Deadly Director's Cut Read online

  I stood up and extended my hand. “Elizabeth Grady. Nice to meet you.”

  She took my hand. Hers felt like three-day-old fish, but she met my eyes and gave me an appraising glance. “They tell me you’re the manager here. Of the entire place. That’s unusual for a woman.”

  “My mother owns Haggerman’s, but it’s not at all uncommon in the Catskills to have women in positions of authority. So many of the places are family-owned. Mothers, daughters, wives simply do what they do best to make their businesses work.”

  A smile touched the edges of her mouth. “I wanted to check that everything’s in order for tonight?”

  “Very much,” I said. “I’m looking forward to the evening.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when we arrived but . . . I had a family emergency.”

  “I hope everything’s okay now?”

  “My mother had a fall, but she’ll be fine. Thank you for asking. Mr. T. likes things to be done properly.”

  “Let me assure you, so do I and the entire staff at Haggerman’s.”

  “Mr. T. expects . . . efficient service.”

  “Miss Renzetti, why are you telling me this? The nature of our business here is ensuring our guests have the best of everything.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. I just . . . well if anything goes wrong, Mr. T. won’t be happy.”

  I assumed that meant he’d take out his anger on his secretary.

  “It won’t.” I sat down. “I’ll see you this evening, then.”

  She mumbled her thanks and left.

  Poor woman. I’ve had bullying bosses myself. We all have. I’d learned that the only way to survive was to grow a backbone and stand up for yourself.

  No one needed to come here and ask me to ensure everything went well. It was an important night. Not only for the reputation of Haggerman’s but also for Olivia personally, and I was determined it would be a success.

  Chapter 4

  At six fifteen I was in one of the small reception rooms on the second floor. We’d be offering canapés before dinner, and they’d be the same as served for the regular cocktail party but with an added extra touch. A larger shrimp on the cucumber squares, more stuffing in the mushrooms, more clams in the dip. The bar was set up and ready, and Rosemary stood behind it, neat and smart in a stiffly ironed black skirt and white blouse with a black bow tie. Next door in the private dining room the linens on the table were starched, the good silver cutlery polished, the glasses sparkling, the plates shining. I never join hotel guests for dinner, but this was a private party put on by Mr. Theropodous in honor of Olivia, and she wanted me to attend. So here I was.

  I’d managed to carve a few minutes out of my day to pop into the beauty parlor and have them tidy up my poodle cut. I wore my best dress, a soft shade of green with a tight bodice, thin straps, and a swing skirt that flared around my knees, with two-inch heels. I’d applied an extra touch of lipstick and rouge; my earrings were gold squares, and my necklace was my sixteenth-birthday gift from my father, a real (although small) diamond on a gold chain.

  Velvet was the first to arrive. She looked stunning in a dress of polka dots draped over layers of pink tulle, with a deep square neckline and a huge dark red bow pinned to a thin shoulder strap. She’d arranged her long blond hair to fall over her right shoulder in a golden wave. Her lipstick was the exact shade of the bow on her dress.

  “Do you think I’ve overdressed for dinner?” she asked me. “It’s not too much, is it?”

  “You look fine, Velvet. It’s not only dinner, remember. We’ll be dancing in the ballroom after.”

  “We? You mean you’re going to dance?”

  “By we, I mean you.” Dancing with guests who might otherwise not have a partner is part of Randy’s and Velvet’s duties here.

  I wasn’t entirely surprised that Mary-Alice was the next to arrive. She slipped nervously into the room and looked around the dining room. It must have met her expectations, as something relaxed in her shoulders. “This all looks . . . nice.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Are you”—I tried not to notice that she was in the same dress she’d been wearing earlier— “going to be joining us?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll sit next to Mr. T.”

  “Hi,” Velvet said. “I’m Velvet McNally. I work here.”

  “That must be so nice.” Mary-Alice gave Velvet a genuine smile. “This is a beautiful hotel. I love the Catskills. When I was a girl we came to a small hotel near Liberty every year. Such happy times.”

