Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman [Estleman, Loren D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery: Cozy - Humor - Romance - Hollywood Films - L.A.
ISBN: 0765333317
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2013-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

15

JASON WAS A good driver, careful and in control. He kept steady speed with most of the other cars on the freeway and didn’t lose his temper with southbound drivers who refused to dim their lights.

“You think Craig Hunter stole the film?” He kept his eyes on the road.

Valentino glared at the darkness outside his window on the passenger’s side. “A few years ago I’d have said no. But by the end he was capable of anything. If Elizabeth Grundage wouldn’t do business with him on Lysander’s advice, he might just have done it out of desperation. Maybe he made up his mind that night he called Lysander to chew him out. It would explain why he was so excited. He’d found a way to cut out the middleman and keep all the profit for himself.”

“Mike Grundage must have suspected he was the thief. Does that put him back on the list?”

“He was never really off. But if he did kill Craig, we know he didn’t get the film back. This trip was a fishing expedition on his part to find out if Craig had slipped it to me.”

“What do you think he did with it?”

“I’ve been racking my brain over that. If he had it in his apartment in Long Beach, the police would have found it when they searched the place for clues after he was killed. I hope he picked a stable hiding spot.”

“Stable?”

“That old silver-nitrate stock doesn’t hold up well to adverse conditions. If there was anything left of it after all those years in the Grundages’ possession—Lord knows how they treated it; winding up in an ordinary storage unit isn’t an encouraging sign—it might be turning to vinegar in a damp crawlspace somewhere.”

“Maybe he put it in a bank safety deposit box.”

“Not much better, but if he did, it will turn up when it’s examined by the authorities. That’s standard procedure after someone’s death.”

“Then you can start negotiating with Elizabeth Grundage.”

“Provided the police find and convict Craig’s murderer before nature takes its course in a muggy evidence room in San Diego. I’ve been down this road before.”

“Can I help?”

“Help me with what?”

“Solving the murder.”

But it was late, and the sleep he’d been missing caught up with him before he could answer. His last thought as he slipped under was that everyone he spent time with, no matter how casually, seemed to know him so well.

* * *

“Sound! Roll ’em! Action!”

The villagers, who have doused their cigarettes and put the occasional flask back on the occasional hip, respond with aching muscles to the commands issuing from the megaphone. They collect their torches, take the bloodhounds by their leashes from the trainers, and resume babbling nonsensical strings of vowels and consonants, tumbling over the brambles and uneven earth of the backlot and hoping this is the last take: It’s getting on toward midnight, and there is no Screen Actors Guild to demand decent hours and extra pay for overtime. The hounds’ baying echoes their own miseries.

But none

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