After hauling the gear inside and starting a pound of pecans toasting in the oven, Lisa sat down to a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows in the library. Mama Cat wandered into the room, her tail waving behind her.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Lisa said, reaching down to pet her soft fur. “How are you tonight? Lonely, just like me?”
The cat jumped up onto the chair opposite Lisa. A paw darted up on the table and batted at Lisa’s phone.
“Meow,” the cat said before pawing the phone again.
“You’re right. I should call Mo.” Lisa picked up the phone and called him, resisting the urge to hang up again.
He answered immediately. “Lisa.” His voice was warm and sad.
“Hi,” she whispered. “I miss you. Are you mad at me?”
“No! I thought you were mad at me,” he said.
She exhaled a ragged breath. “I was mad,” she said, trying to take Toby’s advice and use her words. “I need to know you trust me, and that I can trust you.”
“I do trust you, Lisa. And have I ever done anything to make you think you can’t trust me?”
She thought a moment about the tender-hearted veterinarian. “No,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry for making you think I didn’t trust you,” he said.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “That’s in the past now. Ok?”
“Ok. What are you doing tonight?”
“Baking approximately ninety million Good Morning muffins.”
“So,” he paused a moment, “muffins for the entire state of Arizona, about a dozen each?”
She laughed. “It feels like that sometimes. I’m going to need to go in a minute. I don’t want to burn my nuts again.”
“Nobody likes burned nuts. Would you mind if I came over?”
“I’d love that,” she said. The timer beeped. “I’ve really got to go now! Burned nuts!”
Lisa hung up and did a little dance step back and forth on her way to the kitchen. Mama Cat followed her in, twitching her tail like she was dancing, too.
When Mo arrived, Mama Cat ran to the front door to greet him. She twitched her ears at the cold wind and rubbed against his legs.
“Hello, there. Trying to trip me for old times’ sake?” Mo said, bending down to pet the purring cat.
Lisa stood back, watching him with Mama Cat.
“Hi,” she said. She wiped her hands on her apron, not knowing what else to do with them.
Mo straightened up from his crouch. His face melted into a smile as he looked at Lisa. “Hey, you.”
She took a step in his direction, then hesitated. He hesitated, too.
“Are we good?” he said.
Lisa nodded.
He hugged her, smoothing her hair with a gentle hand like he was petting a cat.
“Are you petting me?”
“Old habits,” he said.
“Come to the kitchen. I still have muffins baking.”
Lisa was telling him about her visit to Tyrone in the hospital when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen.
“My mother,” she said.
“You should get that,” Mo said, taking an involuntary half-step backwards. Even though he and Lisa had been dating a couple of months, he was still intimidated by Penny Baldwin-Chance.
Lisa picked up the phone. “Hi, Mom.”
Penny let out a loud sigh. “You are impossible to get hold of these days.”
“Sorry, Mom.” It was no use trying to argue a thing like that. “What’s up?”
Her mother sighed again. “Are we still on for movie night tomorrow?”
Lisa’s heart beat faster. She’d forgotten about their movie night and made other plans. “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I completely forgot. Carly invited me to go over and help her sort baby clothes. The other teachers at the school gave her a box full of hand-me-downs and she says some of them are practically vintage.”
“Good,” Penny said, surprising her daughter. “I was afraid I’d have to cancel on you, and you know I hate to do that.”
“I’m sorry, Mom, I know you hate when I… Wait, what? What do you mean, good?”
“I have a date tomorrow,” Penny announced.
Lisa grinned and covered the phone with her hand. “She has a date tomorrow,” she stage-whispered to Mo.
He made a shocked face in response.
“Mom, that’s great!” Lisa spun around once, imagining her parents back together again. When Lou had come to the Folly on movie night, it had seemed like Penny would never forgive him, but perhaps that judgment had been premature.
“I’m so glad you and Daddy are working things out,” Lisa went on. “Are you going to Nero’s? Oh, I know, maybe something more low-key for the first night back together. This is just wonderful, Mom.”
There was a moment of silence on the phone before Penny’s voice came back. “No, dear, you’ve misunderstood. I’m not getting back together with your father.”
“Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t jump the gun. It’s just one date. I get it,” Lisa said. She grinned at Mo and pointed at the phone.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Penny said. “My date is not with Lou.”
Now it was Lisa’s turn to be silent.
“Hello? Lisa, are you there?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Good. I thought we’d been cut off. Service with this phone has been a bit spotty lately.”
“Who is it?” Lisa said.
“It’s me, your mother.”
“No, your date. Who is it?”
“Oh, that,” Penny said. “Jake Peterman.”
“What?!”
Mo looked at her in alarm. Mama Cat mewed and ran out of the room.
“I knew you’d overreact,” Penny said.
“But you and Daddy are barely even separated! And Jake Peterman? Why would you go out with that… with that… person?”
“Because he asked me,” Penny said.
“Because he asked you?” Lisa screeched. “Oh, my word, mother. If you married him, you’d be Penny Peterman. What kind of a name is that?”
“Lisa Marie Chance, that is enough. First of all, he asked me to dinner, not to walk down the aisle. And second, even if I did remarry, I doubt I’d change my name again after all the time and money I’ve spent gaining professional name recognition with this one.”
