Page 38 of Script Swap (The Last Picks #11)

I started to turn toward the sound of Nora’s voice, but she made a warning noise, and I froze.

“I like you the way you are, Mr. Dane. Don’t make me do something I’d regret.”

“A bit late,” I said, “isn’t it?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Nora said with a trace of weariness. “You, tell him what I’m holding.”

In a small voice, Tinny said, “She has a gun.”

“So do you,” I said. “Let me get out of the way, and you two can have an old-fashioned shoot-out.”

“Very droll, Mr. Dane,” Nora said. “But unlike that idiot girl’s, mine didn’t come from the prop department.”

“Are you kidding—” I began.

But the chagrin on Tinny’s face answered my question.

I said a few words that Dick Van Dyke had probably picked up in the Army. And then I said, “Listen, Nora, this is—”

“Please don’t try to convince me it’s all a misunderstanding, or that it’s a terrible situation, or that if I know what’s best for me, I’ll give myself up and confess.

I’m afraid I was a lady prosecutor for the last half of the third season of Just Justice , and I have an idea about how the legal system views murder. ”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to call them lady prosecutors.”

“Not to mention the time I spent studying Vivienne Carver and her Matron of Murder series. Trust me, Mr. Dane, I know all about getting the bad guy to talk.”

“That was how it all started, wasn’t it? When you got cast as Vivienne. That’s what gave you—”

“The idea, yes. That’s what gave me the idea.”

“Okay, see, that was my line.”

“But that’s not where it started, Mr. Dane. Not even close.”

(In my opinion, it was starting to sound like Nora had spent more time studying the great Monologuing Villains of History series than Vivienne Carver.)

I tried to keep my voice easy as I said, “I guess it started when your career—”

“When my career died. That’s when it started.”

Under my breath, I muttered a few words you can’t say on Nick at Nite .

“That was the whole point, wasn’t it? You’d come back here.

Nora Day, her career over, a washed-up has-been reduced to doing summer stock theater in her hometown.

And instead, now you’re a sensation. You’re a media darling.

Everybody wants an interview. Everybody wants an exclusive.

The woman playing Vivienne Carver solving a real-life murder, like Vivienne Carver.

Let me guess: the agents haven’t stopped calling. ”

“There has been some chatter about life rights,” Nora said. “Although I don’t have to tell you what a tricky business that is—look at this whole Daniel Dank production. I dare say there is an interest, though. People suddenly remember who Nora Day is.”

Maybe it was easier to see now because I had been through it myself, and now I was on the other side of it.

Like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, so that everything seemed small and contained in a neat frame.

The initial success. The steady work. The parts that were rich and deep and meaningful—but that never took her to the next level.

The awards she didn’t win. Then, more and more frequently, the parts she didn’t book.

Every actor’s worst fear, age, creeping up on her.

A lifetime of hoping she’d finally become—what?

A “real” celebrity? A success? Someone who was actually worth something?

“All it took was murder,” I said.

“Oh no,” Nora said, but the words were playful. “That was Jonni, remember? The scorned lover and all that. She always did have appallingly low self-esteem, but her real problem was that she thought if she could find the right man, she’d finally be worth something.”

There was something ridiculous about staring at Tinny while I was having this conversation, with Nora talking to the back of my head.

Part of me hoped that Tinny would seize the moment and take advantage of the fact that I was oh-so-conveniently distracting Nora and do something .

It didn’t seem likely, though; Tinny was clutching the safe door like it was the only thing holding her up.

“Gee,” I said, “that insecurity couldn’t possibly be connected to having her childhood sweetheart disappear.”

Nora laughed. “Ray didn’t love her. By the end, Ray didn’t even like her. That was the whole problem.”

“What does that mean?”

“No, no, Mr. Dane. This is not the drawing-room scene.”

She was about ten dramatic revelations too late for that, but I only said, “He was in love—”

“With me, obviously.

“How about this? If you don’t want it to be a drawing-room scene, you can let me do it? I’ll do a great job. It’ll be a quick, painless summary. I promise I’m good at them.”

(Or I would be if anyone would let me.)

“He was obsessed,” Nora said. “At the time, Jonni was still a na?ve girl from a remote town on the Oregon Coast. She had no idea what men wanted, much less how to give it to them.”

