Hollywood Stuff (15 page)

“Doesn’t he have oompa-loompas for that?” asked Tim, nodding toward Jeb. “I expect a flock of servants to come out for inspection.”

Jane nodded. “Wrong movie, though. I like the way the help sings and dances in to that big entry hall for Annie’s inspection.”

“Yeah? Well, in our version, Daddy Warbucks has left capitalism for the Moonies.”

Jane followed Tim’s eyes and watched Jeb walk away from the limo. When Jane had lunch yesterday with Jeb, he had dressed in what Jane had assumed was normal everyday wear for a successful Hollywood type. He had worn appropriately fitted and name-branded blue jeans with a coffee-colored woven shirt and an earthy tweed sport coat, unstructured and casually elegant—the kind of jacket that was supposed to look like something from the back of the closet, but had cost a cool few thousand when purchased from a runway show in Manhattan or Paris. It was expensive in the most expensive way—made to look old school, casual and already comfortably worn.

Jeb apparently cultivated a different look for entertaining at home. Here, he wore a long, capelike maroon robe. Jane desperately hoped it was because he had just been swimming. If that wasn’t the explanation, it was troubling to think of this old boyfriend running around as a middle-aged Superman wannabe. Not quite ready for takeoff, he glided toward them, arms outstretched.

“So sorry I behaved so impetuously. I just pictured the scene—you two arriving back at the hotel and being overwhelmed at the thought of packing up and moving, so you’d say no to my invitation out of that travelers’ ennui,” said Jeb.

“Because we wouldn’t be refusing the invitation because we didn’t want to come,” Tim hissed through clenched teeth and a fake smile. “Because you scare the bejesus out of me,” he added.

“Thanks for having us,” Tim said out loud.

“I know you’ll be comfortable. There are bathing suits and robes in the guesthouse if you didn’t pack yours and you want to relax by the pool. We’ll serve dinner shortly. There are drinks and snacks. Ask for whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” said Jane. “I hadn’t expected such…opulence.”

Jeb shrugged. “
S and L
was very good to all of us. I didn’t spend a dime in those days. I didn’t even spend money on rent. I boarded with this old Hollywood couple and helped them out around their place, saved all my money, and invested wisely. Continuing to work in the business, I made some good choices and was lucky. The past few years, I decided it was time to enjoy my life here, accept it as my earthly reward…for the time being, that’s the reward we have, right?”

Jeb excused himself, saying he needed to check on dinner preparations. He suggested that Jane and Tim check out the pool house and see if there was anything else they required for their comfort. Watching him glide off, Jane was struck by her complete lack of knowledge of this man. The Jeb Jane lunched with yesterday was recognizable as the Jeb she knew in college. At-home-in-Hollywood Jeb was a horse of a different color.

“Does he seemed rehearsed to you?” asked Jane.

“Rehearsed? I feel like we just got a paragraph from his
People
magazine interview,” said Tim.

Tim went off to check out the guesthouse, promising to find something wrong with it so they could go back to the hotel.

“I am allergic to faux marbling,” said Tim, “and I have picked up on this creep’s decorating style.”

Jane walked over to the pool, hoping that Louise would be as open in her conversation as she was at the flea market. She jumped up from the chaise and apologized for her part in spiriting Jane and Tim away from the hotel. Jane waved it away and told her it was all for the best.

“ We probably would have been too tired to pack up and we would have missed staying in this lovely place,” said Jane. She noticed that Louise was wearing a different pair of sun-glasses. These were larger and covered more of her face. Since Jane sat to the side of Louise, she could look behind the dark lenses. The glasses, from that angle, could not conceal the fact that her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Detective Oh would advise Jane to wait, to sit it out and allow Louise to answer the unasked question, but Jane’s heart rose above her head.

“Is everything okay?” Jane paused. “Are you okay?”

“I miss Heck,” said Louise.

Jane counted the empty glasses on the side table. So far, all she knew about Heck besides the story of his illness and death was that he could write funny and he could write blue. Maybe Louise, in a margarita-infused moment of truth, would reveal something substantive.

“Would you like some iced tea? I’m obsessed with this orange ginger mint,” said Louise.

