A Knife to Remember (10 page)

When she rejoined Shelley, her friend was deep in thought. "Jane, suppose you turn this around." "How?"

“Well, suppose Jake was the one being blackmailed instead of doing the blackmailing?" "I don't follow you."

“Well, if somebody tried to blackmail Jake, and he thought about it and went back to the person later and said, 'I'm not doing what you want, and what's more, I'm going to 'fess up publicly to the porn movies and tell everybody what a slimeball you are—?' "

“Hmmmm. Seems a stretch to me," Jane said. "Maybe. But the blackmailer was talking about awards and how they don't give awards and honors to people who have been in skin flicks."

“But there are awards for technical things, not just acting," Shelley said. "And we don't know that Jake never acted. Or let us say 'performed' in naughty movies. I don't know that it requires any acting skill. He was certainly good-looking enough to be in front of a camera."

“So you're saying an intended blackmail victim might turn the tables and become the murder vic- tim? Would that apply to George Abington? I'm getting confused. What would anybody want Jake to do for them?"

“Any number of things, I'd guess. Jake was highly respected in the business, it seems. He might have influenced the director to change a scene and feature somebody else since the girl who was supposed to be in it had gotten sick. For all we know, somebody is furiously rewriting the script right now to feature George or practically anybody else."

“So it could have been somebody really minor, too. Another bit player who wanted a shot at stardom?"

“It's possible," Shelley said. "Here's another possibility. And you won't like it. What if Butch wanted something of Jake? Like a better credit at the end of the movie, or more control of the props decisions or something. He might try blackmailing Jake and Jake could have come back and said, `I'm not going along with this and, what's more, you're fired and I'm going to ruin your name in the business.' That would make him a threat worth killing, wouldn't it?”

Jane was shaking her head. "This is too baroque for me. I don't even know who 'A' and 'B' are anymore. And there's yet another possibility that we haven't considered."

“What's that?" Shelley asked brightly.

“That the blackmailing attempt I heard had
nothing
to do with the murder. With that many egotistical, ambitious people around, there are probably half a dozen nasty things going on at any given moment.”

Shelley was only momentarily discouraged. "Then we have a lot of snooping to do to find out what the other nasty things were, don't we? Set your alarm for six, Jane. We've got a busy day ahead of us."

12

“So are you going to marry Mel?" Katie asked as she stood at the window watching for her car pool the next morning.

“Marry?" Jane gasped, nearly choking on her orange juice. "I don't know. I guess Mike told you about my plans."

“Yeah, he said you didn't want to talk to me about it."

“It's not that I didn't want to. I just didn't know how."

“What do you think I am, some kind of… of
prude?"

“
There are worse things to be," Jane said, wondering how she could get control of this conversation. "So you don't mind if I go?"

“Mind? No. It seems kinda silly. I mean, you're almost forty years old, Mom. Isn't that pretty old for — you know? There's Jenny's mom. Gotta go!" she said, flying out the door.

Jane went to the living room and glanced out the window. Eight o'clock and the movie people were in full swing. She'd heard trucks arriving shortly before six, but contrary to Shelley's instructions, 97 hadn't gone out to snoop. Now that the kids were all off to school, she still wasn't in any hurry. She sat down and turned on the television, letting the morning news wash over her while she smoked a cigarette. She was down to six a day now and had pretty much given up trying to quit entirely. Still, six a day was better than the pack and a half she'd gotten up to in the weeks after Steve's death.

The conversation with Katie had shaken her. She never felt fully in control as a mother, but in this situation she'd been put in the position of supplicant, wanting, if not approval, at least permission from her children to lead an adult life. Her discomfort came mainly from the fact that she was on shaky ground logically. She still felt duty-bound to uphold a high moral tone for them to emulate, and this included sexual abstinence. For teenagers. But not necessarily for her. And that's where the logic fell apart. She'd put herself into the old "Do as I say, not as I do" position, which she found very uncomfortable.
She
knew what the difference was, but couldn't find a way to explain it to Katie.