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs and voices came from the hallway, and we had no time to talk over happy times. I gave Rosemary a thumbs-up, and Velvet and I went to the door to greet our guests.

  Elias Theropodous came in with Matthew Oswald and Richard Kennelwood, son of the owner of the hotel on the neighboring lake, where many of the moviemakers were staying. Mary-Alice hurried to the bar and got her boss a bourbon on the rocks, without asking what he’d like. Richard joined Velvet and me.

  “Nice dress,” he said. “Dresses, I mean. You both look great.”

  “Thanks,” my friend and I chorused.

  “I see someone I want to talk to. Catch you later, alligators.” Velvet hurried away. The person she seemed to need to talk to all of a sudden was Rosemary, too busy behind the bar to chat to anyone.

  “Can I get you a drink, Elizabeth?” Richard’s thickly lashed hazel eyes smiled down at me. His freshly washed dark hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck; he was closely shaven and smelled of spicy aftershave. He’d dressed for the evening in a perfectly tailored dark blue suit and thin red tie.

  I felt myself blushing, for no reason whatsoever. “Thank you. Ask Rosemary to make me something light and frothy. But first, I haven’t had the chance to thank you in person for . . .” I tipped my head in the direction of Elias Theropodous and Matthew Oswald.

  “I should thank you for taking them off our hands,” Richard said. “Dad sometimes forgets he isn’t running the show anymore.”

  Kennelwood Hotel had been established by Richard’s grandfather and run for many years by Richard’s father, Jerome. Jerome’s business ethics had occasionally veered onto the shadier side, and after one too many clashes with his father, Richard left for New York City. This past winter Jerome suffered a serious health crisis and Richard returned to take over the running of Kennelwood. The deal had been that Jerome would continue to be the face of the hotel, greeting guests, playing the gregarious host, while Richard controlled everything. Jerome occasionally forgot his side of the deal, and he’d arranged for WolfeBright Pictures to film their movie at Kennelwood. He hadn’t bothered to tell his son about that, or that the movie shoot was scheduled for the same week as a major boat race on their lake. You couldn’t have 1953-era powerboats zipping back and forth in the background of a movie set during the war, nor have the actors shouting over the noise of the powerful engines while pretending nothing was going on behind them. Delayed Lake is smaller than the one at Kennelwood, so we couldn’t accommodate the boats. Instead, Richard asked me if we could handle the movie shoot, although the major actors would stay at Kennelwood for the duration of the filming.

  Gloria Grant contacted Olivia to say she was going to be in the area, and Olivia invited her friend to stay with her. Catering for the cast and crew on set would still be taken care of by the Kennelwood kitchens, all Haggerman’s had to do was provide space on our property, the view of the background, and try to keep autograph hunters at bay.

  The actors began to arrive for dinner, and Richard went for our drinks. The table in the private dining room had been set at its capacity of twenty, and I hoped that was enough. Last night, although she wasn’t the host and she wasn’t paying the bill, Gloria had impulsively invited Velvet and Randy to join the group, and I feared what would happen if she’d continued doing that throughout the day.

  Richard handed me my drink. It was served in a champagne coupe, pale orange liquid with a frothy surface topped with a red cherry.

  “What’s this called?” I asked.

  “Whiskey sour. A classic. Rosemary says it’s hugely popular in the clubs of Manhattan these days.”

  I took a cautious sip and moaned with pleasure.

  “Jerome Kennelwood and I go a long way back.” Elias’s loud voice boomed across the room. “So, naturally, when I thought of the Catskills, I remembered Jerome. He was unable to join us tonight, so his son, Richard, came in his place. Richard, here’s someone you need to meet. Mary-Alice, get Richard over here.”

  Richard waggled his eyebrows at me and went to join the men. Velvet took his place next to me, champagne cocktail in hand. “Where’s Olivia?”

  “Waiting to make an entrance, I expect.”

  “Is Tatiana coming?”