So much for an uncensored monologue.

“Have you talked to Bix yet? Is she home?”

“She left a message for Jeb. She said she’s on some pain medication that has her all doped up and she just wants to stay home by herself for now. Jeb sent one of his housekeepers over there with food.”

“Did she say how she got home?” asked Jane, considering the great Skye-Lou showdown over who was going to get to protect their wounded pal.

“Don’t know that. I’m guessing she just bypassed her room where she knew we’d all be hovering and took a cab,” said Louise. “Sometimes I wonder if we’ve done each other any favors by being so—”

“Jane,” Jeb called from the door of the house.

“So…?” asked Jane, hoping at last for an unrehearsed word.

“Protective?” said Louise. But it was a question, not a definitive statement.

Jane remained seated, holding up a hand to Jeb to indicate she’d be with him in a minute. Jane decided to give a little to get something back.

“I don’t have a large circle of friends. I’ve just got Tim, but I don’t know what I’d do without him. Unconditional support…isn’t that what we all want from our husbands and wives, but what we really get from our friends?” asked Jane, feeling like a traitor to Charley, who gave her enough rope to hang herself on a daily basis.

“Maybe,” agreed Louise, “but Heck needed more from us. He gave us everything he had. And I mean everything. Too much. And we didn’t know how to give him what he needed.”

“It’s always hard to lose someone. Especially hard to be the one to have to identify him,” said Jane.

“Truth is I barely looked at him,” said Louise. “When he jumped, he was wearing the robe he practically lived in that last year and these goofy dog slippers. I went into that room, when his idiot cousin wouldn’t go in, and they pulled down the sheet and I couldn’t focus on his face, I just wanted to see his feet, to look for the slippers. And of course they weren’t on his feet. I asked the technician where his bathrobe and dog slippers were and she looked at me like I was nuts, then I started babbling about how I didn’t want them or anything, it was just that I wanted to say good-bye to Heck when he looked like Heck and she just hustled me out of there. A few days later, a box was sent to the house, and it had the…” Louise stopped.

“They sent the slippers home,” said Jane.

Louise nodded.

Greg, carrying a notebook, and Rick, carrying a laptop, came out of the house. They nodded at Louise, and Rick gave Jane a vague smile. Greg looked at her like he had never seen her before.

“We’re going to work out here for a little while before the meeting,” said Rick, the taller of the pair. Greg sat down and began writing immediately in the notebook. There were single pages stuffed into the notebook and a few came loose and floated to the ground under the table as he set his material down on one of the wrought-iron tables next to Louise and Jane.

“Greg, what exactly are you working on now?” asked Jane.

“Movie script. Cable.”

“Is it appropriate to ask what it’s about?” asked Jane.

Greg shrugged. Rick sat down opposite his writing partner and opened the laptop.

“It’s not inappropriate at all,” said Rick. “It’s just exhausting to talk about. We’ve been through the initial meetings where we hashed it all out, then the pitch where we sold them on the idea, then we wrote the first draft, now we’re working on the second, and, I don’t know, it gets hard to describe, because it’s been through—”

“—the fucking wringer,” said Greg. “And I, for one, am sick of the whole thing. I’m telling Jeb that I’ve had it with this one. I’m out. He can—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Rick, “you quit. He can take that job and shove it.” Rick turned to Jane. “Greg quits every project during the second draft. Then I finish writing it and he’s so appalled at what I do that he rejoins the team before I can hand it in.”

“Get bent,” said Greg, standing and walking quickly into the house.

Jane bent over to pick up the napkins she had knocked to the ground while talking to Louise. Not seeing a trash receptacle, she stuffed them into her bag and stood up.

“Who is the show for?” asked Jane.

“Pilot for a cable network,” said Rick, standing and looking off to where Greg had disappeared inside.

“Didn’t you say it was a movie?” asked Jane.

“Back-door pilot,” said Rick. “I mean, it’s a movie, but if the response is good, they’ll pick it up as a series.”

“If it gets made,” said Louise.

“Yeah,” said Rick. “If.”

