The Body in the Cast (33 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body in the Cast
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Dumb! Dumb! Why had she let Evelyn get close to the door!
Faith would be replaying this scene and scolding herself for months to come, but first things first. She had to take care of Corny and then she had to get a look at the slides, which she'd slipped into her pocket.
Cornelia was moaning slightly. When Faith bent over her, calling her name, she opened her eyes and responded predictably. “Where am I?” What with Evelyn's exit line and Cornelia's entrance one, life was fast assuming all the characteristics of a B movie.
“We're in Evelyn's RV. She hit you on the head, but I don't think it's serious. Don't move. I'm going to get a blanket.” And a towel. Evelyn had not managed to sell Corny the farm, yet Ms. O'Clair had made a mess of her victim's hairdo. Blood was streaming out of a large gash in Corny's left temple.
“Faith, Faith! I'm bleeding!” She had discovered her injury and was panicking. Faith rushed back with the snowy white quilt from Evelyn's bed and one of her monogrammed towels. Irony, at any rate, was alive and well.
She managed to staunch the flow of blood. Corny was going to have a lump the size of the Matterhorn and a headache for a week, but other than that, she should be lording it over everyone as usual before too long. Her good health, and all the milk she'd drunk as a child, had resulted in fortuitously dense bone mass.
It wasn't exactly the time for a chat, yet Corny seemed unable to stop talking.
“She thought I was having an affair with Max! And they're married! I never knew! How could he! Oh, Faith!”
Corny had shut up for the moment and, snugly wrapped in the down comforter, had closed her eyes again. She hadn't passed out again. Faith had asked her.
It was time to look at the slides. Faith switched on a lamp next to the armchair and held the first one up. As she suspected, Alden had been photographing the forest scene and had zoomed in on Sandra, who did full justice to the high-speed Ektachrome Spaulding had employed. Faith assumed the box contained more of the same, but she held each one up to check. Near the end of the roll, Alden had happened upon another scene. It must have been before the afternoon shoot, when he'd returned to his post.
It wasn't in the script.
The slide Faith held up to the light captured Evelyn twisting a hank of Sandra's hair. Alden had caught Ms. O'Clair face on, and her expression was terrifying—full of fury, hatred, and, above all, threatening. The next four were similar, but the last one showed Sandra. It was quite a contrast. She looked defiant—and incredibly beautiful.
So Evelyn had killed her. Faith sank down onto the chair. Evelyn had seen the rushes. They were the frosting on the cake that had been presented at Max's birthday party.
It was unlikely that Max would have replaced his star with a complete unknown in the middle of a picture, but he, or another director, might soon have raised Sandra to stardom, a stardom likely to have eclipsed Evelyn's own career. While not waning at the moment, it wouldn't have been long, and Sandra's ascent would have hastened Evelyn's descent. Good parts for women in Hollywood were scarce enough, and few actresses remained in the limelight past their thirties. Evelyn had clearly seen the wolf at the door—and Max's and the other men's obvious attraction to this sexy beast had added jealousy to fear. Alden must have gotten in touch with her and alluded to the photographs. He might have had some crazy idea that he could trade them for sex with her. The slides didn't prove that Evelyn killed Sandra, but judging from the camera angles,
Alden must have heard what they'd been saying, too. After Sandra died, he must have put two and two together—and come up dead himself. Evelyn had had to kill him or risk exposure for the first murder. The second death—had it been easier for Ms. O'Clair? Had the first one been so hard? It was all becoming clearer—as was the fact that Faith had to get out of the trailer immediately and call the police. Evelyn had no idea Faith had found the slides. She wouldn't go far, but then again, she might.
And it had been Evelyn, not Marta on the phone. She had just used the same phrase while shouting at Cornelia, but without the disguise.
The star's trailer was as secure as Hester's prison cell. The windows were too small for anyone save Ben to crawl through. But they did open. Faith went to first one, then another, systematically shouting for help.
It was no use. The trailer was too far from the other buildings. Unless someone expressly came to get Evelyn, there was no way Faith could be heard. And no one would come. Without the car, it would be assumed Evelyn had returned to the house after getting the director's message that she wasn't needed that day. What's more—no one would miss Cornelia. However much she exalted her role, it was not critical. Faith's own staff would be long gone by now and it would be hours before she was expected at home. Cornelia opened her eyes.
