Jeffery Deaver - Shallow Graves

Meg said, "So you're a writer now?"

"Nope. Still unemployed. Lefkowitz's gotta give me a writer's credit but that's only because of the Guild. I'm just here in case they need to doctor it. I'm still canned. I'm guilty of the worst crime in Hollywood. Aggravating a producer's ulcer."

"So write more scripts."

Pellam laughed and looked at his watch. "When the mood takes me. I've got a free-lance scouting job in Utah."

They heard the rise and fall of the actors' voices.

Then the director's staticky shout in the bullhorn. "Cut, cut! Somebody… you, yes you! Get that effing squirrel out of here. I don't believe it, I do not believe it."

They returned to the camper and sat down in the lawn chairs-slowly. Meg, because of the gunshot. Pellam, because of the popped shoulder.

"Any chance you'd get back east?"

"Lots of movies to be made."

Meg said, "If you do, why don't you come upstate for a visit? Sam'd like it."

Pellam stretched his legs out in front of him, the sharp tips of his stained Nokonas pointed up toward the gray sky.

"Suppose it's a possibility," he said, and they watched the crew fan out into the cemetery to adjust the grass, pluck up leaves, fix makeup, straighten cuffs, chase a squirrel toward the trees. Everyone serious, everyone rushed, trying to get one more take in the can before the November darkness fell.

John Pellam's comment about fire, embers, and smoke comes from one of his favorite authors, Reynolds Price, whom he was not, under the circumstances, inclined to attribute.

Former attorney and folksinger Jeffery Deaver is the best-selling author of a dozen suspense novels and numerous short stories. He has been nominated for an Edgar Award three times and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award for best short story of the year. The London Times has called him the “best psychological thriller writer around.” He makes his home in Virginia and California. The Bone Collector , the first Lincoln Rhyme thriller, is soon to be a feature film from Universal Pictures.