Sex and Death: The Movie: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 6)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Anyway the sister still talks to both of them. So the reason they got estranged is the Florida brother always claimed he hated his brother’s wife—the wife that just died. Meanwhile back in New York, now that his wife’s passed away the New York guy has decided he’s going to head down to Florida, take a vacation, ogle the babes in South Beach, and finally try to patch things up with this long-estranged brother. So he sends the brother a letter telling him he’s coming.” He stopped.

  “Sounds like a good start, Paulie,” Lucy said. “I’m into it.”

  “Right. But it gets better.

  “Since his wife died our guy in New York has been going through a lot of stuff in the attics and closets, jewelry, clothes, old photos, whatever, thinking about their life together, and in the course of doing this attic search, in a secret back corner he happens upon a small wooden box containing a trove of hand-written letters wrapped in a silk ribbon. Never having seen the box or the letters before, naturally he’s curious, so he starts reading—and makes a discovery that shatters his whole idea of what his life has been about.” He stopped, drank coffee.

  “You’ve got my attention, Paulie.” She meant it. “Please, go on.”

  “It turns out that his wife and his brother, who supposedly disliked each other so profoundly that he, the brother, had moved away, were lovers—and had a torrid affair that started during our guy’s courtship of her. Then Morris left, basically, so he wouldn’t break his brother’s heart. Our guy is called Conrad Platznik, by the way, and his brother is Morris Platznik.”

  “Paulie, these are not exactly memorable names.”

  “Actually I think they’re quite memorable—perfect, in fact, because they help evoke a world, Luce. This is the shtetl moved to America, know what I’m saying? Old time New York?”

  “OK, OK, so go on. The plot is thickening nicely, compadre.”

  “So Conrad reads through these letters, which not only begin during the time that he was romancing his future wife with the usual flowers, chocolates, even some schmaltzy poetry—poetry his wife and brother couldn’t help but mock even though she did end up marrying him.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lucy interjected. “Why did she marry him instead of the brother with whom she was supposedly madly in love?”

  “Cowardice? Cold feet? Hunger for security? Because she instinctively knew Conrad was a romantic and Morris a Lothario? That’s another thing you have to figure out, Luce.”

  “So we have some fundamental issues of motivation unresolved. Next question: Does the sister in LA know?”

  “Good one. You answer it that would be another problem solved. So anyways Conrad reads on, and soon he discovers that the love letters—thus the affair—continued for a number of years. His wife, called Madge, short for Margaret, used a PO box to communicate with Morris. It appears from the letters that his wife and his brother even managed the occasional love tryst down in South Beach. Madge took a lot of “business” trips, since she worked as a sales rep for the company that first invented and manufactured electric hair dryers, you know, those big bubble units that you still see in old-fashioned beauty parlors.”

  “Paulie, you’ve got to do better on these details. They’re so mundane.”

  “Hey, inventing the electric hair dryer was a world-changing event, Lucy. Plus it shows how it used to be, when New York was a place things got made instead of guys moving money around.”

  “Whatever. So go on.”

  “You come up with something more interesting I’m willing to consider. But meanwhile, reading on through these letters, Conrad then gets hit with another hammer blow—seemingly the ultimate one—when he finds out that his wife had looked at various rendezvous dates and determined, way back when she was pregnant, that their only child, a girl named Delia, is Morris’s kid rather than Conrad’s.”

  “Jeesh, Paul, this is getting complicated.”

  “Not really, it’s pretty straightforward to this point but I’m not sure how to deal with all the implications. That’s another place I need you, Lucy. All I know is I see the letter in which Morris responds to this news as being the last one he sends her. In this letter, which is dated around 25 years back from the present, Morris agrees, sadly, that they should break it off since they never want Conrad to know that Delia, now a grown and lovely woman of 25, is not really his daughter. Because they know that this—even more than his wife having spent years screwing around with his brother—would break his heart.”

  “Damn, I’ll say. We’re getting deep into the woods here, Paulie.”

