Hollywood Stuff (13 page)

“Coincidence?” asked Jeb, and for a moment Jane panicked. Had she mentioned Oh to Jeb in their lunch conversation?

“No such thing as a coincidence, Professor Oh. The way I see it, everything is ordered for a reason. We are meeting because we need to meet,” said Jeb, shaking Oh’s hand and smiling.

It sounded almost conversational. In equal measure, almost creepy.

My mother used to tell me to believe none of what I heard and half of what I saw. She was way ahead of the curve when it comes to living in a town like Hollywood.

—
FROM
Hollywood Diary
BY
B
ELINDA
S
T
. G
ERMAINE

“That’s what Nellie always says,” said Jane, breaking the silence in the lounge.

Tim looked up from
People,
mildly curious, wildly bored. “So you’re actually reading the Belinda St. Germaine book? I bought it for you as a joke,” said Tim.

“That’s how desperate I am,” said Jane. “How do they expect anyone to want to get well in a hospital if all they provide to read are these dreadful gossip magazines? Why would you want to get out and reenter the world if the breaking news is whether or not some middle-aged actor will marry some teenage actress?”

“Why would you want to get out of here if the breaking news was the actual breaking news?” asked Tim.

Jeb looked up from a script he was reading and smiled at Jane. He seemed not to hear what she and Tim had said, just to be aware that someone was talking. Greg and Rick had gone off in search of a corner to work on something that they said was already overdue. Louise had left to make a phone call, promising to find and bring back decent coffee for all of them.

It might have been a scene out of any day at the hospital where friends and family gathered to wait for their loved one to emerge from a medical procedure—an operation, a serious test, or even labor and delivery. Jane and Tim, though, felt oddly stuck in place, being neither real friends nor family to the patient or those waiting. On the other hand, Jane, watching Jeb redline a script with a disgusted air, thought she might end up being Bix’s best friend in the world if she could figure out what made Jeb Gleason and the B Room tick and get to the bottom of the threatening letters and exploding props.

Oh had left Jane and Tim to rejoin Claire with a promise to call later. Jane and Tim had then followed Jeb and company into Bix’s hospital room, where Tim had left Skye arguing with Lou only a few minutes before. The room was empty. Jane had asked at the nurses’ station if there was any word on Bix and the nurse, after looking Jane up and down to see if she might be anyone famous, shook her head. She also shook her head when Jane asked if she had any idea where Skye Miller and the man she had been talking to had gone.

“No,” she said, smiling,” but the light sure goes out on this floor when she leaves, doesn’t it? Having her here is the most excitement we’ve had since you-know-who had the face-lift.”

Jane nodded, not even realizing that she made an enemy for life when she didn’t ask the follow-up, and returned to the lounge, where they now sat killing time until someone came to tell them how Bix had fared in surgery.

“You know, I thought I might find Lou Piccolo here,” said Jeb, putting the script he had been reading back into a brown leather messenger bag. “Thought he might be back from Ojai.”

“So you said before you ran off with everyone at the flea market,” said Jane.

“Did I say that out loud? Sorry to leave you standing there, but I did not want to get involved in that mess. You see,” Jeb said, dropping his voice, “I recognized the poor guy.”

Jane had learned many lessons from Oh, the most important one being patience. Oh, a serious student of baseball, had told her many times that a walk was as good as a hit, and after her son, Nick, explained the reference to her, she got it. Instead of flailing away at every pitch, she could hold out for the one she wanted. This time, she waited for Jeb to continue, to frame his own speech without benefit of her question.

“It was a writer who had a connection to Lou Piccolo. In fact, I think the guy, Patrick Dryer, is—I mean
was
—suing Lou. Something about Lou stealing his novel for a screenplay.”

“Did he?” asked Tim, who had not learned to wait on the curveball, and began swinging away. “Did Lou steal the story?”

Jeb shrugged. “Lou says no. Claims the story’s an old standard, biblical in nature.” Jeb rolled his eyes. “He actually said that.”

Jane looked at her watch. Even if Bix’s surgery had started as late as Skye said, surely she must be in recovery by now. She felt as if they had been there for hours.

“Do you go to the flea market together every weekend?” asked Jane. She was interested in what Jeb had to say about Lou, but she realized she was more interested in the coincidence of the B Room being right behind her when she discovered the body.

“Often,” said Jeb. “We started going when we worked on
S and L.
It was a first job for most of us and we were just starting to make money, buy houses, and stuff, and Louise suggested one Friday that we all get together and go. Became a habit for us,” said Jeb. “A ritual, of sorts.”

“What do you collect?” asked Jane.

“I tell everyone that I don’t collect anything. But I like a few things. Smoking paraphernalia—old cigarette cases and lighters. I admire vintage watches. Paintings of racehorses. Old religious tracts,” said Jeb.

“That’s a new one. For example…?” asked Tim.

“Oh, you know, pamphlets on Lourdes, Our Lady of Fa-tima…Catholica. And all kinds of handouts from the sixties when street-corner preachers were handing out cards and booklets with
The End Is Near
kind of rhetoric.”

“What’s the attraction?” asked Jane, her curiosity about why people collected what they did overcoming her for the moment. Before Jeb could answer, they were distracted by Skye’s voice, Skye’s loud and disturbed Celie-at-age-sixteen voice, at the nurses’ station.

“I don’t understand how this could be, how this could have been allowed to happen.”

“There was nothing unusual about it, Ms. Miller. The surgery was done under a local. I just talked to Billie in recovery and she said when the doctor was satisfied she understood the aftercare, Ms. Bixby was free to leave.”

