The Coffee Girl

by Natalie Charles

  I was just returning to my dressing room when a figure stepped out from the side of the trailer. My mouth went dry, and I choked on my own breath. It was Detective Cassius DeLuca, and he looked downright uncomfortable.

  "Hey," he said.

  I was suddenly aware that my jaw was wide open. I closed it. "Hey."

  I probably looked like a trout, but I didn't care. All I could think right then was that Cash DeLuca was standing in front of my trailer, and I was covered in pancake makeup, and my two worlds — one hopelessly imaginary and the other inconveniently real — were colliding.

  "Wh - what are you doing here?" I stuttered.

  "I was looking for you." He set his hands on his waist. "I hear you're an actress now. You were cast in Poppy Hayes's role."

  It's not easy to look indifferent when your mouth is bone dry, but I attempted it just the same. "Right place, right time."

  I could see by the way he tilted his head that this was the wrong thing to say. I really did need some kind of buzzer in my life to alert me to these things. "She's still missing, and you were the last one to see her. Why didn't you tell me that right away?"

  I gave a sigh. "Now, how could I have been the last person to see her, considering I didn't do anything to her?"

  Airtight logic, I thought. Solid. But Cash wasn't buying it. "I'd like to ask you a few questions." He reached into his back pocket and retrieved a flip notebook and a pen. "Can you tell me the nature of your relationship with Poppy Hayes?"

  "Oh my God, you actually take notes on paper?" I shook my head. "Sorry, I don't see much of that any more. So, uh, me and Poppy?" I looked up at the clouds as I considered the question. "We sort of don't have a relationship? More like, she had a relationship with my ex-boyfriend, and that's pretty much it."

  "You never knew each other?"

  "Nope."

  "But security cameras caught you climbing into her limousine on the night she disappeared." His eyebrow arched victoriously. "Maybe you want to reconsider your answer."

  Not really, Sergeant Square Pants. "There's nothing to reconsider. She offered me a ride, that's all. It was the first time we spoke." I paused. "Aside from that time she came into Hedda's with Griff, but we didn't speak then."

  "Why would she offer her fiancé's ex-girlfriend a ride in her limousine?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe because I'd saved her from drowning in the pool minutes earlier? I don't know. People do weird things." I eased myself down onto the steps of the trailer. "I didn't hurt Poppy, all right? She said she was heading somewhere in Maine but she didn't tell me where."

  He froze, his ballpoint pen poised above the paper. "So you know where she is?"

  "No. She didn't tell me." I said it slowly, stressing each word. "Some spa. That's all I know, I swear." I made an "X" across my heart for emphasis. "Why are you so convinced that there was, uh, foul play?"

  "There are a few details that are troubling, but maybe you can shed some light," he replied, almost with apology. "Bloody footprints on the floor, for one. Broken glass in the sink. Her bag is missing, and so are most of her clothes."

  I reached up to rub the tension that was gathering across my forehead. "That blood on the floor was mine. I cut my feet when I ran away from the party. And the broken glass in the sink? Poppy broke it. And like I said, she went to some spa in Maine and packed her own bags."

  "What's all this about?" I hadn't heard Jax approach, but he came up between me and Cash now, his face stern. "Is something wrong here?"

  Sergeant Square Pants puffed out his chest, but Jax still had several inches on him. "Detective DeLuca with the Archer Cove P.D.," he said. "Just asking a few questions concerning Poppy Hayes's disappearance."

  "And I'm sure Ms. Mallory has told you everything she knows," Jax replied. "Is there anything else?"

  Cash's gaze jumped from Jax to me and back again. "I think that's all. For now." He folded up his notepad and stuck it into his pocket. "I'd suggest you not leave town, Wren."

  Jax crossed his arms with a soft laugh. "Is that really necessary, detective?"

  But Cash pretended not to hear him and set off toward the studio. As I watched him walk away, Jax mounted the stairs and reached out a hand. "Come on. He's not worth another second of your time."

  I slipped my hand into his and stood. "Thanks. I knew him in high school. He's mostly harmless."

  "You must have turned him down for the prom," Jax said with an amused smile. "There's history of some sort there."