  “Hey, I know. And there’s more, which I’ll save for you to read. But since we talked this morning I have convinced the producer to give you four weeks instead of two, should you need them. Only thing is he wants to meet you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He shrugged. “You know, face time, check you out, whatever.”

  “Check me out? I’m a writer, not a show horse or an actress.”

  “Hey, chill, Luce. It’s just a courtesy meet.”

  “So tell me again where you know this Istopher Crisherwood from anyway?” He gave her a strange look. “What?”

  He stood abruptly and threw a ten on the table. She shoved the script into her bag and they headed out. “I told you, he loved my book. We can get into that another time. Meanwhile let’s go see how my crew’s doing. We’re meeting Chris—Christopher Wadsworth is his name, by the way, and he is painfully waspy, my dear, even more so than you—-for drinks and possibly dinner at six, at that new place on Suffolk. You can hear his whole story.”

  “Which new place? There’s only like nine.”

  “The Sayulita Café.”

  “You’re kidding, right? About the name I mean.”

  “Lucy, don’t you know that X Dames and three travel writers and seventeen real estate agents have put that town on the map? There’s even a book by a guy who moved down and built a house. I know six people in New York alone buying land there.”

  “Damn,” she said. “What a bummer.”

  “Everything changes, Luce,” he said. “You think Sayulita’s getting overrun? Just look at this.” He waved at the scene, the streets of old New York fading. They fell silent and strolled a few blocks, immersed in what the Lower East Side was, and was becoming: the last bastion of old immigrant Manhattan, the latest outpost of chic new immigrant Manhattan, the two worlds at war and in love with each other. The cool needing vestiges of the original to maintain the cool, the original needing the cool to pay the rent. A Manhattan stand-off of a kind. In the end, the profiteers would prevail, for they had the biggest guns, or checkbooks, and Frumkin’s Real Classy Hat Store from 1926 would be replaced by Chapeau, a 26-year-old French designer’s store that replicated hats from the thirties and forties for twenty times the price of Frumkin’s Real Classy Hats.

  Around a corner they found the crew on location, working their way through a scene involving Conrad Platznik’s “daughter,” Delia, as she comes to buy pickles and finds her pickle store replaced by a quaint little Italian restaurant with 22-dollar handmade pasta and 37-dollar milkfed free range veal on the menu. This since the last time she was there like a week back. Another old, original pickle store next door, with its varied barrels sporting faded hand-written signs offering different types of pickles, makes a perfect contrast with the chic new trattoria. Lucy saw immediately that the actress playing 25-year old Delia was a stone cold knock-out. “Nice piece of casting, Paulie,” she murmured with a sidelong glance. He barely smirked as they stopped to watch the scene get shot.

  “She’s a beauty, eh? She’s Manny’s….special friend,” he said quietly, a hint of scandal in his tone. “In real life I mean. Since we started. Which is not good.”

  “I thought Manny Carapini was married to that Broadway actress, you know, the one that played…”

  “He is. And his secret new ‘friend’ here, Carole Wainwright, is playing his daughter in my movie.” He waved hello to the crew, which consisted of two
guys keeping oglers and unwanted cars off camera, a woman running the lights, a guy holding a sound boom, the director of photography with his camera set up in the middle of the street, the assistant director, and six unfamous actors in the side-by-side restaurant and pickle store. Power cables ran down the sidewalk from a single mid-size RV parked down the block with the engine running.

  “Only she’s not really his daughter, right? In the story I mean.”

  “Right. He’s her uncle not her dad but neither of them know it just yet.”

  “Where’s Manny?”

  “He’s working on his cable show today. He only shows up here when he’s in a scene. Or he can claim he is, and Carole’s around.” He gave her a look.

  “The plot has thickened unexpectedly.”

  “Both onscreen and off. If you meet Manny’s wife you’ll understand. Aging drama queens are a handful. Besides, look at Carole.”