“But you did?”

“Of course. I made it my business to know. Once Ray had a taste, he couldn’t help himself.” With a hint of amusement, she added, “Therein lay the problem.”

I’m basically a thirteen-year-old on the inside, which means any conversation about, quote, what men wanted (or, for that matter, the expression once he had a taste when it’s not referring to cookie dough) is naturally squirm-inducing.

But I was a little surprised to see the same ick on Tinny’s face.

“He wanted to—” I began.

“He wanted to divorce her,” Nora said over me, the words overloud, playing to the back of the house—so to speak.

“He thought we were in love. He was going to follow me to California. I told him he couldn’t.

I told him he had a wife. Responsibilities.

He didn’t care. And how would that look?

I was young. I was beautiful. I was talented.

I couldn’t start my new life with a divorced man clinging to me, dogging my steps, begging me to take him back.

A girl’s reputation matters; can you imagine what the papers would have made of it?

And that’s not to mention how jealous Ray could be.

Every dinner with a director, every coffee with a casting agent.

It would have been relentless. He was so—so controlling. ”

The words were full of frustration, heartbreak, outrage, disbelief, even a little anger. But it was all canned. It sounded forty years old and rehearsed and stale. What she’d been telling herself ever since she decided she had to get rid of Ray, and that there was only one option.

“Can I turn around now?” I asked.

Her silence held the faintest note of disappointment—as though she’d been hoping for some other reaction. Or maybe, good God, applause. But she said, “Slowly.”

She was dressed in her usual stylish, low-maintenance apparel—not the dramatic stuff she wore for her press shots.

A pullover. Yoga pants. She’d even worn an Oregon State ball cap.

(Ladies, that’s a great trick for when you don’t want to do your hair and you need to be anonymous while committing murder.) There was a hint of color in her cheeks.

But no fear. No anger. The lines around her mouth were deeper, and if there was still a person behind those eyes, she’d taken the day off while this ugly business was being handled.

“You took the money.”

“I had to make it look like he’d run off.”

“And you used the catwalks,” I said. “To move Ray’s body to the storage space on the second floor. That’s how you got away with it.”

“Of course.”

“You had plenty of time. That was one of the first things you said to me—you played Giselle in A Flicker in the Dark . It’s a small part.

Lots of time backstage to hang out with Betty.

Lots of time nobody else would have any idea where you were or what you were doing.

Just like this current play; Vivienne’s backstage most of the time. ”

She gave me a tight smile.

“That’s how you got to Terrence, too. He didn’t know anything, did he?

He probably saw you coming across the catwalk and opened the control booth for you, worried that something had gone wrong.

You were able to walk right up to him, and he didn’t know what was coming.

Because he never suspected this had anything to do with the stuff with Ray.

The articles in his desk, that was you. You broke in and planted them.

You played a lockpicker in One Last Job ; I should have remembered that. ”

“It was a safecracker, actually. But I did enjoy brushing up on those skills.”

“And the attack on Terrence made it look like everything was connected because that’s what you wanted—you wanted us to link all of this to what had happened with Ray. You were still setting up your big reveal.”

“I honestly couldn’t believe you didn’t connect the dots.

After I recovered from Kyson’s little stunt, I realized it had been a good thing—the wheels were in motion.

And then, when I heard about the box office theft, I thought my luck had finally changed.

How was it possible for everything to be lining up so perfectly?

And then nothing. I was sure that you would dig around and start asking about Ray.

But you were fixated on the script. That was when I realized I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. ”

That, more than anything else she’d said, told me who the real Nora Day was.

“Has Betty been in love with you this whole time?” I asked.

“At a bare minimum, you needed her to turn a blind eye while you used the catwalks, but she went above and beyond and alibied you. I should have seen it earlier—how she wasn’t shy about arguing with Terrence or yelling at Jonni for messing with the set, but she never raised her voice to you. ”

“The world was different when Betty and I were young,” Nora said. “She would have been happier if she’d taken my advice and moved to LA.”

“No one swapped the scripts, did they? Kyson changed that line all by himself after he caught Terrence stealing equipment from the theater.”