“Faith, I think I can get up. I'm certain I should go to a doctor and have some stitches put in. It's been dear of you to take care of me like this.” But, implied Ms. Stuyvesant, let's get the show on the road.
“We can't. She's locked us in. No one is going to hear me from here, so it's pointless to shout. Plus, my crew has gone. I stayed behind to do some last-minute things. Face it—we're stuck.”
Cornelia burst into tears. Faith had seen her maddeningly happy, in a temper, miffed, but never crying. Corny turned out to be one of the noisy, gloppy kind. Soon her sobs were hiccups
and her nose began to run. Faith shoved some tissues in her old chum's hand to stem the tide. It had to be over Max. But it wasn't.
“You're being so good to me and I've been so rotten to you,” Cornelia gasped.
“There, there. That was all years ago. Don't even think about it,” Faith assured her. She ought to see whether Evelyn had any Tylenol in the bathroom for poor Corny's head.
“No, it wasn't!” Cornelia wailed. “Two weeks ago. I did it. I put the Chocolax in your black bean soup!”
“What!”
“Max liked you so much, and all he could talk about was how good your food was. It was school all over again. Everybody liked you better. You always got whatever you wanted. I thought people would just get a little sick and you'd be off the picture.”
“Corny, you could have ruined my business! Not to mention how much pain you caused everyone.”
“I know, I was sick, too, remember. I had to eat; otherwise, everyone would have known who did it. I also put it in Evelyn's soup—which served her right—when I took her the tray, so there would be no question but that it was the caterer's fault.”
The woman must have been mad. “And you set the fire?”
“It was a very little one. I was a Scout, you know. There was no danger.”
Evelyn O'Clair, a murderer. Cornelia Stuyvesant, an arsonist and food poisoner. What a casting call!
“You were jealous of Sandra, too. It was you who put the drapery fabric in the barn. Admit it.” Faith was really angry.
If Cornelia had been other than flat on her back, she would have hung her head.
“I felt terrible about that after she died. I only wanted to ruin her reputation, not hurt her.”
Faith remembered something Corny had said about the other movie. “Was it you who upset that PA on the Maggot Morning shoot so she would quit?”
“No, that must have been Evelyn,” Cornelia said speculatively.
The two were quite a pair.
Faith sighed. Cornelia's confession had cleared up some things, but it wasn't getting them out of the trailer—an impulse that had taken on additional meaning. Faith Sibley Fairchild didn't want to spend a moment longer than was necessary with her fellow alum.
“I'll look for something to help your pain and try to figure out how we're going to attract someone's attention way out here.”
“See the problem? Why do you have to be so nice? It simply isn't fair!” Cornelia started to weep again.
“Would it make things easier if I smacked you one?” Faith had a moment's fiendish hope for a reply in the affirmative.
“No. And you may not believe this, but all I ever wanted when we were young was to be one of your friends and go to your house.” Tears again. Faith hadn't thought things could get any worse, yet they were. Now she was feeling guilty.
“Just lie still. I'll be right back.”
Evelyn seemed to have every medication known to man or woman in the cabinet under her dressing table. Many of the vials were from the clinic in Switzerland, and Faith had a hunch that was where Evelyn had obtained her lethal quantities of chloral. A trinket or two to the right orderly and Ms. O'Clair had her very own Rexall's. Faith passed over the Darvon, attractive as the idea of Corny passed out was, and went straight for the Tylenol. It was possible that Cornelia had a concussion, so Faith had to keep her conscious.
She looked around, trying to think of some way to let people know they were trapped. It was getting late and soon everyone would be leaving for the weekend.
All Evelyn's cosmetics were neatly arranged on the top of the dressing table. It took an enormous amount of effort to be so beautiful. Faith's eyes lingered on a large bottle of nail polish remover. She'd been thinking of smoke signals ever since Cornelia
had mentioned her fire in the barn. There weren't any oily rags around, but Faith could make the equivalent.
She got a tumbler of water and gave Cornelia the pill, advising she remain as quiet as possible. Then she went back and started to ransack Evelyn's closet. It would be a sacrilege to burn some of these things—a lovely black Bill Blass evening gown, for instance. But Faith had no compunction about the Hester costumes—and flimsy rags they were. She put the stopper in the sink, stuffed the garments in, and poured polish over the whole thing, leaving it to soak in.