  I slipped out of my sandals. They may have been beautiful, but they were also cutting off the circulation in my smallest toe. "Not exactly. I sort of set his backpack on fire."

  "Oh, of course you did." He sat down on the couch with a laugh. "That was going to be my next guess."

  His laugh was infectious, or else I'd been having a really bad day. I climbed into the seat beside him and pulled my legs up. He was so handsome, the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed. I glanced down at the floor. "He still hates me for it. The fire, I mean."

  "Nah. I'd say it's the opposite, and he secretly wants you. Don't play shocked with me." He stretched back out on the couch and clasped his hands behind his head. "Just so you know: if you and I had met at a party before I reformed my image, I would've hit it. I'm just saying. You have this smart-girl thing going on. It's kind of hot."

  "Wow, Jax. That's a lovely sentiment. Really. You sound like a poet."

  "I'm taking a nap." He stretched out on the couch, setting his legs over mine. "But you should know I can last for hours, sweetheart. Meditate on that."

  I chuckled and patted him on the knee as I rose to my feet. "Yeah, all right. I think that's a medical condition you're supposed to call a doctor about."

  It was all a joke, of course. Nothing more than our usual banter. I'd learned from Griff that there was a lot of sitting and waiting while on set, so I'd printed out my screenplay to edit. "Mind if I work?"

  "Nope." He flung an arm across his eyes.

  I propped my feet up on the table and leaned back in my chair, pen in hand. The quiet lasted for less than three minutes.

  "Hello?" A cheerful woman's voice called out from the trailer door, and seconds later, she pushed her way inside without waiting for an invitation. "Wren! So good to meet you. I'm Cheryl Millhouse, Mr. Brennan's assistant."

  Cheryl had a set of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth and a large smile to go with them. She looked like a local news reporter, with a sharp, no-nonsense chin-length blonde bob and enough makeup to even out her skin tone to perfection. She was wearing a khaki skirt, a blue knit tank, and a matching cardigan that she'd tied around her shoulders. Her pep was contagious, no matter how early it still was.

  "Nice to meet you," I said. We shook hands.

  She shut the door behind her. "Honestly, I'm impressed by your media blitz, sweetheart. I've never seen anything like it. You're in all the blogs, being picked up by national celebrity news shows. You've got to tell me what kind of photos you have to get that kind of attention."

  Her stream of chatter momentarily flustered me. "Sorry?"

  "Tell me you have blackmail photos of some kind." She reached forward to touch my arm conspiratorially. "Who did you catch doing what? Because you're suddenly hot, and from what I can gather, no one knows why."

  She folded her arms across her chest and waited for my response, which was delayed somewhat as I struggled to figure out what I was being accused of. Fortunately, Jax never seemed at a loss for words. "She's famous because I let her touch me," he yawned.

  Cheryl shot him a look that told me she knew better. "Who don't you let touch you, Jax? Don't mean to put you on the spot, sweetie. Just know that you have my utmost and sincere admiration for whatever you're pulling off here. I understand when people are famous for a film or a television show, but it's the ones who seem to be famous for nothing at all that fascinate me. Anywho." She pulled a cell phone from her back pocket and started tapping at it with a skinny leopard-print stylus. "I'm not h
ere to chat. I wanted to introduce myself and see if there's anything you need from me."

  Five minutes alone seemed like too much to ask today. "Not a thing." I kicked my feet back up on the table.

  "Then I'll show myself out," she said with a broad grin. "When you decide to become high maintenance, you let me know."

  She shut the door behind her and Jax and I looked at each other. "You look tense," he said. "If you want to shag —"

  I groaned. "No. For God's sake."

  He leaned back on the couch. "Well, the offer still stands."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jax had to meet with someone in Wardrobe, but I didn't want to stick around for that. Instead I headed to Studio 12. I was hoping to meet a few of the other actors. There was also the fact that I wasn't actually a jaded starlet, and I was intrigued by the idea of being on a major movie set. I wanted to see how it worked, in a way that brought no attention to myself whatsoever.

