Reel Murder (31 page)

“We’ve already checked that wall,” Officer Conrad said. “We didn’t see anything. No bullet holes, no shell casings, nothing.”

“Was there just one shot?” Rafe asked Mom.

“That’s all I stuck around for. So yes, I think so.” She scrunched her eyebrows together. “But I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”

Rafe shook his head, frowning at the wall for several minutes while Conrad and Jiminez stood by, their arms folded in front of their chests. Finally Conrad cleared his throat.

“Ma’am, is it true that you’re an actress?”

“Why yes, I am.” Mom smiled, thinking she’d found a fan. “Have you seen any of my movies?” She looked delighted. “I’ve done a lot of theater work, but people always seem to recognize me from my movie roles. Oh, and I did a Hallmark Hall of Fame television drama. I played a young social worker in Minnesota who broke up with her fiancé and moved to Guatemala to open an orphanage where she found a half sister she never knew she had. She ended up marrying a journalist who wrote a story about her experience.” She paused to take a break. “Maybe you caught that one.”

I raised my eyebrows. Officer Conrad was probably three years old when that show aired.

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.” He shifted uneasily and stared at his feet for a moment. “I was just wondering, you being an actress and all, if maybe you could have imagined that someone shot at you?” He spread his hands out in front of my Mom apologetically. “No offense, ma’am, but the thought crossed my mind; you know?”

“You think I imagined it? Well, I certainly did not!” Mom was outraged.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Conrad offered, “but you know, sometimes creative people . . .” He let his voice trail off and stared at the floor.

“See things that aren’t there,” Jiminez, his partner, finished for him. “The lighting is pretty bad in here.” He was right. The greasy windows didn’t let in much ambient light and the only illumination came from a low-wattage ceiling light dangling above us on a chain.

“What does lighting have to do with anything? I’m telling you, I
heard
the gunshot!”

“Could have been a car backfiring,” Jiminez offered.

“Ridiculous!” Mom muttered. “They don’t sound anything alike.”

“Did you find anything?” I asked Rafe, who was still staring at the wall, as if willing a bullet hole to magically appear.

A long moment passed. He crossed the room and looked around, presumably for a shell casing. “No, nothing at all.” He looked at Lola. “Whatever happened here, Lola, there’s no trace of it. I’m afraid we don’t have much to go on.”

“Maggie, someone really did try to shoot at me. I didn’t imagine it. You believe me, right?”

It was nine o’clock that evening and Mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of Lark’s wheat germ- walnut brownies in front of us. They’re loaded with iron-rich blackstrap molasses and taste far too good to be healthy, but trust me, they are. Lark had brewed a pot of chamomile tea, and I held the cup to my lips, enjoying the soothing fragrance and the delicate herbal flavor.

“Of course, I believe you. If you say it happened, it happened. You walked into the warehouse and someone took a shot at you.”

I remembered how shattered Mom had looked at Dolce Vita just a few hours earlier and how she’d tried so hard to be brave. She’d insisted on driving her own car back to Cypress Grove even though Rafe had offered to send someone to get it for her.

Now that we were safely back in the condo, I made a conscious effort to unwind, pushing the disturbing picture of the warehouse to the back corners of my mind. My thoughts were whirling in a million directions and it seemed pretty clear that someone wanted me to stop investigating Adriana’s murder.

As Freud said, “there are no coincidences.” The attack on Lola was directed at me. And somehow it was all related to the murder on the
Death Watch
set. But how to connect the dots? That was the problem. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, but I was missing a few key pieces.

“So what’s the next step? Is the Miami PD going to do anything?”

I shrugged. “Rafe said they’ll make a formal report but they don’t have much information to go on. Apparently they can’t find the tenant; the building was rented out to a guy who paid cash. And he paid in advance for six months, so there’s no paper trail at all. The people in the neighborhood say it’s been vacant for the past few weeks. The cops tried to follow up on the name you gave them, but I guess it was phony.”

“Cal Silverman. He said he had offices in New York and L.A. Cal Silverman Productions. It really sounded legit.”

