Jessie was taken aback by the bile in his voice. But she couldn’t honestly think of any additional questions and had to admit that, assuming he wasn’t the killer, she’d punished the guy enough. She decided to give him a temporary pass.
“Submit your fingerprints and a DNA sample to Detective Bray, if you haven’t already, along with your phone data. Once that’s done, you’re free to resume shooting.”
He started to get up when she realized that she did have one more question.
“Anton, did you know about the pile of ash left outside your office last night?”
He nodded.
“Yes, I have been told by her,” he said, indicating Detective Bray.
“In light of that, do you have any concerns that the killer might be sending you a message or that you might be the next intended victim?”
Zyskowski’s eyes popped wide open.
“I did not have this concern until you have just now made me have it. Is there danger for me?”
“I don’t know,” Jessie admitted. “But I would recommend that until this is resolved, you keep company around as much as possible.”
“This will be easy,” he said brusquely. “As the director of the picture, I am never alone.”
“Good to know,” Jessie said. “Then unless Detective Trembley disagrees, I guess you can get back to it.”
Trembley shook his head. Zyskowski didn’t need to be told twice, hopping up and leaving the room quickly. Bray chased after him, yelling something about his phone.
“So,” Trembley said. “Four suspects—each with motive, none definitively eliminated, but all seemingly cooperative and forthcoming about their feelings toward the victim. I don’t feel like we’re any closer to solving this thing. What am I missing?”
“I think we’re missing a lot,” Jessie replied. “We don’t know what’s up with Tara Tanner. We don’t know where Petra Olivet is and if that even matters. We do know that a big-time producer, Miller Boatwright, is mixed up in this somehow. Something about Corinne’s husband seemed off to me. Plus, if she pissed off everyone on this movie, it stands to reason that she did the same on past ones. Every lead we get seems to add suspects, not subtract them.”
“So what’s our next move?” Trembley asked.
Jessie stood up from the folding chair that she’d been sitting in almost non-stop for the last hour. Her butt was sore. The shoulder she’d dislocated was starting to act up. The plastic chair had irritated the not-quite-healed burns on her lower back. And she was hungry.
“My next move is to get a bite and take some pain meds,” she said. “After that, I say we visit Corinne’s previous agent. He’s sure to know where all the bodies are buried. And seeing as how she dumped him right before her supposed comeback, he might be ready to spill.”
“You know, for someone who doesn’t pay attention to this business, you sure seem to have a handle on how it operates.”
Jessie smiled cynically at Trembley.
“In my experience, the business doesn’t matter as much as the behavior. If someone feels wronged, they want payback. Some people spill blood. Others spill rumors. Let’s see which one this guy is.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jamil Winslow was good at his job.
Jessie was reminded of this when she checked her voice messages as she and Trembley drove across town to the office of Phil Reinhold, Corinne’s old agent. Jamil had left a long one. She looked at the time stamp. He’d sent it nearly an hour ago.
Considering that he had to sift through multiple convoluted city databases, that was an amazingly quick turnaround in light of when she’d made the request for info on Tara Tanner. She hadn’t expected to hear from him for hours. Once they were in the car, she played the message on speaker for Trembley.
“Hi, Ms. Hunt. It’s Jamil. So I found some interesting stuff on Tara Tanner. It looks like she lives in New York now. She moved there about a year ago. She mostly does commercial work. But before she left L.A., it looks like she was involved in some litigation. Most of the language is redacted after both parties agreed to a confidentiality agreement. But what’s clear is that Tanner was paid two million dollars by a company called Creative Assessments. It’s a shell company created exactly one week before the settlement was paid out.
“Under normal circumstances I would have hit a dead end at that point. But because we know, based on who gave you her name, that Miller Boatwright has some sort of connection to Tanner, I had some leads