The next morning my alarm clock began playing “Good Day Sunshine” at exactly 6:00 A.M. I rolled over and smacked the snooze bar. Ten minutes later, “Pretty Woman” blasted through my apartment. I whacked the snooze again.
I have no idea how many snoozes later it was that I heard the “William Tell Overture” cut through my sleep. Instinctively I banged my snooze bar, but that didn’t do much good. I popped one eye open, grasping around for my purse, and dug my cell phone out.
“What?” I croaked. Between dreams of dead squirrels and dead actresses, I was in no mood for a telemarketer this early.
“Where are you?” Dana chirped from the other end.
I blinked, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. “In bed. Like a normal person. Where are you?”
“You’re still in bed? We’re supposed to be on the set in, like, half an hour!”
I groaned. “For real? You want to go back?”
“Um, hello? Yes, of course. How are we supposed to catch the killer if we don’t go back?”
I glanced at the clock. 7:15 A.M. “Dana, the entire LAPD is looking for Veronika’s killer. You really think they need Lucy and Ethel on the case, too?”
“Who?”
“Never mind, ” I mumbled, pulling the blankets over my head.
“Listen, my agent said that they’re shooting the scene where Chad and Ashley finally find out who the father of Ashley’s baby is. Don’t tell me you’re going to miss this?”
I pulled the blankets back. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I even had to sign a disclosure thing promising not to spill the secret to anyone.”
“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
I did a quick turn under the blow-dryer and dressed in skinny jeans, red kitten-heeled patent-leather slingbacks, and an oversize black T-shirt with the neck cut out of it. I topped it off with a big red belt and a swipe of Raspberry Perfection on my lips, and I was out the door. Though I did pause long enough to grab my can of pepper spray, because I had, after all, promised Mom. Okay, I grabbed it mostly because I had promised Mom. Partly, I was still a little creeped out by whatever punk had left roadkill on my doorstep. If I caught the little sucker near my door with a squirrel again, I was gonna spray him.
Half an hour later I had Dana in my Jeep, and we were pulling up to the studio almost on time. That is, we would have been almost on time if there hadn’t been a line to get through the back gate that wound around the entire block. Dana and I took our spots at the end, and I craned my neck to see what the holdup was. Blake, aka comatose husband, was standing two people in front of me. I reached around and tapped him on the shoulder.
He jumped as if I’d hit him with a Taser gun. Blake was five-foot-ten, and starting to thin a little on top and spread a little in the middle. There’d been rumors last season that he’d had a breakdown (and who could blame him, having to work with Mia every day?) and had checked himself into a mental hospital over the midseason break. And if today was any indication, his nerves were nearing their breaking point again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Blake licked his lips nervously. “No, no. Th-that’s okay.”
“I was just wondering if you know what’s going on.”
“New security measures. They’ve got two guards on each gate today, and they’re going to be locking down the back gate after dark. They’re even putting extra security on the main gate twenty-four/seven. They’re being very careful after yesterday’s…unpleasantness.”
Unpleasantness. Now, there was an understatement alert.
I craned again to see around him, but all I could make out was a long line of people checking their watches and tapping their feet.
Finally (half an hour later!), we got close enough to see exactly what the holdup was: a walk-through metal detector. Not only that, but they also had one of those scanner machines used in the airport to X-ray your luggage. Apparently everyone’s purses and wardrobe bags had to be scanned before they were let onto the lot.
Dana and I gave our names to the old guy in Coke-bottle glasses and wearing a name tag that read BILLY, who checked them against his list. Then Dana set her Fendi (fake from eBay) down on the conveyer belt. I set my little Kate Spade (real because I chose to live on Top Ramen-it’s all about priorities, people) down next to hers, and we watched our bags disappear into the X-ray machine. Billy’s magnified eyes roved the monitor, carefully scanning the entire contents of my purse for any knives, guns, or suspicious-looking electronic devices.
Beside him stood a bored-looking woman in security blues who was the spitting image of Queen Latifah.
“Next, ” she called, waving Blake through the plastic archway.
Blake stepped through.
The machine beeped.
Blake did a little terrier yelp and clasped his hands together until his knuckles turned white.
