Remains to Be Scene (21 page)

Tim made a mental note that most of the principals from the cast were still at the location well after Dana left. The exception was Jack. Tim asked about the film’s hunky co-star.

“Jack walked with the others to their respective trailers the moment Adam called ‘cut!’ and wrapped up production for the day,” Duane recalled. “He was eager to leave. Jack’s got a double life. The studio knows where he’s going and whom he’s dating. But as long as he keeps a low profile, they won’t bother him.”

Tim was intrigued. “Can you give me a hint who he’s seeing?”

Duane took another long pull from his cup and smiled. “Let’s just say that his box office ranking would probably plummet if teen girls and their mothers ever knew what their heartthrob’s extracurricular activities included. Others would be crowing, “I knew it! I told you so!” Duane sniggered and Tim joined in knowingly. “I know you still hate Dana, but if she’s innocent we’ve gotta do something to get her out of jail. After all, she’s my sister!”

“There isn’t enough proof to keep her locked up,” Duane said. “She should sue Sterling for every penny in their bank.”

T
im’s mind was reeling as he drove off the studio lot and headed toward Mulholland Drive for the trek home. He was terrified of how he’d break the news to his mother that Dana was his half sister. This new wrench in the grinding gears of life was far too disturbing. But, he had to talk to someone about the situation. Tim picked up his cell phone and dialed Placenta’s number. They agreed to meet in the parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl overlook.

It was an unusually clear afternoon. Santa Ana winds had swept away the smog. As Tim sat in his car staring out at the spectacular view of the city below, his thoughts tumbled in summersaults. “I have a sister,” he said aloud. “Dana Pointer. She’s famous. And we almost made out at a party!” His thoughts quickly jumped to seeing Dana on the set of
Detention Rules!
and then flashed on her wearing an orange uniform in her jail cell. “I can’t let her spend another night behind bars!” He was startled back to full consciousness by knuckles rapping on the passenger side window. Placenta had arrived. Tim pushed the button to unlock the door and Placenta slipped into the bucket seat beside him.

After a half-hour of conveying his conversation with Duane, Tim pounded the steering wheel. “Polly’s gotten herself into deep doo-doo again, and we’re in the middle of the mess as usual,” he said.

Placenta sat in silence for a few moments. Then she sighed and said, “First of all, don’t mention these developments to your mother just yet. She’s nervous enough about her date with Detective Archer tonight. All day long she’s been rehearsing how she’s going to weasel classified information from him.”

Tim vehemently disagreed. “She needs a huge kick in the pants! And, I think she should have as much information as possible. The more she knows, the better prepared she’ll be to ask Detective Archer the right questions.”

Placenta relented with a deep sigh of resignation. “Do me one favor? Don’t mention that Dana is Sedra’s and your daddy’s kid. That’s too much information to take in.”

“Why, ’cause she’s always wanted a daughter?”

Placenta snorted. “You come close enough for that. Kidding of course. Sort of.”

Polly sat in The Great Room tinkering at the keyboard of the Yamaha grand piano and was seriously thinking about calling her accompanist to discuss putting her old nightclub act together again. She hummed a little then started singing, “Leading lady, a leading lady, I’ve always wanted to be a Broadway leading lady…” It was a song that she had ripped off from an old Diana Ross television special and used in the “Showstoppers” medley in her own act. Polly thought about the last time she performed in a live venue. She saw herself dressed in black, with a choker of pearls. In this reverie, she was leaning against a shiny grand piano, and telling jokes in between her musical numbers. “I was so excited about seeing you all tonight that I nearly broke my leg as I rushed to the club,” she remembered her between-songs patter. “Yeah, they would’ve had to rename the show, ‘Saturday Night
Femur
!’” Burump-bump!

“Ach!” she now moaned. “That joke didn’t go over the first time I used it and it still sinks like a bag of puppies down a well.”

As Polly was about to launch into her old arrangement of “Edelweiss,” Tim knocked on the door. “Got a sec?” he asked, walking into the room with Placenta trailing behind.

“Just barely,” Polly said, closing the lid on the keyboard. “I’ve gotta get gussied up for the big night. Not that this is an actual real-life man meets woman, woman gets kissed, kind of date. Or is it? Placenta, would you be a dear and add those new lilac crystals to my bath? And take the tags off my new Chetta B. I’ll look sensational in that red ruffled top with the black velvet pants. A little showy, but I want this to be a night the ol’ Sarge will remember.”

“He’s a detective,” Tim said and held out his hand to guide Polly to the sofa.

