Shooting on Location (Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Estelle Richards

  Chapter 4

  With the morning rush mostly over, Lisa filled the sink with hot soapy water and started scrubbing dishes. The cooked-on cheese from the bagel egg sandwiches took particular care to get clean. She was interrupted by a thump and a crash coming from upstairs.

  Lisa jumped. No one should be upstairs at this hour. Upstairs, in her private space. Sometimes customers tried to take their coffee upstairs, thinking it had more seating areas, despite the rope barrier draped across the bottom of the stairway and the sign marking it Private.

  “I’d better see what that was,” Lisa said.

  She dried her hands and went to the hall. Annette was standing at the bottom of the stairs with a dreamy look on her face.

  “What happened?” Lisa demanded.

  Annette looked up and stared at her for a moment as if she didn’t recognize her. “Oh, hi, Lisa. Check it out!” She held up her phone.

  The screen held the now familiar outline of a cookie krumb on Krumbsi. In the middle was a grinning Annette next to a handsome face that Lisa thought looked familiar.

  “Uh, what am I looking at here?” she said.

  “It’s him!” Annette squealed. “Kaden Nicolini!”

  Lisa squinted at the picture on the phone. She recognized the actor this time, but then realized she was recognizing something else. She backed up a step and looked at the stairwell and then at the phone.

  “Was this picture taken here?” she said.

  “Yes! Can you believe it? Kaden Nicolini, right here in person!” Annette was beside herself, staring down at her phone with a goofy smile.

  “Um, and where is Mr. Nicolini presently?” Lisa said.

  “Oh,” Annette said, looking guilty, “he might have asked to see the upstairs.”

  “What? And you let him?”

  “Lisa, he’s a movie star,” Annette said, as though that explained everything.

  “He’s a movie star, so you let him go upstairs into my private apartment without so much as mentioning it to me?”

  “Uh.”

  Lisa heard some more thumping upstairs, and then the muffled sound of voices, one male and one female.

  “Was he alone?” she asked.

  “No, he had his assistant with him. That’s who took the picture. See how it’s better than just a regular selfie?”

  “Annette!”

  “They wanted to record a krumb on the balcony. How could I tell him no?”

  Lisa took a couple of deep breaths. “Fine. I’ll handle it. Please don’t do this again. But for now, would you start working on closing up, please?”

  “Ok.” Annette scurried away to start closing procedures.

  Lisa took out her phone and dialed Toby.

  “Hey, cuz,” he said, answering right away.

  “Hey, Toby. I have a situation developing over here. Probably not a police matter, but…”

  “What is it?”

  “I have a movie star and his assistant in my apartment. It’s sort of trespassing, but also Annette sort of let them go up there.”

  “Ok, that’s new.”

  “I’m going upstairs to shoo them out. Like I said, I don’t think it’s a police matter, but just in case.”

  Lisa didn’t wait for Toby’s response. She put her phone in her pocket and tiptoed up the stairs. At the end of the upstairs hall, the entrance to the secret stairway up to the third floor stood open. A cold breeze filtered down the hall from the doorway.

  Lisa peeked into each of her rooms to make sure they were empty. They were. Rubbing her arms for warmth, she started up the stairs to the third-floor tower room.

  A jolt of fear flashed through her as she remembered the night four months before when she’d mounted these stairs to hide from a murderer. No. She shook her head to clear away the fear. This was different.

  At the top of the stairs the cold grew stronger. She went into the tower room and saw that the balcony doors were open. A tinkling laugh came from the balcony.

  “Excuse me,” Lisa said softly, then louder, “Excuse me!”

  It went quiet, and two figures on the balcony turned to stare at her. She walked to the balcony door, shrugging off another flicker of frightening memory.

  “Excuse me, but this area is private,” she said, pulling the balcony doors open.

  The extremely handsome face of Kaden Nicolini registered shock for a moment, followed by a flash of anger, then a winsome smile. He held out his hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, pressing Lisa’s hand between both of his. “I’m Kaden.”

