A Knife to Remember

said. “I had no idea how hard—and early—all of you have to work. I couldn’t even be myself, much less another character, so early in the morning.“
    “Ah, but you’re seeing only a part of it,“ George answered, looking critically at a tray of food that a gofer had put in front of him. He turned over a lettuce leaf as if expecting something slimy to be on the other side of it. “Between jobs we lie about eating bonbons—or having wild affairs, if you were to believe the media.“
    “That may be how you spend your time, George,“ Lynette drawled. “I for one live a very spartan, healthy life. Rising early, exercising—“
    “As well I know,“ George said with an excessively capped smile. “I remember all the exercise you used to get lifting glasses of wine to your lips. So good for the muscles of the arm, I always thought.”
    Lynette glared at him for a second, then laughed with hollow merriment. “Darling, you know I don’t drink. You must have been reading the sleazier tabloids. I don’t know why that doesn’t surprise me.“
    “At least I can read, my dear,“ he said, and winked at Jane, drawing her into the joke on his side. Jane tried to look pleasantly noncommittal.
    Roberto Cavagnari joined them at this point with a tray piled high with food. “Jake, the campfires, they are not right. These people, they would be burning bits of buildings, not twigs and branches and natural rubbish.”
    Jake set down his fork and said, “I don’t agree. Remember, they have fled the fire into the country. There would be no buildings and they certainly wouldn’t have carried pieces of buildings with them as they fled.”
    Cavagnari apparently recognized the sense of this, but didn’t want to back down, so he pretended he hadn’t heard Jake and launched into a story of a film he had directed in Europe where a special effect fire had gone wrong and endangered the surroundings. The story was not only boring and pointless, but delivered with such drama and so extreme an accent that Jane couldn’t follow it at all. Instead, she just studied the others, wondering which of them she had overheard earlier.
    Lynette was picking daintily at her food, but managing to subtly put quite a bit of it away without looking piggy. She was gazing at (or through) Jake as she ate. She might well have been in a naughty movie in her youth, but her voice was so very distinctive that Jane couldn’t have failed to recognize it if Lynette had been one of the unseen speakers. Jane certainly knew it was Lynette moments later when she overheard her talking to Mike.
    Olive the Keeper stood behind Lynette, a sentinel. Her eyes were never still. Jane had once attended, unwillingly to be sure, a political rally where the vice president of the United States was present and had been fascinated by the way the Secret Service agents continuously examined the crowd the same way Olive Longabach was. It was as if she had it on reliable authority that a sniper was present.
    And there were plenty, but the “snipes“ were verbal and seemed to be bouncing off Lynette. Yes, Olive was the only one who appeared disconcerted, but it looked like an habitual attitude. And the idea of lumpy, frumpy Olive ever being in a skin flick was ludicrous.
    Jane gave up speculating. After all, there were a hundred people on this set and there was no reason to suppose the two she had overheard were among those at this table. They were probably off someplace else right now, hissing more threats and excuses at each other.
    Pretty, chestnut-haired Angela had unobtrusively taken a seat at the far end of the table and was keeping a low profile. Apparently she and Jake had sorted out whatever they’d been arguing about earlier in the day, or had at least decided to ignore each other.
    Jake Elder had wolfed down his lunch and appeared to be listening to Cavagnari drone on. He looked quite interested and calm, except for his right hand. Jane guessed he was an ex-smoker, having a hard time passing up the after-meal cigarette, because his hand kept fidgeting wildly, as if it had a life of its own. It reminded her of Dr. Strangelove.
    Mike, well-mannered as he was, was looking at Cavagnari intently, pretending great interest. But Jane knew the look on her son’s face. She’d seen it often enough. Fake fascination, and behind it he was thinking about baseball or girls or how to talk her out of the use of the station wagon for the weekend. She was enormously