“But her things?” Skye asked, gesturing toward Bix’s hospital room. “Didn’t anyone think it might be unusual for her to just leave without her belongings?”

“Her nurse packed everything for her early this morning when you went down for breakfast. Ms. Bixby had a change of clothes sent over by her secretary. Have you tried her at home?” asked the nurse, getting more and more upset when she realized how distraught her new celebrity friend was becoming. She looked down at a sheet of paper on a clipboard. “She was discharged just over an hour ago and said she had a ride home. One of the nurses thought she might have left in a taxi.”

Skye turned away and walked directly to Jane. “I’ve lost her,” she said, struggling with tears. “I said I could watch her and take care of her, but I’ve lost her.”

“ We haven’t lost her, Skye,” said Jeb in a low voice. “Keep your voice down and stop acting like a fool. No cameras are rolling. Bix got fed up with all of this hovering and went home, that’s all.”

“Shut up,” said Skye, all trace of Celie or any innocent ingenue gone from her voice. “Lou Piccolo was here.”

“So? I expected that. Why wouldn’t he come here when he heard about Bix?”

“He hadn’t heard about Bix. He’d gotten a call this morning that said Patrick would be taken care of for him. Then the caller said all Lou would have to do was to return the favor sometime. Then whoever it was told him to visit his friend in the hospital and gave him Bix’s room number.”

Jeb’s expression didn’t change, although Jane thought his perfect L.A. tan grew one shade paler.

“Lou showed up here,” said Skye,” carrying a gun, for Christ’s sake. We had a fight about where the safest place for Bix to go recuperate was. I said I was going down to recovery to see what was taking so long and he said he was going to make a call. When I got down there, they gave me the bullshit about Bix taking off on her own and Lou Piccolo was nowhere.”

“Has anyone tried calling Lou?” asked Jane.

Skye and Jeb turned to face her.

“Maybe he took her home in a cab,” said Jane. When she saw Skye’s eyes fill with tears, she added, “Or maybe he heard she went home and just left by himself.”

“Has anyone called Bix?” asked Tim. “Since there were no complications after the procedure, maybe she just wanted to get out of the hospital and back to her house.”

“Why didn’t she say anything to me, then?” asked Skye. “I would have packed her things up and taken her. She knew I was here to take care of her.” They had been standing directly outside of Bix’s former room and Skye now walked into it and looked at the empty bed as if she expected to see Bix materialize there. “I’ll bet they didn’t even find all the stuff I had brought in and unpacked for her.”

Jane noted that the plastic basins, hand cream, tissues, and cheap hospital-provided toothbrush were all still wrapped and sitting on the deep windowsill next to a plastic-wrapped tracheotomy tray. Something didn’t look right about the small hospital still life, but Jane couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was that bothered her.

Tim suggested that they check the drawers and closets for anything left behind, then call Bix to see if she needed anyone to bring anything to her home. Although it sounded like a logical course of action, Skye continued to look distraught.

“This is not how it was supposed to be,” she said. “I told Bix I would take care of all the discharge details. I know what I’m doing. I’m not a child, you know, I can do this. But no, Lou comes along and she listens to him just like she listens to you,” Skye said, turning on Jeb. “And look where that’s gotten her.”

“Calm down, Skye,” said Jeb. He kept his voice low, but there was steel in the tone of his delivery. “It’s like Tim here said. She just went home. We’ll head over there and make sure she’s okay.”

“Did she have stuff in here?” asked Jane, opening the small useless drawers of the nightstand. Jane found only an extra hospital gown—nothing belonging to the stylish Bix.

Skye walked over to the door and peered down the hall. They all heard Louise and Rick discussing some award nomination as they returned from their errands.

“What do we tell everyone?” she asked Jeb, sounding more like herself again…or more like Celie. Jane was still not sure which mood or voice was the real Miller. “I mean, I don’t want everyone to be upset or worried.”

Jane walked over to the closet. She was listening for Jeb’s answer, but she wanted to keep busy. Although Skye’s reaction bordered on the theatrical, Jane wasn’t so sure how off the mark it was. Bix had been pretty out of it last night and after a two-hour surgery on her arm—no matter that the nurse was now describing it as a procedure to reduce scarring, primarily cosmetic—it seemed unlikely that Bix would feel like hopping into a cab and going home alone. Bix was frightened when she talked to Jane. She believed the threatening note she had received. Lou had confessed to some disturbing behaviors. And then there was Louise’s story at the market. Her revelations had been the most interesting. The story of the missing member of the B Room…Heck. Was there a story behind his breakdown that related to Bix’s accident? The note certainly seemed to refer to Henry “Heck” Rule.

Oh yes. And there was a dead man at the flea market. Why was it that in the midst of all the angst and noise of the living, the true victim often came last into Jane’s thoughts? The dead are so quiet, she guessed. So undemanding compared to the living.

Jeb had dismissed Skye’s question about the others with a head shake. Louise arrived in the doorway holding a cardboard tray of coffees and looked from face to face. She started to ask if anyone knew what was taking so long and Skye began to answer before she got the question out.

Jane, listening for Skye’s answer but not wanting to appear overly curious, opened the closet door to make sure none of Bix’s belongings had been left behind. She wondered if the startled
oh
she heard herself make was as loud in the room as it sounded in her own head.

Tied around the globe light fixture that turned on automatically as the door opened was a piece of fine string. Tied to the end of the string was part of what appeared to be a coat hanger and three other pieces of string. Attached to the pieces were two folded origami swans and one piece of card stock advertising a book and an upcoming signing at a bookstore in Pasadena. The author pictured on the mini-poster was Patrick Dryer, the man Jane had seen stabbed to death at the flea market. So much for the silence of the dead.