“Oh, no. I couldn't."
“But you must come in Lynette's place," George insisted. "You know she'd want you here, and so will the cast and crew. If we can't have her, we must have you. Very few of these people will be able to come to the funeral, but they'll want to say their good-byes through you.”
It was a gracious gesture, beautifully done, Jane thought. George Abington might consider himself a plumber of an actor, but he was a nice man. He'd sensed that Olive Longabach would have been miserable and lonely this evening by herself, but had appealed to her psychotically overdeveloped sense of duty to Lynette to get her out.
“Well, if I must—”
Maisie had joined them, checking on Olive's well-being and Jane felt free to wander off. She spotted the production assistant who always found her when it was time to let Willard out and waved that she understood the message.
As she brought him outside, Shelley was just putting her little orange poodle Frenchie into his smaller dog run. "Shelley, did you ever know anybody named Veronica?" Jane asked.
Shelley unsnapped Frenchie's collar, closed the gate, and leaned on it. "I don't think so. Oh, yes. A girl in my grade school."
“And what did you call her?"
“Call her? Ronnie, I think. Why on earth do you ask?"
“Because I have a sneaking suspicion I know who the mysterious producers are."
21
“
What did you say your wife's name was?" Jane asked George Abington a few minutes later.
She and Shelley had tracked him down in his dressing room, which was the other half of the same trailer that housed Lynette's space. It was very nice, but quite cramped and impersonal. There was a couch/sofa, a table big enough to eat or do paperwork or play cards with one friend, an open closet, a counter beneath a well-lighted mirror, a couple of chairs, and visible through another door, a train compartment — style bathroom.
George was sitting at the small table and had apparently been studying his script when the brads holding it together had come apart. He fussed with the pages, trying to get the holes lined up. "My ex-wife, you mean? Mrs. Johnson," he said. "Why do you ask?"
“Ronnie, I think you called her," Jane persisted.
“Yes. Hell! Where did that other thing go?" He leaned down and looked at the carpet for the other brad.
“George, is your ex-wife one of the producers of this movie?”
He finally gave up pretending interest in the reassembly of the script and smiled. "You're clever, Jane. Yes. She is."
“And are you another?”
He nodded.
“And who else?"
“Who do
you
think?" he shot back, grinning. "Lynette Harwell."
“Bingo. How in the world did you figure it out? Am I such a poor actor that I gave it away or did Lynette blab?"
“Nobody blabbed. I just heard your rep on the phone, addressing the person he was speaking to as Veronica. And I remembered you calling your wife Ronnie. I also remembered you saying you'd made good money doing so many roles and I figured Lynette probably had, too."
“Come on, Jane. There are a lot of Veronicas in the world and a lot of actors who are fairly well off."
“But there aren't a lot of producers who would risk putting a ton of money into a movie starring Lynette Harwell — except Lynette herself. She hadn't made a decent movie for ten years and was considered a jinx besides.”
George nodded at the logic of this.
“I asked myself, why would you agree to work with her, given your personal history, unless you had money in it, too? And you did say your wife was wealthy and had kept in touch with the business, but not as an actress. You also mentioned how good she was with contractual things in the movie business. So instead of having absent producers, you had two of the three on the set, right in the middle of things, anda third handling the money from a safe distance." "You'd make a good detective.”
Jane hoped he'd never repeat this remark in front of Mel, who could be counted on to take umbrage at such an assessment of her leanings.
“How did this all happen?" Shelley asked.
George leaned back and laced his fingers together over his stomach. "Ronnie and I read the book years ago. While we were still married. I was starting to do pretty well by then and we bought the film option from the author. Then Lynette came along and our marriage went to pot. But we kept joint ownership of the film rights and kept renewing the option because we knew it would pay off someday. Then about two years ago Olive Longabach happened on the book and saw it as a good film opportunity for Lynette. She contacted the publisher and learned who owned the rights. Lynette contacted Ronnie, who suggested that instead of getting into a bidding war for the option renewal, the three of us get together and produce it instead."
“So, let me see if I follow this. You and your ex-wife agreed to bring in your other ex-wife, who took you away from the first wife, and hire the man who broke up your second marriage to direct it?" Shelley asked, shell-shocked.
George shrugged and grinned. "What can I say? Hollywood. Wonderful, weird place. It was the right property for everybody. I got a good role, Lynette got a great one. If it does as well as we think it will, the cable rights alone will keep us all in luxury for a good long time. Even the original author's heirs are thrilled. They've gotten a terrific paperback reprint offer and the old book will have a whole new life.”
Shelley was still shaking her head in wonder.
A production assistant stuck her head in the door. "Mr. Abington, we need you for a minute to get a light reading."
“Be right back. See if you can't get that damned script put back together for me, would you?" he said as he left.
Jane and Shelley sat and stared at each other for a minute. "Jane, I'm amazed. That was really clever of you."
“Not as much as it sounds like. It was what was bothering me last night. I was almost asleep when I remembered another one of Katie's doll stories. She said her doll had been a secretary who had been so much more beautiful than the others that they hated her, but she got them back by marrying the head of the corporation and firing them all. It just seemed like a possibility somehow — that the producers were staying undercover because they were too well acquainted with somebody here, but I didn't really know how until I heard that guy on the phone this morning."
“See? You do have a resident subconscious. It didn't really move to Bermuda." Shelley picked up the script and knocked it briskly on a table to get the pages realigned.
“Just in for a fleeting visit, I'm afraid. But I kept thinking the producers were secretly trying to
get back
at somebody and that didn't make sense. Why risk a huge amount of money to get even with someone. Instead, they were
promoting
somebody. Two of themselves."
“Well, now we know what Jake was blackmailing Lynette about," Shelley said. She'd found the missing brad and threaded it through the holes in the script.
