The Body in the Cast (17 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body in the Cast
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“Don't call a doctor,” she shouted to Cornelia. “Call the fire department; they'll bring an ambulance.”
Sandra's face felt as cold as the weather outside, despite the warmth the lights and people had created in the room. Her eyes closed and she would have toppled from the chair had Faith not caught the young woman. Faith sat on the floor, Sandra cradled on her lap. She seemed to weigh less than Ben. One hand clutched the pewter cup she had placed on the mantel a few moments ago. It was empty.
Faith shouted one final instruction. “And call the police. The state police, too.”
 
Had the town of Aleford replaced its ancient cruiser, Charley MacIsaac would not have lost precious time changing a tire on his way to the Pingree house and would have been there to warn Detective Lieutenant John Dunne of the Massachusetts State Police that it was likely he would encounter his old friend Mrs. Fairchild once again. As it was, Dunne walked onto the movie set and confronted Faith center stage, not merely with a finger in the pie but up to her elbows—with her arms around the victim.
Sandra Wilson was not dead, yet Faith had known immediately something other than fatigue had to be responsible for the woman's pronounced symptoms. One of the crew had brought a blanket and reached for the empty cup that had fallen from Sandra's hand as he was covering her.
“Don't touch it—please!” Faith said. The man had looked mildly surprised and drawn back his hand.
Time had stopped, but Faith's mind was racing. If there had been something in the cup, it might be best to try to get Sandra to vomit. But with some poisons, this was the worst course of action, doubling their effect.
Poison
—she was using the word.
Sandra's breathing was shallow and slow. Her chest, incongruously clad in Hester's flimsy costume, barely moved. The scarlet letter that had looked so sensual a few minutes ago was now a mere piece of brightly colored cloth.
Faith kept her fingers on the woman's pulse. Her wrist felt limp and flaccid; her body draped across Faith like one of Amy's soft dolls.
At first, the room had been as still as the figure drawing every eye, then Max cried out, “Shouldn't we be doing something? CPR, for God's sake!”
Faith had decided they better try it, even if it did cause the girl to throw up. Then they heard the ambulance siren.
“Let's wait,” she said. “The EMTs will know what to do.”
Dunne had followed on their heels and immediately took up all the available space in the cramped room in much the way that Alice had the White Rabbit's house after nibbling a cookie. It was always a shock to see Detective Dunne the first time after an interval. Faith remembered he was large, but not so large—and with a face that could only be cast, to put it politely, in “character” roles. His curly hair, cut close to his head, was grayer than the last time she'd seen him. His wardrobe as bespoke as ever. Today he wore a heavy camel's hair topcoat against the cold. He took charge immediately. Sizing up the situation with one rapid glance, he motioned the EMTs forward and instructed Detective Sullivan, at his side as usual, to rush the cup to the lab. As he left the room, Sully whispered something in his boss's ear.
Relieved of her burden, Faith stood up. Detective Dunne said, “I probably know the answer to this one, but it was your idea to phone us, right?”
Faith nodded. “It seemed like too much of a coincidence for someone to be saying lines about poison in a cup, then immediately
keel over. And what with the business with the black bean soup—”
Dunne interrupted her with an explosive, “More soup! After that guy turned up headfirst in your bouillon, I'd have thought you'd stay away from the stuff!”
“You know perfectly well there was nothing wrong with my bouillon and the same—”
This time it was Maxwell Reed who broke in.
“Would somebody in charge like to tell me what the hell is going on here besides a discussion of Mrs. Fairchild's menus? And what is this about her soups?”
The detective lieutenant answered icily. It was his show now and he'd decide what was going on and when.
“I am Detective Dunne of the Massachusetts State Police. We were called by the Aleford police. Mrs. Fairchild worked with us on an investigation last year, and in the initial stages, there was an incident with some soup. The coincidence struck me. Now why don't you tell me who you are and I'll try to figure out what's going on here.”
Faith was flattered. John Dunne had actually said she had worked on an investigation. This could mean he was beginning to regard her as other than a nuisance and a pest. It could also mean he wasn't. After all, he hadn't said
helped,
although without her, corpses would still be piling up in the neighboring town of Byford.
