Murder Take Two (6 page)

“Disruption and waiting are inevitable after an unexplained death, I'm afraid.” Susan used her best cool voice, the one that stood her in good stead in numerous situations: with irate superiors, malcontent subordinates, drunks, belligerents, and just plain when she didn't know what the hell was going on. A voice that allowed her to skate around on potential thin ice with the best of them.

“It was an accident.”

“If the pitchfork hadn't been where it was, Ms. Bender would probably be alive. We'll need to speak separately with everybody who was present, and we'll try to do that without causing undue inconvenience.”

The fingers on Fifer's left hand danced against his knee. His eyes clicked left and then right, he nodded. “Sure, sure. How long?”

“We won't be certain of the cause of death until after an autopsy.”

Fifer's eyes fixed on her face, the fingers became still. “She fell.”

“Yes, sir. There will also be some lab investigations and that will take time. We'll try to take care of everything as quickly as possible.”

The fingers resumed dancing. “It isn't that I'm not affected by the girl's death.”

“I understand, sir. We will need a list of all the people employed by you, and it would be helpful if you could give us their room numbers at the hotel.”

“Clem can do that,” he said.

*   *   *

There was still no sign of Clem Jones as Yancy tromped around in search of Sheri Lloyd. These fields used to be pastureland. Way off in the northeast corner was a small stock pond, scrub pines grew here and there. Knee-high weeds and grasses had been mowed down in one section to accommodate the vehicles. Trailers for superstars and director. Trailers divided into cubicles called honey wagon rooms for lesser actors, photo doubles, stand-ins, and stunt people. Trailers for wardrobe, makeup, and props. Caterer's truck—Better Than Home Cookin'—from Los Angeles. Ha. Probably afraid we didn't have calamari and garlic ice cream out here on the prairie. A tent staked out for serving hot meals from behind a row of steam trays, long tables and folding chairs for eating. Semis and vans and town cars, flatbed trucks and an electrician's truck and a grip's truck. Bicycles. Did these California people know it rained here? One solid Kansas gullywasher and that's it, Joe. No movin' anything except the bicycles.

Sheri Lloyd was in her own cubicle with her name on the door, but she didn't care to come with him. After some convincing, she got up and followed along, high-heeled sandals tottering over taped cables on the uneven ground. She made her displeasure apparent when he then asked her to wait, standing right out there under the cottonwood, in the heat if not the sun. “It's too damn hot,” she repeated many times. He had to admit she had a point there.

“Where's Ms. Jones?” he asked.

“I have no idea. You said they wanted to see me.” Sheri twitched her shoulders, raised a hand, and flicked long bronze hair over her shoulder.

“Yes, ma'am. It'll be only a moment.” He wanted her all lined up to go as soon as they were finished with the director. With Lieutenant Parkhurst looking like a storm about to happen, Yancy didn't want to give him any aggravation. You couldn't tell so much with the chief. She just always looked poised and classy, kind of haughty with her blue eyes and dark hair, but he didn't think she was any too cool either. She hadn't wanted the movie here from the start, back when everybody else thought it was more exciting than Fourth of July fireworks.

“Well—” Sheri smiled at him. She had the prettiest, whitest, straightest teeth he'd ever seen, dazzling bright in her tanned face. Everything about her dazzled. Well-toned muscles. Surfing probably. Wasn't that what they did in southern California? When they weren't in aerobics classes.

She surely did not like to be kept waiting. She pointed that out to him over and over. Not that he blamed her. It
was
hot; little beads of sweat stood out on her smooth forehead. She constantly tugged at the ends of her skimpy white top thing. No bra. He admired the flexibility of the red shorts that were just a little bit too short—exposing small half-moons of her buttocks, also tanned, he noted—and the shapely length of thigh and curve of calf.

“How come they want me? I wasn't even in there when she fell.”

“I wouldn't know, ma'am.”

Delicately, she patted fingertips at the hollow of her throat. “Is it always this hot here?”

“No, ma'am. Only half the time, the other half you're freezing your butt off. Being from California, I figure you must like heat.”

