Docketful of Poesy (27 page)

Roberta didn’t answer my knock right away. When she
did come to the door, she wore a pale blue bathrobe, her hair
wrapped in a towel, her face greasy with a facial treatment.

“May I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

Warily, she backed up, letting me inside the room. As
she closed the door after me, I looked around curiously. The room
looked as if it had been ransacked. The bed was unmade, closet
open, drawers open, suitcases turned upside down, clothes strewn
everywhere. But apparently it was supposed to look that way because
she simply scooped up the clothes piled on the only chair and threw
them on the bed, gesturing for me to sit.

“Unfortunately, unlike you, I don’t have one of the
royal suites,” she remarked, jerking the coverlet over the sheets,
and curling up on the bed with her tumbled clothing.

“Home team advantage,” I said, quoting Peter. “You’ve
got a nice view of the mountains though.”

She snorted.

So much for the small talk. I said, “I wanted to ask
if we were shooting tomorrow?”

Roberta just stared at me for a long, long
moment.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“You know damn well there’s something wrong,” she
said. “You’ve been saying since practically day one there’s
something wrong.” Her eyes glittered behind the too-cute
glasses.

I made sure I kept my tone nonconfrontational. “I’ve
been talking to Todd. He said this is your first film.”

“And you already know that, too.” She reached over to
the side table and picked up a pack of cigarettes. I hadn’t seen
her smoke before, but then I’d never seen her look quite so nervous
and haggard, either. “Just get to the point, Grace.” She lit up,
and took a defiant drag.

I said, “I knew you didn’t have a lot of experience
as a producer, but Todd says you’re actually an actress.”

“That’s right. Why, is there some law that an actress
can’t move on to producing or directing?”

“Don’t get mad at me. I’m not the one who got you
into this,” I said.

To my astonishment, her face twisted up and she began
to cry. She cried soundlessly, but it was painful to watch for all
that. I didn’t know what to do. I rose, moved over beside her on
the bed, and put my arm around her shaking shoulders.

“What is it? Roberta?”

“Mona,” she said. “Maybe she would still be
alive…”

“If what?”

She shook her head, pulled away from me, going over
to the window and staring out at shadow mountains and the starry
night beyond. After a couple of deep, shuddering drags on her
cigarette, she got control of herself.

“I tried to reach our office in New York. I’ve been
trying for days. Even before Mona…” She stopped, struggled for
control. “The number is disconnected. I thought it was a mistake at
first. I called a friend in New York and asked her to go drop by
the building—the address I had. She went there, and it’s a giant
empty warehouse. There is no Kismet Production Company.”

It took a little effort to absorb that. Although I’d
been convinced there was something screwy with this project, I
hadn’t really considered the possibility that, from beginning to
end, the entire production of
Dangerous to Know
might be one
gigantic fraud.

“
But all the money,” I said. “Where
did that come from? I’ve even received a paycheck. A nice
one.”

“There was a company checking account,” Roberta said.
She wiped her eyes. “But it’s been closed. Our company credit cards
have been cancelled as well.”

“Maybe you better start at the beginning,” I
said.

She nodded, struggled for control. “There was an ad
in
Variety,
” she began.

Gradually, in between my interrupting with questions,
Roberta got the story out. It was like something out of Sherlock
Holmes. Roberta had auditioned for the part of “Producer” in the
screen adaptation of an obscure nonfiction book by an equally
obscure American schoolteacher living in the English Lake
District.

“So there was never any real film production,” I
said. I wasn’t surprised by then, but it was still
disappointing.

“But that’s the thing,” Roberta said. “We really
were
making a film.”

“There was film in the cameras?”

“What part of
really making a film
do you not
get? We had the authority, and the money, and
the film
—to go
ahead and begin producing the movie.”

“We?”

“I suggested Miles for the project—we’d known each
other, worked together—I knew he needed a project right away, and I
knew I could…trust him. Mr. Green interviewed him, and then hired
him as the director.”

