Reap What You Sew (6 page)

Tori stepped forward, brought her lips to within mere inches of her friend’s ear. “You weren’t
in
Paris last year, Leona.”

With a swat similar to that which would normally be imparted upon a pesky mosquito, Leona stepped closer to the table. Tori shadowed her. “What are you doing, Leona?”

“Watch and learn, dear. Watch and learn,” Leona whispered before addressing the guard once again. “Warren will be extremely upset if he’s not told I’m here, Mr. Kelly.
Extremely
upset.”

Less than a minute later, the guard’s skepticism was gone, in its place something much closer to worry.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m just doing my job.”

A triumphant smile spread across Leona’s face. “I certainly understand, Mr. Kelly. We wouldn’t want undesirables compromising the set, would we?”

Tori pushed her mouth closed and followed Leona through the opening first indicated by Todd, her mind whirling with questions Leona had no intention of answering anytime soon.

Except maybe one.

She ran to catch up with her friend. “Do you really know Warren Shoemaker?”

Leona slowed her step momentarily. “That’s irrelevant, dear. What you should be asking is whether I truly intend to get the female lead….”

She stopped and absorbed the woman’s words. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh but I am.”

“Wh-what about Anita Belise?”

“What
about
her?”

She looked to her left and then her right, her voice dropping to a whisper amid the hustle and bustle around them. “It’s her part, Leona.”

“At this moment, that might be true.” Leona stopped, then brushed a determined hand down the front of her skirt before resuming her diatribe, the nature of her words and the tone in which they were uttered unleashing an inexplicable shiver down Tori’s spine. “But just you wait. That part will be mine… One way or
another
.”

Chapter 4

The second they stepped through the opening, they were whisked apart—Tori toward a table heaped with forms, Leona toward a trailer on the far side of the Green.

“There you are, I thought I lost you,” Todd said as he caught back up with Tori. “In order to work on the set, there are some forms you need to fill out. It’s standard procedure and just requires some box-checking and a signature or two. Easy stuff, really.”

Tori peered at the papers in front of her, the legal-style jargon making it hard to concentrate on much of anything besides the fact she’d actually been picked as an extra. Sure, she’d shown up that morning along with the rest of Sweet Briar’s population. But how could she not? She was, after all, the epitome of a curious soul. It was why she’d gravitated toward books and libraries in the first place.

Todd grabbed a packet from the top of a stack and handed it to Tori. “When I turned around and you weren’t at my feet, I was afraid the security detail let that older lady through instead of you.”

She stopped reading and looked up. “Older lady?”

“Yeah.” He lifted the papers on his clipboard and indicated Leona’s picture with a careless flick of his index finger. “This one.”

Setting the forms down momentarily, Tori pointed at the tiny microphone clipped to Todd’s collar. “There isn’t any sort of chance that someone could have just heard what you said, is there?”

He followed the path of her finger with his eyes, shaking his head as he did. “I’d have to press the button in order for anyone to hear me, and even then it only goes to people working on set, all of whom are wearing an earphone like me.”

“Like Warren Shoemaker?”

Todd drew back. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because if it did, you’d be getting an earful right about now.”

He let his various clipboard-confined papers fall back onto Leona’s picture. “I don’t understand. Do you know Warren?”

She shrugged then picked up her own packet of forms once again. “I don’t. But apparently that”—she stopped, glanced left, then right—“
older lady
does.”

A cloud passed over the man’s face. “Excuse me?”

Reaching across the table, Tori plucked a pen from a plastic holder propped in the center. “Something about a trip she didn’t take and a name I didn’t recognize.”

He brought the clipboard to his chest and locked it into place with folded arms. “And what name might that be?”

She searched her memory bank even as a part of her brain was still wading through the forms’ various clauses designed to make a person pull out their hair. “Um, I think it was something like Mook—no wait, Sook…” Her words trailed off as she worked to remember exactly what Leona had said.

Todd’s eyebrows inched upward, first the left, then the right. “Pooky, perhaps?”

“Yes! That’s it,” she said. “Does that name mean something to you?”

“To me, that older lady, and hundreds of other women just like her.” He lifted the mic to his mouth and pressed the button on its side. “Rick?”

Confused, she simply scrawled her name across the bottom of one of the forms and pushed it toward the bored-looking attendant behind the table. “I don’t get it.”

He released the button. “Do you read the gossip rags?”

She shook her head.

The response was met with a raised index finger and another press of the button. “Yeah, hey, Rick. You might want to look in on Warren. Seems you didn’t brief Kelly the way you were supposed to on the whole Pooky connection. As a result, he let another one in not more than five minutes ago.”

She let her eyes roam toward the trailer even as her ears remained steadfastly trained on Todd.

No sign of Leona…

“This one is older than the norm. Attractive enough, but older. I’ve got a picture if you want to see what she looks… what? Wait, wait, wait, I didn’t catch that. Say it again.”

Her gaze returned to Todd, to the disbelief evident in his eyes.

“They’re w-
what
?” he stammered.

An image began to form in her mind—an image she quickly shook off.

“Are you certain?” Todd asked of the voice she’d have given just about anything to hear at that moment.

But even with the one-way conversation, the image still returned.

They were, after all, talking about
Leona
.

Todd brought the mic still closer to his lips and lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. “Do you think this one’s the real thing? The real…
Pooky
?”

A few more seconds of inaudible conversation followed before Todd finally signed off, stunned. He let the mic fall back to his collar. “Wow. I don’t know what to say. Except all hell’s about to break loose.”

She studied him closely. “Why?”

