“Ha,” R.J. said, blowing his nose with a rumpled tissue he extracted from his pocket. “Truth.”
Mindy’s and R.J.’s phones pinged simultaneously. Mindy checked hers. “They’re about to shoot the first scene. We need to go. Dee, you good?”
Dee finished typing. “Yes. Thank you, both of you, so, so much. This has been really helpful.”
She put away her phone and followed the writers out of the dressing room to the set. A stand-up comedian was warming up the studio audience, while instructing them on the rules of watching the sitcom shoot. Not wanting to disrupt the process, Dee hung back. Mindy kept her company. They watched as the actors were introduced, one by one, to applause and whoops from the audience. The show’s star, sixteen-year-old Justin Jeremy, finally waddled out, unhappily imprisoned in a giant roach costume. The audience screamed and cheered, which did nothing to improve his mood.
Dee swallowed a laugh. “A roach costume?” she whispered to Mindy. “Whoa. What did Jeremy do to tick off Dan?”
“His agent called and said Jeremy feels he’s not being served well by his material,” Mindy whispered back. “He demanded more jokes for him and threw in a few threats about Jeremy walking off the set. So now Jeremy’s in a roach costume with no lines at all, stuck listening to the other characters make jokes about him.”
“A lesson smart actors learn early on,” Dee said. “Never get on the bad side of a showrunner. Unless you’re into roach costumes.”
Jeremy took a pratfall, landing flat on his back. Shaniq Flass, the show’s breakout star, who played Jeremy’s best friend, snickered, then declared, “I guess roaches check in, but they don’t check out. At least not to this party.”
He sauntered past the party set’s velvet rope, with a teen girl on each arm, as Jeremy flailed helplessly to roars of laughter from the studio audience.
“A roach motel joke?” Dee whispered to Mindy. “How old and stale is that? And it doesn’t even make sense. The whole point of the bit is that Jeremy can’t check in to the party.”
“If you want, I’ll tell Dan you’d love to join us in coming up with a new joke,” Mindy said, baiting her friend.
Dee paled. “I will drop to my stomach and combat-crawl out of here if it means getting out of doing that. Bye.”
“Bye,” Mindy said, laughing. She grew serious. “And keep me posted on the Michael thing.”
“Will do.”
Dee made her escape. She was almost at the stage door when she heard a particularly loud roar from the audience. She glanced back to see Jeremy had lost his balance and was once again flailing on his back as the costume designer and her assistant tried to pull him to his feet. Dee pushed open the door and hurried out of the soundstage, more confident than ever in her decision to trade a TV career for a barely functional, retro motel in the middle of nowhere.
* * *
The minute Dee returned to the she shed, she conferenced Jeff and Raul to share what she’d learned. “It’s a whole passel of new suspects.” She heard herself and grimaced. “ ‘Passel.’ I sound old-timey again.”
“No worries. We’ve all been there.” Raul spoke reassuringly, although she could hear Jeff chuckle in the background. “Walk us through what you’re thinking.”
“Michael’s killer could be a disgruntled writer. Or a disgruntled poker player from a game where he cheated, because I’m sure he did. Or it could be a disgruntled mobster he owed money to. Or maybe he cheated on Pria with more than one woman, which means the killer could also be a disgruntled lover.”
Jeff emitted a frustrated noise. “You said ‘disgruntled’ so much that the thing where a word doesn’t sound like a word anymore is happening to me.”
Dee broke open a bag of Cheetos she’d snuck off the crafts services table of a show shooting outdoors on the studio’s fake New York street. She popped a few in her mouth and commenced crunching. “Sorry. Bottom line, Michael Adam Baker left a trail of dis . . . contented people behind in L.A.”
“I’ll contact LAPD and see if they can look into the poker angle,” Raul said. “And do a general look-see at anyone in his life who might have held a grudge against him for some reason. Like R.J., for instance.”
“I think R.J. is okay,” Dee said through a mouthful of Cheetos. “He got payback by replacing Michael on Duh! after he was fired, crummy show or not. But I know there are other writers out there who Michael undercut and hate him for it. I just don’t know exactly who they are.”
“That’s for LAPD to find out,” Raul said. “You done good. Now it’s their turn.”
The three signed off. Dee licked Cheeto dust from her fingers, then washed up and readied for bed, eager for morning and her return to the Golden.
At 7:00 a.m., Dee was blasted awake by a cacophony of leaf blowers from the McMansions on either side of her dad’s house. She staggered out of bed and into the shower, then dried off and slipped into sweats and an oversized T-shirt, comfort clothes for the drive home. Once dressed, she packed her carry-on and left the she shed.
She found her father in the kitchen, which smelled of fresh coffee. “How can something that tastes so bad smell so good?” Dee asked with a sigh. She filled a mug with water for tea and placed it in the microwave.
“I got bagels,” Sam said, pointing to a spread of bagels, lox, cream cheese, and tomato slices.
“Yum. Thanks.”
Dee picked up a sesame bagel and dropped it into the bagel guillotine base. She shoved the sharp cutter into the bagel, splitting it in half, then did the same to a bagel for her father. She heaped fixings onto the bagels, setting one at her place and the other at her dad’s, then made her cup of tea. Sam sat down across from her at the retro green-and-gray dinette set Sibby had rescued decades earlier from a neighbor who’d consigned it to oversized trash pickup.
Dee watched her father meticulously assemble a loaded bagel, layer by layer. Whoever said daughters look like their fathers was dead-on when it came to the Sterns. Except the annoying lack of cheekbones, looking at Sam was like looking in a mirror for Dee. She’d inherited the almond shape and hazel color of his eyes, the slight upturn of his nose, along with a smatter of freckles on the bridge of it. The oval faces of father and daughter featured full lips and fair skin that only burned and never tanned.
After breakfast, Dee went through her grandmother’s costumes, which were stored in the guest room closet. “Yes.” She triumphantly held up a square dance dress to show her father. “I should see if there’s anything else useful in here.” Dee pushed aside one hanger after another. “Nurse’s uniform. Victorian dowager. Old-lady outfit. Ha, here’s one.” She pulled out a lacy red-and-black saloon girl costume. “If I wore this around Goldsgone, maybe they’d like me better.”
Sam struck a pose, planting his fists on his hips and furrowing his brow with comic exaggeration. “What in tarnation?! Someone not likin’ my li’l girl? Well, durn those folks.”
“You’d be surprised how much you sound like a Goldsgonedian,” Dee said, her tone rueful. She placed the saloon girl costume back in the closet and the two left the guest room.
Sam walked his daughter outside the house to her car. “Safe drive home, sweetie.”
“Thanks.”
Dee hugged her father. A plane soared overhead, and he clicked the clicker she didn’t know he was holding. He held it up to the sky and cried out in a flawless English accent, “We shall fight in the beaches, we shall fight on the ground. We shall never give up!”
“Fight on, Sir Churchill,” Dee said.
She gave her father a pat on the back and got into the car. She glanced at her rearview mirror and could see Sam cursing the disappearing airplane as she drove off.
* * *
