Murder, She Wrote (20 page)

“
W
hat in heck is going on?” Mitchell Elovitz shouted, coming up to us when we were halfway around the back of the set.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Mort said, “but I need to talk to your people.”

“Great! Talk to them when we're done filming for the day.”

“Nope,” Mort said. “I want to talk to them while they're all together—like now.”

Elovitz looked to me. “Can't you talk some sense into him, Mrs. Fletcher? With everything that's happened, we're running way behind schedule. Lost minutes cost big bucks.”

“I understand,” I said, “but solving Vera Stockdale's murder is more important than losing a few hours of filming.”

Lois Brannigan came up behind Elovitz. She was in full makeup and wore a black judge's robe, her costume for the scene being shot on the office set. “Why is this happening?” she demanded, a hand on a hip, anger in her eyes. “I had my lines down perfectly. Now you've broken my concentration.”

“The sheriff here wants to
talk
to us,” Elovitz said sarcastically.

“What is
she
doing here?” Brannigan asked, pointing at me.

“Mrs. Fletcher is the reason I'm here,” Mort said, “and she'll be asking some questions of her own. Now, if you'll please excuse us, I don't enjoy standing in the dark arguing with you.” With that, he strode past Elovitz, Brannigan, and Barry and onto the set, with me at his heels.

Thirty crew people milled about the hangar, on and off the set. The cameraman, Jason Griffin, was perched on top of a crane operated by Zee, the camera lens pointed down on the scene. The script girl, Nicole Domash, was busy taking still photographs.

Elovitz announced that there would be a break in the filming. “We're going to take ten in a few minutes,” he said. “The sheriff and Mrs. Fletcher have something to say to all of us. It's a lousy time to do it, but I don't have any choice.” He looked at Mort. “You'll have to wait a minute or two. Is that a big deal?”

“I'll give you five,” Mort said, looking at his watch.

“This is going to be fun,” I heard the actor Walt Benson say, as he walked back to take a canvas chair with his name stenciled on it.

Elovitz, seated in his director's chair, a New England Patriots' cap set backward on his head, focused on a shrouded monitor and yelled out instructions. “Audrey, I got some reflections off stray hairs on Lois. Can you spray her down? Karla, her hem is sagging. Fix it. Get me a light on the dog when we resume. Where's the wrangler?”

Hamilton Twomby lumbered over, waving the script in the air. “Thank goodness you're here. Miss Brannigan wants some lines changed,” he said.

“You don't need me to change a few lines,” I said. “Besides, this is not a good time.”

“What
is
a good time?” He lowered his voice. “Look, we're not going to do much, but we have to make it look like we're accommodating her. Elovitz said to give it a good show. We just have to placate her. A tweak here and there should do it.”

“Not right now,” I said firmly. “We have some other business to attend to first.” I wasn't going to allow our murder investigation to play second fiddle to rewriting the scene.

While the rest of the crew looked on, Lois took her place on the set and waited while Audrey sprayed her hair and ducked up and down in front of the actress, trying to spot the stray hairs. Meanwhile, Karla used her teeth to tear off a piece of gaffer's tape and pressed it to the underside of the hem on Lois's robe. When they were finished, Lois sat down in the wing chair at the desk. Zee moved away from the crane, leaving the cameraman up in the air, and settled on a black case next to the canvas cart that bore his initial. Behind him, partially in the shadows, Estelle Fancy shook her head, setting off the tinkling of her long earrings. Arms folded across her chest, she wore a stern expression on her face. Other crew members milled around the hangar, talking or laughing.

“Quiet on the set,” Elovitz yelled.

All conversation stopped.

The director made a show of looking at his expensive watch. “Okay, Sheriff, you have the floor.”

“Sorry to barge in like this,” Mort announced, “but Mrs. Fletcher and I have some questions for you.”

A few technicians headed for the door, Sunny among them. I hadn't noticed her when I first came in.

“Whoa,” Mort said. “I don't want anybody leaving until we're done. Got that?”

