Infamous Read Free

Mr. Marcus, perhaps we can schedule another breakfast meeting for tomorrow. I know how interested you are in finding out all that you can about Silas Quinn and we’ve barely gotten started.” She turned to Hugh and gave him a tight smile. “I’ll let you check our schedules and set that up for us.” The
because you owe me, you little bastard
, was silent.
    But understood. Hugh nodded. Message received. “Ninety-seven thousand,” he started.
    “Yeah, yeah,” she said, as she turned away.
    But this charlie foxtrot wasn’t over yet.
    “Dr. Carter.”
    Yes, that
was
Eleanor Marcus calling her name, in that Betty Boop voice that Alison had never found particularly appealing, even when the actress was a dewy-eyed teenager.
    Most of the crowd had dispersed, which was good. Still, she turned back, trying to unclench her teeth enough to give the poor deceived woman a smile rather than a grimace. “Mrs. Marcus,” she said, bracing herself. Trace had gone into his trailer, but Skip was still out there, watching them from behind his mirrored sunglasses.
    “I’m not acting anymore,” Eleanor said. “It’s a choice. My choice.”
    It seemed like a non sequitur, a change of subject, which was a relief, but she appeared to want a response, so Alison nodded. “I’d heard that,” she said. “It’s a tough business.”
    “I hurt my back,” Eleanor said, indulging in a little lying herself. Apparently it was a hobby for these people. In truth, the actress had stopped appearing in movies because, at the ancient and gnarly age of twenty-nine, she’d refused to let go of her youth—and the doctors who’d tried to make her look eighteen again had somehow botched the procedure, damaging the muscles in her face. She was still beautiful, but shenow had only one expression. She’d had additional surgeries over the past five years—or so the tabloids reported—trying, and failing, to make it right.
    “I’m sorry about that,” Alison said as gently as she could. She backed away, gesturing back the way she and Hugh had come. “I’m melting out here. And I really need to …”
    “I’ve seen pictures of Melody Quinn,” Eleanor said. “She always looked so sad, so haunted—as if she knew what was coming. She was so young when she died.”
    Melody Quinn had always stared soberly into the camera, as did everyone who had tintypes taken at that time.
Say cheese!
wasn’t a photographer’s battle cry until well after the turn of the century. Until long after Melody Quinn had met her tragic end.
    “I would’ve loved to play her,” Eleanor continued. “Not now,” she added with the slight movement of her lips that was now her smile. “But back when I was her age. She was only twenty-one, right?”
    “She was,” Alison said. “And yes, ma’am. You would’ve been great.”
    It wasn’t a lie, but Eleanor rolled her eyes as if it were. “Whatever,” she said, turning to go into the trailer where her skunk of a husband was showering in preparation for stepping into Silas Quinn’s giant, honorable shoes.
    Hugh was trying to slip away, unnoticed, but Alison quickly caught up.
    “Don’t you ever,” she all but spat at him, her voice low but deadly, as she hurried along beside him, down the dusty street,
“ever
do that to me again.”
    “Ninety-seven—” he started, but she skidded to a halt, catching his arm and spinning him toward her.
    “Whoa!” One of the extras, a tall, lean cowboy type, had been following them so closely, he nearly crashed into them.
    But Alison ignored him as she jabbed one finger into Hugh’s face, nearly sticking it up his perfect nose. “Don’t. Start. I signed a contract with Logan Productions,
not
with the devil. That poor girl—”
    “That poor girl,” Hugh interrupted her, “was banging oneof last season’s American Idols, just last week, in Vegas. She knows exactly what Trace does on set without her. She just needed a plausible excuse to keep from looking too foolish.