Diva Las Vegas (6 page)

One thing that
was
great: I had plenty of time to make phone calls and talk to anyone who might have known Shana, including her ex.

 

The first thing I did when I got to hair and makeup was to ask whether Barry was in. No luck. It looked as if he wouldn’t be in for quite a few days. He lived most of the time in Vegas and kept a small apartment in LA. I knew a few actors and actresses who had primary residences there and apartments in town. You could get a real deal on a huge house in a gated community in Vegas, and it was only an hour’s flight. Still sounded like a pain.

No Barry today, so I asked around to see whether anyone had worked with Shana in the past few months on other shows or what have you. And sure enough, Patti Dennis had done Shana’s makeup for a photo shoot just last month. Patti had been working on
The Bare and the Brazen
for thirty years. She started as a body makeup person and had worked her way up to head of the department. She also freelanced on occasion. Thus the shoot with Shana. Thankfully, she knew everything that was going on with the show, because everyone confided in her. But she wasn’t a gossip. A rare breed.

“She did mention the stalker, but never mentioned his name.” Patti gently brushed gray powder onto my eyelid.

“Did she actually
know
his name?” I asked, looking at her with one eye.

“I can’t do your eyes when one is open. Close. I don’t know,” Patti said. “She used to say
that bastard
or
that son of a bitch
. If she knew his name, she never said it. But if you knew Shana, she referred to a lot of people that way. She was kind of a bi—” She stopped herself. The ugly head of integrity reared itself right when it was getting good. I gently tried to lead her on.

“I know Shana has, uh, had a reputation for being a bit of a diva. Did you ever find that to be true?”

“Oh, she was that, all right. Now close your eyes, or I’ll poke you!” Patti clammed up, but somehow I had a very strong suspicion she knew something. I was afraid if I pushed too far, she’d never give it up, so I decided to retreat and find another tactic. I tried my sensitive side.

“I think Shana had a big problem. I mean, that’s why she asked me to go to the party. I hardly knew her. Something must have really been troubling her for her to want to invite me. I really wish I knew what it was so I could at least help find her killer.” I sincerely felt bad for Shana, so I even managed to tear up. I felt a little evil, too, for manipulating Patti.

“Oh, God! Don’t do that! You’ll ruin your makeup!” she cried.

But I could tell I had gotten to her. I kept going. “If you know something, it wouldn’t be a betrayal of Shana’s trust if you shared it with me. You never know what might prove helpful to the police. It could have been anything.” I took a stab. “I don’t know—maybe some problems with her ex?”

Bull’s-eye! Patti looked troubled and started blinking a lot. She paused and said, “She and Barry
were
having some problems. Even though they were divorced, they had remained close. You know? But something happened to put a strain on their friendship.” She paused, just a hair too long. “That’s all I know!” She turned away to put her makeup brush down. “Okay. You’re done! Who’s doing your hair today with George out?”

I really didn’t feel like sitting still for who knows how long.

“I’ll just put it in a pony. No worries.”

“Okay, then, you’re good to go. And I have a department meeting upstairs!” Off she went, leaving me much prettier than when I first sat down, and much surer she was protecting someone.

I turned to the dressing-room sheet on the bulletin board behind me. Barry’s room was 43B, but since he wasn’t in today, that meant someone else was probably using his room. Luckily, it was Priscilla Schmidt; I knew she had finished her scenes and hopefully had even left the building.

I looked for a rubber band on the counter, gathered up my hair and put it in a high ponytail. A little spray and a couple of bobby pins to get rid of the flyaways, and I was ready for TV. One last check in the mirror, and then I slipped down the back stairs to the dressing rooms.

I got to the bottom of the stairs and headed toward the back door of 43B. The dressing rooms had front doors that faced the huge hallway of the production facility, and back doors opening onto the stage itself. I gingerly stepped over cables, avoiding props. It was dark, and I could hear someone boo-hooing on one of the sets. I paused to listen. It sounded like Melanie Piven taping a scene. She could cry at the drop of a hat. I was jealous. It usually took me hours of thinking about horrible past events in my life, or devastating fantasies about the future, for me to form tears. If that didn’t work, I’d have to put on
Oprah
and hope for the best. I am a method actor, and it can be exhausting, not to mention depressing! Some actors are able to cry if someone just looks at them funny. Life is truly not fair.

