Remains to Be Scene (29 page)

“When Sedra finally reached the top, all huffing and puffing, and looking every minute her sixty-something years, saying she hated heights, I asked her if she was going to finally act like a professional and follow orders to do the work and get the film in the can by Saturday.”

Tim exclaimed, “You
were
Laura’s phantom! You put the threatening letter under the stall door!”

“Alright!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “But it was harmless. If this freakin’ film kept on falling farther and farther behind schedule, Missie’d never be able to start her new movie. I wanted Sedra to wrap it up. I didn’t want to hurt her. Just scare her a little.”

Polly and the others had gathered around Elizabeth like a village of peasants ready to stone the Laird’s tax collector. “You’d do anything to make Missie a star,” Polly said, repeating the exact words that Elizabeth had spoken the night of the dinner party. “Anything,” she reiterated. “You’ve said as much. So tell us, Elizabeth, are you a cold-blooded killer? Did you push Sedra Stone to her death?”

Elizabeth cried out, “No way! I said I only wanted to scare the bitch! Honestly, I
never
touched her!”

Missie forced her way through the circle of accusers and calmly said, “Mother, don’t say another word. You don’t remember anything because you were drunk. Remember!”

Polly handed her own flute of champagne to Elizabeth and said, “I think you need this more than I do. Drink up, honey. Placenta will bring a bottle and we can all relax. So what happened next?”

Elizabeth put the rim of the glass to her lips and emptied it with one long swallow. Ignoring Missie’s command, she resumed her story. “I realized that I’d given that note to the wrong person because I believed Sedra when she claimed not to have any idea about what I was talking about when I said she had been warned in writing to finish her job and get out,” Elizabeth said. “Sedra reiterated that this was her chance to return to the limelight and she didn’t care about any threat, that she’d had plenty of those during her lifetime. We argued back and forth until she finally gave in and agreed that she should complete her last scene then move on. But I knew it was only a ploy so I’d come down from the platform. I suspected that she wasn’t going to budge in the way of quitting the movie anytime before she absolutely had to. And I hated her for thinking I was dumb enough to believe her. I didn’t know what to do. And just then, Missie arrived on the platform. I hadn’t heard her come in. Sedra was surprised, too, and almost lost her balance and fell right then.”

Suddenly, all eyes on the room were focused on Missie Miller. “What a place to find your mother, way up on a diving pool platform. It was dangerous. So I quietly climbed up the stairs so I wouldn’t startle her or Sedra. Yeah they were surprised to see me all right, but grateful, too, I think. Sedra especially because she didn’t want to have to somehow get Mother down on her own.”

“Missie to the rescue!” Polly cheered. “Thank God you finished your business with Mike when you did and, that you thought to check the pool for your missing mother. Brava! Saved the day.”

“I noticed the lights were on in the pool building so it’s the first place I checked, after Dana’s trailer,” Missie said, proud of her ability to deduce the most likely place to find Elizabeth.

Then Polly turned to Mike. “Did ya have a swell time together?” she asked, smiling with envy for the easy intimacy the young seem to find wherever and whenever they want it.

“Never enough time,” Mike beamed with satisfaction. “We didn’t want to keep Elizabeth waiting, so we were in and out, so to speak,” he said, chuckling.

Polly returned her attention to Missie and said, “Not to worry, dearest, you’re young. You and your beau will have longer and more encounters, I’m sure. As long as the girlfriend doesn’t find out.” Polly gave a weak laugh. “Well, the brevity of your visit with Mike made it possible to collect your mother before anything happened to her or Sedra. Were you surprised to find them together?”

“Totally,” Missie proclaimed. “Sedra was far from the nurturing kind—just ask Dana—and to hear her actually try to help Mother down from the platform was pretty amazing.”

“So you were in the building long enough to hear dear Elizabeth plead her case for Sedra to step aside and let you move on to your next project. When she refused, how did that make you feel?” Again she was playing analyst.

“Like shit, of course!” Missie snapped. “Look, lady, I know that you’re trying to connect Mother to Sedra’s death, like it was premeditated, or something. Well that ain’t gonna wash. Sedra died, and it was a horrible mess, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

Detective Archer came around to Missie’s side and scratched his neck. “I gotta tell ya, I make mistakes all the time on my job. And when I do, my first thought is how to cover my butt so that nobody finds out I goofed big time. Usually I’m pretty good at covering my tracks. Sometimes, not so good. I have to say, I think your mom, Elizabeth, has done a damn good job of covering her butt. Until now. But I think she pushed Sedra off the platform and almost got away with it because nobody would suspect a nearly blind woman of getting up that high in the first place. And you covered for her.”

The crowd was almost unanimous in their agreement that Elizabeth Stembourg had pushed Sedra Stone to her death. But she protested with loud sobbing tears. “I never touched Sedra! This isn’t how my Hollywood dream was supposed to turn out! Missie was supposed to become rich and famous and take care of me!”