Mr.
Green?
Why had they bothered? Why not just
leave it at Mr. Smith and be done with it? “This Mr. Green —” I
began.

“I’m sure he was an actor like me. In fact, I know he
was, because I’d seen the ad he responded to in
Variety
the
week before the ad ran that I answered. I just never put two and
two together. Maybe I didn’t want to.”

“So did Miles know this was all make-believe from the
start?”

“But it wasn’t,” Roberta told me. “That’s what you’re
not understanding. We were supposed to go ahead and make the film.
I told Miles the situation, and he was even more determined than I
was to really make this film happen. We both needed it to be real,
and there was no reason why it couldn’t be real. We had the money
and the resources. We had the green light.”

No pun intended.

“But the project had been chosen for you already, and
it was my book.”

“Yes. There was no negotiating on that.”

I tried not to be offended that she had apparently
tried. The realization that my work—and I—had been deliberately
targeted was a creepy one. “Who hired Walter Christie?”

“Mr. Green.”

Which explained how Walter knew that Roberta and
Miles weren’t really in control of the production. Inexperienced as
he was, either he knew enough about the way the business ran or
something must have triggered his suspicions. Which made me wonder
if Walter had not suffered an accident because he knew too
much?

But then why not eliminate Roberta and Miles as
well?

Too many bodies? Or because the film had to be made.
Why? That was the real question. Why did someone go to the trouble
of pretending to film my book?

“You, Miles, Walter, and Todd were all hired directly
by Kismet Production Company. Was there anyone else who was hired
directly by the mysterious Mr. Green?”

She shook her head. “Miles and I hired everyone else.
We had a limited budget, but we were able to get a small crew
together. We held auditions for most of the remaining roles.” She
got choked up again. “I called Mona’s agent. We’d worked together
before and I knew she’d be perfect.”

The implications were overwhelming. For a few moments
I just sat there trying to take it all in.

“So…when you originally asked me to take part in the
production…?”

She wiped her eyes again. “We were told to try to get
you on board one way or the other. To offer you any amount of
money.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” She met my eyes. “Honestly. I don’t
know. If I had to take a guess…I’d have thought it was all some
ruse to meet you.”

“To
meet
me?” I was thinking about Walter’s
accident. Surely that hadn’t been to insure that I would join the
cast? But no. There was no guarantee that I would join after
Walter’s death. And, in fact, I hadn’t any intention of signing on.
Not until the production had moved to the Lake District.

Roberta said, “At first, yes. I thought it had to be
some big romantic scheme to meet you. I’ve seen a lot of movies
like that. I honestly expected Mr. Green to show up that first day
you visited the set. But then later…I began to wonder.”

“After Walter died, you mean?”

She shook her head. “No. When the decision was made
to film on location over here.”

“But that decision was made after Walter’s accident,
wasn’t it?”

“No.” Her expression was wry. “That decision was made
within a few hours of my telling Mr. Green that you couldn’t take
part in the project because you were moving back to the Lake
District. I was supposed to offer you the consulting job again, but
then Walter died, so we just turned it into a script doctor
position.”

“I
really
don’t understand,” I said.

I was thinking aloud, but Roberta said, “Join the
club.”

“When did you find out the phone to Kismet
Productions had been disconnected?”

“Yesterday morning. I hadn’t been able to get through
all week. I kept getting an answering machine, and then I kept
getting the message that the machine was full. Yesterday I learned
the phone had been disconnected.”

“And you found out the company bank account had
closed…when?”

“This afternoon. Pammy and I went out to pick up a
few things. My card was declined. So was hers. I called my bank—of
course they weren’t open, but according to the computer system—our
account is closed.” She struggled against another flood of tears,
and I didn’t blame her. The entire production crew was essentially
stranded overseas. Never mind the destruction of the dreams of all
these people who believed they had jobs but really didn’t, the
“company” probably owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in
equipment rentals, salaries, hotel, catering, and the like.

