Murder in a Hot Flash (3 page)

“One egg or two?” Mitch Hilsten was one of those superstars you always thought of in terms of both names. And his was the voice Charlie had thought familiar last night.

“Where'd you get eggs? I'm down to oatmeal,” Edwina said as if she were addressing an ordinary mortal.

“John B. and I went shopping last night, brought back a few good things for everyone.” He flashed his famous teeth. “Just visit his rig when he wakes up.”

He served them eggs over easy, cold smoked salmon, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and French bread. The sun managed to reach under the slatted overhang in time to warm them as they sat down.

Charlie fantasized telling her daughter and her best friend, Maggie Stutzman, that
the
Mitch Hilsten had once cooked her breakfast. Congdon and Morse did not handle his category of talent.

Except for the gleaming smile and powder-blue eyes, he looked all of a color in khaki pants and shirt, tan sheepskin jacket, California tan, and sandy hair. If this was an attempt to camouflage his identity and blend in with the desert backdrop, it was doomed to failure.

“Don't know how I can get any groceries,” Edwina complained. “I'm not speaking to John B. Drake.”

“Now that your agent's here, maybe she can straighten things out between you.”

“Charlie's also my daughter.” Edwina mopped up the last of her egg yolk with the crusty bread and washed it down with coffee before she answered his startled glance between them. There
was
an obvious lack of similarity. “We adopted her when she was a baby. Missed out on all the labor pains but none of the bills, heartache, or hassle, let me tell you.”

Charlie shrugged at Mitch Hilsten. He jumped up to bring the coffeepot from the grate. Known around Hollywood as private, reclusive, and rude—on the screen he came off as tortured, in need of mothering, sexy beyond belief, and even mildly intelligent. He was of medium height, which was tall for actors in the flesh. Still, Charlie was disappointed, as she invariably was with the big stars she'd met. They were so much smaller than on the screen, pathetically human—fearing they'd be recognized, terrified they wouldn't.

Edwina peeled another strip of succulent salmon off the bones. “First time you've ever invited me over. Couldn't be because of my lovely agent here, could it?”

He set the coffeepot down and blew on his hands pretending it was the pot rather than the question that was hot. “Tell you the truth, Edwina, I just had to see what that husky voice looked like. I could sort of see her in your trailer last night but she kept ducking behind you.”

They turned to Charlie for a response so she blurted out the first inanity that came to mind. “Like, there must be a sizable budget here … I mean … for a documentary. Uh … to have someone like you hosting.”

“I'm practically donating my time. I love this country. I'm a dedicated environmentalist and look for any excuse to get out here.”

Someone with your income can afford to worry about saving the wilderness for the beasties. Rest of us have to worry about keeping our jobs and feeding our kids. But she said, “I take it this is not a union project here.”

If it were, all meals on location would be catered and cast and crew would be put up in motels despite the number of tourists.

Hilsten pulled a slow grin. “Utah's a right-to-work state. Fantastic natural sets and nonunion conditions make it very popular with filmmakers. Even Cabot's working his crew without benefit of union.”

Still, it was hard to believe a star of this caliber, even if fading, would be camping on the ground and doing his own cooking. No hangers-on/assistants. Maybe he really
was
the recluse and outdoorsman the hype proclaimed. Or was this all just a way to keep his face before the fickle public eye?

Charlie recalled reading that he hadn't made any pictures the last few years and that the last few had done nothing spectacular at the box office. But, with the string of smashes from his younger days, Mitch Hilsten would be a household name for decades even if he never acted again. Wouldn't he?

For a guy he wasn't all that old but his name was often used in conjunction with “as good-looking as” and handsome was currently out of fashion in leading men.

“So, now that you've met her,” Edwina said, “what do you think?”

“Edwina!”

“Think I'll do the dishes. I've seen what you do with them.” He removed his sheepskin, rolled up his sleeves, and reached for their plates—then froze in mid-movement.

Charlie watched the grin in his eyes fade, form a dangerous squint like in
Deadly Posse
.

She turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was desert-camouflaged, military. But instead of uniformed soldiers, Gordon Cabot and another man sat in it, Cabot driving. As they drew closer, Charlie recognized the other man as Sidney Levit, the producer. Were things so bad he had to work with Cabot?

“Christ, it's a Humvee. He's not even on the road.” Mitch watched them pass as if stunned then started after them on foot, soapsuds clinging to the hairs on his arms. Neither Cabot nor his passenger seemed to notice anyone else, so deep were they in argument—hands flailing, shouting words Charlie couldn't quite distinguish over the roar of the Humvee.

“That man's got to be stopped,” Edwina said in a voice that chilled even her daughter. And Charlie had tangled with this woman all her life.

Chapter
3

“I have a return ticket on a plane leaving tomorrow afternoon. We're going to have to straighten out your affairs the best we can today,” Charlie told her mother at the door of the tent trailer. “And I have to call home. This is Saturday.” Libby would be out of school and on her own.

“When's the last time you came to see me?” Edwina turned, her hand on the latch. “You just got here.”

“If anyone should know what I'm facing back there it's you. Now I'm the one raising a teenager.”

“Well, I hope you do a better job than I did.” Edwina pushed Charlie aside and stomped off across hillocks of sand and scrub toward the concrete bathrooms. “There's a phone down at the Visitors' Center.”

Charlie's eyes teared again. But this time not because of flying sand. How long must she go on apologizing for her life and for Libby's?

She stood undecided behind Howard's Jeep. Should she try to talk to John B. now or walk down to the Visitors' Center and phone Libby? Charlie ended up doing neither because once again there was a shouting match going on behind the pile of rocks she'd climbed last night.

The bowl appeared smaller in natural light. Three teenage girls in heavy makeup draped themselves over various rocks on its far side to pout for a cameraman setting up shots. Charlie wondered if they were about to be devoured by alien animals. Two vans were parked next to the Humvee, off the marked roads as forbidden to all vehicles by forest service signs at each switch and turn.

But the real drama staged itself just below her where Mitch Hilsten, Sidney Levit, Scrag Dickens, a man Charlie recognized from pictures in the trades as John B. Drake, and Gordon Cabot formed a rough circle around yet another man—the latter up to his elbows in plasterlike material he was scooping out of a wheelbarrow and slapping onto a grouping of rocks at the base of the wall. Scrag stood to one side as if to break with the circle, arms folded, observing more than participating. Sidney, on the other hand, a man known for his patience in nursing along troubled projects, was obviously still strung out.

“Too much helicopter time for location shots we can do by miniature in the studio. And now this. Gordon, you are making no sense here.” Levit wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. The
Animal Aliens
producer was one of a fast-disappearing breed of old-timers in the industry—tall, thin, white-haired, with pale skin that shouldn't be exposed to a sun trying to get serious here. Even the spooky wind whirring through the pine needles was heating up. God, Charlie hated nature. She took off her jacket.

It seemed strange to see doc and feature crews mixing like this—even in animosity, sharing the same mesa top for location sites, not to mention the campground. There was a definite pecking order here and a feature would take precedence over a documentary.

“Location plus helicopter equals overbudget, drastic overbudget, Gordon,” Sidney Levit continued. “You are losing your mind and you are losing mine. And we're going to lose our shirts if—”

“Every project goes over budget, Sid. Everybody knows every project goes over budget. Everybody expects it except you.”

“Mine don't.” John B. wore a red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt, faded Levi's, and hiking boots. Charlie had heard or read something juicy about him once, a scandal of some kind, she just knew it. She just couldn't remember it. “I use what's available and don't spend megabucks messing with—”

“Look, Drake, much as I appreciate your puny efforts, not everybody can make a living off sticks and cutesy-pie bugs, know what I mean? These rocks are not right for the aesthetic tone I have in mind here.”

