“I don’t remember you eating a quesadilla…”

“Didn’t I? The chips, then. Although we all ate the chips, didn’t we?” Selene had licked the salt off one chip, exactly one chip, as Tess recalled, while still maintaining that she could eat whatever she wanted, thanks to her fantastic metabolism. “Oh well, what does it matter what caused it? The thing is, I’m still a little shaky, and I can’t let that get in the way of Job One, which is looking after you, especially now that we’re going twenty-four-seven. Which means, of course, I’m going to require backup. I’m only one woman, I can’t be with you constantly.”

“Back” – Selene paused almost five seconds before squeaking out – “up?”

By then she had registered the tall blonde entering the makeup trailer. It was Tess’s oldest friend, Whitney Talbot, whose very posture seemed to scream “boarding school headmistress on crack.” This was Jean Harris before she shot Dr. Herman Tarnower. Mere moments before. Whitney was wearing riding pants and boots, although Tess knew that her friend hadn’t ridden for years, and the kind of gone-to-seed Burberry blazer whose elbow patches weren’t for show. In fact, Tess was certain that she recognized the blazer from their freshman year in college, and she had thought it looked like a dog’s blanket then.

“Around the clock?” Selene said sharply, dropping her usual little-girl lilt. “Isn’t that excessive?”

“Not at all. What if something had happened to you in New York when I got sick? And, truthfully, this isn’t just about you, Selene.” The girl gave the tiniest bit of a pout, as if she found it sacrilegious to suggest that anything was not all about her. “This is a twenty-five-million-dollar production. If anything happens to you, all that money will be lost.”

“But they have insurance for that,” she said, her antennae up.

“Some. But they wouldn’t recoup all their losses, and they wouldn’t be compensated for the money that they expect to make when Mann of Steel takes off. Anyway, this is Whitney Talbot.”

Whitney shook Selene’s hand so hard that what little flesh the girl had on her arms wobbled up to the shoulder and back again. Skinny as she was, Selene didn’t have a lot of muscle tone.

“Delighted,” Whitney said. “What was your name again? I’m afraid that I don’t get to the movies much.”

“Selene Waites.”

“Right. You were in the movie about the prodigy.”

“P-p-prostitute.”

“Well, that’s a kind of prodigy, isn’t it? And I’m sure you were utterly convincing in the part.”

“Th-thanks.”

Whitney was acting, too, of course, but only a little. Tess knew that her friend really did go to the symphony more often than the cinema, and she wasn’t inclined to be impressed by any actress, even one who insisted on being called an actor. The movies that Whitney knew tended to feature Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, or Jean Arthur. Or, as she liked to say: “They were called the talkies for a reason, once upon a time.”

Tess patted Selene’s bony little shoulder, and the girl shot her a look, as if it were a breach of etiquette to touch her without permission. “Anyway, Whitney’s going to hang here on set today, then I’ll meet you back at the apartment, where we’ll both be sleeping for the duration of the shoot.”

“You and me?” Selene’s voice squeaked.

“You, me, and Whitney. Quite a threesome, don’t you think, but you’ve got all those empty rooms, right? Oh, I might sneak home to check up on my houseguest, Lloyd, but Whitney will be there every night.”

“With my rifle,” Whitney added.

Selene bit her lip, studying the two women. Tess was determined not to underestimate her again, and she doubted that the girl would give in easily. But, for now, she seemed cowed, and Tess felt more than comfortable leaving her in Whitney’s care.

“My family was distantly related to the Pattersons,” Whitney said, peering over Selene’s shoulder to study the facsimile of the Gilbert Stuart triptych. “Of course, we kept our money.”

The production office was still cordoned off, an official crime scene for at least one more day, and the writing staff had set up a makeshift workstation in another suite of offices one floor down. Tess was impressed to see Lloyd at the photocopier, running off pages with the rapt attention of a young novice.

“He doing okay?” Tess asked Ben, who was working nearby. Well, lolling, but he could have been thinking deep thoughts about the script in front of him.

“He’s great, actually. Seems thrilled to do anything we ask, and never complains, even about the most trivial assignments. I think he would draw my bathwater if I asked him – and drink from it afterward.”

“We are talking about Lloyd, right?”

Ben nodded. “But you didn’t come up here just to check on Lloyd, I’m guessing.”

“Take a walk with me,” she said. “It’s gorgeous outside.”

They wandered through the Tide Point complex. Built on the old Procter & Gamble site, it had taken the names of P &G products for the various buildings – Cascade, Joy, Dawn, Ivory. Perhaps the developers thought it a whimsical tribute. Tess remembered the hundreds of jobs lost when the plant was closed and found the theme in dubious taste.

“Want coffee?” Ben asked, gesturing to the outpost of Daily Grind just outside the fenced parking area.

“A little late in the day. I try not to drink coffee after ten or so.”

“Vodka, then?”

She laughed. “Maybe a little early.”

“Ah, it was ever thus for me. Too late or too early, never right on time.”

They settled on a bench overlooking the harbor. He extended his long legs and stared straight ahead, which suited Tess fine. There were advantages to talking to a profile. The eye was freer to roam, notice body language.

“About Greer-”

“Fucking tragedy, that.”

“The cops like the ex-fiancé for it.”

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Isn’t that how most women become homicide victims, at the hands of a husband or boyfriend?”

Normally, Tess would like a man who had that information at his fingertips. But Ben’s use of the statistic struck her as glib and incurious, a way of trying to shut down the topic.

“Actually, about one-third of the homicide cases in which women are victims are classified as ‘intimate’ homicides. So the majority aren’t.”

“Still – the broken engagement, the threats…”

“Was there a broken engagement, much less a threat? Lottie told police that you mentioned something to her yesterday, but no one else seems to know exactly where they stood.”

He crossed one leg over the other, resting his foot on his knee. He wore jeans and sneakers, with an Oxford shirt that he hadn’t bothered to tuck in, or maybe he just couldn’t keep his shirt tucked in for long.

“I was just inferring. Greer had been pretty jumpy the past couple of weeks. And there were other signs that seemed to indicate a breakup.”

“She was still wearing an engagement ring when I met her.”

“Yeah, well, Greer wasn’t one inclined to let go of anything once she got it in her grasp. I guess she persuaded herself that she was within her rights to keep the ring. Look, why do you care? This is what homicide detectives do, right?”

“I was hired because of problems on the set. This could be connected.”

“Then the problems will stop, won’t they, once they have the guy locked up.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Ben was getting irritated. “Fuckin’ Flip. Look, I know what he thinks. It’s not Selene.”

“How can you be so adamant?”

“Because, well…” He scratched his cheek. At least he shaved every day, didn’t cultivate the stubble look. “Because that girl doesn’t have the necessary IQ to organize a trip to the 7-Eleven, much less play these kind of pranks. As for murder-”

“Selene went to a lot of trouble last night to get out of town, establish an alibi.”