Jane had the door open before the woman reached it. "Can I help you?" she asked.
The woman shoved back her hood with one hand and extended the other to Jane. "Hi. I'm Maisie Valkenberg. May I come in? I need to murder somebody!”
2
“Who's that?" Shelley asked as Jane came back into the living room.
“Somebody who needed to use the phone," Jane said, then fell silent as the two of them shamelessly eavesdropped on the half of the conversation going on in the kitchen.
“Listen, Anita," Maisie Valkenberg was saying firmly, "somebody's really fallen down on the job. The phone line isn't installed and I'm having to impose on the neighbors. My medical kit did not come out on Harry's truck like you promised me it would and I've already had a grip with a bad splinter. I had to borrow tweezers and peroxide from makeup. This is not the way to run things and I'm going to be talking to the producers in a few minutes. You don't want me unhappy, Anita. I can raise a really big stink if I need to. Safety regulations scare the money people half to death, you know.”
There was a moment's silence, presumably while the downtrodden Anita tried to defend herself. Maisie briskly fired another barrage of threats at her before hanging up.
“Take notes, Jane," Shelley said in an undertone. "You might try that technique on Thelma."
“I'm really sorry to have bothered you this way," the visitor said, peeking her head in the living room door.
“It's no bother at all," Jane said. "Do you have a minute to sit down? You look like you could use something hot to drink. Coffee? Tea?"
“Oh, what a good, good woman you are!" Maisie exclaimed. "Coffee, please. As hot as you can make it. Craft services aren't set up yet either.”
Jane and Shelley exchanged bewildered looks. "What does that mean?" Jane asked.
Maisie had come into the living room and was methodically stripping off layers of clothing: her padded jacket, mittens, a muffler, stocking cap, cable-knit sweater. A trim, pretty woman of about forty-five, with springy dark hair, flashing eyes, and a red turtleneck over jeans emerged from the extra clothes.
“I'm sorry. Craft services is the snack area in movie-ese. That's what's going into your backyard here. I really do apologize for bursting in here so rudely. I didn't even ask your name."
“I'm Jane Jeffry and this is my neighbor Shelley Nowack."
“I'm Maisie Valkenberg. I'm the set nurse for this misbegotten production. Neighbor which way?”
Shelley pointed.
“Then you'll be the honey wagons. And wardrobe goes on the other side."
“Honey wagons?" Shelley asked.
“Dressing rooms for the principal actors. Rest ooms for the rest of the cast and crew. The truck coming between your houses a few minutes ago was one of them.”
Jane poured Maisie a fresh cup of coffee and took it to the microwave to nuke it to the boiling point. When she came back, Maisie was nibbling a cookie and saying, "Have you ever watched a movie being made before?"
“Only when my parents took us on the obligatory trip to California when I was a child," Shelley said. "We toured a studio, but I don't remember it looking anything like this."
“No, the studios are sanitized. Especially the ones that allow tourists. Location work is a whole different game. You'll probably enjoy it a lot. It's a weird, inbred little world and probably very different from what you'd imagine. My base will be by craft services. Bring your lawn chairs out tomorrow when they start filming and I'll try to explain anything I can."
“Won't we be in the way?"
“Not if you stick with me. They're putting up a fake building to shield the 'innards' of the production from the camera's sight. We'll be able to peek through. Just don't invite everybody you know."
“What about the kids?" Jane asked. "My son's school is having an in-service day tomorrow. He's dying to watch."
“How old is he?"
“Eighteen.”
Maisie nodded. "Let me see if I can't find him something to do. Some kind of gofer job. He'd have fun."
“That would be great! Tell us about the movie," Jane said, handing around the cookie plate again just above Willard's reach. "The people who contracted with us for our backyards didn't tell us anything. What's the story?"
“As it happens, I sort of know. I don't usually even see a script because I don't need to, but this one's based on a book I read and really liked a couple years ago. The working title is The Chicago Fire, but the marketing dweebs will rename it. Probably Secret Flames or something. We're moving fast. Only five days on this location, including setup. The rest of the film was done in studios and these scenes will wrap it up. If they're following the book, there should be two parts that happen here. The big scene with the refugees from the fire setting up a sort of camp and then another segment many years after the fire when the heroine comes back, having inherited the land where she was once a penniless, singed widow. It was really a great story. The first part, of course, involves mobs of extras — all doing their best to hurt themselves and come whining to me," she added with a martyred look.
“Who's going to be in it?" Shelley asked. "Lynette Harwell is the lead."
“Lynette Harwell? I thought she was dead!" Jane exclaimed. "She won that Best Actress award for Day of Love and then dropped out of sight."
“Not entirely," Maisie said. "You just haven't been watching grade-B movies since then. She's starred in such memorable films as Killer Women of the Andes, Horror Nite, and something I swear was called Wasted Efforts, which was truly a wasted effort. There must have been another ten or twelve, but I'm glad to say I've forgotten the names. Real doggy films. But I don't believe she's made any movies for the last five years or so."
“Why? What happened to her?" Jane asked. "I saw Day of Love a half dozen times — I just rented it from the video store a month ago, in fact — and she was fantastic. Was that great performance just a fluke, or what?"
“No, she's good. She just made real poor choices because she was greedy. I think she figured she could overcome the roles, like Michael Caine does. Nobody holds it against him that he makes terrible movies. He still gets chances to make good ones, too. But karma must have been against Lynette. She probably did a couple dreadful movies and nobody gave her the opportunity to do another good one. Then, too, there's the bad luck thing—"
“Bad luck? What do you mean?" Shelley asked.
“Well, she's been on troubled sets where there were accidents, thefts, illnesses, financial problems. I was on one of those films. None of the bad things had anything to do with her, as far as I know, but people in this business are fanatically superstitious. If somebody gets the reputation for bringing bad luck to a set, it's damn hard for them to get work."
“Is that why she hasn't worked lately?"
“I don't know. I heard a rumor that she was carted off to a loony bin for some kind of intensive therapy. Probably drugs. But it might not be true atall. Maybe her manager just decided it was trendier to be in rehab than simply unemployed and put the rumor out himself."
“Then how did she get this job?" Jane asked.
“I have no idea. There's a lot of speculation about it. Most of it pretty rude. But this one may well be the role that revives her career. I've watched some of the dailies and she's doing a fantastic job. One day last week she did a scene that even had the grips wiping their eyes. It's astonishing.”
Jane was reveling in the conversation. All this inside poop on the famous was like having "Entertainment Tonight" broadcast live from her living room.
But Shelley had the perplexed look of a woman who was trying to drag something out of deep storage at the furthermost recesses of her brain. "Wasn't she from around here?" she asked. "It seems to me that I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew. . no, it was her brother. He used to live in the next suburb over. I think he was deaf and went to work for a school district down south."
“Why, yes. I know who you mean," Maisie exclaimed. "I remember her brother. He used to do her makeup, but got out of the business to teach the deaf. So they lived around here?"
“I'm pretty sure they did. I'm remembering an article in the Sunday supplement years ago when she won the Oscar. It said she was a 'home town girl' who started out here doing commercials and fashion shows."
“Shelley, you're right," Jane said. "Now that you mention it, I recall having a pretty heated discussion with someone about how I remembered seeing her doing the weather on one of the local stations once, but I was told I had rocks in my head. I'll bet I was right. It was — oh, sixteen or seventeen years ago that I saw her doing the weather. When Mike was a baby.”
Maisie grinned. "Watch out with that 'years ago' talk. She still pretends she's barely thirty."
“No!" Jane exclaimed. "She's my age, at least."