Polly was suddenly aware that this was a summit meeting, not just idle chitchat. She pushed away her son’s outstretched hand and stood with her arms folded across her chest. “No more bad news, please!” she insisted. “Every time we’re in this room together one of my nearest and dearest drops dead on a movie set. I don’t want to hear about any crummy role that I may be up for by default. Those days are over. From here on out I’m only accepting roles that come
to
me,
for
me! No more cast offs.” She thought for a moment. “No pun intended.”

Tim looked into his mother’s eyes and said, “I don’t mean to say I told you so, but Dana Pointer is not Sedra Stone’s killer. I’m sure of it. And you’ve got to let go of your false idea about Dana’s guilt.”

“Give me a break,” Polly said. “You know that I lost interest in Dana as a suspect ages ago. In fact, I’m going to spring the poor egomaniac from the slammer over dinner tonight.”

Tim’s look of disbelief encouraged Polly to explain her change of mind. “Early on my arm may have been slightly twisted by you two.”

“We never…” Placenta protested.

“For the sake of family peace I may have gone along with the suggestion that Dana was a
possible
suspect,” Polly continued. “Hell everyone who ever crossed Sedra’s path represents a possible suspect with motive. But if you’ve been paying attention as I have to the latest developments, then you’d completely drop your obsession with finding that pathetic soon-to-be has-been guilty of such an odious crime.”

Placenta made an “Mmm, mmm” sound. Polly accepted this to mean that her maid agreed that it was totally lame to keep Dana on the list of suspects.

“Actually, I’m betting on Duane or Missie or Judith or Adam as the perp,” Polly continued. “After tonight with Detective Archer, I’ll have a better idea of course.” With a self-satisfied tone she smiled and said, “I’m getting rather good at this sleuthing thing, don’t you think so too? It seems to come naturally to me. Like singing. The vibes are kicking in and I’m single-handedly paring down the list of whackos to a mere half-dozen dubious characters.”

Tim said, “The list hasn’t changed, Mother. You’ve just listed the usual suspects.”

“Didn’t I add the screenwriter?” Polly said, dismissing Tim’s observation. “Maybe this Ben Tyler hack couldn’t bear to have his perfectly awful script made more odorous by the way Sedra delivered his lines, so he done her in. It happened to Jennifer Tilly in ‘Bullet’s Over Broadway’.”

Placenta weighed in. “Mister Tim had a power lunch with your biggest fan today. Seems that Sedra Stone’s screenplay has a character that more than resembles you,” Placenta said. “Even her name…it’s Molly Schlepper!”

“We went through this with Adam last night,” Polly said waving away the very idea of Sedra having written a screenplay. “He said that the script was only a rumor. Anyway, it’s impossible because Sedra was practically illiterate.”

“Have you been to a movie lately?” Placenta said. “When has literacy been a prerequisite for screenwriting?”

“Seems Adam was lying,” Tim said, “Duane found the text on Sedra’s computer. And Adam knew the screenplay existed because his little gold-digging gopher Judith saw it, too.”

“I didn’t think that Sedra had the brains to work a computer,” Polly sniped. “But why would Adam be untruthful with me? Why would he care if Sedra wrote a movie? What’s the big deal? By the way, how am I treated in the screenplay?” Polly perked up. “That’s it! Adam was trying to spare me some horrible heartache, which is why he lied. What did Duane say?”

Tim and Placenta exchanged looks. “Picture an over-wrought, attention grabbing, media whore. She has an overactive sex life, which is why the lead character, who is so thinly disguised as Sedra herself, easily plucked your husbands out of Pepper Plantation in the dead of night.”

Polly turned to stone. She was catatonic with disbelief.

“Here’s an idea,” Placenta said. “What if Adam read the script and thought it had potential as a vehicle for him to direct? He may be a lousy director, but he’s no dummy. Perhaps he sensed that it was a hot property.
Citizen Kane
meets
Mommie Dearest,
and he wanted to direct it. It’s just a guess, but from what I hear scripts aren’t exactly flying over his backyard fence. He needs a new project to follow up
Detention Rules!
”

Polly threw up her hands. “Whatever happened to the Hollywood code of moral principles?” she said. “Stealing someone else’s script. Indeed!”

Tim looked at his mother and said, “More interesting than what’s in the screenplay, is who was left on the film location the night of Sedra’s death. According to Duane, the major players were all there: Missie, Elizabeth, Adam, Judith, etcetera. Only Dana and Jack were missing. So Dana couldn’t have done the deed.”

“Tonight, you’ve gotta get more details about the crime from your boyfriend,” Placenta said.

