Vertigo Effect: The Eighth Jonathan Shade Novel Read online

  “Score one for the detective,” she said.

  “That doesn’t mean it was a death spell.”

  “Black bag? Gold string? Dried blood?”

  “Not more witches,” Esther said. “I hate witches.”

  “Spent or not, it doesn’t mean it was used on Terrell. And maybe the witch only had black bags, so don’t read too much into the color.”

  “It was freshly used when I found it.”

  “Do you have any witches working on the film?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But witches can sell hex bags.”

  “Sure, some do.” Most witches were what you’d expect—ordinary people who’d learned that spells and potions can work. They required ingredients and chants, Latin preferred, but not really necessary. Some witches are natural, in that they don’t require ingredients and can cast simple magic spells on their own, though to work any major magic, they still need help. They’re basically low-level wizards.

  “Lots of people wanted to see Terrell gone.”

  “Gone as in dead?” I asked.

  “Only a few of us liked him.”

  “It’s a mighty big leap to go from not liking someone to actually killing them.” I tucked the hex bag into my pocket.

  “Terrell is dead, so the leap was made. I don’t know why I’m the only one who sees it that way.”

  “All right, if that’s the situation—and I’m not agreeing that it is—who actually liked him?”

  “Me, Bill, Jean, and Trudy. Bill is Bill Dolan, the lead actor in the film. Terrell is his stunt double, and he makes Bill look good. They’ve worked on a number of pictures together. Jean is Jean Fournier, the second unit director. Trudy is Trudy Rawn, his ex. She’s a stunt performer too.”

  “You don’t see his ex as a suspect?” I asked.

  “She dumped him. She likes him, but doesn’t love him. She introduced us.”

  “If I take the case, I’ll need to talk to everyone and form my own opinions.”

  “Of course. Brenda already said you were taking the case, though.”

  “I’ll be honest. I agreed to come here not because of a case, but because Brenda said Kelly and I could do stunts for the movie. I’ve always wanted to be in a movie, but I can’t act for shit.”

  “You’re all set on that front. Brenda sent headshots of you and Kelly, and I fixed you up with SAG cards and credits. You’re on IMDb now.” She glanced back at Kelly. “Both of you.”

  Kelly shrugged. She didn’t care about movies, but I adored them. They were my escape.

  “I don’t think we’ll find anything,” I said, “but I’ll poke around to make sure.”

  “Thank you. Do you have any other questions?”

  “Who’s the lead actress?” I asked. “Please say Jessica Alba.”

  “Meghan Woodley.”

  “Not overly fond of her,” I said, disappointed. “Can we hire Jessica Alba?” I asked. “I’ll gladly pay her salary.”

  She laughed. Angela didn’t realize I could afford to pay the entire budget for the movie without batting an eye. That sent me down a rabbit hole of wanting to make my own movie. By the time we reached the hotel, I’d come up with a story about a team of beautiful bikini-clad assassins fighting crime in the Bahamas. Maybe I should take acting lessons, so I could play the male lead. Or maybe we could make it a porno.

  “Why are you smiling?” Angela asked as she pulled into the circular drive leading to the hotel entrance.

  “No reason,” I said. “Can you get me a copy of that video?”

  “I’ll upload it to Dropbox and send you a link.”

  “Cool.” I pulled a card from my pocket that included a gmail address and handed it to her.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Is the body still at the morgue?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll need to see it.”

  “I’ll set it up for you. Might be tomorrow afternoon, though.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “You’ll be needed on set tomorrow, too.”

  “No worries. I’ll want to talk to everyone Terrell worked with.”

  “Start with Bill Dolan. I’ll let him know it’s fine to talk to you.”

  I nodded. “Works for me. What time should we be ready?”

  “Driver will pick you up at four in the morning.”

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  She gave me a grin. “Welcome to show business.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Under normal circumstances, if I see four in the morning, it’s because I stayed up all night. Getting up before the sun was not something I looked forward to. After Angela dropped us off at the hotel, my first instinct was to go right to bed, but Kelly and Esther wanted to talk.

  We checked in then went to my room. I tossed my bag in the corner, and sat on the bed. Kelly leaned against the wall, and Esther willed herself visible.

  “Crazy dame,” Esther said.

  “That blur could have been anything,” Kelly said, staring at her phone.

  “That blur means we get to be in a movie,” I said.

  “What about the hex bag?” Esther asked.

  I pulled it from my pocket and studied it for a moment then tossed it on the dresser. “It could be a death spell. There’s dried blood in it, but I don’t have a way to check to see if that blood belonged to Terrell.”

  “Would it have to be his?” Kelly asked. She tapped her phone a few times, keeping her attention on the screen instead of me.

  I shook my head. “It’s more effective if it’s the blood of the intended victim because it means it won’t hurt anyone else, but a witch can use her own blood if she wants.”

  “Or his own blood,” Kelly said.

  “That would be a warlock.”

  Now she looked at me. “If there’s a murderer, you can’t determine the gender from a hex bag.”

