“That’s pretty weird,” Lisa said.
“What’s weird is he knocked on every single door. But when he got to Gavin, that’s when he talked. Some kind of accent, too. Russian. Maybe Armenian.”
“What did he say?”
“I might have opened my door to listen for just a second.”
“And?”
Tyrone leaned in. “He demanded money. Honey, I think he was some kind of loan shark. I don’t know who Gavin’s into, but he owes somebody something.”
They were quiet for a moment, considering the possibilities.
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again? Anything distinctive about the way he looked?”
“He was plenty distinctive. If I knew where my phone was, I could show you.”
“You don’t have your phone?”
“I wish I did, but no. It was in the props trailer, with my gloves. It’s been unbearably dull in here without it. Especially with that busted old TV. Only shows C-SPAN, if you can believe that.”
Toby appeared at the door, back from whatever errand had called him away. He came in and stood by Lisa’s chair.
“And who’s this tall drink of water?” Tyrone said, looking up at Toby.
“Sorry. This is my cousin, Toby Baldwin.”
“Nice to meet you,” Toby said.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Tyrone said, looking him up and down.
“Toby’s a police officer with the Moss Creek PD,” Lisa said. “Tyrone’s the prop master on Perdition’s Cowboy.”
“Ooh, is this an official visit?” Tyrone said.
“No, just keeping my cousin company.”
“As sweet as he is handsome. I like that.”
Toby blushed but said nothing about the personal remark. “Even if this isn’t official, I would like to know more about your accident. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Gavin was huddled with his DP again,” Tyrone said, rolling his eyes. “Those two seem to think the light will get better if they just talk about it long enough. I was just trying to keep myself busy. And entertained.”
“Entertained?” Toby said.
“You know, playing around while we waited. Anyway, I sat in his chair and it collapsed under me. And you know I don’t weigh enough to break a chair,” Tyrone said, running his hands down his body.
“His chair? Whose chair was it?”
“It was the director’s chair.”
“A director’s chair? The set has a ton of those.”
“Not a director’s chair, THE director’s chair. Gavin’s chair.”
Toby took out a notebook and wrote in it. “Do you remember anything else?”
Tyrone closed his eyes. “No, after that it was just the trip to this glamorous locale.”
Toby nodded and put his notebook away.
“So,” Lisa said, “will you be back on set soon?”
“Can’t get along without me. I see how it is. Is Gavin holding the big shootout until I get back?”
“Oh. Um, no.” Lisa paused, searching for the right words to break the news. “I assumed you had heard.”
“Heard what?”
“There was an accident. Gavin went ahead with the shootout and Kaden… Kaden didn’t make it.”
“He didn’t… What are you talking about?” Tyrone looked from Lisa to Toby and back.
“Mr. Nicolini was shot. He died in surgery,” Toby said. His voice had the steadiness of practice in delivering bad news.
Tyrone fell back against his pillows. “That’s… that’s terrible. Oh, that stupid Gavin. I told him that scene was dangerous. Poor Kaden.”
They were silent, remembering Kaden Nicolini.
“We should go,” Lisa said. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
Tyrone waved a hand at them, staring off into space. “Thank you for coming.”
Lisa crept out of the hospital room, followed by Toby. She started down the hall. Toby put a hand on her arm.
“Other way,” he said.
“Oh. I always get lost in these places.”
Lisa drove them to Lola’s Burgers and More. They ordered cheeseburgers and fries and went to a table.
“Well, that was awkward,” Lisa said.
“Yeah. It’s never easy delivering that kind of news.” Toby looked out the window. It was dark outside. Headlights made streaks of light in the blackness as they passed on the highway. “Tyrone Woods is an interesting guy.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty nice. I still feel bad about breaking the news about Kaden to him like that. I never would have guessed he didn’t already know. On set, he always knows all the gossip.”
“Didn’t have his phone. He seemed pretty broken up about it. Were he and Kaden Nicolini close?”
The server came with their tray of burgers and fries. Toby gave her a thumbs up and immediately stuffed some fries in his mouth.
“Close? Maybe?” Lisa shrugged. “If so, I didn’t see it. I mean, everyone likes Tyrone. He’s a total sweetheart. But Kaden, hard to say who he was close to. Except Serena, of course.”
Toby nodded and wolfed down a big bite of cheeseburger. Lisa took a bite of her burger, too. It was perfect. Hot and juicy, with extra pickles, just the way she liked it. She looked at Toby’s burger. He’d already eaten nearly half.
“Tyrone could be in a lot of trouble.”
“What? Why? Tyrone didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t think he killed Kaden. There’s no way. He was in the hospital when it happened.”
Toby shook his head. “He might not have pulled the trigger, but he was in charge of the prop guns and loading them with blanks.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean he’s responsible, not when he wasn’t even on set.”
Toby raised an eyebrow. “No, but he might be reason there was a real gun in among the props.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Toby pressed his lips together. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“You can’t just say something like that and then clam up. Toby!”
