Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

to be coming out of his big sleep. Not exactly tear-assing around town—he was still in his striped pajamas—but to be fair, where did he have to go that needed a pair of pants? “You sound a lot better. When I spoke to you on the

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phone, it was like listening to a Quaalude commercial.”

“I feel better. I’ve had some good news!”

“What?”

“I’d been planning on making a few calls, to see if I could find something resembling work. Never got around to it.

Too upset. Well, a friend of Sy’s whom I’d met, Philip Scholes, the director…He’d been renting over in Quogue in July and needed some Xeroxing done fast and called Sy to find out where to go. Sy wasn’t in, but I offered to help and got it done for him in less than an hour. Well, he called me today! He’s been needing an aide-de-camp, and when he heard about Sy, he started thinking about me. Bottom line is, he’s paying for a round-trip ticket so I can go out to California and discuss the job with him!”

“Hey, terrific!” Easton smoothed down the top of his pajamas as if about to begin the job interview. “I’m really glad for you. It was such a rotten break with Sy. You’d come into your own, working for him; I’d never seen you so happy.”

My brother gave a fast, sad nod of assent, but I could see his allegiance was already transferring to Philip Scholes. “You can do something for me.”

“What?”

“Get me a copy of the crew list. You have one?”

Easton got out of bed, slipped into his backless leather slippers and padded into the next room, the study, the slippers flapping against his heels. “Why do you need it?” he asked.

“Checking out if certain people were where they claimed they were last Friday.”

“Like who?”

“Like everyone who gave a statement. Routine shit.”

But Easton shook his head, stubborn, not buying it.

“Lindsay?”

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“Lindsay.”

“Steve, believe me, you’re way off base.”

“East, believe me, you’ve got such a hard-on for her you can’t see straight.”

“Well, maybe I do. But so did Sy. He never would have gotten rid of her.” He got a little petulant. “I told you that.”

He opened a drawer of his desk, drew out a manila folder with an orange tab, leafed through the neat stack of papers.

He knew precisely what he was looking for and where. It was amazing; we were so alike in that regard. Everything had to have a place, be under control. For most of my drinking days, when I’d come off a bender, I’d find bottles and cans neatly lined up against the splashboard of the sink; in that last year before sobriety, when I started finding beer cans on the floor by my TV chair and, once, an empty bottle of wine cooler on the bathroom sink, I began to understand how lost I was.

Easton handed me the crew list. “I know what you told me about Lindsay, but we’ve got a lot of evidence that says you’re wrong, that Sy was getting ready to bounce her.” Easton looked unconvinced, and a little shaken by the threat to Lindsay. I tried to cheer him up. “Look, I’m sure she was in her trailer from four to seven, with a dozen unimpeachable witnesses. It’s just that we found out that there was bad blood between her and Sy. Plus she was screwing around with”—my brother drew back his head, as though somehow he could avoid hearing—“Victor Santana.” No expression, not even surprise, crossed his face. “And it turns out she may have known how to shoot a rifle. She had some firearms instruction for a movie she did. Transvaal.”

Easton smacked the folder onto the desk hard, as if swat-ting a big, obnoxious insect. “But what about Sy’s ex-wife?

Damn it all. I thought you had her dead to rights.”

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“We’re having doubts. Oh, by the way, did Sy ask you to buy a computer and a printer for her?”

Easton looked blank for a second. Then he stared up at the ceiling, as if searching out the answer there. I was getting a little scared. What if she was still lying? Finally, he said:

“Right. I remember now. A bargain-basement computer and printer. Sy said forget IBM; too expensive. He’d heard the Korean ones were all right, and not to go above a thousand for the whole package.”

“Did he say why he was sending it to her?”

“No. I assumed it was a consolation prize for rejecting her screenplay.”

“Do you have a copy of the screenplay? A Sea Change.”

“No.” He paused. “Steve, I’m not telling you your business, but she had every reason to kill him.”

“Why?”

“He passed on her script.”

“Did you read any memos, any letters he sent her, that said ‘I pass’?”

“No. That sort of thing he’d dictate to his secretary in the New York office over the phone; unless she faxed it back for him to proofread, she’d have signed his name. It wouldn’t have come back to the house.”

“So you don’t actually know that he turned down her script.”

“He couldn’t have been trying to cement a relationship, for God’s sake. He ordered her off the set. Very harshly. She must have been humiliated.”

“Even if she was, it may not be motive for murder—unless she’s crazy, and she just doesn’t seem crazy.”

“So you need a suspect, and now you’re going to pick on Lindsay?” My brother, Mr. Moderate, wasn’t acting so moderate. His neck and ears were flushed bright red. He was really working himself up, defend-MAGIC HOUR / 319

ing his damsel in distress. “Why? Give me one good reason why Homicide would go after her. The publicity?”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“I think what you’re doing is out-and-out disgraceful!” I shrugged. Easton stomped over to the leather couch and plopped down on it. He put his face in his hands and shook his head back and forth. I was about to break in, when he looked up.

Easton’s mood