Aurora 07 - Last Scene Alive by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

while.”
    “Great,” he said, brightening. “I’ll set it up.”

Chapter Four
    You would’ve thought the circus had come to town.
    It was the biggest mess I’d ever seen, but I was pretty sure that was because I didn’t understand what was happening. There were people everywhere, standing in clusters talking seriously or buzzing busily around the area that had been delineated with sawhorses. A sizeable number of the cast and crew found time to stop by a table laden with bagels and fruit and coffee, a table supervised by a stout, auburn-haired young woman in a white uniform with
    “Molly’s Moveable Feasts” embroidered on the chest.
    It appeared that Robin himself was barely tolerated on the set, which surprised me. No one seemed pleased to see him or gave him more than a nod. Writing fame was no guarantee of special treatment here.
    “How come they’re not happy to have you on the spot?” I asked.
    “Writers are just a pain on the set,” he explained. He didn’t seem at all ruffled or surprised by the indifference shown him. I couldn’t believe that Robin was being herded into a corner and practically treated as if he were invisible. To me, writers were the most important people around. I noticed that I was invisible by extension, and that was fine with me.
    I only dared talk to Robin in whispers. I tried to figure out what I was seeing, and after a while I asked him to interpret the scene for me.

    “That’s the director,” he said in a low voice, nodding toward a tall, gawky man with five earrings on one ear, a shaved head, and an irritating black goatee. He was wearing an absolutely conventional oxford-cloth shirt and khakis, not only clean and pressed, but also starched. Somehow, with the shaved head and goatee, the shirt and khakis looked odder than a Limp Bizkit tee shirt and cutoffs would have. “His name is Joel Park Brooks, and he’s smart as hell. That’s his assistant, Mark Chesney, to his right.” Mark Chesney was as sunny as Joel Park Brooks was grim, and he was wearing exactly the same kind of clothes. It just didn’t look like a costume on Mark Chesney.
    “Who’s that?” I indicated the graying, rough-looking man I’d seen with Starlets One and Two yesterday.
    “That’s the head cameraman, Will Weir. He’s worked everywhere,” Robin said admiringly.
    “He’s easy to work with, they say, and very good.”
    “Is that Celia?” Starlet One had come out of a trailer and was striding toward the churchyard. She was recognizable only by her walk, as far as I was concerned. Her hair was tame, her makeup looked very moderate, her clothes were definitely more modest than yesterday’s outfit. As I watched, she stumbled on something on the sidewalk, and righted herself with a little jerk. Joel Park Brooks didn’t seem to notice, but the cameraman—Will Weir, I reminded myself—frowned as he observed the misstep.
    “Yes,” Robin said, and he didn’t sound glad, or unhappy—any reaction I would have expected from someone seeing the woman he’d dated until fairly recently. He sounded . . .
    worried, concerned. Odd. After all, anyone can stumble. I am no graceful swan myself.
    Celia hadn’t closed the door to her trailer, which was a sort of queenlike omission. I saw the wind blow in and ruffle the pile of papers on the floor, so I stepped closer to take care of the door; and, also, just to satisfy my curiosity. I saw a couch inside the tiny room, a little table sitting by that, and on top of a pile of what seemed to be a manuscript and some library books was an Emmy . . . the real, bonafide statue. I wondered if Celia would let me hold it, because surely I’d never in my life set eyes on one again. But Robin was looking at me strangely, so I swung the door closed.
    Robin pointed out the producer, a wild-haired burly man dressed all in black. “Jessie Bruckner. He’s going to be catching an afternoon plane back to L.A.,” Robin told me. I had heard of Jessie Bruckner, so I