He climbed out of the car, headed for the stairs. Find out who killed your wife.
Coming to the studio was a risk. But he quickly discovered that no one really looked at a man carrying a clipboard and wearing gray slacks and a bright yellow shirt. His new haircut and fake tan probably helped, but most people immediately classified him as a member of a different caste, and didn’t spare more than a cursory glance. He adopted a blankly busy expression and walked with purpose. It wouldn’t fly if he bumped into someone who knew him well, but it was as close to invisible as he could manage.
This section of the lot was all concrete and buildings, none of the carefully maintained greenery of faux-America. Stage 16 had a marked entrance, but he figured there would probably be another round of security. Halfway down the enormous building, he found a tall cargo door rolled open, with a semi backed up to unload. Daniel nodded at a black-clad woman smoking a cigarette, dodged around a costume rack, and stepped out of the street—
—into his front yard.
He stopped.
The set in front of him was the truncated exterior of a house. Not just any house, though. His house. The one in Malibu.
This version ended twelve feet off the ground. Above hung a light grid of black pipe, two dozen glowing lamps flooding the porch with soft sunset colors, a sort of hyper-clarity that made the fantasy house seem more real than the world surrounding it: the cavernous height of the soundstage, the dolly track laid on the floor, the craft services table stocked with sandwich meat and protein bars and vitamin water, the people buzzing about—
the afternoon he and Laney closed on the place in Malibu, they’d driven straight from the lawyer’s office and wandered giggling around their new home. The first either had ever owned, and how lovely that it was the one they’d shot B-roll of in the early days. The one Cindi, the art director, claimed had the perfect Candy Girls energy. Malibu instead of Venice, but who would believe aspiring starlets lived in Malibu, so he’d rewritten reality, as he was paid to. A few taps of his fingers on the keyboard had lifted the house and whirled it south, plunked it down ready for the Sisters Sweet to live in. And now, two years later, paychecks from the show provided the deposit to buy the real thing. Reality in a feedback loop. A writer and a once-aspiring actress buying their home with money from a show that used the house as home for an aspiring actress scripted by that writer—
He shook his head. The memory had come strong as a vision, and he wished he were alone, that he could sit and stare at the façade of life and try to peer behind it. But he wasn’t, and it was only a matter of time before someone working at the other end of the soundstage recognized him.
Daniel raised his clipboard at an angle that screened his face, as if he were squinting to make out handwriting. Over the top edge, he scanned the people milling around his house. Though he probably knew them all, none of them were cast members. All crew then, setting up for a sequence.
He turned back the way he’d come and walked around the side of the soundstage until he reached the end, where a handful of trailers were parked. The third one had ROBERT CAMERONstenciled on the door. He took a breath, rocked his shoulders back, and knocked. “Arrow Courier. I have a package for you.”
“It’s open.”
With a glance over his shoulder—no one around—Daniel opened the door and stepped inside. The trailer was nicely outfitted: leather couches, a side bar with scotch and glasses, a Bowflex nestled in the corner. Robert Cameron sat at the table, script pages in front of him. He had a stone jaw and dark hair, wore expensive jeans and a thin cashmere sweater. “Need me to sign—” Trailing off as their eyes met. “Daniel?”
Daniel closed the door behind him, took in the room, the actor. The guy was preposterously handsome, his features even, a hint of stubble, the kind of eyes you noticed the color of. Daniel imagined him kissing Laney, her rising up on tiptoes, pressing against his muscled body, and the thoughts were bitter.
“My god.” Something washed across the man’s face, a surge of emotion it was hard to read. Surprise? Guilt? Fear? Hard to say. The first character every actor learned to play was himself. The expression was quickly supplanted by a wide grin. “I’m so glad to see you. Where have you been? Everyone has been looking for you.”
“It’s complicated,” Daniel said.
“I bet.” Robert rose, looked him up and down. “What are you wearing?”
“Yeah, I . . .” He gestured at his courier outfit. Daniel tried on a smile, said, “Sorry about this. I needed to talk to you, but I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You could have called. My god, ever since the accident, everyone thinks—I mean . . .”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Something in Daniel loosened. To hear it from someone else felt wonderful.
“I was just about to order lunch.” The man walking over to a desk. “Let me get you something, you can tell me all about it. Sushi okay?”
“Umm. Fine.” He glanced around, unsure what to do next. The actor picked up the phone, began to dial, his fingers shaking. In Daniel’s fantasies, the man had come at him fists flying, or else had cowered, guilt in his eyes. The last thing he had expected was this affable conversation, an offer of lunch—
Daniel lunged forward, knocking over a chair, and jammed down the button to hang up the phone. Robert looked up, the mask of camaraderie gone.
“Calling security?”
“I . . . Of course not.” The words falling lame. “Just ordering—”
“You thought you’d play nice, keep me busy while they came to get me.”
Slowly, the man hung up. “What do you want?”
“I want to hear about you and Laney.”
“What are you—”
“You’ve been telling the tabloids that you loved her. Tell me.” He knew that the actor wasn’t going to come out and admit to her murder. But Daniel wasn’t a cop. He didn’t need that. He just needed the man to slip, to let out one careless confirmation of impropriety, one hint of an affair. Bluffing was his best option. “I want to hear how much you loved my wife.”
Robert seemed perplexed. “She was my best friend.”
Uh-huh. “Your costar.”
“Yes.”
“Long hours. Lousy shooting schedule. All that time together. Must have been nice to have such a good friend to help pass the time.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I know about the two of you.” Blink. Wince the tiniest bit. I’m watching. “Laney told me before she died.”