A Knife to Remember

worked it around in her mind that she was merely there to brighten the days of the patients and staff. A charitable act, don't you see? She likened it to Dorothy Lamour handing out coffee and donuts at the U.S.O. during World War II. Although she didn't mention the war itself. I don't think she knows there was one. She hadn't been born yet, so what could there have been for people to fight about!'

“Shelley, if your voice gets any higher, only dogs and bats will be able to hear you! Calm down.”

She sighed heavily. 'I know. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. All of this' — Shelley waved wildly, a gesture encompassing the whole set—'all of this is a waste of money. I tell you, that one good performance she gave so many years ago was a fluke. This is going to be a bomb of a movie. What I don't get is why anybody cast her in a supposedly good role. It couldn't have been anyone who ever spent five minutes with her. No wonder the producers are hiding! They must be the stupidest people in the world.'

“But Shelley, when I overheard her talking to Mike, she was talking about him, not herself.'

“No, Jane. She was talking about him in order to seduce him into thinking she was wonderful.'

“True, I guess.'

“And even when she was talking about your husband, she was trying to make herself look like a tragic heroine, but still generous and capable of recognizing talent. Think back, Jane. Wasn't that the case?”

Jane shuddered. 'I don't want to think back on that conversation. Ever. Shelley, do you think maybe she's really crazy enough to have killed Jake and, well — not remember it?'

“Oh, I guess it's barely possible,' Shelley said with resignation. 'She's so far beyond my range of human experience, I couldn't even guess. For all I know, she's been knocking people off right and left and has justified it as Lady Bountiful sparing them the pain and indignity of growing old. .”

Her voice trailed away and her eyes grew very wide again.

“Will you just look at that!' Shelley exclaimed.

16

“Good Lord!' Jane exclaimed. 'Isn't that Jennifer Fortin? And we were just talking about her yesterday!”

A crowd of people were surrounding the willowy blond actress who had just arrived in Jane's backyard and was dispensing waves and smiles like royalty. 'What's she doing here?' Jane asked.

“Just throwing a little shit at the fan,' Maisie said from behind them. She pulled a chair up and sat down with a wicked glint in her eye. 'I heard she was in town, but I never thought she'd show up here. What superb timing. She must have a mole on the set.'

“What are you talking about?' Jane asked.

“You must not be up on your movie gossip,' Maisie said, shaking her head. 'Jennifer was rumored to want this role badly. And Cavagnari wanted her too, by all accounts. But Harwell got it, which must have made Fortin crazy. Fortin's gotten a little testy when interviewers have compared her performances to Harwell's one great one. I wouldn't think Harwell much likes it either, especially when the movie rags talk about how Fortin looks so much like a young Harwell. So here's Fortin, on the very day Harwell has to do her best work or write her career off. Dear Lynette is going to go haywire when she learns who's hanging around the set watching her today.”

Jennifer Fortin was moving out of sight, surrounded by crew members and the People Weekly staff.

“How long has she been in town?' Jane asked.

“A couple days, I think. Why?' Maisie asked.

“Did she have any connection with Jake Elder?'

“Oh, I doubt—' Maisie started, then stopped abruptly. 'Now that you mention it, it was Jake who said she was in town. The first day we were here. He was talking to somebody about having had dinner with her the night before.”

Shelley looked grieved. 'I sure wish you hadn't said that. All we need now is another suspect.”

Mel Van Dyne looked like he'd been dragged through a hedge backward. It wasn't so much the physical appearance of his clothes or hair as a frenzied look in his eye.

“These people are nuts!' he said with disgust. 'That — that director, the one wearing the green `thing,' just snatched somebody I was questioning right away from me. Literally grabbed the guy's arm and took him off mid-sentence. We were playing tug-of-war with him!'

“Want to go inside and neck?' Jane asked. It accomplished what she hoped.

He whooped with laughter. 'I'd take you up on that any other time!' he said. 'God! You're right.

I'm letting them get to me too much. I'm losing it. I would like to go inside. I need to use your phone if I could.”

Jane tactfully disappeared into the basement to check that the cats hadn't found anything important to damage while Mel reported in to his office. Max and Meow were outraged at their confinement, but had done nothing worse than kick the kitty litter around the floor in a pretty wide circle.

When she came back up a few minutes later, she found Mel standing by the windows of her living room, staring at the scene behind the house and shaking his head.

“How's it going?' she asked.

He made a helpless gesture. 'Miserably, if you really have to know. I've managed to find at least twelve people with seventeen motives. Some of them happily handed me two or three reasons they might have wanted to kill him — like they were giving me little presents. None of them very convincing reasons at that. I've never heard anything like it. And at least fifty people had the opportunity to kill him.'

“I guess this means you're not going to have it all cleared up by Friday,' Jane said wistfully.

“I don't often feel stumped, Janey, and I don't handle it well. Now they're all wound up like tops about other things and I can't seem to hammer through to anybody that there's been a goddamned murder here and it has to be solved!'

“What other things?”

Mel jammed his hands into his pockets glumly. 'Oh, somebody had a lot of money stolen this morning. God knows why the idiot had all that cash—'

“How much?'

“Over a thousand dollars. In a canvas bag, left hung over a chair. Jeez! Stupid! Anyway, it turned up. But only after I had to divert two of my officers to look for it.'

“Where did it turn up?'

“Rolled up in an empty coffee cup in the makeup trailer. Naturally, practically everybody in the cast and crew cheerfully admitted having been in the makeup trailer during the relevant times.'

“The money was in plain sight?'

“Yes,' he snapped. 'In plain sight. Why?'

“No reason. It just sounds like somebody wanted to be sure it was found. It's strange.'

“Strange? Strange! Have you personally seen or heard anything normal from these people?”

Jane didn't smile, but it hurt not to. She'd never seen him unravel like this, and while she was sympathetic, she was also pleased. Mel was always just a shade cooler and more composed than she might have wished. A tiny, unwanted element in their relationship was her constant feeling of ever-soslight intimidation in the face of his careful self-control.

“Now—' he continued his litany of grievances, 'they're gearing up for something terribly important this afternoon. Important to them, that is. It's just a movie, Janey! Don't any of them understand that?”

Jane thought about pointing out to him that it was their whole reason for being, just as solvingcrimes was his, but wisely refrained from making this observation. She also curbed her inclination to ask him again whether there was the slightest chance that they'd manage to get away for their weekend in New York. That wasn't going to happen.

Unless she and Shelley could figure out who killed Jake Elder.

She pushed the thought aside. For all her unofficial snooping, she wasn't any farther ahead than Mel and his