Zee stood and started to walk in a direction opposite from the door, toward the large, dimly lit empty portion of the hangar.

“Hey, Zee,” Mort yelled. “Get back here.”

Zee turned and glared at Mort, but did as he'd been told and resumed his seat on the equipment case.

“All right, everybody, listen up,” Elovitz shouted. “The sooner the sheriff and Mrs. Fletcher say what's on their minds, the sooner we can get back to work. Nicole, you've got all the shots you need to maintain continuity?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want hair and makeup ready to touch up Lois again when we resume filming.” He turned to me and Mort. “Go ahead,” he said, not attempting to mask his annoyance.

I'd taken the opportunity to leave Mort's side and to peruse the shelves of books that defined one side of the set. They were typical of law books, all perfectly uniform, each one looking like the next, their spines identical. But one caught my eye just as Mort said, “You're up, Mrs. F.”

I turned to face the thirty members of the cast and crew. To say I was uncomfortable addressing them would be an understatement. Many of them had come to the fringe of the set, but the principals I was interested in hung back. I looked for Zee and saw that he had moved to a place out of the glare of the lighting that illuminated the set. Mitchell Elovitz sat in his director's chair, Nicole Domash perched on her stool, beside him. I also checked to see where Eric Barry was. He stood next to Sunny and Estelle Fancy. Why was Estelle here? Was she Lois's astrologer now?

“First of all,” I said, “I apologize for having interrupted your filming. I know that the murder of Ms. Stockdale has been difficult for all of you, and having to change the cast in the midst of filming must be especially daunting. Sheriff Metzger and his people have been working day and night to bring the killer to justice, and I know that most of you applaud that.”

“
Most
of us?” someone asked. “We
all
want to see that happen.”

“Yes,
most
of you,” I repeated. “Obviously, the person who killed Vera would just as soon see the murder remain unsolved.”

“Are you saying that one of us on this set did the dirty deed? Snuffed out her life?” Elovitz asked, with a less than subtle tinge of sarcasm, from where he sat in his director's chair.

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” I said.

An uneasy buzz of whispers ran through the crowd.

“It would be convenient if Vera had been killed by someone not involved with this production,” I said in a loud voice to quiet them. “But, unfortunately, that's not the case. One of you in this close-knit family of professionals fired the shot that took her life.”

I saw Sunny put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. From the shadows, her father, Terrence Chattergee, emerged. He put his arm around his daughter's shoulder, drawing her into his side.

“I'm well aware that Ms. Stockdale could be difficult, and that there are many in this room who did not think kindly of her. But one of you carried your hatred for her to an extreme.”

There was nervous shuffling of feet, and mumbled questions and comments.

“I wonder if I could ask one of you young men to do me a favor?” I said to some techs standing together. One stepped forward.

“I admire the way the designer duplicated a real judge's office on this set,” I said, “right down to this wall of law books. I know that police looked at the spines of the books when searching for the bullet that killed Ms. Stockdale and found nothing. But there's one book that particularly catches my attention. Would you be good enough to pull it down for me?”

“Which one?” the young man asked.

“That one on the top shelf,” I said, pointing. “See? Its color and height are slightly different from the others.”

He grabbed a small stepladder and placed it close to the shelves, climbed up, reached for the book in question, and handed it down to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I read the book's title from its front cover: “
Famous Actors'
Famous Monologues
.” Then I continued. “Many of you know that Vera Stockdale treasured this particular book and carried it with her wherever she went. There were those of you who scoffed at her for doing so, considered it an affectation. But to her this volume contained precious material that both inspired and instructed. She cradled it when she carried it, pressed it against her chest as though it were a child.” I paused to allow what I'd said to sink in. I continued: “Unfortunately, its beautiful cover has been marred by this bullet hole.”

That announcement elicited gasps, then excited chatter.

I held up the book for all to see, then turned to Mort, opening the book to a page where the bullet protruded from the leaves.