Next, she had to find something for a torch. She planned to throw the clothes far enough away from the trailer to avoid incinerating it—thereby lessening alumni donations to Dalton by two—and needed something she could ignite. The latest issue of
Variety,
well thumbed, was lying on the floor by the bed. It would do nicely. Now all she needed were some matches. Evelyn wasn't a smoker—or was she?
The stash was in the bottom drawer of the built-in dresser in the other room, carefully concealed—by someone with a sense of humor, probably not Evelyn—in a hollowed-out copy of
The Valley of the Dolls.
There they were. Lots of nice neat little joints—and matches from Spago.
Laxatives, purgatives, emetics, uppers, downers, and everything in between—no wonder the woman was nuts.
Faith went back to her soaking garments and made a bundle that she fastened with dental floss so it wouldn't come apart when she heaved the whole thing out the window. She tied the Variety into a roll with more floss and dipped it into the puddle of nail polish remover left in the sink, then went into the other room. These windows faced the direction of the house and there were fewer trees on this side. Faith didn't want the whole town of Aleford blaming her for burning down the conservation-land forest.
She opened the window and threw the clothes as far away as she could. Then she lit the torch carefully. When MGM EXECS NIX X PIX was blazing, Faith pitched the paper out onto the pile
of clothes. It took a very long minute, but the fabric caught and soon the crackling flames sent up a welcome column of dark black smoke. It wasn't as noticeable against the dull late-afternoon sky as she would have wished, yet someone was sure to spot it.
She realized that Cornelia had been oddly silent during this frenzy of activity, not even reacting to the strong smell of smoke and acetone permeating the trailer. Her eyes were closed. Desperately hoping she had merely fallen asleep, Faith grabbed for Corny's pulse and was immediately relieved to find it as slow and steady as one of her prize horses. Cornelia Stuyvesant was dead to the world, but not dead.
She tried to wake her and was rewarded with a mumbled response. Corny's eyes opened. Faith didn't want to shake her or try to move her to a sitting position, so she let her be for the moment.
Faith moved back to her post at the window to be ready to shout for all she was worth at the slightest indication of movement. To her horror, she discovered that the wind had blown her neat little parcel back toward them, where it was rapidly enkindling all the dry grass in sight. The flames were already starting to lick the side of the RV and the heat scorched her face as she leaned out for a closer look.
The plan had backfired.
Before anyone found them, they were going to be burned alive.
“I must reveal the secret,” answered Hester, firmly.
Faith raced around the trailer, desperately looking for a container to hold water. All she came up with was the bathroom tumbler and a small carafe. She filled both and emptied the contents on the raging flames. It was like peeing in the ocean.
Then she wet two towels and draped one over Corny's mouth, holding the other to her own. The smoke was pouring in through the seams around the windows and door. She coughed and gagged. The smell was horrible. She tried to rouse Cornelia and couldn't. Finally, Faith knelt by her friend's side and kept her fingers on Corny's pulse. If worse came to worse, she could try to resuscitate her, but the present conditions in the room made “in with the good air, out with the bad” a farce.
She tried to think where the gas tank on the vehicle was. Underneath somewhere, but where? Maybe the ground, shadowed by the RV, was too damp for the fire to catch. She began to pray. It was hopeless to do anything else.
Help arrived in the unlikely combination of Detective Sullivan
and Marta Haree, garments flapping in the breeze, trailing behind him. Hearing their shouts, Faith jumped to her feet.
“We're locked in!” she screamed out the window. “Evelyn locked us in and drove away. You've got to call the police and stop her.” Faith assumed with all the smoke in the air, someone had already called the fire department.
Marta nodded and started back toward the house. Her expression of concern had not given way to surprise. Oddly enough, it appeared she did not find Faith's words hard to believe.
Others from the movie were now running toward the trailer. Alan Morris sprinted ahead with a fire extinguisher. Max was calling Evelyn's name in the mistaken belief his wife was still inside.
“Go to the door. I'm going to get you out!” Ted Sullivan yelled.
Faith watched in horror as he dashed close to the flames. Soon she heard his voice on the other side of the door. She pulled Cornelia over as gently as possible and stood out of the way. Was he going to kick it in? But she'd forgotten about those oh-so useful skeleton keys cops carry, and he had the door open in a flash.
“Run!” he yelled, prepared to do the same.
“I can't! Cornelia is here and she's unconscious!”
