Chapter 4
Power Won’t Mend a Broken Heart
Sam stood in the marble hallway outside her manager’s office on the seventh floor of Elite Talent Associates, smacking a thick envelope against her hand.
It was one of the pale blue letter-size mailers that Sam’s agency used to provide itineraries, and it contained Sam’s travel arrangements for Colorado.
She’d just heard an earful about the Double Diamond Ranch, outside of Telluride, where Bradley Wilhite apparently raised some kind of rare beef for elite markets.
The eight a.m. convocation with her manager, agent, and a raft of personal assistants was the kind of thing Sam avoided when she could, not being a fan of meetings of the “could have been an email” variety.
This morning, however, Sam had been the one to call the team together, for two reasons.
Number one, she’d had a revelation. It bore down on her last night after about thirty minutes of tossing and turning in bed, feeling annoyed about Bradley Wilhite and guilty for not telling Bex.
The revelation was this: Sam had arrived at a crossroads in her career. It made sense to take a look around.
Sitting at a conference table between her agent and her manager with six assistants of various types arrayed around them and a glass of something called “cold-extracted apple juice” in front of her, Sam had done just that.
She’d gotten an eyeful of some of the many people she would let down if she didn’t meet her immediate obligations.
She’d heard more about those obligations, which included listening to whatever Bradley Wilhite thought of the rough cut of Theomina while she sat at his twelve-foot-long aspen wood table beneath a deer antler chandelier.
This far along in her life as an actor, she truly hadn’t expected to arrive at a point where her own voice felt muffled by her success.
But she had. It did. Sam needed to figure out what to do about that.
The truth was, most of the time, she didn’t feel as though she had any kind of a good argument why she shouldn’t just continue to take the calls, meetings, and projects her team told her to take.
That was what she’d been doing ever since she quit Craven’s Daughter, and it had worked—at least in the sense that it kept her too busy to think about her broken heart.
By any conventional metric, she was successful.
Except she was starting to wonder if there was a different metric to measure success by. One that would make her happier.
That was as far as she’d gotten with her first objective.
The second reason Sam had called this morning’s meeting was so that she’d have an excuse to be at Elite Talent Associates.
This reason had come to her after she got sick of lying awake under the covers, climbed out of bed, did sixty seconds of Internet research, and learned that Ramona Watts’s agent had an office in the building.
Macie wasn’t wrong—Sam and Bex did have access to people and inner circles it would be difficult for the police to penetrate without a warrant. Sam had never been one to leverage her status for more than a runway preview, but the chance to speak to Ramona’s agent was one she couldn’t pass up.
Her appointment was scheduled for nine o’clock.
If Ramona was simply taking a breather, her agent might know where she was and when she would come back. Talking to April Feinstein was therefore a critical first step in reassuring Macie. If April would talk to Sam. She had a reputation for being formidable. Scary, actually.
Sam tugged the hem of her top, which was styled to look like a giant’s shirt collar that a normal-size person could wear as a shirt. A very small shirt.
As her heels clicked down the hall, she considered what Henri Shannon, formerly of the FBI, would ask Ramona’s agent.
First, Henri would need to find a way to introduce the topic of conversation.
Maybe she would have a ruse. Would April Feinstein buy that Sam was Ramona’s cousin?
That they shared a love of antiques? A rare breed of dog?
And Sam needed to know where Ramona was in order to give her a hot tip about an upcoming litter?
No. She was Sam Farmer. After all the work she’d done, if she believed her name couldn’t open an agent’s door in Hollywood without a ruse, then she wasn’t giving herself or her team the credit they deserved.
She would simply walk in there and be Sam Farmer.
When she grasped the handle, the doors opened on whisper-quiet pneumatic hinges, and a tall, curvy, gorgeous plus-sized woman with deep red hair that was, if possible, more unruly than Bex’s grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside.
“Thank Christ you’re here,” she said in a rush. “Does anyone else know?”
Sam blinked at the woman, who was filling out a pair of short shorts with high-top Converse sneakers and a wrap top. “I mean, just the person I set up the appointment with? Assuming you’re April and I’ve got the right office.”
