by Joanne Fluke
“Thank you, Lon. Erik and I really worked hard on it. Now tell me, honestly, what did you think of the camera work?”
“Andy Coyne’s a very competent man.”
“Same old Lon.” Tony shook his head. “I should’ve known you’d never knock a colleague. Don’t you ever get bored, being such a nice guy all the time?”
Lon laughed. “Sometimes. Now, cough up, Tony. You didn’t come here just to renew an old acquaintance, did you?”
“Nope. We came here to talk you into doing Video Kill.”
That’s what I was afraid of.” Lon sighed. “Look, Tony, I’ve already told Alan that it’s not my type of film. I‘ve never done murder-suspense. And now there’s another reason. I knew Tammara Welles, and her murder has me rattled. I wouldn’t want to be a party to sensationalizing her death.”
“Of course not.” Erik took up the argument. “Neither would we. We want to concentrate on the personality of the killer and downplay the rest. We want to do Video Kill with taste and class.”
Lon raised his eyebrows. “A serial murder story with taste?”
“That’s right.” Tony stepped in. “We’re trying for less of a murder story and more of a psychological profile. Do you think it can be done?”
“I don’t know.” Lon frowned slightly. “It’s certainly a challenge. Look, guys, I wish you all the luck in the world but—”
“I suppose I shouldn’t mention this,” Erik interrupted before Lon would turn them down, “but Alan’s signed Tom Steiner to direct. You’re familiar with his work?”
“Uh, yes.”
Lon’s slight hesitation told Erik that he was right on target.
“Tony and I are afraid that he’s going to turn Video Kill into another Murder On Call. The original script was quality work until Steiner got his hands on it.”
Lon nodded. “I’ve seen the film. Steiner did the rewrite, didn’t he?”
“You bet he did.” Erik gave a rueful laugh. “He ditched the original concept and came up with pure blood porn.”
“And you’re afraid he’ll do the same thing with Video Kill?”
“You got it. Tony and I just don’t carry enough weight to make sure that the film’s done the right way. That’s why we need you, Lon. If you demand final cut approval, you’ll get it. Steiner’d go on record as director, but you’d actually be running the show.”
“I see.” Lon smiled slightly. “You not only need my talent, you also need my clout. Steiner, huh?”
“Steiner.” Erik and Tony spoke in unison.
“It’s tempting to think that I could actually force Steiner into doing quality work.”
There was a long pause, and Tony motioned for Erik to remain silent. He’d sold life insurance for a while when he was in college and he knew that the first person who spoke would be the loser. Finally Lon cleared his throat.
“Look, guys, I don’t want to make any commitments at this point. I’ll be wrapping on this Jubee thing in a week or two, and I promise to think seriously about it then.”
“That’s all we ask, Lon.” Tony reached out to shake his hand. “How about lunch sometime soon? We’re starting on the script and we’d really appreciate your input.”
“You want my suggestions for the script? I’ve been in this business for years and no one’s ever asked me to consult on a script.”
Tony nodded. “I know it’s unusual, but you’d be doing us a real favor. We trust your priorities when it comes to aesthetics. Take the first murder, for example. The stabbing in the shower? We think it would be much more effective to imply the violence, rather than let it all hang out up there on the screen. Is there any way to shoot that scene through the shower curtain? Or maybe with backlighting? Or shadows?”
Lon nodded. “That’s easy, Tony. You have several options, but I think your best bet might be to use the technique I did in the lake scene in Carole’s Dream.”
Just then a bell rang on the set, and Lon stood up. “Sorry, guys, I have to run. Nice meeting you, Erik. And Tony, it’s good to see you again. Why don’t you check with Susan on your way out and set up lunch for next week? Have her pick a day when we’re starting late so we’ll have plenty of time to talk. In the meantime, I’ll run a few tests with low-level color and see what I can come up with.”