“Your watch, ” Latifah said, pointing at the gold Rolex on his left wrist. He took it off, setting it in a little metal dish, then stepped back through the machine again.
Beep.
Latifah rolled her eyes, popping a wad of bubble gum between her teeth as Blake proceeded to take off his class ring, a big gold-colored thing from USC, and pulled a key ring out of his pocket. And again he walked back through the plastic doorway, gingerly this time, almost wincing as he placed one loafer-clad foot over the threshold.
Beep.
“Oh for Pete’s sake, ” Dana mumbled under her breath.
Latifah shook her head, popping her gum like little firecrackers. “Come on, I gotta wand you now.”
She waved Blake through, then ran a plastic wand over his extremities. I could see sweat starting to break out on his forehead.
After he’d been thoroughly molested by her stick, the security guard let him pick up his watch, class ring, and battered shoulder bag, and Blake fairly ran in the direction of 6G.
“Finally, ” Dana said, stepping through the machine. Luckily, the plastic thingie liked her. No beeping.
Unluckily (yup, you guessed it), it didn’t feel the same way about me.
Beep.
“Shit, ” I murmured, stepping back through.
“Your belt?” Dana suggested.
Right. I unclasped my belt, setting it in one of the plastic tubs. Sorry, I mouthed over my shoulder to the line of anxious people stacking up behind me.
Okay, let’s try this again. I stepped through.
Beep.
I rolled my eyes heavenward and did a silent, why me?
“Your shoes, ” the security guard said, cocking her head at me and popping her gum. “They got them little metal buckles on them. Try taking off your shoes.”
I stared at her. Seriously?
But she didn’t strike me as the joking sort. Trying not to make any little icky sounds at the feel of the gritty pavement beneath my bare feet, I slipped my ruby slingbacks into another plastic tray, wishing them a safe trip through the scanner. Walking on tiptoes to minimize contact with the ground, I stepped over the plastic threshold. Again.
Beep.
Again.
I threw my hands up in the air. “I give up! Wand me.”
Queen Latifah rolled her eyes and motioned me over, then proceeded to run her plastic wand up and down my legs, getting way more intimate than Ramirez had in weeks.
“Arms out to the side, ” she said in a monotone, then punctuated it with another pop of her Doublemint.
I complied, feeling like those guys on COPS right before they get the handcuffs and the “watch your head” speech.
“Turn around.”
I did, trying my best to hold on to some shred of dignity as the line at the metal detector grew to include two minor sitcom actors and a pair of grips who were smirking in my direction.
And just when I thought I was topping out on the embarrassment scale, I hit whole a new high.
Queen Latifah waved the wand over my breasts and the damn thing beeped like a car alarm going off.
The grips snickered out loud.
Latifah raised an eyebrow at me. She moved the wand away, then back to my barely Bs.
Beep, beep, beep!
My face went Lava Girl and I felt myself go into stammer-and-stumble mode. “Underwire!” I shouted out, as much to the snickering grips as the security guard (who looked slightly less bored with her job now). “It’s the underwire, okay? I have to wear a lot of wire to make it look like I have any cleavage at all. I’m a B. We Bs have to go to extraordinary measures to fill out a shirt. And I know someone as well-endowed as you might not understand…”
She raised the other eyebrow at me.
“…but it’s very, very important for us little girls to push that support up. I swear it’s not a gun. I’m just wearing underwire!”
By now even the sitcom stars were barely concealing their laughter.
Luckily, Latifah took pity on me. “You’re cleared, ” she said. Then she covered a snort with another bubblegum pop.
Sure that my cheeks now matched my slingbacks, I ducked my head down, grabbed Dana by the arm, and hauled ass out of there. Thankful that only about five hundred people had witnessed my boobs-of-steel moment.
“Ashley, the results don’t matter. You know I’ll love her even if she’s Blake’s baby.”
“Oh, Chad, I don’t deserve you.”
“What you don’t deserve is that husband of yours ruining our lives. Please just divorce him.”
“But, Chad, he’s still in a coma! I can’t be that cruel.”
“Miss Culver?”
“Yes, Nurse Nan.”
“I have the paternity results.”
