Bird, Bath, and Beyond Read online

  Barney was fussing a bit, so I walked over and gave him a peanut to keep him sociable. During that time Mannix got himself into “character,” stepped back, and looked to Bostwick for some direction. Bostwick stood and stared at him.

  “So?” he said.

  Heather Alizondo rescued him. “Action,” she called from the doorway.

  Mannix knew what that meant. He took a breath, straightened his shirt, and took two steps toward the spot where Bostwick’s team had marked the killer’s stance. Not being a professional actor, he had to watch the floor for his mark, but he hit it, which was all that mattered.

  The producer was taking his role seriously. He reached into his pocket for the gun, which he found fairly easily. It had been conspicuous in his suit jacket just out of sheer weight. His face took on an angry snarl and he pointed the gun straight out, then remembered the correction Bostwick had given him and held it at his right hip, angled up severely.

  “Put down the gun!” Barney yelled. He dropped the peanut as he spoke.

  That might have been what startled Mannix, or it might just have been his general awkwardness in his role, but he looked toward Barney and not Gary as he pulled the trigger on the gun. The problem was that instead of the click we expected to hear, we got the loud report of a live round being discharged as Mannix’s gun, handed to him by a detective of the New York Police Department and guaranteed to be unloaded, shot a bullet when it shouldn’t have.

  Gary hit the floor face first, and for a sickening moment I thought Mannix had shot him. It must have seemed that way to the producer too, because Mannix looked at the gun and flung it to the floor. “I didn’t do that!” he shouted.

  Bostwick looked absolutely astonished, but his immediate reaction was to reach into his pocket for a pen, which he used to pick up the still-smoking pistol from the trailer floor.

  “A lot of people want you dead, Dray,” Barney said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luckily, Gary had simply fainted and fallen to the floor because he’d been facing away from Mannix and the last thing he’d expected was for the gun to go off. Bostwick did notice a hole in the roof of the trailer that he called yet another team of forensic experts to come and examine. He said they would be at the set in a half hour.

  Mannix, relieved that he hadn’t killed a stand-in (the unions frown on that), sat down on the leather sofa and got an assistant to bring him a scotch without asking Bostwick whether it would be all right. Gary came around after a minute or so, and the group of us sat him on one of the other leather seats in the trailer. He was pale and asked for water; Mannix’s scotch got there first. There is a hierarchy in Hollywood and it is not pretty.

  Heather, after her boss and Gary were squared away, offered to show Bostwick her video of the event so he could see from her angle exactly what had happened. They huddled in a corner watching the footage on Heather’s camera monitor. (Fun fact: The instant video monitor for movie cameras was invented by … Jerry Lewis.)

  I tended to Barney, who seemed none the worse for wear after the loud noise. Hearing a gun go off anywhere can be startling; when you’re in a small enclosed space it can seriously mess with your hearing for a good couple of minutes. So I couldn’t hear what Bostwick and Heather were saying as they screened the footage.

  Mannix, however, was within earshot, and he was constantly stating his innocence in the shooting of Gary, which had in fact not happened, mostly because Mannix was a lousy shot. Gary, on his part, sipped the water that came after a few minutes and looked at the bullet hole in the roof of the trailer.

  “This job isn’t worth it,” he said. I was probably the only person who heard him and I did not argue the point.

  Bostwick walked away from Heather’s monitor with his hand to his chin. “It’s not what happened here in the trailer that’s the problem,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s the time between when I left the station and when I walked into this trailer that someone either switched guns or loaded the one I had on me. That’s what I wish I had on video.”

  He didn’t have it on video.

  “Look, I have an agitated client here,” I said. Barney had just made a perfectly normal squawking noise that I was using as an excuse. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t take him home?”

  Before Bostwick could answer, Heather stepped in front of him. “Barney’s still got scenes to shoot today,” she reminded me. “I’m going to need about two hours of his time.”

  “When can you start?” I asked.

  She looked at Bostwick, who shrugged. “Don’t leave the studio,” he told her. “Aside from that, I don’t need you right in this trailer.”

  Heather turned back toward me. “Give me an hour,” she said.

  I nodded. “Okay, but I’m going to take him onto the sound stage if that’s okay. I think he’s spent enough time in here, probably for his life.” I reached for the cover to put over his cage.

  “The stage is being lit,” Heather said. “It’s better if you’re there, actually, so they can work around Barney being in the cage on set.”

  “How are you going to work around Dray not being there?” I asked.

  “We got all Dray’s stuff shot already. I just need some reaction shots of Barney.”

  Reaction shots? Did she expect the parrot to look different on command? But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my showbiz life, it’s never to argue with an artist or, worse, someone who thinks she’s an artist.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll get him there.” I put the cover over Barney’s cage, something you do whenever transporting a parrot. On the way to the door, which admittedly wasn’t a long walk, I passed Bostwick and said, “See you, Joe.” Actually I hoped I wouldn’t see him again because that would mean I’d be staying on set after today, but why bring it up when he clearly had a lot on his mind?

  “Yes you will,” he answered, which seemed ominous.

