“Maybe you can, but Cop Kelly can’t,” Katrina said. “All she sees are his muscles and that endearing grin. She is definitely hot for his body.”
“In other words, he’s fooled her the same way he’s fooled millions of fans,” Callie said, deliberately phrasing the statement so it could be interpreted in two ways. If they knew Terry was gay, now was the perfect moment for them to reveal it.
They didn’t.
“Exactly,” they both said blandly.
“Surely there must be some women in the world who see through all that charm and get furious with him, maybe even send warnings about his lousy track record to his female conquests.”
“You should know the answer to that better than we do,” Katrina reminded her. “Have they?”
“Nope,” she admitted. “As a matter of fact, they all envy me.”
“See,” Marty said. “They want to believe that underneath those roguish ways, he’s really a man worth taming. It’s our job to make them believe you’re just the woman to do it.”
“In other words, a femme fatale,” she said.
“Just like Jason Kane wanted,” Marty confirmed, that edge back in his voice, though perhaps a shade less resentful than it had been earlier.
Maybe she’d won him over, maybe she hadn’t, but Callie decided she’d pressed as hard as she could for the moment. She stood up to leave, then turned to Katrina. “One last question, do any of the actors ever get serious hate mail?”
Before Katrina could answer, Marty jumped in, looking vaguely alarmed. “Have you gotten some?”
“No, but I’ve read about that kind of thing. People get angry at a character and come up and smack ’em on the street or send nasty letters. I just wondered what I should do about it, if it ever happens.”
“Turn any mail like that over to us,” Marty said grimly. “We’ll deal with it.”
“Does it happen a lot?”
“Only once since the show started,” Katrina said. “That was scary enough.”
“What happened?”
“We hired a bodyguard for the actress for a while.”
“Did you ever catch the person responsible?”
“No. Nothing ever came of it. The letters stopped. We finally decided it had to be a crank. Most of them are. Even so, we don’t like to take chances until we know that for sure.” She exchanged a glance with her coproducer. “The last thing this show needs is a dead star.”
Callie was already cynical enough about television to wonder if the publicity department would agree.
* * *
“So, how come you’ve been locked away with our illustrious producers for the past half hour?” Terry demanded when Callie walked into his dressing room to run through her lines for the scene they were shooting together that afternoon. He sounded miffed.
“Don’t act like there’s been a party and you didn’t get invited,” she retorted. “I was doing research for you.”
He eyed her skeptically. “What kind of research?”
“I was trying to discover whether anyone else in the cast has ever been threatened.”
“Oh,” he said with surprising indifference. He picked up his script. “Ready to tackle this scene?”
Callie didn’t get the nonchalance. Terry was too much of a worrier to dismiss anything which might shed light on the mail he’d been getting. “Terry?” she prodded.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to know what I found out?”
“Not especially.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think it’s a waste of time trying to figure out who’s sending these notes. They probably don’t mean a thing.”
Callie couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly. “Wait a minute. That’s not what you were saying just a few days ago. That phone call Saturday night really spooked you. Admit it.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had time to think about that, too. I’m sure that was the end of it. It was probably just a practical joke.”
“Is anybody laughing? Have you seen any smirks around the set?” It wasn’t entirely an idle question.
“You know what I mean,” Terry said defensively.
“No, I do not know what you mean,” she snapped impatiently. “Are you or are you not concerned about these threats?”
“Not.” He avoided looking directly at her when he said it.
Callie moved into his line of vision so there could be no evasions. “Okay, what’s the deal?”
“I just think maybe I got rattled over nothing,” he insisted, his jaw set stubbornly.
Callie might have believed him, if he hadn’t been gazing somewhere over her left shoulder when he’d said it. For a good actor, he was a lousy liar. She had two choices: she could call him on it or she could allow the lie to stand and forget all about her so-called investigation. Something told her that getting to the bottom of the threats was suddenly more important than ever.
“You’re lying,” she accused. “Now tell me what’s happened or I swear I will tell the world about these threats and call the cops myself.”
He leaped up and slammed his dressing room door. “Jesus, Callie, watch what you say around here.”
“Worried that your letter writer will overhear me?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. You’re already stirring things up just by asking questions. I’m more convinced than ever that that crashing light the other day was meant as a warning.”
“What makes you think that?” When he didn’t answer, she grabbed his brawny shoulders and shook him. It was a relatively ineffective gesture given the difference in their sizes, but she had to do something. “Dammit, Terry, talk to me. How do you know I’m stirring things up?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. As he did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. It had been folded into thirds. “This was sitting on top of my fan mail today. I just opened it.”
Callie took the envelope from him and lifted the flap. She removed the letter carefully by one corner and shook it to open the single, typewritten page.
“Keep the woman out of it!”
The message was succinct and not especially dire, but it gave Callie
