Remains to Be Scene (23 page)

T
he marine layer had inched its way inland overnight from the ocean and settled deep into the Los Angeles Basin. Although the morning sky was overcast, Polly couldn’t have felt any sunnier had she been strolling on a romantic beach in Tahiti.

After a night of easy conversation with Detective Archer, as well as a serious discussion about the Sedra Stone murder investigation, followed by long-overdue intimacy with a man to whom she was genuinely attracted, Polly felt younger and more optimistic than she had in ages. “Lip-to-lip combat can work miracles on a girl’s self-esteem,” she cooed as she stepped from the shower stall and allowed herself to be enfolded in a bath towel gallantly held out for her by Detective Archer.

“You’d be a star in any man’s life,” Archer whispered as he kissed Polly’s wet shoulder.

After dressing and consuming a light breakfast of toaster waffles and four Advil tablets chased with a cup of Folgers’s instant coffee crystals, Polly promised to reserve the following Saturday for another dinner date with Randy. She kissed her host/lover and reluctantly said good-bye. She then stepped into her Rolls, and in a trance, drove herself home to Bel Air.

It was nearly ten o’clock when Polly entered the estate grounds and parked her car. When she unlocked the front doors and walked through her quiet home, she found Tim and Placenta at the poolside patio table each reading a script and arguing about the way in which familiar people and events—themselves included—were portrayed in the screen drama. They both looked up and jostled for her immediate and undivided attention. Polly joined them and settled herself into her usual chair.

Tim won. “I hate to bring you down so quickly,” Tim said. “You’re obviously on a sex high. But…”

“Then don’t,” Polly interrupted. “Pretend I’m not here. Pretend it’s not quite midnight and I’m still wearing glass slippers and a Do Not Disturb sign instead of my pearls. Let me first change my clothes, then I’ll return to you and reality, and my every day monotony.”

“This is urgent,” Tim said. “Read this. Duane printed out a couple of copies of Sedra’s so-called lost script.” He held up his copy. “It’s called
DNA
, and it’s a damn good screenplay. We’re all characters in the story! If Adam Berg chose to kill for a script, I don’t blame him for this one. Who would have guessed that Sedra Stone could write such a compelling movie?”

“Enough!” Polly begged. “Now that Dana’s been released from jail—I presume you’ve heard that news—we no longer have to be involved in this true-crime drama. We can all go back to our usual activities of dissing Bea Arthur and Teri Hatcher. Leave the crime solving to our overcompensated men in Beverly Hills blue. Speaking of our fine public servants, you haven’t asked about my date. Thanks for being so supportive,” she said in a derisive tone.

“Of course we’re dying to hear all about your night on the town—and your dessert between the sheets,” Tim feigned remorse for his lack of giddy teenagerlike curiosity about his mother’s love life. “Would you believe that we wanted you to enjoy your ecstasy in private for a while?”

“Since when do we not reveal every juicy detail of each others’ sex dates?” Polly said. “We’re supposed to be a liberal Left Coast progressive family unit. The very model of everything Focus on the Family wants to throw into the lake of fire—or worse: an eternity of having to watch reruns of ‘Highway to Heaven.’ I endure all the nauseating chatter about the Mr. Rights you both drag in from God knows where every now and then. But I go five years without so much as a tongue in my ear, and when I finally reel in a decent size fish, I don’t even get a ‘way to go’ thumbs up from either of you!”

Placenta picked up her coffee mug and took a tentative sip. “Okay, Cleopatra. We’re all ears,” she said. “Did he wear a condom?”

Polly skewered them both with a look. “We used an entire box!” she snapped; however, she quickly eased up on her displeasure. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “we had a marvelous time together. Dinner was divine. After I checked in to tell you that I hadn’t been abducted, but wouldn’t be home, things heated up for Randy and me. That’s Detective Archer, to you.” Polly went on to provide more detail than necessary about her night of adventurous lovemaking. “Hell, I almost got snatched up in the rapture and shook hands with Jesus,” she sighed. “Hallelujah and Amen!

