Keeper of the Shadows - By Alexandra Sokoloff Page 0,33

walk onto a street you knew from a movie, it was always startling to meet someone who you knew from on-screen. The fisherman looked not that much older than he had in Otherworld, really, and he had the same authentic salt-of-the-earth energy that he’d brought to the role; she understood perfectly why he’d been cast.

Mick introduced the fisherman as Captain Livingston, and said Barrie was a colleague.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” she told him honestly. “My cousins and I loved you in the movie.”

Captain Livingston nodded thanks without speaking, and glanced at Mick.

“We appreciate you seeing us on such short notice,” Mick said.

“Come downstairs and we’ll talk,” the captain said curtly, and turned to go through a door. Mick and Barrie followed him downstairs into the main cabin, a comfortable, masculine room with carefully stored nautical equipment and carved built-in furniture pieces, and a small galley separated from the rest of the room by a storage counter. Outside the wide windows other boats bobbed gently in the rippling current, and the moon stippled the dark water with blue light.

“I can offer you tea, or there’s whiskey,” the captain said in his brusque way.

“Tea would be wonderful, but I can get it for all of us,” she offered. The captain looked her over, and nodded shortly.

She stepped into the galley. There were already mugs set out on the counter, and a kettle was on the burner. She poured tea as out in the main room Mick told the captain, “Steve Price said you might talk to us about the last few days on Otherworld.”

The old fisherman puffed on his pipe. “Depends on what you want to know.”

“We think that a false story was put out about Johnny Love’s death,” Mick said, getting right to the point. “You were on set those last few days before Johnny died. Your scenes with him were some of the last shots of the movie. So, we thought you might know, or have some idea, anyway.”

The old man took his time answering. She brought out the mugs of tea and a plastic bear filled with honey, and handed them around, and it was still some time before the captain actually spoke.

“Most of what they all said about that Johnny Love was false,” he finally said.

Barrie was about to jump in and ask him why, but Mick touched her leg and shook his head very slightly, and she kept silent. The old man sat in his chair, and she felt her body subtly swaying in the softly creaking boat, until finally he spoke again.

“Everyone called those three boys spoiled and arrogant, but it wasn’t so. Not Johnny, anyway. I didn’t know beans about acting, but he was always willing to help me out, explain what the bigger fish were saying. He went over all my scenes with me, practiced with me, talked over what everything meant. And as an actor he was up there with the greats. It’s a crime what happened to him.”

The way he said it, Barrie had to ask, “What did happen to him?”

The old man looked at her with eyes as dark as the water outside them. “I don’t rightly know, but it’s not what they say. Johnny Love died before they ever finished that movie,” the old fisherman said flatly.

Barrie gasped. She looked to Mick, who looked grim—but not exactly surprised, she noted.

He knew, she thought.

She forced herself to focus on the old man. “Please. Please tell us.”

The captain gazed into space, and the very air seemed to change around them as he remembered. “We were down to the last few days of filming. Then one morning Johnny never showed up for a call. It was our last scene together. No one knew what the problem was, but all the bigwigs were in an uproar. Everyone was scrambling. And finally toward the end of the day they had me shoot my scenes with someone else standing in. When you look at that last scene, you can see we were never shot together. Well, it’s because Johnny wasn’t there at all.”

Barrie was feeling distinctly disoriented. She’d just seen the movie. “But Johnny is in those scenes...” she said weakly.

“They did it with computers,” the fisherman said flatly. “And then they filmed the last scenes on a closed set, with only the director, cameraman and the actors.”

Barrie was aware it could be done; it had been done in other movies where a lead actor had died before the end of principal photography.