Pretty as a Picture Read online

  Grace slides down off the counter. “Don’t be silly, I’ll make you some pasta—what do you want? Puttanesca? Arrabbiata?”

  I feel a frown coming on; I fight it back. “A sandwich is fine, really.”

  She adjusts her glasses and plants her hands on her hips. “My dad would seriously disown me if he knew I fed someone a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.”

  “But I don’t want pasta. I want a peanut butter sandwich.”

  The girls exchange a look. “My mom did that peanut butter semifreddo a couple weeks ago,” Suzy says. “We might have some Jif left over.”

  Grace wrinkles her nose. “She didn’t make her own?”

  “It’s better with the cheap stuff.”

  “Gross. I’ll check the pantry.”

  She disappears into a back room. Suzy, meanwhile, crosses to the other side of the room and crouches down behind the counter. Digging through a cabinet? Who knows. Who cares. At least she’s not talking. I cast my eyes to the heavens and try to remember if there’s a patron saint of comfortable silences.

  “So what job will you be fired from in the next three to five weeks?” Suzy asks, her voice slightly muffled.

  “I’m the new editor.”

  Her head pops up. “Really?”

  “Is that surprising?”

  She gives this some thought. “I guess not. We barely saw the last guy, that’s all. Figured Tony had him locked away in a dungeon somewhere.”

  “Not a dungeon,” I say. “Just the cutting room. But I understand the confusion.”

  “Yeah, we heard he was a crazy—I mean, an extreme worka—” She huffs. “An exceptionally diligent worker.”

  They knew Paul? Now that’s interesting. Tony and Anjali weren’t forthcoming, but maybe Suzy and Grace would have some useful information for me. Maybe they even know why Paul was fired.

  “How do you know so much about the crew?” I ask.

  Suzy shrugs. “We spend a lot of time at crafty. Or used to, anyway. But Anjali cracked down on that, and now we get in trouble if we go anywhere near the actors.”

  Her expression is so solemn and sincere, I have to wonder if I’m misremembering things.

  “Didn’t I see you two with Gavin just a few hours ago?”

  “Oh, right.” She breaks into a smile. “We probably should’ve snuck in through the sun deck, huh?”

  “What are you doing with him?”

  She shakes her head. “Sorry, that’s our business.”

  The question that leaps immediately to mind isn’t one I particularly want to ask, but Gavin’s very famous and they’re very young, and Amy would kill me if I didn’t say something, so:

  “Now, you’re not—he isn’t—”

  I drum my fingers against the countertop. How do I put this?

  Suzy laughs. “Molesting us? No way. If Gavin even thought about trying anything, there are like eight line cooks here who’ve known Grace since she was a baby—and they all have access to the meat grinder. We’ve made this clear to Gavin.”

  “Okay, well, that’s very empowered.”

  She puffs out her chest. “Don’t mess with a cook’s kid.”

  “But then what are you—”

  Suzy squeaks and ducks down behind the counter. I turn around just in time to see the man I met at the front desk come in.

  He stops short when he sees me, his hand still on the door. “Oh. Marissa, right?”

  I nudge my mouth into a smile. “That’s right.”

  He’s leaning to the right—Wade, that’s his name—trying to see around the counter. I glance back over my shoulder, somehow not surprised to find no sign of Suzy.

  Wade’s frowning and rubbing the side of his face. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a couple of kids running around back here, have you?”

  I hesitate. On the one hand, I like rules. Rules are good. They tell me where to go and what to say and how to not upset people. They’re clear and they’re comforting, and they make my life easier and happier. Grace and Suzy are clearly breaking the rules. They should face the appropriate consequences.

  On the other hand, sometimes part of following the rules is knowing when not to follow the rules, even though it seems to me that they could have just included that in the rules from the start, as I told my eighth-grade English teacher on several occasions.

  And it’s not like I’m supposed to be in here, either.

  I wonder if Wade knows that.

  “Kids?” I murmur.

  “Teenage girls. One’s Hispanic and one’s—I don’t know, I think the other one’s Chinese?” He flinches. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that. Chinese American.”

  Thump.

  Wade squeezes past me, the door flapping shut behind him.

  “Did you hear that?” he asks.

  He circles the room, moving carefully, quietly.

  “Why are you looking for them?” I ask.

  (Now, it’s possible that I say this a little more loudly than I need to—and also that I try to direct my voice in the general direction of the pantry. Just, you know, in case anyone who might be in there needs a heads-up.)

  “They’ve been bothering the actors,” he says.

  “Everything bothers actors,” I point out.

  “Yes, but Mr. Rees has very strict rules, and if I don’t abide by them—”

  He breaks off.

  “You’re the owner,” I say. “He can’t fire you.”

  “Pretty sure he could fire his own mother,” he mutters. He looks at me then—really looks at me—and his brow furrows. “Why are you here?”

  If I had a dime . . .

  “I know,” I say. “I’m not supposed to be. It’s just that I missed dinner, and—”

  Another of his this-one-goes-to-11 smiles. “Well, we can’t have that, can we? Our new editor going hungry on her first day? Let’s just see what’s in the pantry—”

  “No!”

