Murder in a Hot Flash (6 page)

The blond woman held a clapboard ready. She was certainly a Jill of all trades in this production company.

“Her name's Tawny,” Edwina said under her breath. “Just Tawny, no last name. So she says.”

“Quiet on the set. Roll camera.”

“Rolling.”

“Speed.”

“Thirty-eight takes one—marker.” And Tawny clapped the stick.

Mitch looked small and insignificant in the broad field of grass with the mammoth canyon rim looming from across an abyss beyond it. An endless sky with clumps of floating gray cloud acted as backdrop. Wind ruffled his hair and shirt as it did the grass at his feet.

“Mitch!”

“Wind lays thick deposits of silts and sands on the mesa tops and here a grassland can develop,” Mitch said. “The different textures of ricegrass, galleta, grama, and muhly weave a blanket of subtle, moving beauty that stabilizes the dunes. The superficial roots of these grasses seize the moisture before it can percolate out of reach. Over a hundred years of cattle grazing has all but destroyed the fragile grasslands of this desert plateau.

“But here in the park an experiment is taking place. No grazing has been allowed for twenty-five years and you can see the result. With the return of the grasses there has been a slow but steady return of certain insects, rodents, and small birds. And, with them, their more spectacular predators—the fox, coyote, eagle, hawk, and owl.”

He wore a safarilike outfit, similar to the one he'd worn at breakfast but clearly less rumpled and camp-worn. He looked intense and sincere, his gestures relaxed but his message vital. Yet with just a hint of the sardonic, just enough to remind an audience this message came from Mitch Hilsten. He was alone in this immense landscape with Earl's camera, seemingly unaware of the handheld and the groups of people behind both.

And the moment he began to speak he was no longer insignificant in the vast landscape—he was the center of it. The natural lighting appeared to be performing for him.

As he explained how the grasses offered seeds to the rodents, their burrows helped give proper texture to the soil layers which in turn helped the grass to grow, the shadows behind him lengthened.

The desert varnish washed blue-black to deep lavender in the depressions on the cliff face of that far rim.

Flat rock walls grew textured and three-dimensional, scarred with crevasse and mystery.

Gray clouds turned pink and deepened to rose.

The grass whispered with excitement now, as if on cue.

“… and, as the sun sets, creatures of the night—which burrow beneath us in daylight to conserve the moisture in their bodies—stir in their burrows. And their predators rise and stretch in anticipation of the night's hunt. Some take to the sky to begin their search for dinner.”

Charlie shifted her feet uneasily at the thought of all those hungry night creatures stirring under her, reminding herself that documentary or no there was a goodly portion of show biz happening here. God help her, she loved this business. Nuts as it was.

He really was impressive. Even with the force of his words diffused by the wind, his backdrop upstaging him again with its gorgeous color, he still held Charlie captive. He was a presence, a professional at work. The tingle of excitement he managed to create despite a nearly expressionless expression, the inflection even at this distance so right, it was perfect, just …

And then he blew it.

Mitch Hilsten—who had made her forget the trouble at the agency, her worry over her mother and daughter, even her embarrassment at being sucked in by the tour bus crushed by an alien Porta Potti—suddenly became merely another human.

The clouds behind him lost their color, turned gray at his sudden silence.

“Cut!” John B. threw both arms in the air. “Mitch? What?”

Mitch stared at the sky overhead. The assistant camera operator disobeyed and swung his handheld to follow Mitch's gaze.

Chapter
6

Charlie cringed for a nanosecond, half-expecting an alien outhouse to fall out of the sky.

“I don't see anything,” Edwina said.

Charlie didn't either.

“Damn it, if this is a sick joke I'm going to commit some serious murder around here.” Drake stomped off to confront Mitch.

“We can edit out the last frames,” Earl called after him, wiping a sleeve across his forehead and winking at Charlie. He reached for the camera on his colleague's shoulder. “You're wasting film, Mike.”

“Sure got dark fast,” Tawny said to no one in particular.

