Chapter 3 #2
“Who’s missing her, what they expected, what might be out of the ordinary,” Sam clarified. Now it was her turn to sound like her Craven’s Daughter character, hard-boiled FBI agent Henri Shannon. It was an odd sensation with Bex’s thigh pressed against hers.
“Yeah.” Macie nodded, their eyes on Bex’s gold pen.
“Sorry. I mean, I should be able to tell you more than I can, considering how long I’ve known her.
I got a call from a producer at The Howling around ten this morning.
They wondered if I’d heard from Ramona. I tell them no, but it’s not out of the ordinary for a couple days to go by that we don’t talk.
I’m pushing fifty, and I hate texting. Everyone’s always misinterpreting what a person means or taking offense because you ended a goddamned sentence with a period.
The studio tells me she’s not returning their calls, and the same is true for her agent and manager.
I offer to drive over to her place. It’s locked up, all the lights out.
I look around, but nothing’s out of the ordinary.
I call Ramona, text her, but I don’t hear anything back.
That’s out of the ordinary. She always calls me back. ”
“Even if she were on set or tied up at work?” Sam asked.
“Unless she’s in front of a camera, yeah. She’s my closest friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Came to this town at the same time from the Midwest with our mamas, naive as fuck, the kind of young this business likes to run through like potato chips, but we’re still here.”
“Was it when she didn’t call back that you started to worry?” Sam asked.
Macie seemed to deflate. “I guess I’ve been worried. Listen, I’m going to tell you something in confidence. It can’t leave this group.”
“Of course,” Bex said.
Macie checked each of their faces before continuing. “I think there’s something going on with her. She was under a lot of stress, it seemed like. Some of it was The Howling.”
“The attention from its success?” Sam asked.
“A little, but more because of the work. A horror show is rough on its leads. Physical. She did three days up to her neck in freezing-cold water for the first-season finale.”
“I just wrapped Theomina,” Sam said. “My bruises have bruises. Filming is so technical, and the expectations are brutal. The schedules.”
Bex glanced at her, making Sam’s belly hollow.
Right now, Bex’s warm body was against hers, but in a week, Sam would be in Colorado with an indefinite endpoint on talks for the Theomina series.
After that, there would be the next project, the next location, or a grueling set in L.A.
that demanded fourteen-hour days. It was hard enough to sustain a career in this industry.
How were she and Bex supposed to sustain this relationship?
“You understand,” Macie said. “But with Ramona there are other factors, too. This time of year, late May, is always hard on her because it’s when everything happened with Juliette.”
When Juliette Draper died, she meant.
Sam took stock of what she knew about that accident.
It wasn’t a lot. There had been a small Ice Crew party on a docked boat in Marina Del Rey.
Chad Bevington, Sloan Lennox, Ramona Watts, and Juliette Draper.
Juliette was impaired and had gotten into an argument with the others.
In the year prior, she’d been engaged to Chad, then to Sloan, but had broken it off with both.
There was bad blood. For reasons Sam couldn’t recall, Juliette impulsively took a dinghy out into the bay on her own.
Her body was found days later, her death by drowning declared accidental because she’d been intoxicated.
“I’m sorry you lost your friend,” Sam said.
“I just watched a TikTok about it,” Vic said. “It’s an incredibly sad story.”
“Thanks.” Macie patted the pocket they’d put their vape pen in, then seemed to think better of it and adjusted their glasses. “I don’t think there was ever going to be a way we could have saved Juliette. But Ramona isn’t so sure.”
In the violet light from the pool, Sam caught Macie’s sudden grieved expression and realized the implication. “You’re saying that Ramona really struggles with the anniversary. Emotionally.”
Macie took off the glasses and squeezed the bridge of their nose. “Ramona feels responsible for Juliette’s death. Sometimes, I’m afraid she’ll do something drastic. Hurt herself. Or worse.”
Bex put down her notebook. “My God, what a burden. But Ramona wasn’t held responsible. Did you have any reason to doubt the conclusions of that investigation, or—?”
“No.” Macie shook their head. “But Ramona’s a private person.
To me, she’s seemed preoccupied the last few times I’ve seen her.
Moody. I was at her house not long ago when she got a voicemail that made her jumpy, but she wouldn’t talk about it.
It could have been nothing, the kind of bullshit everybody deals with.
Or it could have been something huge and scary.
I don’t know if there was something unusual going on in her life, but I wouldn’t, necessarily.
What bothers me is not knowing if anybody would know.
” Macie sighed. “If I take my worry to the police, even if they believe me, there will be a leak. Ramona’s reputation will take yet another hit.
I don’t want this to end with her pissed off at me for feeding the sharks.
But what if I don’t do anything and she really is in trouble? ”
“She’s not an anxious person?” Bex asked. “There are a lot of people who would describe me as jumpy after a relatively minor issue that came up on a call.”
Macie shook their head. “It’s one of the reasons why we’ve been close all these years.
I’m inhibited and a worrywart, but Ramona feels her feelings, even the ones most of us avoid.
It means she’s almost always very centered, or she’s taking care of herself while she works through something.
With Ramona, I feel less vulnerable talking about my own shit, and her calm regulates me.
She got off that phone call white as a sheet, jumping at shadows, irritable, and, yes, anxious.
If it were anyone else, I’d probably write it off.
But this is Ramona, so it shook me up. I pressed harder than I usually do to get her to talk. She wouldn’t.”
“Okay, but why did Ramona think it was her fault Juliette died?” Vic scooted closer to the edge of her ottoman.