  He pauses mid-turn, his smile dipping down to an 8. “No?”

  “You don’t have to go to all that trouble,” I say. “Just—point me to the vending machines.” I punctuate this with what is almost certainly the worst fake laugh of my life, and that includes the time I went to a friends-and-family screening of Office Christmas Party.

  His eyebrows come together. “Why are you in the kitchen if you’re looking for vending machines?”

  Good point.

  “I just—don’t want to be a bother—”

  “But you’re our guest.”

  Think, Marissa. What can you ask for that isn’t in the pantry?

  “Eggs?” I say.

  “Scrambled?”

  “Perfect?”

  He goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of eggs, a big block of butter, some fancy milk in a glass jar.

  I glance at the pantry door and pray Grace is smart enough to stay where she is.

  Wade finds a whisk next to the grill. He takes a plate from the shelf and a pan down from the rack. He looks around, slapping the whisk absently against his palm.

  “Bowls, bowls, bowls.” He bends down to check the cabinet at his feet. “Nope.”

  He opens another cabinet. “Not there.”

  He reaches for the next one, and I realize then that if he makes it to the end of the row, he’ll find—

  I drop down and thrust my hands under the counter. I grab the first vaguely round shape I find and hold it up.

  “Will this work?”

  Wade straightens and looks at the object in my hands. So do I.

  It’s a colander.

  “Just kidding,” I manage. “Hold on, I know I saw one down here.”

  I check again and this time I get lucky: Just to my left is a stack of metal bowls. I hand one to Wade and he sets about whisking the eggs.

/>   “The secret,” he says, “is the heavy cream. Used to do a fair amount of cooking here myself, if you can believe it. I’m no chef, but I can hold my own.”

  “For some reason I assumed you were the owner,” I say.

  “Uh, no. That’s Francie, my wife.” He fiddles with the knobs for a few seconds before he gets the burners to light. “I pitch in wherever she needs me.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  He pours the eggs into the pan. “Just over twenty years now.”

  I feel my expression brighten. “So you were here when that girl was murdered?”

  His arm jerks; the egg mixture splashes up over the side of the pan, sizzling against the burners.

  I wince. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He cleans his hand with the hem of his shirt. “No, it’s fine, I don’t mind talking about it. It’s kind of hard not to, these days. I guess it’s just that word, you know? Murder. It’s so—”

  “Gruesome?”

  “—bad for business.”

  “Huh,” I say. “I would assume the opposite. But I guess it depends on the type of murder.”

  He doesn’t respond, and I have to glance over at him. He’s frozen—just standing there. Staring at me. Wondering if I was raised by wolves, probably.

  I clear my throat. “I’m so sorry, I—did you know her?”

  He runs a hand over the back of his neck a few times. “Caitlyn? Yeah, sure, everyone knew her. Her family had been coming to Kickout for years. She practically grew up here.”

  I take a moment to study his expression. He doesn’t appear particularly sad—his face isn’t drooping, his eyebrows aren’t pinching upward—but he’s a man, so that doesn’t tell me all that much. I recite one of my stock expressions of sympathy just in case.

  “That must have been very hard for you.”

  “Harder on Francie,” he says. “Caitlyn was like her kid sister.”

  Caitlyn. Her name was Caitlyn.

  I look down at my hands. Until this moment, it hadn’t really sunk in for me how messed up this situation is. What is Tony thinking, filming this movie on location, in proximity to all the people who have been hurt the most? Surely he could’ve gotten a few establishing shots and done the rest on a sound stage. Authenticity is easy enough to fake.

  I try to imagine having to watch a film crew reenact my worst memory. What would it feel like to be back at that campground? To watch an actress go into that cave? Would she wear the same navy blue Keds with the worn-soft soles? Would they wait for a rainy day? For the creek to rise? Who would they cast as the other campers? Who would they cast as me?

  “Does Liza look like her?” I ask. “Like Caitlyn?”

  He scrapes the eggs out onto a plate and hands me a fork. “She’s a dead ringer.”

  The words hang in the air, and I watch with grim fascination as Wade pales beneath his tan.

  He recovers quickly, though, clearing his throat and wiping his hands on his pants. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it. I’m sure Francie will be needing me.”

  “Thanks, Wade.”

  “Yeah, uh—bon appétit.”

  I wait until his footsteps die away and then, just to be sure, I wait another minute more.

  I push the plate away.

  I hate scrambled eggs.

  THIRTEEN

  Wade’s gone,” I call out.

  Suzy emerges from the cabinet with a clatter. She groans and goes up on tiptoe, stretching her arms over her head.

  When she comes down, she turns to me and sighs.

  “For the record, I’m Korean American.”

  The pantry door swings open. Grace’s head pops out. She looks left, looks right. Then she tosses me a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.

  “On the house.” She sidles up to Suzy and nudges her with her elbow. “Dude, I was just about to come out when I got your text.”

