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  My mother put her hand over mine, which was unfortunate because my hand was holding a forkful of cake and that meant I had to stop eating. “No, Kay,” she said. “What it means is that your dad is going to go out on his own, and I’m going to stop doing the act.”

  “Why?” I asked, and she withdrew her hand. More cake for me.

  “I’m tired,” Mom said. “I don’t feel like going back out on the road anymore. The audiences are getting smaller, and frankly I’m not that interested. It was different when it was the three of us, and even in the last few years when Dad and I were working steadily, but the cruise ships have just started to wear me out. I don’t want to be onstage anymore.”

  Now you have to understand the way my family operates. When I’d told my parents I was going to give up performing to pursue veterinary school (which thankfully hadn’t worked out at all), you would have thought I’d told them I was repudiating happiness, oxygen, and the human race. Well, I was choosing animals over humans, but it wasn’t that definitive.

  So hearing my mother say she didn’t want to be on a stage again was devastating. I actually stopped eating cake for a moment and stared at her. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Very sure.”

  I looked from parent to parent and the seriousness of their expressions was enough to give Ingmar Bergman a sense of dread. “Are you two splitting up?” I asked, but I’m not sure my voice was actually audible. To my ears I sounded like a client I’d once had who was up for a live-action version of Cinderella. He was going to play one of the field mice. Convincingly.

  But my parents must have deciphered my squeak because they both burst out laughing at the same moment. “No!” my mother shouted, and I heard a squawk from the bedroom; she must have awakened Barney. “Where did you get that from?”

  “I just can’t imagine one of you onstage without the other,” I said.

  They exchanged another of those glances, but this one was more personal and less ominous. Dad walked over and gave me a hug. “It was hard for us to imagine too,” he said. “We spent the whole night walking around in the park trying to work it out. But what it comes down to is that your mom really isn’t happy on the ships and I’m not happy without an audience. So this is the only way we can figure to satisfy both of us.”

  “We’ll be apart a lot of the time, and neither one of us is pleased about that,” Mom said. “There are a lot of details we haven’t decided on yet. But we thought we should let you know before Dad booked himself onto a cruise and suddenly he was gone and I was here.”

  The frosting was a little too sweet, I decided. This cake was good, but for earlier in the day. I put the rest back into the fridge. “Well, I certainly would have had some questions.” I still had a few, like whether Mom was planning on staying in my house full-time now. But perhaps this wasn’t the exact time. “Do you have your first solo booking, Dad?”

  I’d thought it was a safe thing to ask, but apparently I had inadvertently stepped on a live wire. My father winced a little. “We just decided,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to get the word out yet.”

  Rarely have I been as relieved to have my phone ring. The ID suggested the caller was Heather Alizondo, which I thought was unusual, but I answered. Heather immediately apologized for calling at night, which was also unusual. Most directors, even in television (which is a writer-producer’s medium), couldn’t care less whether they’re disturbing you at an inopportune time.

  This was not one, and I told Heather that. “Good,” she said. “I did ask you if Barney could be on the set tomorrow?”

  Was she just calling to remind me? “Yes you did, and yes he can,” I answered. “What time do you need him?” I was still puzzled, since this would usually be the task given to an assistant director or, more likely, the producer’s assistant.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Heather answered. “We’re going to need him a little earlier. Can you do seven in the morning?”

  That was early, and would require me leaving home somewhere around the crack of dawn. I swallowed. “Sure,” I said. “Are you trying to get all of Barney’s work in early so you can shoot around Dray the rest of the day?”

  I heard Heather hesitate. “No, this isn’t a production company request. I’m asking because Sergeant Bostwick requested we all be in Dray’s trailer at seven. He wants to reenact the crime.”

