A Vintage Murder (16 page)

“Now, love, in this scene the dog will first be hesitant and then he does what you want him to do. I am going to show you the cues you’ll need. He reads body language and understands the verbals that I will give you. Ready?” She nodded. “First, it will be your energy. Now, I have run through this scene with Buddha several times already. We have been practicing for weeks, even before arriving here. Thank God I finally have an actress who is willing to work with me and the animals. Between you and me there would have been no way this movie would have ever gotten made with Lucy. She could not take on my energy, which is what I’m going to ask you to do. Do you think you can?”

“I . . . think so.”

“No, love. Wrong answer. Be bold. Take charge. You are now Elizabeth Wells, and as Elizabeth you are in control of the animals. Watch me.”

Andy proceeded to run the scene through. With his cues and language, Buddha acted at first as if he were frightened of him by crouching down and slinking away from him, even growling. Andy squatted low. He glanced up at Nikki. “You have to remember that he is acting now. This is his job as much as it is yours.” Then Andy propped himself onto all fours. He turned his head away from the dog and yawned. “You see what I am doing is letting him know that I don’t care if he’s being impossible. In fact, I am bored with it and want to be his friend. I am acting submissive.” Andy took a few steps closer to the dingo, who backed away. He stopped and repeated his movements, even bringing his hand up behind his ear as if to scratch it. “This is in your scene, you realize.”

“I do.” Nikki had reread this scene a few times and was aware that she would basically be playing a canine through most of it. Then Andy sat back and put his head down. After a few moments Buddha came up and sniffed him, pawed his lap. Andy didn’t move. Then Buddha lay down beside him and Andy gave the dog a rub. “You realize that if he were wild, these steps would take days.”

“I do.” She also knew that was a part of her line to Shawn’s character James.

“Good. The thing you must remember is that you cannot have any fear. None. You are Elizabeth. You are me. Whatever it takes to keep you in a mode of
no fear
. You cannot get into your head, and allow yourself to think, that this dog is wild. He is not wild. He is a sweetheart and this entire scene is about acting, for both you and him. So follow what I have been saying, and you and my beauty here will do brilliantly.”

“I’m in.” Nikki took a few deep breaths and psyched herself. This was actually one of her favorite parts about acting—something that she really missed—getting into character. Getting herself into a place where she was no longer Nikki Sands.

“Good. I can’t say it enough: I am thrilled you’re on board. I don’t think I could have worked another day with Lucy. I’m sorry she died the way she did, and I feel awful that it was Charlie who supposedly caused it, but she
was
impossible.”

Nikki didn’t know what to say. She liked everything about Andy—his demeanor, the way he was with both animals and people. But his diatribe about Lucy bothered her. Even more troubling was that Andy Burrow knew how to handle a snake, and it was presumably his snake that had killed Lucy. He was also probably adept at being stealthy. She couldn’t shake the fact that, where Andy was concerned, two and two made four. The man had motive and know-how when it came to killing someone with the bite of a snake.

Nikki did a few trial runs with Andy at her side, and then everything was set to go. She felt comfortable with Buddha, who was definitely better trained than her lazy Ridgeback at home. Actually, Ollie belonged to Derek. But he’d gone back and forth between her place and his, until hers had burned down. She wondered how it would all work when they returned.

She gave Buddha a doggie treat. Nathan and Kane came over and asked her if she was ready to shoot the scene. She was, with one exception—the Aussie accent she would have to pull off. She’d been practicing all morning, but still wasn’t sure she had it right.

“Places everyone.” Nikki took her place inside the farmhouse, where the scene would start with her walking out the front door, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Quiet on the set.”

Nikki breathed in deeply. She could do this. She picked up the cup. “And action!” Nathan yelled.

Nikki walked out the front door of the farmhouse, took a sip of coffee, and looked around. A slight mist rolled through and she set the cup down on the railing to rub her arms. She still didn’t get the tank top. Elizabeth would have been wearing a damn parka, but she was going with it. At least the coffee was real, and hot. She stretched and smiled. This was exactly what the script called for. She headed down to Buddha and said, “How are you today, old boy?” The dog growled. Nikki took a step back.

“Cut!” Nathan said. “Come on, what was that? Andy worked with you for what? At least an hour, and that on top of everything sets us back all day. You are supposed to have no fear. What the hell was that? No fear! For God’s sake you are Elizabeth Wells! And the accent. Please Nikki, you are an actress. Think Nicole Kidman here, okay.”

“Right. I’m sorry. It was instinct with Buddha.” Right—think Elizabeth Wells, think Nicole Kidman. Before long she was going to have a regular party with all sorts of personalities carrying on in her head. She’d need some lithium to get through it.

“Get out of your fucking instinct and get into Elizabeth’s. And work the accent.”

Now she could see what Johnny was talking about. Nathan did have a temper, and over the next two hours Nikki got railed with it a dozen times before she ever moved to the inside of the cage with Buddha. Either her posture was wrong, the look was wrong, the way she talked to the dog was wrong. The accent was wrong. Hell, she even drank the coffee wrong at one point, which had grown cold. But finally—and oddly enough, because she was superstitious—it was on the thirteenth take that it all worked. The scene with Buddha worked beautifully, and she sounded as if she really had been born in the land Down Under. At that point she was pretty sure she was glowing.