Tony waited until they were out the door and then he slapped Erik on the back. “He’s hooked! You were inspired in there, partner. I never would have thought to ask him to save us from Steiner. Where the hell did you hear that story about Murder On Call?”
“From the busboy at Rosie’s Bar. It’s a big-time studio hangout. The busboy’s been there for years and he knows where all the bodies are buried.”
“How did you get him to tell you?”
“Purely by accident, Tony. We started talking and I mentioned I was a writer. So he warned me to stay away from Steiner.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad you brought it up. I think that’s what tipped the scales with Lon.”
“It helped. But I think your bit about getting Lon to call the shower shot is what really put us over the top. What do you say we reward ourselves with some lunch?”
“Sounds good.”
“The studio commissary?”
Tony groaned. “You said reward, Erik, not punish. Let’s go to Rosie’s Bar. I want to slip your busboy a twenty.”
“That’s fine with me, but you can keep your twenty. I already tipped the busboy for the Steiner story.”
“I figured you did.” Tony grinned. “This money’s going for new information. I’m going to ask him how to get a better deal out of Alan Goldberg.”
7
Tony Rocca sat on a hard wooden bench outside Sam Ladera’s door. He’d been sitting on this same uncomfortable bench for more than forty-five minutes. The chief of detectives was holding a press conference in his office and the door was shut. The officer at the desk, whose nametag identified him as Andy Mertens, had told Tony that the conference could run as long as an hour.
Tony spent the time staring at the middle-aged officer, studying him for a possible character in one of his scripts. He was probably in his early fifties, brown hair graying at the temples, and he had hazel eyes that were separated by a classic Roman nose. His shoulders were massive, but he didn’t seem overweight. He had the build of a former football player who’d kept in condition. Tony guessed that the big man could move quickly if the situation warranted.
It was while he was looking at Andy’s hands that Tony noticed something curious. Only the top of his left hand and forearm were sunburned. Tony got up and walked around the desk, supposedly to read several notices that were tacked up on the bulletin board. What he was really doing was examining that curious sunburn. Left forearm, left hand, and now that he looked closely, he could see that the left side of Andy’s face was affected, too. He thought about it quite a while before he figured it out.
“Excuse me, Andy? Do you live to the north of here?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you drive a car that doesn’t have air-conditioning?”
The officer looked surprised as he nodded. “That’s right. How’d you know?”
“It’s your sunburn. Left hand, left forearm, and the left side of your face. You don’t get that kind of sunburn at the beach, so I figured you must have driven to work with the morning sun on your left. Then, when you drove home, you had the same left exposure from the afternoon sun. Since your elbow’s sunburned, I decided you must have stuck it out the car window, and nobody leaves the window open in the summer if they’ve got air-conditioning.”
“Not bad!” The officer looked impressed for a second, and then his eyes narrowed. “Are you a plainclothes detective?”
“Nope.” Tony grinned. “But I went to high school with your chief and we used to swap detective magazines.”
The door to Sam’s office opened and a group of reporters trooped out. There wasn’t a smile among them. A couple of them were grumbling angrily and no one reached for
a cell phone.
“A pretty glum lot, huh?” Andy shrugged as they moved past his desk. “Looks like they didn’t get what they wanted.”
“Sam’s keeping a lid on this thing?”
Andy nodded. “A tight lid. The chief’s the only one who’s seen those murder DVDs. Everybody’s trying to pump him for information. Yours is just a social visit, right?”
“Right.” Tony covered his guilt with a smile. “Just tell him the guy who gave him his nickname is out here. Tony Rocca from Hollywood High.”
Tony watched as Andy buzzed the inner office. It was true that his visit was social, but he had an ulterior motive. He needed some inside information. The press had covered the murders, but their facts were sketchy. What Tony really wanted was to get his hands on the murder discs.
“Yes, Chief. I’ve got it.” The officer put down the phone and looked at Tony with a puzzled expression. “He said to tell Mr. Archer to come right in. But I thought your name was Rocca.”
