Temporary Monsters

6

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed the following morning, but I forced myself to get up and shower and put on clean clothes. The phone had started ringing almost immediately after Sandra left, and I promptly unplugged it. I kept the TV turned off and stayed away from the windows, too. That was probably overkill, but I thought it best to play it safe. I had done my own fair share of snooping, and I knew it wasn’t completely unheard of that some eager-beaver photographer might have my apartment staked out. 

I needed a break, and that made me think immediately of a break in the case. But I wasn’t on the case. The investigation into the death of Jimmy Logan, Hollywood wunderkind, was being led by the PIA with the Toronto Police taking up the slack. I was just a player in this particular piece, and it wasn’t a part I wanted. Unfortunately, the only way I could see of extricating myself was to do the very thing that could get me into more trouble – that could get me dead. 

I figured there would be less of a chance of that happening if I was wearing my gun. After putting it on, I peeked out my front door, verified there weren’t any reporters sleeping in the hallway, and headed downtown. 

To find a film shoot in the city all you had to do was follow the little orange cones until you came to the monstrous trailers that Sandra always called “the movie gypsy caravan.” It was a closed set that day, if only because everyone and their dog wanted to see where the late Jimmy Logan had been filming his final movie, or to get a quote from one of his no doubt grief-stricken co-stars. 

I made my way around the rubberneckers and reporters until I found a young woman who was wearing a headset and had a plastic card clipped to her shirt, identifying her as CREW. I showed her my own card and told her that I was investigating the death of Jimmy Logan. I tried to sound bored, thinking it would make me stand out from the rest of gawkers. 

“Are you with the police?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Is the director on set today?”

She gave me an appraising look. “Is she expecting you?”

“Nope. Just tell her the Fearless Vampire Killer would like a few minutes of her time.”

The young woman looked at me a moment longer, then walked off. A few minutes later she came back and beckoned me with an imperious wave of her hand. 

“Follow me, please.” 

She brought me to an open area hemmed in by trailers. One of them, I noted, had Jimmy Logan’s name on it; a lick of police tape had been plastered across the door. Along one side of the clearing, a long table had been set up with coffee, donuts and various pastries. A broad-chested man in a muscle shirt was pouring coffee from a huge gleaming urn. 

I was escorted over to a tall, slender woman with wide, green eyes and a strained look on her face that might have been caused by the painfully tight ponytail her white-blonde hair had been pulled back into. She was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that said I EAT UNION WORKERS. She scrutinized me with a look that said I had already wasted oodles of her time, and I had better get to my point, and fast. 

“Help you with something?” she inquired brusquely. She was holding a cinnamon-coloured cellphone and there was a small black address book open on her canvas director’s chair. “I’m kind of busy managing a crisis here.” 

“I’ll try not to add to your stress,” I told her. I held out my hand. “Felix Renn.”  

“Van Toren,” she replied. There was a slight huffiness in her tone, as if she was annoyed that I didn’t recognize her on sight. “I’m the conductor of this train wreck.”