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“Murder rarely is.”

“Are you quoting from something?”

She scrunches her face. “I’m not sure.”

“Hmmm.” I pull the evidence bag toward me. Something is off about this script.

Oh, the color!

This one is white. The cover of my script is green.93

I start to open the bag.

“What are you doing?” Officer Anderson grabs it away from me.

“I need to check something.”

“You can’t. It’s evidence.”

“It might be a clue, though.”

“Itisa clue.”

“No, I mean to what’s really going on. That’s an older version of the script.”

“So?”

“I’m not sure, it just feels significant.”

Harper sighs and picks up her drink, but all that’s left is ice. She rattles her glass at the bartender, but I shake my headno. She’ll thank me in the morning.

“Shawna has the script,” Harper says. “She has the burner phone. She’smissing. It seems like case closed to me.”

And then the thunderCLAPSagain, the weather punctuation and underlining all at once.

90Yes, this is also a rhetorical question.

91Not because I have a drinking problem—I just tend to get drunk when there are murderers around, which is hazardous to my health.

92Have you ever noticed that weatherman is theonlyjob where you can be wrong every day and not get fired?

93Scripts have different cover colors during filming depending on the revision, starting with white (the color you start with on day one of shooting) and then blue, pink, yellow, green, all the way to cherry (ninth revision).

WHEN IN ROME

ACT 3, SCENE 12

INT. HOTEL HALLWAY - NIGHT

Cecilia and Connor trip down the hallway, drunk and happy, their arms around each other.

They stop in front of his door. Connor pushes her up against the door and kisses her passionately.

CONNOR

You’re amazing.

CECILIA