Docketful of Poesy (18 page)

I didn’t bother arguing with her. “How many films has
Kismet produced?”

“Oh for —! Look it up,” Roberta said. She rose. “I
don’t have time for this. We’ve both got to be up at the crack of
dawn.” She turned away from the table, then stopped and faced me.
“Look, Grace. I apologize for telling the kid before I talked to
her aunt. It just came up. She
asked
if we were hiring any
extras. It seemed natural to mention it to her. There’s no point
talking to her aunt if she wasn’t interested in the part,
right?”

I suppose it made sense from Roberta’s standpoint.
Seeing my hesitation, she said, “For God’s sake, let’s not you and
me argue. This project is tough enough without that. I made a
mistake. It won’t happen again. We’ll treat the kid with—er—kid
gloves, I promise.”

“All right,” I said. “I don’t want to argue
either.”

“I think it’s all this caffeine we’re drinking,”
Roberta offered. Her smile was wry. “They put something different
in it here.”

I nodded politely. I couldn’t shake the peculiar
feeling, as I watched her on her way out of the bar, that beneath
the anger—and then the sudden about-face and apology—Roberta was
frightened.

I awoke to find the lights on. I was lying in bed, my
copy of
Letty Landon
lying open on my chest. I blinked up at
the dark beams, listening, trying to remember what woke me.

The muted bang of a closing door.

Not my own door. Not next door either. Not…close by.
Perhaps the sound came from downstairs?

I glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. I smothered a
yawn. All was quiet—the heavy silence of late night. Not so much as
a floorboard squeaked.

The last thing I remembered, I’d been reading about
Landon’s broken engagement to John Forster, the noted Dickens
biographer. Landon’s enormous popularity, combined with her casual
friendships with men—she had several male mentors—made her a target
for jealous and slanderous tongues. And not all of them female. Her
engagement to the much younger Forster had been the first
casualty.

I closed the book, set it on the night table, and
turned out the lamp. Light from the lamppost in front of the inn
cast a golden fan against the wall. I watched it quiver gently with
the draft stirring the draperies.

As often happens, once jarred awake, I couldn’t relax
enough to fall back to sleep. I wondered how Peter’s BADA dinner
had gone, and whether he was home and in bed by now. I wondered
again about that funny feeling I’d had about Roberta. And I
wondered about the timing of that stolen car bearing down on Peter,
Walter Christie, and I as we happened to be standing on Highland
Avenue.

It had been so close. Even another second would have
meant the difference between life and death.

I tossed around in the blankets, fluffed the pillows,
then rose and went to pull the drapes closed all the way.

For a moment I lingered at the window gazing down at
the cars in the car park below. Frost gilded the grass and the
roofs of the vehicles. All except one. The silver rental car that
Tracy had been driving the night before. There was no frost on its
roof.

Interesting. Had the door I wasn’t sure I’d heard
closing actually been the car-park entrance to the inn?

Well, if Tracy had hoped to pay a surprise visit to
Peter, tonight the surprise would have been on her.

Chapter
Fourteen

“C
hocolate chip scones,” I
said. “If I didn’t love you before, I do now.”

“I knew the secret lay somewhere near the top of the
food pyramid,” Peter handed me a cup of tea.

Friday morning found me sitting in the window seat of
Craddock House watching the Kismet Productions cast and crew slowly
assembling outside Rogue’s Gallery.

“I’m supposed to ask you again whether you’ll
consider letting us film inside Rogue’s Gallery,” I said.

“
You’re not serious.”

“I’m not. They are. I promised I’d ask.”

He was shaking his head.

I said, “It’s not necessarily a bad thing—look at the
other day. The film crew’s presence kept those goons from going
after you—or at least, their mistaking Todd for you, did.”

He smelled of aftershave and freshly laundered cotton
as he stood there buttoning his shirt. His eyes were thoughtful.
“Did your pet plod manage to bring in the Februarys?”

“I didn’t hear from Brian yesterday, so I’m guessing
no. And why do you both refer to each other as ‘mine’? I’m not in
the slave trade.”

