“Carnival?” Krish looked horrified. “I don’t remember that from the script!”
“It’s a new development,” Alex explained. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll fill you in. Come on, let’s go inside.”
“Hey, Krish,” came Cora’s voice from behind us. She’d just come into the building. “Lali wanted me to copy some of the behind-the-scenes footage to one of your drives,” she continued, adding sarcastically, “You know, whatever I was able to get.”
She made a point of ignoring her brother and didn’t bother to say hello to us, either.
“What’s her problem?” Bess whispered under her breath.
“I think she’s still angry about Alex kicking her off the set yesterday,” I replied.
“That’s not our fault,” Bess said, looking hurt.
We all followed Krish through a set of sliding glass doors, which required a pass code for entry. After that, Krish had to say his name aloud into a small security system with a camera and microphone before someone buzzed him into the main floor of Lightning Post. Once inside, Krish treated us to the world’s briefest and most awkward tour around the facility.
“That’s, uh, the kitchen. The coffee is good, sometimes. And these are edit suites. I’m working over there. Let me get the key to unlock it. Back there is the mixing stage. For, uh, sound. And then we have some visual effects artists, too, in those rooms. They aren’t here yet, I don’t think.”
He shuffled to the front desk for the key to the editing room, the place where he had been assembling footage for The Hamilton Inn.
“Why are we here again?” George was getting impatient. “To look at closed office doors?”
“Don’t mind her, Alex.” Bess elbowed her cousin in the side, hard. “She’s just mad she couldn’t sleep all day.”
Alex smiled. “I promise we’ll make it worth your while, George,” he said as we followed Krish inside one of the tiny rooms. Two screens were set up on a desk, with two additional screens mounted on the wall above them. On one wall was a corkboard with index cards arranged on it. Every card seemed to correspond to a scene of the film.
“Krish is an amazing editor,” Alex whispered to me. “He takes some time to warm up to new people, but you should see what he can do with just a—”
“Alex!” Krish turned around, agape. “The drives . . . they were right here when I locked up last night!”
“What do you mean, Krish?” Alex sounded confused.
“I—I mean, they’re not here!” Krish pointed helplessly to the desk.
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
“So you’re telling me the footage,” Alex mumbled, thunderstruck, “everything we’ve been shooting . . .”
Cora blurted out, “It’s gone!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Full Story
“HOW CAN IT JUST BE gone?” Lali asked incredulously. “How does that even happen?”
A half hour after we’d discovered that the footage had disappeared, Lali met us in the parking lot of the post-production facility. The chaos was distracting everyone else at Lightning Post, so only Krish had remained inside and was going door-to-door to make sure that the drives hadn’t somehow been misplaced. Alex was on the verge of a meltdown.
“They can’t have gone far,” Lali consoled him, even though it was clear that she was just as panicked. “It has to be a misunderstanding.”
“I give up,” Alex said, his voice beginning to crack. “If someone wants to ruin this movie so badly, let them!”
“No!” Cora cried in a surprising display of sisterly support. “Alex, you know how hard it was to get this movie made. You can’t let this jerk win.”
Alex looked at his sister skeptically. “So now what?”
“Go to the set and start walking the crew through the carnival scene,” Lali told him. “Nancy and I will stay here until Krish has scoured the place.”
“I’ll ride with you, bro,” Cora offered.
“Nancy, I know you’ll be able to crack this one. Won’t you?” Alex asked, his expression desperate.
“Sure I will,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure I believed myself at this point. Lali walked Alex to the car with Cora, who seemed to be doing everything possible to soothe him.
“This is terrible,” Bess said, shaking her head. “Nancy, what are you thinking?”
I kept running through the suspects in my mind, but this latest prank was a game changer.
“You saw how heavy-duty the security is here,” I said. “There’s no way some amateur prankster would risk that kind of break-in.”