  “I didn’t say you could.”

  “But you implied that the murderer was female.”

  “Not intentionally. I say witch, I think female. But you’re right. Men are far more likely to commit murder. It’s just that most warlocks I’ve met don’t bother with hex bags.”

  “So you did mean to imply female.”

  “I really didn’t think about it.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I’ll try to be more gender neutral in the future,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was that big a deal to you.”

  “It’s not,” Kelly said and forced a fake smile. “I just like to see you squirm.”

  Esther laughed, but Kelly’s smile disappeared a little too fast.

  “Right,” I said. “So, what did you want to talk about? I don’t get the impression it’s about the movie or the potential murder.”

  “It is about the movie,” Kelly said.

  “What about it?”

  “You said we needed to keep a low profile to keep hidden from the Men of Anubis. Don’t you think appearing in a movie is kind of high profile?”

  “No. I can’t see the Men of Anubis going to a movie and watching to see if any of the stunt performers are one of us—especially when they think we no longer exist.”

  “But we have to have fake names, and we can’t associate with anyone we knew before. Except for you, of course. You get to talk to your sister.”

  I hadn’t been in touch with my sister for years prior to seeing her the previous month in New York, but I knew this was about something else, so I didn’t say that. “All right, Kelly. Who would you like to talk to?”

  She glared at me because the truth was she didn’t have any friends to call. She had acquaintances. Women she trained, a few bodyguards, and such, but because the time she was from had been rewritten, even those people wouldn’t know her. Plus, she wasn’t one to go meet new people or have tea parties. She was meaner than the Kelly I knew. Harder. The Kelly I knew was dead. This Kelly was now my friend, but she wasn’t quite the same, and we knew there was another version of her living in Denv
er. We felt it best not to kick that particular bee hive. Layered time really fucked things up for us, and again, if it confuses you, don’t feel bad; it confuses me too.

  “You’re an asshole,” Kelly said.

  “No argument.”

  “What’s got you all balled up?” Esther asked.

  Kelly sighed. “It’s not important.”

  “If it’s bothering you, it’s important,” Esther said. “Right, Jonathan?” She shot me a look, and I nodded.

  “Right,” I said. “What gives, Kelly?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Chick speak for it matters a lot,” I said.

  “Don’t refer to me as a chick.”

  “Sorry. I was trying to lighten the mood a bit.”

  “Whatever.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m here if you want to talk, and it seemed like you did there for a minute.”

  “Come on, Kelly,” Esther said. “Jonathan is a good listener when he can keep his trap shut.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, Esther. I think.”

  Kelly stared at her phone again, then clicked it off and shoved it into her pocket. “It really doesn’t matter. I wanted to talk about the high profile issue, but…” She shook her head. “Screw it. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”

  She started toward the door, but I moved toward her and grabbed her arm. “Hold on a second. Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Use your own.”

  “I forgot to charge it.”

  She hesitated, but finally took her phone out and handed it to me without a word.

  She didn’t want to say what was bothering her, but I didn’t have to be a great detective to know she’d seen something on her cell. I hopped online and the screen lit up with the last page she’d visited. The Denver Post’s website and a breaking news story about a deputy killed in the line of duty trying to evict a political activist from his home after a foreclosure. There was a picture of the deputy, a guy named Daniel Kingston, but I’d never seen him before, and I’d never heard of the activist.

  “Did you know Deputy Kingston?” I asked.

  Kelly nodded.

  She’d lived a different life from the Kelly I knew. “Were you dating him?”

  “Not this version of him,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I didn’t know him. The Dan I knew doesn’t exist. This just drives home the fact that everything I knew is gone. You’re not the same. The women I trained might or might not have been trained by the version of me living in Denver now. It occurs to me that I have nothing.”

  She said it without any emotion, like she was reading the ingredients of a recipe for someone else to make a meal, but I knew that under the surface, she did feel something. She felt the loss of a man she might even have loved, but who in this reality was now dead without ever having met her.

  “He must have been an amazing man,” I said.

  “My version was,” she said. “May I have my phone?”

  I handed it back to her. She didn’t look at the picture. She walked to the door, yanked it open and glanced back at me.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “See you at four.”

  After she left, Esther gave me a concerned look. “You’re the only person she knows now.”

  “Other than some wizards at DGI, but she certainly won’t want to see any of them. I think her new reality is starting to sink in.”

  “Want me to go to her?” Esther asked.

  “I think she deserves some privacy right now.”

  It amazed me how little I knew about her. I needed to rebuild my friendship with her, but we’d lived such different lives, and we knew different versions of one another. There was a solid foundation from the early years before I died and came back, but things had obviously been very different in her life than in my Kelly’s life. We needed something to bridge that gap. Our experience in New York was a start, but we needed more common experience. Could we find that by playing make believe in front of a camera?

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Esther said.

