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  Chapter Seven – Spencer

  She was right. Once I saw what went on behind the scenes, everything was ruined for me. I never even went to the movies, but it wasn’t like I had never seen one. At any given moment, there were dozens of people standing around, holding their breath, completely still. If they made a sound or stepped in the wrong place, they would ruin the take.

  Josh wasn’t on the call sheet that morning, which I was both glad and disappointed over. I would’ve liked the chance to get a look at him after hearing so much about him. He was the kind of man who cheated on his wife with his costar, then blamed her for his wife getting pissed at him for it. Yeah, I would’ve liked to meet him. But there would be time.

  I stood off to the side, far away from the crowd watching the latest scene shaping up. Charlotte was in the middle of a blocked-off street, getting a cup of coffee from a vendor in front of what I understood was supposed to be the building she worked in. In the movie, she was a down-on-her-luck social worker. How anybody could believe a woman like her was down on her luck was beyond me. Even though they’d done the best they could to make her look a little plain, a little frumpy, she practically glowed.

  And she was good. Even in that scene, where a kid tried to steal her purse as she bought her coffee and she managed to stop him and tried to find out more about him—I could guess just from that one scene that she would try to change the kid’s life and that would be the happy ending the movie was built around—I could see the talent she had. I wondered if it wasn’t a good time to catch some more of her movies. Just so I could get an idea of who I was actually working with.

  At least, that was what I told myself.

  Another thing I found out that came as a total surprise was the amount of time and actual work it took for a scene like that to come off successfully. There was a ton of what they called blocking, since the scene took place on a busy street, meaning there were dozens of extras walking around, pretending to be normal New Yorkers. Everybody had to be in the right place at the right time for the camera to be able to capture Charlotte and the kid she did the scene with. If even one person stepped out of place or showed up at the wrong spot at the wrong time, they could get in the way and ruin the shot. The lighting had to be perfect, too—I wouldn’t have thought an outdoor scene, shot during the day, would need lighting. I was wrong.

  I was also wrong about the number of times the same little bit of action needed to be shot in order to capture it from every angle. I realized I’d seen it so many times in movies, one shot from different angles, all spliced together. I just thought there was more than one camera involved and they all captures the action at one time. Not so.

  That one little scene, where she chased the kid halfway down the block and caught him and questioned him, took four hours to film. By the time it was finished, the director called lunch.

  I wasn’t sure I liked him. I’d heard him yelling out orders to the cast all day long, though he was always overly nice to Charlotte. I didn’t know if he was doing that on purpose, or if he was being deliberately sweet to single her out in front of the cast. He wasn’t happy about having to rearrange the shooting schedule around her absence. I’d already heard him making one or two little bitchy comments about that during the day. He seemed like a pretty cold fish if he could hold that against her. It wasn’t exactly her fault.

  She walked over to me once everybody started scattering around on their way to their trailers or the craft services tent. “So? What’d you think?”

  “I think I owe you an apology.”

  “How come?” She smiled.

  “I didn’t think it took any work at all to make a movie. And that was just one little scene.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, that’s something a lot of people say when they come to a set for the first time. It’s no joke.”

  “No, it’s not.” I nodded in the direction of the tent. “Do you take lunch?”

  “As a general rule,” she smirked. “Though Janine usually takes my food to my trailer so I can go over my lines and stuff while I eat.” I walked her over to the trailer and, sure enough, Janine was waiting inside. There was a practically plain salad for Charlotte, which made me think about the remark on her constant dieting. I was surprised to see a sandwich and soup waiting for me.

  “Thanks,” I said to Janine, who smiled and shrugged.

  “I thought you’d be hungry, too. Watching one of these movies get made is tiring work.” She was sitting on a little sofa at the back of the trailer, laptop open on her lap.

  “I wouldn’t want to do it myself,” I admitted. “It looks so natural on the screen. The finished product, I mean.”

  “That’s the sign of good acting,” Charlotte said, going through a few envelopes Janine had left on the counter for her while she ate her salad.

  “What is?”

  “Making it look natural and fresh, even if you’re on the tenth or twentieth take. Not everybody can do that.”

  “I can name a few actors and actresses who can’t do it at all,” Janine smirked, eyes on her screen.

  “Anybody I know?” Charlotte asked with a laugh. It was good to hear her laugh, since she was so upset earlier in the day.

  “People you’ve worked with, and you know it.”

  I shook my head. “So much cattiness. I’m not used to being around women.”

  “No, you’re more used to being around men in the trenches, right?” Charlotte grinned.

  “Trench warfare? Wrong century.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.” I didn’t get the chance to answer, since the look on her face stopped me. She turned white as a sheet. Her hands shook.

  “What is it?” I got up and went to her, where she held a sheet of paper she’d just taken out of an envelope. It was a handwritten note, all in block letters.

  I’LL FINISH THE JOB NEXT TIME.

