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Julia, Mason, Archie and Will were sitting around the pool, watching the firemen break down the remaining hot spots, kicking over the traces of the living room. It was midmorning the following day, and only a small team of firemen remained, presumably those who’d pissed off someone else and got the sticky end of the cleanup jobs. Because the house was in wings, they’d been able to save the office, the kitchen and the guest quarters without much trouble. But the living room was toast. Burnt toast. The curved frame of the egg chair poked up from a pile of ash, the corner of a picture frame here, a fragment of charred cushion there. Julia hadn’t really reacted yet, but it had to hurt.

The cops had shown up shortly after the firemen, taking Helen into custody and trying pretty hard to take Mason along with her. Come answer questions, they said; it won’t take long, they said…but Mason climbed into the ambulance with Jade and Julia and that was that.

Now, as the sun rose with little enthusiasm and even less fanfare, it gilded the edges of the tray Claudia was carrying across the pool deck.

“How is that even possible?” Will rose to take the tray from her. “There’s no power, you can’t cook, everything smells of smoke, you’re not even supposed to go into the house…”

Claudia grinned at him. “I went out for it. I just popped into the kitchen for the plates and things…I’ve walked through hazard tape before.” She put down the tray and everyone helped themselves. Coffee. Croissants. Breakfast burritos with Tater Tots.

For a while, the team munched in silence.

Julia was wrapped in a blanket, half curled on a lounger, regarding her house with an unreadable expression.

Then she spoke. “Alright. I think I finally have it straight. That whack on the head seems to have jogged my amygdala—is that the part you mentioned, Will? I can remember the night Tony came over now.”

“No, the hippocampus. The amygdala is also a fascinating part of the brain: It’s very small, but totally essential for emotional processing…”

“Sure, that’s great. Moving on. I woke up after the knock on the block with a pretty clear recall of the evening with Tony, at least the early parts of the conversation. He wanted to apologize for not bringing up the tense relationship between Mikey Agosti and Jonathan at the trial, and explained that Agosti had assured him that if he told the cops anything at all that suggested a connection between the Mob and Jonathan’s death, they would destroy the studio. Tony wanted me to see the film, I think, so I could see what I hadn’t known about at the time, but I’m not sure how helpful it was…It doesn’t prove anything; it’s just suggestive.” She sighed. “I think the Mob also threatened Tony personally, but he glossed over that piece. He said he should have stepped up, and could have done so recently, too, once Mikey died, but by then I’d already done the time and he wasn’t sure I even gave a shit. He was right about that—I didn’t—but his doctors had given him months to live, and he was determined to deliver the film to the cops along with a statement about everything Mikey had done and said back then. I started to panic, thinking about the case opening up again, another potential trial, more exposure…” She sighed. “So I drank. It was a stupid reason to pick up, but it’s the reason my disease presented me with and I ran with it.”

“Remember,” said Mason, sagely, “the disease wants you dead, but it’ll settle for maimed.”

“Again, your love of the clichés of the program is a mixture of endearing and horrifying. Let’s keep going.” Julia stared off into space for a moment. “And once I was drinking, Tony pressed home his advantage and got me to agree to be in the Codex remake, too. I remember him calling Christine in triumph. I thought it was hilarious. He also explained he was taking the rights back from Helen because she was worrying him.”

“In what way?”

“In a way that suggested she was obsessive and insane about it, presumably, which was borne out by the fact that she killed him over that very thing not an hour later. No one ever said Tony wasn’t a good judge of character.”

“Good point,” conceded Mason.

“I still have questions,” said Will. “Why did Helen kill Sam? She did kill Sam, right?”

“Yes.” Julia sighed. “Tony must have gone over to Galliano’s after the board meeting, drawn up a new will and had Sam and Becky witness it. It was one of his safest places, right? He knew Maggie would keep the will safe for him, and he left it in the book as one of his funny gestures. But Sam was ambitious and she knew what losing creative rights would do to Helen. Becky said she always had a plan, and in this case Sam went to Helen and said she would destroy the new will, no worries, she just wanted a chance to break in. And Helen said yes, she knew what it was like not to get a break, that she’d come over to discuss it…and she killed her. She didn’t know Becky was passed out behind the bar, or we’d have lost Becky, too.”

“So it was Helen who broke in here? Looking for the will?”

“Yes. When she couldn’t find it at the club, she thought maybe he’d given it to me.”

Mason was confused. “How do you know all this?”

Julia smiled. “I asked her on the drive away from Cinespia, and she was only too happy to explain. In detail. Directors love to explain how they did things. They’re like Bond villains that way.”

“And the attack on Cody?”