She was inside the cage at the part where the dog finally lays his head in her lap and Shawn, as James, said: “That was amazing.”

Immediately Buddha jumped up and ran back into his corner growling, which was what was supposed to happen, and Nikki, in character, came out of the cage and chewed him out. “Why are you here? I didn’t hear you drive up? Do you know I have been working with that animal for weeks? Now look. You’ve probably set him back several more weeks.” She grabbed him by the arm and yanked. “Get away from him.”

Her ass chewing went on for a few minutes and as they reached the steps of the farmhouse, Shawn yelled, “Stop! Don’t move. It’s an adder.” He scooped up the snake, which he tossed a hundred feet.

Nikki knew the snake wasn’t real, but moviegoers wouldn’t.

Nathan yelled, “Cut! Beautiful!”

Everyone seemed pleased and Shawn gave Nikki a pat on the back. They were able to do two more scenes and then they went on break. Nikki felt weary from the last several hours of work, but she knew break time would give her a chance find out more about Lucy Swanson and who might have wanted her in the ground, and that was what Nikki aimed to do.

Simon ran up to her, a sandwich and a bottle of water in hand. “Oh my God, you were so good. So good, and Shawn—awesome. I couldn’t believe it was you. I bought into the entire thing. This is it, baby, you are meant to be a star. Here I brought you some food. You need nourishment.”

“You watched that agony?” Nikki asked and appreciatively took the food.

“Agony? That was
art
, Snow White. Art in motion.”

“After hours and hours of shooting, and even then I don’t know about art in motion. I can’t believe you’ve been here this entire time.”

“And where else would I be? I am your manager. Which by the way, we need to nail down the details on that.”

She gave him one of her “you’ve got to be kidding me” looks.

“But we can do that later. For now, I want you to know you’re brilliant.”

“The director didn’t think so.”

“He was doing his job. He’s teaching you your craft.

Making you better at what you do. You’ll appreciate it later. Be grateful.”

Oh no, he was spouting the Sansibaba crap.

Thankfully, Kane approached them. “I’ll let you two talk. If you need me, I’m going to have a bite myself,” Simon said.

Nikki watched him hurry off and over to Shawn.

Kane laid a hand on her shoulder. “How are you?”

“Fine. Thanks.” One thing she’d already learned over the course of the day: Nathan was a perfectionist, as Johnny had told her. She’d been ridiculed, screamed at, and at one point Nathan even called her stupid. He wasn’t the same subdued man she’d met at the barbecue. He was out of control. “Honestly I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Nathan is tough to work with.”

“You’re doing a great job. I know he can get excited at times, but for someone who has been thrown into this, you have really come through for us. It can’t be easy. You’ve talked to him outside of filming and you know that he has two personalities. He’s a director, what did you expect?”

She laughed. “That’s true. I want to do my best, but I don’t think there is any way I can live up to Lucy Swanson. You guys really should have gotten someone else. Someone with more experience.”

“I don’t know about that. You’ve done awesome out here, and as far as Lucy, sure she was good. Great, in fact. I liked the girl. She had some emotional issues and was pretty high maintenance, but she didn’t deserve what happened.” He shook his head. “It’s too bad. Now you’ll probably see her dysfunctional parents all over the tabloids. They’re total nut jobs. I met the dad once, and he’s a real control freak. Used to manage Lucy until she got smart and realized that he was stealing her blind.”

“Her own father?” Nikki was appalled, but an image of her mother ran through her mind. She didn’t doubt that once her family knew she was coming into some money from the movie, sooner rather than later one of her siblings, or her mom, would be on the phone seeing what they could get out of her. Her family history was long and sordid and one she chose to forget. But in a way she had a feeling she could probably relate to Lucy Swanson in that department.

“Oh yeah, and her mom is a real prize, too,” Kane went on. “Made Lucy feel like she owed her. She was one of those whacko stage moms when Lucy was young and I heard that she’d even been abusive to her. But who knows. It’ll be interesting. I’m sure that Lucy had a will, considering she was worth some money.”

“That’s too bad they treated her like that,” Nikki said. “You know, I’ve been wanting to ask you something about Lucy, because you seemed to have had a decent relationship with her.”

“I don’t know about that, but I was the one everyone turned to when she needed someone to calm her down.”

“Did she have any enemies on the set? I mean,
real
enemies that you know of? I know that some people didn’t care for her but still, was there any one person that stood out in your mind?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wait a minute. You’re not still on the train of thought that someone actually did away with Lucy?” He laughed. “Come on now. You gotta get off that. I did hear something about you being a regular sleuth up there in Napa. It must be true.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your pal . . .” He cleared his throat. “I mean manager, Simon. And your bodyguard? He’s clued us all in that he’s well adept in Jiu-Jitsu.”

She sighed. “Great. Okay, yes, I have been known to be a bit of a snoop, but did my
manager/bodyguard
also tell you that I’ve helped solve some of those cases?”

“He mentioned it. In fact, it got me thinking that maybe I should produce a TV series in Napa, kind of a hipper version of
Murder, She Wrote
.” He held up his hands and formed a square with his palms and closed one eye. “I can see it now, we take the nighttime soap opera tack and throw in murder mystery with an amateur sleuth and I think we’d have one helluva show. Maybe after we wrap this, we should sit down and discuss it.”