“It’s going all right,” I told him. It wasn’t. It was ten minutes to five; I wanted to get back to Bonnie, but I had nothing worth bringing her. I held the icy soda can against my forehead. “Remember that conversation you mentioned to me that took place in dailies? The ‘if lightning struck’
conversation.”
MAGIC HOUR / 407
Gregory nodded. “Sure, sure.” He had a thoughtful look.
He was probably recalling the graininess of the film and seemed, worse, about to describe it to me. I cut him off.
“Who was there? You said it was late. Most people had gone.”
“Ummm,” he began.
“Don’t ‘ummm.’ Talk.”
“Sy.”
“Good. Keep going.”
“One of the assistant producers, Sy’s gofer. His name’s Easton.”
“Who else?”
“Me. I think Nick Monteleone. The D.P. Director of photography. That’s another term for cinematographer.”
“What’s his name, Gregory?”
“Alain Duvivier.”
“Is he French?”
“Mais oui, monsieur le detective. He was there, and his girlfriend.”
“What’s her name?”
“Monica, Monique. But she’s gone.”
“How come?”
“He started with the set dresser, Rachel.”
“Who else?”
Gregory shut his eyes and, for once, his mouth. He seemed to be trying to re-create the scene. “That was it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Did Sy hang back to talk to anyone afterwards?”
“I don’t know. He sent me out to put pink pages in his leather folder in his car. Revised pages of script. You change color with every revision. First blue, then pink, and then yellow, green, goldenrod, then buff—”
408 / SUSAN ISAACS
“Go get me Alain.”
“I can’t. I’m supposed to be in East Hampton, and he’s—”
“Get him now.” Now took two minutes.
One thing about movie people: none of them dressed in a normal, businesslike way. Alain Duvivier looked like a cliché of a French creative type. He was in his mid-twenties, with blond and brown hysterical hair that tumbled over his shoulders, matching heavy eyebrows and one hoop earring.
He wore bubble-gum-color shorts and one of those wrestler-style strap undershirts that have practically no sides. He was more the size of a grizzly than a man; beside him, Gregory was almost invisible.
“Hello,” I said.
“Alo,” he said, then added, with fitting somberness: “Sy.
Very, very sad.” He sounded so French you half expected him to say Ooh-la-la, but he didn’t.
“Mr. Duvivier, I understand you were at dailies the night a certain conversation took place.” He was concentrating too hard, so I slowed down. “There were some remarks about lightning and a discussion—a talk—about what would happen if lightning struck—hit—Lindsay Keefe. Do you recall any of that?”
“Lighting Lindsay?” he asked.
“No, light ning. It was a conversation about lightning.”
“Lightning?”
I turned to Gregory. “What the hell’s the word for lightning in French?”
“I took Spanish.”
I turned back to Duvivier. “Lightning.” I pointed up to the sky and made a streaking gesture back and forth. He glanced over at Gregory a little nervously, and it didn’t help when I made a thunder noise and followed it with another lightning imitation.
He blurted out: “Rachel!”
MAGIC HOUR / 409
“Rachel?” I inquired.
Gregory said: “His girlfriends translate for him.”
“He doesn’t understand English?”
“Well, technical terms. And he says ‘Alo, pretty girl’ a lot.”
“Au revoir,” I said to Duvivier.
“Bye-bye,” he responded.
Smart. The sound on the TV was low enough so someone standing outside would never guess anyone was home. I found Bonnie sitting in my recliner, watching a movie. Before she zapped the remote control I saw that even though it was a black-and-white thing, it was something I would watch, with Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster, I always got them mixed up.
She pushed herself out of the chair. “Ready? It’s five-thirty.”
“Relax.”
“We have an agreement.” She was very subdued.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She wasn’t, but since she wasn’t crying, or sullen or angry, I couldn’t get a precise reading. “How do you want to go about this? Should I call Gideon first, or do you want to drop me off—”
“Listen, do you trust me? Trust my judgment?”
“Isn’t it a little late to be asking that?”
“We’ve got to get out of here fast, because I have a sicken-ing feeling that fuckface Robby is going to wind up here, looking for you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have time now. Let’s get out of here. I’ll explain on the way.”
“On the way home?” She sounded so quiet, thoughtful.
Well, she had a right to be. Leaving my house was like picking the Go-directly-to-jail card.
“You’re not going home yet.”
410 / SUSAN ISAACS
“You promised me.”
“I know, but there’s one more shot. Will you have faith in me, give me another half hour?”
“Yes.” So hushed, proper, ladylike, even. “I will.”
“Then let’s haul ass, Bonnie.”
She looked past the mud room into the kitchen. The stove and refrigerator were older than I was, and the white porcel-ain table had deep black craters where it had chipped.
“Where are we?” Her voice was barely a whisper. I realized she’d seen me lift up an unplanted flowerpot and take the key that was under it. She’d assumed we were breaking and entering, and having gotten to know me, she did not appear to be surprised.
“My family’s house.” I guided her—almost pushed her, because she didn’t want to come—through the kitchen, into a hallway that led to the stairs. “My brother was there for that ‘lightning’ conversation. And he was always around, doing things for Sy. I want to see if he remembers what happened after those dailies, that night or maybe the next day.” Bonnie stopped so suddenly I banged into her. “Come on.” I gave her a light shove and kept talking. “I want to find out who Sy saw—” She wouldn’t move. “—and who he talked to.”
And then I saw what she was staring at. A gun cabinet.
Plain pine. Familiar to someone who grew up on a farm.
Or to someone who grew up in a sporting goods store, whose old man was the best shot in Ogden.
No, I thought. No. She didn’t do it.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E
Growing up in the house of what had once been Brady Farm, I’d pretty much been able to disregard