“Helen was already on the lot, signed in to work on another project, sitting in a writer’s room all day and into the night. Maybe she thought she’d get the job of director if someone else had to run the project. She was closer to Christine; maybe she thought she’d be persuadable. She stopped by the offices, walloped poor Cody—who she hated because he’d gotten chances and opportunities she never had—and then tossed a load of innocent fish around.”

“Yeah, I thought she was such an animal lover.”

Julia laughed. “Oh, she is. She let Phil and Lorre out before she torched the house, didn’t she? But she’s also a director. Did you notice how quickly the media grabbed that fact and ran with it? Ten thousand dollars’ worth of tropical fish…a little grace note, a little detail, the kind of thing that provides a lovely hook for continued coverage.” She sighed and picked a Tater Tot out of her burrito and ate it. “No one ever said Helen didn’t have talent; she just didn’t get an opportunity. Thwarted passion, frustrated desire…these aren’t things women only feel for romantic partners, though the movies would have you think so. Remember that woman who wore adult diapers so she could drive cross-country to kill her lover’s wife? That makes sense to us, right? We’re used to that idea. But a woman who wants to succeed artistically, professionally? Of course a man has a drive for power, has ambition. But we limit women’s motivations along with their agency. It’s fucked up. Helen loved her work, loved it deeply, and when she couldn’t express it, she slowly went mad. Tony taking the rights was the last straw, and when he told her at their final lunch, she decided she had to kill him before he had a chance to change his will. She just didn’t realize he would do it so quickly.”

“What about the attack on you? Or me? Or Maggie?”

“She hired actors for me and Maggie. She told them she was filming live auditions for the Codex remake, that there would be hidden cameras. I imagine they were both quite confused by the responses they got, but actors learn to improvise, too, so I guess they just went with it.”

Mason remembered the headshots on Helen’s kitchen counter, and the guy who’d said he was living the dream. “And the attack on me?” Mason felt her jaw gently. “It still hurts.”

“Yeah, that was actually Helen. Ex-stuntwoman, remember? She wanted us to stop poking around, because she needed to find the will before we did. And it was all grist to the media mill; the press leapt on it immediately, right?”

“Why did she kidnap you and Jade?”

“Because when I announced that everything was going to Cody, she flipped the fuck out. She never saw the new will. She didn’t know it wasn’t true. And when she pulled a gun on me, little Jade saw her and intervened.” Julia grinned. “I have to hand it to her, she’s got balls of steel. Or a complete disregard for her own life.”

“And Helen explained all this to you?”

Julia nodded. “She was full of chatter last night, chatter and an unhealthy level of obsession. But she’s being quiet now, on her lawyer’s advice.”

Silence.

Mason said, “Julia, who’s her lawyer?”

“Well, for now it’s me.” She looked out over the city. “I have a lot of sympathy for Helen, I’m not going to lie. Hollywood is an evil pit of venom and bile for women, and for women of her age it’s particularly acidic. Tony dug his own grave with her. I wanted to kill him myself, dozens of times.”

Mason shook her head. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“I should hope not. Well above your pay grade.”

Her phone rang and she put it on speaker.

“Baby!” It was Larry. “I heard you got your tootsies singed—the press is going insane! Helen lost her mind! Jade is a hero! You’re an icon! The phone’s been ringing off the hook and I’ve gotten five offers already this morning…”

Julia hung up.

A car trundled up the driveway, and Becky and Ben got out of it, along with their grandmother.

Julia muttered, “Well, will you look at that? Witch shows up late for the burning.” She raised her voice. “Mrs. Jones, how nice of you to come and check out my ash.”

Ben laughed. “We’re actually just here to say thanks and grab our stuff.”

Grandma said, “I saw in the paper they arrested someone for the murder of that stripper, so I’ll be taking these two back to Oregon.”

Ben smiled and shook his head. “I’m coming home, Grandma, but Becky’s going to stay here and go to school.”

“To learn what? Advanced stripping and messing up?”

Julia put down her coffee cup and stretched under her blanket. “Listen up, you old crone. Until last night, Becky thought you killed her girlfriend. That’s not something you should be proud of, that she thinks you’re capable of that.”

Anna Jones turned to her granddaughter. “You did? Why?”

Becky kept her face down. “Because you were there, Grandma.”

Ben was shocked. “You were? She was? How?”

There was a little pause, then Anna sighed. “It’s true. I went there. I showed up at that club, or whatever you call it, after it had closed. She was there, with that girl.” She turned to Ben. “She texted you. I saw it on your phone months ago. She said what she was doing, where she was doing it. I prayed for her, but then I remembered that faith without works is dead, so I decided to come and get her.” She had the decency to look ashamed. “I told you I was at Bible Study and I drove down.”

Ben was shocked. “Grandma, you lied?”

Mason thought about Larissa…not blond hair under the neon lights… gray hair.

