Hot Secret (2 page)

The legs of one tilted-back chair hit the floor with a thud. “Shit, man, not again,” assistant director Hank Murdock muttered as he lumbered to his feet. “Come on, guys. Let’s go find him.”

“Find him?” Molly repeated. “You think he’s taken off or something?”

“The street is crawling with broads and bars and bedrooms. Greg’s not known for overlooking any of those opportunities, especially when they come in combination,” Hank said in weary resignation.

“Does that mean you’re going to have to shut down production for the night? Should I tell Veronica she can go back to her hotel?”

“Not yet. Tell her to hang loose. We may get this last shot in yet. Jerry, you check Veronica’s trailer
just to be sure he’s not still in there. That’s the last place any of us saw him. Maybe he stuck around to recuperate once Veronica got her claws out of him.”

“Don’t panic, man,” Jerry Shaw said soothingly. “It could be he’s with Daniel setting up the next shot.”

“I’ll check, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Molly walked with Jerry as far as the star’s trailer. “You all don’t like Veronica much, do you?” she said to the young production assistant. He was only twenty-three and a recent UCLA film school grad, but this was his third film with Gregory Kinsey.

“She’s making Greg crazy. That’s not good for him and it’s not good for the film. Other than that, I don’t much think about her one way or the other.” For his age he managed an incredible air of bored cynicism.

“Why do you suppose she gets to him? Surely, he’s worked with other difficult actresses.”

“Beats me. I’d have told her to take a hike the first day, but Greg wouldn’t budge. He wanted her on this picture no matter what. Fought the studio and everyone else till he got his way.” Jerry rapped on the trailer door and waited. When no one answered, he peered inside.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered, the color draining out of his face. He leaned against the side of the trailer and drew in a couple of deep breaths before shouting at the top of his lungs. “Hank, guys, get the hell over here.”

“What is it?” Molly said, trying to peer past him. Jerry blocked her way. He wasn’t quite big enough, though, to keep her from spotting one dungaree-clad
leg at an awkward angle. She recognized Gregory Kinsey’s well-worn cowboy boot. She swallowed hard and forced her eyes away. “Shouldn’t you get inside and do something?”

“Sweetheart, there’s not much you can do for a guy who’s got a bullet wound in the middle of his head.”

CHAPTER
TWO

Chaos erupted as word of the shooting spread along Ocean Drive like news of free drinks. Crew members abandoned cameras, lights, and card games to join the shocked, tearful vigil outside Veronica’s trailer. Despite Jerry’s conviction that Gregory Kinsey was dead, Hank Murdock shoved the young production assistant aside and went into the trailer to check for himself. When he emerged, his own complexion was ashen.

“Greg’s dead. He’s been shot,” he announced, his voice sandpaper rough and unsteady. He shoved his wide, workman’s hands into the pockets of his well-worn jeans, but not before Molly saw how they trembled. She was every bit as shaken by Hank’s obvious dismay as she had been by the sight of Greg’s body sprawled on the floor.

From the first day on the set Hank Murdock had impressed her as the kind of solid, reliable man
anyone would want around in an emergency, the kind of man who would be unfazed by any calamity. His calm, easygoing personality was the opposite of Greg’s more volatile, creative frenzy. They’d made good partners. Now one of them was dead and the other obviously distraught.

Molly wondered if there was a prayer that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. There was one school of thought around the set that Veronica could drive the most stable among them to consider ending it all. Molly thought, though, that the director would have aimed the gun at the actress.

“Shouldn’t someone call the police?” she asked, since Hank seemed, for the moment at least, incapable of making decisions.

“Done,” the off-duty police officer assigned to the production responded just as sirens began their nerve-racking whine a few blocks away. He was already trying to move people back from the door without letting them get too far out of sight. His partner was doing his best to establish a perimeter around an area meant to close in potential suspects and eliminate curiosity seekers.

With her own options quickly diminishing, Molly edged away from the two officers. She scanned the rapidly growing crowd, looking for Veronica, but there was no sign of the actress’s glamorous attire amid the crew’s denim and T-shirts. Surely the woman hadn’t downed so many vodkas that she’d missed the sight of people streaming toward her trailer.

