“What?”
“You’ll catch Moishe when you get home. I thought it was really cute when you unlocked your door and he jumped right up in your arms. He must really miss you when you’re gone all day.”
“All Moishe misses is a full food bowl,” Hannah said, even though she didn’t really believe it. Moishe did seem to miss her, and that made her feel good.
They climbed up the metal steps to the production truck, and Hannah knocked. She heard footsteps approaching, and then the door opened to reveal a bearded man with a ponytail and a diamond stud in his left ear.
“Hannah Swensen?” the engineer asked.
“That’s right. Mason Kimball gave me permission to watch Rudy’s outtakes for Wednesday. I brought my sister, Andrea, to help me.”
“No problem.” The engineer took one look at Andrea and started to smile. “Come in, and I’ll set you up. I’m P.K.”
Hannah wondered what P.K. stood for, but it didn’t really matter. They followed him down a hallway to a door near the end of the truck. P.K. opened it and gestured for them to go inside.
“This is Mason’s screening room. He said you could use it. Sit down, and I’ll get you the tapes.”
Hannah was impressed. The small room was like a den with two swivel chairs and a table between them. A television set was pulled out from the opposite wall and a rolling cart with a large VCR was set up right next to it.
“Not bad,” Andrea said, taking a seat in one of the swivel chairs. “It would look a lot better with wallpaper instead of that dark paneling, but it’s cozy.”
“Cozy?” Hannah stared around at the perfectly bare walls. “I thought cozy meant chintz and teddy bears.”
In a few moments, P.K. came back with four tapes in black boxes. They were bigger than the tapes Hannah had for her home VCR, and she figured that they were the three-quarter-inch kind that Rudy had mentioned. He opened one of the boxes and slid the tape into the VCR. “I’ll start it for you and teach you how to use the remote. Have you ever used a VCR?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered, “but the one I have isn’t three-quarter-inch.”
“The controls are pretty much the same. The tape’s a different size, that’s all.”
“I have a VCR at home, too.” Andrea smiled at him as he perched on the edge of her chair, and Hannah suspected that her sister had made another conquest. She looked good in her tight black slacks and fuzzy pink sweater, and men had never been able to resist Andrea.
“Then you’ll be able to handle this one just fine.” P.K. held out the remote so that Andrea could see it. “There’s play, stop, fast-forward, rewind, freeze-frame, pause, and the search buttons.”
Hannah almost hooted. Andrea always let Bill set the VCR, and she’d probably never held a remote in her life. But she nodded knowledgeably, and P.K. seemed satisfied.
“Just don’t touch that circle in the middle,” P.K. warned. “That’s for something you don’t need. Do you know about time codes?”
Andrea shook her head and turned to Hannah. “Do you?”
“Mason mentioned them. He said we should write them down if we wanted him to dupe a tape of something.”
“Okay.” P.K. tore his eyes away from Andrea and turned to Hannah. “Time codes are a bunch of numbers that advance at the bottom of the screen. The cam puts them on automatically. It’s distracting at first, but you’ll learn to ignore it.”
P.K. turned on the tape, and they saw a picture of the school. There were numbers at the bottom of the screen, just as P.K. had told them, and the fraction of seconds clicked by so fast, Hannah barely had time to read them.
“When you find something you want, press the freeze-frame.” P.K. held up the remote and demonstrated. “Then all you have to do is back up the tape with the reverse search and freeze-frame it again to read the number.”
“Okay. I can handle that,” Hannah said. “We write down the number at the beginning?”
“And at the end. Bracket the section of the tape for me with time codes. That’ll tell me what footage you want and how long it lasts.” P.K. demonstrated again and handed Andrea the remote. “I’ll get you a couple of notepads and pens from Mason’s office.”
“Thanks,” Andreas smiled up at him. “I’m sorry we’re so much trouble.”
Hannah waited until P.K. had left and then she turned to her sister. “You’re sorry we’re so much trouble?”
“I had to say something.” Andrea shrugged. “He’s being very nice.”
“He might be getting a little too nice. And you’re flirting with him.”
“I always flirt. Bill doesn’t mind. He knows that I’d never actually do anything. And he understands that flirting makes it easier for me to get what I want.”
Hannah had never heard it put quite that way before, but at least Andrea was being honest with herself. “Okay. What do you want from P.K.?”
“Coffee. If I smile a couple more times and happen to mention how cold I am, he’s bound to offer to bring us some.”
Chapter Twenty
Viewing the outtakes was exciting at first, especially when they saw their friends appear on Rudy’s tape. Hannah and Andrea kept their eyes glued to the monitor, pens poised to write down the time codes. Then the novelty began to wear off. Since the footage Rudy had shot was especially for the montage, and that had been designed to be set to music, there was background noise but no clear comments. Occasionally, they heard Rudy’s voice giving information on the location and the people in the scene he was taping, but no one spoke directly to the camera.
During a long sequence that Rudy had shot on Wednesday morning as he followed the contestants’ cars from the lot at the Lake Eden Inn to the Jordan High auditorium, Andrea gave an impatient sigh. “It’s just cars, Hannah. And the camera’s not close enough to pick up the drivers.”
“Mason warned me that this would be boring,” Hannah reminded her.
“You told me. I just didn’t think it would be this boring. How long do we have to go?”
Hannah glanced at the time code flashing on the bottom of the screen. “Three and a half hours.”
“Can you fast-forward through this part?”
“I’d better not. We might miss something.”
Andrea took another sip of the coffee that P.K. had brought them. “I guess you’re right,” she conceded. “Which car is Mr. Avery driving?”
“The dark blue Ford, but we’ve already eliminated him as a suspect.”
“We have?”
“Yes. Both Sally and Dick said he was at the wrap party with his wife at the time Boyd was killed. Just to make sure, I confirmed it with Jeremy and Belle Rutlege.”
“Okay, he didn’t kill Boyd. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed Lucy. After all, she blackmailed him. Lucy’s killer could have been trying to get even with her or recover the evidence she used against them. They didn’t now that we had all of her pictures and negatives.”
Hannah shook her head. Andrea just wasn’t thinking clearly. “How about the film her killer destroyed? Why would one of her other blackmail victims do that?”
“I don’t know.” Andrea thought about it for a moment. “Maybe her killer was trying to keep her from blackmailing anyone else.”
“Lucy was already dead by that time. Her killer knew that it was impossible for her to blackmail anyone else.”
“That’s right.” Andrea rubbed her eyes again. “Are you sure the same man killed Boyd and Lucy?”
“Sure enough.”
