Undercover In High Heels

“Oh, this was a good day. You should have seen her during sweeps week.”

“Yikes. Remind me to stay on her good side.”

“Impossible. Mia doesn’t have a good side.” Dusty tossed the remains of her cup in the trash can. “Well, apparently I’ve got to go switch out Mia’s outfit for something ‘Springy peach, ’ ” she said, doing air quotes with her fingers. “Think you can start rounding up the others and get them dressed for the first scene?”

“No problem, ” I responded.

Famous last words.

The trouble with actors, I was soon to learn, was that they lived by the “hurry up and wait” credo. Depending on the complexity of a scene, the director might spend an hour setting up the shot for fifteen seconds of dialogue. This left the actors with way too much time on their hands and nothing to fill it. Which, as any kindergarten teacher will tell you, just spells trouble.

The Magnolia Lane cast had me running from one end of the Sunset Studios lot to the other all day long. First it was fetching Blake, aka Ashley Culver’s comatose husband, who was, by the way, not in his trailer but across the lot at the basketball court playing one-on-one with a doc from E.R.

Then I had to find Kylie, who played Tina Rey Holmes, the perky newlywed turned high-class call girl who’d moved in next door to Ashley and had the hots for the single electrician across the street who was being framed by the DA for murdering his ex-girlfriend. If last season’s cliff-hanger was any indication, I suspected Tina Rey would be having an affair with Ashley’s husband when he woke up from that coma. (That is, if Nurse Nan didn’t off him first. God, I loved this show!) Kylie, of course, was nowhere near her trailer either. Instead I finally tracked her down smoking a cigarette near the fake Golden Gate Park in the San Francisco section of the Sunset “city.”

Ricky, who played the show’s hunky gardener and everybody’s favorite boy toy, Chad, was, predictably, not in his trailer either. (See a trend here?) Instead, I tracked him down outside stage 3E, chatting up two of the briefcase girls from Deal or No Deal.

And last, but certainly not least, was Deveroux Strong, the Nordic-looking blond who played the hot electrician-slash-framed murderer, and who, incidentally, all the tabloids suspected was about to come out of the closet any day now. After checking the studio cafeteria, the Craft service table, the basketball courts, and the producer’s office, I finally found Deveroux, wonder of wonders, in his trailer.

I changed my mind about the wedges. I was wearing running shoes to work tomorrow.

The worst thing about it all was that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to talk to Mia. The only thing I’d gathered from the other actors was that they routinely got fan letters, some of which verged on the unbalanced edge. The odd thing about Mia’s were that, unlike the usual fan mail, these letters had started showing up in her trailer. Which meant that the writer had somehow gotten onto the set. I thought of the security guard standing sentinel. It didn’t seem likely he’d let a crazed fan in, which meant that whoever wrote them worked either on the show or at the studios. A somewhat disconcerting thought. And, unfortunately, one that didn’t narrow things down a whole lot. But I dutifully relayed it all to Dana when I met her for lunch in the studio cafeteria.

“Ohmigod, that means someone on the show is threatening her?” Dana asked, shoveling a spoonful of fat-free yogurt into her mouth.

I shrugged. “Not necessarily. The letters could be coming from outside and someone on the set is just delivering them.”

“I think it’s the AD. That guy has totally shifty eyes.” Dana illustrated by wagging her eyeballs back and forth as if she were watching a Ping-Pong match.

“Creepy. So, what did you gather in holding?” I asked, digging into my cheeseburger and fries. Hey, all that running around burned a lot of calories. I needed fuel. Thick, greasy, cheese-covered fuel.

“Well, there are seven regular extras on the show and a few others who filter in and out, ” Dana said, nibbling on a carrot stick. “But I think we can eliminate them from the suspects list. That AD watches us like a hawk.”

“With his shifty eyes?” I couldn’t help adding.

She ignored my sarcasm. “There’s no way an extra could wander off without being noticed. The leads, however, are a different story. They’re all over the set. One of them could easily slip away to Mia’s trailer for a minute without being missed.”

I popped a fry in my mouth. “I wish I knew what the letters said. I mean, at least then we’d have a clue what kind of person we’re looking for.”

“Someone who doesn’t like Mia very much.”

“From what I gather, she’s not exactly popular.”

“Have you had a chance to talk to her yet?”

I shook my head. “No. But I’m on it this afternoon.”

We finished our meal, topping it off with dessert (Dana’s a fat-free bran muffin, mine a chocolate-chip brownie with whipped cream) and promised to meet at the back gate after work, before Dana returned to her holding room under the shifty gaze of the assistant director.

I took the long way around the studio, picking my way through the maze of warehouses until I found myself at the back of stage 6G. Here six portable white trailers were lined up in rows, most of them with their blinds shut tight. The first one bore the name RICKY MONTGOMERY. The next two, a generic TALENT, and the fourth MIA CARLETTO. I paused, squinting up at the windows for any indication of life inside. Nothing.

“Mia?” I called, doing a gentle little tap, tap, tap on the door. Still nothing.

Apparently Mia was still at lunch. But that didn’t mean that her mysterious letters were…

I bit my lip, glancing over both shoulders. I should have walked away. I should have gone back to wardrobe, where Dusty was probably waiting for me. I should have known as I tiptoed up the two metal steps leading to the trailer’s door and gingerly turned the knob that nothing good would come of breaking into a star’s private trailer.

I should have.

But I didn’t.

Instead I slowly opened the door ducked my head inside.

“Hello? Mia?”

The interior of the trailer was a decadent contrast to the stark outside. Red velvet material covered a plush, four-foot sofa along one wall. The blinds were not only shut, but layered with brocade curtains in deep reds and golds. The floor was covered in a thick, plum-colored rug that swallowed up the sound of my heels as I stepped into the room. This was a far cry from the trailer my mother had rented to drive us to the Grand Canyon when I was eight.

To my left was a small hallway, at the end of which I could see a bedroom done in the same dark, opulent colors. To the right was a mini kitchen, complete with stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops. In front of the sofa sat a coffee table, the top littered with scripts, notes, half-empty coffee cups, and a stack of mail.

I raised one eyebrow. Fan mail?

I took a step closer, gingerly flipping one envelope over to see the address. It was hand-written in loopy letters with little hearts dotting the Is. Bingo.

I did another over-the-shoulder, praying Mia took a long lunch, as I quickly sifted through the pile of letters. Three from teenagers asking Mia to their prom, one from a little girl in the hospital, two marriage proposals, and one from a housewife in Milwaukee wanting to know were Mia hired her gardener. Great fuel for my celebrity addiction, but none of them threatening enough to warrant a police presence.

I was about to concede that my snooping was just…well, snooping, when I spotted one more envelope, partially shoved under last week’s copy of Variety. I picked it up.

The outside was a plain number ten, like the kind my phone bills came in. It was addressed to Mia Carletto, care of Sunset Studios, though I noticed it was missing a postmark. My heart sped up. Hand-delivered? There was no return address, and the top had already been neatly slit open.

With my pulse picking up to marathon speed, I gingerly slipped my fingers inside and pulled out the note.

Again, nothing special about the stationery: plain white paper, typed note. Could have come from any computer. It started, Dear Mia, but those were about the only repeatable words on the page. This guy seriously needed his mouth washed out with Ivory. He seemed to have a thing for the F-word, coupled with the B-word, with a few references to female genitalia thrown in for color.

But as vulgar as the letter was, it was the last paragraph that made a chill run up my spine.