Last Scene Alive

I glanced at the hardbacks, and then looked again. The Seventies Bombers. Political Violence in the U.S. The Black Panthers. And, sadly, Diagnosing Your Own Illness.

"She was doing research," I said, carefully balancing my voice between question and statement.

"Oh, yeah, remember? She talked about it while we were out at supper that night, I think. Her next project was a movie set in the late sixties, early seventies, about violence in the hippy era. She was playing a middle-class girl turned radical who builds a bomb in her basement with the help of an African-American friend. Based on a true story."

I nodded, as if I'd remembered all that. The truth was, I'd barely listened. I rummaged through the books. The paperbacks were an undistinguished batch of popular fiction, but we can always use books in good condition. "Thanks for bringing these in," I said. Mark turned his attention back to me. He'd been giving Perry the onceover. Perry hadn't noticed, for which I was grateful. Perry was not exactly Mr. Stable, and I couldn't ever gauge his reactions, even to more ordinary occurrences.

"Hope you get to come back to the set," Mark said politely. "We've got our new leading lady. She's flying in tonight, and we should resume shooting scenes with her tomorrow."

That must be why they'd gotten the trailer cleaned out so quickly. The new lead would need it. "Jumping into a part must be incredibly hard for an actor," I said, focusing on what he was telling me, rather than on my random thoughts. "How can anyone learn lines that fast?"

"That's the business," Mark said briskly. "She'll be studying on the plane."

"Not Meredith," I observed. He looked blank. "Meredith Askew didn't get the job."

"Oh, gosh, no. Meredith doesn't have the star quality Celia did. And that's what we need."

"Kind of hard on Meredith."

"That's the business, too," he said, shrugging. He smiled at Perry, who happened to be looking in his direction, and gave me a little wave before he left.

I picked up the medical book. A strip of paper had been inserted between the pages in the H's. Huntington's Chorea had been underlined. So the police knew, as I did now, that Celia had been aware of her problem. I wondered if she'd gone to a doctor when her symptoms had become obvious, or if she'd had some other kind of warning.

Poor thing. She'd known, and she had to have dreaded the disease's progress. But she should have been given the choice of how to deal with her death sentence. She should not have had that snatched away from her. Someone had drugged Celia, someone had strangled her, and someone had hit her in the head. She'd been killed so many ways. Had three different people wanted her to die? Or had one person caused so much damage? If so, why?

The plastic cover on The Black Panthers was torn, so I carried the whole box back to the repair area. That was a corner of the employees' lounge, the corner right by Patricia's cubicle. Nothing closed to view, here. We like to check up on each other, here at the Lawrenceton Library. The donated books would have to be processed back here, too.

After I'd placed the box on the table, I noticed that a thin manuscript was at the bottom. I fished it out. Mark had packed the script of the movie Celia had been signed up to shoot after Whimsical Death. I'd have to call him to ask if he would like to come by and retrieve it. I stuck it back in the box.

I examined our torn cover more closely. If Celia hadn't been dead, I would've had a sharp conversation with her about this book. She'd been underlining, though I admitted to myself I couldn't be sure that had been Celia. There were slips of paper stuck here and there through the pages. I flipped through, removing the slips. One had been inserted in the center of the volume, where there were pages of pictures. I glanced down at the Afros with that kind of superior amusement we give to past fads. I thought of showing some of the more outrageous ones to Patricia, as a kind of peace offering, and I looked over to her cubicle to see if she was overwhelmingly busy.

She was staring at me with the blankest face I'd ever seen. I couldn't tell if she was broadcasting fear, or anger, or just a feeling of stu

The book looked like new, I thought proudly, after I'd finished replacing the cover. As I taped the last flap of plastic in place, Patricia walked by me, heels tapping on the linoleum, her trench coat belted around her tightly. She never looked in my direction. Her purse was hanging from her shoulder. She was talking rapidly into her cell phone.

"Please have him in the office by the time I get there. He's late for his orthodontist appointment," Patricia said precisely. Her eyes met mine as she pulled open the employee door and she registered nothing. I might as well have been invisible.

This was weird.

A second later Sam came out of his office, which opened into Patricia's. He looked at her desk and then he looked through the glass at me. He pointed at his secretary's empty chair and raised his hands, palms up, to ask a question.

I shrugged. I pointed to the back door and made walking motions with my fingers.

Looking unhappy and disturbed, Sam wandered back into his office. He left the door open, so he could see his paragon returning. Pale, fair, and losing hair at an alarming rate, Sam seemed an unlikely poster boy, but there was no doubt that he and Patricia had formed a mutual admiration society.

I was back at the return desk when I remembered an odd fact.

Patricia's son didn't have braces. In fact, Jerome was blessed with teeth so even and white I had remarked them. So how come she was taking him to the orthodontist?

Robin was waiting for me at Trixie's. We ordered, and while we waited for our food I told him about my house situation. Somehow it didn't seem so dire after I'd told him, and I could feel myself begin to relax. When our pizza was in front of us, he carefully wriggled a piece onto his plate and said, "We need to talk about what the police told me this morning."

This wasn't a happy opening. "Okay," I said. "Shoot."

Tracy, it turned out, was on probation ... in California. She'd just gotten out of jail for another stalking incident with another mystery writer, Carl So

"Lucky you," I said.

"Right." He looked grim.

"So she came to Georgia, and got a job with Molly's? How'd she find out Molly was going to be the caterer?"

"She'd done catering work in the past and still had some professional co

"Sheesh."

"Molly couldn't believe it, Arthur Smith kept telling me. Said Tracy was one of the best employees she'd ever had."

"Do they think Tracy killed Celia?" I had to ask.

"The drugs, the pillow... they say that doesn't sound like Tracy."

"The Emmy does?"

"Well, it's more in line with what she did to Carl. She's been spotted around town. They don't think she'll leave."