  She checked out Carole Wainwright. She hovered around 25. She was built, and blonde, and beautiful in an old-style kind of way, with wavy shoulder length hair and lush red lips that pouted naturally, and green eyes that filled at the moment with bewildered sadness at the overnight disappearance of her favorite pickle store, the one her grannie used to bring her to when she was six. The hip young Italian restaurateur who’d taken over the space appeared to be struggling to maintain his arrogance, given the look Carole was giving him. It played well, as did the three stout ladies and the pickleman standing outside the store next door, watching the confrontation. They ran through a few lines, everything went right, and the AD said cut, wrap, let’s chill out, and everybody relaxed.

  “Is there a romance to come right here, with that restaurant guy?” Lucy asked Paul as Carole waltzed down the street towards the trailer. Everybody in the movie, on the movie, or just passing by watched her. She was that kind of blonde. “The eye contact there was pretty intense.”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t…it’s not in the script, Luce. But I see your point. Carole does that to people. I knew when I cast her I’d found the real thing, an old style glamour girl. She was working at Trash and Vaudeville, you know that been-there-forever punk clothes store on St. Mark’s, and I just walked in there on a whim. I was gonna get Raku a Ramones t-shirt to commemorate his six months of dope-free life. There she was, an aspiring punk sales clerk with the face and body of Marilyn Monroe’s better-looking kid sister. She’s a goddess. Damn do I still love New York when shit like that happens.” He lowered his voice. “But this monkey business with Manny has really complicated matters. That’s one reason why I wanted you to see this shoot today. To see her so you’d understand what’s going on. Lucy, Manny wants me to rewrite the story, make Conrad and Morris best friends or even cousins instead of brothers, so that when they find out she’s not his daughter he can have a fling with her and it’ll be part of the story.”

  “That’s a pretty major change, don’t you think? And pretty weird at that.”

  “I know. Incest or not? How do you handle it when someone you’ve raised as a daughter, turns out to be absolutely stunning as well as the sweetest, kindest soul in the world, then you find out she’s not your daughter? I mean they do love each other, that’s a given. But where does this love go? Take it away, Lucy! Having that happen in the movie is one level of difficulty. Having Carole and Manny in the middle of what I seriously suspect is an adulterous affair offscreen notches it up another level, as you can imagine. If his wife gets wind of this it’s going to get really hairy.” He sighed. “Just have a look at the script. Today, if you can. So maybe we can pitch some kind of new angle at Chris tonight. Find a way to make this work and keep Manny happy. Because Manny’s reputation from TV is what’s keeping this thing afloat at the moment. Chris loves the show and having a made guy from TV in his own movie is like, so glamorous. Even if the made guy is a walking antique of an actor who fell into the big time when he should have been stumbling off to Florida to roast in the sun until the sun went down.”

  “Jesus, Paul, I haven’t even read the damned thing and you’re already piling on major rewrite.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, this is what you’re getting paid for. I’ve been living under this pile for three months. I need some company. So get your butt home, pay your rent, get Claud his beauty treatment, then sit your ass down and see what you can do, Luce.” He gave her the soulful eye. “I really need you on this, Lucy.”

  “I guess you do.” She smiled, already conjuring plot lines as she watched the crew break down the set. She could possibly inject a subtle undercurrent of sexuality into the father-daughter relationship from the beginning, even though they don’t initially know they’re not blood relations. That way when they do find out, their “love” turning carnal, if that’s what eventually happens, might not seem totally and creepily incestuous. Also she had to deal with the restaurant Italian who’s also falling for the daughter and thus possibly getting jealous of Conrad the erstwhile dad. Maybe the restaurant Italian poisons Conrad with an arsenic-laced platter of handcrafted penne puttanesca, and frames Morris, the Florida brother who’s the real father. Morris, after all, would have ample reason to knock off his old friend, or brother, if he found out he was schtupping the girl that he’s known all along was his daughter.