I shoved a fingernail into my mouth to keep from gasping out loud. I was watching from the wings as Ashley, Chad, and Nurse Nan stood in the three-walled hospital waiting room (which the set dresser told me had also doubled as Blake’s office last year before the coma), hanging on every word of dialogue as we shot the scene of the season. Bright lights shone down from the exposed rafters, and a guy with a huge fuzzy microphone on the end of a boom stood just outside of the shot. Behind Ashley, Dana sat at the reception desk, dressed in scrubs, silently pretending to answer the phones and trying (mostly successfully) not to ogle Ricky’s tush, as camera one zoomed in to catch Chad’s reaction.
“Chad, hold my hand.”
“Of course, Ashley.”
“Okay, Nurse Nan, we’re ready. Who’s the father?”
“Cut!” Steinman yelled.
A collective groan went up from the crew assembled in the wings.
“Ricky, you’re too far away from Mia. We can’t get both of you in the shot like that, ” Stienman said, stomping onto the set. Carl Stienman was six-four with the body of an ex-football player, and the booming voice to match. I put him somewhere in his fifties, just starting to go salt-and-pepper at the temples, and in need of thick wire-rimmed glasses, probably from too many late nights squinting at the dailies on his monitor. “Move closer together, ” he directed, moving Ricky toward Mia.
“She keeps pushing me out, ” Ricky protested.
“I do not!” Mia yelled. “You’re in my light. Hey, you!” Mia pointed to one of the grips. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know how to properly backlight someone?”
“The light is fine, Mia, ” Stienman said.
“Oh, sure. No one wants to see my face in this scene anyway, ” Mia retorted, laying on the sarcasm. “And you.” She spun around, pointing at Dana.
Uh-oh.
Dana popped her head up, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Yes?”
“I can hear you shuffling papers back there. I can’t concentrate on my lines!”
Dana nodded, doing a zipping-it-shut-and-throwing-away-the-key thing.
“Oh, please, ” Margo cut in, fiddling with the lapels of her nurse scrubs. “It’s not her fault you haven’t studied your script.”
“Why, you old cow.” Mia lunged toward Margo, but Steinman was faster, positioning himself between them. I suddenly saw where his linebacker physique came in handy.
“Ladies, ” he coaxed. “Shall we try to get this shot before end of day?”
Mia stepped back, still glaring at Margo. Margo gave her a self-satisfied smirk.
“Okay, let’s take it back a line, ” Steinman shouted, taking his place behind the monitor again.
I shoved that fingernail back into my mouth, trying not to fidget as I waited for the revelation of who-shot-J.R. proportions.
A PA with an electronic clapboard stood in front of the camera. “Speed. And…rolling!”
“Okay, Nurse Nan, we’re ready. Who’s the father?” Mia repeated.
“I’m sorry to tell you that the results aren’t what we were hoping for.”
“What?”
“What do you mean, not what we’d hoped for?” Ricky asked, taking a step closer.
“Dammit, Carl, he’s in my light again!”
“Cut!” Steinman yelled, rubbing one hand over his eyes. “Would someone get another spotlight in here, please? Everyone else, take five.”
Walkie-talkies buzzed to life, and two PAs took off, scurrying. The makeup woman descended upon Margo, dusting and powdering her forehead, and Mia stalked off to her trailer.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Dana asked, skipping over to me.
“I think I’m going to pop a blood vessel if someone doesn’t tell me who the father is soon.”
“No kidding. Ohmigod, I hope it’s Chad’s. That man is H-A-W-T, hawt!” she spelled. She glanced behind me. “Hey, where’s your purple-haired friend today?”
“Dusty took a personal day.” At least, that was what they’d told me when I’d finally made my way onto the set that morning. Apparently she was still shaken up after being the one to find Veronika’s body. I didn’t blame her. After just finding a squirrel’s body, I’d been ready to spend the day in bed.
As it turned out, it was a good thing I hadn’t, because with Dusty gone there was no one else. Nurse Nan might very well have still been wearing the gaudy Day-Glo orange wool scarf and Crocs she’d been in when I’d arrived on set.
“Dana, ” the AD called her, “could you stand in for lighting?”
