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Mason didn’t want to admit it, but living at Julia’s house was pretty fucking rad.

The thing that blew her mind was the quiet. If the wind was in the right direction, it carried traffic noise up the hill, the soft billows of sound like so much surf. Right then, early morning as she stood sleepily by the side of the pool, she heard two or more cars getting into it, blaring back and forth. Somehow the frenetic anger of it was lost, and it sounded like birds calling.

She sipped her coffee, the thick cream Claudia had added carrying tiny pockets of cold against the scald of the espresso, all of it waking her up sense by sense. She noticed little flags of police tape flickering along the fence bordering the pool’s edge. She wandered lazily along, picking them up. No littering, people. She looked at the stretched edges of the tape, the puckers and curls, and thought about leaves. She was just beginning…

“Hey…”

Mason turned. Christine Greenfield was standing there, phone in hand, hair blowing, eyebrows raised, as though she’d been waiting for Mason and Mason was showing up late.

“Yes?” It’s possible her tone was a little sharp. There were few things she loved more in life than daydreaming with a cup of coffee in her hand, and this woman had just interrupted a perfectly good reverie.

“I know you.”

“Not really,” said Mason, putting the police tape in her dressing gown pocket and starting toward Christine. “But I’m Mason. Can I help you?”

“I want to see Julia Mann.”

“Well,” said Mason, “it’s not even eight in the morning, and a call might have been a good idea. I’ll see if she’s even awake.”

“I’ll wait.”

Mason paused. Christine hadn’t said or done anything up until then that suggested she was capable of waiting, for anything or anyone. But after three years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, Mason had grown open to miracles.

She led the way inside and put Christine in the living room.

Then she went to the kitchen, told Claudia what was going on and went upstairs to get dressed. She was confident in her ability to be badass in a dressing down…but the bunny slippers had definitely taken the edge off.

Julia wasn’t upstairs in her room, and Mason eventually found her in the office, talking to Larry on the big screen.

Larry, it turned out, was working from his hospital bed as though this was an entirely reasonable thing to do. He literally had EKG cables snaking out of his pajama top, but he had his glasses on, a pen in his hand and all his faculties intact. He looked like the world’s biggest cherub, with a framing halo of gray curls edging a shining head. Big blue eyes and an expression that swung between beseeching and bullying without any apparent whiplash at all. Julia was clearly used to it.

“Why are you trying to kill me, Julia?” For a second Mason saw tears in his eyes, then she blinked and they were gone. Damn, he was good.

Julia was sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed, unconcerned. “I’m not, Larry. On the contrary, you are very much alive and doing your best to kill me. We’ve been doing this dance for decades now; it’s obviously taken its toll on you. You never had a heart attack before. Maybe you should take this as a sign from the universe.”

“It is! I do! It’s a sign that life is short and you should take advantage of the opportunity to start your movie career up again. Jason Reed has been on the phone to me every single day, begging me—BEGGING me—to get you to be in the new Codex . He says you can do anything you want. You can play a bit part or have a major role. Carte blanche, baby, carte blanche. Do you know how many actresses of your age, of any age, dammit, would kill for this opportunity?”

“Unfortunate choice of words, Larry. I didn’t kill anyone for it, and I don’t want it. I’m a lawyer / avenging angel now, not an actress.”

“The media are going mad for the story, Julia, just insane. The lead article on the Variety website today was a complete redux of the Codex Curse—every event, every on-set disaster, the death of Bella Horton, you and Jonathan, the fire, everything. Tony’s murder, your arrest, the attack on Cody Malone, the attacks on you and your assistant…It’s all proof that the curse is alive and well. They’re eating it for breakfast. The dead piranha were the icing on the cake. The headline was Fishy Business Resurfaces on Codex. Gotta love it.”

Mason cleared her throat. Larry looked over. “Who’s the chicken?”

“That’s Mason, my assistant.”