  She dropped it on the floor with a moan. I caught her before she fell from her chair. Janine jumped up. “Get her some water,” I barked, holding Charlotte in my arms. Her eyes started to slide closed and I realized she was about to faint.

  “Stay with me,” I murmured, tapping her cheeks with my fingers. “Stay with me.”

  “Here.” Janine raised the bottle of water to Charlotte’s lips, and she took a long gulp. I was glad to see the color come back into her cheeks. She closed her eyes, but not because she was on the verge of fainting. Her chin trembled like she was about to cry.

  “I’m so sorry,” Janine said. “I should’ve checked it out before I left it here for you. It’s all my fault.” She knelt in front of Charlotte, rubbing her hands.

  I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. It’s whatever psycho is doing this shit.” Charlotte’s head rested on my shoulder. I felt her body trembling against mine.

  “I’ll get you some tea,” Janine said, jumping to her feet.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte whispered, still leaning against me. I looked down at her and wondered who wanted her dead that badly. They had to know the cops were onto them, that we’d be on top of Charlotte all the time. But they were still determined to at least get inside her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass.”

  “You’re not,” I said, “What gave you that idea?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not the kind of person who faints,” she murmured, shaking her head.

  “I can’t blame you. Stop blaming yourself.”

  She sat up, eyes still on the note she’d dropped. “Don’t touch it,” I warned as I pulled my phone from my pocket. I called Ricardo to tell him about it, and he said he’d be out to collect it as soon as he could. By the time I hung up, Janine was back with the tea. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying.

  Charlotte drank the tea slowly, keeping her face turned away from where the note sat on the floor. I left it there until Ricardo arrived to keep my fingerprints off it. When the door swung open, I assumed it was him.


  It wasn’t.

  “Sweetheart.” Brian rushed into the trailer and sank to his knees, throwing his arms around his client. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  “How did you hear?” She looked at Janine, who shrugged.

  “I called him,” she said, still looking like she might cry in the blink of an eye. “I thought he should know.”

  “Damn right, I should know.” Brian hugged Charlotte. He practically mauled her. I could tell she wasn’t a fan, either. She didn’t strike me as the type who enjoyed being mauled by anybody, even her manager.

  “I don’t want a big fuss being made over this,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t. Let’s just move on if we can, huh?”

  “Move on?” Brian looked stunned.

  “Come on,” she said, and she brushed him off her. I wanted to smile when I saw how hurt he looked. I just didn’t get a great feeling about him, but that might’ve been because he was so California and I so very much wasn’t.

  “How can you say you want to move on?” Brian asked, finally taking off his sunglasses.

  “Because I do. I don’t want this getting around the set—with people talking and stuff, you know? There’s already enough gossip flying around. And everybody’s waiting for me and Josh to face off again, like it’s a cage match in something. I hate it. I won’t be blamed for holding back the production.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m not trying to start a fight,” Brian grumbled. He stood, brushing off the knees of his pants. “I didn’t know it was a crime to care.”

  “I never said it was,” she whispered. All the fight drained out of her. I was proud of the little bit of fight she showed. She wouldn’t be a victim. I couldn’t help admiring her for that.

  Ricardo got there just in time, since the tension in the trailer was almost too much to take. He pulled on a pair of gloves and examined the note, then the envelope it came in. It had a Manhattan postmark and had been mailed out the day before. He slid both into a baggie and slid the baggie into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  He asked Janine about it. How did it come in? “With the rest of Charlotte’s mail. She gets fan letters and notes and things all the time on the set. I didn’t think much of it when I saw just another handwritten envelope.”

  “Makes sense.” He turned to Charlotte. “You all right?”

  “Better now,” she said with a smile. She was braver than I gave her credit for at first. “It’s just a letter. I get them all the time. Not so threatening, of course, but there are plenty of nut jobs out there. Something I’ve had to get used to.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a print on this,” he said, smiling. I could tell he didn’t believe himself, and I could tell Charlotte didn’t believe him, either. But she went along with it.

  I stepped outside with him. “Well?”

  “Well, you and I both know there won’t be any prints on this besides hers and the assistant’s,” he muttered, looking around at the other trailers. “If the attacker didn’t leave a print in the trailer, the odds of them being careless with the letter are slim to none.”

  “Right.” I shoved my hands into my pockets, shivering a little in the cold. It had gone from a warm start to the week to feeling like January.

  “How’d she take it when she first saw it?”

  “She almost fainted,” I murmured, looking around to be sure we weren’t overheard.

  “It seems like she’s taking it all right now.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s an actress.”

  “Good point. I’ll take this in.”

  “Hey.” I stopped him from walking away at the last second. “What about that alibi? Josh’s wife?”

  “We still haven’t found anything that sticks,” he said. “The list of possible suspects is narrower all the time, and she’s still at the top.”

  “Let me know if you find out anything else, please.”

  “Or maybe you can just talk to Andrea about it.” For maybe the fifth or sixth time in all the years we’d worked together, I heard Ricardo laugh.

