And how do you know what Jake Blake’s gun looks like?” I said. Barry suddenly appeared sheepish.
“Okay, I admit it. I watch L.A. 911.” He looked up at the three of us. “Just to see what they get wrong—which is just about everything.” Barry pointed out the gun was a .357 Magnum six-inch barrel. “Everybody knows his initials are engraved on the handle,” he said, showing us the engraved JB. “I said fake guns have a plug in them, but they can’t very well film them with a bright orange thing on the end.”
He got a bamboo skewer from the kitchen and poked it inside the gun barrel. When he pulled it out, an orange plastic plug was hanging off of it. He stared at the three of us. We got more head shakes. And then Barry’s gaze rested on me. “How do you manage to get in so much trouble?” I was relieved to see he said it with a smile. “I’m going to miss all the comic relief.” He looked at the gun still lying on the floor with the red and yellow handled Pinchy-Winchy next to it. “I hope you have a plan for getting it back where it belongs.” He started to leave the room. “Don’t worry. I didn’t see anything.”
I didn’t want my fingerprints on the prop gun, so I picked it up with a pencil and dropped it in a plastic bag. Adele was already backing toward the door. “I can’t go back there.” It wasn’t until she was outside in the yard that she realized her car was parked back by Dinah’s house and she couldn’t make a hasty exit.
“Cutchykins can’t know I had anything to do with this,” Adele said with a worried tone. “I’m not giving up my detective career, no matter what he says, but he can’t know about this.”
I drove us back to Dinah’s and as soon as I pulled in front of her house, Adele had the door open. She started to walk toward her Matrix, but then stopped and appeared to have a soul-searching moment before she turned back and rejoined us. “I can’t bail on you. We’re the three musketeers.”
As we looked down the dark street, we could see the night filming was still going on. It was hard to miss the tall crane with the bright light illuminating the area. I imagined Nanci Silvers grumbling in her house since the light probably was shining in her back windows as well. Eric was sitting atop his motorcycle facing away from us.
Adele had a plan. I didn’t really trust her plans, but we had limited time and she was the one who knew the lay of things and where exactly the gun had come from. It seemed that while Eric was guarding the north end of the street, no one was really watching the south end. We walked around the block past the Donahue house and Nanci Silvers’ and came around the other way. Just as Adele had said, it was all quiet on that end of the production. North’s trailer was parked away from the action in front of the middle school.
“This should be easy,” I whispered as we looked ahead toward the luxury RV dressing room. Adele pushed the plastic card toward me.
“I can’t go back in there,” she said sounding panicky. “If anything happens and I get caught, I’ll lose cutchykins.”
“Well, I can’t go in there,” I said. “If anything happens and I get caught, my son will lose a big client.”
Dinah grabbed the plastic card. “I’ll do it,” she said, wrapping her long scarf around her neck several times so it wouldn’t trail her. Adele gave her the details of how to open the door and where to put the gun and I handed my friend the plastic bag. Adele and I went back into the shadows and Dinah slipped quickly toward the door. I could barely make out her figure as she worked on the door. Then the shiny metal caught the reflection of a streetlamp as the door opened and closed.
I could feel my fast pulse throbbing in my neck and my mouth went dry. I kept my eye trained on the door, waiting for it to open and for Dinah to come out. Seconds turned to minutes and still the door stayed shut. Something was wrong.
“You can’t leave,” I said in a loud whisper. Adele had come out of the shadows and was looking down the street toward the filming