Her daughter was poised on the brink, hormonally speaking, of being a woman. She still had a lot to learn about life and people and especially herself before she should consider becoming involved sexually with anyone. Whereas Jane herself was feeling menopause breathing down her neck.

She suddenly imagined she could hear her mother's voice speaking to her. "Chickie, you're doing it again. You're thinking too much about things you can't do anything about.”

Jane put out the cigarette, tidied up the kitchen, and finished dealing with the last of the kitchen trash in the guest bathroom. Then she fed the cats in the basement, where they would be locked in today with fresh kitty litter and a big bowl of water. She had enough to fret herself silly about without having to worry about their whereabouts, too. Mike had taken Willard out to his dog run early and the big yellow dog was already settled in by the dining room window to begin his daily watch for the mailman. Jane double-checked that the doors were all locked, put the key to the back door in her jeans pocket, and went outside.

Shelley was just approaching the house. "Jane, I was coming to look for you."

“I had to get the kids off and had a brief, shattering talk with Katie to recover from. What have you found out?"

“Nothing. I was waiting for you. We work best as a team. I did try to get Jake's maybe-girlfriend Angela to chat, but she seemed to consider me a nobody and a busybody."

“Well? Aren't you?”

Shelley laughed. "Probably. I've been talking to Maisie about her, about Angela I mean, and it seems she's a very ambitious young woman. I've got a plan to get her talking. You catch her attention any way you want and just go along with me. Here she comes again. ." Shelley added, lowering her voice to a whisper as she led Jane to the lawn chairs still set up by the snack table.

“Oh, hello there," Jane said to Angela, wishing she'd had the opportunity to question Shelley about this "plan" of hers. "Why aren't you in costume today?”

Angela Smith was in jeans and a beautiful red sweater. Her gorgeous chestnut hair was in trendy disarray. She glanced briefly at Jane, then went back to dropping tiny marshmallows into her hot chocolate. "I don't have any scenes until this afternoon. I just wanted to be around to see scene sixty-three done," she replied in a perfunctory tone.

“You'll have to excuse Jane if she seems nosy," Shelley said. "She's a writer and you know how they are."

“A writer?" Angela's interest was piqued slightly. "What do you write?”

The honest answer would have been "The first 104 pages of a story that might, with enormous good luck, turn into a novel sometime within the next decade." But Jane didn't get a chance to say anything.

Shelley leaped in. "I'm sorry, Jane. I know I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I can't help myself sometimes." She turned to Angela and said confidentially, "Jane's not allowed to reveal her pseudonym. Contractual reasons, you know. But I think it's all right to tell you that she had two novels on the best-seller lists last year and then, of course, there are the scripts—"

“Scripts? Novels?" Angela said hungrily.

Jane smiled modestly at Shelley. "Now, now. You'll give me away if you're not careful."

“Would I have read anything of yours?" Angela asked. She pulled up a vacant lawn chair and sat down alarmingly close to Jane."Oh, I wouldn't know—"

“Rosamund Pilcher! I'll bet that's who you are. No, she's English, isn't she? Will you tell me if I guess?"

“No, I'm sorry. I really can't reveal any more," Jane said.

“-and these scripts of yours? Are they based on your own novels? Have any of them been produced?"

“Have any of them been produced?" Jane said archly to Shelley and they both laughed merrily at the absurdity of anybody asking such a naive question.

“Let's just say it's no coincidence that this movie is being made in Jane's backyard," Shelley said.

Jane gave her a "look-out-you're-going-too-far" glance, and said to Angela, "I'm not
officially
involved in this production at all. Really.”

It was almost obscene the way Angela's thoughts chased each other greedily across her otherwise lovely face.
Here,
she was obviously thinking,
is somebody of power and influence who could not only get me a plum role, but maybe write one for me.

“
Tell me about yourself, uh… Angela, was it?" "Angela Smith. Yes. How nice of you to know my name. And yours is…?"

“Jane Jeffry. Legally, that is," Jane said with a coy laugh that caused Shelley to make a noise like a seal barking.

“Sorry," Shelley said. "I think I inhaled a bug."

