KW 09:Shot on Location (17 page)

43.

Joey Goldman’s boat wasn’t much to look at, just eighteen feet of bland and slightly dinged up fiberglass, some sun-faded blue seat cushions, and a well-worn outboard engine that usually but not always took him where he wanted to go. He kept the modest craft at Garrison Bight, the locals’ marina, where teak was seldom oiled, brass was rarely buffed, and every once in a while a venerable houseboat or trawler would silently settle to the bottom of its slip, coming to rest at a picturesque angle in the fragrant mud.

Now Joey and his passengers pulled slowly away from the funky dock, and when they’d scudded under the Fleming Key bridge and through the upper harbor to round the breakwater that led to the privileged precinct of the Brigantine Marina, they looked like poor relations arriving for a strained, unwelcome visit, or maybe more like refugees pulling into some barely believable promised land. The tall raked masts of million dollar sloops and ketches towered over them. They were dwarfed by the gleaming tuna towers and pendant outriggers of rich men’s occasional fishing boats.

Donna, her arm still in a sling but her color and sass largely restored, said, “No offense, Joey, but people’ll think we’re someone’s dinghy.”

“Let ’em think what they want,” said Bert, who was dressed in red and white seersucker for the excursion. His dog had a tiny yellow life vest on. “Snob bastards.”

At idle speed, Joey weaved through the mooring field and up and down the ranks of floating piers. Here and there, amid the sailboats and the cabin cruisers, speedboats were roped into their berths. There was something odd and rather sad about these speedboats: In their overreaching attempts to be distinctive they all ended up, like society women in extravagant hats, looking more or less the same. Lots of chrome. Swollen phallic hulls. Rich and sinister finishes leavened with flecks and sparkles. Looking at these flashy vessels, Jake begged his eyes to discern details, telltale quirks, but he felt a secret fear of failure. He doubted he could tell one speedboat from another.

Then they found the
Quickie
. It was tied up between a big wooden yawl and a high-tech racing sloop. The name was painted in fancy gold script on a tapering transom. The pipes and windshield glared blindingly in the late morning sun. The dock lines were slack and the muscular hull sat perfectly still in the sheltered water. Joey eased to within five feet of its stern.

Ace said to Jake, “Zat it?”

Jake stared, thought, hoped that memory might trump imagination as he tried to picture truly what had happened on the morning of Donna’s big swim. He saw again the speedboat appearing with horrible abruptness in the channel between the islets; he recalled the looming menace of the lifted hull; he remembered watching distance shrink between the boat and its victim then stretch again as the guilty craft sped remorselessly away. He stared at the
Quickie
for a few long moments, pursed his lips, then just shook his head.

“That isn’t it?” said Ace.

Unhappily, Jake said, “I don’t know. It might be. I’m just not sure.”

Ace looked at Bert. Bert looked at Donna. Donna said, “Don’t ask me, I was underneath the sonofabitch.”

Joey idled for another moment. He was just clicking into reverse when a tall blonde woman in amber sunglasses appeared at the head of the dock, just outside the fence, perhaps a hundred feet away. She wore a chic leather jacket that was far too snug to close, but left a swath of cleavage and taut flat midriff exposed to the air and sunshine. On her feet were golden sandals whose straps wound up her calves.

She was punching in a gate code when she noticed the crummy little skiff that was loitering near her boat. She stopped what she was doing, watched, appraised. Sightseers? Gawkers? It took a moment before anyone in Joey’s craft saw the woman standing there, and then everyone seemed to discover her at once. Heads turned, gazes locked in. The woman didn’t budge, didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. As the seconds passed, her immobility seemed more and more a dare, a taunt.

Never taking his eyes off the blonde, Ace said in a rough whisper, “Put me ashore.”

With one jerk of the motor Joey maneuvered toward the pier and the big man leaped onto it. Jake, by reflex, followed him, and the two of them, first jogging then sprinting, dodging coiled ropes and stacks of gear, labored up the floating dock that rocked and tilted under the pounding of their feet. For an instant more the blonde just looked at them, then she wheeled and moved away. She didn’t panic, didn’t run, just walked quickly with a confident and mocking step, a bag slung across her shoulder and bouncing on her hip.