“I'm Maxwell Reed.” The director appeared to think his name was sufficient introduction, and he was right.
“And who was the young woman we've just carted off to Emerson Hospital?”
“That is one of my production assistants, Sandra Wilson. She has been working extremely hard and I'm sure they will discover she simply needs some time to rest.”
Dunne didn't respond. He walked around the set, threatening cameras, lights, and even the fabric pinned to the walls.
“The Scarlet Letter.
I've heard that's what you're filming, so the cup means this was the scene in Hester Prynne's prison cell
where Roger Chillingworth gives her something to calm her down.”
Faith was impressed. She knew that John's upbringing in the Bronx, across the river from her own in Manhattan, had been unusually literary. His mother was devoted to English poetry—witness the name. Apparently, Mom had revered the Concord Renascence crowd, as well.
“Yes,” replied Reed. “We were using the stand-ins to test the lighting before shooting with the principals. But Miss Wilson didn't drink from the cup. We cut before that point.”
Reed's stand-in, Greg Bradley, who also worked as one of the grips, spoke up. “She did after you stopped shooting. Said she was very thirsty.”
“What was in the cup?” Dunne asked. It was a simple question, but Reed seemed to draw a blank. Faith knew the answer.
“Diet Coke and Perrier. That's what Evelyn O'Clair likes to drink,” she added after noting Dunne's arched eyebrow, a habitual gesture that emphatically did not make him look like Cary Grant.
“Hmmm,” he said, “Detective Sullivan told me it smelled like booze.”
Someone gasped and everyone looked surprised. Sandra a secret drinker? Or Evelyn?
Dunne was about to speak again when Chief MacIsaac, Evelyn O'Clair, Cappy Camson, and Marta Haree all showed up at once.
Evelyn, wrapped in her sable coat, was almost hysterical. “What were all those sirens? We heard them in the woods—and what are the police doing here? Max! What's happened?”
The room was ready to burst.
Dunne answered, “I was just about to say that we don't know whether anything has happened here. Sandra Wilson passed out and is now being treated. Until we hear from the hospital, we only have Mrs. Fairchild's intuition to go on.” He managed to make her hunch sound extremely dubious and Faith began to think she might have been overoptimistic about his attitude.
“Yesterday was the Ides of March, you know,” Marta commented in a voice filled with foreboding.
“Yes, but Sandra wasn't stabbed and we're not doing Shakespeare, Marta!” Max was annoyed. He looked angrily at Faith. “What is she doing on the set?”
Alan stepped forward and said something sotto voce to Max, who struggled with himself for a moment, then calmed down—the whole process vividly enacted on his face.
“Detective Dunne, I am sure you will understand that we need to get on with what we're doing here. I can't have a whole crew just sitting around on their hands. It gets to be very expensive. Producers don't like it, especially my producers.”
“Of course I understand. As soon as we get word from the hospital, you can all get back to work.” Dunne's tone suggested he liked movies as much as the next guy.
“But this could take hours!”
“I'm sorry. However, since there is the possibility that there was something in the cup that shouldn't have been, until we hear otherwise, we can't disturb the room.” He waved his hand vaguely in Faith's direction.
He might just as well have said it out loud, Faith thought bitterly: If you want to blame anyone for all this, blame little Mrs. Fairchild, your soon-to-be-ex caterer.
“The cup!” Evelyn's voice rose to a wail. “My cup! What was in my cup!” She'd taken off her coat and was wearing her Hester costume. Faith had had to look twice to be sure it wasn't Sandra miraculously risen from her hospital bed.
Max put his arm around Evelyn. She'd detached herself from Cappy, to whom she'd been clinging like a limpet, and crossed over to Max's side as soon as she entered.
“Nothing! Nothing was in the cup. Maybe some liquor. Somebody did it as a joke. Hester with bourbon on her breath—something like that. Everything's going to be fine. Why don't you go back to your trailer and lie down for a while until this is all sorted out?”
“I'm not going back there alone! Something's going on here!