“The only dissonant note came when Randy said that they’re closing in on Sedra’s killer,” Polly continued. “That’s a good thing, of course. But, although he wouldn’t tell me who they’re about to finger, I got the impression it was Duane. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It’s absolutely not Duane!” Tim charged. “I had drinks with Duane last night. In fact, he’s fairly sure it was Adam Berg who killed Sedra.”

“Why on earth would Adam kill off one of his actors?” Polly said as if the idea was absurd. “He’s a limited talent who needs all the help he can get making this movie. Scorsese, he’s not!”

“Precisely the point!” Tim said. “Here’s what Duane thinks: Wunderkind choreographer slash rap music video director gets a shot at a Hollywood feature film. But he finds he’s not the talent everybody expected. He’s been handed full reign of a big movie and it’s gone way over budget and dragged miles behind schedule. The guy’s drowning in career disaster and he desperately needs a life-saver. Then, unexpectedly, the showbiz Gods throw him a rope when he happens to come across a highly marketable screenplay. And, he’s got the perfect actress for the lead role. Think Missie Miller. But there’s a catch. The screenwriter has already precast herself in the film. Think Sedra Stone. She insists on playing the main character. After all, it’s a movie she apparently wrote herself.”

Once again Tim held up his copy of the script, which claimed in bold typeface: A SCREENPLAY BY SEDRA STONE.

Polly snorted. “Oh, brother. You’ve got a wilder imagination than Mary Higgins Clark enjoying an LSD aromatherapy,” she said.

Placenta spoke up. “If we’re counting killers, I’m putting my money on Judith or the
real
screenwriter—’cause I don’t believe for one moment that Sedra Stone had the mental capacity to write a thank you note all by herself, let alone a screenplay as stunning as this one. If Duane is right about Adam’s culpability, I’ll bet it was Judith who told Adam about the screenplay in the first place. I mean the other night at dinner she did say that she saw the script on Sedra’s computer. Duane corroborated that. Perhaps Judith realized that if Adam made this sure-fire hit, he’d owe her big time, and she’d finally have the Sugar Daddy she’s been trawling for. So let’s suppose that
Judith
bumped off Sedra to insure that Adam got his next project before his lack of talent and the disaster of
Detention Rules
was discovered and ended up in the pages of
Rolling Stone
or
Premiere
.”

Polly slapped her knee and pretended that she hadn’t heard a funnier joke since Rodney Dangerfield’s last benefit at the Actors and Others for Animals annual charity banquet. “Where’s the laugh track to this farce?” Polly cracked. “Your ideas are positively insane. If you tell me that you guys write those lame sitcoms on CBS to earn extra income, I’ll totally believe it.”

Tim stood up and began to pace the patio. “I think that Placenta’s onto something,” he said, moving to the bar to mix Polly a Bloody Mary. “What if Sedra didn’t write the screenplay? I agree she couldn’t write a check let alone a movie. This may seem like a farfetched guess, but what if…what if someone—let’s say Ben Tyler ’cause I can’t think of another screenwriter at the moment—wrote the script, and gave a disk copy to Sedra to read on her computer. She liked it and told him she’d do his film, but only if she got her name on it as a credited co-writer. Ben’s no different than everyone else in Hollywood, desperate to succeed. Especially after his crappy
Detention Rules!
So he agrees to Sedra’s extortion demands. In the meantime, Sedra goes into the computer and erases Ben’s name from the script altogether.”

“That’s absurd!” Polly wailed. “She’d know that she could never get away with stealing intellectual property.”

Placenta added to the mystery. “Then along come Duane and Judith. They read the script in Sedra’s trailer and think it’s her solo work. Judith tells Adam, who then approaches Sedra and asks to read the completed screenplay. She gives him a print out, which the real writer eventually sees and is psychologically destroyed to find his name is missing from the title page. Sedra’s an easy target for a hit man—what with so many enemies—so Judith, along with the screenwriter, gets one of Adam’s rap stars’ entourage to send Sedra to her next life.”

Tim said, “The screenwriter—Ben, or whoever—can’t come forward and scream ‘thief’ because he’d be the logical primary suspect in Sedra’s murder. He’d be seen as just another disgruntled writer who discovers that someone plagiarized his work.”

Tim was wild-eyed with melodrama. “For Adam then to come along and usurp Sedra’s name after she eliminated someone else’s—well it’s ironic and almost a perfect crime for Adam.”