  Lisa had been around stars occasionally while she lived in LA. Kaden had the same luminous quality she’d observed before, as though there were levels of beauty that transcended the mortal plane. She found herself reflexively smiling back at him.

  “Lisa Chance. All this,” she waved her newly freed hand around them, “is mine. But only the first floor is open to the public as part of the café.”

  The girl next to Kaden took his arm and started tugging on it. “Let’s go. We’ve got what we need.”

  Lisa took notice of the other woman for the first time. She was dressed all in black, and had long black hair with a magenta stripe running down the middle. Lisa turned to her.

  “Hi, I’m Lisa,” she said, holding out her hand.

  She got an eyeroll and a reluctant handshake in return. “Serena,” came a begrudging mutter.

  Kaden smiled again. “This is Serena Rubinoff, makeup artist, personal assistant, and all-around life-saver.”

  Serena graced Kaden with a smile, and Lisa could see that when she wasn’t scowling she was quite pretty.

  “You’re sure we’ve got it?” Kaden said to Serena.

  “Yeah, it’ll do.” She went back to tugging his arm toward the stairs.

  Lisa moved out of the way and let them come into the tower room, then she closed and locked the balcony doors.

  “If I may, what did you get?” Lisa said.

  Serena rolled her eyes. “Footage. Krumbs.”

  Kaden gestured at the balcony. Even a small movement of his hand was the picture of grace. “We just got back from getting a krumb at the Grand Canyon. My fans love to see me in exotic locations. When I saw your balcony, I just had to get it on camera.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s a beautiful house. I’ve loved it since I was a kid,” she gushed. “But I wish you had asked me. It would have given me a chance to tidy up first.”

  She clapped her mouth shut, suddenly feeling as silly as Annette.

  “Would you like a coffee before we close?” she said.

  *

  Gideon and Lisa stood at the foot of the stairs, frowning. Lisa took a drink of her mocha and savored the sweet hit of caffeine.

  “I know it doesn’t go with the look of the original architecture,” she said, “but I can’t have people just wandering upstairs into my apartment.

  Gideon shook his head. “Have you ever been in one of those old houses that’s been split up into a bunch of little apartments? There’s a lot of them in Flagstaff near the university. They’re terrible. They put up their little walls and partitions and cover over the original details, no respect for the flow from room to room, no vision. You might as well cover your hardwood floors with industrial indoor-outdoor carpeting and put aluminum siding over the brickwork outside.”

  “But what about security?” she insisted.

  He took a long drink of his coffee and stepped back.

  “Look at this hall. Look how the flow of the stairway intersects with the flow into the vestibule. If you close it off, you’ll have to add to the wall on this side, and you’ll…” Gideon sighed. “No. I can’t in good conscience butcher the lines of an old house like this. And would the owner even allow it?”

  “Hmm.” Lisa hadn’t asked Claire Comstock about renovating the stairs to add a door at the bottom. While Claire had been quite happy to allow the little tweaks and renovations to make the first floor into a café and the seco
nd floor into Lisa’s residence, she might balk at work that changed the character of the house. It was her ancestral home and, after all, Gideon was right. Adding the door to the base of the stairs the way Lisa had envisioned it would be hideous.

  “Then what am I going to do?” she said, draining the coffee.

  “How bad is the problem?”

  “What? Having people sneak into my home is a bad problem.”

  “No, I mean, how many times has it happened? How many people?”

  “Oh. Two people, and just the one time. Just the one time so far, anyway.”

  “That’s not so many, especially since you’ve been open in this location two months. Were they locals?”

  Lisa shook her head. “No, they definitely weren’t locals. One of them was actually a movie star.”

  Gideon laughed. “You’re worried about more movie stars showing up in Moss Creek and breaking into your apartment?”

  “Well, they don’t exactly have to break in, now, do they?”

  “Point taken.” He thought for a moment. “How about another mocha while we brainstorm solutions?”