  “Heavens no. She was invited, but this sort of formal shindig isn’t exactly Aunt Tatiana’s thing. Even if she wanted to come, I doubt she’d have something she’d consider suitable to wear, and she won’t exactly fit in Olivia’s clothes.”

  “No kidding. Is there any way in which Tatiana and Olivia are similar?”

  “Not a single thing I can think of.” It would be hard to find two sisters more different than Olivia and Tatiana. Olivia Peters isn’t even my mother’s real name. She was christened Olga Petrovia, daughter of working-class Russian immigrants. Although her mother claimed, as almost every working-class Russian immigrant did, to be aristocracy who’d lost everything but their lives in the revolution. (When we’d been learning about the Russian Revolution and the first war in school, I did the math. I came home and asked my grandmother how they could have escaped from the Bolsheviks, as they’d been in America prior to 1917. She’d snapped at me to go and set the table.) A long-ago-star of the Bolshoi Ballet (or so she claimed) who lived upstairs from the family recognized Olivia’s talent and encouraged it. From then on my mother was trained for the stage, while her older sister learned to be a proper Russian housewife and later took on the responsibility of raising her sister’s child. I never thought Tatiana believed she got the worst of the arrangement. She and her husband, Rudolph, didn’t have children of their own, but they’d loved each other deeply and had been very happy together until his death three years ago. It had been a good family to grow up in.

  “I’ve seen you around, but we haven’t been introduced,” a deep voice said. “Let’s correct that now, shall we?” The lead actor was looking at Velvet. His smile was so broad, his teeth so white, I almost needed my sunglasses. Up close, he was even more handsome than as seen from a distance. Dark hair worn slightly too long across his forehead, deep California tan, razor-sharp cheekbones, cleft chin, shoulders bulging under his perfectly cut dinner jacket. “I’m Todd Thompson.”

  Velvet’s eyes popped out of her head. “V-V-Velvet McNally.”

  Todd took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. At five foot seven, he was shorter than she, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. “I’d offer to get you a drink, but you have one. Let me know when you need another, will you?”

  “Uh—uh . . . okay.”

  “I hope you’ve been seated next to me at dinner, Velvet.” He said her name as though he were caressing the cloth after which she’d been named.

  Velvet’s eyes flew to me.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t check the seating arrangements.”

  Todd didn’t take his eyes from Velvet’s face. He reached behind him and snapped his fingers. “Mary-Alice.”

  The woman popped up next to him as though in a puff of smoke. “Yes, Todd?”

  “See that Miss McNally’s seated next to me at dinner, will you? There’s a good girl.”

  Another puff of smoke and Mary-Alice disappeared.

  “Is Mary-Alice your secretary also?” I asked.

  Slowly Todd turned to me. He smiled, but it wasn’t the same all-encompassing, you’re-the-center-of-the-world smile he gave Velvet. “Mary-Alice knows Elias likes me to be happy. I like me to be happy.” Back to Velvet. “What about you, Velvet? Do you like to be happy?”

  Oh for heaven’s sake. I’d always considered Velvet to be a practical, down-to-earth woman, and here she was gushing and giggling as though she were a high school freshman and the quarterback of the football team had stopped to talk to her. There really was something about that Hollywood magic.

  I turned to see Randy standing in the doorway. He also was a good-looking man: blond, tall, and muscular, strong facial features, but he didn’t radiate charm as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud after days of rain. He certainly didn’t radiate charm right now, not with that look on his face.

  “Cheer up,” I whispered to him. “They’ll be gone in a few days.”

  “What? Oh, sorry, Elizabeth. I was just thinking about—about . . . a problem child in the pool today. Poor thing, scared out of his wits and his dad yelling at him not to act like a girl. Although, considering his sister was racing across the water, perhaps he should have acted more like a girl.”

  The small room was filling up. Rosemary was hard at work behind the bar, flipping bottles and scooping ice, and the waiters were bringing in fresh canapés and clearing dirty platters and glasses. I didn’t recognize several of the guests, and I assumed they were actors, senior crew, or financial backers of the picture.

