Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 04 (13 page)

-- ==+== --

Kevin was sorely disappointed when all the Hollywood folks packed up and left, as if they'd finished the movie without allowing his betrothed to be a star. From the grim look on her face and the rumbling deep in her throat, he could tell she wasn't entertaining happy thoughts, herself.

They were sitting on her porch, watching everybody straggle down the road with their picnic baskets and coolers, most of them subdued, since no one had a clue why the deputy had sent the Hollywood folks away. Lottie Estes had gone so far as to knock on Raz's door to ask him, but he didn't answer. As she and Eula walked toward her car, they'd agreed that thus far watching a movie bein' made was on the boring side. Well, the girl had been dressed like Daisy Mae, and the director had used a lot of unChristian-like language, but for the most part, they'd wasted half the morning staring at the front of Raz's shack.

Heather and Traci were disappointed, too. They'd been hoping there would be a crowd scene requiring teenage girls, which is why they'd both gotten up early to spend more than an hour spraying and moussing their hair. The light breeze stirred nary a hair on either head; a hailstorm would have met with an equal lack of success.

"You wanna see if Darla Jean wants to go to the Dee-Lishus?" asked Traci.

"She could have taken down all the laundry in the county by now," Heather said. "Now, let's not jump on her and demand to know what happened between her and that hunk. We'll be real casual about it. Don't even mention Frederick Marland's name -- okay?"

Traci solemnly vowed not to say a word.

Millicent McIlhaney was having to drag her husband back to the car, in that he was still overwhelmed by being in the presence of Hollywood folks. As they caught up with the girls, she tapped Heather on the shoulder. "Did you and Darla Jean enjoy the picture show last night?"

"Yes, ma'am," Heather said promptly.

"What time did y'all get back from Farberville?"

Heather glanced at Traci, who was being no help whatsoever. "I dunno. We went for ice cream and ended up sitting there for the longest time, talking about the upcoming junior class picnic."

"I'm glad to hear you had a nice time," Millicent said as she urged Earl into motion. "Real glad."

"Thank you, ma'am," Heather said. She didn't jab tongue-tied Traci in the ribs, but she thought about it.

Back on the porch, Kevin decided to risk it all. "That was kinda funny how they left like that, wasn't it?"

"Funny as in ha-ha, or funny as in Mrs. Wockerman listening to aliens through her hearing aid?" Dahlia said with an ominous look. "What kind of funny are you referring to?"

Kevin wished he knew.

-- ==+== --

On another porch on the opposite side of town, Billy Dick MacNamara handed Willard Yarrow a bottle of grape soda pop and sat down on the top step beside him.

"My parents are going to the hospital tonight," Willard said. "Trudi's got a date with some jock. You want to come over and play the game? I'll get some chips and stuff."

"What's his name?"

Willard blinked. "The jock? I dunno. He's hairier than a summer groundhog, and his head kinda rests on his shoulders. I snuck up on 'em once when they were sitting in his car. Trudi's damn lucky it was me instead of Pa, 'cause he would have whipped her silly and packed her off to reform school."

"What were they doing?" Billy Dick asked.

"Oh, you know," he said, taking a drink to hide his discomfort. "Hey, I worked half the night on my map, and I've got a real good idea how to get by the dragon and find the diamond mines of Exedor."

He prattled on about magic potions and the sword bought from the gnomes with the last of the gold stolen from the griffin, but Billy Dick wasn't listening.

-- ==+== --

"Listen, please," I said after Plover and I'd agreed on the procedure, "all of you need to wait in your rooms out back. Sergeant Plover will station a man in the parking lot to make sure you're not disturbed, and we'll escort you one at a time to the police department just down the road."

Hal slid off a stool and came across the room. "Arly, sweetheart, let me run this by you."

