Director's Cut (19 page)

And know enough to use the right typeface and the correct color of paper.

“That's true. So now you want to know who would be able to do such a thing. I can't blame you. Unfortunately, almost anyone in the business would know the format to use, but the person you're looking for had to have access to the most recently revised script.” He paused and thought. “That would limit it to maybe fifty or so people.”

“Fifty?” West said.

“Give or take. Scripts have already gone out to site hunters, costumers, special effects, and various people and businesses in the chain of production.” He paused and toyed with the orange juice bottle. “The key, it seems to me, isn't who has a script, but who knew Catherine would need a new one.”

“We believe it was stolen to force her to ask for another,” West said.

“That makes sense, but . . .” He trailed off. I had a feeling I knew where he was going. “But there is another crucial issue, and I'm afraid it doesn't make me look very good.” He studied West. “This is what you've been leading up to, isn't it?”

“Perhaps.” West smiled.

“I'm a few beats behind here,” I admitted. “Someone care to fill me in?”

“Let me try,” Rockwood said. “That is, if you don't mind, Detective West.”

“Go ahead.”

“The question is, Mayor: why didn't Catherine receive two scripts? I took the call. I started the ball rolling. A script—an altered script—was delivered to her. If someone on the outside was delivering a script, then Catherine should have received two, one from them and one from me. Since only one script arrived, it must—”

I finished his sentence. “Be one from this office.”

Rockwood nodded.

“Couldn't the one you sent be intercepted somehow and another substituted?” I asked.

“I suppose it could,” Rockwood said. “I'm impressed, Mayor. Maybe you should give up politics and become a detective.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Mr. Rockwood,” West said. “I'd like to get your fingerprints to compare with those found on the script. I would also like to interview Lindsey, Patty Holt, Buchanan, and his son.”

“You're welcome to my fingerprints, Detective,” Rockwood said, “but you're on your own with the others. I'm just their producer, not their lawyer.”

“I'm sure your cooperation will go a long way to encourage their cooperation,” Duffy said with a small smile.

Rockwood looked down at his feet. “I suppose I need to go to the police station for this.”

“No need,” West said. “I brought a field kit. It will only take a few moments.”

“Tell me, Mayor,” Rockwood said as he watched West set up, “these inserted pages you saw, where were they in the script?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. His question was odd.

“Were they at the front, in the middle, or toward the end?”

I thought back to what Catherine had said. “Catherine said it was at the end of act one and she called it a plot point.”

“Interesting.” His tone was dismal.

“What's a plot point?” West asked.

“In a three-act screenplay it is the culmination of events or a significant event that sets act two in motion. Usually there's one at the end of act one and another at the end of act two.”

“And that is interesting, but why did you ask?” West said.

Rockwood shrugged. “It's probably just me, but it makes me wonder if there will be a second act.”

West stopped cold.

So did my heart.

Chapter 18

T
he script meeting lasted longer than planned. West and Duffy's presence had caused everything to grind to a halt. An exasperated Charles Buchanan finally called an end to the meeting. West spoke to the group for a moment, gathering names and addresses. Catherine and I slipped out as soon as we could. We were already an hour behind our planned departure time and Catherine had to be at the theater early.

Traffic was uncooperative and as thick as mud. I pressed on, doing the vehicular equivalent of throwing elbows. My frustration grew as two cars conspired to move side by side at the same speed, becoming a bone in the throat of forward progress.

“How do you do it?” Catherine asked.

Since leaving Hollywood she had barely spoken. I was giving her time to decompress. I have learned that fears can compound. Even small things in sufficient quantity could press a person to the ground. A ton of feathers still weigh a ton. Catherine didn't have feathers on her mind; her issues were large and hard and unrelenting.

“How do I do what?” I shifted lanes again.

“Remain so together, so confident when things go wrong.” She paused, then continued before I could respond. “I visited Mom and Dad last month. My mom had been talking to yours. I know about the attack in your home and about the death of your friend.” She looked out the side window. “Yet you keep going forward, running for congress, managing the city . . . taking care of me.”

A tiny tear crawled down her left cheek. A black sadness oozed into my soul. I kept my eyes forward, partly because of the dense traffic, partly because I knew that her anguish was contagious.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “You've gone through all of this with unbelievable strength.”

“It's a facade,” she said. “I'm a mess, Maddy. What you see, what others see, is just an act. I'm an actor, it's what I do. Inside . . .”

I let a moment pass. We both needed a few seconds of silence to gather our wits. “I think most people are actors, Catherine. I know I've spent a good deal of my life putting on airs. That's not so bad. Sometimes we begin to feel the way we act, not the other way around. Other times the mask we wear doesn't matter. We can fool others, but we can't fool ourselves.”

“So you just keep going regardless of how you feel?”

“I used to.”

“Used to?” She turned to face me.

I moved to the far right lane where the traffic was slower. I couldn't duke it out with other drivers and tell the story at the same time. I needed the slower pace. Catherine didn't object.

“As you know, my husband Peter was killed in a carjacking. That was a long time ago, but the shock and pain never fully goes away. All time can do is quiet the sorrow; it can never extinguish it.” I took a deep breath. “In less than two years I've lost two friends to violence. I wanted to hide from the world.”

“But you didn't run away,” Catherine said.

“A person can't flee such things. Loss like that is a wound. No matter where I go, the wound will still be there.”

“So you just gut it out?”

“Not exactly.” I felt awkward, and I was uncertain how she would respond to what else I had to say. I took the plunge. “A little over a year ago I made a decision, and it's changed the way I look at things.”

“What kind of decision?” she pressed.

