We passed sets in various stages of completion. On one, an elderly black man was carefully assembling a red vacuum cleaner that would be photographed against this scrap of deep blue carpet like a ruby in a blue velvet box.
Another set held a bedroom that looked ready to shoot. Even the camera was in place. Everything that the camera might see was brilliantly lit and as pristine as the set’s new coat of paint Two feet out of camera range though and it was back to darkness, shabby and ordinary. The bed was dressed in gorgeous linens, but when we walked around to view it from the other side, I saw that the comforter that looked so lavish from the front barely covered the back edge and that where a leg was missing, someone had substituted a gallon paint bucket.
It was like being backstage at a Broadway show, viewing the scenery from behind. The degree of clutter around the edges was astonishing and the corners were stacked deep in what seemed to be bolts of cloth, old pipes, broken light stands, scrap lumber and odd sizes of sheetrock.
“Umm. Nice kitchen,” I said, pausing at yet another tableau that looked camera ready to my untrained eye. The modern cabinets glistened as did the place-settings of potteryware in an eclectic mix of primary colors. A sleek stainless steel chandelier hung over the breakfast table. At least it was sleek as far as the camera would notice. A few feet up, just out of the camera’s field of vision, the shiny steel rod became a utilitarian cable.
“What do you suppose the product is?” Dixie asked me. “Appliances, breakfast set, or lighting fixtures?”
“The ceramic dishes,” I answered promptly.
“Wrong,” said a half-familiar voice behind us. “It’s the vinyl floor tiles.”
I turned and there from my courtroom yesterday was young Randy Verlin all togged out in jeans, scuffed work shoes and a very professional-looking tool belt.
“Oh,” he said. “Judge Knott. Sorry. I didn’t recognize you, ma’am, without your robe. You know, I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but I sure do appreciate what you did. Giving me Travis and all.”
He twisted a screwdriver in his hands. “And I’m gonna try real hard to do like you said, all that about not bad- mouthing April Ann to him.”
“That’s good,” I said warmly.
“I gotta tell you though. When I seen that you were a woman, I thought for sure you’d give him to her, but you made a believer out of me.”
“Thank you,” I said, choosing to take this as the compliment he obviously intended. “So this is where you work?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Great, maybe you can help us.” I turned to Dixie. “Where exactly do we want to go?”
“I’m completely turned around,” she told him, smiling. “Where do y’all keep your stairs these days?”
“Oh, you must have passed them on your way in here.”
He led us back the way we’d come to the stack of carpets. “Just on the other side of that wall there.”
We circled around and Dixie stopped short. Blood drained from her face. “Oh, God!” she whispered.
It stood alone in the center of an empty space—a graceful, sinuous flight of steps that snaked up to nowhere.
“I’ll be happy to move it for you,” said Randy Verlin.
He kicked off a brake and tugged at the lower rail. The fifteen-foot-tall staircase moved smoothly on ball- bearing casters.
“Where do you want it?” he asked Dixie, and I realized that he must have assumed she was on Mulholland’s staff.
“No,” I said sharply. “She meant the stairs to the second floor.”
By now, Verlin had caught on that something was very wrong, though he wasn’t quite sure what.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought—But you want to go upstairs, right?”
“Right.”
He pointed. “Down to the next opening and bear left.”
Dixie strode off as I thanked a puzzled Randy Verlin and hurried after her.
The stairs to the second floor were of ordinary industrial steel, painted bright red. Dixie was almost at the top before I caught up.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but as soon as I touched her arm, she turned to me in tears.
I held her till she stopped shaking, then offered tissues from my purse.
“Sorry. Each time, I keep thinking this will be the last time I cry for Evelyn. And then something like this will hit me in the face and I fall apart all over again.”
She needed to put cold water on her eyes. There was a women’s room halfway down the hall, but it was locked and the second floor seemed deserted.
“Never mind,” said Dixie. “I think Savannah’s studio had a lavatory attached to it. If hers doesn’t, Pell’s does and one of these keys is bound to unlock his door.”
Pell had said that Savannah’s studio space was around the corner from his but the hall seemed to dead-end in a tangle of cast-off furniture. Yet, when we looked closer, we saw that it was possible to snake through the clutter and turn the corner.