  Maybe just a little more cake.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Okay, so the vic was standing here, according to the forensics.” Detective Sergeant Joe Bostwick stood in Dray Mattone’s trailer, which had been sealed from the time the police had left two days ago until now and smelled like it. Working from a diagram he held in his hand, Bostwick was sizing up the space. Between him, another detective named Baker, who seemed never to speak, and the camera crew—Bostwick had asked that Heather film the reenactment for reasons I didn’t understand—it was a tight fit before I’d been instructed to place Barney’s cage “exactly where it was that day.” That was something of a test for me because I didn’t remember precisely how everything had looked. I had been a trifle distracted by the blood on the carpet, which had now dried to a very unattractive brown.

  Barney’s habitat had been positioned on the table about six feet from the trailer door. It’s important to know that just because actors operate out of trailers, these are not your typical RVs. Stars like Dray would be given a double-wide version that wasn’t ever going to be moving while he was inside it, so it was outfitted with considerably more luxury than a person might expect in a home on wheels.

  Everything was compact or stowable, to be sure. But the seats were leather, the countertops were granite, and the carpet, at least before the brown stains, had been tasteful and luxurious. If you didn’t know better, you’d believe you were in a classy if tight hotel suite, not a mobile home. Television stars lived well. If it hadn’t been for the bloodstains on the carpet, the piece of wood on the table that had ricocheted from the gunshot, and the yellow police tape, I would have gladly moved in here and left the house for Mom and Dad. The chemical toilet was probably a negotiating point.

  Now Dray Mattone wasn’t living at all and that was why we were gathered here. Bostwick was sizing up the scene like a director. I almost expected to see him frame the area with his hands to better duplicate what it would appear like on the screen.

  “He’s got his back to the door,” the detective went on. Baker, standing to his right and positioned toward the door, looked at it as if the killer was about to walk in and announce himself. Alas, that didn’t happen, so we went on with Bostwick’s little stage play. “He’s doing something near the table, but I don’t know what.” He looked at a sheet attached to a clipboard in his hand. “Was there anything found on the table?” he asked no one in particular.

  Nobody answered him. Baker simply didn’t react at all, perhaps assuming the question must have been meant for someone else, because Bostwick never seemed to want anything of his colleague. I didn’t answer because I had no idea what might or might not have been left on the table, and the film crew, each doing a job, wouldn’t have answered if someone had asked whether the trailer was on fire. They were engrossed.

  It didn’t matter anyway because Bostwick pointed at the clipboard and nodded. “Right,” he said, answering his own question. “There was a butter knife and a plate, like he was about to eat something.” Amazing, Holmes! The powers of deduction were staggering!

  Then Bostwick turned toward the trailer door and asked, “So where is Dray Mattone?”

  It was now clear that the sergeant had lost his mind. I was doing my best to be invisible in the far corner from the door, and still I believe my gasp was audible from anywhere in the room. If Bostwick thought Dray was going to walk through the door, why did he think he’d set up this reenactment in the first place?

  And then, son of a gun, Dray Mattone walked into the trailer.

  All right, that was how it seemed on first glance. The man who entered was
Dray’s size and had his build. His hair was colored and fashioned just as Dray’s had been when I’d met him on the set two days before. He walked with the same tightly controlled gait. His face was serious but showed the ability to be softer and more frivolous.

  But it wasn’t Dray.

  “This is Dray’s camera double,” Heather told Bostwick.

  The man stuck out his hand toward the detective. “Gary Norwood,” he said. “I stand in—stood in—for Mr. Mattone when they were lighting the set.”

  Heather led Gary in by the shoulders like a proud mom. “He’s too modest by half,” she said. “Gary did almost all of Dray’s stunt work as well.”

  “Not that much,” Gary said, eyes down. “Dray did his own stunts whenever he could.”

  “You don’t have to keep that fiction alive anymore,” Heather told him. It was odd the way she was promoting Gary to the gathering, most of whom had certainly known him a while. “Dray didn’t like to do stunts and you are very good at them.”

  Gary just grinned goofily and kept searching the floor for something.

  “Okay,” Bostwick said, impatiently waving Gary toward him. “All I need you to do is stand here where we think Mattone was standing when he was shot. You can do that?”