“Mom, you can’t go out with Jake Peterman.”
“And why not?”
Lisa sputtered, unsure where to begin. “He… he… wanted to turn the Folly into condos! He’s a philistine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with an upmarket condo in a good location,” Penny said. “And if you wanted to have the right to an opinion on the real estate market in this town, maybe you should have taken my advice and gotten your real estate license instead of wasting your time on that ridiculous coffee idea.”
Penny hung up before Lisa could retort.
She looked up at Mo, who was staring at her with wide eyes. “Ridiculous coffee idea? She called this a ridiculous coffee idea.” Lisa gestured at the kitchen around her.
“Uh, I thought she was the one who loaned you the money to get started.”
“Exactly! How dare she loan me that money and then call it a ridiculous idea?”
Mo shrugged. “It seemed supportive at the time.”
Lisa glared at him. “It was supportive. Is supportive. Ugh, my mother!”
“Do you want a hug?” he said, holding his arms out tentatively.
“No, I need to finish these muffins. My ridiculous coffee business needs ridiculous muffins to serve to my ridiculous customers!”
“Um, maybe I should go.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I just can’t believe my own mother would go on a date with that louse, Jake Peterman.”
“Yeah, I’m not exactly a fan of his myself.”
Lisa thought about the first time she’d met Mo, when he was all bruised from a wildlife encounter courtesy of Peterman. She shook
her head.
“No, I guess not. I just can’t believe it. Doesn’t she remember how he tried to run me out of business?”
Mo shrugged. “Penny does things for her own reasons.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So, baby clothes at Carly’s place tomorrow, huh?” Mo said, changing the subject.
Lisa chuckled. “Yeah. I think she’s trying to convince me that I need to have one of my own.”
“Oh.” Mo blushed. “Really?”
The timer dinged and Lisa went to the oven, putting on her oven mitts. “Yeah, I get the feeling she’s worried about becoming a parent. Which is ridiculous, of course. I mean, the woman teaches elementary school. She’s practically a mother of twenty-five already.”
Chapter 16
Lisa sat across the table from Carly, watching her friend make headway through a big plate of Lola’s excellent onion rings. She considered the possible consequences of stealing one from the plate for herself, but decided against the risk.
She took a sip of her chocolate shake. “Little guy really likes those rings,” she said.
Carly smiled, her lips shiny with the grease from the deep-fried delicacies. “Or I finally have an excuse to eat as many of them as I want, and I’m not going to waste it.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“Mmm, maybe we should get some fries, too.”
“Your call.”
Carly thought for a moment, her head tilted to the side like a sparrow’s. “Maybe not.”
“That’s unexpected,” Lisa teased.
Carly shrugged. “I’m a woman of mystery. Ooh, speaking of mystery, tell me everything about what happened to Kaden Nicolini.”
Lisa’s heart sped up. “I don’t really know anything. He was shot. It was an accident.”
Carly shook her head. “Nuh-uh, not from what I heard.”
“What are you talking about?” Lisa leaned forward, almost spilling her milkshake. She grabbed it to steady the glass.
“I saw it on the news last night—”
“The real news?”
“Entertainment news is real news,” Carly said, working to suppress a smile.
“In LA it is, that’s for sure. But go on, what did you see on the so-called news?”
“The inside scoop says it was a suicide. He made some kind of video talking about wanting to go out like James Dean or Brandon Lee.” She sighed at the mention of the star of The Crow. “Basically, he wanted to die young and be famous forever, like some kind of movie star god.”
“That’s unsettling. Have you seen the video?” she said.
“Yeah. It was kind of weird, actually,” Carly said. “It was almost like a parody of Brandon Lee’s last interview while he was making The Crow.”
Lisa nodded. “How did they get the video?”
Carly shrugged. “Anonymously, I think.”
“Hmm.” She took another drink of her milkshake.
A thin woman with hair cut in a severe bob pushed her way across the restaurant to their table and held up her phone, looking at it and then at Lisa. After a few glances back and forth, she nodded to herself and stuck her hand out.
“Rosemary Thyme,” she said.
Lisa raised an eyebrow but took the woman’s hand and gave it a quick shake. “Uh, hi.”
Rosemary turned the phone around to show them a photo of Lisa sitting in Lola’s across from Kaden Nicolini. Lisa’s face looked contorted, with one eye half closed and her mouth at a funny angle. Kaden, movie star that he was, looked as perfect as if the photo had been staged. Lisa knew it had definitely not been staged.
“Where did you get that?” she said, blinking rapidly.
Rosemary smiled tightly. “You’re Lisa Chance, former actress and sometime paramour of the late Kaden Nicolini.”
“What? Paramour? No. Never. And you’ve got some nerve to come and make that kind of accusation.”
Carly’s eyes had widened as she watched the exchange until she looked like a 1950s Felix the Cat wall clock. “Did you…?”
“No,” Lisa hissed. “Of course not.”
Rosemary’s smile was smug. She thumbed another photo onto the screen. It was one of Lisa’s headshots from when she first moved to LA. “Naive young girl from the sticks, entrapped in a web of intrigue by Hollywood power players.” She shook her head in an imitation of sympathy that made Lisa’s skin crawl.
