Death of the Office Witch (36 page)

“So, now that you've met her,” Edwina said, “what do you think?”

“Edwina!”

“Think I'll do the dishes. I've seen what you do with them.” He removed his sheepskin, rolled up his sleeves, and reached for their plates—then froze in mid-movement.

Charlie watched the grin in his eyes fade, form a dangerous squint like in
Deadly Posse
.

She turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was desert-camouflaged, military. But instead of uniformed soldiers, Gordon Cabot and another man sat in it, Cabot driving. As they drew closer, Charlie recognized the other man as Sidney Levit, the producer. Were things so bad he had to work with Cabot?

“Christ, it's a Humvee. He's not even on the road.” Mitch watched them pass as if stunned then started after them on foot, soapsuds clinging to the hairs on his arms. Neither Cabot nor his passenger seemed to notice anyone else, so deep were they in argument—hands flailing, shouting words Charlie couldn't quite distinguish over the roar of the Humvee.

“That man's got to be stopped,” Edwina said in a voice that chilled even her daughter. And Charlie had tangled with this woman all her life.

Chapter
3

“I have a return ticket on a plane leaving tomorrow afternoon. We're going to have to straighten out your affairs the best we can today,” Charlie told her mother at the door of the tent trailer. “And I have to call home. This is Saturday.” Libby would be out of school and on her own.

“When's the last time you came to see me?” Edwina turned, her hand on the latch. “You just got here.”

“If anyone should know what I'm facing back there it's you. Now I'm the one raising a teenager.”

“Well, I hope you do a better job than I did.” Edwina pushed Charlie aside and stomped off across hillocks of sand and scrub toward the concrete bathrooms. “There's a phone down at the Visitors' Center.”

Charlie's eyes teared again. But this time not because of flying sand. How long must she go on apologizing for her life and for Libby's?

She stood undecided behind Howard's Jeep. Should she try to talk to John B. now or walk down to the Visitors' Center and phone Libby? Charlie ended up doing neither because once again there was a shouting match going on behind the pile of rocks she'd climbed last night.

The bowl appeared smaller in natural light. Three teenage girls in heavy makeup draped themselves over various rocks on its far side to pout for a cameraman setting up shots. Charlie wondered if they were about to be devoured by alien animals. Two vans were parked next to the Humvee, off the marked roads as forbidden to all vehicles by forest service signs at each switch and turn.

But the real drama staged itself just below her where Mitch Hilsten, Sidney Levit, Scrag Dickens, a man Charlie recognized from pictures in the trades as John B. Drake, and Gordon Cabot formed a rough circle around yet another man—the latter up to his elbows in plasterlike material he was scooping out of a wheelbarrow and slapping onto a grouping of rocks at the base of the wall. Scrag stood to one side as if to break with the circle, arms folded, observing more than participating. Sidney, on the other hand, a man known for his patience in nursing along troubled projects, was obviously still strung out.

“Too much helicopter time for location shots we can do by miniature in the studio. And now this. Gordon, you are making no sense here.” Levit wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. The
Animal Aliens
producer was one of a fast-disappearing breed of old-timers in the industry—tall, thin, white-haired, with pale skin that shouldn't be exposed to a sun trying to get serious here. Even the spooky wind whirring through the pine needles was heating up. God, Charlie hated nature. She took off her jacket.

It seemed strange to see doc and feature crews mixing like this—even in animosity, sharing the same mesa top for location sites, not to mention the campground. There was a definite pecking order here and a feature would take precedence over a documentary.

“Location plus helicopter equals overbudget, drastic overbudget, Gordon,” Sidney Levit continued. “You are losing your mind and you are losing mine. And we're going to lose our shirts if—”

“Every project goes over budget, Sid. Everybody knows every project goes over budget. Everybody expects it except you.”

