A Knife to Remember

“Anybody else who's already a property master would have their own and somebody like Butch, trying to break into the business, wouldn't have any money. Besides, I got the impression that a property master located props rather than owning a warehouse full of them.'

“You're probably right. We're really hampered by knowing so little about the film business. Let's ignore Jake for the moment. What about Lynette?' Shelley suddenly laughed nervously. 'Who would have thought, a week ago, that we'd be sitting here talking about Lynette Harwell as if she were somebody we actually knew!'

“To our sorrow,' Jane said glumly. 'Well, Lynette was probably loaded. George Abington told me that even bad roles often pay well and she has been working steadily on bad roles for a lot of years.'

“Maybe poor old Olive killed her for her money,' Shelley offered.

“Are you kidding? Lynette took her for granted. I'll bet she didn't even pay her a decent salary. I can't imagine her making Olive her heir.”

Shelley nodded. 'That would be like making a carpet your heir, wouldn't it. Lynette seemed to take all that adoration as her just due. What about Lynette's family? Maybe somebody on the set is a long-lost brother.'

“George said she came from a rich, social background. Well, that's how she got Olive. She started out as Lynette's nanny. I imagine the rest of the family is well off.'

“New motive. Ambition?”

Jane waved this away. 'The movie is almost done. How could killing either of them further anybody's career?'

“This movie is almost done. But what about the next one? I wonder if Mel could find out if either of them was contracted for a job after this.”

Jane sipped her coffee and thought about this. 'Possibly. That makes me think of Jennifer Fortin.'

“Me, too.'

“Maisie said she was supposed to have wanted this role badly. Maybe Lynette had another good role coming up that she beat Jennifer out of? When Jennifer saw or heard what a great job Lynette did on that last scene, she might have felt she had to clear her out of the way or she'd never have a chance. They look somewhat alike. They're about the same age, and each has one Oscar for agreat performance. Maybe the way Jennifer saw it there were certain roles that either of them could play and Lynette was going to get them all from here on.'

“That's all perfectly logical, but I don't buy it,' Shelley said.

“No, me neither,' Jane admitted. 'Oh! The brownies!”

When the kids had come and gone, stuffed to the gills with starch and chocolate, Jane said, 'I'm still puzzling over the mysterious producers.'

“Not again! Jane, why do you keep coming back to that?'

“I don't know. It just seems like it ought to be important. And I have that peculiar feeling that I know something that I don't know I know. Something Katie said when she was making up stories about those clothespin dolls made it come to mind. I wish I could remember what she was talking about at the time.'

“Maybe you're right,' Shelley said. 'There must be a huge amount of money involved in making a movie. And money can be a good motive for murder. As good, or rather, as bad as any other.' She glanced at her watch. 'Oh! It's after ten! Paul will think I've run away from home.'

“Paul's back?'

“Just this evening. Watch me to my door, will you?”

As Shelley opened her kitchen door and waved at Jane, she called out, 'Think about those dolls when you go to sleep. Maybe your subconscious will work on it for you.'

“My subconscious went on a winter cruise to Bermuda seven years ago and never came home,' Jane shouted back.

20

Unlike Jake's death, which hardly seemed to make a blip in the progress of the movie, Lynette's got to everybody.

The cast and crew were once again on the set, looking madly busy as the sun rose; this was, after all, the last day and there was much that had to be done. But the mood had changed. Jane could tell that much just from looking out the window at the scene behind her house. The morning was overcast and occasionally the sky spit drizzle, adding to the glum mood. People went about their work with heads down, or glancing over their shoulders furtively when anyone approached behind them.

The press had arrived in ravening hordes. Lynette was well-known; her death was real news. Local papers and television stations sent crews, and all the wire services had gotten the word and also sent people. The police and movie people for once cooperated and banned all the press from the set. A police guard, augmented by private security men and women, was set up to prevent outsiders — including the gawkersfrom coming any closer than the street. When Jane had first looked out her front window that morning it was like a reverse parade crowd: instead of mobs standing on the curb looking toward the street, they were standing there trying to see between the houses to the set. It was truly unnerving.

It was more alarming trying to get out to take the kids to school. Jane couldn't have expected any of the car pool drivers to even get on her street. Nor would she have let the kids out of the house to run to their cars if the car pools had made it. She decided to take everybody herself in one trip.

They all got in the car in the garage and as Jane backed the station wagon out she was nearly forced to run over people to get them out of the way. She had the windows rolled up and the doors locked, but they tapped on her windows and shouted questions. Mike, sitting tense and white-faced in the front seat with Jane, gave one reporter a rude gesture which Jane pretended not to notice. Katie and Todd huddled together in the backseat, genuinely frightened.

“They'll all be gone by tomorrow,' Jane said, trying to sound calm and reassuring, even though she was deeply shaken. 'Would you all like to go from school to your grandmother's this afternoon and spend the night there?'

“Thanks, Mom. Yeah,' Katie said, her voice trembling.

“Me, too,' Todd said. 'I don't like these jerks.' 'I'll go home with Scott, okay?' Mike growled. 'All right. I'll pack up stuff for you all. I promise, by tomorrow morning, we won't even know any of this happened.”

As they got away from the neighborhood, everybody felt better. On a whim, Jane suggested breakfastat McDonald's since everybody had been too excited and upset to eat at home. The kids thought this was great, especially the idea of getting to be late to school with a note from Mom to explain it.

By the time she finally delivered them to their schools, she felt confident that the trauma of the neighborhood invasion had been smoothed over. But she had to go back. For a moment she considered just stopping by the library for a bunch of good books, then checking herself into a nice motel to read and lounge all day, but decided that wasn't the responsible thing to do. Besides, she was just plain curious herself as to how everybody on the set was going to take this new development.

Nobody really bought Lynette's death as a suicide although a few were still trying to romanticize it as such. 'She must have known she could never do better than yesterday,' Jane overheard somebody saying. 'She wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, I think.”

But most of the cast and crew were uneasy, obviously feeling threatened that a murderer was among them. It was odd, Jane thought, that Jake's death, which was so unmistakably a murder, hadn't made them nervous, but Lynette's demise, which might (in spite of Shelley's and Mel's instincts) have been suicide, frightened them all. Jane supposed it was because in a strange way suicide is scarier than murder. We can lock ourselves in our houses and hide from killers, but there's nowhere to hide from ourselves.

Shelley was already outside and had been eavesdropping. 'What's up now?' Jane asked her in a hushed tone.

“Olive arrived a while ago, looking like a corpse herself, poor old thing. I guess she came to pick up Lynette's things. The rumor is that there was a ring in Lynette's dressing room that wasn't hers.'

“Whose was it?'

“The gossip mill says it was Angela's.' 'Interesting. I wonder how Angela explains that.'

“Apparently she can't. The word is that she says she kept it in her purse and didn't even realize it was missing until the police asked her to identify it.'