And she was right. Twilight was over. It was night. Charlie'd noticed the suddenness of the same when driving in here the night before.

“All right, children, we'll pack up the lights and go home,” John B. said, stalking through the grama and muhly grasses. Time for a directorial tirade. Charlie caught the dance of laughter in Earl's eyes as he pulled a baseball cap out of a pocket to conceal his mirth and naked head. She hoped Edwina would keep her mouth shut.

The wind had gone as silent as the crew, but the generator hummed.

“Never mind that we are nearing budget,” the director emoted. “Never mind that cables are strung and all is ready. Never mind that the night is perfect for the last scene for which we have to pay a superstar on location—”

“Christ, I'm working for practically nothing.”

“You call playing jokes with my budget nothing? The years you took off my life just now, nothing? Is that right, Mitch? I thought we were friends. And all because you looked up and didn't see anything?”

“What I said was, I saw nothing. That's not the same.”

But when Charlie and Edwina left them, John B. had everyone back to work as if there'd been no interruption—Mitch Hilsten, bathed this time in a golden glow of false light from the grid, talking earnestly to Earl's camera.

“Only in Hollywood,” Charlie muttered. She took her mother's arm when they both stumbled on the uneven ground in the dark and was surprised to feel the bones through Edwina's skin. “Have you lost weight since I saw you last?”

“Flesh sags with years, Charlie. I'm just getting old. I don't do it to irritate you. Someday you'll know.”

Once, Edwina had said, “I hope you have a daughter just like you someday, Charlie Greene. That will be my revenge. Then you'll know.”

Charlie wished her mother would stop with this “old” business. She never knew when Edwina was making a play for sympathy or when it was time to seriously panic. Charlie'd never heard of aging causing people to take up heavy swearing and get physical. Gordon Cabot must have been off balance when this frail woman knocked him down.

They made their way through the grasslands to the road and along it to the resumption of the stunted forest. Every other shadow-shape was a tree skeleton, twisted and grotesque, trying to snag them like something out of a Disney animation.

But Charlie's thoughts slipped off to real life—her regret at missing the screening of
For Whom the Bell Tolls II
back in L.A. tonight. There would be people there she needed to see.

Right, and all they'd want to talk about is the mess the agency's in.

Charlie would have to call Bud Harrington and Toby Davenport for progress reports tomorrow night when she got home. Monday's schedule was too full. They were the only two writers she had on active assignment at the moment. Things had never been this bad for her or Congdon and Morse. Name talent was falling away like dandruff.

As Richard, the Morse in Congdon and Morse Representation, always warned, “Get a name as a bad luck hotel in this town and you're shunned. Superstitious bunch in this business.”

At least Jory would be pitching
Willing Hostage
at Universal Monday. Charlie was backed up on her reading and Richard was putting the pressure on her to discover some “wonder” project to help get the agency on its feet. Her Toyota was due at the garage for a physical, there was cleaning to be picked up, and the damn cat needed a new flea and tick collar, and … what was Libby doing tonight? Saturday night with Charlie out of town—

Edwina startled her back to the problems at hand with, “Wonder if there was really anything there when Mitch stopped speaking like that. Always impressed me as pretty levelheaded—for an actor.”

Mitch had insisted he'd seen only a large patch of sky with no stars in it. Or thought he had.

They picked their way carefully along a shadowed stretch of road hoping not to turn an ankle in a pothole. Charlie was glad for the illumination the parking lot—style lights around the toilets provided the whole campground.

Enough for Edwina to see to light the lantern. Charlie held it while her mother split wood into kindling with an ax like Scrag Dickens had pulled out from under the table last night.

“Why don't you use charcoal?” she asked as her mother slathered sugary barbecue sauce from a bottle onto chicken pieces.

“Takes too long. Besides, this is more like it used to taste cooked over the campfire. Remember those days? How good everything was?”

Charlie remembered everything mostly as cold and tasting charred but didn't say so.

They were at the picnic table crunching burned chicken and gritty corn and pinto beans from cans Edwina had opened and set right in the fire, when both film crews began to straggle in. Even Cabot in his Humvee. He paused behind Howard's Jeep long enough to raise a triumphant middle finger in their direction.