I quietly knocked on the door of 43B and put my ear to it, listening for a response. Nothing. Slowly I turned the knob and pushed.

“Hellooo? Anyone in here? Nobody naked, I hope!” I can’t tell you how many times I’d been walked in on half dressed.

The room was empty except for a pile of clothes on the floor. Priscilla had clearly finished work and just dropped her wardrobe where she stood. Now, that really pissed me off. Since when was the wardrobe department supposed to be our personal maid service? I always wondered if these slobs were raised in caves. Hang up your own clothes! Okay, deep breaths!

I looked around Barry’s room. There was a waiting list for dressing rooms, which meant some actors moved from room to room until a coworker with a permanent room left or got fired. I hadn’t been on the show long enough to have my own room, so I was a floater. Barry had been on the show for at least fifteen years and had had this room most of that time. I thought he had decorated it well. Masculine, yet tasteful and not too macho. The walls were a calming shade of taupe with large, framed black-and-white prints on the walls. There was a large mahogany armoire that held a flat-screen TV with several drawers below it. Candles had been placed on the coffee table and sofa tables. The lighting was soft and diffuse.

I picked up Priscilla’s clothes and started to put them on hangers. I couldn’t help myself; I wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but it really bugged me when actors . . . Never mind.

I hung a dress in the closet and noticed something shiny at the back of the shelf, above the rod. Standing on my tiptoes, I reached for it. It was a picture frame holding a photo of Barry, Shana and another couple I had never seen before. A recent photo, from the looks of it. They all had big smiles on their faces, and the picture had been taken at some event. Maybe I was just bitter because of my own (non) relationship with my ex-husband, Randy, but it seemed strange to me. Were they still a couple or not? I was confused.

I put the frame back on the shelf and looked around the room. Something caught my eye. The drawers at the bottom of the armoire had locks. Not unusual. Sometimes actors kept personal items at work, and they didn’t want someone ripping them off. I tried opening the top drawer. Locked. I took a bobby pin out of my hair and stuck it in. After a second of jimmying, it opened. I was getting good at this! Or it was a cheap lock.

I slid open the drawer. There were only hygiene products: mouthwash, lotion, shower gel. I tried the next drawer down. It was locked, too, but I picked it. I couldn’t believe it! It looked like a pharmacy in there. Prescription bottles of all shapes and sizes. They all seemed to be painkillers and antiinflammatories. Wow, Barry must have severe back pain or a severe drug problem. I examined a couple of bottles. Some had Barry’s name on the label, and some had Shana’s. Medication with her name on it and a recent photo in his closet? I wasn’t just bitter. This was definitely odd. I picked up a few more bottles and noticed the same doctor, Eugene Reynolds, had prescribed them all.

Just then, I heard the front door open. I quickly closed the drawer, but my hands were still holding four bottles! I put them behind my back.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Hey, Alex, what are you doing in here? This isn’t your room today.” Jennifer from wardrobe poked her head around the corner. “You’re in 43C.”

“Oh, really? Thanks. I guess I read the room rundown wrong!” I tried covering my surprise. “I’ll just head over next door.”

“I’m picking up Priscilla’s clothes. Oh, my God! It’s a miracle! They’re hung up!” She squinted and looked at me. “Did you do this?”

“I might have, yeah. No biggie.”

“Thanks. Hey, really shocking about Shana Stern, huh? Barry must be devastated; they were so close.” Jennifer was moving toward the sofa, and I was afraid she was settling in for a long conversation. Just then, a loud voice came booming over the speaker on the wall.

“Moving to item thirteen: Brad, you have a one-scene standby, and Alex, you have a two-scene standby. Moving to item thirteen . . .” I was saved by Herbie, our stage manager.

“Yikes! I gotta go get dressed. We’ll catch up later, Jen,” I backed out of the room, still holding the bottles behind me.