“No such person, I’m afraid. Either here or on the West Coast.”

“It seems hopeless, then. There’s nothing for them to go on.” She looked crestfallen, finishing the last of her tea and rubbing her eyes.

I was silent for a moment, thinking. “The only concrete evidence is that phone call you got here at the condo. They can try to figure out where it originated, but that may be a dead end, too. Rafe said he’d call or stop by tonight, if he had any new information.”

Mom nodded and stood up slowly, stifling a jaw-cracking yawn. Mom is like the Energizer Bunny, always operating at full throttle, but tonight she looked like she’d finally run down.

“You know, Maggie, I think I’m ready to call it a night.” She glanced at her watch. “I haven’t gone to bed this early since I was twelve years old,” she said wryly,” but I’ve got to be on the set bright and early tomorrow. Hank gave me a couple more lines of dialogue and he put me in another scene.”

“That’s good.” I smiled. I knew having some extra lines made her happy and I wondered if Hank had gone out of his way to beef up the role for her. He’d sounded genuinely upset when we’d called him about the fake audition down in Miami and he’d asked if he could do anything to help. I told him the best thing would be for Mom to get right back to work and try to put the whole incident out of her mind.

Good advice, but I wondered if I could do the same thing?

I was ready to call it a night myself half an hour later when there was a quiet tap on the front door. Pugsley gave a soft little yip and trotted to the front hall with me. When I swung open the door, my breath caught in my throat.

“Is it too late to stop by?”

Rafe, looking a little rumpled but sexy as hell, was standing on my doorstep, his jacket slung over his shoulder.

“Of course not; c’mon in.”

I pulled the door back, but he shook his head. “I’ve only got a second. Just wanted to fill you in on the latest.”

“Okay, then I’ll join you out here.” I stepped outside, closing the door softly behind me. Mom was probably dead to the world and I didn’t want to disturb her. I knew the incident at the warehouse had taken a terrible toll on her, even though she’d tried to make light of it.

It was a gorgeous evening, and I took a deep breath of the night-blooming jasmine Lark had planted next to the front walk. The fragrance was intoxicating. Rafe leaned against the wrought-iron railing, his eyes dark and intense. He was always watchful, even when he tried to look relaxed. It’s as though all his senses are always on high alert, and his mind is always sizing up the situation. I never can decide if it’s personality style or learned behavior. He’s a cop so maybe it just goes with the territory.

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing substantial. The call to your condo is the only thing we really have, and the guy used a phone card.”

“I was afraid of that.” I paused, thinking. “And nothing turned up in the warehouse, did it? I don’t think the cops believed a word Lola said. They think that because she’s an actress she has a vivid imagination. They probably think she’s a drama queen.”

Rafe grinned. “She’s pretty dramatic all right, but I know she didn’t make this up. Something happened but it might not be what she thought it was. I went over the warehouse again, after you left. I used a Maglite and went over it inch by inch—there was nothing there, Maggie, no bullet hole. Nothing. I’d bet my badge on it.”

“Then I don’t know where this leaves us.” I bit my lip in frustration. “Mom’s not delusional; she really heard a gunshot. I believe her.”

“I know she thinks she heard a gunshot, but it could have been something else. A car backfiring, or maybe some kids had a cap gun; I don’t know—”

A cap gun.
That’s when it hit me, the thought that had been playing around the edges of my mind for hours. It had tickled my brain cells, tantalizing me, and now it finally drifted to the surface
. Bingo
. My pulse glitched in excitement.

“Rafe, I think I know what happened,” I said, cutting him off. “What if it was a prop gun? Could that be what she heard in the warehouse? They sound very realistic. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Someone wanted to threaten Lola, to intimidate her, but not kill her, so they shot a prop gun.”

He scratched his chin; he had just a faint hint of stubble. “That’s an interesting theory,” he said slowly. “It’s certainly possible.”

“And remember, whoever called her knew that Edgar Dumont was her agent. And he deliberately wanted to keep Edgar out of the loop. Someone decided to play this cruel prank—or whatever it was—to lure her down to Miami and then nearly scare her to death.”