“Wow, they did a number on her face, huh? Nice bones,” said Larry. “Pity about the hair.”

What is it with people and my bones? thought Mason to herself. “Sorry to interrupt, but Christine Greenfield is here, waiting to see you.”

Larry laughed out loud. “See? The mountain is coming to Mohammed now. I bet she’s here to beg you to be in the movie. Or at least promote it. Can we circle back on Cinespia? Helen Eckenridge called me this morning; she really wants you to do it.”

Julia sighed. “Why Helen?”

Larry shrugged. “Apparently, she’s running point on the event. She owns the rights. I guess she wants to control things. Born director, that one.”

Julia shook her head. “I don’t want to do it. Not going to do it.”

Larry replied smoothly, “I told her you would.”

“Then you lied, you hideous old fart. Call her back and tell her the truth.”

“Don’t want to do it. Not going to do it.” He looked off to the right, obviously pretending. “Gotta go, the nurse is here.” He disconnected.

Julia clicked the window closed and laughed. “He’s a terrible bully, but I can’t help loving him.” She performed her parlor trick with the remote, lobbing it almost the length of the room and into the drawer. “Hey, I went to a Zoom meeting this morning, thought you’d be proud of me.”

Mason was surprised. “I am. That’s fantastic. Day ten today. You’re doing great. Do you want to talk to Christine? She’s been waiting awhile.”

Julia nodded. “She should have made an appointment.”

“I told her so.”

“And how did she take that?”

Mason shrugged. “I didn’t really wait to find out. Shall we go see together? Should I find Will?”

“Will’s already out checking alibis for the night of Tony’s murder and the attack on Cody. He’ll be back later. We’ll have to tackle the scary lady alone. Luckily, I’m a scary lady myself.”

In the end, Christine Greenfield waited over an hour. To be fair, she was a studio executive, so in that hour she spoke to five other executives and issued four demands, three directives and a lunch order. She watched Julia Mann and Mason walk through the door and finished her conversation before hanging up and fixing Julia with what she possibly hoped was a withering look.

Julia didn’t wither.

“Miss Greenfield, I understand you’ve been waiting. My standard practice is to make appointments with people I want to talk to. I suggest you think about adopting it.”

Christine nodded. “Of course. Normally, I would have, but I am so close to the end of my tether that I found myself driving here at half past seven and decided to go with it. I’m sorry if I threw your morning.”

Mason was feeling more on top of her game now that she had her ass-kicker boots on, but even so, she found herself wrong-footed again. Christine Greenfield had resting cross face, but then, what she actually said was entirely reasonable. It was giving Mason a stiff neck.

Julia, of course, merely crossed her legs at the ankle, turned her body to the most flattering yet comfortable angle and ceased all movement.

“That was an elegant apology,” she said. “Did my housekeeper offer you coffee?”

Christine nodded. “She did, but at the time I wasn’t ready for it. Now I distinctly am.”

Julia looked at Mason, who rolled her eyes and turned toward the door. Two steps later she stopped, because Claudia was already there. It was like a magic telepathic coffee service.

And cookies. Magic telepathic cookies.

Julia kept speaking. “How may I help you, Miss Greenfield?”

Christine said, “I should have come to see you earlier. We are business partners, after all.”

“Not for much longer. I have no interest in the studio.”

“Really?” Christine looked surprised. “Why not? Tony gave me no warning he’d changed his plans, but I see the Big Idea. An experienced executive, a young, scrappy assistant and an Oscar-winning pain in the ass. It’s bizarre…but it might just work.” Suddenly, Christine smiled a smile of such genuine amusement that Mason nearly dropped her cookie. “And if it doesn’t work, it’ll make a great movie.”

Julia tilted her head and smiled back. Mason guessed she’d been as surprised as she was. “Or it could be three rabid minks in a cage. I doubt your board of directors is as thrilled about it as you are.”

