Later that morning Diana discovered all the cast and most of the crew had left, along with Grady Leonard. The lodge staff—all ten of whom were related to Joe and lived in Penowa—hadn’t showed up, either. Joe told them not to come in until the police figured out who was behind the attack on Jordyn.
“I don’t want them getting sucked into whatever weirdness you film people have gotten yourselves into,” he said. “I expect the police will be back up here soon and arrest someone.”
If her journalistic instincts were right—and they always were—this was going to be a huge story, which meant her parents would see it and freak out. They got into the habit after she and Billie got into a few mishaps in college. Diana decided on a pre-emptive strike, so she locked herself in the lodge office and called home.
As expected, it didn’t go well. Papa started yelling in Italian, then her oldest brother, Angelo, grabbed the phone.
“I’m coming up there to get you,” he said.
“Don’t be a jackass, Angelo, it’s twenty-five hundred miles! I can get home on my own.”
“Diana Seraphina! Language!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” She wasn’t six.
She didn’t hear what Angelo said to that, because Fabio, her second-oldest brother, grabbed the phone next.
“I’ll fly up this afternoon,” Fabio said. “Innocenzio”—their next-to-youngest brother—“is checking on flights.”
“By the time you get up here, I’ll probably already be in Vancouver. Don’t bother. Let me talk to Papa.”
By this time, Rocco, their youngest brother, had grabbed the phone. “I’m coming, too.”
Diana huffed. They were impossible. “You will not,” she said, putting some force in her tone and hoping it would stick. “Who will help Papa and Mamma with the restaurant if you all come? Stop being ridiculously overprotective and give the phone to Papa!”
Instead, Innocenzio was on the line, demanding to know if she was okay.
“I’m fine. Why would anyone want to attack me? I’m nowhere near as bitchy as Jordyn.”
“She’s really good-looking,” her brother, the aspiring Romeo, sighed. “As for the other, that’s a matter of interpretation.”
Diana rolled her eyes—wasted because Innocenzio couldn’t see her—and asked to talk to their father again.
Their middle brother, Franco, grabbed the phone and asked if she would be safe until they reached Vancouver.
“For heaven’s sake, Franco, you probably couldn’t find this place anyway, it’s at the end of the world. And, after I get to Vancouver, I won’t need your help. I’m going to live here, remember?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Franco said. “We thought Canada would be safe . . . .”
“I’m not letting you drag me back to Detroit, and if you don’t give the phone to Papa, I’m hanging up.” She had had enough.
After some muffled arguing, Papa was on the line again. Diana wouldn’t admit to anyone—except herself—what a relief it was to hear Papa’s deep bass rumble.
“I do not like you so far away, principessa, and in trouble. Again.”
He was scowling, she just knew it. “I’m not in trouble. Just because something bad happens to someone else and I’m in the general vicinity, that doesn’t mean I’m in trouble.” It had to have happened at least once.
“You are there with that California girl?”
“Yes.” Diana suspected she was about to get yet another lecture on what a bad influence Billie was on her. “Papa, I’m leaving as soon as I get off the phone with you. I knew if I didn’t call, you’d worry. So I called.” She twisted the phone cord around her index finger.
He sighed. “I worry. That California girl, she gets you into so much trouble, principessa. You are leaving this morning?”
Diana crossed her fingers. “Yes. So . . . maybe . . . we don’t have to tell Mamma?”
“I will not lie to your Mamma . . . but . . . .”
Diana’s heart lifted. “But?”
“There is no need to worry her, if you will be safe by this afternoon . . . .”
“I will be.”
“You will call.” This was a command, not a question.
“Yes.”
“I will take care of your brothers, then. Ti voglio bene.”
“Ti voglio bene. Ciao.”
Diana hung up with a sigh of relief and slumped in the chair. Her family was so much effort.
Someone knocked on the office door.
“Who is it?”
“Billie.”
Diana unlocked the door, hauled Billie in and shut it behind her. “Any word on a ride out of here?”
Billie shook her head. “Everyone who was local and had a car left. A couple of the L.A. people left in Grady’s rental. It’s like a ghost town, and only the production vans are left.”
Diana relaxed. “That’s fine, we can fit a bunch of people in the vans. Do you want to call your parents before we pack?”
Billie shrugged. “I can wait until we get to Vancouver.”
“Are you fighting again?”
“No.” Billie leaned against the desk and crossed her arms. “They just won’t notice.”
Diana raised an eyebrow. “It’s going to be all over the news, Bils. It would be hard for them not to notice. Just give them a quick call.”
