yankees baseball cap. He looked from Skye to Jane to Tim, who had walked in behind her, and then back to Skye.
“It’s Jane Wheel and Tim Lowry, so you can put that silly thing away now,” said Skye, shaking her blond hair and wagging a finger at the man.
Jane looked back and saw that the man, who was now looking back and forth from Jane to Tim, looked even more nervous. His hands were shaking. Particularly the one that was holding the gun pointed first at Jane, then at Tim.
“I told you to put that thing away. Jane’s going to help all of us, so you don’t have to shoot your foot off proving you’re a macho guy who can protect us all.”
“Shut up, Skye, I know how to use this if I have to,” said the man in a low raspy whisper.
“Oh, Lou, you couldn’t shoot your way out of a Gucci shopping bag,” said Skye, with that ringing laugh that was her trademark as Celie on Southpaw and Lefty.
“Who?” asked Jane and Tim at the same time.
“Meet Lou Piccolo.The man who wants to buy your story rights,” said Skye. Looking at the gun and once again laughing, she added,” Or else.”
“Okay, I’m officially confused,” said Tim. “I thought you told me that Lou Piccolo—”
“Had red hair? I don’t know where I got that idea,” Jane said, laughing her best okay-I’m-confused-too-but-I’m-trying-something-here-don’t-ask-questions-old-pal sort of laugh. Jane stuck her hand out to shake Lou’s hand, then dropped it when she remembered that people holding guns don’t usually extend themselves for the meet-and-greet.
“Put it away, Lou,” said Skye,” and talk to Jane. She isn’t going to help a crazy man. And you are definitely acting like a crazy man.”
Or a frightened one. Jane could see that his hands, with gun and without, were still trembling. “Maybe I can help, but like all those cliché private eyes in mystery novels, I think a lot better when there isn’t a gun pointed at me.”
Lou put the gun on the floor next to his leather briefcase and took a deep breath. He almost smiled.
“That’s a cliché? I must have used that line a hundred times in He’s for Hire and nobody ever told me that.”
Lou took off his cap and rubbed his head. He looked like someone who hadn’t been sleeping. “Hell of a way to meet someone,” he said, looking at both Tim and Jane. “Sorry. I heard some news that scared the…that scared me…and I guess, according to Skye, getting hold of a gun was an overreaction.”
“The news you heard,” said Jane. “Was it about Bix getting hurt?”
“No,” said Lou. “I mean, that’s terrible, but that was an accident, right?”
Bix must still be in surgery. Or the recovery room. Although Jane didn’t know what kind of personal relationship Bix had with Lou, she felt that he couldn’t have seen her yet. Even if he wasn’t part of the B Room, Bix couldn’t have hidden her own fears about the prop department incident. She looked too vulnerable lying in that hospital.
“Wasn’t it?” Lou looked at Skye. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh heavens, Lou, you come in here like a cowboy, showing off your new toy and acting like you’re Clint Eastwood or something—when am I supposed to tell you what’s really going on?” Skye tossed her head and used her hands to accent the question, and Jane realized a real dilemma for successful television actresses. Everything Skye did was a gesture she had perfected in front of the camera. Every pout and laugh and smile and flip of her hair reminded Jane of Celie on Southpaw and Lefty. It was bad enough that an actress probably couldn’t get away from a popular character she had played in order to get more work; what about finding some kind of real balance in her personal life? Because every
thing about her was associated with a fictional character, how could she ever appear genuine?
“Where is Bix?” asked Tim. “It’s after three. Shouldn’t she be back from surgery?”
Skye shook her head. “Late start,” she said. “I got a different surgeon to come in. Did they really think they were going to get away with any old cutter on Bix?”
Lou patted Skye on the shoulder and nodded, clearly grateful to her that she had taken care of business.
“De Niro’s?” asked Tim.
“Better,” said Skye. “I found the guy who—”
Before she could elaborate on the doctor she had brought in, one of the floor nurses entered and motioned for Skye to come with her.
Lou watched her go, waited for the door to close, then moved closer to Jane and Tim.
“I got to talk fast, Jane, and I’m sorry to lay all of this on you. I just don’t want Skye to hear it. Bix is practically a mom to her. You know about the B Room stuff? The one-for-all-and-all-for-one crap?”
“They obviously take care of each other,” said Jane.
“More than that,” said Lou. “First show Bix and I did together, she could never work late on Tuesdays because it was the night the B Room met—like a frigging secret society or something. Jeb ran meetings and they all kept each other in business. If one of them was on a show that went down, somebody else folded them in, partnered up with them on a script until they got work again. I mean, in some ways it was cool, you know? In this town, you’re as good as your last project, and since we’re all getting older…I mean, we’re of the age that
we’re priced right out of the business. Young guys come into town every day willing to start at minimum and we’re all in a different bracket, so we don’t get hired. We’re like ballplayers, you know? Rookies are ready and willing to come in and take our spots. We’re the creaky old-timers.”
“How did you and Bix team up?” asked Tim.
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