My mind was racing with possibilities and I could hear the words tumbling out too fast. Pressured speech, the shrinks call it. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t seem to rein in my thoughts or my words and they bubbled up under their own power.

I was sure I had the key to what happened and I wanted Rafe to agree with me.

“There wasn’t any gunpowder smell in the warehouse,” he said thoughtfully. He was obviously turning the idea over and over in his mind, realizing it was the only way to explain what had happened. “So that would go along with your theory,” he admitted.

“I’m telling you it was a prop gun; I know it.” I grabbed his arm in my excitement, and he locked eyes with me for a moment. We were standing very close and I felt the hard muscle ripple under my fingertips. I flushed and let my hand drop back to my side. “Anyway,” I hurried on, “this the best explanation we have so far.”

“You realize you’re playing with fire, don’t you? Whoever set this up went to a lot of trouble. First the notes at the station and now the threat against Lola.”

“I know. It’s awful to think I might be responsible for what happened today.” I stared at the street for a moment, lost in thought. It was shrouded in shadows and the fronds on the palm trees were dancing in the evening breeze. I pulled my thoughts back to the unpleasant truth I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t believe I’d put Lola in harm’s way, but that’s exactly what I’d done.

“You’re not responsible, Maggie,” he said, touching me lightly under the chin, forcing me to look up at him. “But this has to end, right? It has to end right here, right now. You’ve got to let us do our work, and you do your work. We’re the cops and you’re—”

“Nancy Drew?” This is one of Rafe’s not-so-affectionate nicknames for me and it never fails to annoy me. I’m sure that’s why he does it.

“Wrong. As usual, you’re jumping to conclusions. I was going to say ‘you’re a talk show host.’ ” His cell phone chirped and he pulled it out to look at the screen. “Gotta run, Maggie. Promise me you won’t do anything foolish,” he added, heading down the steps to his car.

Foolish?
Rafe has an uncanny ability to push my buttons and I felt a little bubble of anger start to rise in my chest.

“I won’t do anything
foolish
,” I echoed. Just a touch of sarcasm in my tone, to let him know I’m not a pushover.

He stopped dead in his tracks on the middle step and whirled around to glare at me. “I mean it, Maggie. This guy isn’t kidding; he’s playing hardball, whoever he is. Remember what the notes said: Back off. That’s two warnings, and now there’s this incident with Lola. Here’s exactly what I want you to do—”

“Yes?”

“Nothing.” His voice was flat with a steely edge to it. “I want you to do nothing. We’ll solve this crime without your help, and you’re just putting yourself and your mother in danger by meddling. You’re making our job tougher, not easier. Got it?”

Wow, no subtlety here. Rafe can lay it on the line when he wants to. Sometimes he talks to me like I’m one of his suspects, I thought with a flash of intuition.

“Got it.” I gave him a mock salute but his back was to me; he already was getting into his Crown Vic with his cell phone jammed to his ear. Rafe was back in his cop world, moving on to the next problem, another pressing case, and our conversation was no longer center stage.

I sighed and went back inside. For a really hot guy, Rafe can be an incredible pain in the ass sometimes.

I sat down at the kitchen table, too jazzed to even think about going to bed after my conversation with Rafe. I grabbed a piece of paper and started to make a list of all the suspects in Adriana’s murder, hoping something would jump out at me, some key fact that I’d missed or maybe a subtle clue that I’d managed to overlook.

Writing has always been soothing for me, offering me a shot of clarity when my thoughts are hopelessly deadlocked. I used to jot down all my impressions when I was dealing with a particularly troubling patient back in Manhattan. Somehow, just the act of putting pen to paper gave me a new perspective on the case—it seemed to jolt my brain into problem-solving mode.

I started by writing my patient’s name in the center of a piece of paper and then I listed the names of all his friends and family members in a big circle. Then I drew a line from my patient to each of the main characters in her life, connecting them, like the spokes of a wheel.

It’s a sort of visual shorthand. A straight line means a harmonious relationship, a jagged line indicates some tension or troubling issues, and a broken line tells me the relationship has been severed.