“If it isn’t in the business or technical section, they won’t notice. Look, Di, I know you mean well, but I’d rather not. It’ll just stress them out.”
“. . . do they know you’re working?”
Billie fidgeted with the ties on her hoodie. “Yes.”
“On a movie?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Um . . . we should probably pack. You want me to help you roll Closet Sidney up?”
Diana narrowed her eyes. “They don’t know, do they?”
“It’s not you, it’s them. You know how they are—they blame you every time something weird happens.”
Diana cleared her throat. Since Papa had just blamed the Jordyn thing on Billie, she couldn’t complain. “Okay, I understand that, but you should still call them. They’re your parents, Bils.”
“Di, I was raised by robots.” Billie rolled her eyes. “Unfeeling, nerdy robots.”
“They love you, Bils. They’re just . . . different.” Different covered a multitude of sins.
“Di, they’ve been pushing me to be just like them my entire life. My first onesie said ‘I love NASA’! Guess what? I don’t love NASA. In fact, I hate NASA. I barely passed earth science in college!”
“Well, in their defense, you were a baby and couldn’t tell them you didn’t love NASA since you couldn’t talk.”
“Seriously, Di?”
“Well, you couldn’t.” Billie’s expression was best described as incredulous, so Diana amended, “well, just keep the option open, okay?”
Billie sighed. “Okay.”
They would leave soon, so it shouldn’t be an issue anyway.
They were never getting out of here.
Dick lost his shit when he realized only the out-of-towners were left and, in a snit fit, declared none of the production vehicles would transport the stragglers into Vancouver. He confiscated the keys to ensure no one took off. Diana hoped the killer whacked Dick next, then maybe the rest of them could escape. If she saw a chance to push him down the stairs, she would take it.
No actors and a skeleton crew meant production shut down.
Diana and Billie needed to get the hell out of Dodge. Diana knew how this would play out—bodies on the ground. Dick hadn’t said a word about Lark to anyone. Diana was considering publishing a newsletter, then skywriting it for good measure.
The only local person left was Miles. That was weird. If she could bug out, she would, but Miles stuck around. He claimed he left his car in Harrison Hot Springs because the shocks were too shaky to take on an unpaved road. Diana thought that was a load of bullshit.
Diana cursed herself for not hitching a ride with one of the locals—she happily would have traded Eamon staring down her cleavage all the way back to Vancouver for a ride for herself and Billie—but the bastards slunk off under the cover of darkness.
They couldn’t walk out. Even Penowa was over an hour’s drive, through miles of thick forest on a logging road. She considered calling a Chilliwack-based cab company, but she didn’t think they could afford the round trip, and they weren’t getting a money transfer at the end of the world.
Billie was packing. Better to be prepared than caught unaware was Diana’s motto—or maybe it was her oldest brother, Angelo’s, motto. He had been a Marine; she was certain that was the Marines’ catch phrase. Besides, if the police didn’t come back today, they would be back the following day, and she and Billie could get a ride to Chilliwack.
She cut across the lobby on the way to grab some lunch. Pam still was on set, but not for long, since she was employed by a subcontractor. At breakfast, Pam said the company was sending a van out for her and the equipment the next day. That pissed Dick off. He screamed at Pam, but she only shrugged and handed him his coffee.
Joe waved her down.
“What is it?”
He waved a fistful of papers. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook. All these reporters wanting to know what happened to Ms. Brooks.”
“Toss ‘em, Joe. As soon as I figure out how I’m getting out of here, I’m gone. Production shut down.” She stopped. “Do you have a car, Joe?”
“Yup.”
“Thank the sweet baby Jesus! Let’s get out of here!”
“Can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m waiting on a new alternator. And a battery. And a timing belt.”
“That isn’t a car, that’s a collection of spare parts. How are you going to get all that out here?”
“Mail.”
“Is it coming today?”
“Mail came yesterday. The parts didn’t come. Maybe next week. Or the week after. It doesn’t matter, you film people will all be gone soon, one way or another.” He laughed.
“Jesus, did you take lessons in being creepy?”
“Nope.”
“All natural talent, then.”
The front doors rattled with another gust of wind. A storm was brewing; it wasn’t enough they were isolated with some psycho, but now it would get humid and her hair would frizz.
“What am I supposed to tell the reporters?”
Diana shrugged. “Take the phone off the hook. Better yet, direct all the callers to the Chilliwack RCMP. It’s not like I know what’s going on with the investigation.”
She entered the darkened dining room. Only a few tables were set for lunch, and the rest of the room was dark. It was creepy, but the whole place was creepy and had been since they got here.
