“I don't know. But whatever was in the cup acted extremely quickly and she seemed in very bad shape.' Faith suddenly realized she had to sit down or she'd fall down. Her knees had buckled out from under her at the memory of how rapidly Sandra's skin had cooled and her heartbeat slowed. Someone was talking.
“Put your head between your knees.” It was Pix with typically useful advice, although Faith had long ago decided she'd have to be in extremis to assume such an ungainly position.
“I'm okay. And I'll be a whole lot better when we hear that Sandra is.”
But they didn't.
As they were serving the first of the crew, Dunne strode in, took Faith aside, and said, 'She's dead. Now come with me and tell me everything.”
Faith was stunned. The thought that she should have started CPR or done something else nagged at her. Her nose got stuffy and she felt the tears come. She stuck her hand in her jacket pocket and found a blue crayon but no tissue. It made her cry harder. Dunne reached into his pocket and pulled out a fine Irish linen handkerchief with his initials discreetly embroidered at the border. She took it silently. It smelled faintly of bay rum.
She wondered where they would be able to talk and followed him into the house—an hour ago crawling with movie people, now crawling with police. She noted the familiar yellow plastic crime-scene ribbons and the plethora of cameras as they passed the diningroom. She followed Dunne up the narrow, twisting stairs to the second floor and into the front bedroom. It was being used to store equipment and the only place left to sit was on the floor or on the large four-poster. Charley MacIsaac, who was behind Faith, immediately claimed the end near the pillows. Dunne sat next to him and Faith perched at the foot of the bed. The lyrics to one of Ben's favorite songs, 'Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,' immediately leapt to mind and she could hardly keep herself from chanting, 'And the little one said, `Move over, move over.' ' She restrained herself by focusing again on the tragedy. It wasn't difficult to push nonsense aside in the face of incomprehensibility.
“What made you think Sandra Wilson had been poisoned?' John got straight to the point.
“I'm not really sure.' Faith tried to explain the feeling she had as soon as Max had said Sandra needed a doctor. 'Maybe it's left over from the other night. The whole thing was pretty strange.' She described Max's birthday party in detail. Charley's eyes opened wide and the detective lieutenant allowed himself one of his thin-lipped little smiles. 'A Hester Prynne striptease. Wait until they hear about this down in the Zone. It could replace `All Nude College Girls: “
Faith continued. f she thought out loud, maybe things would get clearer.
“It's very hard to tell what's normal on a movie set. I mean, there's obviously a lot of tension about time and not going over budget. Then the actors all have a lot of anxiety about their roles. In some cases, whether they're doing it right; in others, whether they've got enough to do. And you have all these egos that need caressing, which reminds me. Caresse Carroll.' She told them about the child's tantrum and fears about being off the picture. She and Charley filled Dunne in on the black bean soup incident.
“I don't see how the two events can be connected, yet they have to be. And the fire. I'm sure it was set to get us out of the tent while the Chocolax was put into the soup, although it still leaves the question of Evelyn's soup. That was served before the fire. But tampering with food—twice in less than a week. Even if the first incident gave someone an idea, there has to be a link.”
Dunne shook his head in agreement. 'Do you know who was responsible for filling the cup?”
Faith had been dreading the question. 'Yes. Me. That is, the prop man came into the kitchen before they started shooting and asked me to fill the cup with diet Coke and Perrier. I did and he took it back to the dining room.'
“Charley, you want to go down and find the guy? Ask him what he did with it after he left the kitchen.'
“It probably sat on the mantel the whole time. That's where it was when I came in later,' Faith told them.
“Makes sense, but let's get him right away.”
Charley left and Dunne speculated: 'It sounds to me like somebody wants to shut the production down. I wonder if Sandra's death wasn't an accident. Too much of whatever was put in the alcohol, or something she was allergic to. The idea was to have another poisoning where nobody actually got hurt, although from what Charley has said, everyone suffered.' He looked pointedly at Faith.
“You could be right,' she said. 'I think what I'm trying to say is that there's been an unusual amount of tension on this set compared to others I worked on. I'vebeen chalking it up to Max's unorthodox methods—and his personality. We've all been waiting for a display of his famous temper. Evelyn isn't exactly laid-back, either.' She told him about the forest scene shoot and subsequent drama enacted at the Marriott, then returned to her previous point. 'In retrospect, I think the other night was Evelyn's ego run amok, no doubt an everyday event. Stars with their noses out of joint are pretty common on movie sets. People work around it, ignore it. But the strain in the air on A has been more than that.'
“Any ideas who would want to stop the filming?' Dunne asked.
Faith thought for a moment. 'No. In fact, it would be detrimental to everyone I can think of—the actors, Max, crew, producers.'
“What about the studio? Isn't there some sort of insurance money they collect if the movie isn't finished? Could they be in trouble?'
“Maybe, but this is supposed to be a blockbuster with an all-star cast and the cachet of Maxwell Reed as director. It's slated for a wide release at Christmas. They stand to make a whole lot more money if the picture is finished. Besides, and maybe I'm being naive, I can't imagine they'd go to such lengths to get the insurance money.'
“Unless somebody was overextended, shall we say. Like one of the producers. The track, women, high living.”
Faith tried to fit Arnold Rose into the picture. Or Kit Murphy, lounging in someone's pink satin boudoir, her filmy negligee carelessly tossed to one side, next to the marabou feather-trimmed high-heeled mules she'd kicked off before lowering the lights and finishing the champagne. The champagne was right, but the rest .. .
“No, the producers—and they've been with Max for years, like almost everyone else—seem as anxious as anyone to get the picture made.'
“A disgruntled crew member?'
“Possibly. And he or she could be responsible for the soup, too, but other than run-of-the-mill grousing about lack of sleep and cold weather, I haven't heard any complaints. Working on one of Max's pictures is a credential people in the business fight to get. Caresse has been the only outspoken malcontent.'
“What about Caresse?'
“I suppose it's possible. She's hardly led a normal childhood—whatever one is.' Faith tried not to get distracted. She spent a lot of time these days thinking about this topic in the hopes of saving Ben and Amy hours on the couch, not to mention fees that could be put to better use, such as sending aging parents to the Caribbean or the south of France in some far distant winters.
“Putting the laxative in the soup seems like something she would do out of spite—she was really furious at Max and could easily have grabbed a dozen or so boxes from Evelyn's stash, but she wasn't even on the set today. This scene involves infant Pearl, represented by very docile twin baby girls.”
Faith looked out the window. The dull gray sky framed by the ball fringe on the Pingrees' white Priscilla curtains threatened rain, or worse—snow. When had she stopped greeting the first flakes with the delight Ben did? Sometime in April her first year in Aleford? She was getting old and her bones felt creaky, or maybe it was just from sitting on the four-poster, which seemed to have a mattress stuffed with corncobs.
There was such a thing as too much authenticity, and people with period houses often veered dangerously close to the line.
“We'll start someone checking on what Miss Carroll and her mother were up to this morning. Anyone else missing from the set—that is, any of the principals?'
“No, I was surprised to see Marta, though. I didn't think she was involved in this scene, except you never know with Max. He's taken a pretty free hand with Hawthorne'