“Run, damn it!” he said again. “I'll get her! This could blow any minute!”
She obeyed, looking back once she was clear of the fire, to see him following close behind carrying Cornelia.
Alan had trained the nozzle of the extinguisher at the heart of the fire. Max was still screaming for Evelyn. Pandemonium reigned. Safely away, Faith and Sullivan collapsed onto the ground. Sully rolled Cornelia off his shoulder. Coughing and gasping for breath, it was some time before either could speak, and Sully beat Faith to it. “You can thank Dunne and MacIsaac when you see them. I've been tailing you since yesterday. Those guys may just have saved your life.”
Faith nodded solemnly. She knew it. But there was work to be done.
She could hear the sirens that meant help was on the way and ran over to Greg Bradley to ask him to stay with Cornelia. Sully looked puzzled when she returned with Max's stand-in.
“We've got to hurry. Greg will keep an eye on Cornelia. I'll tell you all about it in the car.”
Out of earshot, Faith quickly filled the detective in on the scene that had occurred in the trailer and her discovery of the slides, still tucked safely in her pocket.
“I didn't want to tell Marta why I thought the police should pick Evelyn up. Let everyone assume it's because she locked us in. It may be that she wasn't acting alone, although I'm pretty sure she was. In any case, Max or someone else might warn her before we could get to her.”
Sully agreed. “So, we're on the way to the house they rented?”
“No, I'm sure that's where the police, sorry, where you guys will go first and there's no point in duplicating effort. Besides, I doubt she's there. The nanny and baby would be around and I don't think Evelyn's in a motherly mood. She may simply be driving around hell-bent for leather in that car of hers, letting off steam. As far as she's concerned, she's just had another tantrum and locked two obnoxious underlings in her very comfortable dressing room. She may even consider us lucky to be honored with a prolonged stay in a place most fans—and Entertainment Television—would give their eyeteeth to see. She has no idea we have the slides.” Faith noted she must be upset to be using such clichéd expressions. She was virtually certain she'd never referred to eyeteeth or leather before. Sully noticed it, too.
“And if she's not driving around in the colorful manner you suggest, I'm sure you have an alternative.” Sully had definitely been around Dunne too long.
“As it happens, I do.” Faith gave him a slightly reproachful look. Cynicism was such an ugly trait. “What do people with eating disorders do when they're upset? They eat. And what's
less than a mile from here? Webb's, the homemade ice cream place.”
“I can't say that I've ever been there, but your logic makes a certain amount of sense. Tell me where to go.”
Webb's was several turns off the main road. It had originally started as a stand adjacent to the Webb farm and was open only during the summer months, but after being discovered by Boston magazine and listed in several guidebooks, business increased to the point where the Webbs built a year-round structure and expanded the menu to include lunch offerings. The main emphasis remained on the ice cream with its sinfully high butterfat content. Webb's was not the place for frozen yogurt aficionados.
Faith and Sully were rewarded by the sight of Evelyn's shiny red sports car, sprawled across two spots in the parking lot.
“She's here!” Faith wanted to leap from the car and drag the woman out, but she restrained herself and told the detective her plan. He gave her a look that could have been approval and stayed in the car while she went in the door.
There was nothing cute about the inside of Webb's, just simple booths, a long counter, and a calendar from a feed company on the whitewashed walls kept scrupulously clean by Mrs. Webb. The one concession to decor was red calico curtains.
Evelyn was in a booth at the rear. Faith recognized the back of her sweater. The star's hair was covered by a large kerchief, and when Faith got closer to the table, she could see that Evelyn was wearing dark glasses. Whether the disguise had worked, or because the late-afternoon clientele, busy spoiling their appetites for dinner, had decided to ignore her in their own inimitable New England way, Evelyn was being left strictly alone. Alone except for the wreckage of several of the Webb's gigantic ice cream specialties. These confections carried names such as Danny's Dairy Delight and Myrtle's Mounds of Mocha—in honor of the cows or the children, Faith had never asked. Evelyn was attacking Bessie's Chocolate Dream—a bowl of
several hefty scoops of chocolate ice cream with hot fudge, marshmallow topping, whipped cream, nuts, chocolate chips, and several cherries.
Faith sat down opposite her. Sully walked in the door, said something to the cashier, and casually strolled to a booth across the aisle.