Lali returned to us and said, “I’m going to call the police again. This time we’re looking at a straight-up theft. They’ll have to pull security tapes from the building and the parking lot. But what if those drives are really gone? What if they’ve been deleted? This is going to set us back days. And the investors, I don’t even know . . . what am I going to tell them?”
“What about . . .” I trailed off as I spotted something familiar in the parking lot. A beat-up red car with California license plates. Ronan Beale’s.
I walked closer and peered through the rear window. There was a comic book lying on the backseat.
“Nancy?” George called out. “What is it?”
“That’s Ronan’s car,” I replied. “I remember it from when I met him for coffee. He did say he was editing something at a postproduction facility, so maybe he’s working here.”
“So it is him!” Lali exclaimed. “Good work, Nancy!” She was about to race into the building, but I stopped her.
“Not so fast! This doesn’t make any sense,” I pondered aloud. “We have no evidence that Ronan did this. Plus, there’s no way he would have been able to target Brian’s costume, write on the call sheet, or steal Zoë’s necklace without someone seeing him. And whoever rigged the light falling had to be a crew member.”
“We always said the suspect probably wasn’t working alone,” Bess pointed out. “Maybe someone on the set is helping him.”
“Or,” George joked, “maybe Ronan’s some kind of superhero.”
George’s words echoed in my head, and the pieces clicked into place! I saw exactly what I had been missing all along.
“Lali,” I said, “I have to run a quick errand.”
“What is it?” Lali asked, bewildered by my sudden change in energy.
“Don’t call the police and don’t confront Ronan!” I shouted, jumping into my car. “Just meet me at the carnival in an hour! Bess and George, you too! Trust me!”
I arrived at the fairgrounds exactly one hour later, a brown paper bag—and a major piece of evidence—tucked under my arm. The sun wouldn’t be setting for a while but I knew the crew would be getting ready for the shoot to begin as soon as it got dark. Although I attended the River Heights Fourth of July Carnival every year, I had never seen the games without people crowded around them, or watched the Ferris wheel turn absent the tinny music and the smell of popcorn. I didn’t have time to linger, though.
I easily spotted the film crew under the bright lights and crates of equipment. The process of setting up was much more chaotic than what I had seen in the shoot’s first few days.
Lali had texted saying that she was stuck in traffic, but my news couldn’t wait. I quickly ran up to Nysa, who was barking orders at the extras.
“Nysa, where is Alex?” I asked breathlessly.
She handed me a call sheet and pointed toward the Ferris wheel, where Zoë sat alone on a bucket seat at the very bottom. Alex and the cinematographer stood directly in front of her, while Brian leaned on the side of Zoë’s bucket, smiling flirtatiously.
“They’re going to start shooting when the Ferris wheel begins to move,” Nysa informed me.
“I need to talk to Alex right now,” I stressed.
“You’ll have to wait until after this shot, Nancy,” Nysa said. Then a flash of aggravation crossed her face. She yelled into her walkie-talkie, “Wait, why is Brian here? He’
s not even in this scene. Did someone forget to give him the updated schedule?!”
“Okay, Nysa, we’re ready to do a take!” Alex called out.
Nysa jumped into action. Spencer stood behind the Ferris wheel operator, who was poised to start the ride. Everyone else backed away . . . everyone, that is, except for Brian. He was doing some lunges several feet behind it. At first I didn’t find his behavior odd, but I suddenly remembered something about the package under my arm. I raced forward.
“Quiet on set! And start the—”
Before Nysa could finish, I threw myself in the Ferris wheel operator’s way.
“No! Don’t start it!”
“Nancy?” Alex looked over at me. “What’s going on?”
“Check Zoë’s seat,” I gasped. “I bet you anything that something is wrong with it.”
“What?” Zoë cried. She scrambled down while the operator checked the bars holding the bucket in place.
“She’s right,” the operator replied. “There’s an attachment loose. But I just did a safety check right before!”
“It’s not your fault,” I assured the operator. I pulled out the brown paper bag and held up my evidence: a comic book titled The Blue Ranger: Defender of the Night.