“That’s right. Archer’s my nickname.”
“Oh.” Andy leaned over the desk. “What’s the chief’s nickname? You can tell me. I won’t pass it around.”
“You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself.” Tony got up and covered half the distance to the door before he took pity on the frustrated officer. “It’s really pretty easy, Andy. Just go see some old Humphrey Bogart movies.”
Tony pushed open the glass door that had been outfitted with blinds for privacy and found Sam waiting for him. They stared at each other for a long moment. Sam was the first to speak.
“You look the same as you did in high school, Archer!”
“So do you, Mr. Spade.”
Tony lied through his teeth. Sam looked as if he hadn’t had any sleep in months.
“And you’ve learned to lie with a straight face. I look like roadkill and we both know it. Help yourself to a cup of coffee and tell me what you’ve been doing since high school.”
Tony walked over to the two silver urns sitting on a table at the side of the room and poured himself a cup of black coffee. Then he carried it over to the chair in front of Sam’s desk and sat down.
“A couple of tours in the Middle East and then back here to UCLA. Right now I’m trying to survive in the movie business. That just about sums it up. Oh, and I’m married, no kids. How about you?”
“College and the police department. I was married, but it didn’t work out. She decided she needed a divorce to find herself.”
“Bitter?”
“I guess so.” Sam shrugged. “After all those years it’s hard to get used to living alone. She’s a reporter.”
“Was she with the group that just left?”
“No. They haven’t assigned her to any big stories yet. That was part of the problem. I kept on getting the promotions, and she felt she was just spinning her wheels at the paper.”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then Sam switched the subject.
“Did you say you were in the movies?”
“Not exactly in them.” Tony laughed. “My partner and I are writers. The last thing we wrote was Free Fire.”
“I saw that! It was good.”
Tony smiled. It always gave him a lift to hear that someone had liked his movie. He took a sip of his coffee, wondering how to get the subject around to the murders, and choked slightly. It was the worst coffee he’d ever tasted.
Sam looked concerned. “I forgot to warn you about the coffee. Did you take it from the urn on the left?”
“Uh . . . yeah. I think I did.”
“Then you’re drinking the press pot. We give them lousy coffee. It’s one way to cut press conferences short. Go pour it out and take a cup from the other urn.”
When Tony returned to his chair with a fresh cup of coffee, he found Sam watching him with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“I need to talk to someone, Tony. Can I trust you with something confidential?”
Tony took a sip of his coffee and set the cup on the corner of the desk. Sam was right about the coffee. It was considerably better than the first cup, but that wasn’t saying it was good. Then he put on his best friendly and nonjudgmental look. Sam probably wanted to talk about his divorce.
“You can trust me, Sam. I don’t talk about a friend behind his back.”
Sam nodded, and Tony sat back, prepared to listen to the long, sad story of a failed marriage. Instead Sam took off on another tack altogether.
“I should have guessed you’d go into something with film. You were always hustling to get money for matinees. Remember how we used to cut history class to make the two o’clock feature at the Grand?”
Tony nodded. Sam was working up to something in a very circuitous way. He’d just have to sit patiently and wait for him to get there.
“Tony? This may sound a little bit off the wall, but are you a Hitchcock fan?”
“I wouldn’t call myself a fan, but I had a class on Hitchcock films once. Why?”
“And you don’t get freaked out by blood and violence, do you?”
“No. I don’t like it, but I saw plenty of gory scenes in combat. What’s this about?”
“Do you remember those Hitchcock films well enough to compare them to other films?”
“I think so.” Tony had reached the end of his patience. He met Sam’s eyes squarely. “Stop quizzing me and spill it, Sam. What are you fishing for?”
There was a tense silence, but finally Sam seemed to make up his mind.
“I’ve got a big favor to ask you, Tony. Just say no if you don’t want to do it and we’ll forget it. Okay?”