After stashing the bottles, I quickly changed into my wardrobe for the scenes I had coming up. I hadn’t even gone over my lines yet. Thank God I didn’t have too much to say. The writers had killed off my evil twin, so I wasn’t pulling double duty anymore. And I wasn’t in the middle of a big story line at the moment. This was good for me as a mom, because I had more time with Sarah, but not so good as the sole breadwinner in my family. I got paid by the episode, after all.

I pulled out my script and looked over the dialogue. Pretty straightforward. I was just about to call Jakes when I was summoned to set. I ran out the back door and gingerly stepped over a multitude of cables to get to my character’s living room set. My costar and newest on-screen love interest, Brad Lamont, was waiting for me.

“Let’s run this while the cameras move over,” he said.

“Good idea,” I agreed, and so we did—about ten times, which was nine times too many for me. I feel that running lines too much makes them stale, but a lot of other actors like to do it. It proved to be a good move today, though, because we did all our scenes in one take each.

I was leaving the set to go call Jakes when a bunch of the crew came over to ask me about Shana.

“What happened, Alex? Do the cops have any leads?” Mikey, one of the boom operators, asked me.

Cheeks, a camera operator who seemed to have a lot of information, asked, “I heard she had her throat cut in the haunted house at the Playboy Mansion. Is that true?” Word got around fast!

“Yeah, that’s true, Cheeks. But I don’t know about any leads, Mikey. Sorry. I’ll keep you posted, though. I promise.” I was desperately trying to keep my professional life and sleuthing life separate. Not easy. But I was happy to see that so many people cared.

I got back to the dressing room and was careful to lock both doors. I pulled the prescription bottles out of a drawer I had hidden them in and scanned the labels. Vicodin, oxycodone, Keflex and vancomycin.

I sat down on my sofa and looked at my scene rundown. I had a good three hours before working again, so I took out my laptop and turned it on. But first I had to call Jakes. I tried his cell, but it clicked over to his voice mail, so I left a message. I was going to call his office, then decided maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Sometimes his buddies and higher-ups were critical of my involvement. Better wait for his call. In the meantime, I could check out what these medications of Barry’s and Shana’s were used for.

I typed the names into Google and quickly got the results. The first two were most commonly used as painkillers, and the second two after surgery to combat infection. It was quite obvious that Shana wasn’t shy about going under the knife, but Barry? He looked fairly homegrown to me. And who would need so many pills? I knew a little about plastic surgery, but clearly there were all sorts of procedures being done today I didn’t know about. But I knew someone who did.

I changed back into my street clothes and checked over my lines to make sure I remembered what I would be doing in the next few scenes. Then I headed out the back door of my dressing room and quietly into 43B. I had to relock those drawers I had jimmied. The only problem was how do you do that once I’d opened them with a bobby pin.

I got down on my knees and saw it was a spring lock. I set the spring and shut the drawer. I pulled, and it held. Hooray!

I looked around to make sure I had covered my tracks, then retraced my steps back into my room and out the front door. As I was walking down the hall to the elevator I pulled out my cell and called Herbie, the stage manager.

“Herbie! I’m going to be out of the building for a little while. Call me if you need me, will ya?” Herbie is a doll and always has my back.

“Sure thing, honey. See you, ummm . . . probably right after lunch.” That gave me just about three hours. I could do it. Bel Air Estates was only twenty minutes from the studio. But I’d have to hurry.

Riley Scott is one of those friends you have who, if nothing else, is entertaining. One whom you never know what they’re going to do next—although, with Riley, it usually involved plastic surgery. She had something done after each marriage or live-in relationship ended, which meant she was going to the doctor every two or three years. If anybody could be my expert on plastic surgery, she could.

She had become a fabulously wealthy woman by combining settlements from each husband. After number six, she moved herself to Bel Air Estates. When her maid showed me to the pool, I expected to find her with a fresh bandage covering something.

Riley’s real name was Marianne Weber; she was born in a small town in Iowa. She had won a Miss Something or Other back in the day, and came to Hollywood to pursue the Dream. I had met Marianne in an acting class when we were both in our early twenties. She was a very sweet person, and we became friends and stayed friends, even after I started working as an actress and she didn’t. Riley was a very pretty girl, but she didn’t have much talent and wasn’t tall enough to model. As a result, she began reinventing herself. First she changed her name and got boobs and a nose job.