Celebrity Sudoku (5 page)

Lolly’s response was more along the lines of a noncommittal grunt as she stared at the small screen on her phone.

I guess I’ve gotten out of the habit of cell-worship up in Maiden’s Bay,
Liza thought ruefully.
She must have turned her phone on as soon as they broke taping—not that she’s enjoying whatever text message she’s looking at all that much.

Snapping her phone shut, Lolly followed Ritz off the set. The other girl was already talking on hers. Liza wondered if Ritz had gone through phone withdrawal during her brief prison stint, unable to talk or text.

Even with Ritz gone, Darrie Brunswick hadn’t stopped her screaming. In fact, her outrage and complaints just rose in volume—while also rising up the local chain of command.

Finally, the show’s director entered the fray. “Darrie, you know how we depend on you,” he began.

She cut him off. “Then you depend on this,” the hostess snapped, standing nose to nose with her boss. “Either you get rid of that little snot, or you do the show without me.”

The man shook his head. “Darrie—”

“From the moment she showed up here, all your precious Ritz Tarleton has done is disrespect us and disrupt the show.” Darrie’s voice had gone from loud and angry to low and venomous. “Well, if she can do that, so can I. I was doing
D-Kodas
when she was in diapers. No way am I going to let her spit on what we’ve accomplished.”

Whirling on her high heels, Darrie stalked off.

The director stood in silence for a moment, watching her leave. Then he sighed. “I think we may as well take an early lunch. The folks in production will have to take this up.”

Production assistants began spreading the news, and in moments, the soundstage had pretty much cleared out.

Liza got her cell phone and called Michael’s number. “We’ve been given an early lunch. Do you think you can get free?”

“Looks that way,” he replied. “Our director is in conference with the female lead. They’re in his office, and whether they’re upright, horizontal, or conferring tantric style, it looks like it’s going to take a while. What do you say I come over there and pick you up? Maybe we can sneak off the lot.”

“And miss the studio canteen?” Liza teased. “I wanted to see all the stars in costume.”

“You’re more likely to see extras, and most of them will just be wearing their own clothes,” Michael told her. “Just give me a couple of minutes, okay?”

He was as good as his word, arriving behind the set almost immediately. “So how are you enjoying the wonderful world of make-believe?”

Liza grimaced. “Unfortunately, the world of reality keeps pushing in. I expected Sam Pang to kick butt. Instead she seems to be ducking down and lying low. Ritz won the first round, so she’s leading a team—and Lolly is her teammate.”

“That’s not exactly the end of the world,” Michael said. “After all, Ritz had a good teacher.”

“When I ran that class, she all but blew it off.” Liza shook her head in concern. “It worries me that she’s the one who won the first round. What does that say about the rest of the players? I’m surprised Will hasn’t been coming around to discuss dumbing down the puzzles.” She sighed. “Although I don’t really know how you could dumb down a four-by-four sudoku grid.”

Michael nodded. “You’ve sort of reached rock bottom already.”

Liza spread her arms as if she were trying to reach out for something that eluded her grasp. “It’s as if there’s a cloud hanging over this whole enterprise, holding everything back.”

“We’ve both been on enough movie sets to know that morale plays a big part in any production,” Michael told her. “I’ve never heard of it affecting a quiz show before, but who knows?”

“It all seems to center on Ritz,” Liza fretted. “She’s going out of her way to make trouble, and I keep feeling that she’s gaming the system—us—everything, somehow.”

Michael shook his head. “You can’t have it both ways. She can’t be a dummy and a master manipulator.”

“Really?” Liza asked sarcastically. “I’ve seen lots of show-biz egos that didn’t have much in the way of smarts, but plenty of low cunning. Certainly, Ritz managed to bring production to a standstill with just a few well-placed remarks. We were supposed to have three shows in the can before lunchtime. If this keeps up, it will take a week to film Celebrity Week.”

“Bite your tongue,” Michael teased.

“Why?” Liza laughed. “What more can go wrong?”

That was when the earthquake hit.

The first jolt caught Liza off balance, flinging her to the floor. She hit with an “Oof!” and lay still for a second, winded and a little stunned.

Then came a second, deep shaking, not as powerful as the first . . . but strong enough to rattle loose the jerry-rigged entrance. A two-by-six brace popped away from the frame of the doorway, flying back and scything down—straight for Liza’s right leg.

She had no time, no chance to get out of the way. The heavy plank landed just below her knee. The world went white as sudden, crushing pain shot from the point of impact, so intense that Liza found herself gulping back sudden nausea.

“Ohmigod, are you all right?” Michael knelt beside her to heave the piece of wood out of the way.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Liza said weakly. “Go to a—” She broke off. Like anyone who lived in Southern California, she’d had earthquake safety pounded into her head—like looking for a doorway to shelter under.

Hell of a lot of good that did me,
she thought.

She struggled to sit up, wincing at another blast of pain from her knee. But when Michael tried to help her rise farther, Liza got light-headed—everything around her seemed to acquire a foggy radiance. She grimly clung to consciousness.

“Can’t,” she muttered, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Hey! Anybody! I need some help here!” Michael yelled.

With her eyes still shut, Liza heard hurried footfalls.

“That beam fell on my wife’s leg.” Michael tried to sound calm, but Liza could hear the quiver in his voice.

“Let’s get her out. One more shake, and those lights are going to go,” another voice said. Hands gently formed a sort of seat under and around her, but Liza let out a gasp as her rescuers raised her up, letting her leg dangle. As smoothly as they could, they hustled her outside, where she could hear confused shouting . . . and a few screams.

When they placed her down, she gritted her teeth to keep from adding some noise of her own. Michael knelt beside her, supporting her in a sitting posture, her head resting on his shoulder. “It hurts.” Liza tried to whisper rather than whimper, but she wasn’t sure how it came out.