“All right, Sam. What is it?”
Sam took a deep breath and sighed. “Will you watch those videos we found at the scene and tell me what you think?”
Allison sat in a chair at her mother’s bedside, crocheting yet another afghan. Her mother had rallied a bit when she’d first come in, but after a few minutes she’d dozed off. The only sound in the room was her mother’s labored breathing and the soft whish of the yarn as it passed through Allison’s fingers.
Crocheting was a relatively new hobby for Allison. She’d started shortly after her mother had taken up residence at the convalescent center. It provided just enough challenge to be interesting, but the granny square pattern that Allison followed was the simplest one she’d been able to find. It didn’t require counting stitches, and that meant she could pick it up and put it down whenever she chose, without losing her place.
Allison completed one more square and tied off the yarn. She had almost enough for another afghan. It would be her eighth, although none of them were completely finished. She still had to crochet the squares together with something called a joining stitch. That was complicated, and Allison didn’t want to enroll in a class to learn to do it. The squares would just have to sit in their plastic bags in the closet until she either learned the stitch or farmed them out to someone else to finish.
This month’s afghan was rainbow-colored, and Allison got out the red yarn to start another square. There were seven tiers to the squares in the rainbow colors. She always remembered them by something she’d learned from Miss Parry, her fourth-grade teacher. The rainbow’s name was Roy G. Biv., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
As she started on the next row, Allison realized that she remembered quite a few of Miss Parry’s mnemonics. The Great Lakes were HOMES, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. The notes on the lines in the treble clef were “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” And the notes on the spaces spelled out the word FACE. Perhaps she should tr y out for a quiz show.
Her mother made a slight sound in her sleep, and Allison glanced over at her. It was painful to watch Helen Greene sleep. Her mouth sagged open slightly and her thinning white hair was plastered to her forehead. Her body was so wasted, it barely made a bulge under the sheet that covered her. She was becoming a living skeleton.
Allison blinked back tears. She’d heard people say tha
t death held no dignity, and now she knew what that meant. Her mother’s facial hair was growing as a side effect of the chemotherapy. Helen Greene, who had always been flawlessly groomed, was now growing a beard of white straggling hairs. What if her mother should see herself in a mirror? She’d be so appalled she might give up and die!
Angrily, Allison flung down her crocheting and ran out to find the head nurse. For the money the convalescent center charged, they ought to at least shave her mother’s chin. As she headed down the hall, Allison began to have other suspicions. Her mother was sleeping much more lately. Were the nurses doping her up so they wouldn’t have to tend her so closely? She’d seen the exposés on nursing homes across the country. Sometimes a patient was sedated just so the nurses could have an easy day.
By the time Allison reached the head nurse’s office, her legs were trembling and her mouth was set in a straight line of anger. That anger grew into a rage as she caught sight of Miss Stanley at her desk, sipping a cup of coffee. How dare this woman lounge around when her mother was dying?!
“Hello, Mrs. Rocca.” The nurse smiled and motioned her in. “I’m just on my afternoon break. Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee?”
“No.” Allison was so upset she forgot to be polite. “My mother is growing a beard!”
Miss Stanley nodded. She was quite used to handling upset relatives. “And you think we’re being negligent by not removing it, especially at the prices we charge. Is that right?”
Allison felt the wind knocked out of her sails. She barely managed to nod.
The head nurse smiled and indicated a chair. “Sit down for a minute, Mrs. Rocca. Of course we’ll remove your mother’s facial hair if you insist, but there’s a reason we haven’t done so yet. Are you interested?”
“Well, yes. Of course.” Allison sank down into the chair.
“Your mother has been extremely uncomfortable for the past twenty-four hours. There’s been a change in her analgesics. We’ve had trouble adjusting the dosage. That’s why she’s sleeping so much. And waking her just to remove her facial hair seems counterproductive. When her medications are adjusted and her condition has stabilized, we’ll certainly do it.”