The woman hadn’t let go of her wrist. She gazed at Sam’s face with her brow furrowed in contemplation. “No one else, though, right?”
“No?”
“Except, of course”—she winked—“Bex. She would know.”
Bex actually didn’t know, not yet, but Sam’s head was spinning, so she only nodded.
“Right. Follow me. Sorry it’s so”—she waved her hands around the office, which contained a long glossy desk with a single chair and nothing else—“Zillow-ready. I’m not in the agent game anymore, ever since I founded my production company with Katie, you know.
But I kept one client, because, well”—she leaned against the desk and gestured to the chair for Sam to sit—“one doesn’t fire Ramona Watts. ”
Sam took a slow breath through her nose while she tried to catch up.
This had to be April Feinstein. The “Katie” she’d just name-dropped would be Katie Price, one of the most A-list of the A-list, who had recently started directing.
Sam had seen a few industry write-ups about the partnership between the two.
April jackknifed her body forward, breaching Sam’s personal space with a waft of something expensively citrus-scented.
“I was so glad, so glad, when I heard you wanted to pop in. You’ve added years to my fucking life.
I’d already tracked down your cell number to call you myself because I didn’t see any other option. ”
“Any other option?”
April widened her eyes. “To find Ramona! I’ve been out of my mind, and I am never out of my mind.
My mind is a steel trap. A titanium trap.
As far as I’m concerned, I lost the woman myself.
That’s how responsible I feel for my people.
But what am I going to do, call the cops?
” April rolled her eyes. “Categorically not. Then I realized. You and Bex are my only hope.”
“Me and Bex?”
“The detectives.” April twirled a finger in the air. “For sensitive predicaments in this town.”
Sam swallowed. “I see.”
“I’m sure. So. You’ll want a timeline. What I know. I’ve got something ready for you, too.” She paused, having finally observed the confusion on Sam’s face. “Do you have something to write with?”
“Yes.” Sam pulled her tiny bag covered in twelve-inch-long rainbow fringe into her lap and poked through it until she found a black Sharpie that she’d signed autographs with the last time she wore this purse. She turned over the travel arrangements envelope to write on. “Go ahead.”
April raised an eyebrow but continued. “You talked to Macie, so you know what I know. Ramona wrapped an episode Friday. She was due to set yesterday morning bright and early, but she didn’t show.
I didn’t hear from her over the weekend, but I wasn’t expecting to.
The first I heard of her being out of contact was from the studio.
They called Monday to ask if I knew where she was.
I didn’t. Would I reach out and find out why she wasn’t on set?
Sure thing. I called, texted, emailed, called again and left messages.
Didn’t hear back. That’s when I start sweating through my clothes. Ramona always calls back.”
Macie had said the same thing. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Last week, Thursday. The Howling was going to be taping on location Friday, and Ramona had some questions about her insurance riders.”
“Was there something hazardous about the filming conditions?” Insurance riders were added to standard studio contracts to improve an actor’s coverage for the specific risks or needs of a project.
“She didn’t say. Ramona’s been burned a lot, so she trusts no one. Plus, the folks running The Howling are serious about leaks. The scripts and production details are locked down as tight as Fort Knox. If you don’t need to know, you won’t fucking know, you know?”
Maybe it was more than just paranoia that had caused Chad’s covert behavior in the parking lot. “But wherever they were filming Friday, it wasn’t at the studio,” Sam said.
“Yeah, though it wasn’t so far away that they couldn’t get there, shoot, and get back to the studio the same day. I didn’t hear about any problems.”
“Gotcha.” Sam filed the information away. It was helpful to know that Ramona had left the Howell Motion Pictures campus on Friday. A location shoot was definitely a lead. “What else can you tell me?”
Mainly, what Sam learned was that Ramona’s agent loved her. She described her as gifted, dependable, and delightful to plan projects with. She shared Macie’s perspective that Ramona’s preference for privacy had a tendency to backfire, sparking rumors about her lifestyle that were not true.
“You said you had something for me to take with me?” Sam capped her Sharpie when the conversation seemed to have reached its natural conclusion.