Page 20 of The Director's Daughter

“Hey, you remembered to bring me back my latte. One good turn and all that.”

“Martha, could you do me one last favor before you go? It’s a quickie.”

“Sure, what?”

“Call the set ofA Killer’s Smileand find out if they’ve wrapped.”

“Ah, Anna Lee.”

“Yep.”

As Martha smiled and nodded knowingly, Zach returned to the script he was reading. It was intense and gripping, and with the right tweaks it had tremendous potential. But the title,Moonbeams and Fairy Dust, belied the content.

The story centered around drug use.

Not the drug use on the streets, but the infestation of drugs in the upper echelons of society. For the celebrated in Hollywood, indulging in drugs was almost a given, but when it came to politicians, philanthropists and CEO’s, the topic was rarely talked about, and hadn’t been covered in a major motion picture.

“I’ve got surprising news fromA Killer’s Smile,”Martha declared, stepping back into his office. “The whole day was screwed up. They haven’t even started the scenes with Anna Lee and Jackson yet.”

“What happened? That’s crazy.”

“You know they’re shooting at a private house in Santa Monica.”

“Yeah. Is there a problem?”

“I guess the electrics of the home didn’t want to provide the extra juice.”

“But they have their own generators.”

“Two of them blew.”

“Damn. I guess it was one of those days.”

“Must have been. Things are looking better though. They’ll be getting underway fairly soon.”

“That means Anna has been sitting around twiddling her thumbs for three hours,” Zach muttered. “She’ll probably be a wreck by now.”

“I feel bad for her having to do a passionate love scene with Jackson Wardlow. I happen to know he’s a total dirt bag...and I mean...Ireallyknow,” she added dramatically.

“Martha, what are you not telling me? Is there some gossip I haven’t heard?”

“Actually, I’ve been dying to tell you about this,” she said, her eyes widening. “It’s not gossip. It’s something I saw with my own eyes, but hang on. A picture is worth a thousand words.”

As she hurried away, Zach felt his pulse tick up. When she returned and closed the door behind her, he leaned across the desk, eager to see what it was she’d managed to record on her phone.

“A couple of months ago I was visiting a friend in West Hollywood,” she began. “I was driving through that seedy stretch on Sunset Blvd—you know the area. There’s a hooker on every corner, a few strip clubs and those awful motels.“

“Sure, I know where you mean.”

“I was stopped at a light, and this is what I saw,” she said, speaking in hushed tones as she handed him her phone.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he breathed, staring in shock at the small screen. “I can’t believe what I’m looking at. What an idiot. I’m amazed no-one else got this.”

“It was very late, well past midnight, and he was only there for a few seconds before a cab pulled up. In that baseball cap and long fake hair he must have assumed he wouldn’t be recognized, but you know me and faces. Mind you, if I hadn’t been stopped, and my headlights hadn’t hit him just right, even I wouldn’t have known it was him.”

The short video showed the usually dapper and meticulously groomed Jackson Wardlow, dressed in a crumpled trench coat, with shoulder-length, blonde dreadlocks spilling from beneath a dirty green baseball cap. Draped around him was a prostitute in skin tight, leopard-print spandex pants, a black leather tank-top that barely covered her ample cleavage, and spiked high heels Zach thought could be classified as lethal weapons. To top off the outlandish outfit, her lips were coated in bright red lipstick, and dark eyeliner framed her eyes.

“There’s another one. It will blow your mind even more. I had to stop filming for a minute to grab the steering wheel.”

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