Diana stopped halfway across the room. The room reeked of something burning. Diana sniffed. Pork, possibly. She frowned; no matter how Dick bitched, the food was good. Pam didn’t burn food.
Her heels clicked loudly as she hurried across the room. It was dead silent. A dark suspicion bloomed. “I can’t believe this shit.” She spoke to kill the silence.
Someone entered the dining room behind her—several people by the sound of it. She ignored them and continued to the kitchen. She would open the swinging doors, and Pam would be scraping a burnt roast or chops into the trash. Pam would make her a couple of plates, the rest of the stragglers would arrive for lunch, and she would laugh about this with Billie later.
She pushed open the kitchen doors.
Diana screamed.
Pam was slumped across the stove, the handle of a butcher’s knife jutting up between her shoulder blades like an exclamation point. The back of her white chef’s smock had turned a brilliant red.
The stove was on, and the smell wasn’t pork burning. Still screaming, Diana dragged Pam from the stove. Chunks of her burnt flesh adhered to the burner, sizzling.
Pam’s body fell to the floor, her head bouncing, hitting the ground with a dull thud. Diana’s hands were covered in blood from grabbing Pam’s saturated smock.
She couldn’t seem to stop screaming.
People crowded into kitchen, all yelling and—when they got a look at Pam’s charred face—cursing. Diana stumbled to the sink, bumping into people, half-sobbing and chanting “oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Her hands were slick and shaking, and she kept missing the faucet handles.
Someone reached over her shoulder and turned the hot and cold water on. Diana thrust her hands under the spray and watched the pink water swirl down the drain, doing a full-body shudder.
“You okay?” Miles said.
She sobbed, and Miles held her. She would end up in his arms when a half-burnt corpse was in the room.
“I’ve got a dead woman’s blood soaking into my shirt cuffs, how can I be okay?” She wriggled free of his arms.
“What the hell is this?” Dick stormed into the room, saw Pam’s body, turned and started vomiting in the sink.
Miles guided Diana toward the door, his hand at the small of her back.
“This is Pam,” Miles said. “We’ve got to call the cops. Again.”
“I’ll do it.” Elyse hurried out of the room, one hand pressed against her mouth.
“We shouldn’t move her,” Judd said.
“What are you, a police investigator?” Tiny had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the door frame. He looked at Pam’s body and shook his head.
“No,” Judd said. “But I’ve watched CSI.”
Billie appeared in the doorway, wide-eyed, and Diana threw herself at her best friend. Billie hugged her close. “What happened?”
“I found Pam. She . . . she was on the stove. It was on.”
“Oh God.” Billie hugged her again. “This is now officially worse than Big Bear. Maybe as bad as sophomore year.”
“I don’t want to think about that.” Diana hid her face in Billie’s shoulder.
“What the hell is all over the floor?” Dick stooped to pick something up.
“I don’t think we should touch anything,” Judd said.
“Diana already touched the body,” Miles said.
Diana shot him a dirty look. “She was cooking. What did you want me to do, baste her?”
“Dunno.” Miles shrugged. “You could’ve just turned the stove off.”
“I couldn’t just leave her there. I liked Pam.”
“What the hell?” Dick peered at something dark and the size of a fingernail.
Miles sighed. “Put your glasses on, Richard.”
Dick did so, then looked it over. “It’s fucking Ex-Lax.” He looked from the floor, littered with little dark squares, to the large butcher’s block table.
A bowl, a bag of chickpeas and a handful of spices were on the table. Pam was in the middle of making Dick’s hummus—he swore it was good for digestion—when she was killed. The killer must have turned the stove on for extra-added gruesome.
Dick looked from the Ex-Lax to the hummus, a deep frown marring his brow. “Son of a bitch! She’s been dosing my hummus! That’s why I’ve been shitting my brains out all week!” He looked at Pam’s dead body—her face wasn’t visible from where Diana stood, thank goodness for small favors. “Son of a bitch! She’s been putting Ex-Lax in my fucking hummus!”
“Oh, shit, I told her to do that.” Diana clapped a hand over her mouth.
Dick whirled around. “Why in the hell would you tell her to do that?”
“I didn’t. I mean, I did. I told her that, if I were her and you treated me the way you did her, I’d put a laxative in your food. I didn’t tell her to actually put that in your food! Besides, if you weren’t such a dick to her, she never would have done it.”
“I’ve lost eight pounds in a week! I’ve got this rash around my asshole—”
“Stop!” Diana pressed her hands over her ears. “That is nothing I want to hear about. I never want to hear about that. I am going to pretend I never heard that.”
Elyse cleared her throat behind them. “If you’re done talking about Richard’s ass, I need to tell you something.”
