Final cut, p.10
Final Cut, page 10
That afternoon was no exception. Every table was full, and there was a line out the door, people willing to wait on the sidewalk to order. But the counter people worked quickly, and the line moved at a good pace. All the regulars knew the drill: if you couldn’t get a table, you did takeout.
Eli returned with their food, then went back to get her melon drink and plastic utensils. He sat down across from her and started to doctor his tacos with salsa.
“I didn’t know I was hungry till I got here.” He bit into a mole poblano taco, dribbling salsa over his fingers.
Joey looked down at her sampler platter, and her stomach did a flip. She hadn’t been to Guisados since the breakup with Eli, and the situation was too emotionally charged for her to take even a bite.
“Something wrong with your food?” He stopped chewing, peering at her across the table.
“It’s not that.” She pushed her plate aside. “You said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”
“Always right to the point.” He shoved the rest of the taco in his mouth.
“You asked me to meet you and I’m here.” She took in some air. “You didn’t sound good on the phone. I thought maybe you needed …” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I thought, to tell you the truth.”
“I was worried about you.” He looked down at the table. “I heard the sheriffs had you in for questioning, and I’m sorry about that.”
This was a detour she hadn’t expected. “That’s not your fault.” Her breath caught and she had to swallow. “I’m the one who found her.”
“Yeah, but I heard they were rough on you,” he glanced up for her reaction. “Mostly because of our relationship.”
“Who told you that?” she asked, more sharply than she meant to.
“Some girl reporter who’s been hounding me.”
“Tall thin brunette? Works for some website with a funny name?”
“That’s the one.” He frowned. “She talked to you too?”
“Tried to. She had me paged at LCC yesterday, but I didn’t stick around to chat.” Joey sat back in her chair, trying to figure out where this was going. “Wait, she’s the one who told you the sheriffs were rough on me? I didn’t tell her that, or anything else. I blew her off as soon as I realized what she was up to.”
“She said she’s got a contact inside the sheriff’s department.”
“Sounds like you two had quite a conversation,” Joey said coolly.
He gave an impatient shrug. “I wanted to hear what she knew.”
“That’s how she set the hook, so she could turn around and pump you for information.” Her resentment for Fuller’s tactics boiled over. “You shouldn’t let her play you like that.”
“Give me some credit,” he said. “I’m not a total idiot.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” she snapped.
“Truce.” He made the time out sign. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
She nodded, trying to compose herself. It felt so strange, but also familiar, talking to him this way, almost as if they were still a couple. Unsettling was the word that came to mind.
“I just don’t trust that woman,” she said. “She’s out for blood, and I don’t think she’ll be picky about collateral damage.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but she was right, wasn’t she?” He gave her another searching look. “They raked you over the coals.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” She shook her head irritably. “They’re going to talk to everybody on the movie; that’s their job.”
“What did you tell them?” He hesitated. “About us?”
“I told the truth,” she said. “We used to be a couple, we’re not anymore, but we want the best for each other.”
He kept his eyes fixed on her. “What did they say to that?”
“The detective I talked to didn’t say much, aside from the nonstop questions. She wouldn’t tell me anything, even when I asked her directly.”
“What’d you ask?” Now Eli’s tone grew sharp.
Joey didn’t feel comfortable going into a lot of detail about the interrogation, but she couldn’t sidestep his question.
“I asked how Courtney died.” She shifted in her seat, much as she had when she sat across the table from Blankenship.
“What did she say?” Eli picked up a plastic fork and started tapping it on the table.
“She asked me how I thought she died,” Joey said softly.
Eli’s gaze flicked to hers and held. “You know they think I did it.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Did they say that?”
“Not in so many words, but that’s normal, right? The husband or boyfriend is always the one they suspect.”
“I guess so.” She nodded slowly. “But you didn’t do it, and they’ll prove that once they collect all their evidence.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t look convinced. “I’ve been thinking I should hire a lawyer.”
She could tell he was serious. “But she died on set, and they’ll be able to narrow down the time frame. There have to be a dozen people who can vouch for you; you’re always in the thick of things.”
Joey tried to tamp down her own anxiety. This conversation rekindled every fearful thought she’d had since Blankenship made it clear that she was, at the very least, a person of interest in Courtney’s murder.
“You’re naïve about the legal system.” Eli sat back and crossed his arms. “Innocent people get convicted all the time. The cops want to close cases and they’re not always as careful as they should be with the facts.”
His words were like knives carving up what was left of her fragile peace of mind.
“You should think about getting a lawyer too,” he said.
A disturbance on the sidewalk made her turn toward the windows lining the little storefront. A crowd of onlookers pressed against the glass, some with cameras, some with cell phones clicking away, taking pictures of Eli and her.
Her throat closed in panic. The group on the sidewalk was attracting more people, and the noise swelled with the size of the throng. Everybody in the restaurant gaped at them. She stood in a rush, knocking her chair over backward.
