gone.” She looked up. “Now none of them will never have a chance to get her Oscar.”
Daniel said after a moment, “The Crown Prince—what will they do now that Deborah’s dead? Will they simply go down their list and select the next actress they’d considered for the role?”
Missy stared up at him. “You’re thinking another actress would have gone around the bend and killed Deborah for that part?”
Daniel shrugged.
“Plus five others? Listen, even if you killed an actress who won a role you wanted, who’s to say they’d give it to you? They’d have to find an actress who looks enough like Deborah to cut in smoothly, and the second actress in line probably wouldn’t fit the bill. Given that, they’d probably give the role to someone who’d never auditioned for the role before.”
“One step at a time, Miss Devereaux. Also, according to our eyewitness who saw the killer leave Deborah’s house, the killer is a man. Oh, yes, keep that to yourself as well, all right?”
“Of course. Oh, for goodness’ sake, Detective, call me Missy.” She gave him a long look, smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. “And that makes you Daniel.”
Daniel slowly nodded, never looking away from her. “Yes,” he said, “it does.”
Cam cleared her throat as she swished the tea bag around in the hot water. “I’m wondering—what if the murders do indeed have to do with the roles these actresses have won, and played? What if it has to do with their rivals? Maybe there’s an actress who lost out to all of them, maybe even more than once, and did have a mental break. Or maybe she complained about it to, say, a husband or boyfriend, and he was the one with the mental break? How would we begin to even find these actresses?”
Daniel was shaking his head.
Cam raised her hand, sighed. “I know, all the task force has already spoken to all the agents, tried to compile lists. There are far too many names to get them all together, find unique connections.”
Missy nodded. “There have to be hundreds of actresses who go to every audition they can, and that’s thousands of auditions. Fact is, everyone can win, and everyone loses out, at least once in a while.”
Cam said, “Then let’s simplify. Both you and Doc said Deborah kept very complete records. Plus, Doc seems to know a good deal about her career, her friends. So let’s start by looking through your contacts, and hers. I’ve asked Agent Aaron Poker to review the flight manifests between Las Vegas and L.A. this past week. Maybe the Serial flew commercial. Maybe we’ll find him on one of your lists. Missy, you keep a list of contacts on your computer, right? Including actresses you know?”
“Oh yes,” Missy said, and punched a key and pulled up a file labeled Friendly Enemies. There were about twenty names. “Several of us were hanging out on the beach one day, came up with that file name. We all use it. These are the people I sometimes hang out with. I met some of them at auditions, actually, and sometimes, afterward, we’d go shopping, drink beer, complain and whine, trash guys. Many times at Ivy’s at the shore.” She paused. “I met Connie there.”
“I’d like to copy that list, Missy. In fact, I’m going to copy all of your contacts. I want to make sure every actress you know gets a call telling her she might have a connection to these murders, that she should never be alone, and emphasize she should take this seriously.
“I’d also like a copy of your auditions files. I want to compare it with whatever I can find at Deborah’s place, or find out from Doc. Now, tell me about Connie. You said you met her at Ivy’s?”
Missy nodded. “Connie was nice and I liked her. She talked a lot about this great guy she was seeing—Theo Markham—he’s a really important producer who believed in her so much he even rented her his house in the Colony for peanuts so she could quit selling shoes at Saks and concentrate full-time on her career. She was so excited, said he was lining up roles for her. Of course all of us were thinking he rented her the house because she was sleeping with him, and it was convenient for him. She laughed about it, said she knew what we were thinking, but she wasn’t having sex with Mr. Theo—that’s what Connie always called him. No one cared, but I thought