I want a bodyguard, Max. I told you I should have one!” She began to sob. She looked absolutely terrified.
He put his other arm around her. “Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing has happened. Just some mix-up. I wouldn't let anything or anyone hurt you. You know that, darling! How about if Marta goes back with you? Just until I can come?” He looked over Evelyn's head, now buried in his shoulder, at Marta, who nodded and moved toward them.
Max addressed Dunne pointedly. “I assume we're free to leave the room.”
“Certainly, but, for the time being, not the property.”
After Marta led the distraught actress away, others left—in search of a breath of air, perhaps, and also to get away from the eidetic images hanging about of Sandra prone on Faith's lap—and the cup.
Max looked glumly after the retreating figures and said to Alan, “Oh well, we were going to have to break for lunch soon, anyway.” The remark reminded him of Faith, and he seemed about to say something to her she'd rather not hear. She was hastily following the crowd out into the frigid March morning when Dunne called after her, “Don't go too far, Mrs. Fairchild. I want to talk to you.”
Faith ran to the tent to tell Niki and Pix what was going on—or rather, what had happened. The news had preceded her and they were waiting anxiously by the entrance.
“Faith! One of the crew said Sandra drank from a cup that was a prop and passed out! Do you think someone has been playing tricks again?” Pix asked.
“I don't know. But whatever was in the cup acted extremely quickly and she seemed in very bad shape.” Faith suddenly realized she had to sit down or she'd fall down. Her knees had buckled out from under her at the memory of how rapidly Sandra's skin had cooled and her heartbeat slowed. Someone was talking.
“Put your head between your knees.” It was Pix with typically useful advice, although Faith had long ago decided she'd have to be in extremis to assume such an ungainly position.
“I'm okay. And I'll be a whole lot better when we hear that Sandra is.”
But they didn't.
As they were serving the first of the crew, Dunne strode in, took Faith aside, and said, “She's dead. Now come with me and tell me everything.”
Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.
Faith was stunned. The thought that she should have started CPR or done something else nagged at her. Her nose got stuffy and she felt the tears come. She stuck her hand in her jacket pocket and found a blue crayon but no tissue. It made her cry harder. Dunne reached into his pocket and pulled out a fine Irish linen handkerchief with his initials discreetly embroidered at the border. She took it silently. It smelled faintly of bay rum.
She wondered where they would be able to talk and followed him into the house—an hour ago crawling with movie people, now crawling with police. She noted the familiar yellow plastic crime-scene ribbons and the plethora of cameras as they passed the dining room. She followed Dunne up the narrow, twisting stairs to the second floor and into the front bedroom. It was being used to store equipment and the only place left to sit was on the floor or on the large four-poster. Charley MacIsaac, who was behind Faith, immediately claimed the end near the pillows. Dunne sat next to him and Faith perched at the foot of
the bed. The lyrics to one of Ben's favorite songs, “Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,” immediately leapt to mind and she could hardly keep herself from chanting, “And the little one said, ‘Move over, move over.'” She restrained herself by focusing again on the tragedy. It wasn't difficult to push nonsense aside in the face of incomprehensibility.
“What made you think Sandra Wilson had been poisoned?” John got straight to the point.
“I'm not really sure.” Faith tried to explain the feeling she had as soon as Max had said Sandra needed a doctor. “Maybe it's left over from the other night. The whole thing was pretty strange.” She described Max's birthday party in detail. Charley's eyes opened wide and the detective lieutenant allowed himself one of his thin-lipped little smiles. “A Hester Prynne striptease. Wait until they hear about this down in the Zone. It could replace ‘All Nude College Girls.'”
Faith continued. If she thought out loud, maybe things would get clearer.
“It's very hard to tell what's normal on a movie set. I mean, there's obviously a lot of tension about time and not going over budget. Then the actors all have a lot of anxiety about their roles. In some cases, whether they're doing it right; in others, whether they've got enough to do. And you have all these egos that need caressing, which reminds me. Caresse Carroll.” She told them about the child's tantrum and fears about being off the picture. She and Charley filled Dunne in on the black bean soup incident.
