A Knife to Remember

“Not very likely,' Jane said. 'Even if it was in her purse and just fell out, it fell out in Lynette's dressing room and that's very damning. Angela is connected to Jake, either as his girlfriend or his niece, but did she have any previous connection with Lynette?'

“I can't find anybody who knows of any,' Shelley said.

Jane glanced around, noticing that the weather had cleared and was promising to turn into a very nice day for their final scenes. Suddenly she saw somebody who made her nearly scream. She damped it down to a squeak. 'My God! I thought that was Lynette!”

Shelley looked where Jane pointed. Jennifer Fortin was in conversation with Roberto Cavagnari. She was dressed in the same costume Lynette had worn the day before and had her hair fixed in the same style. She looked astonishingly like the dead actress.

“How creepy!' Shelley exclaimed. She left Jane gaping and went to chat for a minute with some extras standing around the coffee urn. When she came back, she said, 'They had some long shots to do of Lynette and George. Jennifer is filling in. Didn't they do that in Jean Harlow's last movie?'

“Oh, yes. I remember seeing the scenes that were supposed to be Harlow at a racetrack or something. All three-quarter shots of the back of her head. But it was somebody else because Harlow had died. I see how it's necessary, but it's still nasty.”

Jane learned a little more about it when she went to fix herself a cup of coffee. The producers' representative was using the phone as she stood a few feet away. He punched in a long set of numbers. So it's long- distance, Jane thought to herself.

“Yes, hello. Is V. J. there?' he asked. 'Yes, Claude here. Just checking in. It's a zoo, as you could guess. No, Roberto says he can finish by four as long as the security people keep the press out of his hair. They're getting ready for the long shots of scene nineteen.”

He paused, listening. 'No, Roberto must have called Fortin. She's doing them. Didn't even ask for credits. Just scale. My guess is she's sucking up to Cavagnari. Oh, sure I did. I don't let anybody near here without a signed contract. Not to worry.”

Jane got very busy picking over the donuts as if which one to choose were a life-and-death decision. Not that she needed a donut, but she wanted a reason to stay in place.

“Listen, Veronica, everything's really all right, given the mess,' the young man was going on. 'We didn't need Harwell today except for the long shots. And the kid doing the props is fine. Don't worry about the press. I'm just sorry we're getting all this attention now instead of closer to the release date. Now, I've got a problem with George's home ticket. It's for the wrong day. Could you get it straightened out at your end? Uh-oh, a reporter's got hold of Olive. Gotta go!”

In fact, several reporters had gotten through the security cordon and had hold of Olive. Or perhaps she had latched onto them. Jane's heart ached for the older woman, who looked pale and ill. Her eyes were red and her face blotched and she was hanging onto an assortment of canvas bags and dresses on hangers, which made her look like a refugee fleeing a disaster with all her worldly goods.

But she seemed to have a grip on herself in spite of it all. At least for the moment. 'I will not comment on Miss Harwell's death,' she was saying to a gathering crowd. The producers' nerd was trying to shoo them away, but to no avail. 'But I will talk about her life and her work. She was the finest actress of the century and when the world sees the work she did on this, her last film, she will take her rightful place in the history of the film industry.'

“How did she die?'

“Who are you?'

“Where's she being buried?”

The questions came fast, overlapping each other.

“This film represents the finest achievement of her career,' Olive went on, as if giving a rehearsedspeech. Maybe it was, Jane thought. 'This role and her remarkable performance will be a tribute, an eternal tribute, to a fine actress.'

“That's enough, boys!' George Abington had appeared, grabbed Olive's arm, and pushed her through the crowd, flinging reporters aside like bowling pins. 'Olive,' he said firmly. 'Drop all that stuff. There are people to carry it for you. Just come over here and have some tea. Those people won't bother you again.'

“Let me fix you some tea, Miss Longabach,' Jane said. 'Do you take sugar?'

“Lemon and sugar. Yes, please,' Olive said, her voice starting to crack. Jane wondered for a second if she and George were the only people in the world who'd ever offered to do anything for Olive. George had scattered the last of the reporters by the time Jane got to the old woman with a hot cup of tea and a paper plate with a donut.

“I'm very sorry about your — about Miss Harwell, Miss Longabach,' Jane said.

“Thank you, dear. It's terrible. . just terrible. I feel so awful that I wasn't with her. .'

“Now, now. Don't think about that. Would you like for me to keep her things in my house until somebody can pick them up?”

George was still standing guard over her. 'Don't bother, Jane. I've already arranged to have them sent back to the hotel. Olive, you should stay here today. I don't want you back there by yourself. Roberto may need you, too. And there's a wrap party tonight, you know,' he went on. 'You must come.'

“Oh, no. I couldn't.'

“But you must come in Lynette's place,' George insisted. 'You know she'd want you here, and so will the cast and crew. If we can't have her, we must have you. Very few of these people will be able to come to the funeral, but they'll want to say their good-byes through you.”

It was a gracious gesture, beautifully done, Jane thought. George Abington might consider himself a plumber of an actor, but he was a nice man. He'd sensed that Olive Longabach would have been miserable and lonely this evening by herself, but had appealed to her psychotically overdeveloped sense of duty to Lynette to get her out.

“Well, if I must—”

Maisie had joined them, checking on Olive's well-being and Jane felt free to wander off. She spotted the production assistant who always found her when it was time to let Willard out and waved that she understood the message.

As she brought him outside, Shelley was just putting her little orange poodle Frenchie into his smaller dog run. 'Shelley, did you ever know anybody named Veronica?' Jane asked.

Shelley unsnapped Frenchie's collar, closed the gate, and leaned on it. 'I don't think so. Oh, yes. A girl in my grade school.'

“And what did you call her?'

“Call her? Ronnie, I think. Why on earth do you ask?'

“Because I have a sneaking suspicion I know who the mysterious producers are.'

21

“What did you say your wife's name was?' Jane asked George Abington a few minutes later.

She and Shelley had tracked him down in his dressing room, which was the other half of the same trailer that housed Lynette's space. It was very nice, but quite cramped and impersonal. There was a couch/sofa, a table big enough to eat or do paperwork or play cards with one friend, an open closet, a counter beneath a well-lighted mirror, a couple of chairs, and visible through another door, a train compartment — style bathroom.

George was sitting at the small table and had apparently been studying his script when the brads holding it together had come apart. He fussed with the pages, trying to get the holes lined up. 'My ex-wife, you mean? Mrs. Johnson,' he said. 'Why do you ask?'

“Ronnie, I think you called her,' Jane persisted.

“Yes. Hell! Where did that other thing go?' He leaned down and looked at the carpet for the other brad.

“George, is your ex-wife one of the producers of this movie?”

He finally gave up pretending interest in the reassembly of the script and smiled. 'You're clever, Jane. Yes. She is.'

“And are you another?”