  All of my scenes were going to be filmed on the office set. It was a gray cubicle jungle, really. When I walked on the set, I immediately saw Hayleigh Burroughs blustering her way through the interview scene. The actor playing her boss looked familiar, but I'd forgotten his name. Someone shouted, "Cut!"

  I stood near the back, well behind the cameras and the crew crowded around the actors, and watched breathlessly as the director rose from a box he'd been sitting on and approached the actors. I already knew that his name was Alex Sherapovna. He was dressed in jeans and a brown herringbone jacket and his hair was streaked with gray, but his face appeared younger than his almost fifty years. "Hayleigh, honey. Remember: you need this job because your grandmother is going to be evicted from her house."

  The young actress watched him, her blue eyes saucer-like. "Yes." She reached up to scratch at her head. "I'm sorry, but this is driving me crazy."

  Alex shouted over his shoulder, "Can we do something about her hair?" He looked back at her. "We need to see some desperation. When he tells you that you're not exactly what they're looking for, we need to feel your heart break."

  A young woman in dark-rimmed glasses ran up and unfastened whatever pins and barrettes had been holding Hayleigh's hairstyle in place. The actress looked at him, stone-faced, as her hair was fixed. "I just thought that right now, it was more about proving something to herself than saving her grandmother. I thought that she didn't fully appreciate what her grandmother was going through until later on."

  Alex crouched down to speak with her. "You're giving me feisty. I don't want feisty. I want vulnerable."

  "But feisty is there, right? Rita has this energy, and I want to make sure that it comes through."

  "It's coming through," he assured her with a pat on the knee. "But what I need you to do is to show us Rita's underbelly. Show us the softness. Got it?"

  She couldn't nod because her hair was being violently tugged into place by the woman with the glasses. "Got it."

  "Good."

  He turned and pointed to someone behind him. "Joe? We need to fix the lighting."

  As I was absorbing the unfolding scene with a sense of wide-eyed wonder, someone came up right beside me and said, "You're Wren Mallory, right?"

  I looked and saw a fresh-faced man beaming at me. I smiled back, ever the gracious one. "Yes, I am."

  "I'm George. I'm a PA."

  I blinked. "PA?" I searched my brain for a moment, then remembered. "Production assistant. Of course. Nice to meet you, George."

  "I'm heading over to craft services. Can I get you something? A coffee or water? Something to eat? It's going to be a late night."

  I wasn't filming, but I needed to head out soon. I was needed in the bakery. "I'll be fine, thanks."

  "You sure?" He pulled out a pen and notepad and was poised to write. "You seem tired. How about a coffee or a tea? It's no trouble."

  I considered. "Well, maybe —"

  "Is this guy bothering you?"

  I jumped, not just at the voice, but at how close it was. Griff. I hadn't even heard him approach. He narrowed his eyes at George. "Trying to get a date? Leave her alone, pal."

  It was like something out of a bad movie, and I rolled my eyes. "He's fine." I stepped between Griff and George, who was starting to wilt under the scrutiny. "He was offering to get me a coffee, that's all."

  "Do you want a coffee?" Griff said. "Because I'll get it for you. You." He turned back to George. "Don't you have something better to do than hassle the talent?"

  Hassle the talent? Oh, honestly. "He wasn't doing anything wrong —"

  George took a step back and gave me a patient smile. "I'll go. But if you need anything, Ms. Mallory, you let me know."

  "I will. Thank you, George." I looked at Griff, who was standing much too close for my comfort. "Do you always boss production assistants around like that?"

  "Sorry," he said, without looking it. "I've had a rough few days. I'm not myself." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and shifted from foot to foot. "Do you think I should go apologize to him?"

  "Yes. Absolutely I do. He —"

  Just then a loud voice boomed, "Quiet on the set!"

  Griff reached for my elbow and nodded behind us. "Come on," he whispered. "Let's get out of here." So much for an apology for poor George.

  We left the set and stepped outside into the afternoon sunshine. "Funny meeting like this again," he said once the door had closed behind us. "When my agent told me you'd been cast, I thought I'd heard wrong. But here you are." He looked me up and down. "I guess I'm wondering why."