  “I did it all the time,” Gary answered, his voice a little more combative. Do not dare impugn his ability to stand still!

  “Good. Right here.” Bostwick pointed to the spot. “Face that way.” He indicated the wall away from the trailer door. “Now let’s see how that looks.” The detective stood back and took in the scene. David Lean on his most detail-obsessed day couldn’t have looked more intense.

  He pronounced himself pleased and motioned to Heather, who was directing the documentation process. They spoke quietly for a few moments and then she walked back behind Dan, the guy with the Steadicam, which was the only professional camera that would have fit in this tight space with this many people and gotten a decent image.

  Personally I thought a uniformed officer with an iPhone could easily have handled the filming here, but Bostwick appeared to be making his demo reel in case Heather wanted to recommend someone as a director on a cop show. Bostwick might not solve the case, but he was going to have the absolute best crime scene video ever shot.

  “Ready when you are,” he said to Heather.

  She looked a little surprised and answered, “We’re rolling. Do what you need.”

  Bostwick must have expected to hear “Action!” or something, because he kept looking at Dan the cameraman for a moment, shrugged, and went back toward Gary. “Okay,” he said, “you’re Dray Mattone.”

  “I’m Gary Norwood,” the double replied.

  Bostwick waved a hand dismissively. “I know. But for these purposes, you’re Dray Mattone, okay?” Gary nodded, although I’m not sure he had understood. “So you are alone in your trailer except for the bird, right?”

  “Can’t kill a zombie!” Barney insisted, just to make sure everyone knew he was there.

  “Yeah,” Bostwick said absently. He turned back toward Gary, pointing. “So you’re pointed in that direction and you’re doing … what?”

  Gary stared at him. For a while. “I dunno. What?” he asked.

  “I’m asking you.”

  Gary, obviously very confused, looked around. “What do you want me to be doing?”

  “That’s not the point,” Bostwick told him.

  Gary looked from face to face, no doubt searching for some assistance. Because I was not bright enough to avoid eye contact (as the others were), he settled on me. “Do you know what he means?” he asked.

  How to say this in actor-speak? “He wants you to ad-lib,” I said.

  The poor kid looked absolutely terrified. “I’m a stand-in,” he hissed at me. “I don’t know improv.”

  “Fake it.”

  He looked at the table in front of him. “Should I use the stuff on the table?” he asked Bostwick.

  “Do whatever you think Dray Mattone would have done” was his answer, and I expect it was not the one Gary had hoped to hear.

  Gary examined the table, which still held a plate and a dull knife. “Okay,” he said as unconvincingly as I’ve ever heard it said. He picked up the knife and stood there holding it as if waiting for a piece of toast to pop so he could butter it. Naturally, he looked down at his hands while holding what I’m sure he considered to be props.

  “According to the angle of the bullet, his head was up when he was shot,” Bostwick said. “Hold up your head.”

  Immediately Gary’s neck snapped upward and he stared directly ahead. “Is this better?” he asked. I wanted to give the kid a cookie and tell him it would be okay in a little while.

  “Well, now you’re not doing anything,” Bostwick noted.

  Heather finally came to poor Gary’s rescue. “I’m here to direct, Sergeant,” she said. “I don’t know anything about the forensics you’re trying to do. Why don’t you concentrate on that and let me get the whole thing on video for you? I promise we won’t miss anything.”

  Bostwick, having been reminded he was a police detective and not Martin Scorsese, nodded brusquely. “Okay, kid,” he said to Gary. “You just stand there and relax. Mattone didn’t know anything was coming.”

  “Is something coming?” Gary squeaked.

  “Not really, no.” Heather jumped in before Bostwick could frighten the young man any more thoroughly. “This is just a run-through, Gary. We’re not doing anything for real.”

  That seemed to satisfy the stand-in, who just stood (because that was literally his job) and waited. Bostwick looked at Heather, who nodded. The detective then gestured toward the trailer door.