Anna got defensive. “I waited until all the people had gone, but I never saw Becky come out. So I went in. Into the lion’s den, like Daniel, hoping to persuade her to give up her wicked ways. But it was worse than I thought: She’d become a deviant.”

Becky made a noise, but said nothing.

“Neither of them would listen to reason, or to the Scripture. Eventually, Becky went to get yet another drink from behind the bar and passed out on the floor. It was degenerate. And then that girl had the nerve to say she loved Becky, and things were going to get better for them, that she was going to have a real job soon. I told her she was going to burn in hell and left. I prayed all night for both of them, as I drove back to Oregon, and God took care of it, because the next day I saw that she had been killed.” She shrugged. “The wages of sin are death.”

Becky spoke, her voice sad. “I guess I was passed out behind the bar for quite a bit, because when I woke up Sam was dead, the barman had called the cops, and I decided not to mention Grandma to anyone. Helen must have come while I was unconscious and hadn’t seen me because I was behind the bar. No one else had seen Grandma, and I didn’t think I would get convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”

Julia growled, “It has happened.”

Becky looked at her. “I know that now.”

Mason was still a little ticked at Becky. “How come you didn’t mention the will? You witnessed it. You must have read it.” Even as she said it she realized how dumb she sounded.

“I didn’t read it. Was that what that was? Sam just said we were going to go on vacation. To Cabo.” Becky looked disconsolate. “I’ve never been to Cabo.”

Ben reached over and took her hand. “We can go to Cabo sometime, Becky. I’m going back to work, but we’ll keep in touch this time, right?”

Becky nodded. “Yeah, I promise.”

Julia said, “You can stay here until you’re sorted out, of course. It’s going to take a week or more for the smell of smoke to dissipate, but we’ll get there.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mann.”

“Call me Julia. You can have Mason’s room.”

Mason felt a little stab, but said smoothly, “Yeah, I’ll be taking my cat and going home today.”

“No, you won’t.” Julia was surprised. “You’re moving into one of the guesthouses.” She turned to Claudia. “It’s ready, right?”

Claudia shook her head. “Not even close. You only told me to sort it out a couple of days ago, the fucking house got torched last night—what do you think I am, a miracle worker?”

“Yes.”

Claudia sniffed. “Well, you’re wrong. Besides, I thought she might like to pick her own colors.”

Mason was incredulous. “Hey, I’m sitting right here, and there is no way I am moving in. I appreciate your hospitality, and I’m not denying the appeal of eating Claudia’s cooking every day, but I like my apartment, and boundaries are important.”

“Sure, but I want you inside my physical boundary. Besides, I need you; this whole debacle has been great for business. We have three client meetings lined up for next week.” Julia waved her hand at the house. “And look at this mess. I need help.”

“No.” Mason was getting irritated. “I am a grown-ass woman and I choose what I do. I got the shit beaten out of me, I took part in a car chase, I watched a man shoot his head off and I nearly got killed. I don’t want this job.”

Julia got to her feet and shook out her blanket. She turned and stared at Mason, folding her arms. “Look, instead of sullenly wandering around waiting for that haircut to come back into fashion, you’ll spend every day saving terrified, helpless people from perfidious inequity.”

Mason stood up, too, to even the playing field. “You can use whatever fifty-cent words you want to, Julia, but I’m not doing it.”

Julia thought for a moment. “You can go back to school and finish your law degree. Then you can become a private investigator. I’ll pay the tuition.”

Mason frowned. “I’ll think about it.”

“You can see Archie all the time.”

Everyone turned and looked at Archie, who looked surprised and a little bit pleased.

Mason blushed. “I said I’ll think about it.”

Julia shook her head. “Don’t. It’ll just confuse you. Besides, I’ll treble your salary, let you live rent free in my guesthouse and make every day a fun-filled cavalcade of danger and opportunity.”

“I’ll help,” said Will.

“I’ll feed you,” added Claudia.

“And besides,” added Julia, “I like you. Despite your truculent attitude and reactionary lack of fashion sense, you’re bold, smart and funny. You make me want to laugh. Not out loud, obviously, but inwardly. Which is more than most people. You saved my life, and you keep me focused on staying sober, which is like saving my life, each and every day. I think you’ll add enormously to our team. Please say yes.”

Mason stared at her. Actually, everyone stared at her.

“Well, if you put it that way.” Mason suddenly changed her mind, in the way she so often lived to regret. “Why not. I’ll try it.” She turned away, to hide the tears that had suddenly started tickling her eyelids. She realized she liked Julia, too—liked all of them in fact—and had felt more useful and engaged in the last two weeks than in the last two years. No need to let them see that, though. Tough cookie, all the way.

“That’s my girl,” said Julia, rewrapping herself in the blanket. “And I mean that literally.”