“I thought probably the only way to get you and Ida to stop calling was to see what’s on your mind.”
“What does Ida want?” she snapped.
“Ask Ida.”
“Well honey,” she started, and then unwound some platitudes-we all miss you, you have every right to be upset-the full laundry list. I interrupted her mid-sentence.
“Lana, I’m in the middle of dinner.”
“Shall I call later?”
“Please don’t. Let’s hear what you have to say and be done with it.”
“I want you to do a film for me,” she said.
“About the late Park Holloway.”
“Yes. Who better than you, Maggie dear?”
“You have balls, Lana,” I said. I glanced at Jean-Paul and caught him grinning as he eavesdropped. I winked at him.
“Think about it, Maggie,” she said. “You can try to get backing to do it on your own. But if you make the film for me you’ll have full access to all of the resources the network can offer, and you know they are significant. We both know this story is ripe, and we both know that there are probably half a hundred hungry folks out there ready to pluck it. But I want you. What will it take to bring you home?”
Home? I wanted to tell Lana to go to hell. I had worked in television for a long time and knew very well that shows get canceled and people get dumped all the time; it had happened to me more than once. Between network gigs, I had also worked as an independent filmmaker and knew that being out there alone was an even dicier way to earn a living. But the ragged way Lana handled the cancellation still left me feeling raw three months later.
On that particular afternoon, I had gone up to Lana’s office with Uncle Max, who was my agent as well as my attorney, expecting to sign the new contract that he, Lana and the network had drafted just the week before, with raises for my crew as part of the package; an early Christmas present. Instead, I got the ax and was left to tell my co-workers that they were laid off. When I walked in to deliver the bad news, they had been icing celebratory champagne, waiting to hear their raises were coming.
That crew was the only reason I didn’t immediately hang up on Lana. Fergie was in financial extremis and I couldn’t carry her, Guido was out huckstering, looking for free-lance jobs. The others were in similar straits. So, I took a sip of wine, and took a deep breath.
“I will consider doing the film through the network, but only on the condition that you hire back my production team at the pay rate that was established in the contract you reneged on in December.”
“I’ll call Max and we’ll get started on the contracts right away.”
“You are right about the topic being ripe, Lana,” I said. “I already have Fergie doing research. So keep this in mind: yours isn’t the only call I’ve had today. From you I learned that handshake agreements mean nothing, so you would be advised not to dick around about getting contracts drafted and signed, because I will take the first offer that meets my conditions, whether it’s your offer or someone else’s.”
“We’ll get it done, honey,” she said. “Have I ever let you down?”
“I hope you aren’t expecting an answer to that. Good-bye.” I ended the call.
Jean-Paul seemed thoroughly amused.
“Another quick call,” I said to him, dialing. “And then I’m turning off the phones.” I reached out and touched his cheek, he took my hand and kissed my palm. “For the rest of the night.”
I dialed a number that went directly to Max’s message system. Saves a lot of time. I told him Lana would call him, if she hadn’t already, and told him my terms to sign with her. Then I turned off the phones.
“Remind me never to argue with you,” Jean-Paul said, with a wry smile, a little shrug.
“Might be worth it,” I said. “There’s a lot to be said for making up afterward.”
Chapter 11
Sunday morning Jean-Paul and I had brunch on the beach in Ventura before continuing up the coast to Santa Barbara. Lew Kaufman had mentioned that Franz von Wilde, AKA Frankie Weidermeyer, the sculptor whose work Holloway had raised money to buy, exhibited in a gallery on State Street. I thought it would be worth a trip to take a look at the gallery, find out what we could about von Wilde, and with luck, find some link between him and Holloway. An added benefit to being away from the house was that we were also avoiding news-hounds who wanted to talk to me.
There were over half a dozen galleries on State Street, so Jean-Paul parked at Anapamu Street and we started walking. The day was brisk. Though the sky was still clear overhead, we could see dark clouds gathering offshore, the promised Monday storm approaching.
As we crossed an intersection, we were buffeted by a cold blast straight off the ocean. Jean-Paul looped my hand into the crook of his elbow and leaned his shoulder against mine.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
“Out of the wind, yes.”
I wished for a jacket that covered my butt, but I had chosen a short leather one because it looked good. Jean-Paul, wearing the suit he had arrived in the day before, with the cashmere V-neck sweater from his gym bag over his open-necked dress shirt, no tie, was effortlessly elegant. How the French pull that off is a great mystery to me, so why had I even tried?
He was easy to be with. Maybe too easy. Once again, there was that problem of geography. Jean-Paul told me that after his wife died their friends had urged him to accept the consular post in Los Angeles as a change of scenery for both him and his son, Dominic. And it had been good for them both.
What he did not say, and did not need to say, was that this posting wasn’t a permanent assignment. His family, his home, his profession were in France, and one day he would go back there. I needed to keep that in mind, because my home, my family, my work were in California. But in the meantime, it had been lovely to fall asleep in a man’s arms again.
The first two galleries we visited had never heard of Franz von Wilde or Frank Weidermeyer. But at the third gallery, after the owner was finally persuaded that we did not want a melodramatic seascape to hang over our sofa, we got our first break.
“Frankie,” she said. “More chutzpah than talent. When he was a kid, I let him put some of his little drawings in my window. He’d stick a great big price tag on them and people would think that was cute and then they’d come on into the store.”
She leaned in closer to us. “The thing is, he wasn’t kidding about the price he wanted, and cute lasts only so long. But his mother was one of my best clients, so I put up with him.”
“His mother was a client?” I said. “I thought she had a gallery of her own.”
“She does now.” She waved to someone walking by on the street. “Around here, we have winter people and summer people, and all of them come for our weather. Clarice and Frankie were summer people. About the time he got out of high school, they moved here permanently.”
“Where did they live the rest of the year?”
“Somewhere in the east. I’m not sure they ever said.” She leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Clarice never said anything about her private life. I never met a husband, but money didn’t seem to be a problem.”
The woman was gossipy, a boon for us. Better yet, she never introduced herself, saving me the need to reciprocate. When your name pops up on the news, people can get notional. It’s better to stay anonymous.
“Clarice Weidermeyer?” I asked.
“No. Her name is Snow,” she said. “I have no idea who Weidermeyer is. Or was.”
“Do you think she opened the gallery to exhibit her son’s work?” I asked.
“Good Lord, no.” The question amused her. “She knows what she’s doing. She lets Frankie display a few things there because she’s his mother. In the local art market, Clarice Snow is at the very top of the heap. The very top.”
She never asked why we were being nosy. There was no one in her gallery, so maybe she was just entertaining us to fill some space. We thanked her, promised we’d think about a seascape, and walked on down the street.