“I don't see how the two events can be connected, yet they have to be. And the fire. I'm sure it was set to get us out of the tent while the Chocolax was put into the soup, although it still leaves the question of Evelyn's soup. That was served before the fire. But tampering with food—twice in less than a week. Even if the first incident gave someone an idea, there has to be a link.”
Dunne shook his head, in agreement. “Do you know who was responsible for filling the cup?”
Faith had been dreading the question. “Yes. Me. That is, the prop man came into the kitchen before they started shooting and asked me to fill the cup with diet Coke and Perrier. I did and he took it back to the dining room.”
“Charley, you want to go down and find the guy? Ask him what he did with it after he left the kitchen.”
“It probably sat on the mantel the whole time. That's where it was when I came in later,” Faith told them.
“Makes sense, but let's get him right away.”
Charley left and Dunne speculated: “It sounds to me like somebody wants to shut the production down. I wonder if Sandra's death wasn't an accident. Too much of whatever was put in the alcohol, or something she was allergic to. The idea was to have another poisoning where nobody actually got hurt, although from what Charley has said, everyone suffered.” He looked pointedly at Faith.
“You could be right,” she said. “I think what I'm trying to say is that there's been an unusual amount of tension on this set compared to others I worked on. I've been chalking it up to Max's unorthodox methods—and his personality. We've all been waiting for a display of his famous temper. Evelyn isn't exactly laid-back, either.” She told him about the forest scene shoot and subsequent drama enacted at the Marriott, then returned to her previous point. “In retrospect, I think the other night was Evelyn's ego run amok, no doubt an everyday event. Stars with their noses out of joint are pretty common on movie sets. People work around it, ignore it. But the strain in the air on A has been more than that.”
“Any ideas who would want to stop the filming?” Dunne asked.
Faith thought for a moment. “No. In fact, it would be detrimental to everyone I can think of—the actors, Max, crew, producers.”
“What about the studio? Isn't there some sort of insurance money they collect if the movie isn't finished? Could they be in trouble?”
“Maybe, but this is supposed to be a blockbuster with an all-star cast and the cachet of Maxwell Reed as director. It's slated for a wide release at Christmas. They stand to make a whole lot more money if the picture is finished. Besides, and maybe I'm being naïve, I can't imagine they'd go to such lengths to get the insurance money.”
“Unless somebody was overextended, shall we say. Like one of the producers. The track, women, high living.”
Faith tried to fit Arnold Rose into the picture. Or Kit Murphy, lounging in someone's pink satin boudoir, her filmy negligee carelessly tossed to one side, next to the marabou feather-trimmed high-heeled mules she'd kicked off before lowering the lights and finishing the champagne. The champagne was right, but the rest …
“No, the producers—and they've been with Max for years, like almost everyone else—seem as anxious as anyone to get the picture made.”
“A disgruntled crew member?”
“Possibly. And he or she could be responsible for the soup, too, but other than run-of-the-mill grousing about lack of sleep and cold weather, I haven't heard any complaints. Working on one of Max's pictures is a credential people in the business fight to get. Caresse has been the only outspoken malcontent.”
“What about Caresse?”
“I suppose it's possible. She's hardly led a normal childhood—whatever one is.” Faith tried not to get distracted. She spent a lot of time these days thinking about this topic in the hopes of saving Ben and Amy hours on the couch, not to mention fees that could be put to better use, such as sending aging parents to the Caribbean or the south of France in some far distant winters.
“Putting the laxative in the soup seems like something she would do out of spite—she was really furious at Max and could easily have grabbed a dozen or so boxes from Evelyn's stash, but she wasn't even on the set today. This scene involves infant Pearl, represented by very docile twin baby girls.”
Faith looked out the window. The dull gray sky framed by the ball fringe on the Pingrees' white Priscilla curtains threatened rain, or worse—snow. When had she stopped greeting the first flakes with the delight Ben did? Sometime in April her first year in Aleford? She was getting old and her bones felt creaky, or maybe it was just from sitting on the four-poster, which seemed to have a mattress stuffed with corncobs. There was such a thing as too much authenticity, and people with period houses often veered dangerously close to the line.