“Is there another way out of here?” she said to one of the wide-eyed countermen.
He nodded, pointing toward the kitchen. She grabbed Eli’s hand, and they dashed behind the counter, past the cooks in the tiny galley and out the back door.
“My car’s on the next street over,” she said. “Through the alley.”
They sprinted down the narrow passageway together. She unpinned her keys from her waistband and had them ready when they pulled up beside her car.
“Get in.” She threw herself in the driver’s seat and jammed her keys in the ignition. Eli stood by the open passenger door, looking dazed. “It’s me or them,” she said and cranked the engine.
He got in beside her and she pulled out of the parking space, tires screeching.
Chapter Ten
“No way a bunch of photographers just happened to show up in East LA.” Joey pushed the car as fast as she dared through the glut of surface street traffic, heading to the I-10 freeway. “You think somebody could have followed one of us?”
“I didn’t notice anything on the way over.” Eli cast a nervous glance at the passenger side mirror.
“Neither did I, yet we suddenly had a horde of people pointing at us and taking pictures.” She frowned and checked the rearview mirror. “Maybe your reporter friend is keeping tabs on you.”
“She’s not my friend,” Eli said through gritted teeth.
Joey automatically headed straight for the west side; her only thought was to get away from the mob scene at Guisados as quickly as possible. Once they were on the freeway, Eli pulled out his cell.
“I haven’t looked to see what’s online today,” he said. “Didn’t have the stomach for it.”
Joey glanced over, but his face was bent to his phone, and she couldn’t read his expression. She found it hard to believe he hadn’t already steeped himself in the media coverage of Courtney’s death, but who was she to say how he should deal with his loss? Maybe avoiding the news was part of his coping strategy, to keep himself on the straight and narrow, staying clean.
He was quiet as he scrolled through the information on his phone. Westbound traffic was heavy and Joey had to keep her eyes pinned on the road. After a while, he sighed and let his head drop against the seat back.
“What’d you find?” she asked.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
She wondered if he’d seen anything different from the articles she’d been reading earlier but decided she could wait to find out, at least while she was behind the wheel of a ton of metal speeding along at seventy miles per hour. They made the rest of the journey in silence until they were on PCH, about a mile from the trailer park.
“If we see anything suspicious, keep going,” Eli said. “We don’t want to get trapped.”
Joey’s heart dropped. It hadn’t occurred to her that more photographers might stake out their homes.
“Where should we go?” She flicked an anxious look at him. “If we’ve got company here, they’ll be at your place, too.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
His response did nothing to ease her mind, but a few minutes later, they pulled into the carport next to her house without spotting anything fishy. Even so, they scurried up the porch steps like a couple of crooks on the lam.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Joey said. “Can I get you anything, water or iced tea? I have some fresh orange juice if you’d rather.”
This was the first time Eli had been in her personal space since their breakup. Joey was so intent on getting home safely from East LA that she didn’t think how she’d feel about having him in her house until they were already there. Now she got busy in the kitchen to cover her tension, opening cabinets, setting out glasses, and checking the contents of the refrigerator.
“Relax, I’m fine,” Eli flung himself down on the love seat. “I’ll only stay till it’s dark, then I’ll call an Uber and go pick up my car.”
“What if they wait for you to come back, maybe even follow you home?” Joey’s mind was racing. “What’ll you do then?”
“I don’t think they’re going spend that much time hanging around East LA.” He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “If they really want to find me, it’s not that hard.”
“This is serious, Eli.” Between the ambush at Guisados and the weirdness of having her ex in her living room, Joey felt like a nervous wreck. “We can’t just ignore the situation; we have to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” He glared at her. “We just had to make a run for it from the zombie apocalypse. How do you expect to have any idea what’s coming next?”
She turned back to the fridge, trying to calm herself. Eli’s attitude wasn’t the problem; not compared to Courtney’s murder, Blankenship’s suspicions, and all the trouble on the movie. It was a waste of energy to pick a fight over something neither of them could control.
She took out a pitcher of tea and poured some into the glasses she’d set on the counter. “You hungry? I could scramble some eggs, or I’ve got a pizza in the freezer.”
When she crossed the room to give him the tea as a peace offering, he reached for her hand. “Listen, I’m sorry for being such a butt.”
“You weren’t.” She tried to soften her tone. “I’m all keyed up, and I shouldn’t push so hard.”
“No, I mean about everything. I let us both down.” He looked at her wistfully. “If I’d been a better man, who knows? Maybe none of this would have happened.”
Joey knew it was never that simple. Early in their relationship, she hoped some of their issues, like Eli’s chronic jealousy, would fade over time. Sometimes she wondered if their problems fed his addiction; she still didn’t understand how fast and hard drugs took him down, like zero to sixty in a heartbeat. But there was nothing to be gained by rehashing that now.