Elizabeth stood up and removed her dark wrap-around glasses. She looked first at Dana with eyes that seemed to see perfectly well. “This is all your fault. I told Missie not to hang out with you. And look what happens. The bad girls always win.” Next she focused on Adam Berg. “If you had an ounce of talent in your creepy little brain, you would have finished this picture long ago, and I wouldn’t have had to take care of things on my own.”

Tim asked, “What ‘things,’ Elizabeth?”

For a long moment there was silence in the tent. All eyes were glued to Elizabeth Stembourg as they watched her contemplate how to answer Tim’s question.

“Yeah, Missie overheard what Sedra said about her being nothing more than a pretty face, but with no more talent for acting than Kathie Lee Gifford has for singing,” Elizabeth said. “Missie was justifiably furious. When Missie arrived on the platform it was pretty crowded and I just wanted to get down. So I took the first tentative steps toward the stairs. And then…”

“And then nothing,” Missie spoke sharply to her mother.

“Tell ’em what happened. Or I will,” Elizabeth said. “Fine. Okay. Have it your way.” Elizabeth thought back to that moment. “I decided we should have a toast to Missie’s new film because come hell or high water I was going to make sure she was on the set of
DNA
bright and early on the first day of production. And that’s when it happened. The bottle of champagne was still on the platform so I picked it up.”

At that moment Missie yelled, “Stop it, Mother! There aren’t any witnesses. You don’t have to say another word!”

But Elizabeth continued, as if on autopilot headed for impact against the face of an Andes peak she said, “I picked up the bottle and told Sedra that Missie was going into a new film project right away, regardless of whether or not
Detention
had wrapped. I started blabbering about the new film, and Sedra said that the story was exactly like a screenplay she’d written herself, but that the floppy disk it was on had gone missing. That’s when I realized that Adam had screwed my Missie and Sedra. That the screenplay was probably Sedra’s after all. But the role was too good for Missie not to play. It would win her an Oscar. I was sure of it.”

Suddenly determined to make certain that everybody understood that her mother was not in her right mind that evening, Missie finished the story. “I could practically tell what Mother was thinking as Sedra began demanding to know more about Adam and the screenplay he’d supposedly written. I looked over at Mother and saw her shaking the bottle. Then she pointed it at Sedra. I yelled at her to put the bottle down. Then suddenly…POW! You’d think a canon had gone off for all the noise it made in the emptiness of the building! The cork hit Sedra square in the forehead and she reeled. She automatically tried to dodge the cork and stepped backward. She was right on the very edge of the platform. She wobbled, then…”

Missie’s eyes took on a glassy stare. “I see everything in slow motion now,” she said. “Sedra didn’t say anything. No scream, or sound came from her. But the look on her face was complete and utter shock. In a split second she reached out in vain for anything to grab on to in order to stop her from going over the edge of the platform. But there was nothing to grab hold of. For an instant she flailed, like she thought she could flap her arms and fly to safety. And I couldn’t move fast enough to stop her falling. I would have gone over the edge, too. And then she belly-flopped…into nothingness.”

As the audience listened in horror, Elizabeth suddenly stood up from her chair. She faced Polly and glared at her with a look that was filled with anger and hatred. Then, with the swiftness of a slight-of-hand card sharp she simultaneously struck the fluted part of the champagne glass she was holding onto the metal arms of her chair and wielded the sharp jagged stem. With the swiftness of a rabid pit bull she lunged at Polly. A stronger woman than she appeared to be, Elizabeth easily wrestled Polly to the stage floor and held the sharp weapon to her throat.

Instantly, Tim, Placenta, Detective Archer, and everyone except Missie raced to Polly’s rescue; however, Elizabeth screamed for everybody to back off and threatened to make it nearly impossible for even the best plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills to do repair work after she was finished with Polly’s famous face.

“Let her go!” Tim begged. “Polly never did anything to you!”

“She’s ruined my chances! She’s taken away my dream! I’ve settled up with the others who stood in my way, and I’ll do it again!”

Polly laid perfectly still, her mind reeling and trying to figure out a way to save her life. The weight of Elizabeth sitting on her chest, and the sting of sharp glass pressing against her throat made it difficult to breath, and she dared not try to speak and talk reason with her assailant.

Tim yelled out again, “Just let her go, Elizabeth! I promise we won’t press charges! You and Missie can leave and go back to Boston. I promise!”

“We can’t go anywhere now,” Elizabeth spat back. “All my plans are over! And it’s all Polly Pepper’s fault! If she hadn’t gotten in the way with her snooping around and getting Dana off the hook…”

Suddenly a voice came over the speaker system. “Everything is always about you, isn’t it Mother?” All eyes turned to Missie Miller who was walking toward Elizabeth. “
Your
chances?
Your
dreams?
Your
plans? What about what I want?”