He handed me a piece of paper. I scanned it quickly, then read it aloud for Plover's edification. "Mrs. Katherine Meredith of Van Nuys, California, was found dead in a motel room during a vacation to the Ozarks. The police have determined that she slipped and fell while bathing. She is survived by her husband, B. Meredith. A private ceremony will be held in Van Nuys."

Hal was waiting eagerly. "Not shabby, huh? No one's going to make the leap from Mrs. Katherine Meredith to Miss Kitty Kaye, and B. Meredith's hardly a household name. You just type this up for the local paper and run off copies in case someone comes snooping from outside."

"Slipped and fell while bathing?" I said.

"I know, I know. It's an understatement, but it's still cinema verité if you follow me. You're not going to tell me she didn't slip and fall at some point while this maniac was attacking her, are you?"

Carlotta joined us. "You don't want a horde of reporters any more than we do. Unless something along the lines of World War III starts today, the media may decide to grab this one and run with it until they drop. Kitty was a very sexy leading lady in the fifties, and her films are in the classics section of every video rental store in the country. Her autobiography sold well ten years ago, and a few years back there was a Kitty Kaye festival at one of the theaters in L.A."

"Kitty was a class act," Hal cut in, wiping at more of those invisible tears. "You know, Carlotta, somewhere in the credits we ought to stick in a dedication. Figure something out and let me look at it."

Plover found his voice. "You want us to say she slipped and fell in the bathroom?"

"It sounds better than saying she was attacked by a local psychotic," Hal said, lighting a cigarette. "It's your neck of the woods. You want everyone in the country to think you're a bunch of murderers, feel free. It's not going to do much for the tourist trade, though."

I grabbed Plover's arm and propelled him to a corner. "It's not outrageous," I muttered. "Carlotta may be right about the zillion reporters descending on us. We're going to have a tough enough time sorting through this without television vans surrounding the PD and reporters screaming at us. At this point, only these people and the guys in the parking lot know what took place inside number five. I think we ought to hush it up, at least for a few days."

We argued for a while, but he finally relented and we left the barroom, content in the knowledge that no one else knew that Kitty Kaye had been murdered.

Chapter 9

"WILD CHERRY WINE" (REVISED 5/23)

24 CONTINUED:

LORETTA

O my Gawd ... that was Preacher Pipkin! He must have seen everything! What if he says something?

BILLY JOE

He's a filthy pervert, that preacher man! If he hadn't run away like a yeller-striped skunk, I'd have punched him so hard he'd be harking the herald angels.

LORETTA

But what are we gonna do, Billy Joe? What are we gonna do?

BILLY JOE

(harshly)

We're gonna get out of this town somehow. You just wait for that message, you hear?

CUT TO:

-- ==+== --

"My real name," Gwenneth D'Amourre murmured, nibbling on her scarlet lipstick. "What if it is my real name?"

She was in the chair opposite my desk, and Plover, always a gentleman, had dragged in a chair from the other room and was straddling it, his arms on the top of the back and his chin resting on them. The attentive gleam in his eye was unnerving me, although its recipient seemed to be undisturbed by it.

I tapped my pencil. "I need your real name for the record. I may still clap when Tinkerbell nears death, but I have this sneaky suspicion that D'Amourre is a stage name."

She glanced at Plover for help, but when he gazed back blandly, she took a last bite of lipstick and said, "Wanda Sue Thackett. It didn't seem to ripple, you know; it gurgled like dirty old bathwater going down the drain. Hal thought up my new name, and I think it's totally terrific."

"Me, too," I said as I wrote down the gurgly one. "Your current address?"

She rattled off an answer that included an apartment number. "It's very close to Beverly Hills," she added.

"And you're originally from ... ?"

"Chicago."

"Age?"

Apparently this was a bit of a poser. I waited silently while she decided how gullible I was. The remark about Tinkerbell was probably a factor. "Twenty-two," she said with a hopeful look, then sighed. "Okay, twenty-four, but all my promo stuff says twenty, so don't spread it around."

"How long have you been associated with Glittertown Productions?"

