A Knife to Remember by Jill Churchill Read Free Book Online Page B

is what I think of your producers!”
    His accent had been pure Bronx for a moment. He strode to the trash container by the craft service table and dropped the tape into it with a flourish.
    Then he thought better of that. Accent back on track, he said, "Ah-hah! I see your look! You think when my back is turned, you will come back and remove it!" He fished the tape back out and looked around for a means by which to destroy it on the spot.
    “I'll throw it away if you like," Jane said. "Who are you!" Cavagnari demanded.
    “This is my yard. I live in this house," Jane replied sweetly. "I'll put it in the trash inside."
Maybe,
she thought to herself. Or maybe she'd just keep it as a nice little souvenir of having had lunch with a bunch of famous people. She noticed that Mike was smiling at her, making her wonder if her son could read her mind as well as she read his.
    Cavagnari lobbed the tape at her, which she managed to catch before it hit her. Jane felt her face reddening with anger and embarrassment. This man needed to go back to preschool and learn manners from the ground up. She slipped the tape into the kangaroo pouch on the front of her sweatshirt.
    The producers' representative was muttering fiercely to himself and studying his recently assaulted camcorder for damage.
    “If I see you use that again, I'll smash it to bits," Cavagnari said to him.
    A tense silence fell over the group. Only Lynette Harwell seemed immune. She was still eating; slowly, delicately, relentlessly finishing everything on her plate. Perhaps this was why Olive Longabach insisted on serving her, Jane speculated. Knowing Lynette's appetite
and
her need to stay slim, Olive probably chose precisely the number of calories Lynette could afford to eat.
    Jane was still seething with anger at Cavagnari's rudeness, but she had come out of the scene with the tape and was feeling an odd hostessy urge to make conversation. After all, they were all eating
in
her backyard, even if she hadn't invited them. "I understand you're originally from Chicago, Miss Harwell," she said.
    “Oh, hundreds and hundreds of years ago," Lynette said with a coy laugh, which was presumably meant to cue somebody to say that it couldn't have been so long ago.
    Nobody did.
    “From this part of town?" Mike asked.
    Cavagnari fell to eating his lunch, having ignored it while telling his endless story. Jake was studying a script with notes in the margins. George was making conversation with two people at the far end of the table who Jane hadn't even noticed were there until now.
    “No, we lived much closer in," Lynette said. "I was in my last year of high school and didn't know a soul. It was very lonely for me." This with an attractive little
moue
of sadness. "But I kept myself very busy. I did some modeling and community theater. And I studied privately with a very great old actress who had retired to the area and took only a select few students who she knew had great potential. Isn't that right, Olive?”
    Olive, still on guard behind Lynette, merely nodded.
    Lynette smiled at Olive. "Poor darling Olive would find me up fearfully late at night, going over and over my lines. Making sure I had it perfectly right. And she'd have to absolutely force me to sleep.”
    Olive finally softened. "You always did work too hard."
    “But it was worth it, wasn't it, darling Olive.”
    To whom?
Jane wondered. To Lynette surely, but to Olive? All that Olive had gotten out of it was a hard life on film sets and locations. Sleeping in strange hotels, having no life of her own, waiting hand and foot on a spoiled, aging seductress?
    “Mom," Mike said suddenly. "I wonder if maybe I ought to take a few acting lessons. Just to see if—"
    “Oh, my dear! You must! You might be terribly, terribly talented," Lynette gushed, putting her hand over his. "You certainly have the looks for screen work. In fact, you remind me of a great love of my life! I met him just before I left Chicago. He was such a