“Why is Greg going to tell Jeb he’s quitting?” asked Jane. “I mean, what does Jeb—”

“I’ve got to go make a call. Please excuse me,” said Rick. “I’ll probably see you at dinner.”

Rick did not seem to be in any special hurry. Jane noticed that everyone from the B Room had a California languor, a mellowness that cried out sunshine and palm trees. But he did keep his eyes on the door where his partner had disappeared as he picked up his own drink and laptop and headed toward the stairs that led to a coach house over the multicar garage.

Louise watched him go, then stood up herself.

“Later,” she said to Jane without any explanation, and followed Rick to the coach house.

They hadn’t seemed terribly worried about Greg’s angry departure. They all acted out their little dramas for each other so frequently that it wouldn’t surprise Jane to know that they took each other’s fits and pouts for granted. But Jane wasn’t sure she was supposed to be privy to this one. She took some papers out of her bag. Along with the napkins she had picked up from the ground, she had picked up a stray page that Greg had knocked loose from his manuscript. Jane had folded it and sandwiched it between the napkins to get a look at what Greg and Rick were working on.

Page eight of a script. Few stage directions—some quick give-and-take between a father and daughter. Jane couldn’t tell very much from the content of the scene. She noticed two things about the page itself, though. It appeared to be typewritten, not printed from a computer printer. The paper felt different. It had the heft and weight and texture of typing paper, heavy bond, rather than a multipurpose office megastore sheet of printer paper. And the name in the corner was neither Greg’s nor Rick’s. The shorthand identifier typed in the corner read:
“ Your Pal, Pete” / first draft/ H. Rule.

H. Rule. That would be Henry Rule. Heck. Why were Greg and Rick working from a first draft of a script written by a dead man?

Remember this when you describe your great idea to someone in the business…if they so much as raise an eyebrow or tell you one line is cleverer than the next, they’re going to want a writing credit.

—
FROM
Hollywood Diary
BY
B
ELINDA
S
T
. G
ERMAINE

“Dinner in a half hour? Okay with you and Tim?” Jeb called out to the pool from the doorway. He seemed to have given up on Jane coming into the house before the meal was served. Or he had just gotten too busy with Greg coming in to tattle on Rick or whatever was going on among the members of the B Room.

Jane went to check on Tim to see if he had made his peace with the guesthouse. It adjoined two small rooms that were the changing rooms for the pool. There was a separate entrance with a mailbox, a doorbell, and a welcome mat. Jane opened the door and surveyed the entire first floor, which was visible from the entryway. It was laid out like a one-level loft with a large open area surrounding a kitchen with a round table in its center. There were seating areas and reading nooks situated all around the edges of the house, but basically it was one open room. A stairway led to what Jane guessed were the bedrooms, and there was one enclosed room behind the kitchen which Jane assumed was a powder room.The house was bright and comfortable and cozy without being crowded.

“Tim, are you upstairs?” Jane called, opening the refrigerator, which was stocked with champagne, bottles of tonic, olives, some expensive cheese, and a few lemons.

“Where there’s tonic, there’s vodka,” said Jane. “How about a drink, Timmy?”

When Jane turned to face Tim, whom she’d heard come down the stairs, she was prepared for him to pepper her with more questions about why they were staying at Jeb’s and how could she agree to this, and so on, but she was not prepared to see her friend, serious and worried, holding up the large tote bag she carried as a purse.

“I brought this up to your room and the mobile fell out,” said Tim.

“I showed it to you. You knew I took it,” said Jane, pouring vodka for both of them and, not finding any toothpicks in the drawer, throwing olives into the glass. “Sink or swim, boys. What’s the deal?”

“Look at this thing,” said Tim.

Jane had only glanced at the mobile before Jeb had taken it and she had retrieved it. Both origami swans, well folded, made from pages of
S and L
scripts, were attached to the coat hanger with what appeared to be dental floss. A faint smell of mint came from the piece. The picture of Patrick had a crude hole punched in the top, probably made with the little scalpel, and the floss was poked through. Jane turned the picture over and saw that it had quotations, blurbs on the back. It was a postcard announcing the publication of the novel.