“Let’s just try to help each other get through this without making things worse.” She gently disengaged her hand. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Yeah, I noticed you didn’t touch your tacos.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “You know me, I can always eat.”
Joey got eggs, butter, and half-and-half from the refrigerator, then set a skillet on the stove. She chopped onions and a green pepper, put whole wheat bread in the toaster, and drizzled olive oil in the pan to sauté the vegetables. The homely activity helped her feel more at ease than she had since she and Eli walked through her front door together.
“Why did you take down all your artwork?” he asked, the first words either of them had spoken in ten minutes.
“Felt like I needed a change, I guess.” She whisked half-and-half together with four eggs and poured the mixture over the veggies sizzling in the skillet. “I just haven’t gotten around to putting up anything new.”
She didn’t say it was also because many of the pieces, mostly watercolors she’d done of the beach at different hours of the day and various seasons, reminded her of the time they’d been together, memories both good and bad. Somehow, she found it even more painful to remember the good times because then she was forced to think about all the reasons she fell in love with Eli, his intelligence, his dry sense of humor, his curiosity for the world, and his tenderness, especially when they were alone. It hurt to think about how much they’d both lost to his addiction.
“Are you still painting?”
His question brought her back to the present. “Who has time anymore?” she said lightly, as if that was the real obstacle.
“Do you still have them, the ones you took down?”
“They’re in storage.” She dragged a spatula around the pan to scramble the eggs and vegetables.
He tipped the tea to his lips, watching her over the rim of his glass. “You think I could have one of them?”
She frowned as she turned down the heat under the skillet and started buttering toast. The itchy, unsettled feeling she’d had at Guisados was back; the feeling of familiarity, fixing supper with Eli the same way they had too many times to count. But now everything had changed, and none of this felt quite right anymore.
A plaintive meow sounded outside the door to the patio.
“Would you mind getting the door?” she said, glad for the interruption. “The cat wants supper, and I’ve got my hands full here.” She was in the middle of assembling their plates of food.
“When did you get a cat?” he asked as he crossed to the door.
“More like she got me.”
She grabbed a can of Fancy Feast from the cupboard. Bigfoot scampered past Eli to the bowl Joey set on the floor.
“You didn’t answer me about the painting,” he said.
She knew it would be easier to just let him have one of the pictures. What did it matter? She didn’t want to look at them anymore. But her paintings had a little piece of her soul embedded in each of them, and she didn’t want to give that to Eli.
“Let me think about it, okay?” She set the plates of eggs and toast on the small kitchen peninsula that doubled as a breakfast bar. “Right now, let’s eat.”
After supper they went out to the patio to watch the sunset. Sky and water merged at the horizon in a blaze of pink as shadows stole over the shoreline. Joey switched on the fireplace to ward off the chill that took hold as soon as the sun disappeared, and they continued to sit quietly by the pale glow of moonlight.
“I’d forgotten how peaceful it is here,” Eli said. “Like we’re in a different world, away from all the noise and insanity.”
Joey didn’t know how to respond. He’d made no move to call the Uber he’d mentioned earlier, and he seemed to be making himself at home. That didn’t sit well with her.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, sounding drowsy.
She was about to suggest it was time to dial up a ride to his car, but then she saw an opportunity, with them sitting there together and no one else nearby.
“I’d like to talk to you about something that’s bothering me,” she said.
“Seriously?” He sat up, alerted by her tone.
“It’s about work,” she said. “Nothing personal.”
“Okay.” He leaned back on the sectional. “In that case, you’ve got my undivided, professional attention.”
“Is Marcus Pray always such a complete dick?” she said evenly.
He closed his eyes. “Do we really have to talk about this now?”
“No, we don’t have to,” she replied, “but this job’s going to be hard enough without that misogynistic jerk blowing up every time things don’t go exactly his way, like he did the other day with Brooke.”
“Oh, for …” He stood up and stalked into the kitchen. “I need some water.”
But Joey wasn’t willing to drop the subject.
“Somebody needs to step in and straighten Pray out,” she called after him. “You can’t expect the cinematographer to ride herd on him for the whole show.”
She saw his face by the light of the refrigerator when he opened the door. He looked tense and angry, like a different person from the one she’d been sitting with just now. Even though she meant every word about Pray’s behavior, she knew some part of her wanted to goad Eli, to lash out because of old resentments and because she didn’t want to allow herself to feel close to him ever again.
“I don’t know what you expect from me.” He grabbed a bottle of water and slammed the refrigerator shut. “I work for the guy, same as you. I can’t control him.”
All at once, he sank down on his heels with his back braced against the refrigerator and dropped his face in his hands. The unopened bottle of water rolled slowly across the floor.
Shaken, Joey got to her feet and went to the kitchen. Eli crouched in the corner, weeping silently. She leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder. “Please don’t cry.”
“Everything’s ruined.” He gazed up at her, his eyes wide with anguish. “I don’t know what to I’m supposed to do now.”