Rosemary lowered her head until she was staring right into Lisa’s eyes. “The network will pay handsomely for an exclusive.”
“There’s no exclusive. Nothing to tell,” Lisa protested.
Rosemary pursed her lips and swiped the screen again. The next photo was Dylan’s headshot. “Or how about this story: Jilted lover helps corrupt local cops cover up a murder on set.”
“What? It was an accident,” Lisa said.
“Or suicide,” Carly added.
Lisa shot her a dirty look.
Rosemary’s smile widened, making her heavily made-up face appear to be in danger of cracking. “Local cops fake actor’s suicide in sordid payoff scheme? Hmm.”
“There’s no scheme! There’s no cover-up!” Lisa blushed as she realized her raised voice was attracting attention. “No cover-up,” she whispered. “Just a tragic accident.”
“Or suicide?” Rosemary said.
Carly nodded.
“Carly!”
“What? It was on the news.”
“We have to go,” Lisa said.
“Afraid to talk about it? In too deep?” Rosemary said, her voice dripping with insinuation.
“Come on, Carly.” Lisa grabbed her purse and stood up.
“But the milkshake,” Carly said.
Lisa gave her a look.
“Fine, I’ll just try to drink it while I can.” She stood up, her milkshake clutched in her hands. She slurped through the straw as she followed Lisa to the door.
Rosemary kept pace with them, now recording them on her phone. “The tape’s a fake, you know,” she said.
Lisa ignored her.
“He had everything going for him. He was never depressed. The suicide angle is a cover-up,” Rosemary pressed.
Lisa pushed the door open to go outside. Rosemary was right beside her. Carly drank a last few drops of milkshake before leaving the glass in the bus bin by the door and following them outside.
“His fiancée claims it’s a set-up.”
Lisa stopped. “Kaden had a fiancée?” She knew she shouldn’t even talk to this sleazy reporter, but her surprise made her blurt out the words. “He never said that.”
Rosemary smiled. “The paramour had no idea she was the Other Woman.”
“I was not the Other Woman! I have never been the Other Woman in my life!”
The world seemed to stand still for a moment. Cars in the lot paused in their motion as drivers stared at her through their windows, able to hear her yelling even through the glass.
Jake Peterman’s truck idled in front of them. He grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows. Lisa’s face blushed even redder.
“Just leave me alone. I have nothing to say to you,” she hissed at Rosemary.
The ride home was tense. Carly drove, suppressing a series of little belches and shooting worried glances at Lisa.
“I never fooled around with him,” Lisa said. “We were coworkers who ate burgers together one time.”
“Ok.”
“I can’t believe they’re calling me a paramour.”
“It is a little disappointing,” Carly said.
“Wait. Which part?” Lisa looked at her friend with suspicion.
“That the news isn’t always accurate.”
Lisa glared at her until Carly’s composure broke and she guffawed with laughter. Lisa pressed her lips together, holding back a giggle.
“It’s a tabloid rag. It’s nothing,” Carly said. “They probably won’t even use the story, and if they do, it’ll be next to some garbage about an alien-Elvis hybrid clone.”
Lisa’s g
iggle broke through. “An alien-Elvis hybrid clone?”
Carly nodded, eyes on the road. “It’s a fact that Elvis had perfect DNA, and that’s why they took him for their cloning program.”
Lisa snorted with laughter. “You’re too much.”
“I’m so much, I’m two people,” Carly said, rubbing her pregnant belly.
The tension broken, Lisa’s shoulders started to relax from their position up around her ears.
“But what do you think about that suicide thing? Do you think there really could be some kind of cover-up? I mean, the tape was pretty convincing,” Carly said.
Lisa bit her lip. “I don’t know. Isn’t an actor’s whole job basically to convince people of something that isn’t true?”
“I guess,” Carly said.
“I just don’t know,” Lisa repeated, staring out the window.
*
Later that afternoon, her hands in the dishwater, a thought hit Lisa. When she’d loaded the gun at the shooting range, she’d had to handle each bullet individually. Could the police get fingerprints off the bullets? It was a long shot, but it might be enough to figure out who’d loaded the gun with real ammo.
She scrubbed at a stubborn bit of cooked-on food in the bottom of a pot, her thoughts circling the problem of who’d loaded the gun, when another thought came to her. Who had purchased the ammunition itself? Tyrone had stocked ample boxes of blanks. But if someone wanted to use real bullets, they would have to supply them from somewhere.
Lisa thought of her trip to the gun range with Toby. She would bet that Ruby Bartok would remember if a movie star came into Moss Creek Guns and Ammo.
When she finished washing up, Lisa grabbed her keys and hopped in the car, heading for the outskirts of town.
At Moss Creek Guns and Ammo, she pulled in next to Ruby’s old blue Ford pickup. The sign in the window still said open, so she went in.
Ruby looked up from a ledger book spread across the counter and smiled when she saw Lisa. “Back already? I know it’s addictive, but usually it takes a day or two to pull someone back in.”
Shooting on Location (Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 10