“Bit touchy this morning, are we?”

I sniffed. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last
night.”

“No?” He picked up my scone, took a bite, and put it
back on my plate. “That’s two of us.”

I barely heard him. I was staring at my scone. It
sounds ridiculous, but it was the first time I remembered him
taking a bite from food on my plate. It was such a simple and
ordinary moment of domesticity that I actually felt…moved.

Peter had already moved away in search of his wallet.
He was getting ready to deliver two rosewood Rococo armchairs and
some other items to Angela Hornsby’s estate and would be out all
day. Which was probably a good thing with the film crew back on the
premises. It would save wear and tear on everyone’s nerves if Peter
were safely out of the way for most of the day.

“Is it all right if I use your computer this
afternoon?” I called.

“What’s mine is yours.” I couldn’t help noticing how
unconsciously sexy he was in those jeans and the blue cambric
workshirt that emphasized the worldly blue of his eyes. “I’ll see
you later tonight, will I?” He stooped and kissed me.

And then kissed me again.

“Oh, yes,” I said.

*****

The sunshiny promise of the morning held, and filming
went smoothly that day—at least from what I understood. To be
honest, I spent a good portion of the morning closed up in Rogue’s
Gallery trying to find out what I could about the Kismet Production
Company.

The problem was there were several Kismet film
companies. There was a Kismet Media Group, which was a talent and
brand management company; Kismet Entertainment Group, which was an
indie film production company that seemed to handle everything from
comic books to video games; and there was Kismet Films, based in
New York, which was a feature film and commercial production
company.

Kismet Films initially looked promising, but I had
trouble believing that the company that had produced several
critically acclaimed documentaries, shorts, and corporate image
pieces was one and the same as the haphazard assembly I was part
of.

There was a Kismet dance production company, a Kismet
cleaning service, and several Kismet import companies.

None of them looked to be my Kismet Production
Company, but I couldn’t completely rule them all out at first
glance. I was going to have to dig a little deeper and perhaps make
a few phone calls while being careful not to give my suspicions
away in case I truly was unduly paranoid.

I Googled and Yahoo’d “Miles Friedman”, and there was
no question that he was the genuine article. The genuine article
being a second-string director with many more romantic conquests
than film credits. But he did have film credits—and some of them
were quite good.

I had less luck tracking Roberta down. Twelve pages
into a search for “Roberta Lom,” and nothing relevant was coming
up. I tried The Internet Movie Database and there were one or two
mentions of an actress named Roberta Lom. No pictures. It was
possible that Roberta had started out as an actress. She was known
to Miles and Mona, so she couldn’t entirely be a fake—and maybe
movie producers, unlike movie directors, didn’t get a lot of
press.

I decided to try to find out what I could from Mona
and some of the other cast members and then try searching
again.

And I could always ask Brian for some help. Not that
he ordinarily approved of my sleuthing, but being in law
enforcement he probably endorsed paranoia on general
principles.

When I had done about all the online detecting I
could accomplish in one sitting—and eaten all the chocolate chip
scones—I went downstairs to observe Cordelia’s theatrical
debut.

Her first scene basically consisted of crawling
around the outside of Rogue’s Gallery, peering in windows, and then
getting knocked out by Norton using what looked like a lethal lead
(but was actually rubber) pipe. No dialogue was required, unless
Cordelia’s quite realistic yowl of pain counted.

Of course I could have told her from having been
knocked out myself on one memorable occasion that there’s no time
for yelling when you’ve been struck unconscious, but it did make
for a nice dramatic moment.

Undeterred by the camera pointed her way, and the
number of people watching her, Cordelia, in character as Jacinda,
did a convincing job of slinking along the wall of the building,
scowling ferociously into the unlit windows. I suppose I found her
performance especially amusing since she was pretending to be her
cousin Allegra. Al and I had initially got off on the wrong foot,
and diplomatic relations hadn’t improved over the years.