  Richard was still talking to Elias and Gary, the assistant director. Or I should say being talked to by Elias and Gary, the assistant director. His eyes darted around the room, seeking escape. Mary-Alice handed Elias another drink, and he took it without so much as a glance toward her.

  Two women came in, and Elias stopped talking mid-sentence and rushed to greet them.

  Behind me, I heard Todd say, “Here she is. Let the drama begin. I have to go and act happy to see her. Don’t go away, Velvet, I’ll be back soon as I can. Rebecca! You’re here! How marvelous!” He strode across the room and greeted the younger of the newcomers with a kiss on both cheeks.

  She was in her early twenties and stunningly beautiful. Her golden hair was gathered in a French twist behind her pale heart-shaped face, her eyebrows were plucked to two fine black lines, her plump lips a slash of the deepest red. She wore a floor-length crimson gown that left her white shoulders bare and clung to every one of the ample curves in her body. Above-the-elbow gloves matched the dress.

  As everyone’s attention turned to the two women, Matthew Oswald wandered over to me. “Talentless hack.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I could have used a stronger word than hack, but not in the presence of ladies.”

  We watched as Todd and the new arrival fussed over each other, while Elias and the woman who’d come with the beauty watched approvingly. “That’s Rebecca Marsden. The female lead for the first half of the movie, before the action moves to Europe. I didn’t want her in this picture. She’s got the looks, I’ll give her that, but she can’t act her way out of a paper bag. She would have been bearable in the days of silent films. Voice like chalk on a blackboard.”

  “She’s playing a character named Esmeralda Sanchez?”

  “Yeah. I wanted Rita Moreno, but she was busy. At least this one comes cheap. In more ways than one.” He chuckled.

  “Who’s the woman with her?”

  “Nancy Littlejohn. Great character actress. She plays the supervisor at the factory where the girl works. Came up to the Catskills to try to talk her out of running away with Todd’s character.”

  Nancy was a short woman in her thirties, verging on plump, with a square face and a mop of black curls. She wore a knee-length blue dress with matching jacket that was attractive but didn’t have the glamour of the other women’s clothes.

  “The whole darn casting—pardon my language, Mrs. Grady—of this flick is a disaster, except for Nancy and Gloria. Gotta give it to those old broads. They know how to give a producer his money’s worth.”

  “Nancy can’t be that much older than me,” I protested. “I’m twenty-seven.”

  “Honey, if her name’s not Elizabeth Taylor or Lauren Bacall, a woman’s old in Hollywood if she’s college age.” He nodded to Velvet, watching Todd and Rebecca with wide eyes. “Your friend over there? Looking like she wants nothing more than to be in the pictures? Gorgeous as the best of them, more beautiful than most. Another year or two and she’ll be about ready to play the mother parts. Time for another drink, I’d say.” He wandered away, leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth, and not from my cocktail.

  Nancy and Rebecca melted into the crowd, exchanging air-kisses with people they knew and being introduced to those they didn’t. Todd returned to charming Velvet.

  I glanced at my watch. It was two minutes to seven. Where was Olivia?

  At that moment, I felt the air move. Conversation died mid-sentence, and everyone froze in place. I turned to see Olivia and Gloria entering the room.

  Now, that was star power. Doubled.

  They didn’t pose dramatically. They didn’t try to draw every eye. They simply knew they’d get it.

  Gloria looked stunning in floor-length white satin with a sequined black bodice. The dress had short sleeves, and she matched it with long black gloves, a heavy diamond-and-gold bracelet, and earrings of cascading diamonds. To my considerable surprise, my mother was understated this evening, her perfect dancer’s body wrapped in in a black knee-length dress with a high neckline, a long strand of pearls around her neck, and discreet pearl earrings. The pearls were fake, but you’d have to be a jeweler to recognize them as such. Her black hair was twisted behind her in a loose chignon, her makeup subtle, and her lipstick a soft pink.

  She had, I realized, wanted to let her friend be the center of attention this evening. I felt a rush of affection for my mother. She caught me looking at her and gave me a startled smile.

  At that moment, the doors to the dining room opened.