Cheating at Solitaire(42)

“Hah,” Stewart Gordon said. “You’ve got to ask yourself whether it was enough money for the trouble. It wouldn’t have been enough money for my trouble.”

Clara Walsh ignored him. “The movie is fairly contained,” she said. “Mostly, it was good business for the people in Oscartown, but not really elsewhere on the island. Everybody seems to have packed right into Oscartown and just stayed put most of the time, except for the drinking.”

“They drink like fish, these girls,” Stewart Gordon said, “except why we should say that, I don’t know. I mean, fish don’t drink, do they? But they do. Marcey and Arrow and the rest of them. There are road houses all over the place up here, and they’ve hit most of them.”

“They have been seen in quite a few,” Clara said. “We do have local police, and by and large they have not been happy. You always get a lot of drunk driving in a resort area, but in the past few months it’s been excessive.”

“And ask yourself why it’s been excessive,” Stewart Gordon said. “Kendra Rhode doesn’t drink. Well, she does, but barely. I’ve never seen her drunk, or high, to the point where it could impair her driving, and she’s been on these road trips more than once, and she’s never the designated driver. Never.”

“Kendra Rhode has been up here for the entire time the movie has been here?” Gregor asked. “That’s been—how long?”

“About six weeks,” Clara Walsh said. “And no, she hasn’t been. She’s been in and out. They’ve all been in and out, except for some of the technical people, and the director, and people like that. Most of them have been here for the last couple of weeks, though. I think it depends on when they’re needed for filming.”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Stewart Gordon said. “Didn’t make any sense to me to go running off to wherever the hell just because they didn’t need me for a couple of days.”

“This Mark Anderman, the man who died,” Gregor said. “Was he here the whole time?”

“Yes,” Stewart Gordon said.

“I think so,” Clara Walsh said. “He was definitely one of the technical people. Unlike Mr. Gordon here, I’d have to check.”

“Thank you,” Gregor said. “But I’m still not getting a picture here. For the past six weeks or so, the technical people have been here, some of the actors have been here, and the local people have been here. The local people include fishermen, and people who run grocery stores and that kind of thing—what about nonessential retail? Clothing stores, that kind of thing.”

“Most of it’s shut up for the winter,” Clara said. “There are several stores here that have winter branches in Boca Raton and Palm Beach. The owners do the season here, then pack up and open down there.”

“You say there’s a lot of national press here. What about local press? Are there local newspapers on Margaret’s Harbor? A local television station?”

“The television stations are out of Boston,” Clara said,“but there is a local newspaper. It’s called the Home News. It comes out weekly.”

“And a wonderful paper it is, too,” Stewart said. “Down-to-earth. Sensible. Intelligent.”

“Printing almost nothing about the movie people,” Clara Walsh said.

“Printing absolutely nothing,” Stewart said. “At least as long as I’ve been reading it. Oh, except for traffic advice. Don’t use Main Street Tuesday morning, it’s going to be closed for filming.”

“You’d have to know Linda Beecham,” Clara said, “which almost nobody does. We went to high school together, but I think that’s the last time I ever really had a chance to talk to her. She’s not—I don’t know how to put it. Social. And, of course, she’s had a very hard life. But she either isn’t interested in the movie people, or positively dislikes them, because she’s run nothing at all on them. Jack Bullard is ready to kill her.”

“Who’s Jack Bullard?”

“Her one full-time reporter,” Clara said. “She’s also got one technical person, and that’s it. It’s not a big project. Jack’s young, and he’s her photographer as well as her reporter, and he’s taken plenty of photographs of the movie people and sold several of them to the tabloids, which is good for him. But I’ve talked to him. He tries every time to get her to run them in the Home News first, and she isn’t having any.”

“Does the Home News make money?” Gregor asked.