Christine shrugged. “I’ll make sure to ask them at the next board meeting. When we met in the immediate aftermath of Tony’s death, you were in jail and Cody was still fetching my coffee, out of habit. Things are changing and moving so fast right now.”

“Very true. So what brought you here so early?”

Christine leaned forward. “Anger. When I walked into the office yesterday, someone had nearly killed that scrappy young assistant, and I discovered I was really, really steamed about it. Someone killed Tony, messed up my office and callously threw a load of tropical fish on the floor for no reason at all. I don’t feel safe, I don’t like what they’re saying about my studio in the media and I don’t want it to continue. Seeing as you might also be on the hit list, I thought you might have a vested interest in tracking down the asshole who drew it up.”

Julia shook her head. “I’m not saying no; I’m shaking my head because you’re way behind. The morning after Tony died…well, once I sobered up enough to understand what had happened, I knew I had to find out who did it because otherwise the police would assume it was me. I would have, in their place, and so it transpired.” She moved her shoulders delicately, the foreshadow of a shrug. “But this is personal for so many reasons. I don’t need money to motivate me.” She looked at Christine. “I’ll find out who did it, I assure you.”

“How can I help?”

Julia looked at Mason, who held up her notebook and pen. “I got you,” she said.

“The day Tony died there was a board meeting—what was discussed?”

“Upcoming projects, an issue on a shoot in Romania, possible directors for the Codex remake, a lawsuit we were considering against a streaming service, quarterly earnings… fairly standard stuff. Tony didn’t explicitly discuss changing his will, for example.”

“And did he seem normal? As normal as he ever was?”

Christine had lost the smile and gone back to her pugnacious potato expression, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “I never really understood the bad blood between you two. In all the time we worked together, and I think we were friends as well as partners, I never heard him say a single bad thing about you.”

That subtle shoulder move again. “We had a fundamental disagreement a long time ago.”

“About the studio?”

“About my husband. About ownership of creative work. About valuing a contribution and sharing credit. About ego and power. About money. About legacy. About love.”

Christine raised an eyebrow. “Just the small stuff.”

“Yeah. Little things.” Julia took a breath. “Was he worried about anything lately?”

“Tony didn’t worry. He thought about things a lot, obviously, and things went wrong all the time. But he was never visibly worried. He always saw another way.”

“What was the issue in Romania?” Mason looked up from her notebook and raised her pen.

“It was complicated.”

“Talk slowly, then,” said Mason.

The other corner of Christine’s mouth twitched. “The local electricians union was providing much of the day-to-day labor during filming, with the key grip and gaffer being from here, obviously. The gaffer asked for something the local guy thought was impossible, the key grip got involved and proved it wasn’t impossible, a small altercation broke out, the best boy swung and hit the other best boy by accident and the local folks walked off set and everything stopped.”

Mason’s pen hovered above the page. “How can there be two best boys? Wouldn’t that make one of them the second-best boy?”

Christine opened her mouth, but Julia made an impatient noise. “It doesn’t matter. Write it down and think about it later, Mason.” She turned back to Christine. “What’s going on with the remaking of The Codex ? And do you have that voicemail? I want to hear it.”

If Christine was surprised by the change of subject, she didn’t show it. “We’re in preproduction. Nothing is set. Some key things are nailed, others still loose as fuck.” She smiled. “Are you certain you don’t want to be in it? It would be great.” She was scrolling through her phone.

“No.”

“Could be a little cameo, doesn’t have to even have lines; you could Hitchcock it and just carry a violin case.” She apparently found what she was looking for. “Here’s the voicemail.”

For the first time, Mason heard Tony Eckenridge’s voice. Mild, with a lot of laughter in it.

“Christine, you’re going to love this.” (Sound of laughter in the background.) “Julia has agreed to be in the remake!” (Indistinct chatter.) “No, you did, you definitely said yes. Ignore whatever she says in the morning. She said she’d do it…Talk tomorrow, baby.”