Dana did a little happy squeal before skipping over to a mark in front of the camera where the new spotlight had arrived.
I left her having a starlet moment and went in search of that Starbucks carafe.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one in need of an afternoon pick-me-up. As I approached the Craft service table, I spied Ricky pouring himself a steaming cup of coffee.
“Want some?” he asked, the carafe hovering over a fresh paper cup.
I nodded. “Please.”
I tried not to stare at the play of muscles beneath his too-tight T-shirt as he poured me a cup-tried being the key word here. Holy cow, the guy was built. And, I had to admit, up close he was even hotter than on TV. I touched a hand to the corner of my mouth to make sure I wasn’t drooling as I accepted the cup Ricky handed to me.
“Wild day yesterday, huh?” he said.
“Very. I’m so sorry about Veronika. Did you know her well?”
Ricky shrugged, then got kind of a sad look in his baby blues. “We went out a couple of times when she first started working on the show.”
I felt my internal radar pick up. “Really?What happened?”
Ricky shrugged again. “Nothin’ much. We saw a movie out in West Hills, near where she lives. But, you know, we just didn’t really hit it off.”
Despite my earlier decision to leave it alone, I couldn’t help asking, “How about Mia? Do you know if she’s seeing anyone?”
Ricky shrugged. “I dunno.” Then he paused, his eyebrows puckering together. “Why?”
“It’s possible the killer mistook Veronika for Mia, ” I said slowly, watching his reaction. “She was in Mia’s trailer, after all.”
Ricky’s eyes went big, his mouth dropping open. “Wow. Heavy.” He paused, churning this bit of info over in his head. “Well, I don’t know if Mia’s with anyone now, but a while back she was dating Blake.”
I took a sip of my coffee to cover my surprise. Nervous Blake was the last person I’d expect a control freak like Mia to be attracted to. “Really? Any idea why she stopped seeing him?”
Ricky shook his head. “Nope. But I know that it was right before Blake checked himself into the hospital. And when he came back, Mia had convinced the producers to put him in a coma.”
“The coma was Mia’s idea?”
“That’s what Blake told me. He was kind of ticked off because it’s cut his screen time in half.”
Iiiiinteresting. I sipped my coffee again, wondering if being in a coma were enough motive to want Mia out of the picture. I’ll admit, I had a hard time picturing the shaky Blake actually strangling a woman without having a panic attack, but stranger things have happened.
A PA with a headset glued to his ear ducked his head around the corner. “Maddie?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re wanted back in wardrobe.”
Great, what now? I had a terrible vision of Margo bargaining to put the Crocs back on again. “Be right there.”
I gulped down the rest of my coffee, praying that it was just a loose seam. Of course, the fact that I haven’t been to Mass since my Irish Catholic grand-mother dragged me to the midnight all-you-can-pray Christmas Eve service was probably why God ignored this request. Instead, I could almost hear him giggling at his own private joke as I walked through the door of the wardrobe room to find two uniformed officers going through the racks as a guy in a rumpled suit with a gun bulge at his hip looked on.
And, in the corner, arms crossed over his chest, Bad Cop face firmly in place, Ramirez.
I made a mental note to go to Mass more often.
Taking a deep breath, I did a little one-finger wave in his direction.
No reaction. Oh boy.
“Miss Springer, would you please have a seat?” The guy with the gun bulge indicated a folding chair beside him. He had graying hair and a face that looked like it had been left out on the Venice boardwalk during a heat wave-tan, wrinkled, and in serious need of some moisturizer.
I sat down, giving a tentative glance to Ramirez. Still no reaction.
“I’m Detective Rodgers, ” Prune Face said. “I’d like to ask you some questions about the events of the last few days.”
I nodded, gulping down a dry lump.
“Where were you between midnight and 3:00 A.M. the night of the thirteenth?”
The night Veronika had been killed. That lump grew, and I nervously cleared my throat.
“We have to ask all the cast and crew, ” Rodgers reassured me, a fatherly smile parting his wrinkles. Though I watched enough Law & Order to wonder whether it was sincere.
“So, you think the killer was someone on the set?” I asked.