“I don't like it here, I can tell you that. I can't wait to get out of this place.”

Yancy nodded. Hollywood go home. He could go back to being a cop. But this accident that smelled like homicide sure beat all to hell whatever story they were trying to film.

“If you want to know the truth,” Sheri said, “I'm not terribly terribly surprised this happened. Laura's been hyper-uptight from the beginning, you know?” She stopped for a second, then added, “Like just waiting to mess up super bad,” in case he wasn't following along with his dim countrified brain.

“If you want to know the truth,” she said again, “Fifer knows it too. You can be sure he isn't telling it like it is in there. You can be
sure
of that. He needs a great success artistically and financially and I'm afraid—” She shook her head sadly.

“I understood this movie was going well.”

“Oh, that's what they
say,
but Laura—well, she was quite good in her day. With a certain type of part, one that didn't require—how shall I put it—a quality of vulnerability—she was okay. She has no subtleties. Just a certain hard—ah—brittle, you might say, archness. It's all just so—so—TV miniseries.”

“Isn't Ms. Edwards supposed to be a great actress?”

“Pa-leese.”
Sheri laid a hand on her chest, fingers fanned out over a breast. “I have nothing but the greatest respect for her as a performer, but I'd have to admit, since you force me, that her—talents are limited. And this film—she was killing it.”

Why was she wasting all this stuff on him? In her view, he could only be a gofer, sent to fetch and carry. Rehearsal maybe? “Fifer isn't pleased with Ms. Edwards's performance?”

Sheri lifted her hair off her neck, making her nipples poke against the halter top. “You have to know the kind of man he is. In control, very circumspect, on the outside, but inside—inside he's really—screaming. And I know—only because I know him so well—I know he realizes he made a mistake with Laura. As a matter of fact…” She leaned closer, stroked a long curl of hair, and twirled it around her finger.

He knew he was supposed to be spellbound here, lost in all her sexy shimmering. He smelled her musky perfume, got a glimpse of those incredible boobs.

“I just happened to overhear—and I wouldn't want you to think I was eavesdropping—I mean, I wouldn't
stoop
—but he was on the phone and there was this despair in his voice and he was saying”—she lowered her voice—“‘I know something has to be done.' And then there was this pause, like the other person was speaking, you know? And then Fifer got this really cold—I mean actually frightening, it was so cold—look on his face and he said, ‘I'll take care of her. She won't be a problem.'” Sheri widened her eyes at the enormous implications.

“You believe he was talking about—?”

“Laura.” A little impatience here. She caught it right away. “Laura forced him to take her on. I personally know he didn't want her. She has some kind of”—Sheri searched her mind for a word of enough devastation—“
something
she's holding over his head.” Sheri nodded sagely. “That's the only reason she's in. And she's destroying this movie.”

“Who was Fifer talking with?”

“Well, one of the investors, of course.” She was a wee bit exasperated he was wasting time on the nonessentials. She moved constantly while she talked; her hands fluttered and her hair swayed and her butt jiggled and her boobs bounced. No wonder she was sweating, all that action had to be exhausting.

She was putting on quite a performance. He had to give her flawless skin, mouth-drying shapeliness, hair asking for fingers to get tangled in, and certainly gorgeous teeth, but she wasn't lighting any fires. He'd never, at work or at play, found contempt a turn-on. All right, she probably didn't have much experience with homicide. Maybe this was her way of coping, handling fear, shock, anxiety, grief even—anything's possible. Or maybe she was just a cold, emotionally stunted, selfish little bitch. Or maybe she had a hand in the fall and there was some purpose behind this titillating display.

“Oh, pay no attention—” She laid her fingers on his arm. “It's just—oh, I just—everything is too much. There's a curse on this movie. Something more, something very bad—” Tears glistened in her eyes.

Now Yancy was impressed. When the emotion got turned on, he'd have expected heaving bosom and muffled sobs.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

Suddenly she stopped all the jiggling and bouncing and stood stock-still. A breath caught going in. He turned to see what got her attention. Ambulance out on the road. Slow and silent. The very stuff of which movies were made. Endless blue sky. Not a cloud. The tortured scream of a jet plane and then a thin white jet stream. Ambulance rolled by leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

She paled. He took her elbow. “Ms. Lloyd?”

