Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 3

"That's not what I meant." He frowned. "What's the matter with you?"

"I don't know." When she looked up, her eyes were unfocused. "Something feels . . ."

"Different?"

She shook her head. "Familiar."

The trees cut the rain back to a bearable deluge. Carefully avoiding new, water-filled ruts and the occasional opening where rain poured through the covering branches, Tony plodded toward the house. Half a kilometer later, as he came out into the open, and saw the building squatting ma.s.sive and dark at the end of the drive, thunder cracked loud enough to vibrate his fillings and a jagged diagonal of lightning backlit the house.

"Well, isn't that a cliche," he sighed, kicked a ten-kilo hunk of mud off his shoe, and kept walking.

Finally standing just inside the kitchen door, he shook the excess water off his rain cape out onto the huge flagstone slab that floored the small porch, added his shoes to the pile of wet footwear, and pulled a pair of moccasins out of his pack. Stopping by the big prep table, he snagged a cup of coffee-more practical than most in the television industry, craft services had set up in the kitchen-and headed for the butler's pantry where the AD's office had been set. He shoved his backpack into one of the lower cabinets, signed in, and grabbed a radio. So far, channel one, the AD's channel was quiet. Adam might not be in yet or he just might not be talking-impossible to tell. On channel eight, the genny op and the rest of his transport crew had a few things to say about keeping things running in the rain. Impressed by the way the profanities seemed to make it through the interference intact, Tony set his unit back on channel one, and headed for the conservatory at the back of the house.

Extras' holding. Tony could already hear them; a low hum as two dozen voices all complained about their agents at the same time.

Pa.s.sing by the bottom of the back stairs, the servants' stairs, another sound caught his attention. A distant, rhythmic creak. Er er. Er er. Like something . . . swinging. Someone had probably left the door open on the second floor. He thought about heading up and closing it, then spotted the black cat sitting at the three-quarter mark and changed his mind.

Uneven, narrow, and steep, the stairs had tried to kill him once already and that was without the added fun of something to trip over. A sudden draft of cold air flowing down from the second floor raised the hair on the back of his neck and consolidated his decision. Damp clothes, cold air-not a great combination. Besides, he was already running late.

Sucking back his coffee, he hurried along a narrow hall and finally down the three stone steps into the conservatory.

The house had been deserted of everyone but hired caretakers for almost thirty years and it seemed as though none of those caretakers had cared to do any indoor gardening. The conservatory was empty of even the dried husks of plant life.

The raised beds were empty. The small pond was empty. The big stone urns were empty. The actual floor s.p.a.ce, on the other hand, was a little crowded.

Over on the other side of the pond, several men and women were changing into their own modern evening dress with the nonchalance of people for whom the novelty of seeing others in their underwear had long since worn off. Ditto the self-consciousness of being seen. Crammed between the raised beds and the stone urns, still more men and women- already dressed-sat on plastic folding chairs, drank coffee, read newspapers, and waited for their turn in makeup.

The two makeup stations were up against the stone wall the conservatory shared with the house. Some shows had the supporting actors do their own face and hair, but Everett had refused to allow it and CB, usually so tight he could get six cents change from a nickel, had let him have his way. Sharyl, Everett's a.s.sistant who worked part-time for CB Productions and part-time at a local funeral parlor, handled the second chair. Curling irons, hair spray, and a mult.i.tude of brushes were all flung about with dazzling speed and when Everett yelled, "Time!" Tony realized they'd been racing.

"Not fair!" Sharyl complained as she flicked the big powder brush over the high arc of male pattern baldness. "I had more surface to cover."

"I had a more delicate application."

"Yeah, well, I'm faster when they're lying down." She stepped back and tossed the big brush onto the tray. "You're lovely."

Tony didn't think the man-white, thirty to forty, must provide own evening dress-looked convinced. Or particularly happy to hear it.

"Next two!" Everett bellowed over the drumming of the rain on the gla.s.s. He waved the completed extras out of the chairs, adding, "Don't touch your face!" Tony couldn't hear the woman's reply, but Everett's response made it fairly clear. "So itch for your art."

Waving at a couple of people he knew from other episodes and a guy he'd met a couple of times at the Gandydancer, Tony made his way over to the card table set up beside the coffee urn. He pulled the clipboard out from under a spill of cardboard cups and checked the sign-in page. It seemed a little short of names.

"Hey! Everybody!" The rain threatened to drown him out, so he yelled louder. "If you haven't signed the sheet, please do it now. I have to check your name against our master list."

No one moved.

"If your names aren't on both lists, you won't get paid!"

Half a dozen people hurried toward him.

Other shows would have hired a daily PA or TAD-trainee a.s.sistant director-to ride herd on the extras. CB figured they were all adults and were therefore fully capable of walking from the holding area to the set without him having to pay to see that they managed it. Human nature being what it was, and with two thirds of the season in the can, Tony could pretty much guarantee that someone-or some two or three-would wander off and need to be brought back to the herd while he did his best Border collie impression. Snarling permitted; biting frowned on.