“The lab looked at all the guns collected on set. The rest of them couldn’t fire live rounds if you wanted to. But someone put a real one in the mix, and who else could it be?”
“That’s impossible.” Lisa shook her head. The sweet-natured prop master wouldn’t have hurt anyone, she was sure of it.
“Maybe. But just keep an ear open when he gets back on set, and tell me if you hear anything.”
“Toby, Tyrone had nothing to do with Kaden’s accident.”
Toby took a drink of his soda. “He does have a record, so of course we have to check him out.”
“I have a record, too, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Calm down, cuz. Have a French fry.”
She took a bite and chewed it, glaring at him.
“He’s also the prop master. How would it look to fail to check out the prop master after an accident on set that involves a prop?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
They ate and drank in silence for a few minutes.
“I just can’t see Tyrone having anything to do with this,” Lisa said. She studied her cousin’s face for confirmation.
Toby sighed. “It would be nice if he did, but I think you’re right.” He stabbed a French fry into his pool of ketchup. “Things are looking worse and worse for Dylan.”
“Dylan?” Lisa said. “Why are things looking worse for him?”
Toby’s eyebrows rose toward his crew-cut hairline. He chewed his fries and looked at her for a minute.
“What?” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Isn’t it obvious, cuz? Dylan was the one holding the gun. If Tyrone wasn’t behind it, who do you think is going to take the rap?”
“Oh.” She thought back to earlier that day, when Dylan had come into the kitchen. She thought she’d heard him say he was in trouble. Was this what he’d meant?
“You know how the chief is about corruption and nepotism,” Toby wen
t on. “Dylan may be a hometown boy, but that’s not going to keep him out of the electric chair.”
“The electric chair? Does Arizona still use that?”
Toby waved his hand. “That’s not the point. The point is that your ex is facing a murder charge.”
“Oh, no.”
Toby watched her while he sipped his drink. “Of course, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. The guy did cheat on you.”
“Toby! Just because he’s a dirty cheater doesn’t mean he’s,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “a murderer.”
He shrugged and drank some more soda.
“He could never do something like that. I should know. I lived with him for almost a decade.”
“How long was he sleeping around on you?” Toby held up his hands. “Sorry. It’s just that sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do.”
“Well, I know he’s not a murderer.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” She glared at him.
“Fine, fine. Speaking of boyfriends, how’s Mo?”
Lisa groaned and leaned back in her seat.
“That good?”
“I’m an idiot.”
“Granted, but what’s that got to do with Mo?”
Lisa crumpled a napkin in a ball and threw it at him. He caught it neatly and threw it back.
“So?”
“I started a fight with him and we haven’t spoken since.”
Toby looked skeptical.
“I walked out in the middle of our date. Left him at Nero’s.”
“You and your temper.”
She sighed. “I don’t even know what this means. He let me leave. He hasn’t called me. Are we broken up?”
Toby held up his hands. “Hey, hey, I’m not exactly the relationship whisperer.”
Lisa wrinkled her brows together. “True. When’s the last time you were even on a date?”
He shrugged one shoulder and rattled the ice in his empty drink cup. “But if I were, I’d say, maybe talk to the guy?”
“I was hoping for more of a mind-reading and magic type of solution.”
Toby laughed. “You ready to leave?”
“Fine.”
In the car, she had another thought. “Wait a minute. You said Dylan is facing a murder charge. Does that mean the police don’t think it was an accident?”
Toby blew out a breath. “The coroner’s report says the manner of death is homicide. It’s an open investigation.”
“But if it’s a homicide, and someone has to be charged, then Dylan really is in trouble.”
“That boy should have stayed in Hollywood.”
“I wish he had,” Lisa said. “I wish he had.”
Chapter 13
Headlights turned into the drive, and a shiny small SUV pulled into the gravel courtyard to park. Penny Baldwin-Chance got out of the driver’s side, looking like a winter queen in her long cream wool coat and crimson scarf.
“Hi, Mom,” Lisa called. “I’m just finishing up down here, but you can go upstairs if you like.”
Penny hugged her daughter. “Hello, darling. Do you want me to go upstairs? Something you need to hide from your silent partner down here?”
Lisa sighed. “It’s not silent if you talk about it.”
“Of course.” Penny pulled off her cream leather gloves and tapped her palm with them. “But have you had a profitable holiday season? It’s not the high season for real estate, of course, but retail depends on it.”
“The retail section did ok.” Lisa shifted uncomfortably. “But really, the whole business is still getting off the ground. Of course, once I get paid for this movie gig, it’ll help the bottom line. You did the contract; shouldn’t I have gotten something by now? At least for supplies?”
Penny cocked her head. “You certainly should. Haven’t they been paying for the supplies up front?”
“No.”
“Does no one read their contracts anymore?” Penny huffed.