“Don't let him bait you, Edwina.” Charlie had been ready to stuff a drumstick in her mother's mouth to keep her quiet.

But Edwina remained ominously silent. Maybe because of the sounds of joviality emanating from John B.'s motor home.

“Damn, I wanted us to go over and talk to him about your little problem tonight.” First thing in the morning I'm outta here. “But it'd be hard to do with all those people around.”

“My
little
problem?” Edwina said, every line in her face sagging. “Is that what I am to you, Charlie?
Your
little problem?”

“Mom, stop it right now. I've had it.” Charlie slammed her spoon down on the plate and slid off the bench seat. “You either tell me what's really wrong here or I'm changing that tire tonight and heading for the airport in Grand Junction.” She wrung chilled hands over the warm embers of the cooking fire and realized her mother was wearing only a thin shirt. “Are you sure you're still taking your hormones?”

“What did you say, Charlie?”

“Are you sure you're still taking your—”

“No, before that.”

“I'm outta here tonight if you don't tell me what's really wrong. It's not just John B., is it?” I know you. There's more. And somehow it's going to add up to a big guilt trip for me.

“No, before that. You called me Mom.”

“Well you are.”

“It's always been Howard and Edwina. And then just Edwina. Never Mom.”

“Jesus, what do you want? You want me to call you Mom? I'll call you Mom. Just tell me what the fuck's wrong. I have a life, you know. And I have to get back to work.”

“Edwina will be fine, thank you.” Charlie's mother picked up the paper plates and slipped them into the grate to burn. “You run on along home and don't bother with my little problems. I should have known better than to ask such an important person for help.” She slammed the trailer door leaving Charlie alone with her guilt and rage.

“There is no way to win with her,” Charlie told John B., Tawny, and Mitch Hilsten, who all sat across from her in the built-in booth in the director's motor home.

“My mother was just like her,” Tawny commiserated, “before she died.” She managed to drape herself over both men at the same time.

“What is it with women and their mothers?” Mitch asked.

“I get along fine with my mom.” John B. Drake shaped a smug face and refilled Charlie's glass with Beaujolais.

“Me too,” Earl said. Charlie sat wedged between the cameraman and Sidney Levit.

“Anyway, I'm leaving first thing in the morning and she's all yours.”

“Hey, if she's really suffering some kind of personality change, this could be serious.” Mitch smeared the edges of the wet rings from his beer bottle around with a fingertip. His makeup was beginning to shed on his collar. “You can't just walk out on her.”

“Just watch me.” Charlie pushed the glass of wine away. It was her third and it was wonderful but such closeness to the superstar was causing a warmth between her legs.

“Well, I'm livid over Gordon's scaring you two this afternoon with that run-through of the crushed bus scene,” Sidney said. “I hope that didn't cause trouble between you and your mother. He's caused nothing but trouble lately, damn him.” The producer was the only member of the enemy crew in the crowded motor home.

“He didn't do anything to mess up my shoot tonight, did he?” John B. asked.

“Couldn't have. Too busy with his own. Besides, not even Gordon could block out stars.”

“Mitch is the only one who thought he saw something like that,” their host pointed out.

He was also probably the only one facing that direction, Charlie thought, but kept still.

“No, Mitch wasn't the only one.” Scrag was busy scarfing down leftovers of the cold ham and pasta salad the producer/director had fed his crew. “I saw it too.”

“Oh yeah?” Earl's sea-colored eyes turned to Charlie, this time sparking mischief. “So, what do you think caused it, Dickens?”

Scrag put a hunk of cheese on a hunk of bread and poured himself some wine. “I think it might have been some sort of natural gaseous material,” he said in a voice so deep it had to come from his crotch. “Looked to me kind of submarine-shaped. Soon as you develop the film in Mike's camera we'll all know.”

Mitch, obviously fed up with being teased about this, groaned and stood to leave. Charlie had to nudge Earl to let her out to follow him.