Torn between finding Veronica and calling her boss to report they were likely to be caught in the
middle of a public relations nightmare, Molly prayed for a pay phone somewhere between the trailer and the outdoor café where she’d left Veronica. She could probably borrow a cellular phone from half the status-conscious people along the beachfront street, but that would mean having her conversation overheard by everyone who’d crowded around. There were also cellular phones galore in the production trailer, but the prospect of being inside that confined space with a murderer on the loose nearby made her stomach churn.

It hadn’t been all that many months since she’d discovered a body in the card room of her own condominium. The murderer had later taken her hostage and left her to die in a sweltering storage shed. The claustrophobic memory was still spinetinglingly fresh. She opted for a pay phone half a block away, searching for a quarter and Vince’s home number in her purse.

The call to Vince elicited a stream of obscenities. Since she’d barely said “Hello,” she guessed she’d caught him in the middle of his Saturday night seduction ritual. No wonder he’d insisted the number be used only in dire emergencies. The flow of invective and the rustle of sheets stopped abruptly when she casually mentioned the murder. That, at least temporarily, cooled his ardor. She’d always wondered what it would take.

“Murder!” Vince repeated. “What the hell are you talking about? What murder?”

“Actually, there’s a slim possibility that it might be suicide,” she said demurely. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Molly, who exactly is dead and precisely why do you think they’ve been murdered?”

The determinedly patient note in Vince’s voice suggested that he’d finally recognized just how close she was to hysterics. Even her unobservant boss could tell that she was really not happy about being one of the two people to find Gregory Kinsey with a bullet through his head.

“Molly? Are you there? Molly!”

She sighed. “I’m here. Gregory Kinsey’s been shot. He’s dead. The police are on the way. That’s all I know.”

“Shit!”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“Who did it?”

“Vince, I’ve already told you the sum total of everything I know. The murderer’s name was not included. Don’t you ever listen?”

They both knew the answer to that. Vince’s attention span was only slightly lengthier than a toddler’s in a toy store. Countless spurned women could attest to that.

“Stay there,” he said. “Whatever you do, do not leave until you know exactly what’s going on. If anyone from the media asks, issue some sort of statement. We regret, et cetera, et cetera. You know what to say.”

She noticed that Vince did not offer to leave his comfortable bed to join her.

“I’ll think of something,” she said bleakly. She couldn’t imagine what. The movie’s publicist would probably have more than enough to say for all of
them, and none of it was likely to improve the Miami area’s image among production companies.

How did you put a positive PR spin on the murder of one of the nation’s rising Hollywood talents while he was filming in your own backyard, so to speak?
Miami Vice
had left the country with a slightly skewed impression of murder and mayhem in Dade County, but at least those deaths had been fictional. This one was distressingly real and likely to be splashed across the front page of every newspaper and tabloid around the globe. It would be a helluva blow to local tourism, and the Miami area film industry alike, unless the police could prove that the murderer was someone close to Greg, an import rather than one of the area’s own criminals.

Once she’d listened to more advice and warnings from her boss, Molly dropped another quarter into the phone and dialed her neighbor, praying that Liza was home from whatever Third World country she was currently championing. She responded on the first ring with a breezy, cheerful greeting.

“Liza, it’s Molly. I need a huge favor. You aren’t going out tonight, are you?” The question wasn’t absurd despite the lateness of the hour. Liza Hastings marched to her own particular social drummer. She thought nothing of joining friends at midnight to plan strategy for one of her causes or at dawn to tote a picket sign in front of some business they found offensive.

“Are you kidding?” Liza said. “I still have another five thousand save-the-rain-forest flyers to label and stamp. I’m surprised my tongue hasn’t dried
out. I wonder if all that glue has calories. I need to drop three pounds by next weekend, if I’m going to wear that slinky silver dress to that world hunger benefit performance.”

“Liza!” If Molly didn’t stop her now, Liza was likely to go off on some convoluted dissertation on world hunger. Her sharp tone apparently registered.

“Sorry,” Liza said, immediately contrite. “What’s the favor?”