“Sam said something about needing to cut back on the budget.”
“He can’t do that unilaterally. You need to make them pay.”
“Make them pay? How exactly am I going to do that?”
“Start with an invoice.” Penny nodded, signaling the end of the conversation, and climbed the steps to the porch. “It looks bare without all the lights and decorations,” she noted.
“I’ll miss the holiday stuff,” Lisa agreed. “But new things for a new year.”
“Indeed. Now, if you’re almost done down here, I believe we have a date with Mr. John Hughes.”
Lisa grinned. She and her mother had been spending an evening a week watching John Hughes classics from the 80s and popping enormous batches of popcorn. This week they were going to watch The Breakfast Club, one of their mutual favorites.
It had been difficult for Penny since her split with Lisa’s dad. Lisa wasn’t used to thinking of her mother as a person who could get lonely, just like anyone else, but spending quality time together was starting to open her eyes to who Penny was. And they really did love popcorn and John Hughes.
“Just let me go in and do a last check in the kitchen before we go up,” Lisa said. “I think it’s done, but you know how it is with employees; you always have to make sure something didn’t get left out.”
She went into the kitchen and cringed as she realized what she’d just said. Her mother had had some trouble with employees recently, and could take Lisa’s statement as an indictment of how she handled things at the real estate office.
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean—”
Penny’s face was pink but she shushed her daughter. “I know you didn’t.”
Mama Cat rubbed against Penny’s ankle and purred. Penny reached down to scratch the perceptive kitty behind the ears.
“You’re a good girl,” she murmured to the cat, “even if you are getting black fur on my white slacks.”
They were starting to mount the stairs when a knock on the front door stopped them.
“Who could that be?” Penny said. “I would have thought that, by now, the whole town knows you’re not open in the evenings.”
Lisa shrugged and went to the door. A cold blast of wind brought crystalline flakes of snow into the hall as she opened the door and saw her father, Lou Chance.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, pausing an awkward moment before stepping back to let him in.
“Hi, baby.” He gave Lisa a quick hug before looking up to see Penny standing on the stairs. “Penny. I didn’t know you would be here.”
“Lou.” Penny’s tone was colder than the snowflakes melting on Lou’s turned-up jacket collar.
Distress played on Lou’s face. Lisa thought for a dreadful moment that his heart condition was worse. But he sat down on the bench lining the hall and put his face in his hands.
“I’m such a fool,” he said. “I thought we were in love, but she’s gone off with some Peruvian textile artist.”
“What? Who?” Lisa asked.
“Olivia, of course,” Penny supplied. “My sister has never been known for the longevity of her love affairs.”
Lisa stared at her mother.
“If by ‘who’ you meant the Peruvian textile artist, then I have no idea,” Penny said. “Olivia’s scruffy artist friends have been blowing in and out of her life like so much litter on the highway for years.”
“Daddy, I’m sorry,” Lisa said, feeling excruciatingly awkward about comforting her father in front of her mother. “Would you like a muffin?”
“You can take it to go,” Penny said. “We have plans tonight.”
Lou looked up at her with a face like a basset hound’s. “Plans? Can I join you? It’s a new year.”
Penny pursed her lips. “Let me guess. You spent Christmas with Olivia, but then she started to get hard to reach on the phone, and even though you had plans with her for New Year’s Eve, you didn’t hear from her until morning, when maybe you got a text message. Am I close?”
Lisa cringed. “I’ll go get some muffins.”
She went to the kitchen and scooped up two Good Morning muffins and one fruitcake muffin and put them in a sack. Maybe her father would appreciate the fruitcake muffin. In the front hall, she found her father sitting with his chin in his hands, and her mother facing away, arms crossed. Lisa thrust the bag into Lou’s hands.
“I’ll call you later, Daddy. Love you.” She stretched a tight smile across her face and waited for him to leave.
*
Lisa popped a triple batch of popcorn and poured a ridiculous amount of melted butter on it. She brought extra napkins in with the large bowls of popcorn. Penny sat on the battered leather recliner, a tense expression on her face.
“I have root beer or actual beer. Your choice,” Lisa said, handing her a bowl and putting the second bowl on the scarred coffee table that had been a garage-sale find for five dollars.
Penny didn’t answer.
“Mom? Beer or root beer?”
“Root beer, but do you have any ice cream to make it a float?” Penny finally said.
“Uh, I think I only have strawberry or pecan praline.”
“A scoop of each.”
Lisa went into the little kitchen Gideon had rigged up for her in the back bedroom above the big kitchen downstairs. He’d done a nice job of modifying the upstairs of the Folly to turn it into an apartment for her to live in. The little kitchen had the basic necessities of stove, sink, and refrigerator, plus some storage and a table. The downstairs kitchen was the showpiece, with its stainless steel prep surfaces and double ovens. Lisa scooped some ice cream into a glass to make her mother’s float.
Shooting on Location (Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 8