Undercover in High Heels by Gemma Halliday Page A

their hands and nothing to fill it. Which, as any kindergarten teacher will tell you, just spells trouble.
    The Magnolia Lane cast had me running from one end of the Sunset Studios lot to the other all day long. First it was fetching Blake, aka Ashley Culver’s comatose husband, who was, by the way, not in his trailer but across the lot at the basketball court playing one-on-one with a doc from E.R.
    Then I had to find Kylie, who played Tina Rey Holmes, the perky newlywed turned high-class call girl who’d moved in next door to Ashley and had the hots for the single electrician across the street who was being framed by the DA for murdering his ex-girlfriend. If last season’s cliff-hanger was any indication, I suspected Tina Rey would be having an affair with Ashley’s husband when he woke up from that coma. (That is, if Nurse Nan didn’t off him first. God, I loved this show!) Kylie, of course, was nowhere near her trailer either. Instead I finally tracked her downsmoking a cigarette near the fake Golden Gate Park in the San Francisco section of the Sunset “city.”
    Ricky, who played the show’s hunky gardener and everybody’s favorite boy toy, Chad, was, predictably, not in his trailer either. (See a trend here?) Instead, I tracked him down outside stage 3E, chatting up two of the briefcase girls from Deal or No Deal .
    And last, but certainly not least, was Deveroux Strong, the Nordic-looking blond who played the hot electrician-slash-framed murderer, and who, incidentally, all the tabloids suspected was about to come out of the closet any day now. After checking the studio cafeteria, the Craft service table, the basketball courts, and the producer’s office, I finally found Deveroux, wonder of wonders, in his trailer.
    I changed my mind about the wedges. I was wearing running shoes to work tomorrow.
    The worst thing about it all was that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to talk to Mia. The only thing I’d gathered from the other actors was that they routinely got fan letters, some of which verged on the unbalanced edge. The odd thing about Mia’s were that, unlike the usual fan mail, these letters had started showing up in her trailer. Which meant that the writer had somehow gotten onto the set. I thought of the security guard standing sentinel. It didn’t seem likely he’d let a crazed fan in, which meant that whoever wrote them worked either on the show or at the studios. A somewhat disconcerting thought. And, unfortunately, one that didn’t narrow things down a whole lot. But I dutifully relayed it all to Dana when I met her for lunch in the studio cafeteria.
    “Ohmigod, that means someone on the show isthreatening her?” Dana asked, shoveling a spoonful of fat-free yogurt into her mouth.
    I shrugged. “Not necessarily. The letters could be coming from outside and someone on the set is just delivering them.”
    “I think it’s the AD. That guy has totally shifty eyes.” Dana illustrated by wagging her eyeballs back and forth as if she were watching a Ping-Pong match.
    “Creepy. So, what did you gather in holding?” I asked, digging into my cheeseburger and fries. Hey, all that running around burned a lot of calories. I needed fuel. Thick, greasy, cheese-covered fuel.
    “Well, there are seven regular extras on the show and a few others who filter in and out, ” Dana said, nibbling on a carrot stick. “But I think we can eliminate them from the suspects list. That AD watches us like a hawk.”
    “With his shifty eyes?” I couldn’t help adding.
    She ignored my sarcasm. “There’s no way an extra could wander off without being noticed. The leads, however, are a different story. They’re all over the set. One of them could easily slip away to Mia’s trailer for a minute without being missed.”
    I popped a fry in my mouth. “I wish I knew what the letters said. I mean, at least then we’d have a clue what kind of person we’re looking for.”
    “Someone who doesn’t like Mia very