Hollywood Stuff (6 page)

As soon as someone refers to you as hot—as in the hot writer/producer/director—cover your ears and do not, I repeat, do not listen. Make sure you have some money in the bank and a full tank of gas. If you’re not careful, you will be heading out of town and into a new career within a month.

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

Tim loved driving in L.A. He had picked it up quickly, loved the expensive cars he saw whizzing by, loved the beautiful girls and boys he saw driving the expensive cars, and he adored the
Thomas Guide.

“It’s a bible out here, you know,” Tim said, patting it where it sat next to them on the front seat. “I studied it this afternoon while I waited for the car to be delivered.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t a Mini. Tim had ordered a sensible car for them to drive to Pasadena the next day. A Volvo station wagon.

“Way too soccer mom for my taste,” said Tim,” but it was the best they could do for safety and storage and I figured it this way: If we brought a van, we’d feel cocky and shop too large. Anything we can fit into this, I can figure out how to get easily home. Not that we couldn’t ship something larger, mind you—”

“Hey,” Jane stopped him. “Why are we going to the hospital? What’s the secret stuff going on here?”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

Jane always answered her cell phone. It was her deal with her son. She had promised Nick that she would always answer and she always did. Even if it meant she would miss bidding on a Heisey punch bowl or a souvenir Rhode Island tablecloth, she would pick up the phone when it rang. Nick, and Tim, for that matter, both tested her by changing the rings, but she had never missed a call from her son…except for the time when she hadn’t heard it because it didn’t ring because she was on the phone already….

“What time did you call exactly?”

Jane calculated that she had been on the phone with Nellie when Tim had called and left a message. She had heard a click or two on the line, but that was usually Nellie tapping a fork against the phone. She claimed it brought better reception to Jane’s cell phone.

Yes, she had a message. She decided to listen to recorded Tim, since live Tim was talking out loud to himself, reciting the directions to the hospital that he had memorized, and, Jane observed, he was caressing the
Thomas Guide,
which he had moved to his lap, seemingly channeling information from it.

“Janie, don’t be scared, but there was a little explosion in the prop room. Bix got hurt, but I think she’ll be okay. Wild-eyed hysteria around here, though—they’ll have her dismembered and dead when the telephone rumor game gets through with this. Keep this hush-hush, but Bix wants to talk to you about something, so…right, will do…hey, Cynda, thanks for the coffee, okay, Max, we’ll talk to you later about the Biedermeier. Get back to me as soon as you can and don’t tell anyone else, okay? Give me the first refusal, yes?”

Jane finished listening to the message as Tim pulled into the hospital parking lot.

“Did you think Cynda was listening in?”

“I don’t know. She comes off like a bimbette one minute, then she’s all Ms. Efficiency and number cruncher on the phone.

I wouldn’t trust your old boyfriend as far as I could imagine throwing him, but I do think he was right about everyone out here being someone else. I’ve always prided myself on having an A-1 bullshit detector, but I couldn’t tell whether Cynda’s a good little actress, trying to be whatever she’s supposed to be to whomever she’s talking to…or if she’s a flake.”

At Wren’s door, Jane hesitated. It was partially closed.

“She wanted us to come, right?” Jane asked.

“Jane? Yes. Come in,” Wren called out. “And close the door all the way behind you.”

Jane smiled when she saw that almost all of Wren Bixby’s braids were still intact. It was comforting in the face of her other injuries. Some of her hair had been singed closer to her face. Her right cheek was bandaged and her right arm was wrapped from shoulder to wrist. When Jane met her that morning, Wren had appeared to be thirtysomething. Without makeup, her skin pale against the hospital-white pillowcase, and lit by overhead fluorescents rather than the low-wattage lamps in the rosy-walled office, Wren looked every bit of forty. A scared and tired forty, at that.

“Wren, I’m—”

“Since you’re about to hear my confession, I think you’d better call me Bix. It’s my real name. Mary Bixby. So I’ve always been Bix. Please.”

Jane nodded and sat in the chair Bix pointed to and Tim pulled up an extra from across the room.

“Can you find out who tried to kill me?”

Jane tried to maintain a neutral expression. Even though she was semiofficially part of Bruce Oh’s consulting service, which was, in fact, a detective agency, she wasn’t at all confident in the title. She hadn’t received her Illinois license yet, but she guessed that didn’t mean she couldn’t ask a few questions in California. It was just that she had never been asked such a by-the-book-right-out-of-Miss-Marple question.

Jane tried to remember every mystery movie and television program she had ever watched. Leaning forward and trying very hard not to stumble over her lines, she said, as seriously as the situation warranted,” What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?”

Bix pointed to a script on the bedside table.

“Flip to the middle.”

Tim was closest. He picked up the script and fanned the pages. A heavy cardboard tag fell out. It had a piece of twisted wire looped through the grommeted hole. He handed it to Bix.

“Tags like these are used on props in the shop by designers who walk through and want to claim pieces for movies and shows. Remember, Tim, I showed you?”

“Yeah, all the ornate silver…candelabras and tankards, vases, and that kind of kitschy bling were tagged for the sequel to
Pirates of the
whatever. All the loot-worthy pieces that could pass for swag had big green tags on them with the movie logo and a
reserved for
message on them,” Tim explained to Jane.

“Sometimes people use plain index cards to mark property, sometimes there are cards with a distinguishable color or picture to identify the project or the designer,” said Bix, adjusting her arm, allowing Jane to plump the pillow that was supporting it. “When I saw the wooden box with this tag on it, my first thought was to get the tag off before Tim saw it and told you, so I ripped it off and put it in my pocket. Then I opened the box….” Bix closed her eyes.