“Mine don't.” John B. wore a red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt, faded Levi's, and hiking boots. Charlie had heard or read something juicy about him once, a scandal of some kind, she just knew it. She just couldn't remember it. “I use what's available and don't spend megabucks messing with—”

“Look, Drake, much as I appreciate your puny efforts, not everybody can make a living off sticks and cutesy-pie bugs, know what I mean? These rocks are not right for the aesthetic tone I have in mind here.”

“They are
right
,” Mitch Hilsten said with the low menace that had given Charlie erotic dreams as a teen. “
They
are perfect. Nature
made
them that way.” Each statement brought the superstar a step closer to the little director. “You come
this
far. For
this
setting. And then you have to
fuck
it up.”

The men who had given way to Mitch's threatening approach grabbed for him now as he appeared about to take a swing at Cabot. Everyone but Scrag, who glanced up to grin at Charlie.

She crawled off her perch and walked away. Somehow, guy stuff had seemed more dramatic on the big screen when she was a kid.

Charlie found herself on a path carefully edged with rocks, an occasional low and unobtrusive sign pleading with her not to leave it and stomp on the fragile ecology.

It was springtime, May, and the morning warmed enough now for her to wish she could shed her last sweatshirt. She also wished she could shed the wash of guilt Edwina invariably induced. That's probably what had so discolored the scene she'd just left. Given her a funny uneasiness. Guilt or no, Mitch Hilsten or no, Charlie would be glad to get on that plane tomorrow.

Scrubby plants and bushes sported flowers, as small and understated as their faint fragrance. Charlie was aware of birdsong because it was so scant—not the usual morning cacophony you barely notice because it blends into a background noise like traffic. Each little trill or chirp or peep was distinct and alone and perfect here, spaced from its companions like the plants and shrubs along the trail, where the sand stretched tidy and clean between.

There were deer tracks though and, if you looked closely and had a mother like Edwina who made a point of such things, you could pick out the faint trails of the ubiquitous desert rodents.

Charlie came upon the stone and mortar parapet without warning. It was only knee-high. She backed away and sat in the middle of the path, head swimming with adrenaline, guilt and sexy superstars long forgotten.

Cavorting around on the expanse of mesa top, she hadn't kept in mind why this whole area was referred to as Canyonlands.

The drop on the other side of that parapet was a good thousand feet straight down.

If you threw a live body over that parapet, you'd never hear it splatter. Even in tall buildings in New York or mountain overlooks in Colorado, she'd had to sidle up to windows or cliff edges. Charlie never took a window seat in an airplane.

She wasn't sure if it was natural curiosity or that she always feared she might be missing something, but she sidled up to the parapet by scooting along on her tush. At the bottom of the first thousand feet was a broad benchland with a narrow ribbon of road. The road had another chasm running along beside it with another thousand-foot drop to a mud-cream river that looked about as wide as a string from here.

“Oh boy.”

Sitting down made the parapet more like chest-high. You couldn't trip over something chest-high and go sailing out into space and plummet in agonized dread for thousands of feet knowing—for what would seem like hours—the sure and final outcome.

Still, this was not a comfortable place for Charlie Greene. She slid back to the middle of the path before she stood.

“I don't want to startle you,” John B. Drake said behind her, and Charlie whirled to face the red-and-black-plaid shirt. “I assume you're the agent. I'm John Drake.”

“Yes, I'm from Congdon and Morse.” She wiped the sweat off her palm down the seat of her jeans and shook his hand. “Charlie Greene, Edwina's daughter.”

He looked as if he'd been born in the faded denims and solid hiking boots. He hadn't shaved yet and his dark hair needed combing. Guiding her companionably along the path, he said, “I assume you were headed to the Point.”

“The Point … uh, is it … are there sheer drop-offs and cliffs and—”

“The view,” he said, “is what's known as breathtaking.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

“Don't worry, the parapet must be two feet thick. About Edwina, there's no way to please the lady. I can't meet her demands and I don't really need her that much. But I don't want to hurt the old girl's feelings. Can you help me make her see sense?”