They sat there quietly, each of them reacting in their own way.

“Well,” said Julia, finally, “it’s a week or so later and I’m still saying no. Sorry, but I really am retired.”

“I’m going to keep working on you—be warned,” said Christine.

Julia shook her head. “Save your energy. Jason Reed is confirmed?”

Christine nodded.

“Jade Solomon?”

Another nod.

“Screenwriter?”

Shake of the head. “Not confirmed.”

“Is Helen Eckenridge on board?”

Christine’s head was still. “Yes and no. She holds the creative rights and she wrote the working draft, but she still needs to collaborate with the studio in order to get the movie made.” She flipped her hand over, palm uppermost. “Helen doesn’t know Jason Reed super well, so that’s been a problem. But Repercussion has always been a director’s studio. Tony wouldn’t have it any other way; it’s where he came from. Even though he moved into production and then into running the studio, he was always a director at heart.”

“And you?”

“No. I have no interest in creative control. I hire good people and stay out of their way. Tony taught me that.” She hesitated.

“Yes?” Julia was patient.

“The funny thing about The Codex ? There’s all this fuss about the curse, all this lore, right? It gets the fans revved, the media laps it up and spreads it around. The stuntwoman getting killed.”

“Bella Horton. Her name was Bella.” Julia’s voice held a note Mason hadn’t heard before. Hard to place.

Christine heard it, too. “Bella getting killed, yes. Admittedly, Jonathan being killed and you going to prison, that’s serious stuff. But the fire. The real bullets in the gun. Drama and infighting on set. It’s not a curse; it’s just the regular bullshit that happens on a badly run production. I said that to Tony once and he agreed. He said Jonathan was drinking and partying so hard the production fell apart all over the place…” She stopped. “Not true?”

Julia’s face was white. “Not at all. You asked me before why I hated Tony. That’s why. He lied so much he believed his own stories. If anyone was messed up on that set it was him. It might have been a long time ago, but he was standing right next to me when Bella hit the ground. After the thud, the first noise anyone heard was a coked-up Tony giggling his ass off.”

Christine nodded thoughtfully. “Hard to imagine for me, I won’t lie. He was clean many years by the time we met. Regardless, I think we should remake it as a streaming series anyway. Not a feature.”

Julia’s eyebrows went up. “Oh yes? Who agrees with you?”

“Jason does. Cody isn’t sure. Jade doesn’t care and Helen hates the idea. We’ll see.” She looked at her watch. “What else?”

“Did you stage the accident? On Robertson, the day of Tony’s death?”

“No, it was an actual accident.” Christine paused. “At least, I didn’t plan it. Jade caused it, actually. She saw someone she knew and reached across to wave and knocked the wheel. You know how close traffic gets on that stretch. We just swerved a little but it was enough.” She sighed. “I don’t want this craziness to go on much longer,” she said. “I want it to be done. Find who did it.”

Julia had nodded and shrugged at the same time. “I’m trying,” she said. “Breaking into the studio offices suggests to me that whatever they wanted to achieve by killing Tony they didn’t actually achieve. They’ll keep trying, and they’ll make mistakes, and we’ll catch them.”

Christine nodded, then stood up.

“OK, I’ve said my piece. I admire your commitment, as I’ve always admired your talent. Please consider appearing in the movie. It would be wonderful.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Fair enough. The movie is going to be huge. It’ll be a tribute to everything Tony cared about.”

“The only thing he truly cared about was himself.”

“I think you’re wrong about that,” said Christine. “I can see myself out.”

There was a pause after Christine left, then Julia looked at Mason.

“Alright, back to work. Go see Jason Reed next, I think,” she said.

“You want me to drive you?” said Mason.

Julia walked past her, a drift of chiffon and perfume. “No, I want you to drive yourself. Take your new best friend, Jade, and go find out whether Mr. Reed has enough of a temper to kill for what he wants.”