She swayed. He eased her around so she couldn't see the road. She shivered. The ambulance, swaying and bouncing, moved on.

“Listen,” she said. “I can't wait around here all day. I can't help any anyway. So—”

The trailer door popped open and the director shot out.

“Fifer?” She put out her hand to stop him.

“Later, baby.” He patted her arm. “I'm busy now.”

With a little pout, she watched him stride off. Lieutenant Parkhurst got her attention and invited her inside. She turned on the smile and the jiggle and bounce and tripped up the steps, managing to slide very close to Parkhurst as she went by. Hey now, must be some kind of performance she was planning for the lieutenant.

“Yancy,” Parkhurst said, “round up Clem Jones. Tell White he can turn the rest of them loose. Make sure he has names, local and permanent addresses, and phone numbers ditto.”

Yancy nodded and headed for the caterer's tent where White was keeping two dozen or so people corralled. They sat in folding chairs at long tables, or stood around in clumps, yakking with each other. Soft drink cans, glasses, cups, and plates with various snacks were all over the place. Nobody was pounding a fist and demanding to be let go. These people were used to hanging around waiting. He did notice all eyes shift to him when he passed along the message to White. Clem Jones wasn't with them. He asked if anyone had seen her.

“Here somewhere.”

“Around.”

“Every time you move, you trip over her.”

But nobody could tell him where she was now and the last time anyone remembered seeing her was in the barn after Kay Bender fell.

Had she slipped through in all the confusion? Gone back to the hotel? He was getting all tense about her. He hoped nothing had happened to the silly little twit.

Tapping at Nick Logan's trailer got him Nick, but no Clem Jones.

“You mind if I talk with you for a bit?” Nick asked.

“I'm looking to find Ms. Jones. Any ideas?”

“I'll help you.” Nick stubbed out a cigarette and shoved his feet into thongs.

“You work with that guy in there?” Nick gave a hitch to his jeans and fell into step beside Yancy.

“The lieutenant? Sure.”

“What's his name, Parkhurst? How is he to work for?”

No way Yancy was going to reach into that funny little can of worms. Sometimes the lieutenant was a volcano about to go off, and sometimes he wasn't. You didn't know. You paid attention. “He gets the job done,” Yancy said, sidestepping the obligation to be specific.

With a mocking expression in his eyes, Nick acknowledged the diplomacy. “You been a cop long?”

“Six years.”

“Like it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Tell me about being a cop.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Why a cop?”

Yancy shrugged. That was simple; he'd needed a job. If he had a father somewhere he'd never met the guy. His mother didn't live in the same world as everybody else. Sweet, yes, and beautiful, but loony as owl shit.

When he was a little kid he'd come home from school hoping there'd be something to eat in the house. Like as not, his mother would hug him fiercely, grab his hand, and race with him to the woods. She'd point out butterflies and wildflowers, touch a petal with a fingertip as gentle as a puff of spring breeze. She'd sing in a soft clear voice, eerie haunting songs about blood and murder and revenge and unrequited love. He'd have made a pact with the devil for one peanut butter sandwich, would even have shared it with his sister who used to fantasize about food until he yelled at her to shut up.

“It's a job,” Yancy said. He'd wanted to be fireman. Saving children from burning buildings, rescuing kittens from treetops. A hero. God help him, he was his mother's son. She'd marked him with all her fairy stories without him even knowing it. The fire department wasn't hiring, but the police department was.

At the makeup trailer, a man told him Clem wasn't there, he didn't know where she was.

“What kind of man is he?” Nick asked.

“Who?” Yancy's mind was still running along the track that read what to do about his mother. By this time it was worn into a deep rut. For a moment he thought Nick was asking an oblique question about Yancy himself. And it startled him. Not only because he didn't know the answer, but also because it seemed to hold echoes of his sister's accusatory voice.