  Complications, complications. Was this a murder mystery waiting to happen? Though she hadn’t heard the whole story yet she had to assume Paulie didn’t write it as one, that wasn’t his thing at all—but on the other hand that’s what she was known for, and he had, after all, approached her with the job offer. Maybe they could make it into a mystery while staying within Paulie’s stylistic and philosophical framework. She wondered if the pickle store to restaurant change-over had actually happened, right here, in real life just like in the movie. The restaurant looked real enough, not just made for the movie. And once upon a time there had been more than this one pickle store in this block. Maybe someone “drowns” in a pickle barrel. That would be a first. She was getting jazzed. “Hey, you know what, I’m thinking this might be fun. In any case I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Cool, Luce. So see you at Sayulita, six pm? With pages?” He added hopefully.

  “Pages maybe, notes definitely.”

  “I love you, Lucy,” Paul said. The assistant director approached. “I gotta kibbitz here, Luce. Thanks a lot, sweetie.”

  “See you tonight.” She took off, head buzzing with scenarios. The movies!

  CHAPTER TWO

  GET ME REWRITE

  Lucy opened the carved, bright red Mexican door of the Café Sayulita, and the first thing she saw stopped her in her tracks. Plastered on a wall across the room was a huge photomural of the Sayulita beach and surfing wave, shot from somewhere in the vicinity of El Costeño Restaurant on the sand at the foot of the cobbled street leading from the plaza to the beach. A grande version of this wave—Sayulita on steroids—had been the location of the X Dames surfing contest, in that weeklong stretch Lucy spent down there writing for the show. Lucy’s friend Sandra Darwin had died beneath a Sayulita wave. Lucy nearly had.

  And yet as she looked and remembered, in spite of the death-vibe that would always be part of Sayulita for her, she thought, take me there. November approached and soon winter would nail them all to the wall, while in Sayu the sun bore down warm and sweet, the pelicans in warlike squadrons rode the wind rising off the waves, and the beach boys drank Pacifico by the liter, mocking the gringos behind their backs. “Hey Luce,” she heard, and looked over the lively room. There sat Paul between his wife, Grace, and Carole, the bombshell babe Lucy had witnessed doing a scene earlier that day. Two blonde chiquitas in their twenties. Would Paul ever grow up? Why should he? Wasn’t perpetual adolescence the great American birthright? On Carole’s other side lounged another aging boy, a lanky, handsome if faintly decadent-looking character Lucy assumed to be Chris Wadsworth, nouveau movie mogul. He looked not a day over thirty, if that. Seated in Mexican leather chairs, they had gathered at a round table near the long, busy bar.
Lucy went over. “Hey guys,” she said. “Sorry I’m late but I wanted to finish my first batch of notes.”

  “No problem, Luce,” Paul said. “You know Grace.” They nodded at each other. “This is Carole Wainwright, whom you saw working today.” They exchanged hellos.

  “You did some good work out there, Carole,” Lucy said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That Italian kid is like so cute it makes it easy.”

  “And this is Chris. Christopher Wadsworth, our producer.” Chris stood, and smiled at Lucy. He was tall, at least six four with pale green eyes and blond hair pulled back into a little tail. He wore a black turtleneck and silver-stitched black cowboy boots with black jeans. He reeked of understated chic. Downtown money.

  “Paul tells me you’re going to rescue our script,” he said, offering a hand. “Lovely to meet you at last, Lucy Ripken. Loved the X Dames—and the Costa Rica thing in the Voice.”

  “Hey, thanks. Nice to meet you. Actually I don’t think the script needs rescuing so much as—massaging. It’s really close,” Lucy said, eye-locked to the max as they shook hands, his a trifle clammy. She hadn’t been so intensely ogled since first meeting the late and little-lamented Bobby Schamberg of X Dames fame. On the other hand this Wadsworth had a certain undeniable if slightly greasy charm, and a way with flattery. Not unlike poor dead Bobby in that regard as well. “I spent the day working some stuff out. I have it here,” she said, patting her bag. “Hey, how’s the baby, Grace?” she said, sitting down with the foursome.