  “Now in accordance with the angle of the shot, this man is the proper height for the shooter,” Bostwick said to the camera, apparently believing he was now the host of a true crime TV show. “If we can see how the crime went down, we might be able to get a better idea of who might be the killer.”

  I naturally looked toward the door expecting another stunt performer or one of the production assistants, whose job it is to do everything nobody else wants to do. Instead, the door opened and Les Mannix entered.

  “You wanted me in here?” he asked Bostwick.

  “Just for a moment,” the detective told him. “We’re reenacting the crime and you are the right height to stand in for the shooter.”

  This was all seemingly news to Mannix, who looked both surprised and concerned. His voice deepened to convey responsibility and portent. “Should I be calling my attorney?” he asked.

  “You’re not being asked to do this because you’re a suspect,” Bostwick told him. “You’re being asked to do this because we need someone exactly five foot eleven, and you’re that height. I’m sure we could have found someone else to do it, but I’m betting you’ll want to be in on this so I don’t have to tell you about it later. Am I right about that?”

  Mannix thought it through and you—or at least I—could see him weigh his options. If he insisted on seeing his attorney, he’d look like a suspect in Dray’s murder. If he didn’t, he might do something that would give Bostwick the upper hand. There is nothing television producers like less than letting someone else call the shots.

  Eventually he fell back on his first line of defense—seeming to be reasonable while continuing to monitor the situation. “Of course,” he told Bostwick. “I’m happy to help the investigation in any way I can.”

  “Good,” the detective said. “Now our friend Gary here is pretending to be Dray Mattone. You’re the person who shot Mattone.”

  “No, I’m not.” Mannix was pretending to be witty, but it was clear he wanted that on the video record. He’d been near enough cameras to know when one was running. Heather had the Steadicam operator back himself into the threshold of the open door so he could widen his angle.

  Bostwick gave Mannix his intended chuckle but did not directly address what the producer had said. Bostwick would be the determiner of who had shot D
ray, and Mannix’s denial, on the digital record or not, meant nothing.

  “So you’re standing in for that person,” he said, nodding once in Mannix’s direction. “Now if you would just put your feet onto the marks that have been made on the floor, I’d appreciate the angle.”

  Mannix obliged, saying he knew how to “hit his marks” from a brief career as an actor before he’d moved behind the camera. “What do you want me to do?” he asked Bostwick.

  The detective once again referred to the diagram on his clipboard. “The killer is right handed, and so are you, Mr. Mannix. So, here.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved a pistol. “This is the model of gun that we found in Ms. Powell’s purse yesterday and that we are assuming, pending confirmation from the ballistics department, is the murder weapon. It’s not the same gun, but it came from your prop shop, so it’s the same type and caliber.”

  Mannix studied the weapon as Bostwick handed it to him, and it was clear the producer had held a gun before. “We have a number of weapons on set,” he noted. “It is a cop show. This is one of the guns we keep for our detectives to carry.” He hefted it, held it as if aiming. “It’s not loaded, right?”

  Maybe Mannix thought he was being funny—his grin was of the bad-boy variety—but Bostwick was not laughing. “Of course it’s not loaded,” he said. “Well, it is loaded with blanks because we want the weight to be the same. We take every precaution.”

  He repositioned Mannix in the role of killer behind dear sweet Gary, who had not moved a muscle the whole time. “Now stand like you’ve just walked in. You pull the gun out of your pocket—yes, put it in your pocket first, Mr. Mannix, good—then aim it at Mattone here.” Bostwick referred back to his ever-present clipboard. “No, the angle is lower. Like this.” He adjusted Mannix’s right arm so the gun was being held at hip level, but was pointed upward. “That’s it. Now let’s see it in one swift motion. Come in from the door.” Bostwick looked up to see Heather and the Steadicam operator in the doorway. “Okay, just take a couple of steps back and then pull out the gun and fire it. Let me see what that would have looked like.”