  “Sure.”

  They went into the kitchen for two more mochas then came back to the front parlor, where they could sit at a little table and see the bottom of the stairs.

  After some sipping and looking and thinking, Lisa said, “Well? Got any brainstorms?”

  “Ok, sure. First idea, you put a table in front of the rope. It would be awkward to go around.”

  “It’s already awkward to lift the rope.”

  “True. Ok. You put a table there and hire someone to sit at it and shoo people away from going upstairs.”

  “That’s a pretty expensive fix.”

  “True. Ok. You put a table there and sit a mannequin at it with a sign saying No Admittance.”

  “Now you’re just being silly.”

  Gideon grinned. “Maybe.”

  “Ok, maybe I will position some kind of furniture in front of the rope during the day. Maybe a hat stand. But that doesn’t really change the security level much.”

  “Hmm, yeah.” Gideon nodded and sipped his mocha, and thought for a minute. “Ok, maybe we could put some kind of gate across the top of the stairs. Like a baby gate but with a lock and key.”

  “That might help. It wouldn’t really keep out the most determined, but neither does a deadbolt on the front door when you get right down to it. I’m not sure I’d really want to be in a position to have to stand on the stairs and fumble with a key every night, though. I think I’m more worried about falling than I am about people getting into my space.”

  “Good point. Did you know that falling is one of the most common causes of injury among people between the ages of thirty and fifty?”

  Lisa nodded. She did know how dangerous falls could be. She had been the one who’d found the body of a man who’d died of a fall just a few months ago.

  Gideon put his cup down. “I have an idea. Something I did in a client’s home last year. They were real gun lovers, but safety minded. Didn’t want the kids to be able to get into them. So they had me put a reinforced door with a good lock on it on the closet in the master bedroom. We could do a locking closet for you upstairs, and you could keep your valuables locked up. Guns too, of course.”

  “That’s an interesting idea. I’m not going to keep guns in the house. I heard someone say once that if an intruder is going to shoot me, he’d better remember to bring his own gun. But a locking closet, reinforced, that sounds good. I don’t see how Claire would mind, either.”

  “The doors in this place are solid,” Gideon said. “We might be able to get away with a lock and a little reinforcement.”

  “Ok. I’m sold.” Lisa nodded at her friend’s husband. “Does Carly know how lucky she is?” She smiled to herself, thinking how lucky she felt when she was snuggled up next to Mo.

  “That depends on the day.” Gideon finished his coffee. “I have a job to get to, but I’ll find a day and work you in.”

  “Thanks, Gideon.”

  She picked up their empty cups and bussed another table in the room, taking the dishes and trash back to the kitchen. Jan was at the sink, washing dishes from the morning breakfast rush. She smiled at Lisa.

  Jan was in her early twenties, a local Moss Creek High graduate who’d stayed in town. Lisa remembered running into her at the band office talking to Lou about marching or embouchure or band uniforms. Like her dad, Lisa put a certain stock in the character of people who were in marching band. So far, that stock was proving itself, as Jan was a great employee. She’d picked up the trick of making good espresso drinks quickly, and had a flexible schedule and a good attitude.

  “Sorry to add more to your load,” Lisa said, putting the bussed dishes by the sink.

  “No problem. Pretty good morning today. Lots of bagel egg sandwiches.”

  “Yep, still the morning best seller. Anyone go for a fruitcake muffin?”

  Jan grimaced. “I had one joker say he wanted to order them as replacement bricks for his chimney.”

  Lisa sighed. “I don’t know why people won’t just give them a try. They’re really good.”

  Jan shrugged and went back to scrubbing.

  Lisa grabbed her notepad and started checking the supplies to see if they were running low on anything. She hoped they weren’t, given the state of her bank balance. But once the movie checks started coming in for craft service supplies, she would be close to being in the black again.

  Jan finished washing the dishes and started wiping down surfaces. Lisa finished her list and grabbed the broom.