It was unbelievably cruel. Unbelievably cold.

“What does Miles say?” I asked.

Roberta stubbed her cigarette out. “He doesn’t
believe it. His credit card doesn’t work either, but he’s convinced
it’s all just a big mistake, and everything will be ironed out on
Monday. Tomorrow.” She smiled bitterly. “Miles has always been good
at seeing what he wanted to see.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. We can’t keep
filming. We can’t keep running up bills.” She rubbed her forehead
wearily. “Maybe Miles is right. Maybe everything will be back to
normal tomorrow.”

“Maybe so,” I said, and I sounded as unconvinced as
she did. Rising from the bed I went to the door. “Thank you for
telling me.”

“You don’t have to say it. I know I should have told
you the minute weird things started happening.” Her eyes met mine
briefly.

“That would have been the day you first auditioned
with Mr. Green.”

“True,” she admitted. “I’m sorry anyway. Not that
it’s done you any particular harm.”

That remained to be seen. I opened the door, and she
said suddenly, “Oh, I just remembered. I don’t know why it would
matter, but Tracy was hired by Mr. Green as well.”

Chapter
Twenty-One

T
racy was not in her
room.

Or if she was, she was sleeping very deeply. I
checked my watch. It was now nearly midnight. Too late to pay Sally
a visit. Actually, too late to pay anyone a visit—if I wanted to
hear anything beyond a lot of understandable cursing. I returned to
my room and sat down at the table with all my notes and books. In
addition to my scribbles on Laetitia Landon and her contemporaries,
there were my efforts at charting everyone’s movements regarding
Mona’s missing flask.

I stared at them but my brain felt too worn out to
process anything more that night. I had a chocolate from the open
box, chewing slowly.

On one point Roberta had clearly been wrong. It
seemed certain that all this chicanery had not been in aid of
meeting me. Not for romantic purposes, not for any purpose. In
fact, I didn’t believe it was about me at all. I was pretty sure
this entire murderous farce was entirely about Peter.

After all, the book was as much about him as me. And
there were just too many strange coincidences. The two bumbling
attempts on his life by the February brothers. His odd, angry
behavior—and his demand that I return to the States at once. His
refusal to explain anything. And then his trip to France—surely to
see Catriona. Even Walter’s fatal accident might have been an
attempt on Peter’s life. Maybe someone had followed him to the
States.

True, that seemed a little farfetched; but one thing
for sure, whoever had set up this elaborate film production hoax
had money to burn—or believed any amount was worth it to…to what?
Eliminate Peter? Apparently so. But why?

Because this person hated Peter?

Well, that seemed a given. But these events showed
more than simple hatred. Because how hard would it have been really
to kill Peter? A sniper with a rifle could have taken care of it
within minutes. Clearly that was too simple. This was a cruel, cold
personality who deliberately manipulated and ultimately cheated an
entire group of people, completely innocent bystanders, leaving
them stranded and legally liable on foreign shores.

Cold, cruel, but imaginative. Very imaginative. The
whole idea of this fake film was so weirdly involved and risky. It
was almost like a game.

A game
. I thought of the beautiful antique
chess set in Angela Hornsby’s living room. The engagement present
from her fiancé, the man who loved to play chess. An antique
Turkish chess set belonging to a man named George Robinson.

If those photographs on the piano were of this George
Robinson…and Peter happened to recognize Robinson…

I tried to remember the man in the photographs, but
there had been nothing memorable about him. Just another bland,
innocuous-looking man in late middleage.

A gray little man. The kind of chap you never took
notice of.
That was how Peter had described Gordon Roget, the
fence who had double-crossed them in Turkey. The man who had stolen
the Serpent’s Egg, and left Peter to rot in a Turkish prison.

Gordon Roget.
G.R.
George Robinson.