“What?” Dick asked.
“The phone lines are down.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dick said with feeling.
Billie let go of Diana and rushed to a house phone in the dining area. When she picked it up, it was silent. A flash of lightning lit the room.
“Well, that’s not creepy at all.” She put the receiver down. Part of her was relieved. She didn’t have to worry about an excuse to not call home now.
“I bet the storm knocked the lines down,” Miles said.
“Someone open the doors and get some air in here,” Richard said weakly. “The smell . . . I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat bacon again.”
Billie sat down with Diana. “We need to get out of here. This is bad. This is Miami-levels of bad.”
“It was awful, Bils. Worse than the severed head at the Omega Zeta Tau house senior year.”
Billie shuddered. That was a bad scene. She was glad she hadn’t seen what Diana had. Billie studied her friend’s hands—Diana had blood in the creases around her nails.
“Why don’t you go up to the room and wash up? I’ll try and convince Richard we need to get out of here before the storm gets worse. I can smell the rain.”
“I’m not going upstairs alone!” Diana shook her head. “I know I’d be fine in the room—Closet Sidney has a protective presence, if you remember the whole axe murder situation. But going from here to there? Nope. Not going to risk it.”
“Judd, will you walk Diana upstairs?”
Diana kicked her under the table. “You know, I think I’m good.”
“You still have blood on your hands.”
Diana looked down, frowned, then let out a tiny “oh.”
Judd looked at Cassie. She was talking with Elyse, and both looked worried. Fay huddled in a corner, staring out the windows at the trees, whipping in the wind. They needed to hurry.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll walk her upstairs,” Judd said.
Diana gave her a look, but Billie got up and headed toward Richard, ready for battle.
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
“We can’t. We’re in the middle of shooting.”
Billie stared at him. “Richard, the caterer was just murdered. Cooked. On your set. I have a feeling you aren’t going to have a choice about continuing once the police hear about this.”
“But in the meantime . . . .”
“Pam is dead!”
“Pam was poisoning me! Maybe she poisoned the wrong person.”
Billie raised an eyebrow. Richard was intimately attached to everyone who was murdered or attacked. Granted, Pam wasn’t a conquest so much as a mortal enemy, but each girl was involved with him in some way. She shivered. There was a strong possibility he had something to do with it.
“Can’t we just . . . put her in the freezer for awhile, finish some more of the film, then call the police when the phones are up?” Richard asked weakly.
Billie had had it. “No, we can’t. Your movie is done. Over. Jordyn is gone. All the other actors left. Most of the crew is gone. You’ve got Judd, Miles, Elyse, a grip, a couple makeup people, a script supervisor who is sitting in the corner with a bottle of Jose Cuervo right now, and a hairdresser who’s more interesting in getting Judd back than making anyone look gorgeous. It’s over, Richard.”
He sat down, more dejected than a fat kid whose cake had been taken away.
“She’s right, Richard.” Fay sat beside Richard, putting her hand on his arm. “We need to get out of here before the storm makes it too difficult. Someone is hurting these people. On your watch.”
Richard’s shoulders slumped even more.
“Do the right thing. Shut down production. We can drive out and stop in Harrison Hot Springs for the night. The Chilliwack RCMP can be called and they can come out here and deal with this. We’ll stay at the big hotel there. It’s got a spa.”
Diana would be on board with that plan.
“We can regroup and rewrite,” Fay said. “It’s not a write-off yet. We just need to be alive to finish it, and I don’t think that’s going to happen if we stay here.”
Richard’s sigh came from his core. “Yeah. Okay. Get everyone together and we’ll drive out in the vans. I’ll get the hard drives with all the film on it.” He got up and left the dining room.
“Thanks.” Billie watched Richard’s back as he left. “He listens to you.”
“I don’t know how much good this is going to do.” Fay looked around the room and leaned closer to Billie. “Whoever is killing these girls is one of us. If we leave . . . the killer is coming, too.”
“Good news.” Billie walked into their room. “We’re leaving. Richard said meet up by the vans.”
“Hallelujah!” Diana grabbed her suitcases. “Help me get Closet Sidney down.”
“Let’s go!” A booming knock sounded on their door and Billie threw it open.
Richard stood there. “Last call, move it.” He looked at Diana. “Even you.”
Diana sputtered for a moment.
“We still have a few things to pack,” Billie said.
“Tough shit, I have a ton of equipment I’m leaving here. We’re leaving. If you aren’t following me, you don’t have a seat in the van.”
Diana looked terrified.
“We’ll come back.” Billie took her hand. “Come on. I promise.”
“Oh,” Diana moaned. “I hope you know what kind of sacrifice this is.”