“You don’t know what the hell you want!” Elizabeth shrieked. “Your problem is that you dream too small. You would have been content to stay in Boston. But I’m not about to let all your potential just shrivel up and go unnoticed!”

“Mother,” Missie pleaded, “let Polly go. They said we could leave. But if you hurt this woman you’ll never see me in another film. I’ll be completely washed up. And then where will
your
dreams be? Let her go, Mama.”

With Missie serving as a distraction, Tim and Detective Archer gave each other a look and simultaneously rushed Elizabeth and dragged her off of Polly. In an instant she was handcuffed and being led away by Archer’s contingent of plainclothed police officers. Before leaving the tent she yelled out, “You’re nothing without me, Missie Miller! You have no ambition! Go ahead and have Mike’s babies and see how happy you are without being in the spotlight. You’ll be a miserable nobody! I promise!”

And then she was gone.

A
s guests made their way off of the Pepper Plantation property, more than a few stopped to tell Polly, Tim, and Placenta that the drama of the evening exceeded their expectations for what they’d heard made a Polly Pepper party so spectacular. “No wonder this place is world famous!” said one of the
Detention Rules!
location assistants. “Wasn’t this like the most awesomely fun event ever? Is it like this every night?”

“Every night, dear,” Polly said.

“It was like being in a Hitchcock movie,” said the sound effects editor to Polly.

“With a touch of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
, eh?” Polly trumpeted.

“By the time we get home everyone who was here tonight will have started writing their own script about it,” said a Stedicam operator.

“Hell, I may as well jump on the bandwagon,” the sound effects editor retorted. “I’ll call it,
Set for Murder.
”

“Or
Put a Cork in It,
” said the Stedicam guy, who laughed as he tried to concoct different titles.

“Never a dull moment at a Polly Pepper event,” said Candice Bergen with her trademarked sly and sardonic phrasing. As she kissed her hosts good-bye she added, “Leave it to adorable Tim to plan another winner. If the networks ever get around to buying your life story, or starring you in an updated version of ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ you’ll add a ton more Emmys to your trophy room. Call me in the
A.M
. You should guest on ‘Boston Legal.’”

Polly gleamed at the accolades, and the idea that television might come beckoning again. When Ellen DeGeneres sidled up to Polly and gave Polly a hug she whispered, “Portia and I loved your performance tonight. What about producing
DNA
as a feature for Lifetime? I could play Sedra and Portia could play you. What do you think about Shirley Jones for Placenta? Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris would be ideal to play Tim! Let’s do lunch to discuss. Ta!”

When the house was in relative peace again, with only the distant sounds from the caterers who were cleaning up in the kitchen, the family gathered in the Great Room together with Dana Pointer, Detective Archer, and Kevin Cartwright. “Geeze, what a night!” Polly exclaimed to no one in particular, as she flopped down on one of the sofas. “I swear I’ll never be able to open another bottle of champagne again as long as I live! I’ll always be reminded of the way Missie’s mother killed poor old Sedra!” She looked around. “Placenta, dear, would you break out the Cristal? We all deserve the good stuff.”

Placenta looked at Polly and wryly said, “So you’ll start your new sobriety the day after never?”

Polly looked momentarily confused. “Oh, hell,” she waved away Placenta’s suggestion. “I said I’d never be able to
open
a bottle of champagne. I never said I wouldn’t
drink
the stuff! Lord, are you insane?”

With Detective Archer seated beside Polly, and Tim next to Kevin, the room took on a more romantic vibration than usual. Observing the arrangement, Placenta decided to add to the atmosphere by lighting the gas fireplace and slipping a Michael Feinstein disk onto the CD carousel. As the crooner’s plaintive “My Romance” tenderly filled the air, Placenta poured champagne and began distributing the flutes. When she got to Dana, the teen screen queen was holding one of Polly’s Emmy Awards and examining it carefully. Dana accepted the flute and said, “Hell, this ‘Polly Pepper Playhouse’ show must’ve been popular. I guess I should see what all the fuss was about. Maybe there’s a Polly Pepper section on Netflix.” She then returned the award to its place on the bookcase shelf and wandered over to where her hosts were gathered.

Dana sat down beside Placenta and raised her glass. “I’d like to propose a toast to both Trixie Wilder and Sedra Stone,” she said. “You were both so different yet you had a couple of things in common. You both died before your time. But at least you’ll forever be in the chapter of the celebrity history books reserved for the likes of Bob Crane and Sal Mineo. I guess sometimes murder can be good for a career.”

