"I should have known not to bring you this morning," a familiar voice said dryly, and Angel folded her long legs to sit beside my chair.

"It's not my fault stuff happens. Celia Shaw's dead," I said.

"I heard tell."

"I don't think it was a natural death. Unless she had fits or something. But then, someone whacked her with the Emmy."

"Ummm."

"Barrett found the body."

"Time Barrett grew up."

"I bet Barrett wouldn't be such a ..." I groped for a nice way to say it.

"Asshole," Angel supplied.

"Asshole, if Martin had stayed with Barrett's mother." Sometimes the blunt term fits the bill best.

"I bet not." Angel began braiding her hair, her slim muscular arms stretched back behind her head. "I bet he would've been worse. Martin was miserable with his first wife. Named Cindy, right? Shelby met her—long, long time ago. I know you got to know her a little last winter, but I think she must have mellowed out by then." Angel secured her braid with an elastic band.

"So it's not just me who thinks Barrett is hard to deal with?" I felt a little better.

"Oh, no." Angel was matter-of-fact. "Shelby, little as he knows him, can't stand to see that boy coming. And he is still a boy, when he should be a man."

It was so refreshing to have a conversation with someone who agreed with me, and wouldn't think the less of me for detesting my stepson. I began to feel a few degrees less tense. Then I thought of the crumpled body just a few yards away, and realized that it was pretty darn likely someone had killed Celia Shaw while I was sitting in this very chair. I shuddered, despite the gathering heat.

"Wonder what this'll do to the movie schedule." Angel took a sip from a bottle of water she'd snagged from the catering table.

"They won't cancel, surely?"

"No, they'll just hire someone else, I figure."

"Meredith Askew?"

"That would be unusual," Angel said. "I think they'll hire someone just about Celia's level, and Celia was several steps higher on the food chain than Meredith." I forgot, all too often, that Angel had an eclectic background that included considerable knowledge of the movie world. She was the most down-to-earth person I'd ever met, and I admired her many abilities immensely. And I would much rather think about that than the dent in Celia Shaw's forehead.

"Meredith's going to hope she'll be moved up," Angel went on, spotting the young woman in the crowd, making the most of the "friend of the deceased" role. "But I doubt it."

I thought about that a little. "So, someone's going to be mighty happy about Celia dying."

Angel nodded. "But no telling who that is, though there may have been some other woman who's been on the back burner the whole time, some woman we don't know about. Carolina told me that Celia had been acting strange for the few days they'd been here."

"Robin thought so, too," I said after a moment. I had seen the perplexity on his face while he observed his former flame. I remembered the previous morning, when it had seemed for all the world as though Celia was going to slap the director.

"So that's Robin Crusoe, over there?" Angel had come to Lawrenceton after Robin left. She gestured with one bony finger, and I nodded, glad she'd spotted him for me.

Robin looked haggard, understandably enough, since he'd just discovered his former flame had been murdered, and that she'd spent the night before her death with another man. He'd put on dark glasses and was talking to a middle-aged woman with gray-streaked black hair. Robin pushed his fingers up under his glasses, and I knew he was brushing away tears. I pushed my own glasses up on my nose.

"You and him were tight?"

"Kind of," I said, feeling unaccountably shy about it. "But we're talking years ago. Right before I dated Arthur Smith." I looked down at my hands, and began twisting my wedding band around on the finger it no longer fit.

Angel raised a blond eyebrow. "So, what happened with Robin?"

"I was really fond of him. I think he was fond of me, too. But when he decided to write a book about the murders, and I realized there was no way he could leave me out of the book, I felt pretty unhappy about it. And when he went to Hollywood with his agent to push the book proposal, our connection just kind of tapered off."

"He call you?"

"Oh... yeah. At first."

"When did he quit?"

"When I told him I was marrying Martin."

"And then he moved on to that Celia Shaw?"

"That's what the gossip magazines said. I think they had pretty much called it quits by the time they got here."

"So he moved from the real you to the play you." Angel looked amused at my wince. After a second of considering that unnerving idea, I shrugged.

We fell silent and watched the unfolding panorama together. Joel Park Brooks, shaved head flashing in the sun, was being attended by paramedics, by Mark, and by several other people whose names and functions I had not yet learned. He seemed to feel that the FBI should be brought in to investigate the death of an important actress like Celia Shaw. The Hollywood dispensation, I guess.

Robin had found a chair and sunk down onto it, his hands on his knees, lost in thought. I wondered if I should go to him.

Meredith Askew, still looking properly distraught, was resting her face on the shoulder of Chip Brodnax, the tall young man who was portraying Robin. His back was to me, so I had a good view of Meredith's face. As I watched, I saw her expression change to one of intense speculation. She was staring into the distance, unaware that anyone was observing her. As if she'd turned to me and spoken her thoughts out loud, I could tell that she was wondering if she had a chance of replacing Celia in the main role.

This was depressing. If anyone in this crowd (besides possibly Robin) was simply grieving for Celia Shaw, I could see no sign of it.

"Let's us go," I suggested to Angel.

"Won't the police get us?"

"I have a feeling I can get around that."

I made my way through the crowd to Arthur, who was issuing instructions to three other cops. I waited until he'd finished speaking, and as soon as they scattered to do his bidding, I knew he would turn to me.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Can Angel and I go home?"

"Will you stay at your house until I come later? Will you not talk to anyone else?"

"I promise."

"Okay, then. You and Angel can go."

"Thanks." I tried to dredge up a smile for him, but I couldn't.

I trudged back to Angel and gave her the thumbs-up. We made our way to my car and climbed back in. Though it was only nine o'clock, it seemed like a lifetime since we'd gotten to the set. The day was getting hotter by the minute. The car was stuffy. The streets around the movie site were almost chaotic; I had never in my life seen traffic this disordered in Lawrenceton. I figured all the police had been grabbed off traffic control and shifted to the murder scene. It wouldn't take the news crews long to get there, especially with all the busy cell phones on the set. I was willing to bet CNN already knew about it, had maybe aired a bulletin, if Celia rated that high.

I decided not to turn on the radio. I didn't want to hear anything about the murder, I didn't want to listen to any music, I didn't want to know the weather report. I just wanted to get out of here. With Angel helping me avoid cars and people, all going places they shouldn't go, I finally drove out of the area. I made a huge effort to obey every traffic rule. I was so grateful to Arthur for letting us leave, I was determined to be no trouble at all.

Once I got away from the town center, traffic thinned out dramatically. I took the county highway that led northeast out of town, past the very nice suburb where my mother and her husband live. My house is about a mile out of town, on a road that turns into farms pretty much right after it leaves the city limits.