Jill Churchill - A Knife to Remember

“These people are nuts!" he said with disgust. "That — that director, the one wearing the green `thing,' just snatched somebody I was questioning right away from me. Literally grabbed the guy's arm and took him off mid-sentence. We were playing tug-of-war with him!"

“Want to go inside and neck?" Jane asked. It accomplished what she hoped.

He whooped with laughter. "I'd take you up on that any other time!" he said. "God! You're right.

I'm letting them get to me too much. I'm losing it. I would like to go inside. I need to use your phone if I could.”

Jane tactfully disappeared into the basement to check that the cats hadn't found anything important to damage while Mel reported in to his office. Max and Meow were outraged at their confinement, but had done nothing worse than kick the kitty litter around the floor in a pretty wide circle.

When she came back up a few minutes later, she found Mel standing by the windows of her living room, staring at the scene behind the house and shaking his head.

“How's it going?" she asked.

He made a helpless gesture. "Miserably, if you really have to know. I've managed to find at least twelve people with seventeen motives. Some of them happily handed me two or three reasons they might have wanted to kill him — like they were giving me little presents. None of them very convincing reasons at that. I've never heard anything like it. And at least fifty people had the opportunity to kill him."

“I guess this means you're not going to have it all cleared up by Friday," Jane said wistfully.

“I don't often feel stumped, Janey, and I don't handle it well. Now they're all wound up like tops about other things and I can't seem to hammer through to anybody that there's been a goddamned murder here and it has to be solved!"

“What other things?”

Mel jammed his hands into his pockets glumly. "Oh, somebody had a lot of money stolen this morning. God knows why the idiot had all that cash—"

“How much?"

“Over a thousand dollars. In a canvas bag, left hung over a chair. Jeez! Stupid! Anyway, it turned up. But only after I had to divert two of my officers to look for it."

“Where did it turn up?"

“Rolled up in an empty coffee cup in the makeup trailer. Naturally, practically everybody in the cast and crew cheerfully admitted having been in the makeup trailer during the relevant times."

“The money was in plain sight?"

“Yes," he snapped. "In plain sight. Why?"

“No reason. It just sounds like somebody wanted to be sure it was found. It's strange."

“Strange? Strange! Have you personally seen or heard anything normal from these people?”

Jane didn't smile, but it hurt not to. She'd never seen him unravel like this, and while she was sympathetic, she was also pleased. Mel was always just a shade cooler and more composed than she might have wished. A tiny, unwanted element in their relationship was her constant feeling of ever-soslight intimidation in the face of his careful self-control.

“Now—" he continued his litany of grievances, "they're gearing up for something terribly important this afternoon. Important to them, that is. It's just a movie, Janey! Don't any of them understand that?”

Jane thought about pointing out to him that it was their whole reason for being, just as solvingcrimes was his, but wisely refrained from making this observation. She also curbed her inclination to ask him again whether there was the slightest chance that they'd manage to get away for their weekend in New York. That wasn't going to happen.

Unless she and Shelley could figure out who killed Jake Elder.

She pushed the thought aside. For all her unofficial snooping, she wasn't any farther ahead than Mel and his staff. With some reluctance, she mentioned to him Jennifer Fortin's arrival on the set. "She knew Jake, too. Apparently had dinner with him the night before they started work here."

“Oh, great. ." he said dismally.

When Jane got back outside, the same table was being set up in her backyard for luncheon. This time she avoided sitting at it, but instead she and Shelley took up a listening post nearby. A moment later Cavagnari swept into the area with Jennifer Fortin on his arm. They were both smiling and gently pawing each other. Jennifer hung on his arm, giving it little squeezes and hugs and he kept patting her cheek and making what he probably imagined were seductive expressions. In Jane's view, the green velvet poncho detracted considerably from his effort.

“If that isn't a love feast, I don't know one when I see one," Shelley murmured. Cavagnari and Fortin had seated themselves practically on the same chair and were feeding each other little tidbits of cheese cubes from a tray that had been set on the table.

Jane just shook her head in wonder at the spectacle.

“What has Mel found out?" Shelley asked quietly. "I saw you snag him and take him inside."

“Nothing. Poor Mel is going nuts. He's not cut out to deal with the artistic temperament."

“Who is?"

“Oh, you and I are much better equipped than he is. Anybody who's trying to raise teenagers without going to jail or the loony bin isn't too surprised by anything."

“I guess you know that the junior high was taking school pictures today," Shelley said.

Jane knew exactly what this seeming non sequitur meant. "Oh, no! That explains why Katie was made up like a floozy raccoon this morning. I wondered. What do you think would happen if I ran up to school, dashed into her math class, and washed her face?"

“She'd hate you," Shelley said simply. "I made Denise kill the hairdo this morning. She was wild. She had her bangs moussed into a three-inch crewcut. It was appalling. I tried to make her understand that school pictures are forever. They come back and haunt you when you're thirty-five. You know, sometimes I get tired of being a warden. I can't wait for her to grow up and get to be my friend. Do you think it will ever happen?”

Jane shrugged. "My mother always said that when your kids grow up they just get scarier, more expensive problems. Of course, she had to cope with my sister Marty marrying that jerk. "

“It's so frustrating, having Denise known far and wide for absurd hair, when she has so many good qualities I'd like to see immortalized instead. Maybe I could make her wear a placard around her neck that says, 'I'm very tidy and get straight A's.' Do you think people might read it instead of falling back in horror at her bozo hair?"

“Probably not."

“She was so cute when she was ten," Shelley mused. "I wish I could have kept her that way. Locked in amber or something. Her school picture that year was darling, she still liked me and her father. She even got along with her brother at that age. She didn't care about money yet. It was the last good year. ." she said in a voice of doom.

Jane nudged Shelley out of her grim reverie.

“Uh-oh," Shelley said, the gloom deepening.

Lynette Harwell had just come through the break in the scenery and was taking in the spectacle of Jennifer Fortin and Roberto Cavagnari all but locked in a cheesy embrace. Her lovely face was suddenly transformed into a mask of anger, and just as quickly became bland. Her sense of theater, or self-glorification, came back. She might not have any real intelligence, but she knew better than to cast herself in a bad light.

“Jennifer Formas, isn't it?" she said in a sweetly trilling voice. "How nice of you to drop by."

“Why, Lynette Harwell! I didn't know you were in this film!" Fortin said, ignoring the fact that Harwell had deliberately gotten her name wrong. "Roberto, darling, you've been keeping secrets from me," she gushed.

“Hardly a secret, my dear," Harwell said. "But some of us keep in touch with the industry better than others. What on earth are you doing in Chicago? Are you doing a trade show or something?”