Chapter 11

  

Penelope made her way back over to the inn while Ava stayed behind to give a statement to Sheriff Bryson. Penelope agreed to gather her staff and meet him a half hour later downstairs in the great room. Fighting the instinct to rush across the courtyard, she breathed in the cold air and slowed her pace to clear her head. She felt numb, her legs rubbery as she thought about what the sheriff had said about bruises on Jordan’s body. Penelope had picked up her fair share of bruises working over the years, and sometimes she couldn’t figure out how they ended up where they did. She hoped the sheriff was being overly cautious and they would turn out to be incidental.

Penelope paused as she reached for the handle on the heavy wooden door, the fleeting thought about that morning when she’d found Jordan landing with a thud in her mind.

“Why did he take off his boots?” Penelope whispered to herself. Her mind skittered back to the scene, Jordan’s blue toes twisting just above the metal floor of the refrigerator. She hadn’t noticed his boots in the kitchen. Even though the inn had been remodeled, the floors in winter were still cold. Why would he be barefoot? She made a note to check the office at the inn. Maybe he’d slipped his boots off in there before heading into the kitchen. But still, a commercial kitchen floor, even a clean one like the one at the inn, wouldn’t be a place any trained chef would walk around barefoot.

The dry heat from the fireplace warmed Penelope instantly. A few members of the crew were filling crystal tumblers from a bottle of scotch on the bar and speaking in low voices. The windows on either side of the bar were edged in frost, the sky almost completely dark behind them. Penelope slipped past unnoticed and headed upstairs.

Penelope rapped her knuckles on the door to Jennifer’s suite. Normally it was open, but now it was locked, and there was no answer. Penelope turned and went to the opposite end of the hall to Arlena’s suite, knocking once and entering when she heard Arlena call “come in” softly.

“There you are,” Arlena said when she saw Penelope. She stood on a raised platform in front of a tri-fold set of full-length mirrors. She had on her primary costume, the one she wore in most of her scenes: a long black dress with a squared collar. She looked every inch the unreliable frail governess from the story, at least what Penelope remembered from when she read The Turn of the Screw back in school. Skylar was perched on a low stool in front of Arlena, holding a section of the skirt in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder at Penelope, brightly colored pins pinched between her lips, before sticking one in the hem of the dress.

“Is this a bad time?” Penelope asked.

Arlena shook her head and waved Penelope over. “It’s never a bad time to see you. I’ve lost some weight since we’ve been here. They need to bring in the dress again.” Arlena had gained fifteen pounds a few months earlier as part of a push to land a role in a movie. She didn’t get the part, and had been losing the extra weight ever since. “Jennifer is going to flip out if I have a ten-pound weight variance during filming. It will be too obvious, I think.”

“Keep coming to dinner. I can make you some extra shakes too,” Penelope said. She suddenly felt exhausted and looked for a place to sit down.

Arlena’s assistant, Sarah, emerged from the adjoining bedroom and shuffled through a few script pages. Her thick slouchy sweater pulled down her narrow shoulders and left bright pink balls of fuzz on her leggings. “I’ve marked all of tomorrow’s dialogue changes,” the young girl said, tucking a red pen behind her ear. Her black hair was styled in a pixie cut and dyed purple at the fringes, the same color as the frames of her glasses.

“What’s wrong?” Arlena asked, her expression becoming concerned as she looked closer at Penelope. Skylar and Sarah stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to her also.

“The police are at the restaurant,” Penelope began.

“Who, the sheriff again?” Arlena asked. Skylar pulled the pins from her lips and stood up from her stool. The three of them waited silently for Penelope to continue.

“They’re saying Jordan’s death might not have been a suicide. That maybe he was murdered.” Penelope plopped onto the nearest chair.

Arlena stepped down from the platform and went to Penelope, draping an arm over her shoulders. “So there’s a maniac on the loose in this little farm town?” Arlena asked with disbelief. “Who killed Jordan?”

Penelope shrugged. “They don’t know. It’s an open investigation now.”

“He was killed here?” Sarah asked in disbelief. She put her hand over her mouth immediately afterwards and mumbled “Sorry” through her fingers.

“It’s not safe,” Skylar said, sounding more excited than scared. “They’re definitely going to shut the movie down now.”

Arlena looked at them and said, “Would you two stop? Go on, give us a minute.”

Skylar and Sarah got up and went into the adjoining bedroom reluctantly, appearing anxious to hear what was happening. They left the door partially open and began a hushed conversation.

Arlena hugged Penelope closer to her side on the settee. “They’re right, you know. I love Jennifer, but I’ve never worked with a director who had so many day-to-day changes. Scenes, dialogue, schedule changes…she’s rewriting every day. Some of the crew members are disgruntled—the accommodations here aren’t working for everyone. Now a murder?”

“I know. I’ve heard grumblings around the set too. I’ve never been on a project that felt so…depressed.”

Someone knocked on the door, a persistent series of raps. “Who is it?” Arlena asked, sighing.

Whoever it was knocked again, a playful series of beats that reminded Penelope of a childhood rhyme.

“Who’s there?” Arlena asked again, becoming impatient with the unannounced visitor.

There was no response, just the continued rhythm on the door. Arlena pushed herself up from the settee and took a few long strides, then yanked it open. She looked like she was about to give the person on the other side a strong opinion about their interruption, but then Penelope saw Arlena’s face move from irritation to delight in a matter of seconds.

“Daddy!” Arlena cried, reaching up to throw her arms around Randall Madison’s neck.