Polly smiled. “He’s not my boyfriend, silly.”

“You’d better make him think he’s your boyfriend,” Placenta demanded. “You’re an actor. Or so you’ve seduced the world into believing. Get out there and prove you deserve your reputation.”

Polly put her fingertips to her forehead and whined, “Too much pressure! You’re all giving me a headache. How about a little more credit for my intelligence and ability to manipulate fans? I’ll handle Detective Archer. By the time he’s spoon feeding me crème brule, I’ll know more about the murder of Sedra Stone than Michael Jackson did about the consequences of combining sleepovers with Jesus Juice.

“Now, don’t you all have things to do?” Polly concluded the meeting. “Placenta? My bath, please. Tim, call up Duane. He was blubbering all over the machine. Sterling canned his tushie today. Adam was right about that.”

As Polly rose from her seat on the sofa and swept out of the room she ascended the stairs to her bedroom suite. Placenta harrumphed but dutifully followed behind to prep her mistress for a night on the town.

In the meantime, Tim reached for the cordless phone and pressed the menu button. He scrolled down to Duane’s name and selected his home number then pressed the telephone icon to make the connection. “Guess I can delete the office number,” he said as he heard the ring tone on the other end of the line. Duane picked up.

“Heya, buddy,” Tim said somberly. “What’s this I hear about Sterling letting you go? Jerks.”

Duane made a sniffling sound, then croaked out a hard to understand series of sentences that sounded like, “They think I stole Sedra’s laptop. Accused me of cheating on my time card. Said if I tried to sue them for wrongful termination that they’d bring out all my Match.com e-mails. And the websites I visited on company time using the studio’s computers. That witch in HR said they have a thick file of infractions to use against me.”

Tim tried to offer words of comfort. “Gosh, Duane, do you want to meet for a drink? Would it make you feel better if you came to the house to talk? How can an employer just decide you’re no longer needed?”

“It’s not fair,” Duane sniffled again. “Jobs are tough to find. I never stole anything in my life. I’ll never get another job unless I clear my name of their false charges. Hell, I know a lot about Sterling that the company wouldn’t like the world to know. I just might have to call up ‘Access Hollywood.’ Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. And Liz Smith, too.”

Tim reiterated his offer to take Duane out for a drink and to talk about the situation. “Rest for a couple of hours,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll be over at six. Polly’s going out for the evening, so I’ve got some time.” When he’d collected the information, Tim hung up the phone and went to his computer to print out driving instructions to the West Hollywood street on which Duane lived.

In a short while the house was suddenly in turmoil as Placenta came rushing in to The Great Room, excitedly calling, “Mister Tim! Detective Archer’s car is coming through the gate! Come and greet the man, for crying out loud. Polly’ll make her appearance as soon as you’ve plied him with a drink.”

Tim rushed to the foyer, checked his hair in the hall mirror, and waited for the doorbell. He looked at Placenta who was wringing her hands in anticipation. “Shouldn’t you be the one to let him in?” Tim asked. “You know how Polly likes people to get the impression that she’s got a staff of obsequious toadies.”

Placenta folded her arms across her chest. “Your allowance is bigger than my salary. You can play the bootlicker for once.”

The doorbell rang. Placenta ducked out of sight.

“One, one-thousand. Two, one-thousand,” Tim began counting and maintaining the appearance that whoever was at the door was of little consequence. “Nine, one-thousand. Ten.” He stomped his feet for the sound effects of one who had just arrived at this place, then he opened the door. “Detective Archer!” Tim said with a burst of false enthusiasm. Both men simultaneously offered a hand to shake. “Great to see you again. Come on in. You were in the paper last night. You’re becoming famous!” Tim didn’t know what else to say other than, “Please come this way.” He cocked his head and led Detective Archer into Pepper Plantation. “How about a drink?”

As Tim escorted the detective into The Great Room, Placenta arrived with a tray of champagne flutes. “Just in time! You remember Placenta? Of course, you interrogated, um,
interviewed
her about Sedra Stone’s death. By the way, you’re doing a heck of a job on the case.”

Tim then began an exhausting and hopefully surreptitious cross-examination of his own. The words tumbled out in a near stream of conscious chain. “With all due respect, I have a hunch you’ve got the wrong person in jail…Dana Pointer, I mean…she’s hardly the killer type…absolutely not a killer…oh, I know witnesses heard a screaming match between them the night of the murder…and Sedra had some of Dana’s tresses clutched in her hand as if there was a struggle, and they seemed to hate each other, but then who didn’t hate Sedra…it all looks horrible for Dana, but…”