Ramirez narrowed his eyes at me, his jaw doing that jutting, granite thing again.
“Please, just answer the question, Miss Springer, ” Rodgers said.
I gulped. “Right.”
“Where were you on the night of the thirteenth?”
“Sleeping.”
“Alone?”
I glanced at Ramirez. “Very alone.”
He pretended not to notice.
“Can anyone verify this?”
Wait, what did he mean, verify? “Am I a suspect here?”
“Please just answer the question.”
I turned to Ramirez. “You can’t possibly think I’m a suspect here.”
“Maddie, ” he warned, his voice tightly restrained.
“Like I said, we’re asking everyone, ” Rodgers repeated.
“Then why are they going through the clothes?” I asked, gesturing to the uniforms.
“The nylons came from the wardrobe room, ” Ramirez said.
Rodgers shot him a look that clearly said, “Ix-nay on the info-ay to the uspect-say.”
“Well, anyone could have walked in and taken them. The room’s not locked during the day.”
“What about at night?” Rodgers asked, flipping open a notebook and jotting something down.
“Yes, it’s locked. But I don’t even have a key!” I sputtered. “I’m just the assistant.”
“Who does?”
I paused. “Dusty.”
The detective exchanged a glance with Ramirez.
“But she wouldn’t do this!” I protested.
“How well do you know Dusty?”
“Semi-well, ” I hedged.
Another glance exchange.
“But I’m telling you, she wouldn’t do this. She’s my college roommate’s best friend’s cousin! Plus, her best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s mother plays canasta with the producer’s aunt!”
Rodgers gave me a blank look. “Isn’t it true that she and Mia had an altercation yesterday? Over the color of her shirt?”
I leaned forward. “So, you think Mia was the target?”
“Just answer the question!” Rodgers had dropped the fatherly tone, doing a full-on exasperated-cop thing now-a routine that, thanks to Ramirez, I was all too familiar with.
“Mia has altercations with lots of people. Just now she had one with Margo, Ricky, and Steinman.”
“I’m only interested in the one she had with Dusty the day Veronika was killed. Did Mia threaten Dusty’s job?”
I bit my lip. “Um, I’m not really…I mean…”
“Well?”
I looked to Ramirez for help. Nothing. It was starting to piss me off that he was just standing there, letting this guy grill his almost-girlfriend.
Clearly I was on my own here.
I crossed my arms and puffed out my chest as far as it would go (which, sadly, wasn’t very far). “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions without an attorney present.”
Ramirez lifted one eyebrow, then muttered, “Jesus, ” under his breath.
Rodgers gave me a hard stare and flipped his notebook shut with an audible thud. “Fine. We’ll be in touch.”
“So I can go?”
He nodded. Then to Ramirez, “Escort her back to the set.”
“I don’t need an escort.”
Ramirez stood up and grabbed my arm. Hard. “Oh, yes, you do, ” he said under his breath.
Ramirez steered me out the door and down the hallway. “This is police brutality, ” I hissed as his grip on my arm tightened. He opened a door and pulled me into an empty storage room. Then he spun me around with enough force that I feared whiplash.
“Ow!”
“What the hell was that in there?” he asked, his dark eyes blazing.
I froze. I’d never seen him like this before. Sure, I’d seen him exasperated, frustrated, even a little peeved with me at times. But this was different. This was downright angry. There was no hint of humor glinting behind the fire in his eyes. This time he was serious.
I bit my lip to stave off the unpleasant emotion bubbling up inside me. If I had to put a name to it, I’d say it was somewhere between anxiety and all-out dread.
“You just don’t get it, do you, Maddie?” he continued. “This is a homicide investigation. And that was a homicide detective. This guy isn’t playing around.”
“But you’re a homicide detective, too, ” I squeaked out.
Again his eyes blazed, only this time I could see the exhaustion of the past week creeping into them. “No, I used to be a homicide detective. Now I’m a glorified security guard.”
“Thanks to me, right?” I finished for him. The dread was bubbling up so far it was stinging the backs of my eyes now.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Jesus, Maddie.” Ramirez ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you just tell Rodgers what you knew? Then you could have gotten the hell out of here.”
“They think Dusty did it!”