Evelyn looked up from her ice cream. For a moment, she seemed not to recognize Faith, then hissed at her, “What the hell are you doing here? Can't you leave me alone!”
“I thought we might talk about these.” Faith held the slide box up, then quickly returned it to her pocket.
Evelyn pulled off her glasses.
“Give those to me! They're mine!” Her voice was rising. “You took them from my trailer!”
“And you took them from the storeroom after you killed the photographer, Alden Spaulding. His name is on the box, not yours,” Faith said calmly.
Evelyn stood up and reached for Faith across the table, sending the sticky contents of Bessie's Dream flying all over Faith's jacket, much to the sleuth's annoyance.
“Give me those slides, you bitch, or I'll kill you, too!”
Detective Sullivan pulled Ms. O'Clair away from Faith, thereby saving her face from possible damage.
“You have the right …” he intoned.
 
Faith was very thankful. She was thankful that Dunne had had Sully follow her. She was thankful Evelyn O'Clair's talonlike fingernails hadn't reached their target. And she was thankful to be in her own house later that night with some of the cast of characters sitting around the Fairchilds' big kitchen table devouring Chinese takeout.
It wasn't a chicken feet crowd or even a clams in black bean sauce one. What wasn't deep-fried or covered with red dye number something sweet-and-sour sauce was being rolled up in mu shu pancakes. And, like other similar establishments in the Boston area, far from their roots in Canton, the restaurant
supplied bread along with rice. There were some six-packs in the middle of the table and a few bottles of Coke. It lacked the finesse of a Have Faith affair, but even the lady herself agreed, it was a banquet.
“Shove some more of those shrimp over to this side, Faith, and stop showing off with your chopsticks,” Charley demanded. He'd placed the order and was busy mopping up some sauce on his plate with a hunk of good old familiar white bread.
It was absolutely lovely to bask in warmth created by friendship and an almost-adequate heating system. Faith had taken a shower as soon as she'd returned home, yet it wasn't until the food arrived that the smell of smoke finally left her nostrils. She was none the worse for the experience except for some vivid, paralyzing moments of anxious “what if's.” She doubted, though, that her suede jacket from Barney's would ever be the same again. Evelyn's damage had been far-reaching.
Cornelia was fine, too. However, to be on the safe side, she was being held overnight for observation at Emerson Hospital, where she'd been taken when the fire department arrived. The cast and crew of A had managed to contain the fire and keep the RV from blowing up, but they had not put the blaze out. There was plenty for Aleford's finest to do. Greg Bradley had gone with Cornelia to the hospital and somehow had ended up in the Fairchilds' kitchen, entering with Charley.
Pix and her husband, Sam, had rushed over as soon as they heard. Pix had refused to leave Faith's side for a moment, talking to her through the bathroom door as she showered, abandoning the watch only to call Niki with the news. Niki was at the door twenty minutes later with some of the day's leftovers. Plates of cookies, doughnuts, and a large pan of pear crisp sat on the counter—the next course. When Greg had walked in, Faith had steered him next to her assistant. No obvious tattoos and with a job—Niki wouldn't be bringing him home for dinner, at least not yet.
Dunne had arrived at Webb's shortly after Sully had read Evelyn her rights and Faith had immediately given the slides to
him with a brief description of what was in the box. Ice cream melted in dishes as one and all watched the star being led away, screaming for her lawyer and Max.
“I didn't make it up to get her to confess. Spaulding's name was on the box. It would have been a good idea, except don't they call that entrapment? Anyway, I realized the name might be on it when Sully and I were driving to Webb's. There was no way Evelyn could claim they were hers. What did she say at headquarters?” Faith asked eagerly.
Dunne leaned back in his chair, smiling expansively. It was the end of a case, two cases really. Good food—and it was his turn to speak.
“She got in the car and shut her mouth tight. I didn't expect to hear another peep out of her, but after we'd gone a few miles, she suddenly went ballistic and wanted to know what was going to happen to her car. Didn't want it left out overnight. Her car! She's killed two people and she's upset about a piece of machinery. Anyway, I told her someone would drive it to headquarters and that quieted her down. Then she said that when we were through with her, someone could just drive her back and she'd pick it up! I mean, the woman had no concept that she was in any more than slap-on-the-wrist trouble.
“I told her that could be a long time and she went nuts. This is not someone who generally hears the word no.”

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