  “What? Jesus Christ, she told you?”

  “We’re partners, Spence. Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.” He winked and walked away, still chuckling. I made a mental note to have a nice chat with Andrea, and soon.

  The director announced lunch break was over. I went back into the trailer and found Charlotte ready to get back out there. “You’re sure you’re okay to do this?”

  “Of course,” she said. She sounded a little irritated. “It’s my job.”

  “Okay, fine.” I stepped aside, then followed her out of the trailer. Anybody who saw her striding back out to shoot the next scene would’ve thought everything was all right. Again, I thought about how brave she was.

  Chapter Eight – Charlotte

  I was a wreck, but I’d be damned if I let any of them see it.

  I couldn’t shake the thought that it was somebody on the crew. Who else could’ve gotten into my trailer without anybody stopping or even noticing them? Somebody right there, working alongside me, might’ve been the person who tried to kill me. The worst thing I could do would be to show fear.

  We shot the next scene, set up in a little diner on the same block as we shot the previous scene. In the movie, I took the kid who tried to steal my purse for a burger and asked him questions about his life. We sat at a booth by the window, food in front of us and buckets just off to the side so we could spit it all out between takes. That was one of my least favorite parts of movie making—anything to do with food. I couldn’t help thinking about the way it went to waste. Waste was something I was never allowed as a kid, so it stood out to me.

  Mark, my young co-star, was a cute kid. Super bright. Precocious as only a young actor could be. He’d already been in maybe five or six movies by the age of nine, plus dozens of commercials. He had real, tangible talent. The sort of talent that was almost unnerving. He could pick up on anything his partner was feeling.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when I first sat down. I pretended not to hear him as hair and makeup artists touched me up in preparation for the shot. Only he wouldn’t let it go. He waited until they were gone to ask me again. “What’s wrong?”

  I could tell from the way he stared at me that he wouldn’t let it go. Another thing about kids. They were tenacious. “Just tired.”

  “You’re lying. Is it because of the attack?”

  “How do you know about that?” Nobody was supposed to tell him. He was too young.

  “I know how to read stories on the internet,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And I have ears. Everybody talked about it all week when you were gone.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” I said, my voice dry.

  “Don’t worry. Everybody was really upset and worried about you. For real.”

  “Not for fake?” I grinned.

  “No. For real.” He was solemn. I decided not to tease anymore.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Is that guy who’s with you your new bodyguard?”

  “For now,” I said. It wasn’t worth explaining.

  “Maybe he’ll do a better job than that other guy.”

  “I hope so.” I held up crossed fingers, and he did the same. A shame, really, that I connected better with him than I did with most adults. I wasn’t sure if that said more about him or me.

  I let myself get lost in the work, then. It was time to start shooting, so we both fell into character. He was a street-wise kid, tough, older than his years. He had a few things in common with the kid playing him, come to think of it. And I was the hardened-but-hopeful social worker who didn’t feel like she was making a difference, and naturally jumped at the chance to change a young boy’s life.

  Yawn. Total Oscar bait. I wouldn’t win—I hadn’t kissed enough asses or greased enough palms to do that—but I might get nominated. Wouldn’t that be funny? Getting nominated for something I almost got killed working on.

  I giggled. Needless to say, that was completely out of
character.

  “Cut!” Stephen, our director, glared at me.

  “You okay?” Mark murmured with a frown.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know why I did that.” Because my thoughts had wandered away, of course. I wasn’t focused. And that wasn’t like me.

  “Okay, let’s take that again.” Stephen looked like he was ready to pull my hair out—I could tell I was on his shit list, even though it wasn’t my fault and even though he did his best to make it look like he genuinely cared about me. I knew it was all bullshit.

  I shook my head, trying to get clear. What was my first line? Damn it.

  “What’s my line?” I whispered to Mark before the cameras started rolling again.

  His frown deepened. “You’re supposed to ask me when the last time I ate was.”

  “Oh, right, right. Okay.” I shook my head again. Why couldn’t I remember? I had the scene down pat the night before and had run it over and over to myself throughout the day, between takes of the previous scene. I knew my lines inside out. Then, at least.

  Stephen cleared his throat. “All right, here we go. Cameras rolling… Action!”

  Marcus lifted his burger to his mouth and took a big bite, then shoved a handful of fries in after it. The food nearly fell out of his mouth as he chewed and chewed, making little grunting noises as he did. He was supposed to do all of that, of course. Which was what led to my first line.

  Only I couldn’t remember it. I could hardly focus on him.

  He looked up at me, eyes wide, cheeks bulging with food. Finally, as I stammered and searched for the right thing to say, he turned and spit it all out into the waiting bucket. “What’s your problem?” he asked.

  “Cut!” Stephen’s voice was shriller all the time. “Charlotte, what the hell is your problem? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stoned.”

  “I’m not,” I said, shaking my head. Whew, that made me dizzy. I leaned back against the booth. “I’m not stoned, damn it.”