“Yeah, and now he thinks you’re covering for her. Does the word accomplice mean anything to you?”
Does the word girlfriend mean anything to you? I longed to retort back. But I was suddenly too afraid of the answer. Instead, I let out a feeble, “Dusty’s innocent.”
“Maybe.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t know Dusty.”
“Do you?”
I bit my lip. “Maybe not. But why would she do this?”
“What about the argument she had with Mia?”
I shook my head again. “Dusty wouldn’t kill over that. Besides, Dusty must have known Mia was right. With her coloring, she really is a Spring.”
Ramirez narrowed his eyes at me. “That’s it? You believe her because some woman is a season?” He shook his head. “Jesus, Maddie, I don’t get you.”
“No, you don’t, ” I said, realizing just how true that was. Damn. The stinging was getting worse. Another minute of this and my mascara would be toast. “Look, Dusty’s my friend, and I know she’s innocent. And if you or your law-and-order posse have any more questions for me, you can ask them through my lawyer.”
I turned and tried to stalk out of the room, making a really dramatic exit. But the stinging behind my eyes had morphed into tears that were suddenly blurring my vision. I kind of stumbled instead, half running, half tripping down the hall and out the back exit onto the lot. I blindly ran through the Sunset city, not caring where I was going, just wanting to get away. Away from the accusations, away from the chaos of the set, and, most of all, away from the man who, instead of comforting me, was interrogating me!
Sure, Ramirez and I had had our ups and downs in the past. But this felt different. This felt like only downs. Where were our ups? Were we ever going to have one again? Not likely, the way things were going. Maybe Ramirez had been right all along-maybe we just weren’t relationship material. I’d known from the beginning that Ramirez was a cop first. But somehow in the back of my mind I’d always hoped that he’d wake up one day and realize how much he wanted to put me first.
Clearly today wasn’t that day.
I finally ran out of breath and sat down at a bus stop somewhere in New York. “Somewhere” being the key word here. As I wiped at my damp cheeks, I realized I had no idea where I was.
The fake city was eerily creepy in the fading dusk, the setting sun creating shadow across the New York skyline. I did a few unladylike hiccups, getting myself under control as I got up and walked down the street, half expecting a mugger to jump out of the dirty alleyway, even though I knew the dirt had been spray painted on by set dressers and the only rats on the lot were the agents.
But between the talk of murderous letter writers and even more murderous murderers, the empty buildings seemed to take on an ominous feeling.
And then I heard it. The sound that made my heart start pumping double-time.
Footsteps.
I paused, freezing in the middle of a street lined with brownstones (or, at least, brownstone facades). The footsteps continued for a beat, then stopped, too.
Okay, so maybe it was just a set dresser getting New York ready for that cop show tomorrow. Maybe it was a cleaning crew. Maybe it was an actor trying to soak up some of the East Coast atmosphere.
Maybe it was a homicidal maniac who strangled women in their trailers with panty hose.
I started walking again, briskly, in the direction of the set. Only, with the adrenaline-fueled fear pumping through my veins, I wasn’t sure which direction the set was.
I quickened my pace, almost jogging now as I rounded the corner and found myself suddenly on a tavern-lined street in Boston. The footsteps followed me, speeding up as mine did. I glanced behind my shoulder and let out a squeak. A figure loomed in the shadows just a few yards behind me. Clearly my imagination did not produce that. Frantically I tried the door to O’Shays Pub. Of course it didn’t open because, duh, it was freaking painted on. Nothing here was real!
Nothing, that was, except the murderer chasing me.
I was running now, trying not to trip over my feet as I heard the footsteps growing closer. I didn’t dare look back for fear he’d be right on top of me. I rounded another corner, onto a San Francisco street lined with Victorians, and started jogging uphill.
I could hear him closing in, his breath coming fast, as if he weren’t any fonder of San Francisco terrain than I was. I reached into my purse, grasping for anything that might be used as a weapon. Lipstick, tampon, change…pepper spray! I said a silent thank-you to my overly protective (though, in hindsight, genius) mother as my fingers curled around the canister. I felt around for the little button to push, still tripping uphill. I found it.
Just as I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.