She wiggled in the chair, then resorted to counting on her fingers. "Well, there was Satan's Sisters, in which I played a whattaya call it -- a novice, a beginner nun. Frederick was the handsome young priest. My father makes me join the convent, and at first I have to toil in the fields, but then -- "

"We don't need the plot," I said quickly.

"It was very artistic, and one of the reviews said I looked celestial. Anyway, my second film was Tanya Makes the Team. In that one, I was a cheerleader who's willing to do anything she can to help her team win the championship."

Plover began to cough, and when he couldn't stop, flapped his hand at us and stumbled into the back room. I was surprised when I heard the door slam, but he was old enough to come and go as he pleased. I looked at Gwenneth. "And then?"

"Frederick's the quarterback, and Buddy's the kindly old coach who's lost his nerve. I decide to -- "

"No, that's not what I meant. You've done other films?"

She crossed her legs and gave me a pitying look. "I am becoming a major force in the genre, and I'm in demand all the time. Last spring we did Prickly Passion in Flagstaff. Now, there's a nice town, with all kinds of shops and a great pool at the motel. I just soaked in the sun with ... Kitty." She took a tissue from her purse, daintily blew her nose, and then took out a compact. Once she'd powdered her nose and carefully relined her lips in scarlet, she said, "I'm sorry, but I kinda had a crush on Kitty, if you know what I mean. She was real sweet to me and gave me a lot of advice about how to handle some of the animals in Hollywood. You would not believe the things that have been whispered in my ear about two seconds after I've been introduced to some guy in a silk shirt and alligator shoes."

"And Prickly Passion was the last movie before this one? That was in the spring. You've done three movies with the company, and this was to be the fourth, right? I'm not clear how long you've been associated, though."

"About a year," she said.

"This is the fourth movie in a year?"

"We're all professionals. Hal arranges the finances, Carlotta does the preproduction, Fuzzy rolls the camera, and we make the damn thing." She took an emery board from her purse and began to file her nails.

"Tell me what you've been doing since you and the others arrived in Maggody two days ago," I said, trying not to react to the scritchy sound that always makes my teeth ache.

"We got here in the afternoon. I didn't notice what time because I don't wear a watch. I used to wear one, but it left this horrid white mark on my wrist and I -- She realized I was not enthralled. "Anyway, Carlotta and I are sharing number three, the one on the end next to Hal's room. We all had dinner in the barroom. Since there wasn't anything for the cast to do yesterday, Kitty and I took our scripts and went out to the parking lot to sunbathe."

"And last night?"

"Last night was the same. After the meeting, we had dinner in the barroom. I asked for a fresh shrimp salad with vinegar and oil on the side. I ended up with tuna fish."

"Wait a minute -- what meeting?" I asked. I noticed I'd penciled in her dinner order, and crossed it out.

"The production meeting. Hal, Carlotta, and Fuzzy confirmed all the sites yesterday, which is why there wasn't anything for the rest of us to do except sunbathe," she explained. Scritch, scritch.

"Buddy Meredith and Miss Kaye were at the meeting?" She nodded. "And then had dinner with the group at Ruby Bee's, right?" She nodded again. I made a note, then gave her my full attention, wishing Plover were back to help me ascertain the veracity (or lack thereof) of her statement. "What happened after dinner, Miss D'Amourre?"

"I had a conversation with a gentleman named Jim Bob something. We discussed my career, of course, and he talked about some store he owns and how I could have a ten percent discount. I perked up until I realized he was talking paper towels and canned vegetables."

"And Meredith and Kaye?" I persisted.

She blinked at me for a long while. I couldn't tell if she was composing a lie or simply trying to remember what the two had done. "I think they stayed at the bar until about ten, but I may be wrong. Jim Bob was behaving like an octopus, if you catch my drift, and I had my hands full preventing him from having his hands full. I finally got tired of being mauled and went back to the room at eleven or so."