I let a Chevy pickup pull in front of me. Several pieces of lumber cantilevered over the tailgate. “Before Peter died, he started hanging out with a group of businessmen who used to go deep-sea fishing once a month. Peter was born and bred to be a salesman. Having a dozen businessmen confined on a boat was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.”

“He worked with his father, right?”

“That's right. Glenn Structural Materials. They make commercial flooring. The businessmen came from banking, restaurants, construction, and the like. Prime targets for Peter. It was the only way you would get him on a boat like that. The only thing he ever fished for were new clients. On his first trip out, he learned that more was going on than fishing.”

“Nothing illegal, I hope.”

“No, nothing like that. They were holding a Bible study. On the way out and on the return trip, the men studied the Bible.”

“That's weird.”

“I thought so too when I heard about it. Peter went several times. I knew nothing about what was happening on the fishing boat. Peter never talked about it. He made one last trip with the guys before going to LA where he was murdered. Years later I learned that he had made a decision for Christ, that he had become a believer.”

Catherine opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. I gave her an understanding smile. “I felt the same way when I heard of it. I didn't learn about this change in his life for years. Peter was a believer for less than a day.”

I forced my eyes straight ahead and reminded myself that I was driving on a crowded freeway. Talking about Peter still hurt, but I pressed on.

“A friend, Paul Shedd, gave him a Bible. Do you know Paul?”

“No.”

“No reason you should, I suppose. He used to be a banker but decided he'd be happier as a restaurateur. He owns the Fish Kettle diner on the pier. Paul has a habit of reading through the Bible every year. As he does, he makes notes in the margins and underlines verses that strike him as important. Every year he gives the Bible to someone he thinks will benefit from it. He gave one to Peter the day he drove to LA, the day he was killed. When the police returned Peter's personal possessions, the Bible was with them. I kept everything in a cardboard box stuck away in a closet. It took a long time for me to open that box. I found the Bible.”

“And it changed you.”

“It took a little time and a lot of explaining from Paul Shedd, but ultimately I made the same decision for Christ that Peter did years before.”

“And so everything is perfect in your life.” Her words had an edge to them.

“I don't recall saying that.”

“I'm sorry.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest. “It's just that Hollywood has its share of so-called Christians. I haven't been impressed.”

“What are you expecting from them?”

“What do you mean?”

“You sound disappointed. What are you expecting out of the Christians you know in Hollywood?”

“I don't know. What should I expect?”

“You should expect people who do their best to be godly, but you shouldn't expect perfection. Walking in faith isn't easy. I've learned many take the name but they don't take the challenge.”

“So because you have Jesus in your life now, you no longer have problems.”

That made me laugh out loud. I apologized and then said, “I can't say that. In some ways, I have new problems because of my faith. Took me awhile to learn this, but embracing faith in Christ didn't turn me into the perfect saint. It's not like flipping a switch. The decision, the prayer, can happen in a minute, but the lifestyle takes practice. I still struggle with my temper, and most of all, my mouth.”

“So what's the difference?”

I checked my rearview mirror, buying some time. I felt awkward. Being so new to the faith, I had very little practice at explaining what I had come to believe. “The difference is, now I care. Before I plowed forward and if I hurt someone's feelings along the way I wrote it off as the price of living. Now I try to think about the impact of my words. It's not natural for me and I have a long way to go.”

I pulled one lane to the left and pulled around the pickup. “You asked how I dealt with the tragedies I've faced. Well, that's how. I pray. I seek God's will. I try to live like a person who has Christ in her heart. The more I learn, the more sense it all makes.”

“But God hasn't protected you from pain. That doesn't seem like a loving God to me.”

I understood the sentiment well. I should. I've wrestled with it for as long as I can remember. “Catherine, I'm no theologian. I'm not a preacher. I'm just a woman who has found strength and purpose when I didn't even know I was looking for it. All I can tell you is that my belief in Christ has changed everything for me. Sometimes . . . sometimes experience is the best explanation.”

The next fifteen miles passed in silence. Catherine sat as if someone had sewn her to her seat. She didn't fidget, didn't shift, didn't move. Her tears had been replaced by an emotionless mask. On her lap was the new script. She hadn't said so, but her actions said she wasn't going to let this one out of her sight.

“I had a few minutes to talk to Detective West,” I said, putting an end to the hush. “He was tied up with interviews, but he wanted me to tell you that he was sorry to have to interrupt your meeting.”

“He's just doing his job,” Catherine said. “The meeting was important but not crucial. Shooting is still weeks away.”

“He also wanted me to tell you that he searched your home again, this time looking for listening devices. He brought an expert with him.”

“Did he find anything?” She looked at me.

“No.”

“I don't understand,” she said. “The mystery script had our words down almost identically.”

“That's one of the things that bothers me,” I admitted. “If someone was listening in and recording our conversation, then why are there subtle differences between what we said and what was later written?”

“Maybe whoever did this didn't record it. Maybe they just listened in and later wrote it down. I'm not sure I could recite what we said word for word.”

“That's natural enough,” I said. “Memory is fragile.” I waited for a moment, then added what I had been putting off. “There's something else—something Mr. Rockwood said.”

“What?”

“He asked where the additional pages appeared. We told him. Then he mentioned the same thing you did about three acts and plot points. He said he wondered if there would be a second act.”

“That's frightening.”

“I thought so. Could it be a coincidence the pages were placed there and not somewhere else in the script?”

“I suppose,” she said.

“You don't sound convinced.”

“I'm not convinced about anything.”

“How competitive is the movie business?” I asked. “Could someone be doing this to you to throw off the production?”