“Could have been worse,” a gruff voice said somewhere overhead. “They managed to quakeproof most of these buildings over the years.” The voice got a little softer. “She doing okay?”

“We’ve got to get that leg looked at,” Michael said tightly.

“Here comes some help.”

Liza heard a siren coming nearer. She opened her eyes to catch the blurry image of an ambulance pulling up.

“Everyone all right here? Anyone need treatment?”

Several voices asked for aid, including Michael’s.

A figure in blue surgical scrubs came over, and Michael explained what happened. Gentle fingers probed Liza’s knee, but even so, she reacted with a hiss of indrawn breath.

“No blood, so the skin isn’t broken,” the examiner said.

Fine, but what about the leg?
Liza wanted to say, but she just couldn’t summon up the strength for a wisecrack.

“What’s this I hear about Liza getting hurt?”

That was a familiar voice—Wish Dudek’s.

“Mr. Dudek, we’re supposed to be setting up a triage system—”

But Wish didn’t want to hear it. In moments, he had used his position to scrounge up some sort of transportation—one of those glorified golf carts used to haul visitors and VIPs around the studio grounds. Liza was carefully deposited in the backseat, where Michael supported her while Wish took them at top speed to the studio infirmary.

Liza clung to Michael as they slewed through a turn onto a treelined street that looked eerily like Hackleberry Avenue. The bungalows here served as suburban exteriors in countless movies while also housing producers’ offices, accounting operations, even rest spots for stars.

They came up to the carefully tended magnolias that masked the front of the seventy-year-old miniature bungalow originally built for Baby Boots. Liza had passed the place often when visiting various producers at the studio, enjoying the whimsical gingerbread carving at the roofline. She’d promised herself that someday she’d find some pretext to check the place out.

That wouldn’t happen now. The roofline seemed to be gone. Even though it cost her some pain, Liza craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse of the bungalow. But all she saw was a pile of weathered lumber where the little house used to stand.

Sighing, Liza lay back in her hospital bed, making herself as comfortable as her injured knee would allow. Wish Dudek had ruthlessly used his pull at the studio to get her examined at the studio infirmary. And Atotori Studios, terrified of a lawsuit, had passed her along to a very select little hospital up in Bel Air.

It was the kind of place that patched up A-listers in between car accidents and rehab or dealt with the results of botched plastic surgery. They were used to the demands of their select patients, so they hadn’t been that surprised when Liza insisted on having her trousers removed rather than cut off.

“This is Oscar de la Renta,” she’d told them. So, even at the cost of a little pain, she’d managed to save her designer pants.

After X-rays and further examination by an orthopedist, she got the verdict—not a broken leg, but what the doctor called “traumatic patellar tendonitis.” The area just south of her knee had suffered deep bone trauma. It might not be broken, but it would definitely hurt for a good long while.

So now she lay in a private room with the bottom of her hospital bed raised up and an ice pack on her knee, enjoying a painkiller buzz. The main pain, really, was the news that when she did get out of bed, she’d have to use a walker. “You can’t put any weight on the injured leg,” the doctor had told her. “In a few weeks, you’ll graduate to a cane.”

Liza had managed not to tell him where he could put that cane.

Well, the problem of getting around could wait until tomorrow. For now, Liza was content to drift.

The phone rang, but Michael answered for her.

“You have visitors,” he announced. “Will and Wanda.”

Michael stepped out, and Liza’s puzzle compadres came into the room.

Will held out a sheaf of papers. “I worked up a selection of sudoku for you, varying the toughness from slightly distracted by pain to completely drug-addled.”

Liza laughed. “Maybe semi-addled,” she admitted as Will sorted out some of the puzzles and gave one to her.

“Could I hold on to this?” she asked.

“You can have them all.” Will put the sheaf of puzzles on her bedside table.

“I’m really sorry about your leg,” Wanda spoke up a little shyly.

“You should be glad,” Liza told her. “If Ritz hadn’t set off Darrie the way she did, that quake would have hit right in the middle of taping.”

“While I was standing under that doorway that fell apart.” Wanda looked a little faint now.

Liza gave her an encouraging nod. “And here you were all worried about blowing your lines.”

“I think that’s the medication talking.” Will took Wanda by the arm. “Besides, our time is up.”

Liza blinked. “What is this, the Intensive Care Unit?”

“No, but there’s a backlog of people who’d like to see you,” Will explained as he and Wanda left.

Then the next shift of visitors arrived. Michelle Markson had to hop upward to perch on the side of Liza’s bed, aiming a piercing stare down at Liza. With her diminutive size and fine features, Michelle looked like a malevolent pixie. Her companion, Buck Foreman, could have made two of her and could probably have boosted her onto Liza’s bed with one hand.

He wouldn’t have done that, though. Buck was a former cop, big, buff, and tough-looking in his mirrored sunglasses. But he also had a well-developed sense of self-preservation and knew that any attempt at giving Michelle a hand came at the risk of losing the same.

“Well,” Michelle said, “from the look on your face, this whole adventure wasn’t as bad as I’d heard.”

“The beam fell on my knee, not my face,” Liza told her business partner.

Buck took off his sunglasses and looked at Liza closely. “Dilated pupils,” he said. “Guess we shouldn’t be surprised. A joint like this, I suppose every white coat is a Dr. Feelgood.”

“Given your body chemistry, I suppose I can overlook your tone.” From the expression on Michelle’s face, she was just managing to keep her famous temper in check.

Liza couldn’t care less. She was busy concentrating on something that had drifted up from her memory. “When Wish was rushing me off to the studio infirmary, we passed the bungalow where Lolly Popovic and Ritz Tarleton were staying. I think it had collapsed.”