“Sad you have to leave your curling iron behind? I don’t care! Outside.” Richard grabbed two of Diana’s bags and tossed them into the hall. “Camera Girl, move your ass.”
Diana looked back longingly at the closet, but followed Richard out of the room. Billie locked the door and handed the key to Diana. Di tucked it in her bra.
They struggled down the stairs with their suitcases, and Richard flung the front door open. The wind was merciless and warm, and Billie remembered being stuck in a tropical storm in Miami. The weather was ripe for a big storm.
A flash lit the sky and a crack of thunder sounded in the distance. A second later the skies ripped open and rain poured.
In seconds, sheets of rain pounded the ground. Richard tossed suitcases in the van willy-nilly and ushered everyone inside. Richard got behind the wheel of one, and Judd drove the other, Claudia harassing him from the passenger seat.
“At least Claudia isn’t driving,” Billie said.
It didn’t make much difference. Richard was in a hurry to get the hell out of there.
“Wait, where’s Joe?” Diana asked.
“Joe who?” Richard asked her.
“Joe the lodge owner?”
“Don’t know. He wasn’t around. Took off. Probably fried up Pam and left.”
Diana sat in irritated silence, and Billie clung to the armrest as Richard shot around a curve. The windshield wipers went full blast, but it didn’t do much good. It was late afternoon, but as dark as night. Wind buffeted the van as Richard tried not to careen down the canyon and into the creek below.
Rivers washed down the cliff face on the right, and Richard dodged rocks that slid loose and landed on the road.
Diana grasped her knee and Billie took her hand. Diana squeezed it hard.
“Not too much further to go,” Billie said.
“Liar.” Diana had her eyes shut. “It’s at least forty-five more minutes to Penowa.”
Billie leaned forward. The wipers slapped back and forth as the rain fell faster. Lightning flashed and a crack of thunder sounded at the same time, the boom so loud the van shook and Diana screamed.
Richard slowed to a crawl. “Jesus Christ, I hope we make it out of here. Fay, this was your idea, if we die, I’m blaming you.”
“If we die, we’ll be dead and we won’t have to worry about blame. Watch the road. And slow down!”
Richard floored it and dodged around another corner. He bombed along the unpaved road, Judd trying to keep up behind them. Billie wanted to close her eyes, too, but she felt watching would keep Richard from crashing, like she willed the van to stay on the road.
A few minutes later Richard raced around another curve.
“Look out!” Billie screamed.
Lightning flashed, illuminating a huge tree in the middle of the road. Richard slammed on the brakes and the van slid. Billie braced for impact—whether hitting the tree or Judd hitting them—but it never came. A second later they skidded to a stop, inches from the tree.
“Holy shit,” Richard breathed.
Everyone was quiet, only the sound of the rain bouncing off the van roof and Jenny whimpering in the back breaking the silence.
“I told you to slow down,” Fay said.
“I did. We didn’t hit the tree.”
Diana had Billie’s hand in a death grip. “You want a medal for not killing us? Be glad I’m wearing a seatbelt, or else I’d be up there killing your ass so hard—”
“We’re trapped.”
Everyone turned to look at Billie.
She gestured at the tree, then scrambled to the door and slid it open. The rain was a deluge, lightning flashed and thunder boomed all around them. She struggled closer to the tree and looked up at the cliff face.
“It’s not just a tree,” she said over the sound of rushing water in the creek below, falling rain and thunder. “There’s been a landslide. We need to get out of here. This whole thing could come down on us.”
“And it will,” Richard said. “Ever since you two showed up, it’s like bad luck central.”
Billie didn’t bother to correct him—he was right.
“What do we do?” Fay asked.
Richard sighed. “Back to the lodge. It’s the only way.”
Billie climbed back in the van.
Diana looked hopeless. “It’s back to the house of horrors, isn’t it?”
Billie nodded.
“Great.”
“Someone’s going to have to move Pam into the freezer,” Richard said. “I am not sleeping with her corpse lying in the kitchen.”
Diana bristled. “No, you’d just throw up all night. You direct slasher films. You’d think a little sautéed craft services would be nothing to you.”
“You know who I’d like to sauté?”
“Stop it,” Fay said. “Just stop. We need to stick together. And Richard’s right. We have to go back to the lodge. And we need to take care of Pam. Then we have to figure out what to do.”
Fay turned and looked at the people in the van, then back at Richard. He put the van in gear and started to turn around. Judd followed suit behind them.
Billie caught Fay’s eye. She looked grim, and Billie knew why. They were going to be trapped in the lodge with a homicidal maniac.