Everyone sipped from their respective glasses and murmured agreement with Dana that Sedra and Trixie were now immortalized because of the way they had died. Tim leaned back and stretched out his arm behind Kevin on the sofa. He said to Dana, “So, what’s up now? I mean, with
Detention
, and your career?”

Dana took another long pull from her glass. “Well, first of all, Sterling will probably make Adam finish the film, so I’ll be going back to work. Of course, I’m going to sue his ass for selling Sedra’s screenplay under his own name.” She stopped to think for a moment. “I mean, now that Sedra’s dead, and I’m her only living relative, her estate becomes mine. That means intellectual property, too.” Then she gave Tim a quizzical look. “The fact that we’re somehow related, does that mean we’ll fight over the estate?”

Tim made a motor noise over his lips that implied that Dana was being absurd. “Honey, I’m not the least bit interested in anything from the woman who done my Mama wrong—twice. I won’t lay claim to a red cent of Sedra’s estate. But don’t expect there to be very much. Remember, she hadn’t worked during the past two decades. She lived lavishly, but the house is bound to be mortgaged to the hilt. I think she wrote the screenplay because she knew it was a potboiler and would be a quick sale to one of the studios. Despite hurting a ton of people, which she was used to doing, it was probably going to be her annuity.”

Dana simply nodded.

“But now that it’s going to be common knowledge that you were Sedra’s blood relative, what do you think
The Peeper
will say and do?” Tim asked.

Dana smiled and for the first time that evening seemed genuinely delighted. “It should place me squarely on the cover of every issue for a year,” she said. “And with the right PR spin, I can be the sad and long-lost orphan forever searching for her mother, then finding her just when it was too late.” Dana faked a sniffle. “Hell, if I play my cards right I’ll be able to shed my bad girl image! And now that Missie Miller is considered an accomplice, however unwitting, to her mother murdering Sedra, the tables will be completely turned. I’ll get all the sympathy, and maybe a couple of Kiera Knightly roles! Missie’ll join Tonya Harding in the ‘Whatever Happened To…’ game.”

Polly snuggled a little closer to Detective Archer and asked, “What about you? Now that you’ve solved this case?”

Archer made a sound similar to the one Tim used to dismiss Dana’s concern about her estate. “You and Tim and Placenta solved this case, not me!” Archer said. “I royally screwed up right from the beginning. I’ll be lucky if I get to keep my job. If Dana is litigious enough to whoop Berg’s butt, I can only pray that she takes pity on mine, and my otherwise long and distinguished career.”

Dana’s silence was inscrutable, as she raised an eyebrow and sipped daintily from her flute.

Polly preened. “We did solve the case, didn’t we,” she said with complete satisfaction. “We’re crusaders for truth and justice, and the Hollywood way! This town is a safer place tonight because Robert Blake has had his firearms permit revoked, and Elizabeth Stembourg is behind bars with Phil Spector.”

“Yeah, you guys set out to prove Dana’s
innocence
and in the process discovered not only Sedra’s killer but got a confession that Trixie Wilder was the recipient of Elizabeth’s murderous hand, too.”

Polly thought about Trixie’s death for a moment then said, “For Elizabeth to have strategically placed that brick on the floor, and determine ahead of time from where and how hard to push so that poor creature would fall just right, she’s gotta have a background in mathematics. Or she’s just lucky.”

“She’ll be lucky if our illustrious governor doesn’t personally flip the switch that fries her wrinkled hiney,” Placenta said. “And on that note, I think I’ll call it a day. A very long day.”

“Us, too,” Tim said, looking at Kevin, who blushed his acceptance to the unspoken invitation to sleep over. He gave a sly grin and soft exhalation of breath.

Polly placed her lips on her glass and surreptitiously looked over at Detective Archer, who instantly picked up on her body language. “We’re cool,” Archer said to Placenta.

Placenta wanted to say, “You’re about to be hot,” but she held her thoughts to herself. Instead she looked at Dana and said, “Hmm. Looks like we’re the only ones in the house who aren’t paired off for the night. And there’s no way we’re letting you drive home at this hour. I’ll be upstairs fluffing your pillow in the guest room when you’re ready.”

“Lead the way,” Dana said as she leaned over to give Polly a goodnight peck on the cheek. Then she tousled the hair on Tim’s head and gave him a wink that said, “Way to go, bro.”

As Placenta stood to exit the room she made one final comment, “The next time we stumble over a dead body or unmask a killer let it be while watching reruns of ‘The Avengers,’ or ‘Perry Mason.’ This sleuthing work is exhausting…and we drink way more champagne than usual. Our bill from the Liquor Locker this month is into five figures!”

Polly sighed. “I’m with you kiddo. From now on I’m leaving detective work to the specialists.” She looked at Detective Archer and smiled. “If you promise not to get a television show, I promise not to poke my nose around people who mysteriously and unexpectedly turn up dead. Deal? Or no deal?”