“They are
right
,” Mitch Hilsten said with the low menace that had given Charlie erotic dreams as a teen. “
They
are perfect. Nature
made
them that way.” Each statement brought the superstar a step closer to the little director. “You come
this
far. For
this
setting. And then you have to
fuck
it up.”

The men who had given way to Mitch's threatening approach grabbed for him now as he appeared about to take a swing at Cabot. Everyone but Scrag, who glanced up to grin at Charlie.

She crawled off her perch and walked away. Somehow, guy stuff had seemed more dramatic on the big screen when she was a kid.

Charlie found herself on a path carefully edged with rocks, an occasional low and unobtrusive sign pleading with her not to leave it and stomp on the fragile ecology.

It was springtime, May, and the morning warmed enough now for her to wish she could shed her last sweatshirt. She also wished she could shed the wash of guilt Edwina invariably induced. That's probably what had so discolored the scene she'd just left. Given her a funny uneasiness. Guilt or no, Mitch Hilsten or no, Charlie would be glad to get on that plane tomorrow.

Scrubby plants and bushes sported flowers, as small and understated as their faint fragrance. Charlie was aware of birdsong because it was so scant—not the usual morning cacophony you barely notice because it blends into a background noise like traffic. Each little trill or chirp or peep was distinct and alone and perfect here, spaced from its companions like the plants and shrubs along the trail, where the sand stretched tidy and clean between.

There were deer tracks though and, if you looked closely and had a mother like Edwina who made a point of such things, you could pick out the faint trails of the ubiquitous desert rodents.

Charlie came upon the stone and mortar parapet without warning. It was only knee-high. She backed away and sat in the middle of the path, head swimming with adrenaline, guilt and sexy superstars long forgotten.

Cavorting around on the expanse of mesa top, she hadn't kept in mind why this whole area was referred to as Canyonlands.

The drop on the other side of that parapet was a good thousand feet straight down.

If you threw a live body over that parapet, you'd never hear it splatter. Even in tall buildings in New York or mountain overlooks in Colorado, she'd had to sidle up to windows or cliff edges. Charlie never took a window seat in an airplane.

She wasn't sure if it was natural curiosity or that she always feared she might be missing something, but she sidled up to the parapet by scooting along on her tush. At the bottom of the first thousand feet was a broad benchland with a narrow ribbon of road. The road had another chasm running along beside it with another thousand-foot drop to a mud-cream river that looked about as wide as a string from here.

“Oh boy.”

Sitting down made the parapet more like chest-high. You couldn't trip over something chest-high and go sailing out into space and plummet in agonized dread for thousands of feet knowing—for what would seem like hours—the sure and final outcome.

Still, this was not a comfortable place for Charlie Greene. She slid back to the middle of the path before she stood.

“I don't want to startle you,” John B. Drake said behind her, and Charlie whirled to face the red-and-black-plaid shirt. “I assume you're the agent. I'm John Drake.”

“Yes, I'm from Congdon and Morse.” She wiped the sweat off her palm down the seat of her jeans and shook his hand. “Charlie Greene, Edwina's daughter.”

He looked as if he'd been born in the faded denims and solid hiking boots. He hadn't shaved yet and his dark hair needed combing. Guiding her companionably along the path, he said, “I assume you were headed to the Point.”

“The Point … uh, is it … are there sheer drop-offs and cliffs and—”

“The view,” he said, “is what's known as breathtaking.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

“Don't worry, the parapet must be two feet thick. About Edwina, there's no way to please the lady. I can't meet her demands and I don't really need her that much. But I don't want to hurt the old girl's feelings. Can you help me make her see sense?”

They had reached the Point, the curved bow of their mesa, anchored in a sea of chasm and plumbless shadow and yawning abyss on three full sides. Charlie turned carefully away from the breathtaking view. “I'm here to help Edwina, Mr. Drake. If I could see a copy of her contract, perhaps we can negotiate something acceptable to both sides.”

“You're not going to keep up this farce about Congdon and Morse representing Edwina Greene?”

“How about Charlie Greene will represent Dr. Greene?”