“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Jennifer yelled. “I memorize my lines, but Lani can get away with messing hers up?”
“It’s called ad-libbing, Jenny,” Lani protested. “If you’d ever taken an acting class in your charmed little life, you’d know that.”
“Snob!” Jennifer stuck her tongue out at Lani.
“Twit!” Lani gave Jennifer the finger.
“Enough!” The director put both hands out in a stop sign motion. “Look, let’s just…just call it a day,” he said with a resigned sigh. “We’ll work this out tomorrow, okay?”
“Fine,” Jennifer said.
“And, Lani,” the director added. “Could you please go over your script again tonight?”
Jennifer sent Lani a smirk. The brunette narrowed her eyes, mumbling something about a donkey and Jennifer’s mother under her breath as she stalked off set.
“Are all teenage girls this catty?” Cal whispered to me.
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m pretty sure I was never a teenager. There!” I pointed as Jennifer walked off the set. “I’m going in.”
“Good luck,” Cal mumbled to my back.
Jennifer stepped outside, immediately going to one of the white trailers and shutting the door behind her. I did a quick glance over my shoulder, then followed, knocking on the metal door.
“What?” I heard from inside.
Gingerly, I turned the knob and pushed my way inside. “Hello? Jennifer? It’s me, Samantha.”
The interior of the trailer was, like Pippi’s bedroom, done in all pink-pink walls, pink carpeting on the floor, pink velvet sofa. It was like a cotton candy machine threw up. To the right sat a small table and chairs, pink vinyl on shiny chrome. On the side table a film script sat open-faced, as if abandoned mid-read.
The queen of all things pink herself sat on the sofa, her legs curled up under her, eyeing me over an iced latte. (I had to find out where she was getting those!) “You’re who?” she asked, clearly not recognizing me.
“Uh, Samantha. Stevens. You know, from the Bochco drama.”
Jennifer blinked, trying to place me. Then finally shrugged as if it didn’t really matter that much to her anyway. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Uh, I was wondering if you had a few minutes?”
“I’m actually kinda busy right now,” she said, taking a long, noisy sip from her drink.
“It’ll just take a minute.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatev.”
I took a seat on the sofa next to her, trying not to covet her caffeine fix too deeply. “A little trouble with your co-star?” I asked.
She cocked her head at me.
“I watched that last scene you shot,” I explained. “The brunette seemed to be giving you some trouble.”
Jennifer nodded. “Lani. She thinks she’s so hot just because she’s taken a few acting lessons. She doesn’t understand that some of us are just naturals, ya know?”
“I thought I read in the Informer that you and Lani were friends?”
“Well, sure,” she said, slurping away. “But she’s, like, totally the Nicole Richie of the friendship, you know? She’s just riding my coattails.”
“Right.” Ah, Hollywood loyalty.
“So, I heard that you worked on that last Pines movie?” I said, getting down to business.
She nodded, licking coffee off her lips. “Yeah. What of it?”
“Well…” I leaned in close. “Someone told me a rumor about Jake Mullins, and I was wondering if you could confirm if it’s true.”
She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. “What kinda rumor?”
I took a deep breath, mentally crossing my fingers. “That he tried to blackmail Pines.”
The other eyebrow shot up. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
“Wow, that’s so not cool.”
“You didn’t know anything about it?”
Jennifer shook her head, her blonde locks brushing her shoulders.
“Nope. Man, you think you know someone.”
“Any idea if he approached any of your other costars?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“Who did Mullins talk to? Pal around with on the set?”
“You’re awfully nosey,” Jennifer said, narrowing her eyes as she bit down on her straw.
I suddenly had a bad feeling that the blonde might not be as dumb as she played on TV. So I decided to level with her. Hey, at this point, what did I have to lose?
“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m not really an actress.”
“I know,” Jennifer said.
Which took me off guard. “You know?”
“Duh.” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “That hair. Who would hire an actress with purple hair like that?”
I bit my tongue, promising myself I could crucify her in tomorrow’s column. “Right. Well, I’m actually a reporter,” I confessed.
Jennifer froze, straw dangling from her lips. “A reporter?”
“With the L.A. Informer. Tina Bender.”
She slammed the latte down on the side table. “You! What, trying to dig up more fake dirt on me? Those marijuana lies weren’t enough?”
“Hey, I just wrote what I saw.”
“Right.” She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at me like a two-year-old facing a plate of broccoli.
“I’m sorry,” I conceded.
“Yeah, well, check your facts next time,” she spat out. “I don’t smoke.”
“Duly noted. Look, actually, I’m investigating Mullins’s death.”
“I thought that was an accident? Overdose or something?”
“Sleeping pills. But I’m not convinced it was accidental. I think he may have tried to blackmail someone else on the set and been killed for it.”
Her eyes went big. “Dude.”
“No kidding.”
“So, what do you want to know?” she asked, curiosity starting to override her initial anger.
“Anything you can tell me about Mullins. His behavior on the set, who he hung out with, what he might have dug up on his co-stars.”
Jennifer pursed her lips together. “Jake was really creepy. Always keeping to himself, kinda slinking around the place like he had some secret. I don’t think he was really close to anyone. There was always something a little greasy about Jake, you know? Like he was just a little too desperate. But blackmail…Wow. I had no idea he’d be that stupid.”
A great quote that I mentally tucked away for later use. However, not really helpful in finding out anything further about Mullins’s potential killer. I bit my lip, trying to come up with anything else that might make this trip not for nil. My eyes rested on the script beside her.
“A new film opportunity?” the gossip columnist in me had to ask.
She followed my gaze. “Kinda.”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, it’s one of those boring Oscar films with a micro-budget that no one goes to see but sweeps all the awards. But it’s not for me personally,” she said, scrunching up her nose at the idea of doing anything less than a summer blockbuster. “It’s for my production company. My manager thinks it will be good publicity.”
I froze, gears clicking into place.
“You own a production company?”
She nodded. “Co-own, at least.”
“That company wouldn’t happen to be here on the Sunset lot, would it?”
Again with the nod, her blonde hair bobbing up and down.
Mental forehead smack.
“PW Enterprises?”
Her shoulders sagged, and her mouth dropped open into a surprised little “o.” “Yeah! How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” I mumbled. It all fit, and I felt foolish for not putting it together sooner. The company was on the same studio lot as Pippi Mississippi, Jennifer had been in the one and only film they’d produced so far, and if Pines was the “P,” it was suddenly painfully obvious who the “W” had to be. Jennifer Wood.
I cocked my head to the side, sizing Jennifer up as a suspect once again. Sure she had an alibi, but now that she was tied tighter than a Christmas bow to PW Enterprises, I wondered, how hard would it have been to get one of her “Nicole Richie” hangers-on to make the call for her?