  Instead of heading directly to the sound stage, though, I took Barney to my car and settled him into the back seat. I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere, but I did want just a little chunk of time when there wasn’t anyone else bustling around. Film sets are insanely difficult places to think.

  And I had a good deal to think about: Barney was working on a TV series that might or might not be ending thanks to the death of its star. That death had been brought about with Barney in the room, and while he didn’t seem especially traumatized by the whole thing, he had strangely picked up a number of new phrases when that simply shouldn’t have been possible.

  Dray’s murder had also meant the kind of suspicions and tensions that follow any company of entertainment professionals had been multiplied by a noticeable degree. People were looking at one another in ways they had not before, wondering who might have been the one to walk into the trailer and pull out a gun. The rest were assuming this gig was coming to an end and scrounging around for the next one.

  But what I found myself circling back to, no matter what track my train of thought had started out on, was the idea that my parents were breaking up their act. That was such a staple in my life I found it hard to imagine it would not be continuing. The act was something I’d known literally all my life, and now instead of being a stable unit, Mom and Dad were becoming two separate individuals, one of whom would probably be living in my house all the time.

  I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle that.

  We hadn’t really had time to discuss it the night before. The call for Bostwick’s botched reality show version of Dray’s shooting had been for a very early hour, and that meant I had to get to sleep early last night. Once I’d taken the call, despite my wanting to iron out all the plans for Mom’s retirement and Dad’s transformation to a solo performer, I had asked for a day to process the information and gotten myself into bed. I hadn’t actually slept all that much, but it was the intention that mattered.

  All this rumination wasn’t getting me anywhere, and I was in fact sleepy from the night before. So I decided to act
like a mature adult business owner and call my office. Consuelo, as ever, answered on the second ring. Not the first, not the third. Always the second.

  “I was wondering when you were going to call in.” One of the disadvantages of caller ID is that for people like Consuelo it has eliminated the need for something so prosaic as hello.

  “Things have been a little busy,” I told her. I filled her in on the morning’s laugh-filled agenda so far and asked her what was new at the office, which I remembered as a place I used to frequent but now couldn’t clearly picture.

  “The woman from Giant Productions called and is interested in Bagels,” she reported. “The dog, not the food.”

  “Yeah, I sort of figured that. Do they want to see him?”

  “They do. You want to take a ride over there and schedule something, or do you want me to do it?” Consuelo never asks as if she was unwilling or unhappy about taking care of the errand; she just wants to know which one of us will be handling it.

  “I’ll go. But call Miriam and tell her to make sure Bagels’s schedule is free, okay?”

  “No problem. Um…”

  Oh, damn. “I’m sorry, Consuelo. I forgot to call Doris about the other cat, but I’ll do it right now, I promise.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Consuelo said. She didn’t want to seem like she was putting pressure on her boss, which was wise.

  “No, I will. I’ll call you right back.”

  I had Doris Kappel’s number in my contacts, but I took a minute before calling just to figure the right tactic. On the one hand, I wanted Consuelo to have a fair shot at being an agent. On the other, I didn’t want my client’s owner to feel I was foisting her off on my “assistant” so I wouldn’t have to handle both her cats. It was a tricky situation.

  I’ll admit it; I chickened out. I called Consuelo back.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m not comfortable trying to separate the two clients between us.”

  “I understand,” she said. Not even a tinge of resentment in her voice.

  “But here’s what we’re going to do. The very next cat owner who gets in touch with us gets you, not me. The sign on the door says Powell and Associates. You’re Associates. Okay?”

  Consuelo’s voice lightened, even if she wasn’t elated. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Kay.”

  “I mean it. The very next cat. Keep me informed.” We hung up.

  There was no problem with splitting things that way. The key was to get Consuelo established as an agent, and the best way to do that was to start her off with a fresh client, not someone we’d worked with before. I told myself that it was a better idea and that I wasn’t actually a sniveling coward.

  To be fair, it actually was a better idea. That last part …

  I drove over to the Giant Productions and held another five-minute meeting with Harriet, Barney knocking around in his cage on the floor next to my chair, during which Bagels the sheepdog was confirmed for an audition the next day. Bagels, whose main talent was looking goofy while being pretty smart (but not brilliant—he was no Bruno), was up for the part of Roger, a big shaggy dog who was going to befriend a bear in a family movie, thus teaching small children that bears can be friendly creatures tamed by dogs. Rated PG because, for all I know, the bear uses a mild curse word.

  When we got to the Dead City sound stage again, only the back half of the morgue set had been put up; without Dray, there would be no need for the front part. This was to be a number of shots of Barney in his cage, presumably reacting to various stimuli, both good and bad. I guessed.

  Heather was not yet present, but the crew was working on the lighting and I did notice a boom mike being prepared for use, which was interesting. Barney could be recorded at any time and didn’t have to be in sync with any special audible cue. Why Heather would have called for a mike to pick up whatever he felt like saying was puzzling, but directors are nuts, and in my experience it’s best to just give them what they want.