“It’s Brian,” I declared. “He’s been sabotaging this movie.”
“What?” Alex cried.
“I have proof,” I said, but Alex seemed to be in shock. He opened and shut his mouth several times, as if he had lost the ability to form words. Lali ran up to us breathlessly, just in time to hear my revelation.
“What are you talking about, Nancy?”
I opened the comic book. “It’s all in here,” I explained. “He took every single prank from the first issue of this comic book, the same one the movie is based on! And each time, Brian made sure to play the hero,” I concluded. “That’s why the pranks only took place while the camera was rolling—either the movie camera or Cora’s.”
Brian, for once, didn’t have any peppy responses or inspiring speeches.
“Brian?” Alex prodded. “Is this true?”
“This is ridiculous!” Brian sneered. “A comic book doesn’t prove anything. Do you think all these people will just take your word for it?”
“No, but they will take mine,” Ronan said, walking up behind me. Brian was now reduced to sputtering.
“Thanks for calling me, Nancy,” Ronan said.
“What is he doing here?” Alex grunted, clearly not happy to see him.
“Hold on, Alex,” I said. “Ronan is actually the reason I figured it out. I recognized the comic book in Ronan’s car as the same one I had seen tucked in Brian’s script on the first day of the shoot.”
“She’s right,” Ronan said. “I had to move back into my parents’ place and admit that my whole writing career was a complete failure. So when Brian came to me with this project, I felt like I had no choice. I thought that if I got into his good books, I might have a chance of getting back into the game.”
“He’s . . . making . . . this . . . up!” Brian seethed, but nobody was listening to him anymore.
“I don’t understand,” Alex practically whispered. “What project?”
“Brian didn’t work alone,” I explained. “He convinced Omar and Ronan to help him. Omar managed to slip the fireworks into the coffee machine when he helped Sal move the table. I’m guessing the argument he had with Brian that day had something to do with it.”
We all looked at Omar, whose eyes were glued to the ground.
“Brian promised me a small role in the Blue Ranger film if I followed along with his plan,” Omar mumbled. “After I planted the fireworks, I told Brian that I couldn’t go through with the rest of the pranks, but he convinced me that I’d be passing up a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a star if I walked away.”
“You’re lying, Omar!” Brian shouted.
I continued despite his outburst. “When the fireworks went off, Brian was sure to be seen—and photographed—protecting Zoë and Lali. Then he calmed everyone down afterward to show that he had quick instincts and could remain composed in the face of danger, just like the Blue Ranger.”
I pulled out the comic book and flipped to an image of the Blue Ranger swooping into a school and calming everyone after an explosion.
I kept going. “In the aftermath of the firecracker incident, Omar stole Spencer’s tools and cut the hole on the top of the costume trailer. The grocery bag he was carrying contained ketchup and chocolate syrup. He poured the mixture into the hole, and it dripped onto the sweater.”
“You little sneak! How come nobody caught him?” Spencer fumed.
“Because he looks exactly like you from behind,” I said, “and I’m guessing he bought one of those fleece vests. Nobody ever questioned him rummaging around in your truck, because the security guards thought it was you.”
Lali grabbed Omar’s backpack and began rifling through it. Sure enough, she produced the missing tools and the black fleece vest.
“Brian flirted with Cora to make sure she was filming him whenever your camera wasn’t rolling,” I explained to Alex. “That way he could demonstrate his fearlessness and agility. See, the Blue Ranger can scale entire buildings without assistance—just like Brian scaled the trailer.”
I showed him another page of the comic book, which pictured the Blue Ranger climbing a small apartment building in order to save an old lady trapped on the roof.
“What about the call sheet?” Lali asked. “Does the Blue Ranger write dumb notes?”
“That one threw me off,” I admitted. “But then I realized that Omar was also hanging around the production trailer during the time the note appeared. I’m guessing he hid the stapler in the cooler and wrote the note while Shea was out looking for it.”
