Jill Churchill - A Knife to Remember

“So it could have been somebody really minor, too. Another bit player who wanted a shot at stardom?"

“It's possible," Shelley said. "Here's another possibility. And you won't like it. What if Butch wanted something of Jake? Like a better credit at the end of the movie, or more control of the props decisions or something. He might try blackmailing Jake and Jake could have come back and said, `I'm not going along with this and, what's more, you're fired and I'm going to ruin your name in the business.' That would make him a threat worth killing, wouldn't it?”

Jane was shaking her head. "This is too baroque for me. I don't even know who 'A' and 'B' are anymore. And there's yet another possibility that we haven't considered."

“What's that?" Shelley asked brightly.

“That the blackmailing attempt I heard had nothing to do with the murder. With that many egotistical, ambitious people around, there are probably half a dozen nasty things going on at any given moment.”

Shelley was only momentarily discouraged. "Then we have a lot of snooping to do to find out what the other nasty things were, don't we? Set your alarm for six, Jane. We've got a busy day ahead of us."

12

“So are you going to marry Mel?" Katie asked as she stood at the window watching for her car pool the next morning.

“Marry?" Jane gasped, nearly choking on her orange juice. "I don't know. I guess Mike told you about my plans."

“Yeah, he said you didn't want to talk to me about it."

“It's not that I didn't want to. I just didn't know how."

“What do you think I am, some kind of… of prude?"

“ There are worse things to be," Jane said, wondering how she could get control of this conversation. "So you don't mind if I go?"

“Mind? No. It seems kinda silly. I mean, you're almost forty years old, Mom. Isn't that pretty old for — you know? There's Jenny's mom. Gotta go!" she said, flying out the door.

Jane went to the living room and glanced out the window. Eight o'clock and the movie people were in full swing. She'd heard trucks arriving shortly before six, but contrary to Shelley's instructions, 97 hadn't gone out to snoop. Now that the kids were all off to school, she still wasn't in any hurry. She sat down and turned on the television, letting the morning news wash over her while she smoked a cigarette. She was down to six a day now and had pretty much given up trying to quit entirely. Still, six a day was better than the pack and a half she'd gotten up to in the weeks after Steve's death.

The conversation with Katie had shaken her. She never felt fully in control as a mother, but in this situation she'd been put in the position of supplicant, wanting, if not approval, at least permission from her children to lead an adult life. Her discomfort came mainly from the fact that she was on shaky ground logically. She still felt duty-bound to uphold a high moral tone for them to emulate, and this included sexual abstinence. For teenagers. But not necessarily for her. And that's where the logic fell apart. She'd put herself into the old "Do as I say, not as I do" position, which she found very uncomfortable. She knew what the difference was, but couldn't find a way to explain it to Katie.

Her daughter was poised on the brink, hormonally speaking, of being a woman. She still had a lot to learn about life and people and especially herself before she should consider becoming involved sexually with anyone. Whereas Jane herself was feeling menopause breathing down her neck.

She suddenly imagined she could hear her mother's voice speaking to her. "Chickie, you're doing it again. You're thinking too much about things you can't do anything about.”

Jane put out the cigarette, tidied up the kitchen, and finished dealing with the last of the kitchen trash in the guest bathroom. Then she fed the cats in the basement, where they would be locked in today with fresh kitty litter and a big bowl of water. She had enough to fret herself silly about without having to worry about their whereabouts, too. Mike had taken Willard out to his dog run early and the big yellow dog was already settled in by the dining room window to begin his daily watch for the mailman. Jane double-checked that the doors were all locked, put the key to the back door in her jeans pocket, and went outside.

Shelley was just approaching the house. "Jane, I was coming to look for you."

“I had to get the kids off and had a brief, shattering talk with Katie to recover from. What have you found out?"

“Nothing. I was waiting for you. We work best as a team. I did try to get Jake's maybe-girlfriend Angela to chat, but she seemed to consider me a nobody and a busybody."

“Well? Aren't you?”

Shelley laughed. "Probably. I've been talking to Maisie about her, about Angela I mean, and it seems she's a very ambitious young woman. I've got a plan to get her talking. You catch her attention any way you want and just go along with me. Here she comes again. ." Shelley added, lowering her voice to a whisper as she led Jane to the lawn chairs still set up by the snack table.

“Oh, hello there," Jane said to Angela, wishing she'd had the opportunity to question Shelley about this "plan" of hers. "Why aren't you in costume today?”

Angela Smith was in jeans and a beautiful red sweater. Her gorgeous chestnut hair was in trendy disarray. She glanced briefly at Jane, then went back to dropping tiny marshmallows into her hot chocolate. "I don't have any scenes until this afternoon. I just wanted to be around to see scene sixty-three done," she replied in a perfunctory tone.

“You'll have to excuse Jane if she seems nosy," Shelley said. "She's a writer and you know how they are."

“A writer?" Angela's interest was piqued slightly. "What do you write?”

The honest answer would have been "The first 104 pages of a story that might, with enormous good luck, turn into a novel sometime within the next decade." But Jane didn't get a chance to say anything.

Shelley leaped in. "I'm sorry, Jane. I know I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I can't help myself sometimes." She turned to Angela and said confidentially, "Jane's not allowed to reveal her pseudonym. Contractual reasons, you know. But I think it's all right to tell you that she had two novels on the best-seller lists last year and then, of course, there are the scripts—"

“Scripts? Novels?" Angela said hungrily.

Jane smiled modestly at Shelley. "Now, now. You'll give me away if you're not careful."

“Would I have read anything of yours?" Angela asked. She pulled up a vacant lawn chair and sat down alarmingly close to Jane."Oh, I wouldn't know—"

“Rosamund Pilcher! I'll bet that's who you are. No, she's English, isn't she? Will you tell me if I guess?"

“No, I'm sorry. I really can't reveal any more," Jane said.

“-and these scripts of yours? Are they based on your own novels? Have any of them been produced?"

“Have any of them been produced?" Jane said archly to Shelley and they both laughed merrily at the absurdity of anybody asking such a naive question.

“Let's just say it's no coincidence that this movie is being made in Jane's backyard," Shelley said.

Jane gave her a "look-out-you're-going-too-far" glance, and said to Angela, "I'm not officially involved in this production at all. Really.”

It was almost obscene the way Angela's thoughts chased each other greedily across her otherwise lovely face. Here, she was obviously thinking, is somebody of power and influence who could not only get me a plum role, but maybe write one for me.

“ Tell me about yourself, uh… Angela, was it?" "Angela Smith. Yes. How nice of you to know my name. And yours is…?"

“Jane Jeffry. Legally, that is," Jane said with a coy laugh that caused Shelley to make a noise like a seal barking.