At the head of the pier, Ace swung open the security gate and lumbered through it, Jake closely following. But as soon as the water and the boats were behind them, they found themselves without transition in a teeming bazaar of shops and kiosks, cafes and bars. Chairs and tables spilled across the sidewalk, almost to the shoreline; early drinkers sucked tall Bloody Marys through straws. Phalanxes of shoppers glutted up the passageways, lugging souvenirs, taking pictures. Ace and Jake peered left and right, ran a block in one direction, then, winded and sweating, doubled back the other way, sidling and dodging as they went. But there was no trace of the taunting blonde. Somehow, even with her unmistakable strangeness, she had melted into the milling crowd. She was as gone as though she’d never been there.

44.

As usual, it was Claire who was expected to bear the brunt of Candace’s unhappiness, this time brought about by the cancelling of her publicity appearances. During a break in that day’s shooting, the diva came barging into her metal box of an office and said without prelude, “You’ve heard what that bitch Jacqueline did to me?”

Claire was elbow deep in mundane paperwork — union time cards, caterer’s bills. Without looking up she said, “Yes, I’ve heard.”

Redundantly, hoping to draw the other woman’s gaze, Candace said, “Cancelled my interviews. Every one.”

Claire kept working, her eyes down on her papers. “Yes, I’ve heard,” she said again. She said it very calmly and without much apparent interest or sympathy. This confused and rattled Candace. Why wasn’t Claire responding as she should, as she always had before? Why wasn’t she swept at once into the drama?

Upping the ante, the actress put a hand on her hip and dipped her shoulders forward. With her free hand she loudly snapped a finger. “Just like that,” she said. “No warning. No explanation. No gratitude for everything I’ve done.”

Claire briefly put her pen down. “Gratitude? How about gratitude on your side?” She went back to the tasks in front of her.

“On my side?” said the diva, her voice rising in disbelief. “For what? Being kept up all hours of the day and night? Getting stung? Getting poisoned?”

“You weren’t poisoned. It was chocolate. Look, you didn’t have to go along with the publicity. You did it because you wanted the attention. You got it, and all you did was complain. Now you’re losing it and you’re complaining again. Which is it, Candace? Make up your mind.”

The actress stared back at Claire for just a heartbeat, then she turned and strode the short length of the metal office, her forearm raised across her brow. Peering back over her shoulder she whimpered, “So you’re against me too.”

Wearily, softly, Claire said, “I’m not against you. And by the way, neither’s Jacqueline. But speaking for myself, I’m sick and tired of babysitting you. You’re a real pain in the ass, Candace.”

The words could not have been much simpler but it seemed to take a while for the actress to process them. Behind her eyes she was riffling through her repertoire of possible reactions. Righteous outrage? Wounded feelings? Treating the comment as a bit of a joke? But nothing in her well-schooled range seemed to fit the naked truth of the moment and she stood there blankly, wondering what she ought to feel.

Instead it was Claire who finally let the emotions fly. Months of forbearance, of overwork, of acting on decisions she did not believe in and taking care of everyone except herself finally overwhelmed her tact, and she allowed herself the luxury of candor. “You’re more trouble than the rest of the cast put together. You’re selfish. You’re oblivious. You’re cruel to less important people. You’re talented but you’re a nightmare, Candace. Now if you’d please leave, I have work to do.”

---

Claire’s heart rate had returned to normal and she was unconsciously whistling when her cell phone rang. It was Jake.

“Know why I’m calling?” he asked.

“No idea.”

“I’m calling because you say I never call and that I’m never the one to see if we can get together. So I’m calling not to be a chicken and to ask if I can see you later.”

Claire was pleased enough that her peachy skin flushed beneath the suntan. “Well,” she said. “You’re the second person who’s surprised me today.”

“Who was the first?”

“Myself. I just told off Candace.”

“Good for you.”

“Maybe. Felt good in the moment. But, you know, it’s partly your fault.”

“My fault?”

“These last few days,” she said, “hanging around with you, talking, I’ve finally been thinking about what I want for a change.”

Jake said, “So that means we can get together?”

“Sorry, but actually we can’t. Not today. Quentin’s coming into town.”