Mort drew a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. He pulled the bullet that had killed Vera Stockdale from the book and dropped it in a plastic bag. “Good work, Mrs. F.,” he murmured to me.

“Thanks,” I said as I closed the book and handed it to him. “You have your bullet, Mort. All you need now is the gun that fired it—and the person who pulled the trigger.”

Sunny stepped away from her father and edged closer to the front of the set. “How did the book get up there, if she was holding it when she was shot?” she asked.

“The killer put it there,” I replied, “after Vera either fell or was lifted into the wing chair.” I turned to face Lois, who sat in the chair.

She jumped up. “I didn't realize this was the same chair,” she said. She walked swiftly off the set to stand next to Elovitz. “It wasn't me. I wasn't anywhere near the set that night.” She shivered.

“Go on, Mrs. Fletcher,” Sunny urged. “How did you figure it out?”

“Although Vera was discovered sitting here on this set, the fact that the bullet wasn't lodged somewhere in the chair indicated that she must have been standing when she was shot. But if that was the case, it was odd that no bullet was found.”

“Couldn't her body have been moved?” Elovitz called out.

“The sheriff considered that,” I said, “but the laboratory technicians and medical examiner who inspected her clothing couldn't find anything to suggest that her body had been anywhere else before we stumbled upon it.”

“But how did you figure out where the bullet was?”

“I've been grappling with that ever since the day we found her body. Where could the bullet have gone? It wasn't until Dr. Hazlitt and I visited a friend of his, a leading forensic specialist, that the answer came to me. It's now clear what happened. Whoever killed Vera Stockdale shot her while she stood next to the chair. She either fell into it or was placed there by her killer, who took the book that had stopped the bullet and put it on the shelf among all the others with the hope that it would not be found.”

“That's pretty clever,” Elovitz said.

“I agree with you,” I said.

“Seems to me that it's Mrs. Fletcher who's the clever one,” Mort said, “finding what no one else could.”

“Hear, hear,” Terrence Chattergee said, stepping forward and applauding. “But finding the bullet doesn't translate into knowing who killed Vera.”

“You're absolutely right, Mr. Chattergee,” I said. I turned to Audrey, the hair and makeup stylist, and Karla, the wardrobe mistress, who stood together behind where Elovitz sat. “Audrey,” I said, “you told me when I visited you in your trailer that the handgun you're licensed to carry was missing.”

“That's right,” she said, “only it isn't missing anymore. I found it this morning right where I usually kept it, in the drawer. I must have missed it the last time I looked.” She laughed. “You know how they say that men have ‘refrigerator blindness,' never finding things in the fridge. I guess I have drawer blindness. It was there all the time.”

“Or maybe it wasn't,” I said. “Maybe whoever took it, and used it to shoot Vera, put it back.”

“You think that it was my gun that killed Ms. Stockdale?” Audrey said.

“I'd say that it's a good possibility. How many people have been in your trailer in the past few weeks?”

“Geesh,” she said, looking around. “About a dozen, I guess, but I was always there.”

“Always?”

“Yes. Except for the time Zee came to hang my equipment rack. He chased us out of the trailer, said it was going to be dusty and noisy.”

“And after Zee—Ernest Zalagarda, to be more formal—had visited your trailer was when you found the gun was missing?” I checked Zee for a reaction. There wasn't any. He sat stoically on the equipment case, eyes locked on me, his mouth set in a hard, straight line.

Audrey said to Zee, “Is she right? Did you take my gun?”

There was an edge to his voice as he replied, “Why ask me? This old snoop seems to have all the answers.”

Mort used his walkie-talkie to call in one of the deputies. He motioned to Audrey to approach. “You don't have the gun with you, do you?”

“No!” she said. “I'd never take it on the set.”

“Please accompany my deputy back to your trailer and give him the gun. We need to test it for fingerprints and match it against the bullet we just found.”

“Sure, but I hate to miss the rest of this show.”

“You can come back afterward. The deputy will let you in.”