Ragan sat back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and let out a long breath. “Don’t come to my place of business again, Detective. Don’t leave messages on my phone. Leave me and Emma alone.”
40
Mo Knows
Trae sat in the makeup chair, staring down at his iPad while Lisa fussed with his hair.
“You’re up next, Mo,” Lisa said, gesturing to the empty chair next to Trae.
Mo sat down and peered over at Trae’s screen. “Is that a script?” he asked. “Movie or television?”
Trae abruptly closed the iPad’s hand-stitched leather flap. “It’s nothing, really. Just a concept I’ve been playing around with. But my agent thinks it has promise.”
“Great,” Mo said. “Hope it works out.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I still love being in front of the camera. It’s my passion, but I’ve always thought to succeed in this business you have to write your own material.”
Trae leaned over and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “I’d love for you to take a look at it, once I’ve got it a little more polished. You know, just share your thoughts.”
“What kind of show are we talking? Home improvement, scripted reality?”
“Neither. It’s a rom-com,” Trae said. “About a guy who produces a scripted reality show, and he falls in love with his star, but there are complications, because she’s in love with the hunky head carpenter on the show.”
“Let me guess. You play the carpenter?”
Trae shrugged. “Who else?”
“All done,” Lisa said, handing him a hand mirror. “See if you like what I did with the back.”
Trae put the iPad on the countertop, held up the mirror, and studied his image. “Nice. What do you think about my brows? Could they use a little more shaping?”
“Your brows could win an Emmy they’re so perfect. Now get out of here.”
* * *
Lisa waited until Trae was out of the trailer. “Sounds like he’s writing a movie about you, starring him.”
“A little bit,” Mo agreed. “Except for the falling in love with the star part.”
Lisa squeezed a bit of moisturizer into the palm of her left hand, added a squirt of bronzer, stirred them together with her fingertip, then began massaging it into Mo’s face.
“Mhmm,” she said. “Never happens in real life.”
* * *
According to Mo’s research, Jada Watkins’s great legs were her claim to fame. They were loooong and shapely, and exquisitely displayed beneath a very short, school bus–yellow sleeveless dress that seemed to be made out of a single piece of bandage material.
The Headline Hollywood star had a mane of glossy auburn hair and she had dark, almond-shaped eyes, a pronounced, beakish nose, and a generous mouth. He gave her a brief rundown of the Homewreckers premise before she moved on to the main attraction.
“You two,” she exclaimed, taking Hattie and Trae’s hands in hers. “I hear you’re the toast of Savannah! And I can’t wait to hear all about the house, and of course, the missing woman angle.”
Hattie seemed shy and ill at ease with Jada. She was wearing a kind of Rosie the Riveter getup, zipped low enough in front to expose some interesting cleavage, with a scarf worn as a belt. She somehow managed to look sexy and wholesome at the same time.
Trae was Trae, and he wasted no time sucking up to Jada Watkins. Maybe he was looking to cast her in his fantasy rom-com?
He had to admit that Jada seemed genuinely interested in the project, teetering around the house on backless spiked heels that made a clattering sound on the old wooden floors as she followed in Hattie’s wake.
* * *
Hattie’s jaw muscles ached from smiling. She’d been a dutiful television personality for close to two long hours, twinkling and laughing and chatting during take after take after take for Alex, the Headline Hollywood producer, and his star.
But now, the sparkle had definitely worn off, and she couldn’t wait until the ordeal was over. After leading a tour of the house and discussing all the changes she and Trae had planned, they’d ended up in the kitchen, where the fire restoration team had wrought overnight miracles, sanding down the floors, scrubbing the worst of the soot from the walls, and making room for the camera crew.
Hattie gave a capsule synopsis of the wallet-in-the wall discovery, and what it meant.
“Lanier Ragan was a beloved and respected educator in Savannah, and I felt her loss personally, because she was my favorite teacher. More importantly, she was a wife and the mother of a young daughter, Emma, who has been waiting for seventeen years for answers to her mother’s disappearance.”