Collapsing dramatically into the flowerbed, Cordelia,
cushioned by daffodils and crocuses, won a round of applause from
the crew. Miles pronounced himself happy with this take, and
because of the cast members taking tea with Lady Venetia Brougham
later that afternoon, we were all excused.

I found myself being driven back to Innisdale by
Cordelia in a sporty little black Jag convertible, which she
informed me had been a present from her parents upon her acceptance
into drama school.

“My reward for keeping out of their hair,” she told
me with that coolly adult cynicism that always took me aback.

“But you’re still staying with your great-aunt on
weekends?”

“Off and on,” she said cryptically, punching the
accelerator so that we might zip around yet another long, dawdling
tour bus on the wide country lane.

I felt my hands bunching into fists, and deliberately
smoothed them out. Cordelia, hair whipping around her head, threw
me a quick grin as though reading my mind.

She was actually not a bad driver, though she was
definitely a bit of a speed demon. We flew down the road, the
countryside passing in a green-gold flash of grass and sunlight and
daffodils.

“How do you like drama school?”

“It’s all right.” She shot me a quick sidewise
glance. “They all take themselves far too seriously.” She combed
strands of hair out of her mouth. “I suppose it’s all about the
slow and painful decay of the middle class, isn’t it?

“Isn’t what?” I asked carefully over the howl of wind
in my ears.

“Oh, you know. Other people imposing their values.
What it’s really all about is art and passion and being true to
yourself. Or it should be.”

Ah.
I called upon the experience of years
spent teaching adolescent girls. “Are you seeing someone?” I
asked.

She blushed. And she was not a girl given to
blushing. Flushing a painful and awkward red when she tripped or
dropped something or said something she didn’t mean to say…yes. Not
this delicate flush of color in her thin face. “His name is
Douglas,” she told me, and I could see the struggle it was for her
not to smile when she spoke his name. “I call him Dougie.”

I smiled, too. “And he’s planning to be an actor as
well?”

“Oh no,” she said blithely. “He’s done with all that.
He’s an instructor at the school. And a playwright. He’s writing a
play for me. It’s called
Wild Cherries
.”

I swallowed hard and managed not to say the first
thing that occurred to me. “Is he?” I got out weakly. “Have your
parents or…your aunt met him yet?”

“Auntie Vee?
” She burst out laughing at the
idea, and I chuckled feebly with her, wondering what the hell I
should do about this—if anything. Cordelia was nearly eighteen; she
was my friend, not my student or daughter or little sister. And
maybe cherry-flavored Dougie was a perfectly decent, not very old,
unmarried instructor.

Right. And maybe Peter and Brian would one day be the
best of pals—and Catriona would act as my maid of honor when I
married her former lover.

We were nearing the environs of Innisdale, and
Cordelia slowed from suicidal to merely reckless speed. As we wound
through the narrow village streets, she continued to chatter about
what Douglas thought about this and that—he was certainly an
opinionated man—but while I ended our drive knowing how Douglas
felt on such vital topics as Oprah’s book club, architecture and
urbanism, and sexual politics, I still had no idea of how old he
was or whether he was married.

I knew better than to ask outright. In fact, as I had
surmised, the less curiosity I revealed about Douglas, the more I
heard. None of it reassuring.

Cordelia followed me into the inn and upstairs,
sitting on my bed while I did my makeup and then changed into a
skirt and sweater.

“Is your aunt really hoping someone is going to make
a movie out of one of her books?” I asked, checking copper earrings
against my Ralph Lauren cable knit cardigan.

“Partly. Partly I think it’s just an excuse to see
you,” Cordelia said, rising to try on a pair of my earrings.

“Why would she want to see
me
?” I questioned
suspiciously. Not that I didn’t believe her. I’d been caught up in
several of Lady Vee’s schemes, and I suspected she viewed me in the
light of a never-failing patsy. In fact, my friendship with
Cordelia began when her great-aunt coerced me into acting as a sort
of chaperone-companion the previous summer.

“No idea,” Cordelia said cheerfully. “Could I borrow
these?”

“Not until you return the amethyst ones you
borrowed.”