“There’s no such thing as a perfect crime,” Polly pooh-poohed the scenario. “Everybody pays the piper eventually. Chickens come home to roost.”

“Every crime is perfect until someone gets caught,” Placenta agreed with Tim. “This one could have worked, if it wasn’t for…”

Tim set Polly’s Bloody Mary before his mother on the glass tabletop. “If it wasn’t for what? I’m stumped.”

“I haven’t figured out the next step,” Placenta said and then turned her attention to Polly. “First a wee drink, then a lovely soak in the tub. Then you’ve gotta read this script! If you don’t play the role of Molly—which has you written in invisible ink all the way through it—then Laura Linney or Meryl Streep will grab it. And face it, they’re better actors than you so you’ve gotta book this one fast. This script has Miramax, Merchant Ivory, Fox Searchlight, and Lion’s Gate written all over it! Spacey should direct.”

Polly set her Bloody Mary aside without taking a sip, a gesture not lost on either Tim or Placenta. “Too many flaws in your cockamamie theories,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You suggest that Sedra took the original screenwriter’s name off the script. For what purpose? Why would she do such a thing? To see how her name looked on a title page? No, she’s seen her name on the big screen! To dupe others into thinking she’s a writer? No. She used to get co-writing credit on ‘Monarchy.’ If she so much as contributed one line to the week’s episode, her name went on the crawl. Next you’ll be suggesting it wasn’t an act of malice, but rather to give the living a clue into her death. As if she knew someone wanted her dead and this is her way of communicating from the grave!

“Then you’d have us believe that after Sedra’s convenient demise, Adam took
her
name off the script, the easier to claim credit all to himself,” Polly continued. “But don’t you see, Sedra’s death removes any obstacle for the real screenwriter—if there is another—to claim the work as his own. Sedra’s out of the way and he now has a case against Adam. It’s like money laundering. In this case, the writer is no longer linked to Sedra, so it’s a simple matter of siccing the WGA on Adam. In all likelihood the script was registered with the Writers Guild anyway. And since Adam has a zero track record as a writer, they won’t even get to an arbitration. He’d be busted.”

Tim and Placenta thought about Polly’s surprisingly cogent analytical skills. They looked at each other and telegraphed agreement with Polly’s assessment.

“Not so fast,” Tim suddenly said. “Sedra would
have
to be the sole author of
DNA
because all the characters are based on real people she knew and worked with, including you,” Tim challenged. “It’s a guess, but that screenwriter guy, Ben, wouldn’t have known Sedra’s history, or yours for that matter. So he’s probably not part of the equation. Did you notice how young he is? I’ll wager that not only doesn’t he shave yet, but he also doesn’t even remember a world in which Cher’s first and middle names were Sonny And. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised—although it pains me to say this, Mommie Dearest—that he probably never even heard of Sedra Stone, ‘Monarchy,’ or ‘The Polly Pepper Playhouse.’ Stupid though he would be, of course.”

“Of course,” Polly agreed. “But everything can be researched on the Internet. Google me and you’ll find my cholesterol count. Anyone could have written about Sedra and her peccadilloes without ever doing an honest-to-God interview.”

“But who would spend so much time writing a spec bio script?” Tim said. “Sedra’s life may have had its interesting chapters, but she was never a big enough star to warrant a movie about her life.” Tim paused. “Only a fan would take the time to write a movie about Sedra Stone and her nemesis Polly Pepper,” he said. “And the fan is…” Tim caught himself midthought.

“Duane’s a walking encyclopedia about
Polly’s
life,” Placenta said, patting an understanding hand on his forearm. “Polly is his idol. He insists that he had no interest whatsoever in Sedra Stone.”

“Maybe that was to throw us off track,” Polly said. “Could Duane really be the writer
and
the killer?” she mused.

Placenta’s lack of a response said that she was thinking the same thing.

“I refuse to consider the possibility,” Tim said. “What about Missie Miller? The part that Sedra would have played in her movie is really meant for a much younger actress. Missie’s perfect for the part. And playing it would alter her goodie-goodie image. Working against type is what gets Oscar notice. Think of Heath Ledger in
Broke-back Mountain
,”