Impressed, Jake said, “Wow, he finished his script already? That’s some fast writing.”

“He got on a roll and worked through the night. Didn’t even talk with the staff writers. Just powered through it. Sounded really wired when he called. Said he was catching an early flight.”

“So he’s in Florida already?”

Claire looked at her watch. “No, it’ll be another hour or two. You know, with the time difference. But I’ve got a bunch of grunt work to do in the meantime. Can we get together maybe tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Jake said. “Sure.”

There was one of those dangling pauses that happen when a conversation is basically over but two people aren’t quite ready to break off the tenuous intimacy of a phone call. Finally Claire said, “I gotta go. I’m really glad you called.”

She tried to get back to her paperwork but had a little trouble concentrating. Two minutes later her cell phone rang again.

Before he even said hello, Jake said rather breathlessly, “The time difference.”

He was calling from his cottage, which suddenly seemed too small to contain the excited circuits of his pacing. Leaning far forward, flapping his free hand in some emphatic yet vague explanatory gesture, he said again, “You said the time difference. It didn’t register before.”

Claire said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Knowing he was rambling, but too amped up to fix it, he said, “I just thought of this. Quentin’s early morning flight. Early morning in California. Not here. Three hours later here. So by the time he gets to Florida it’s late afternoon.”

Patiently, Claire said, “Yes, the earth revolves. That’s how time zones work.”

Cutting in again, Jake said, “Three hours later for the time change. Four, five hours for the flight.”

“Right. So Quentin will be in Miami around four. I don’t see--”

“Except I’m not talking about Quentin now.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m talking about Jacqueline. Jacqueline got here too soon.”

Claire said, “Jake, I’m not really following this. Can you please slow down a little?”

He tried to. He plopped down on the sofa in his living room and pegged his elbows on his bony knees. “Okay. Okay. The day Donna got run over. She got hurt … when? Around ten. When did Jacqueline land in Miami? Around two, right? Isn’t that when it was? Two p.m. East Coast time. Do the math. There weren’t enough hours. She would’ve had to get the news, get to the airport. It should have been more like two o’clock
Los Angeles
time when she landed. More like five out here.”

“So you’re saying —”

“I’m saying she was on her way before Donna got run over.” He paused and let the words sink down like mud to the bottom of a puddle. “Like maybe she knew it would happen.”

Claire pondered but resisted. “Whoa, that’s quite a stretch. Just because she happened to be on an early flight? Maybe she was coming anyway. For something else.”

“Maybe she was. You tell me. What else would she have been coming for?”

“I … I don’t know,” said Claire. “But they don’t tell me everything.”

“They seem to tell you most things.”

Still skeptical, still fending off belief, Claire stalled a moment then murmured, “But Jacqueline? I just can’t imagine …”

“What? That she’d sacrifice a stunt girl for a terrific story? For a first-class publicity blitz that would look very glossy on her resume? It’s the entertainment business, right?”

Claire searched for a response and in the meantime Jake sprang up, resumed his pacing, and let his hunch carry him still farther.

“Couldn’t’ve been Jacqueline alone, of course. There needed to be someone else. Someone here. Someone with a speedboat. Maybe someone Jacqueline knew from before, from Los Angeles. Like maybe the crazy blonde.”

“Now wait a second,” Claire protested.

He didn’t. “Think about it. Think about their two agendas. Jacqueline wants her story. The crazy blonde wants Candace front and center, out in the open, so she can get to her, torment her, bring her down. Donna gets hurt and they both get exactly what they want. Look, we’ve been trying to figure out a connection between what happened to Donna and what’s been happening to Candace, right? Maybe this is the connection.”

Claire, trying to follow the rush of Jake’s hypothesizing, had been doodling some of her complex but obscure diagrams on random scraps of paper. “I don’t know,” she said, examining her arcs and triangles. “It just sounds a little, a little —”

“Show me the flaw in the logic,” he challenged. “Show me where the logic doesn’t wash.”

“The logic seems fine,” she conceded after another moment’s thought. “Then again, it was pretty logical to think it was Ace. A little proof would be nice.”

“One thing at a time,” Jake said. “One thing at a time. I’ll see you tomorrow.”