  I won't lie — having my ex-boyfriend of two years in front of me again was a little surreal. Watching him puff out his chest to impress me was even weirder. All I saw was the guy who dried his socks over the bathtub and watched late-night television in his boxers with one of those muscle-gaining milkshakes. He would stick his fingers in the peanut butter jar rather than opening a drawer and grabbing a spoon. Sure, he was a star now, but knowing too much about a person makes them less impressive.

  I cleared my throat and stuck out my hand. "Nice to see you too."

  He wrapped my hand in both of his and gave a gentle squeeze. He also held my gaze in a way that felt, well, creepy. Then I remembered that when we were both wondering why we couldn't break through in the Biz, he'd gone to some seminars on becoming unforgettable. One of the tips was to make eye contact like the other person was one of the most fascinating subjects in the world. The technique made him unforgettable, all right. "You are full of surprises, Wren." His voice was oddly husky. "I had no idea you were still interested in acting."

  "Guess the bug bit me." I laughed too loudly. "It's just…I never considered myself an actress, but then there was this opportunity." I paused when I realized that I'd referred to Poppy's disappearance as an opportunity. "Sorry, that sounded callous, didn't it? How are you holding up?"

  "All right, all things considered. Everyone's been supportive, and I've been looking forward to seeing you to formally thank you for…everything."

  He released my hand and shoved his hands back into his pockets. He looked down at the ground, imitating the appearance of someone forlorn. At least I think that's what he was going for.

  "You don't have anything to thank me for," I said.

  He picked up his head to gaze into my eyes, but it was really just staring. Intensely. "You saved Poppy from drowning. It would have been a terrible way to go."

  "No problem." I cleared my throat and darted my gaze anywhere but to his face. "Have you heard from Poppy?" I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer.

  "Poppy and I were having problems," he confided. "It's been over for a long time."

  Once upon a time, Griff and I had been as close as any two people could be. In those days, I might have thought it strange if we'd been in the same room and he hadn't made an effort to stay close by my side. At that moment, when he edged closer, I felt an unexpected revulsion. My personal boundaries had closed me off to Griff. Any bond we'd once shared had vanished.

 
"She never understood me," he continued. "Not really. We led separate lives for the most part."

  I smiled tightly. Politely. "You could've fooled me. You always seemed so close in all of those photos." My voice sounded a little shrill to my ears.

  He chuckled softly and bobbed his head. "It's all part of the deal. Smoke and mirrors is what we signed up for, it's what we do for a living. Meanwhile what happens in here —" he jabbed a finger against his sternum. "That's off-limits. To the press, definitely. Sometimes to those closest to us."

  I was certain that if I'd caught myself in a mirror at that moment, the look on my face would have been something out of a horror film. Open up a closet and have a werewolf jump out at me, and bam! Same face. Because Griff was being so weirdly horrifying at that moment that I couldn't even pretend that what he was saying made any sense. The worst part was, he was certain that I would agree, like it was part of joining the union that all actors agreed to think of ourselves as chimeras, showing one face for the sake of the cameras, another for those we cared about.

  A thought struck me like a blast of ice to the heart: how well had I known Griff, anyway? How much of himself had he kept off-limits? I felt uneasy.

  Griff was still talking, still edging closer to my side. "You want to grab something to drink and maybe run some lines? We're shooting a scene together tomorrow."

  Yes, we had a few scenes together. He was unfortunately cast as my love interest in a secondary story line. But he was turning my stomach at the moment. "Maybe another time." I tried to keep my voice syrupy. "I'm sure you've had a long day. You should rest up for tomorrow."

  He ran his fingers through his highlighted hair. No, it wasn't the lighting. That hair was definitely ridiculous. "Right. I mean, it's cool. I'm fine, I just." I braced myself as he brought his hand down and looked at me with a gaze that was loaded with meaning. "I just wanted someone to talk to."

  No. Just no. Wasn't that how I'd gotten into this mess in the first place, because I apparently attract actors who "just want to talk"? I took a deep breath and held it. Where was my fake boyfriend, anyway? Shouldn't he be on the set, fighting to keep his hands off of me?