“Because Anita doesn’t like competition. She’s proven that again and again with each new Pooky that’s walked through the door since shooting began—” He stopped suddenly, and waved his hand in the air. “You know what? I’ve already said way more than I should. You passed on breakfast this morning to be a part of the glamour and glitz, yes? So let’s get to it, shall we?”

Not knowing what else to say, she simply nodded, her feet trailing behind his as they made their way across the Green to a large white tent that had been erected overnight. He talked as they moved, filling her in on everything she’d be doing over the next few hours.

“The scene you’re being brought in for involves the moment when the two main characters see each other for the first time. Kevin—the main character—is deeply conflicted. He has recently learned he’s dying and his life is plagued with regrets.”

“I’ve read the book more than a few times,” she said, the breathless quality in her voice warming her cheeks. “It’s one of my favorites.”

He nodded. “Then you know that the moment he sees this woman is magical. So it needs to be just perfect.” When they reached the tent, he pushed aside a flap and motioned her inside. “We want the background to be quintessential small town—folks out walking their dogs, couples picnicking, children playing nearby. Yet, nothing so distracting that it detracts from the powerful emotion this scene must portray.”

She fell into step behind him once again, dodging various microphone and name-tag-wearing people every few steps. “So we’re the silent background.”

“Primarily, yes. Unless we see something in a particular extra that will make the scene stronger. But that, although next to rare, won’t happen if there is even a hint of a personality issue with the key players. Especially in a scene involving Anita Bel—okay, here you go.” Todd stopped in front of a tall redheaded woman with a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose and a name tag slung around her neck. “Here’s one of your extras, Margot.”

The harried-looking twenty-something with large brown eyes and a serious case of bedhead merely nodded in Tori’s direction, before pointing to a series of chairs, most of which were empty. To Todd, she said, “So far we’ve got four of our fifteen. Max and Chelsea need to pick up the pace if we’re gonna have a prayer of getting this shoot going with the body count Warren wants.”

Todd shrugged. “They’ll find the rest. They always do.” He shot a glance around the tent, his eyes taking in everything around them with an ease that surely came from experience. “Is Anita here yet?”

A snort escaped Margot’s pencil-thin lips. “Oh she’s here all right and making everyone’s life hell as usual.” Dropping her voice so as not to be heard beyond their section, the girl’s words morphed into a divalike mimic. “Do you think it might be possible to find a decent cup of coffee in this godforsaken town? Something that doesn’t look or taste like mud?”

Todd released a matching snort. “So the pot I brewed wasn’t sufficient?”

“Is it ever?” Margot replied, answering her own question before Todd could utter a word. “Which is why I was wandering the streets of Sweet Briar until about ten minutes ago.”

Tori stood beside one of the empty chairs. “You could try Debbie’s Bakery. They make better coffee than I found in Chicago.”

Todd’s questioning glance was met by a vigorous headshake from Margot. “The place was closed. As was everything else I tried in this one-horse open town.”

“Oh. Sorry. That’s right. Debbie and just about everyone else in town are here. Hoping for a chance to be an extra.” Tori lowered herself onto a chair. “But if it was open, I suspect Ms. Belise would have been happy with that coffee.”

A second, more sarcastic snort escaped Margot’s nose. “You haven’t met Anita the Great yet, have you? The coffee is never good enough, the lunch is never expensive enough, the crew isn’t polite enough, the script isn’t perfect enough. And then, just when you think she’s found every last thing to complain about, some poor slob’s spouse sends in a treat for everyone after a long day on the set and she makes us throw it out because it’s been within a ten-mile radius of a nut.” Margot exhaled in frustration. “Trust me.
Ms. Belise
is never happy with anything or anyone. Except maybe War—”

A loud and decisive throat clear from Todd brought Margot’s diatribe to an abrupt halt.

“So. Margot. I’ll check in with Chelsea and Max and find out where they are in terms of extras, then I’ll head back outside and see who else I can find.” He waved his clipboard at Tori. “You good to go in here with Margot?”

Tori nodded. “I guess so, but”—she glanced down at her silver link watch—“do you know how long this will take? I’ll need to be opening the library soon.”

“Library?” Todd echoed.

“I’m the librarian.”

“If you’re going to do this, you’ll need to find someone else to open and close for you today.”

“Close, too?”

“Shots like this can go deep into the night, though we’re hoping that’s not the case today.” Margot shooed Todd toward the door with her own clipboard. “We’ll have a better chance, of course, if we actually find all the extras we need, isn’t that right, Todd?”

He offered a dramatic salute in return. “Yes, ma’am.”

And then he was gone, disappearing out the flaps of the large white tent, leaving Margot in charge of the meager slate of extras that had been corralled thus far. “Okay, so let me explain the shot you’ve been brought in to help with. The two stars are walking down the sidewalk. He, lost in thought over everything he’s facing, and she simply enjoying the beautiful day. You four”—the woman pointed at each of the people seated in her section—“along with the other eleven or so my coworkers are supposed to be finding, will be our town. A few of you will be strolling the sidewalk, a few of you enjoying a picnic, one to two playing with a baby in a carriage… that sort of thing. Think you can handle that?”

Tori’s head nodded along with those of the three other extras.

“Any questions?”

A teenager two chairs to the left of Tori slid to the end of his seat and balanced himself there with a toe. “Is this Anita chick really a witch?”

“That’s being kind.” Margot flipped back the top sheet on her clipboard and jotted something on the page below, her mouth still moving despite the deep concentration that created crease lines in her forehead. “But I didn’t just say that, okay?”

“Your coworkers might get mad, huh?” asked a woman to Tori’s right who looked vaguely familiar.