Jane looked at the tag.
BIXPIXFLIXBIXPIXFLIX
was written as a continuous frieze around the top of the card in a font that mimicked old typewriter letters. Written in purple ink was
Save for SCARECROW MURDERS/JANE WHEEL.

Bix had seemed plenty confident in her office that morning, but Jane figured that was how people in her business had to act. Sure they could get Teri Hatcher or, hey, why not Julia Roberts to play Jane Wheel, then Jane signs on the dotted line and suddenly, instead of going with a star, it’s going to be a breakout role for someone who’s been doing cartoon voice-overs. Jane had been in advertising long enough to recognize the bravado. But to go ahead and tag props for a movie not optioned? Script not written?

“Who could have tagged the box?” Jane asked.

“Access to the tags wouldn’t be a problem. The front desk in the bungalow is open and Cynda’s running off to auditions and meetings herself half the time, so anyone could take out stationery. Our tags might even be in the office at the prop shop. To get into the warehouse, you need to sign in. Authorization and identification…all that. But…” Bix paused. “People have gotten in who shouldn’t be there. It happens. People on studio tours have been known to sneak in. If furniture’s being moved out and the side doors are open, someone could walk in, I guess.”

“You kidding? Someone could live undetected up on the third floor,” said Tim. “Once you’ve gotten in, with or without credentials, who notices when you leave? If you leave?”

“You’re supposed to sign out with the time. There’s a book…someone must check it,” said Bix.

“Is someone sitting with the book?” asked Jane.

“Yes. Well, not always. I mean, they don’t necessarily watch you sign or anything,” said Bix.

“Honey, there was no attendant when you and I walked in and signed today,” said Tim. “You called out hello to someone and they answered from another office where they were on the phone.”

“Yeah…but they know me.”

“So, if they know me, I could just sign in and mark a time out for fifteen minutes later while I’m signing in, then disappear upstairs without anyone knowing I was there past the time I wrote in,” said Jane.

“Hardly has to be that complicated,” said Tim. “I saw people returning a dining room set through a side door and it was just a bunch of workmen carrying things in. Someone could have walked in right behind them carrying that box, already tagged, set it down, and left the lot altogether.”

This was where Jane needed the Bruce Oh side of her brain to kick in. Without him by her side, she felt herself drifting into the land of infinite questions. She hadn’t found a tangent yet that she didn’t want to explore. She was already jealous that Tim had seen the props warehouse and she hadn’t. Aisles and aisles of Hollywood stuff, movie props, set dressing, and one of those pieces literally had her name on it. Until it blew up.

“What was the box anyway? An old chemistry set like they said?” Jane asked.

Bix shook her head. She didn’t think so. “It was an unmarked oak box. It could have held a silver service or maybe compartments for type—”

“Okay,” said Jane. “We don’t know exactly what the box was and we know that anybody could have put it in the prop shop.”

“Whoa, slow down, Nancy Drew, you are solving this case way too fast for me to keep up,” said Tim. “How do you do it?”

“Go ahead, mock. It is important that anyone could have gotten into the prop shop. Not just someone from Bix Pix Flix. Think about it. Before you knew all that today, would you have thought it possible to get in there and tag something like that? You didn’t even know the system existed. So it was somebody familiar with the lot and the system of marking props,” said Jane. “Somebody who could get a tag from the Bix Pix Flix office…which you said, Bix, is easy enough. So…who knew about
The Scarecrow Murder
? I mean, who knew that you were trying to get the rights to this story?”

Bix sighed. “There aren’t any secrets. I talked to my agent, who had already shown the treatment around to some actresses, and then there are all the rumor bloggers who announce what everybody’s doing all the time even before people decide to do it.”

“Teri Hatcher?” Jane asked with a smile. “Was she really getting a look?”

Bix shrugged. “We hoped, but…you know…maybe.”

Jane looked around the hospital room. It was a typical room, forgettable in its antiseptic straightforward layout. There was a bulletin board opposite the bed with the only spot of color in the room—a tacked-up laminated sheet of yellow paper. Drawn and illustrated on the page was the Pain Rating Scale. A vertical line marked 1 to 10 with corresponding faces next to the number. Number 10 was a crying face, four tears. Number 9, still crying, but only two tears. As the faces went down in number, the crudely drawn expressions of discomfort lessened until the illustration of number 1 was the internationally recognized symbol of feeling good, the smiley face.

Jane went over and took it off the bulletin board. Looking at number 5, a face with a quizzical upside-down smile, she inadvertently pulled the corners of her own mouth down. She turned to Bix, who was pouring herself a glass of water with her left hand. Jane wondered if it was too painful to move her right arm or if Bix was left-handed. She hadn’t noticed this morning.

“Why do you think someone was trying to kill you?” asked Jane, still frowning.

“Someone is trying to kill everyone—”

“Oh, you already have visitors, Bix? I didn’t know, doll. Poor child, I heard you lost your arm, but that’s not as bad as poor old Jeb got it. He heard you were dead.” The breathless blonde who burst through the door without knocking stopped for a short breath before plowing on with her special brand of comfort. “You want Tressie to send the caterer with some menus? I hear the food is dreadful here. I’ve got the name of a hand surgeon. The best. De Niro’s hand surgeon. Might as well have him on your speed dial, you know, just in case.” Blondie stopped and stuck out her own perfectly groomed hand first to Jane, then to Tim. “I am Skye.” She paused for a moment, as if she were giving them a moment for the name to sink in. “I am Wren Bixby’s best friend.” She paused again. It seemed to be a speech pattern. She was either giving her thoughts time to take effect or holding for applause.