“From what I understand, the facts are far from mysterious. Chad and Sloan and Ramona and Juliette were all in plain view of the busy marina on the main deck of the yacht. There were pictures of the party taken at the marina from afar. People heard Juliette yelling. When she was found in the water, her toxicology screen told the rest of the story. What could Ramona have done differently?”
“She was in between projects the night Chad and Sloan wanted to party on Chad’s yacht.
When she heard Juliette was planning to go, she invited herself along to protect Juliette, who was taking pills like Tic Tacs at that point.
I don’t know a lot about what happened that night, but I know that in a general sense, Ramona thinks she gave up on getting Juliette away from Chad too soon, and that she didn’t do enough to keep her from rebounding with Sloan.
She didn’t get tough enough with her about the drugs and alcohol and media attention that were dulling Juliette’s judgment.
And Jesus, the media was so loud. It was like the entire plot of The Lights of Marfa was playing out in real life. ”
In the cult movie that instituted the Ice Crew as a cultural phenomenon, the character played by Juliette had to choose between two men played by Sloan and Chad.
The film presented the choice between blond, wealthy, traditionally masculine Chad and slim, brunette, bespectacled, fedora-wearing Sloan as a choice between polar opposites, though neither man treated Juliette’s character with respect or kindness.
In the end, Juliette’s character picked Sloan’s—a decision portrayed as a tragic, given what the film had shown the audience about the destructive force of his obsession with her.
Sam shivered, thinking about how many young people had seen that movie and thought it was about love.
She understood why Macie was reluctant to involve law enforcement.
Celebrity-obsessed media distorted the most minor blips into full-fledged scandals.
Add to that reality Ramona’s reputation, and if Macie felt it wasn’t the time to make their alarm public, Sam had to respect that.
But she did need a way to gauge how alarmed Macie was—and how alarmed Macie thought they should be.
“Just to be clear,” she said, “do you believe that Ramona may be in danger, struggling with these feelings?”
Macie pulled out the vape then and took several pulls, enveloping their body in smoke that looked blue in the light.
“She has taken time to be by herself before, whenever she needs it. She likes to connect to the outdoors when feelings are hard. But not once, not ever, has Ramona failed to tell me she’d be off the grid for a while.
I feel like my heart’s hovering right outside my chest, poised to fall on the ground and smash to pieces.
If I’ve learned anything from Ramona, it’s not to ignore emotions that are tearing you up inside. ”
Bex had tears in her eyes. Years ago, she had told Sam that the night her parents died in a car accident in Ohio, she sat straight up in bed, certain there was something very wrong. Within hours, she found out what it was.
“I’m not sure we can do much,” Sam said.
“Believe me when I say that everything that happened around the Craven’s Daughter reunion was organic.
We were deeply connected to Jen. What’s more, we knew the players.
I know the world’s making the most of the idea of two TV detectives as actual sleuths, but we’re actresses. ”
Macie adjusted their horn-rims in a way that signaled impatience with Sam’s line of argument.
“What you’re saying just proves you can help.
The world does think you know how to do this, which means you’ll be taken seriously.
People will talk to you. And more than that, because you’re actors, you understand what Ramona’s show means to her.
You won’t put it at risk. Actresses, detectives—it doesn’t matter to me, as long as someone finds her. ”
Sam leaned forward. “But if we find out she is at risk—”
“Then I’ll go straight to the police,” Macie said. “Right away, if I have a reason to believe she’s truly in danger.”
Sam was reassured. She was perfectly willing to go to the police herself, if it came to that.
“We’ll do it,” Vic said. “We’ll help you.”
“Vic,” Bex hissed.
“What? You can’t seriously be thinking of saying no? Macie came to us in the night! A woman is missing! You’re both in the same place at the same time! It’s destiny that you find Ramona. If you don’t help Macie, I will. My squad will back me up.”
Sam winced. The idea of Vic’s action-seeking young Hollywood friends chasing down Ramona Watts made her more nervous than the thought of having to deal with Chad again.
“Sam?”
Bex’s thigh pressed hard against hers. In the low light, the freckles Bex often hid under makeup looked nearly three-dimensional against her shadowed skin. “Maybe it couldn’t hurt to ask a few questions?” she asked.
Sam glanced at Bex’s notebook, which was filled with her tidy handwriting, little boxes and stars, and many underlines. “You don’t really mean a few questions.”
Bex closed her notebook with a smile. “Maybe however many we need to ask.”
Whatever the circumstances, Sam wouldn’t say no to Bexley Simon. Even if she could, Sam wasn’t the kind of person to turn away a genuine request for help.
She’d go with the flow, same as always, and steal the time and space to connect with Bex wherever they could grab it. Sam knew how to do that. She’d made herself an expert at it.
But she couldn’t seem to feel as excited as Vic was or as emotionally invested as Bex already seemed to be at the prospect of digging up Ramona Watts’s secrets. And she couldn’t tell if that was because her time with Bex was precious or if her intuition was picking up on something darker.
“I’ll give you whatever phone numbers and introductions you need,” Macie said. “I’ll be the muscle where it’s necessary, if someone won’t take your call. Please.”
“Okay. Yes,” Sam said.
Bex reached out and touched Macie’s arm. “We’ll do what we can. Everything we can.”
Sam stood up, reaching her hand down for Bex, who took it and stood up, too. Instead of letting go, Bex twined their fingers together. The tight knot deep in Sam’s chest relaxed.
“Stay out here as long as you need to,” Bex said to Macie.
Sam pulled on Bex’s hand to draw her back inside the house and—if Vic managed to take the hint—offer Macie some privacy.
And to give Sam, finally, at least one minute alone with Bex.