“We'll start someone checking on what Miss Carroll and her mother were up to this morning. Anyone else missing from the set—that is, any of the principals?”
“No, I was surprised to see Marta, though. I didn't think she was involved in this scene, except you never know with Max. He's taken a pretty free hand with Hawthorne.”
“Reed said Sandra Wilson was one of his production assistants. Did you see her other than at the party and on the set … know her at all?”
“Not really. She'd come to request a tray for Max, Evelyn, or one of the other actors at lunch or a snack at other times, and I'd see her when she ate, usually with Max's stand-in, the guy who said she drank from the cup. We'd exchanged pleasantries. That's all. She struck me as somewhat shy, although her performances were anything but. She seemed totally devoted to Max—following him around with her clipboard and watching him starry-eyed when he was busy with someone else, that kind of thing.” Faith was glad she hadn't known Sandra better. It was easier to deal with her death in a vacuum, without the knowledge of parents, sisters, brothers, happy years growing up in wherever.
“What about the male stand-in? Were they romantically involved?”
“I don't know. Though I hope so, because if she was in love with Max, it was pointless.”
Faith saw Sandra's glowing face again as she emerged from kissing Max after the strip. There was no if about the young
woman's feelings for the director. She sighed. Life was monumentally unfair.
Having reduced God's cosmic joke to a single sentence, she debated with herself what to tell Dunne about Cornelia. Cornelia had been on the set, of course. Glowering in the corner during the stand-in shooting and strangely quiet and immobile during its aftermath. Certainly she was jealous of Sandra, but she wouldn't do anything like this. Tamper with one of Max's sacred props! Never!
Dunne eyed her suspiciously. Faith found it almost difficult to meet his gaze.
“Are you sure you've told me everything? Do I have to give you the speech again?”
The speech, Faith knew from experience, consisted of stern reminders that this was a murder investigation, not a Sunday School picnic, etc., etc., etc. Certainly it was a murder investigation, and investigate was exactly what she intended to do.
She crossed her fingers behind her back, something of a reflex, and said, “Of course I have.”
 
Anyone peering in the lighted windows of the parsonage later that evening would have been rewarded by a picture as wholesome as apple pie, or, since it was Faith,
tarte tatin.
Mother was at the sink washing pots. Baby Amy was swaying contently in her wind-up swing and little Ben was drawing pictures across the table from Father, who was reading the newspaper—yester—day's, since it was Tom. He never seemed to have time to catch up and yet could not bring himself to take his wife's suggestion and skip a day. An acute observer might have noticed the slight frown on Mother's face as she attacked the broccoli and orecchiette pan with a scouring pad. And Father seemed to be reading the paper uncommonly fast—as if nothing could engage his attention for long. He flung the pages to one side and directed his attention to his son.
“What are you making? It looks like a very nice car. Good job, Ben.”
Ben shook his head. “It's our house, Daddy. See all the bushes in front, and here's Superdog to save the day!” Ben finished his explanation in song. Grown-ups just didn't get it.
Superdog or man, woman, girl, or boy was what they needed about now, Faith reflected. Someone who would go directly to the heart of the matter and solve it in the name of truth and justice. She was so enmeshed in this fantasy that when the doorbell rang, she called out to Tom, “I'll get it,” half-expecting to throw open the door and see someone of steel in blue tights and a cape.
The cape part was right—and the steel—but the person before her was wearing hose of an indeterminate brown, presumably to blend with the putty tweed suit and olive green Alpine cape she wore against the cold night air. It was Millicent. If not Superwoman, possibly a cousin. Faith felt oddly relieved to see her and wondered why.
“Millicent! Come in. We're all in the kitchen. Have you eaten?”
This last was automatic with Faith, and as she took Millicent's cape, she mentally surveyed the contents of the larder. They'd finished the pasta, but there was some good smoked trout pate and …
“Of course.” The idea that, number one, she might arrive unannounced at someone's house for dinner was as preposterous as, number two, that at well past six o'clock she would not already have dined. “I've come to talk to Tom,” she said, promptly quelling any misconceptions Faith might have had about Millicent's intent.

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