Page 15 of Romance Is Dead

“What the hell are you doing here?” Scott set down the scythe and grabbed both of us by the ears, yanking us into the light pouring out from the door.

I craned my neck, frantically trying to get another look at the head. A shock of pain tore through the side of my head and I stopped, not wanting my ear to be added to the list of severed body parts in the immediate vicinity.

“Lay off, man.” Teddy wrestled free. “We weren’t trying to spy.” He moved between me and Scott, succeeding in getting him to release me.

“Shut up,” I said, my teeth gritted. “He wasn’t even thinking that.” Rubbing my ear, I was finally able to squint into the trailer and see that the head was, in fact, a prop.

Damn it, of course it was a prop. It looked eerily real — its eyes bright and glassy, the mouth gaping and bloodied — but the wig had slipped off, revealing an obviously plastic scalp with bolts holding the plates together.

“Bullshit you weren’t spying.” Scott looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “Hey, you’re Quinn, right? Jim’s little girl?”

I bristled. “I’m hardly little. But yeah, he’s my dad.”

“Figures.” Scott rolled up the arms of his shirt, which had slipped down in our scuffle. “Any kid of his was bound to make trouble. What are you two doing here if you weren’t trying to stick your nose where it don’t belong?”

“Natasha asked us to stop by,” I blurted.

Teddy’s eyebrows jumped in alarm. “Yeah, uh. . . she wanted to make sure the. . . special prop would be ready for tomorrow.”

My brain spun, trying to remember what scene we’d be filming tomorrow in case Scott asked us to be more specific. Thankfully, he didn’t.

Instead, he beamed. “Sure will be!” He opened the door and motioned inside. “Want to see?”

I did not, actually, want to see. But Teddy and I complied, climbing into the trailer after him. Scott picked up the fake head lovingly, smoothing the blonde wig back into place.

“Now, I only have the one.” He glanced at Teddy out of the corner of his eye. “So we can’t afford to ruin it.”

“Hey.” Teddy held up his hands. “That was Trevor who broke the lamp, not me.”

Scott grumbled something indecipherable.

“Speaking of Trevor,” I said. “Did you happen to see him? The night he died?” Realizing this probably seemed out of the blue, I hurried to add, “I thought I heard him say he was stopping by.”

“Yeah, he did. To drop off props and apologize about the lamp.” Scott shook his head. “Real nice kid. A shame what happened to him.”

Teddy and I exchanged a meaningful glance, which didn’t go unnoticed by Scott.

“Why?” He set the head back down and crossed his arms. “What’s going on?”

“The police think Trevor’s death was an accident, but we’re not so sure,” Teddy said carefully.

“We’re just trying to figure out what really happened.

Right?” He looked down at me, his eyes stern.

Normally I would chafe at such a blatant attempt to keep me in line, but considering we were dealing with a potential murderer, I decided to comply.

And, coming from Teddy, I kind of liked it.

The realization took me off guard. When, precisely, had I stopped hating being in his presence? Was it when I was straddling him for the camera? When he’d pushed himself between me and Scott just minutes ago? I brushed the thought away.

Meanwhile, Scott looked taken aback. “Listen, I may not have liked that kid too much after he broke that lamp.” He ran a hand over his head. “But hell, it wasn’t worth killing over.”

“Do you have an alibi?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, not that I owe you two anything, but I do.” He knelt to the floor and started rummaging through an old, worn backpack. “Here you go.” He pulled something out and extended his hand. It was a receipt.

I studied the small piece of paper. Sure enough, it was from the date of the murder and timestamped at 10:07 p.m. Teddy and I had found Trevor shortly after that, so it seemed like Scott would have been far away at the time the murder took place.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have killed Trevor before scurrying off to get a receipt for this very reason.

I squinted at the top of the slip of paper. “Why did you need to go to Jenny’s Beauty Supply?”

Scott rolled his eyes toward Teddy, elbowing him playfully in the ribs. “Your girl here is a right pain in the ass.”

Teddy opened his mouth, but before he could get a word out, Scott continued.

“Well, Ms. Nosy, after Trevor apologized, I drove around trying to find a replacement lamp, which I also have the receipt for, and then to the beauty supply store for liquid latex so I could finish our pal over there on the bench.” He nodded toward the head, which was still staring at us bleakly.

“Anyway, I didn’t get back here until after midnight. ”

“Did you notice anything strange?” Teddy asked. “Anyone sneaking around?”