“Brian is due home from his soccer game any minute and I can’t get away from the film location. Can he stay at your place?”

“If he can lick stamps, he can stay. How’s he getting home from soccer? Do I need to pick him up?”

“No. Michael or one of the parents is supposed to drop him off after they all go out for pizza.”

“Michael, hmm?” Liza had taken an inordinate interest in Molly’s relationship with the tall, dark, and handsome detective who’d investigated the murder in their Key Biscayne condo. The casual mention of his name had clearly placed her curiosity on full alert.

Hoping to forestall a lengthy interrogation, Molly warned, “Liza, I do not have time to discuss Michael O’Hara or my social life.”

“Oh?” Liza said, all innocence. “I wasn’t aware that you had a social life or that you could link such activity with Michael O’Hara in the same breath. Does that mean things have changed since I left for Guatemala last month?”

“It doesn’t mean a damn thing, except that I am at my wits’ end and I do not have time for this,”
Molly snapped, suspecting she was wasting her breath. Liza was not known for staying on track or taking a hint, no matter how directly or waspishly it was phrased.

“What’s happening over there? Is it exciting? Maybe I should take a break from all this disgusting glue and bring Brian over to watch. I know it’s late and all, but it’s not a school night, right? Besides, I wouldn’t mind getting a close look at Gregory Kinsey. From what I’ve seen he’s quite a hunk.”

“Not anymore,” Molly mumbled.

“What?”

“He’s dead.”

There was an instant of stunned silence. Then, her tone suitably sober, Liza said, “Gregory Kinsey is dead? What happened? Molly, are you okay?”

Molly responded to the genuine note of caring in her friend’s voice. “I’m as well as can be expected considering the fact that we are about to have police and reporters swarming all over the place, and I don’t have answers for any of them. Not that the police are going to expect answers from me, but the reporters might, and if I don’t have them, Vince will kill me.”

“Molly, you’re babbling.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she retorted. “Liza, I’ve got to run. I have to get to Veronica. Greg’s body was found in her trailer. I don’t think she knows about it yet.”

“Oh, my God. Do you suppose …”

Molly hung up without supposing a thing. She had to find the actress and warn her that all hell was about to break loose. Then she had to figure out
how she could help to stem the tide of all the negative publicity.

Unfortunately, a survey of the outdoor café where she’d left the star less than twenty minutes earlier proved fruitless. Either Veronica was suspiciously aware of the fatal shooting in her trailer and had vamoosed to safer ground—Miami International Airport was a hub for all those tempting Latin American locations that didn’t have extradition treaties. Or she’d gotten tired of waiting for her call and had simply gone back to her hotel in a snit. Either way, the police were not likely to be happy about the absence of a woman likely to be a prime suspect.

Rather than wasting time trying to guess how Veronica’s mind worked, Molly skirted the crowd outside the murder scene and went back to the production trailer. The same people were gathered inside. Now, though, a palpable tension had replaced the boredom.

Hank Murdock, his usually affable expression grim, tried to pop open a soda, only to drop the can and send a dark spray all over the pale green carpet. No one moved to wipe it up. Hank just reached for another can. Jerry Shaw sat at the table and drummed his fingers in a nervous rhythm. Molly sat down beside him.

“You okay?” she asked.

He shot her a disbelieving look. “Do I look okay? The country’s greatest film director since Hitchcock has just been murdered by a conniving bitch and you ask if I’m okay? Are you nuts, lady?”

Hank glared at him. “Shut up, Jerry.”

Jerry’s face crumpled. “Jesus,” he murmured over and over. “Jesus.”

“Did you find Veronica?” Hank asked Molly.

She shook her head. “There was no sign of her at the café. I was hoping she’d come back here. I doubt she ventured back to her own trailer with all that commotion outside.”

Jerry muttered a cynical remark under his breath, but Molly chose to ignore it. “Maybe I should call the hotel,” she said. “If she’s back there, she should be told what’s happened.”

“As if she didn’t know already,” Jerry muttered darkly.

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Hank said. “Taking pot shots at each other won’t help anybody right now. We need Veronica if we’re going to bring this film in, so watch what the hell you say to the police.”