“What?” asked Jane, scanning the card. Then she saw what had turned Tim so serious. Patrick’s picture was on one side of his publisher’s publicity department postcard, superimposed over the book’s title, now unreadable, and the cover. On the other side, there were two blurbs on the top half of the card. Beneath the manufactured raves for the novel, someone had hand-printed in very tiny letters an additional quotation.

“Not since
And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie have you read such a horrific tale! Te n Little Indies! Screenwriters who think they can make it on their own without a major studio! Who will be next? Jeb Gleason, Louise Dietz, Greg Thale, Rick Stewart, Wren Bixby, Henry Rule, Skye Miller, Lou Piccolo? Or will it be special guest star Jane Wheel?”

“Time to call the police, Nancy Drew?” asked Tim, draining his glass of Grey Goose.

“Almost,” said Jane, taking out her cell phone.

As she dialed, she pointed out what intrigued her about the postcard. Yes, the hand-printed quotation that Tim had found so chilling was…chilling. Even more intriguing was something printed above the blurbs for the book.

Publication Date, December 1.

“This book isn’t out yet,” said Jane.

Tim took the card from her and turned it over to look at the author’s face.

“Poor bastard isn’t going to do many signings, is he?” asked Tim.

At dinner, Jeb kept the conversation going. It was an uphill task. Jane would have found it more surprising that a group of good friends, writing partners, and all-around show business funny people could be so quiet and surly, but as Tim kept reminding her by kicking her under the table and covertly pantomiming calling the cops, a cloud hung over the B Room.

Wren Bixby’s accident—or attack, depending on who was doing the spin—then the murder of Patrick Dryer at the flea market, had cast a pall. Even by the high Hollywood dramatic standards of this group, it had been an extraordinary few days.

“If Bix isn’t up to it tomorrow, someone ought to take Jane and Tim on a tour,” said Jeb. “I’d do it, but I’ve got that meeting.…They should see something besides a hospital room.”

“We’ve been to the flea market,” said Jane, “although that was cut a bit short.”

Jane tried to get a member of the group to look at her when she brought up the flea market. Louise poured water for herself, keeping a careful watch on her glass. Rick pushed sushi around on his plate and refused to make eye contact. Greg had not come to the table, although Jane could hear someone she assumed was Greg bumping into things in the kitchen and arguing with the housekeeper.

“Did you all know Patrick Dryer?” asked Jane. “Or was it just you who recognized him, Jeb?”

Jane might have asked the question, but the diners all looked at Jeb as if he had posed it.

“I had met him before, but I didn’t know him well,” said Jeb. “Rick, you knew him, didn’t you? From the gym or something?”

“No,” said Rick. “I met him at the health club once, but he was there as the guest of someone I didn’t know very well. He recognized my name when we were introduced and asked me about the B Room, said he knew all about our group. Passed himself off as a friend of Lou Piccolo’s. I didn’t know he was trying to sue Lou at the time. I guess he was trying to see if I knew.”

“I knew Patrick Dryer,” said Greg, who had come in quietly from the kitchen. He was holding a tumbler full of ice and lemon slices and what Jane sensed might be vodka. He was sipping it too slowly for water and with too much relish for it to be simply tonic. “Doesn’t anybody besides me remember old Patrick?”

“Drinking your dinner tonight, Greg?” asked Jeb, watching him make his way to a seat at the table.

“Patrick visited the set a couple times when we were on
S and L,
” said Greg, setting his glass down hard, splashing his drink onto the linen tablecloth. “In fact, I thought he and Bix—”

“He was visiting a family member who worked on the show,” said Louise. “I remember now. But he was a snob, didn’t want to talk to TV writers. He introduced himself as a novelist.”

“Anyone know what his latest book was about?” asked Jane.

The question got everyone’s attention, although no one had any answers.

Louise and Rick both said they had no idea that there was a new book. Rick shook his head. Jeb shrugged and said it was probably some thriller with a limp. “You know, the kind that purports to be all action and plot, but when you break it down, there’s no ‘there’ there. All a bunch of rambling thoughts in some know-it-all narrator’s head,” said Jeb.

“Interesting title, though,” said Jane.