It took a moment for him to realize that the scream was not a rehearsal. Extras generally did a lot of screaming on shows starring vampires. Some of them, disdaining the more spontaneous terror of their contemporaries, liked to practice.

On the other side of the conservatory, a half dressed woman clutching a pair of panty hose to her chest, backed away from one of the raised beds and continued to scream. By the time Tony reached her, the screams had become whimpers, barely audible over the sound of the rain.

"What?" he demanded. "What's wrong?"

Conditioned to respond to anyone with a radio and a clipboard, she pointed a trembling finger toward the garden. "I sat down, on the edge, to put on . . ." Taupe streamers waved from her other hand. ". . . and I sort of fell. Back." Glancing around, she suddenly realized she had an audience and, in spite of her fear, began to play to it. "I put my hand down on the dirt. It sank in just a little. The next thing I knew, something grabbed it."

"Something?"

"Fingers. I felt fingers close around mine. Cold fingers." A half turn toward her listeners. "Like fingers from a grave."

Tony had to admit that the raised beds did look rather remarkably like graves. Yeah, and so does any dirt pile longer than it is wide. He stepped forward, noticed where the dirt had been disturbed, and poked it with the clipboard. He didn't believe the bit about the fingers, of course, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. Over the last few years he'd learned that belief had absolutely nothing to do with reality.

The clipboard sank about a centimeter into the dirt and stopped with a clunk. Clunk sounded safe enough.

In Tony's experience, the metaphysical seldom went clunk.

A moment's digging later, he pulled out a rusted, handle-less garden claw.

"Was this what you felt?"

"No." She shuddered, dramatically. "I felt fingers."

"Cold fingers." Tony held the claw toward her and she touched it tentatively.

"Okay, maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Fine." Her snort was impressive. "Probably. Okay? It felt like fingers, it's barely dawn, and it's kind of spooky in here, and I haven't had any coffee yet!"

Show over, the other extras began to drift away and the woman who'd done the screaming pointedly continued dressing. Tony tossed the claw back onto the garden bed and headed for the door. Drawing level with Everett, he asked for a time check.

"They'll be ready when they're needed," Everett told him, layering on scarlet lipstick with a lavish hand. "But don't quote me on that."

"I kind of have to quote you on that, Everett. Adam's going to ask."

"Fine." He pointedly capped the lipstick and drew a mascara wand from its tube with a flourish. "But don't say I didn't warn you. Oh, calm down," he added as the middle-aged woman in the chair recoiled from the waving black bristles.

"Thirty years in this business and I've yet to put an eye out."

"I put one in once," Sharyl announced and Tony figured that was his cue to leave. Sharyl's mortuary stories were usually a hoot, but somehow he just wasn't in the mood for fun and frolic with the dead. Pausing on the threshold, he glanced back over the room to do a final head count. Party guests and cater-waiters clumped with their own kind, making his job a little easier.

Twenty-five.

Only twenty-four signatures.

A second count gave him the right number of heads and a third confirmed it. He must've miscounted the first time- it wasn't easy getting an accurate fix on the crowd of guests around the central urn. About to turn, he stopped and squinted toward the back garden, a flurry of movement having caught his eye. It had almost looked as if the claw had stood on its broken handle and waved its little claw-fingers at him. Except that the claw was nowhere in sight.

Wondering what he actually might have seen-given the absence of the claw-got lost in a sudden realization. If the claw was missing, someone had taken it. Great. We've got a souvenir hunter.

Every now and then cattle calls would spit up a background player who liked to have a little something to help him remember the job. With a souvenir hunter on the set, small, easily portable items had a tendency to disappear. During episode seven, they'd lost the inkwell from Raymond Dark's desk. After CB expressed his thoughts about the incident- "No one from that group works again until I get my property back!"-they'd had four inkwells returned. Unfortunately, most of the small, easily portable items from this set belonged to the current owners of Caulfield House not CB Productions and the odds were good the crew wouldn't immediately realize it if something went missing.

I'd better let Keisha know.

He grabbed a cinnamon bun on his way through the kitchen, dropped the signed sheet in the AD's office, and headed for the drawing room. The original script had called for a ball and the presence of a ballroom was one of the reasons CB had jumped at using the house. Problem was, the ballroom was huge and the number of people it would have taken to fill it-even given the tricks of the trade-would have emptied the extras budget. With episode twenty-two and its howling mob of peasants with torches and pitchforks still in the pipeline, the ball became a smaller gathering and the venue moved to the drawing room.

A huge fieldstone fireplace dominated one end of a room paneled in Douglas fir. Above it, mounted right on the stone, was a ma.s.sive gold-framed mirror. Six, tall, multipaned windows divided the outside wall and gla.s.s-fronted built- in bookcases faced them along the inside. The curtains were burgundy with deep gold ta.s.sels and tiebacks-the two colors carried into the furniture upholstery. The room seemed essentially untouched by almost a hundred years of renovation and redecoration. Standing in the midst of this understated luxury were Peter, Sorge, the gaffer, the key grip, and Keisha, the set decorator, all looking up.