  Mandy, the actress who had been playing the freshly deceased but actually still walking around zombie, was standing by but out of costume. The slab on which she’d been lying the day she shot the scene with Dray was set up, and that was as far as the set went today. Perhaps Heather wanted to get some longer looks at the scene as a whole, but without Dray in it, the shot would look weird. Maybe she wanted to get some reactions from Barney and still have Mandy’s voice on the track. There wouldn’t be any way to edit Dray seamlessly into the overall scene without some pretty expensive computer-generated imagery (CGI), which television doesn’t usually like to do because remember how I said it was pretty expensive?

  I put Barney on a prop table not near the craft services area. The smells from the food probably would have driven him crazy, and the baked goods there weren’t going to serve me all that well either.

  There wasn’t much to do until Heather decided the set was ready for shooting, which probably wouldn’t be all that long from the looks of things. Another couple of lights in place and we’d be all set to film a bird being himself. Playing herself, I guess. Mandy wandered over from the other side of the stage as I took the cover off Barney’s cage and let him look around for a while.

  “Hey,” she said as if we’d ever spoken before. She looked into the cage. “Hi, birdie.” She was about to extend a finger when I held up a hand.

  “Give him a minute to acclimate,” I said. “He might decide your finger is a peanut, and you don’t want that.”

  Mandy laughed daintily. “No, I don’t.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Mandy Baron. I don’t think we met the other day. You’re an agent?”

  I took her hand. “Kay Powell. No, things were pretty hectic that day. Yes, I’m Barney’s agent.”

  “I’m sort of … between agents right now. Are you looking for clients?” Mandy was very good at looking cute when she wasn’t being a zombie. She could use it on men or women too.

  I shook my head. “All my clients are animals,” I said. “The kind with fur or feathers.”

  Mandy laughed. “I’ve met the other kind. Too bad. Know anybody who’s looking? I work pretty steady.”

  “I’ll ask around,” I said, although I don’t really deal with agents for humans very much. “Pretty tense around here, huh?” Change the subject so the actress doesn’t make another pitch.

  “I know. What happened to Dray.” She shook her head at the senselessness of it all. “I mean, I thought he’d gotten himself back together, you know?”

  I won’t say I didn’t consider the option of pretending I knew what she meant, but I felt it wouldn’t actually give me any information at all, and what would be the point of that? “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Mandy turned her attention away from Barney, whom she’d been watching intently, to me. “I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Yes you should, I thought. “I don’t think it’s speaking out of school now. Is it anything you didn’t tell Sergeant Bostwick when he questioned you?” If it was, I was heading to the front of the class. If not, there was no harm in telling a nobody like the parrot’s agent.

  “He didn’t question me,” Mandy said. “The other detective did, and I think he asked maybe one question, like, ‘Who killed Dray?’ The guy doesn’t talk much.”

  True enough. “What did you mean, Dray had gotten himself back together?” Best to keep the conversation on topic.

  “Drugs,” Mandy said. She tried to be casual in the way she moved back to peer into Barney’s cage, but as an actress, she was in the business of conveying emotions and being noticed. Right now she was exhibiting nervousness. “Dray had supposedly cleaned up. You remember.”

  Of course I did not remember, so I looked at her blankly for a moment. It’s one of my best things. I’d ask my mother what she could find online about Dray using drugs later. Mom is a whiz on the Internet.

  “When Dray went into rehab? It was on all the shows.” Mandy searched my face for signs of recognition, so I gave her one despite my not having any.
Recognition. “See? He went in for alcohol, they said, but I’m pretty sure it was cocaine. Anyway, he came out and they said he was doing well, but I guess he relapsed.”

  Before she could ask me to recall anything else I hadn’t paid any attention to, I asked, “What makes you say that? Do you think the shooting had something to do with drugs?”

  “There were people on the set the last week or two,” Mandy said. She was making such a show of playing with Barney that it almost convinced me until I realized Barney was asleep on his perch. “Not all the time. Someone would be close to Dray as soon as a take was finished. Walk over to a corner and just huddle up like they were trying to decide how to break through the defensive line, you know?”

  I was pretty sure that was a football thing. I nodded. Later I’d wade through what she was saying and try to figure out exactly what the subject matter might have been.

  “It wasn’t the same person all the time,” Mandy went on. Once given to talking she needed little encouragement to keep going. Actors love nothing better than attention. It makes a little more sense when the actor, like my client base, is not a human. “But it wasn’t like there was a new one every day.”

  “Did you ever see them doing drugs?” I asked. It had been so long since I’d heard my own voice I decided to try it out and see if it still worked. And sure enough, it was in perfect operational order.

  Mandy actually glanced at me for a moment with a face that didn’t quite make it to disdain but stopped somewhere around pity. “Of course not,” she said. “Nobody’s going to get high right on the set; there are too many unknowns and eyes on you here. But there were plenty of trips to the trailer, and it wasn’t simply because that’s where the comfy bed with the drink holders in the frame is kept.”

  I tried not to speculate on how Mandy knew about the drink holders in Dray Mattone’s bed. I had sunk so deep into the none-of-my-business zone here that plunging further seemed to invite the danger of drowning.