“What was it?” asked Jeb. “And how do you know it?” Jeb had exchanged his maroon robe for a kind of tunic, open at the throat, but he stretched his neck when he asked the question as if a collar were choking him.

“Even hack novelists don’t deserve to be stabbed in the back with a—” Greg began, but was interrupted when Jeb’s housekeeper came in and announced that there was a gentleman at the door to see Mrs. Wheel.

“I forgot to mention that Professor Oh was stopping by,” said Jane. “He offered to drop off a manuscript of his new book for me to bring home to Charley. When he mentioned he was staying with family in the Los Feliz neighborhood, I gave him your address and he knew right where the house was, so…”

“No problem at all. Let’s invite him to join us, shall we?”

Oh entered the room in his professorial persona, all shyness and apologies.

“Please, I can see I am interrupting your dinner,” said Oh, backing out of the room.

Jeb, all host and director, pulled over a chair from under one of the massive windows and placed it next to his own.

“You must stay, Professor. We have too much food and too little to say to each other. We all know each other too well to entertain Jane and Tim here,” said Jeb.

“ We need fresh blood,” said Louise.

“That remark is in questionable taste under the circumstances,” said Greg, wagging a finger at Louise, who blushed and shook her head.

“Thoughtless. Sorry.”

“ We were discussing the murder victim from the Pasadena Flea Market today, Professor. Patrick Dryer. Have you heard about it?”

“My wife’s family has talked of nothing else. Her brother is an antique dealer who had a booth at the market. He was complaining that his business was dramatically reduced because of the murder. Even though we reminded him that a poor man lost his life, he was adamant that the police should not have closed the market and held everyone up in such a fashion as they did,” said Oh. “His complaint was that so many people were coming and going during the time of the murder, before it was discovered, that the police barricades after the fact were of no use.”

Jane arched an eyebrow and studied her old friend Jeb Gleason. He had successfully avoided any direct mention to Jane of what went on at the flea market and to her surprise, he now looked openly angry.

“Your brother-in-law is absolutely right. Anyone could have gotten in and out during the window of time that the murder was committed. I didn’t like the guy that much, I mean, as much as I knew about him, but no one deserves that and, according to the police, they didn’t find any suspects among the bargain hunters they managed to trap inside the market after the fact. Poo r ba stard.”

It was the worst piece of acting Jane had witnessed since she had arrived in Los Angeles.

“You knew the man who was killed?” asked Oh.

Jeb looked past Oh, fixing his eyes on some map that no one else could see. After a moment, he chose his path.

“Slightly.”

Jeb stood up from the table and looked deliberately at each member of the B Room still seated. Jane knew he was trying to convey a message, something he hadn’t had a chance to work out with them in advance. It was the silent communication a parent attempted with a child when someone entered the room about whom the parent had just been speaking. If Jane, for example, had just been mentioning in front of Nick that her neighbor had a big mouth and said neighbor walked in, Jane would give that look to Nick—that please-don’t-repeat-what-I-just-said-even-though-what-I-said-was-right-and-I-have-nothing-to-be-ashamed-of look—half pleading, half threatening, half guilty. That’s right, three halves. Jane, like every other parent, felt that two halves of any feeling, two sides to any question, were never enough to explain how one felt when faced with a child’s quizzical look.

Jeb’s look at his dinner guests had less pleading, more threat, but overall was a mute request for backup on whatever he was about to say.

“Patrick Dryer was a novelist who came out to Los Angeles hoping to be treated like something special. He thought he was ready for prime time immediately, couldn’t understand why no one hired him to write a movie or invited him to come on staff at a television show. He didn’t bother to ask anyone why things didn’t work out, either—he just began whining and blaming everyone in his path.”

“And suing them, as well?” asked Jane.

Jeb ignored Jane’s comment.

“Patrick never wrote a script on speculation, he never bothered to talk to an agent about what he needed to do to be taken seriously, he never bothered—”

“ To pay homage to Jeb Gleason and the B Room? Never handed over his pound of flesh, did he? And we don’t like it when someone tries to draw from our well without asking politely for a drink. Reminds me, may I have another drink? Please?” asked Greg, cutting between the table and where Jeb was standing, making a direct beeline for the bar.