Hollywood Stuff by Sharon Fiffer Page A

for the time when she hadn’t heard it because it didn’t ring because she was on the phone already….
    “What time did you call exactly?”
    Jane calculated that she had been on the phone with Nellie when Tim had called and left a message. She had heard a click or two on the line, but that was usually Nellie tapping a fork against the phone. She claimed it brought better reception to Jane’s cell phone.
    Yes, she had a message. She decided to listen to recorded Tim, since live Tim was talking out loud to himself, reciting the directions to the hospital that he had memorized, and, Jane observed, he was caressing the
Thomas Guide,
which he had moved to his lap, seemingly channeling information from it.
    “Janie, don’t be scared, but there was a little explosion in the prop room. Bix got hurt, but I think she’ll be okay. Wild-eyed hysteria around here, though—they’ll have her dismembered and dead when the telephone rumor game gets through with this. Keep this hush-hush, but Bix wants to talk to you about something, so…right, will do…hey, Cynda, thanks for the coffee, okay, Max, we’ll talk to you later about the Biedermeier. Get back to me as soon as you can and don’t tell anyone else, okay? Give me the first refusal, yes?”
    Jane finished listening to the message as Tim pulled into the hospital parking lot.
    “Did you think Cynda was listening in?”
    “I don’t know. She comes off like a bimbette one minute, then she’s all Ms. Efficiency and number cruncher on the phone.
    I wouldn’t trust your old boyfriend as far as I could imagine throwing him, but I do think he was right about everyone out here being someone else. I’ve always prided myself on having an A-1 bullshit detector, but I couldn’t tell whether Cynda’s a good little actress, trying to be whatever she’s supposed to be to whomever she’s talking to…or if she’s a flake.”
    At Wren’s door, Jane hesitated. It was partially closed.
    “She wanted us to come, right?” Jane asked.
    “Jane? Yes. Come in,” Wren called out. “And close the door all the way behind you.”
    Jane smiled when she saw that almost all of Wren Bixby’s braids were still intact. It was comforting in the face of her other injuries. Some of her hair had been singed closer to her face. Her right cheek was bandaged and her right arm was wrapped from shoulder to wrist. When Jane met her that morning, Wren had appeared to be thirtysomething. Without makeup, her skin pale against the hospital-white pillowcase, and lit by overhead fluorescents rather than the low-wattage lamps in the rosy-walled office, Wren looked every bit of forty. A scared and tired forty, at that.
    “Wren, I’m—”
    “Since you’re about to hear my confession, I think you’d better call me Bix. It’s my real name. Mary Bixby. So I’ve always been Bix. Please.”
    Jane nodded and sat in the chair Bix pointed to and Tim pulled up an extra from across the room.
    “Can you find out who tried to kill me?”
    Jane tried to maintain a neutral expression. Even though she was semiofficially part of Bruce Oh’s consulting service, which was, in fact, a detective agency, she wasn’t at all confident in the title. She hadn’t received her Illinois license yet, but she guessed that didn’t mean she couldn’t ask a few questions in California. It was just that she had never been asked such a by-the-book-right-out-of-Miss-Marple question.
    Jane tried to remember every mystery movie and television program she had ever watched. Leaning forward and trying very hard not to stumble over her lines, she said, as seriously as the situation warranted,” What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?”
    Bix pointed to a script on the bedside table.
    “Flip to the middle.”
    Tim was closest. He picked up the script and fanned the pages. A heavy cardboard tag fell out. It had a piece of twisted wire looped through the grommeted hole. He handed it to Bix.
    “Tags like these are used on