Omar didn’t deny anything.
“How’d you figure that one out, Nancy?” George asked, scratching her head and leafing through the comic book. “Brian wasn’t even around when Shea found the threatening note on the call sheet.”
“I remembered that Zoë had asked for a call sheet early,” I said, taking the book back from her. “And Omar tried to stop her from seeing it because he knew that Brian was planning to make a speech when the whole crew collected call sheets at the end of the day.”
I flipped to another page where the Blue Ranger makes a speech to the mayor and his wife, urging them to remain calm after receiving a ransom note threatening their kidnapped daughter.
“But he took the opportunity to give that speech right after the light almost fell on my head instead.”
“Did he do that, too?” Bess gasped.
“Yes,” I replied dryly, “but I’ll get to that. Next was the pendant. Omar stole it and handed it off to Brian, who slipped it into his own cider. He waited for the camera to start rolling before his little stunt,” I added. “By the way, Brian, for a television doctor, you should know that if you were actually choking, you wouldn’t be able to cough.”
Brian grumbled something under his breath. I flipped to another page of the comic book that showed the Blue Ranger proclaiming that he works alone. In the comic book, the Blue Ranger even gives himself stitches after a knife fight.
“But Brian selected a less bloody option,” I explained, “and gave himself the Heimlich. The next day he discreetly unscrewed the light fixture and moved the sandbags off its stand while he was showing off his ‘frightened’ act to Bess, George, and me. Then he made a joke about using his martial arts skills on a serpent coming out of a sewer. That was an important clue. There’s a scene in the comic book in which the Blue Ranger fights off a sewer serpent with his bare hands. Then, when he saved me from the falling light, it mimicked a scene in which the Blue Ranger saves someone from being crushed by a falling boulder.”
“But how did you know about the Ferris wheel?” Lali choked out the words.
“In the last scene of the comic book,” I pointed out, “the Blue Ranger has to save someone else after the sewer serpent pushes
her out of a hot air balloon. Once I realized that Brian wasn’t even supposed to be here today and saw him doing all those exercises, I assumed that he’d loosened the bucket’s nuts and bolts while he was pretending to hang out with Zoë. It’s exactly what he did to the light yesterday.”
Zoë shrieked, “Brian, I could have died just now!”
“But you wouldn’t have! I would have saved you!” he cried. “I just wanted to prove to the Blue Ranger producers that they shouldn’t have rejected me. It’s been so hard!” Brian wailed, falling apart. “I had to show them that I have what it takes!”
In the minutes that followed, Brian finally admitted that he had done some research and found out that Ronan lived nearby. He then used Ronan’s not-so-secret rivalry with Alex (and the promise of a healthy fee) to pressure Ronan into helping him. Ronan agreed and rented a suite at Lightning Post. After Krish left his editing room each night, Ronan would swipe the key and sneak the drives out of the Hamilton Inn editing room, copying the footage of Brian’s heroics, and then returning the drives by the time Krish returned the following night. The reason the drives were gone that afternoon was because of the schedule change due to the carnival scene; Ronan didn’t know that Krish and Alex would be coming in so early. This also explained why Brian kept begging Cora for her documentary footage; he wanted a visual record of the pranks that the film’s camera didn’t capture.
“Brian, how could you?” Alex said. “Couldn’t you just film yourself doing those things without putting this movie in danger?”
“I know how it looks, Alex,” Brian pleaded. “But the schedule was too tight for me to organize anything in L.A. I figured I could send this footage to the director and they would realize their mistake by the time we finished shooting. Plus, I would have had the benefit of professional equipment and cinematography. I just wanted to show them—”
“That you’re completely insane?” Lali exploded. “This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen!”
“I didn’t think it would affect your film, Lali, I swear!” Brian insisted. “I wanted to show the Blue Ranger team that I’m creative and resourceful. I wanted to stand out!”
A Script for Danger Page 9