  All of a sudden, I’m able to place the blue light from before. “You guys are using your smartphones?”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Grace pleads. “I promise we’re not using them to take pictures of the sets or anything.”

  “We just need them for research,” Suzy says.

  “What for? Aren’t you guys on summer break?”

  They’re so in sync, they give themselves away by just how hard they’re not looking at each other, and here I have to make a decision, because I have what I came for: this giant jar of perfect, processed, non-crunchy peanut butter. These girls are not my friends, their behavior is not my business, and these fluorescent lights are really beginning to get to me.

  But—

  I think this is one of those niggling questions that’s going to worm away at me. Like when you’re talking to someone who just got a haircut, but there’s one strand that’s longer than the rest, and you can’t hear anything they’re saying because all you can think about is how much you want to lunge forward and yank out that piece of mismatched hair. Sure, they might charge you with assault, but it would be worth it.

  I set the peanut butter and bread on the counter.

  “What are you up to?” I ask. “It has something to do with Gavin, doesn’t it?”

  Grace bites her lip.

  “You can trust me,” I say.

  Suzy looks up at the ceiling.

  “Did I or did I not get rid of Wade for you?”

  “Fine,” Suzy says. “But if you rat us out? Remember those line cooks I mentioned.”

  “Hugely disproportionate physical threat duly noted.”

  “We’re working for Gavin,” she says.

  “But we don’t, like, get him lattes,” Grace says.

  “Or do his dry cleaning.”

  “Or pick all the green M&M’s out of the bag because real artists don’t—”

  I hold up my hand. “I get it. You’re not his assistants. So what’s he paying you for, then?”

  They look at each other and grin. And when they answer, they do so in unison.

  “We’re detectives.”

  My stomach turns over.

  Grace goes on. “He wants us to exonerate him.”

  “Well, not him,” Suzy says. “His character.”

  “I’m not sure he sees the distinction?”

  I let my upper body slump against the counter. “So—Gavin’s playing the killer.”

  Suzy makes a face. “I mean, obviously.”

  “But he doesn’t think the guy really did it?”

  “Right,” Grace says.

  It takes a moment for this to sink in—I’m honestly shocked Gavin would want to play an innocent man.

  “And what do you two think?” I ask.

  “We don’t think,” Suzy says. “We know. The evidence is circumstantial at best.”

  Saints preserve me.

  “If you’re going to be ‘detectives,’” I say, slowly, “you should probably be aware that most evidence is circumstantial. Fingerprints are circumstantial. DNA is circumstantial. Blood spatter is circumstantial.”

  “Oh,” Grace says. “Then I guess they don’t have circumstantial evidence, either.”

  Suzy gives me a speculative look. “How do you know all that? You’re not a lawyer.”

  “I cut three episodes of Suits.”

  Suzy leans over to whisper in Grace’s ear. Grace nods, and they turn to face me, their arms linked.

  “You should help us,” they say.

  I take a big step back. “They weren’t very good episodes.”

  “Yeah, but you’re way nicer than anyone else we’ve met, and I bet you know all sorts of useful stuff,” Grace says. She pokes Suzy. “Google her.”

  Suzy pulls an iPhone out of her pocket. “What’s your last name?”

  I narrow my eyes. “None of your business.”

>   She snorts. “Like that ever stopped me.”

  Approximately ten seconds later she hands the phone to Grace and points at something on the screen.

  Grace lets out a breath. “Whoa.”

  “Right?” Suzy says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You know Amy Evans?” Grace says. “We’re obsessed. We saw her last movie, like, eight times.”

  “Now you have to help us,” Suzy adds.

  “Because I worked with Amy?”

  “She wouldn’t hire someone who sucked.”

  I rub my nose. “You’d be surprised.”

  Suzy slides her phone back into her pocket. “So you’ll do it?”

  I hesitate. “I have a job of my own, you know—”

  Suzy leans forward and slaps her hands against the counter. “That’s right—you’re a part of this, too. Well, Gavin says Tony’s one hundred percent certain Billy Lyle’s guilty. Like, that’s that. Case closed. Q-E-whatever. Do you really want your name on a movie that’s going to ruin an innocent man’s life—for the second time?”

  Wait—Billy Lyle? How do I know that name? I don’t think I would have read about the case, I was in middle school at the time. Was there a cast list lying around somewhere? Did I see something in the editing room?

  Then it comes to me.

  “The boat captain?”

  Grace’s eyebrows go up. “You know Billy?”

  “He brought me out to the island.”

  She smiles. “Then you know what a nice guy he is.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly the word I’d use.”

  “I know he’s a little weird when you first meet him,” Suzy says, worrying the bands around her wrist, “but once you get to know him—well, okay, he’s still pretty weird, but I swear, he would never hurt anyone. He’s a sweetheart. I’ve seen him drop everything to move a cockroach out of his way.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I bet plenty of murderers like bugs.”

  “Billy’s not a murderer,” Grace says.

  “Then why is everyone else so sure he did it? You should’ve seen the way these guys were treating him tonight.”

  “Because he’s different! Because he makes people uncomfortable. They just look at him and think he’s, like, wrong.”