  “Tomorrow is my first day delivering to the movie set,” she said, sweeping up a pile of crumbs. “Are you all set for manning the café during the morning rush?”

  “Make coffee, serve customers, keep things clean. Yeah, I’m ready,” Jan said, peering into the microwave and giving the cheese stuck to the inside some serious elbow grease.

  “Good,” Lisa said. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m comfortable the craft service is ready to go. But since it’s the first day, it might take a little longer than just dropping things off.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jan said, smiling. “It sounds exciting, being on a movie set.”

  “Thanks, Jan.”

  A shiver of anticipation wiggled its way up Lisa’s spine. It had been months since she’d been on a TV or movie production set. It wasn’t as glamorous as people thought, but it had been her dream for all those years living in Hollywood. A part of her wished she could skip it and just stay at the café, but her bank account would thank her for the extra revenue. And maybe she could convince the movie people to eat her fruitcake muffins.

  Chapter 5

  The road to the little canyon was dark and slippery. Lisa gripped the wheel of her car and wished she’d followed Mo’s advice to get those snow tires put on.

  She pulled into the clearing. Only one car was there. The light inside the car was on, and Lisa could see someone sitting inside, juggling a cigarette, a coffee thermos, a phone, and a clipboard.

  Lisa backed her car into the spot nearest the craft service table and popped the trunk. She got out and started unloading carafes of coffee, baskets of muffins, and an assortment of fresh fruit. She was arranging things on the table when the other car’s door opened and a tall thin man with a pinched expression hurried over to her, hands full with his thermos in the left and phone and clipboard in the right, and his cigarette clenched between his lips.

  He stopped in front of her, blew out a plume of smoke and put the thermos on the table. He switched the phone and clipboard to the other hand and held his right hand out to her.

  “I’m Sam. You must be Lisa Chance. Is that coffee?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Good.” He unscrewed the top of his thermos and refilled it, then puffed his cigarette and took a long drink of coffee. “That’s good coffee.”

  “Thank you. We pride ourselves on our coffee.”

&nbs
p; “Fine, fine. Well, if you have any questions, ask them now. Otherwise, keep that good coffee coming.”

  Sam’s phone buzzed, and he gave Lisa a quick nod as he turned away to answer it. Lisa had talked to Sam on the phone about the day’s setup. He’d been brusque on the phone, with a tone of voice that suggested he was in a constant state of having three days’ worth of work to do in the space of one day, a typical situation for a first assistant director, or first AD.

  Lisa went back to arranging the craft service table. The road in lit up with headlights as a stream of other vehicles arrived. Bleary-eyed crew members staggered to her table to get muffins and coffee. Most of them mumbled a hello as they grabbed their first dose of caffeine. Lisa felt a bit like a drug pusher as she watched the coffee do its work. The best kind of drug pusher. A benevolent drug pusher.

  The flow of the set waking up and the crew starting the shooting day brought Lisa back to the time she had spent on set in Hollywood. Her first few years in LA she’d done background work, calling Central Casting every night to see if there were any non-speaking parts for young white female extras. She remembered her mornings of rushing across town with her car full of wardrobe choices, showing her ID at the studio gates, reporting to set early in order to wait in holding until the second AD came in looking for people. It was a lot of time for not much money, but it had helped her learn how a production ran. As she recalled, the craft service table was a linchpin of an extra’s opinion of a particular production. Not enough food for the lowly extra? Word went around the grapevine to avoid working on that show.

  She looked at the line of people getting coffee and muffins (and occasionally fruit) from her table and smiled. Feeding people felt good.

  She watched as Kaden Nicolini went into his trailer with Serena and a hair stylist, and came out again later with his hair and makeup camera ready.

  The sky was just getting light. Two stand-ins stood in the snow in front of the camera. Gavin Jump stood by the camera, conferring with the director of photography, or DP. While they muttered and gestured, the cameraman ambled over to the craft service table.