Jane had to look away from her to keep from

bursting into seal barks herself. "So, Angela, you don't look like you're too upset about Jake's death," she said, plunging into the heart of the inquisition.

Angela looked taken aback, but by now was so eager to ingratiate herself with Jane that she had to respond. "Oh, but I am. Jake Elder was a legend. The business just won't be the same without him."

“That's odd," Jane said. "That you'd see it in those terms, I mean. I had the impression that you had a more personal relationship with him."

“Oh, no," Angela said, tossing her hair. "Not that Jake didn't want it that way, but no. I had enormous respect for him, of course. You can't help but respect people who have mastered their craft—" A respectful, puppyish look at Jane with this pronouncement. "But there wasn't anything really personal between us. I believe Jake may have wanted — well, to help me along some. He felt I had talent, you see. And wanted to see me succeed."

“That's odd," Shelley said. "I thought I saw you having an argument with him yesterday.”

Angela gave Shelley a look that ought to have made her skin come up in blisters. "It was just a little disagreement about his method," she said. "Nothing at all.”

Jane got a faraway look. A faraway "scriptwriter" look, she hoped. "Disagreements are the heart of fiction," she said meaningfully. "The very bone and meat of stories. Tell me all about it.”

Angela looked like a butterfly pinned to a board. "It was nothing, really. Jake just wanted to help mea little. There was another extra who was supposed to do a scene with Miss Harwell yesterday and she got sick. Measles or something. Jake thought it would be nice if I stepped into her place. I mean, I am here. It would save the producers time from auditioning somebody else. And I have had years of acting lessons, and — anyway, he was just telling me that he'd mentioned the possibility to a few people.”

Jane and Shelley exchanged meaningful glances. This was probably what Jake was wanting the unknown blackmail victim to help with.

“I don't understand," Jane said. "Why would that be cause for a disagreement? I'd think you'd be grateful."

“Oh, I was grateful! Very grateful!" Angela all but shouted. "But I want to make it on my own, you see. By my own talent and skills."

“Come now, surely it doesn't hurt to have a `legend' point those skills out to others, does it?”

Angela squirmed. "Well, I think he was a littleah, forceful about it."

“Forceful?" Shelley asked serenely.

“Offensive, maybe," Angela allowed. "Well, you had to know Jake to understand, but he never did anything subtle. Not with people. With things, yes. He was great with things. You've never seen anybody pay such fanatic attention to detail. I was an extra on another film he did here last year and it was a period piece and there was luggage. You know, old suitcases with stickers on them like people used to collect? And Jake discovered that some of the stickers weren't from the right period. He stopped the whole production to get them painted out. Now, you know nobody in the audience would ever notice a thing like that, but Jake did and he said he wouldn't have his name on a film that allowed something sloppy like that. He shut down production for a whole day to get it fixed right."

“That must have made him popular," Shelley said.

“No, not popular, but he was right. And he was meticulous about being right. That's what made his reputation so great. If a person takes that kind of attention with little things, you know they'll never make big mistakes.”

Jane wasn't so sure she agreed with this, but didn't argue. Angela was obviously working at leading them off the scent and Jane wasn't to be deterred. "So he was great with things, but not with people, you said?”

Angela looked defeated. "Yeah."

“And what had he done regarding you that you objected to?" Jane felt she was stabbing another pin into this beautiful butterfly. But having come this far, they couldn't release her before she confirmed their suspicions.

Angela looked down at her cup of cocoa, the marshmallows now melted down into a repulsive skin on the surface. "He'd threaten people," she said softly. "He didn't say so exactly, but I could tell what he meant. He was such an overbearing turd when he wanted something."

“But he wanted it for you, not himself," Jane pointed out.

Angela laughed bitterly, looking ten years older than she had moments before. "Don't kid yourself. Jake never did anything for anybody without a payoff in mind. He thought he'd do me a favor and I'd fall into bed with him. And in the meantime, half the cast and crew would have hated
me
for this goddamned 'favor' he was supposedly doing me. Some fucking favor!" she said, bursting into tears.