  “My thoughts aren’t worth a penny right now.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bill Dolan stepped out of his trailer and followed Ryan, the energetic first AD to the set. Like many actors, Bill was on the shorter side. He stood maybe five-seven if he wore thick-soled shoes. He was bald, but had a thin mustache and some scraggly hair on his chin that didn’t quite qualify as a goatee. He had diamond studs in his ears, and a twinkle in his eye. He wore a three-piece suit with polished shoes.

  “You should talk to him,” Esther said, pointing. We stood by the craft service table not too far from where they were preparing to film a scene. The lights were blazing, the camera ready. Dolly tracks stretched across the set, and small pieces of tape in different colors on the floor showed the marks the actors were supposed to hit. Each actor had his or her own color tape. Stand-ins stood on the marks while the cameras were set up and lights adjusted.

  “After they shoot his lines,” I said.

  “Did you say something?” the craft service girl asked. She looked fifteen, but had to be older.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking out loud. Can I get another one of those sliders? Those are damn good.”

  “That’s why they’re here,” she said.

  I grabbed another small sandwich. It was roast beef with cheese, and while it was cold, it was tasty. I made a note not to answer Esther on set. Too many people around.

  “I’ll go wandering,” she said. “See if I can get the dirt on anyone.”

  I resisted the urge to make a smart ass remark. Not an easy thing for me to do. She smiled at me and moved off toward the trailers. If she found anything suspicious, she’d let me know.

  Kelly sat in a fold-up chair near the trailers. We were supposed to meet with Jean, the second-unit director, as he would be our boss, but I wanted to talk to Bill. Angela told him about me looking into things, so he was expecting me. I moved closer to the set, standing off to the side out of range of the cameras, and away from the gaffers and boom operators.

  I held a copy of the script, and planned to read it soon. The movie was called The Seventh Hour. Bill played a man named Cole Mitchell, an FBI agent from the CIRG division. CIRG was an acronym for Critical Incident Response Group. The scene they were filming took place in an FBI office. I flipped through the script to find the pages they were shooting. The office was supposed to be in New York, but here we were in Florida. Ah, the magic of the movies. An interior can be shot anywhere.

  What I’d been told about the script seemed far-fetched, but loaded with action set-pieces. A terrorist kidnapped seven daughters of seven senators and wanted to ransom them each for their weight in gold. He offered clues to the FBI so they could try to save each girl before she died a horrible death. Something like that. I guess it made more sense if you watched it. In this scene, Cole was supposed to walk through the FBI offices with Tess, who I guess was his partner or love interest, or both. I hadn’t read the script, so I was clueless beyond what I’d been told on the ride over. This was to be a phone call where the bad guy, known as Pharaoh, contacts Cole to give him a clue.

  I moved closer. The director, Guy Manfield, looked around. “Everyone set?”

  People nodded. Bill Dolan stood with a cute girl, Meghan Woodley, the lead actress. She wore a smart business suit and looked over her pages while a hairdresser plucked at her already perfect hair. Meghan handed the script to the stylist and waved her off.

  “Rolling,” the cameraman said.

  “Speed,” the sound man said.

  “And, action,” the director said.

  Bill and Meghan walked onto the set. His cellphone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Mitchell,” he said.

  “Would this be Special Agent Mitchell?” a voice said behind me.

  I turned around and saw a man talkin
g into a cellphone. He wore sweat pants and a Tim McGraw tour t-shirt. His hair was unkempt.

  “Yes,” Bill said. “Who is this?”

  “Ah, finally, a worthy adversary. I’m the man who’s been pulling your strings.”

  “Pharaoh,” Bill said with contempt. “Couldn’t think of a more original name?”

  Meghan looked surprised. I glanced at the script and saw the line, Tess gives him a surprised look.

  Good acting.

  “It serves my purpose,” the unkempt man said. “After all, you are my little slaves.”

  Bill stumbled as he moved past a desk.

  “Cut,” the director said.

  “Sorry,” Bill said.

  “No worries. We’ll take it again from the top.”

  A few hours later, they were still filming the same page. They were further along, but it was mind-numbingly dull. The bad guy was supposed to give a clue, and evidently the writers of the script were riffing on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but giving things a modern spin too. The second clue was Stones will fall from the Bridges of Babylon. Unkempt man said that line over and over.

  The clue played off a Rolling Stones album called “Bridges to Babylon” and referred to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  I sat down and read the script. To my surprise, it was pretty good. The premise was out there, but the execution was solid. There were some good lines, decent character development, and a cool final showdown on a ship in the Welland Canal lock system heading out to the Atlantic Ocean. I’d never seen anything like that on film before.

  During a break in filming, I talked to the unkempt man. “Are you the actor playing Pharaoh?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m just an extra, but I’m filling in on the phone because Walken is still on another film.”

  “Christopher Walken is playing the bad guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Are you staying with the film when it moves to other locations?”

  “No, man. I’m local.”

  “You hear about that stunt man?” I asked.

  “Which stunt man?”

  “Guy named Terrell, I think. Died doing a stunt the other day.”