Deadly Director's Cut (A Catskill Summer Resort Mystery, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vicki Delany is the author of the Year-Round Christmas Mysteries, the Constable Molly Smith Mysteries, and, writing as Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library Mysteries.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

"Lights. Camera. Action!"

Velvet McNally clapped her hands. "This is so exciting, Elizabeth. I can't believe I'm watching a real-life movie shoot."

"Quiet!" a clipboard-bearing man bellowed. "Or I'll have the set closed." He gave us a furious glare, his right cheek bulging with chewing gum, and Velvet dipped her head and mumbled, "Sorry."

"Quite all right, Gary. Enthusiasm does get the better of attractive young women sometimes." The director turned in his chair and gave my friend a smile and a slow wink. "Which is why we love them so."

Velvet giggled and blushed to the roots of her sleek blond hair. I refrained from rolling my eyes. As the manager of a Catskills resort, I've learned not to let my feelings show on my face. Not too much, anyway.

"Now, shall we try again?" the director said. "Miss Grant, when you are ready. Which I sincerely hope is this very moment."

The woman in front of the camera lifted her arms, and the emerald-green silk of her dress flared around her. It was a hot day, and the sun was strong, but she appeared cool and composed, hair and makeup flawless, dress unwrinkled. She cried, "This is a mistake, Reginald. You'll regret it for the rest of your life."

"I have to take a chance, Grandmama," the heartbreakingly handsome man facing her said. "Surely you, of all people, can understand that." A light wind blew off the lake and rustled his slightly-too-long black hair. He wore perfectly tailored casual beige slacks, an open-necked shirt, and his accent was direct from the Upper East Side.

The camera, mounted on a tripod of legs on a wooden plank, closed in on her. One man stood behind it, peering through the lens, while another crouched alongside, guiding the big wheels. Two canisters containing film were mounted on the top. A box, which I'd been told held sound recorders, dangled from a boom held above the actors' heads. Even though it was full daylight, giant lamps poured light onto the actors' faces. "I've made mistakes, Reginald," the woman said, her own aristocratic voice breaking with emotion. "Dreadful mistakes. I don't want to see-"

I touched Velvet lightly on the arm to get her attention, and when I had it I raised my eyebrows and tapped my watch.

She shook her head and mouthed, "Nothing."

I nodded, gave her a wiggle of my fingers to say goodbye, and turned my back on the lake and the movie shoot. I couldn't get over the number of people and the amount of equipment needed to film one short scene in one Hollywood movie. A great many of the people seemed to do nothing but hang around in the background, looking bored and smoking one cigarette after another.

I carefully negotiated my way past catering tables laden with lunch and cold drinks and around the maze of thick black cables crisscrossing the lawn, up the small hill toward the main hotel building. We employ our own security staff, of course, but the movie had brought theirs, who were keeping an eye on the crowd. This was a well-heeled, well-behaved bunch, and the guards didn't have much to do.

I could understand why Velvet, the outdoor activities coordinator at Haggerman's Catskills Resort, had nothing to do today. Almost every one of our guests was gathered on the hillside watching movie magic being made. Who would want to do calisthenics on the dock, take a paddleboat out for a slow tour of the lake, or play rounds of tennis when the great Gloria Grant was being directed by the equally great Elias T. Theropodous.

Not only guests were entranced by the movie production. At the sight of me rapidly crossing the lawn and rounding the flower beds, hotel staff scurried inside, where they would pretend to be hard at work.

Various paths meet in front of the hotel at a circular flower bed, into which a tall pole filled with brightly painted direction signs points to the swimming pool, the beach, the boat dock, the tennis and handball courts, the cabins, and the parking lot. Something had been nibbling at the flowers at the base of the sign, and the earth was disturbed as though tunnels were being dug beneath. As it was unlikely to be anything that would threaten the foundations of the hotel, I simply made a mental note to ask the head gardener about it.

In the circular driveway that sweeps around the front entrance, a group of bellhops were clustered around Mr. Theropodous's shiny baby-blue 1953 Buick Skylark while cars tried to edge past it. Another bunch of my male employees peered into the back of the equipment van pulled onto the verge and chatted to the movie technician.

"Excuse me," I said to Mr. Theropodous's chauffeur, a tall, thin, scraggy-faced Black man in his late sixties, dressed in a plain dark uniform. "I'm sorry, but you can't park here. You're blocking the driveway."

He touched his uniform cap. "Apologizes, ma'am. Mr. Theropodous instructed me to remain here with the car."

"Perhaps he did, but this is my resort, and I'm instructing you to park around the back. With the exception of that one truck in case something's urgently needed, we agreed that your cars, equipment trucks, and trailers use our staff parking lot. I need you to park there with them."

He lowered his eyes and shifted his feet. "Mr. Theropodous insists that the car be available the instant he's ready to leave. He's staying at Kennelwood, ma'am."

"Yes, I know that."

The director and most of the major cast had rooms at Kennelwood Hotel, a resort considerably larger and more famous than us. The crew and lower-ranking actors were stuck in an assortment of bungalow colonies or cheap hotels near the town of Summervale. Only Gloria Grant herself was staying at Haggerman's, and that's because she'd taken my room in the house I share with my mother, Olivia Peters, the resort owner. To the delight of our guests, Gloria didn't tuck herself away but used the pool or enjoyed walks along the lakeside and woodland paths. Most people kept their distance, but if anyone approached her for an autograph she was always polite and signed cheerfully. I'd told my security guards to keep an eye out and if they thought anyone seemed to be bothering her to send them on their way, but their intervention had not been necessary.

I was bunking in with Velvet. By bunking, I mean sleeping on the floor on a reed-thin mattress, which had been taken out of service long ago.

I gave the chauffeur a bright smile, to show him how reasonable I was being. "Guests will be arriving throughout the day, and they have to be able to unload. I can't have the driveway blocked."

He twisted his hat in his hands. He looked genuinely concerned, and I felt awful. The man had his orders from his employer, but I had 350 guests to think about.

"Is there a problem here?" A man stepped off the veranda, flicking his half-smoked cigarette into a flower bed. I was glad the geraniums had been watered this morning. We hadn't had a drop of rain for more than a week, despite the constant humidity, and the temperatures remained in the high eighties. The surrounding woods were dry and brittle.

The chauffeur let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the new arrival. "Lady needs me to move the car, Mr. Oswald."

Mr. Oswald smiled at me and thrust out his right hand. He was also in his sixties, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, close-shaven with thick silver hair, of average height, and the bearer of a round belly that might have been a basketball stuffed under his starched white shirt. "I'm sorry, but I...