"The ceilings are high enough. We can shoot under them," Peter said as Tony joined them.

"We are keeping the cameras low," Sorge agreed. "Keeping the shots filled with the people."

Still staring at the ceiling, the gaffer frowned. "A diffuser under each of them might help."

"Couldn't hurt," the key grip allowed.

Keisha made a noncommittal albeit dubious sound.

So Tony looked up.

"Holy f.u.c.k." Those were three of the most hideous looking chandeliers Tony had ever seen. In fact, he wasn't entirely certain they could even be called chandeliers except for the dangly bits. Although what the dangly bits were actually made of he had no idea. A certain Leave it to Beaverness about them suggested the same 1950's vision that had been responsible for the redecorated parts of the master suite, the bathroom in particular.

Something.

Rocking in place. Forward.

Back.

Not that particular.

"I think Mr. Foster has succinctly summed up the situation," Peter sighed and Tony looked down to find all four looking at him. "Did you want one of us for something?"

"Uh, yeah, Keisha mostly, but you should probably all know. We've got a souvenir hunter. There's already a piece of c.r.a.p missing from the conservatory."

"c.r.a.p?"

"Broken end of a garden claw."

"c.r.a.p," Keisha acknowledged. "But not our c.r.a.p either. All right, I'll make sure Chris keeps an eye out and we'll do a double count when we pack up. In the meantime, someone's going to have to get pictures of everything in those cabinets."

"Tony . . ."

Yeah, he knew it. He was usually "someone."

". . . get Tina's digital," Peter continued, "and get those shots while we finish setup. We all know how much CB loves unexpected bills."

Only the center cabinet was actually a bookcase. The others were too shallow for books and instead displayed cups and saucers, grimy bowls of china flowers, and the little plastic toys from inside Kinder Eggs-Tony suspected the three-part water buffalo and the working lime-green windmill were the most recent additions to the decor. Behind the water buffalo, he found a yellowed card buffed down to the same color as the shelf by a thick layer of dust.

Theoretically, he wasn't supposed to touch.

When he flipped the card over, the black handwriting was still dark and legible.

Finger of a Franciscan monk killed by the Papal Inquisition, 1651. Acquired August 17, 1887.

There was no sign of the finger although on the next shelf he did find half a dozen of the tiny china figurines that used to come in boxes of tea and were required inventory in every cheesy antique store in the country.

He finished up just as his radio sent a spike of pure static into his head.

"Adam, this is Brenda. Lee and Mazzzzzzzzzit are in wardrobe."

"Roger that. Everett's on his . . ." The last word was lost under another burst of static and some rather impressive profanity from the other end of the room. "Tony!"

He closed the last cabinet and turned toward the 1AD.

"Send Everett out to the trailer and start moving the extras up here."

"Why does it have to be extras," Peter muttered as Tony dropped the camera back off at Tina's station. "I hear the Hall of Presidents is closed down for renovations; why can't we borrow their animatronics? Toss 'em in a tux, stick a martini gla.s.s in their hands . . . Washington would look very feminine in a high collar and some ruffles; he's already in a wig. Who'd notice? But no, we have to use real people. Real people who don't listen, who never know their right from their left, who all want their fifteen minutes, who make suggestions . . ."

The director's continuing diatribe faded as Tony moved out into the hall heading for the conservatory. Everett, who'd known the talent should be in the trailer at nine, was on the move when he arrived. Sharyl was packing up her case, ready for on-set touch-ups. All that was left was moving the extras.

Humming the theme from Rawhide was optional.

With most of the crowd on the correct heading, Tony raced across the kitchen to prevent an unauthorized side trip.

"Hey, where are you going?" Hand flat against the wood, he shoved the door closed before it actually opened.

The actress shrugged. "I was just wondering what was down there."

"Probably the bas.e.m.e.nt." The door felt like ice under his palm. "Just keep moving."

Leaning in closer, she drew her tongue slowly across a full and already moist lower lip. "You're so serious . . . No hard feelings?" Her voice dripped single entendre.

"Give it up, love." One of the waiters took her arm, winked at Tony, and started her moving again. "I'd have better luck."

"What?" She shot Tony a frustrated look he answered with a shrug, and then allowed herself to be towed away. "Are there no straight men left in television?"

"You're asking the wrong f.a.g, puss. Besides, he's only the production a.s.sistant."

"I know that! I was starting at the bottom."

"An admirable sentiment."

As they followed the rest of the extras down the hall, Tony lifted his hand from the door and stared down at the red mark on his palm. It looked a bit like a letter-a Russian letter maybe, or Greek, or Hebrew. Before he could decide which, it had disappeared. When he touched the door again, it was no colder than any other surface.

"You don't want to be going down there."