“Probably so. But how did he know?”
Shelley shook her head. "I don't suppose we'll ever find out. He'd been around the business a long time, though, and knew everybody. Maybe he heard the front guy calling George's wife and put it together, too."
“But that would only lead him to George. Not Lynette."
“It led
you
to Lynette."
“You're right. But Shelley, I still don't see how it helps us. I hate to admit that after my 'brilliant' deduction. What if Jake was blackmailing her about being a producer? He must have known the same about George, and he tried something entirely different on him and it was easier to figure out George's connection than Lynette's. Anyway, even if it helped explain why Jake was killed, it doesn't help with Lynette's death. I can't quite see her killing Jake, then doing away with herself out of remorse. She probably had no concept of remorse."
“Unless—"
“Unless?" Jane asked.
Shelley lowered her voice. "Unless it was George trying to keep it all a secret.
And now the two of us know."
“Oh—!”
Shelley set the script down as if it were a bomb and they both rose and quickly headed for the door. But George was standing just outside.
“Where are you going, ladies?”
Did he sound menacing or was it Jane's imagination going into overdrive?
“No, no. We don't want to disturb you anymore."
“I haven't got a thing to do for another hour.”
He came in the door, sweeping them before him. "Look, George — Mr. Abington, we're going to have to tell the police what we know. In fact—" Jane started to say they already had, but was cut off. "I don't think they'll be too surprised." "Why?"
“Because I told them last night when they were collecting alibis."
“You told them already?"
“Of course. It wasn't
that
deep cover a secret. In fact, we had a press release written up to present at the wrap party tonight. There was a copy in Lynette's dressing room. The police found it and asked me about it.”
Jane didn't know whether to be relieved or angry. She settled on angry. "Then why the hell was it a secret to begin with!" she snapped.
“Why, for Cavagnari's sake, of course," he said, as if this should have been obvious to an especially backward four-year-old.
Seeing their blank expressions, he explained patiently. "Ladies, directors are a touchy lot. They will work for producers, any producers. The — producers can be mob bosses or survivalists, as long as they have the money to put up. But directors hate working for actors. They consider us below them in the food chain and we damned well better staythere. Roberto didn't mind taking orders from an orthodontist's wife from Encino. Just as long as he didn't know two of his actors were also giving the orders. But as of tonight, Roberto's main work is done. In a few hours, it won't matter. He's still got to oversee the cutting, but we won't be underfoot. Well, even if Lynette hadn't died, I mean."
“Okay, George. So you're saying Jake wouldn't have been trying to blackmail Lynette over this?" Shelley asked. She sounded as irritable as Jane was feeling.
“Oh, he might have been trying. But Lynette probably wouldn't have much cared. It all happened so close to the end of filming anyhow."
“But her most important scene was yesterday. She wouldn't have wanted the director to know before that, would she?”
George thought a moment. "I don't think it would have mattered. Lynette had that scene down cold. She didn't need Roberto to tell her how to do it."
“I don't get it," Shelley said. "She seemed so vain and stupid. And yet, you're saying she created a marvelous performance out of that empty head? And before that, helped put together the financing for the whole deal?"
“I guess she was sort of an idiot savant," George said. "Dumb as a chicken about most things and brilliant in a very few."
“Who killed her?" Jane asked, hoping to surprise valuable information out of George.
“No idea," he said cheerfully. "Not my problem, thank God.”
2 2
“Can we believe him?" Shelley asked as the two walked back to their "home base" in Jane's yard. "About what?"
“Everything. Anything."
“I think I probably do. We don't have much choice. Besides—" Jane explained to Shelley about George's being so nice to poor old Olive a little while earlier. "It's entirely possible that he may know more than he's telling us. He may even be lying about what he is telling us, but I'm absolutely certain the man isn't a killer. I think his instincts are basically kindly.”
As they came through the gap in the scenery, they met up with Mel. "There you two are. I've been looking for you. I've got to get away from here for ten minutes. Want to go someplace for coffee?"
“Sure. I'll drive," Jane said. "You're probably parked fourteen miles away anyhow and I'd like to get another shot at running over a reporter. It's something I think I could be good at with a little practice."
“I've got to run home for a minute first," Shelley said. "I'll meet you in your garage.”
“Jane, I'm really sorry," Mel said, taking her arm possessively as they headed for her house. "About this weekend, I mean.”
Jane glanced at her watch. "So am I. Right now we'd have been heading for the airport." "Another time. As soon as this is sorted out." "Are you getting close to solving the murders?" "I'll tell you all about it when we get away from here.”
They went in through the kitchen door and back out to the garage from the inside entrance. They sat in the car in the dark garage for a minute. Mel kissed her long and hard, then Jane sighed and pushed the garage door opener. Shelley was waiting outside, smiling as if she'd guessed what caused the delay.
They went to a family restaurant a few blocks away, which was nearly deserted. The breakfast crowd had gone and the lunchers hadn't arrived yet. Mel got them a booth in the far corner and ordered coffee all around.
“So?" Jane said when the waitress had come and gone. She hadn't much liked the hungry looks the young woman had given Mel. Nor had she been pleased with the fact that the waitress was dressed in a very flattering uniform while Jane herself was in gray sweats.
“So, I guess you heard about Angela's ring being in Harwell's dressing room."
“Just gossip. Is it true?”
He nodded. "She claimed at first that she'd never been in there, but we had questioned somebody who saw her knocking at the door the first day of shooting.
Then she admitted she'd been lying before and that she had gone in. It was the day before Harwell died and Angela could well have claimed that's when she lost the ring, but she didn't."
“I doubt that would really have worked," Jane said. "I'll bet Olive knows every inch of that trailer."