Scott hesitated. “I didn’t think of it at the time, but. . .”

My ears perked up. “What?”

“The light was on in the attic before I left to find a new lamp. I thought it was weird, because who would need to be up there? Anyway, I was standing out there staring up at the window and I saw a face.”

A chill tripped up my spine. “Who was it?”

“Beats me. I couldn’t make them out. They were just sitting up there, staring down at me. Like they were waiting for something.”

“Well, that was a bust.” I hopped into my car, grabbing the seatbelt as I slipped the key in the ignition. After the long walk back from the props trailer, the adrenaline from confronting Scott had ebbed away and been replaced by something else — brutal disappointment.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Teddy climbed in and slammed the passenger-side door closed. “Now we know it’s not Scott.”

“You believe the story he told us?”

“It was a pretty solid alibi.” He cocked his head to the side. “I don’t remember the last time I saved a receipt. Hope I’m never suspected of murder.”

I sighed as I switched on my music and pulled onto the road. The Smiths played through the speakers, Morrissey whining about being miserable. How appropriate. It was silly to have thought we’d solve the mystery on our first attempt, but it was still discouraging.

“We’ll figure it out,” Teddy said cheerfully.

“I guess.”

Teddy elbowed me in the shoulder. “Come on, it could have been worse. What’s up?”

“I just didn’t picture my la — ” I froze, catching myself. No one besides Mara knew this was going to be my last film, and I preferred to keep it that way. “I didn’t picture the movie starting this way. Hunting down a murderer is my character’s job.”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t picture my first movie going like this either.”

This did make me smile. “It could be worse, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah? How?”

“When Jack Nicholson was filming The Shining , they fed him cheese sandwiches for two weeks straight. He hated cheese sandwiches. They wanted to drive him literally crazy to better his performance. Stanley Kubrick was so mean to Shelley Duvall she lost her hair.”

“Damn.”

“While filming Texas Chainsaw Massacre , the cast had to spend over twenty-four hours in an abandoned house filled with dead animals and rotting food. In one-hundred degree weather. With no air-conditioning.”

“Ok, that one might beat being in a real-life murder mystery. But barely.”

I laughed. “At least we have air-conditioning.”

We fell silent, but I could feel him watching me. I squirmed, uneasy under his stare.

Teddy twisted in his seat. “I promise we’ll figure this out.

And in the meantime, I won’t let anyone hurt you.

There’s no getting past these guns.” He rolled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt, which he was still wearing, and flexed his bicep in a convincing impression of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast .

I smirked, ignoring the fluttering in my stomach at the thought of him wanting to protect me. “That’s awfully confident.”

“What can I say? You can’t argue with pure, muscular strength.”

“Oh my God, gross.” I reached over to smack his shoulder. His bicep was solid under my hand, and I fought the urge to remember the way those arms had gripped me in his hotel room, pulling me against him before I’d slammed on the brakes.

I flipped through the songs in my playlist, desperate for a distraction.

Teddy started humming along, his mood shockingly light for someone who’d been questioning a man not a half an hour ago about whether he was a murderer.

I was surprised — I didn’t take him for someone who would be familiar with thePixies.

“You know this song?”

“Sure do.”

“You don’t strike me as an eighties alternative rock guy.”

“What kind of guy do I strike you as?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. . . a Post Malone type guy.”

He burst out with a laugh. “Not my style. My mom loves music, so I grew up listening to this stuff. She played R.E.M. on her big CD sound system every night when she was making dinner, and she took my brother and me to see Blondie when I was eleven. My first concert.”

“You’re really close to your brother, aren’t you?”

Teddy nodded. “And my mom. She’s amazing and did everything she could for us, but as a single parent with two jobs, she was gone a lot. So my brother and I got really close. Fought a lot, too, but we grew out of that.”

I wanted to ask what had led to his mother raising them alone, but it seemed rude to pry.

“My dad used to play these guys as we drove around in his pickup to conventions and premieres.”

“You rolled up to movie premieres in a pickup truck blasting eighties rock?”

“Sure did.”

He grinned. “I love it.” Teddy tapped his foot to the beat, unable to keep himself from drumming on the dash as the tempo increased. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, amused.

“I don’t get you,” I finally said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been so worked up about performing that you were blowing your lines and ruining takes.” I shook my head ruefully. “But there might be a killer out there, possibly after us, and you’re totally calm.”

Teddy shrugged. “I guess.”