Lethally Blond by Kate White

shoot on Monday. That part doesn’t make sense. Why call for his schedule if he was bailing? But as you say, maybe he was calling to quit.”
    “I wonder what’s in Newburgh Junction.”
    “He might have just been passing through.”
    “And that was the last call?”
    “Yeah, I don’t like that part, either. Maybe he lost his phone. The trouble is, there’s nothing I can do. Gina said you’re a friend of a friend?”
    “Uh-huh—Chris Wickersham, the actor you spoke to. I’m a reporter, and he asked me to help follow any leads. But so far I haven’t turned up anything.”
    “Well, look, would you call me if you hear anything? The money seems to point to him just splitting, but I don’t have a good feeling about this one.”
    “Will do, and I’d appreciate being kept abreast of anything
you
hear. Can I ask why you’ve done as much as you have? Missing twentysomething guys usually
don’t
warrant it—unless there’s some evidence of foul play.”
    “The executor of the parents’ will—a guy named Robert Barish—made a call to someone he knows higher up, pulled a few strings. They told me to follow up. But since the money seems to point to a split, there’s really not much more I can do.”
    After hanging up, I flagged down a cab, my thoughts jostling around in complete confusion: Tom was okay—he’d withdrawn a large amount of cash so he could just take off and leave everything behind him. Tom
wasn’t
okay—even if he’d decided to split, why wouldn’t he have used his cell phone for nearly two weeks? Tom was okay—he wasn’t playing the role he wanted on the show, plus the producer had chewed him out, so he’d obviously decided not to hang around. Tom
wasn’t
okay—he’d been acting since college, so why burn bridges even if he hadn’t been thrilled with his part?
    Rather than go directly home, I took the cab to Tom’s car lot on Houston—between Essex and Ludlow. There were two Guatemalan attendants on duty. They spoke broken English, but with the help of my rudimentary Spanish, I figured out that one of them had been on duty when Tom had driven off on Saturday. He said that Tom had left very early, at around eight o’clock. He had not mentioned where he was going or when he was coming back.
    Five minutes after I returned home, my next-door neighbor, Landon, was knocking on my door. He was wearing a pair of khaki pants and a cerulean blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt. With his compact body, light brown eyes, and close-cropped silver hair, he’s one of the best-looking seventy-year-old men I know.
    “I heard you come in, darling. You’re not at
Buzz Kill
today?” That was what Landon had taken to calling the magazine after the editor in chief had been murdered in July.
    “There seems to be a moratorium on celebrity misdoings this week.”
    “Oh dear, is that going to pose a problem for you? If they stop misbehaving, you’ll be out of a job. Maybe you should call Winona Ryder and casually mention that a new shipment of Marc Jacobs pieces has just arrived at Saks.”
    “Brilliant,” I said, laughing. “What about you? How was your date the other night? Did you like the guy?”
    “I did until he opened his mouth over dinner. Speaking of which, I stopped by to inquire if you wanted to come face-to-face tonight with the most delectable lamb chops you’ve ever seen in your life. I invited a client to dinner, but he’s just canceled.”
    “I’d play second fiddle to score one of your lamb chops any day. I’ve actually got an interesting story to share, but I’ll fill you in over dinner.”
    After throwing together a sandwich, I found a map of New York State online and looked for Newburgh Junction. It was, just as O’Donnell had said, about an hour north of New York City. But even more interesting, it was close to the New York State Thruway. I let my eyes run up the map. About two hours farther north was the town of Saratoga, home of Skidmore College. Bingo. What if
that’s
where