They had reached the Point, the curved bow of their mesa, anchored in a sea of chasm and plumbless shadow and yawning abyss on three full sides. Charlie turned carefully away from the breathtaking view. “I'm here to help Edwina, Mr. Drake. If I could see a copy of her contract, perhaps we can negotiate something acceptable to both sides.”

“You're not going to keep up this farce about Congdon and Morse representing Edwina Greene?”

“How about Charlie Greene will represent Dr. Greene?”

“I heard you tell her yourself last night you didn't think she had a leg to stand on.”

Charlie peered over the parapet, took a glance at the Colorado River so many heart-stopping fathoms away, and turned her back on it. Now if anybody asked her if she'd been out to the Point she could say yes and forestall another trip. A flash of blue caught her eye. Safely back from the edge of anything now, she gestured toward the distant deep azure, evenly shaped lakes in an otherwise dull russet and beige landscape.

“The APC holding ponds,” the director explained. “American Potash Corporation. One of the sponsors of our film. They pump water thousands of feet deep into a mine and when it comes up another hole it's full of potash. They hold it in those ponds and when all the potash sinks to the bottom and the water evaporates they scoop it out. There's a display about it at the Visitors' Center.”

“Potash … I've heard of it but I can't remember why.”

“It's a potassium compound, used in all kinds of things, but mostly fertilizers. What I wanted to—”

“Mr. Drake, I may not be all that up on location shooting, but I'm surprised Cabot didn't get the Film Commission to boot you from this site.”

“Oh, he tried.” John B. gave the sky a hard look and a grimace, but turned back to Charlie with the rubbery smile of an actor. “However, the Film Commission doesn't decide those things on public land.”

This was a state park and the chief ranger at the Visitors' Center did. And he was much more into environmental documentaries than he was science fiction features. The docs were easier on the fragile landscape he was protecting. “They even buried the last twenty miles of the electrical cable that comes out here.”

Cabot's crew had just started to move equipment in the day before.

“They use the campsites more for R&R between shoots and to stock supplies anyway. But they did have some problems finding space in Moab for everybody, supposedly,” he said with an edge to his voice that belied his cheerful expression. “Sid Levit and I have known each other for years.”

The
Return of an Ecosystem
crew had been here four days already and had planned only three but nature'd been uncooperative. “We've had problems with thunderstorms and the critters never show up when they're supposed to. Which is another bone I have to pick with your mother. She ought to be able to flush them for us.”

The cinematographer drove his truck off a cliff the first day. He managed to jump out before it went over, but the production lost some equipment. “We had to rent Earl another truck and fly in replacements. And then along come
Animal Aliens
and Gordon Cabot. I'm hoping, Charlie Greene, that your arrival signals a change of luck for this beleaguered production and its director.”

Gordon Cabot might need a Sidney Levit to smooth things over, but a good director is charismatic, persuasive, decisive, demanding, wily, and infinitely patient. Able to charm the maracas off a rattlesnake. Drake was really no exception. He had Charlie laughing by the time they reached the campground, had her agreeing to forgo the discussion of Edwina's complaints until lunch in his motor home, and her tentative acceptance to join him and the crew that evening when they hoped to shoot a sunset sequence.

A slender tawny blonde pouted in the doorway of that motor home as Charlie passed it. And Edwina pouted in her tent trailer over a cup of coffee.

“Let's go call Libby,” Charlie coaxed. “I know she'd like to talk to her grandma too.”

“What'd Drake have to say?” her mother asked suspiciously as they walked down the road toward the Visitors' Center. “I saw you two come back from the Point together.”

“We agreed to discuss your complaints over lunch in his rig. That's when lots of business gets done in this business. And you're invited. I told him I represent you. But you're going to have to let me do the talking. He's twice as clever as he wants anyone to think he is.” But he's right—this is all a charade.

“You're the agent, Charlie,” Edwina said and even managed a smile.

The Visitors' Center was one of those buildings just before the wye in the road Charlie had passed the night before. There were several rangers behind the desk in the lobby, all young and pink with health. One had a loose, silly grin that didn't disappear when he spoke. His name badge announced him as Tim Pedigrew.