An Unfinished Storm, page 1
San Juan Islands Mystery #4
by
Bethany Maines
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Prologue
Tish Yearly
I’m dead. I’m dead. I am so, so, so dead.
Tish Yearly had her head between her knees and was trying to figure out if she should kiss her ass goodbye. The front door slammed, and she heard her grandfather, Tobias Yearly, meander through the kitchen and into the dining room, his cane making a little squeak on the freshly mopped kitchen floor. She knew she ought to move but could only concentrate on breathing. She heard his footsteps stop as they arrived on the plush carpet of the living room.
“Tish?”
Tish willed herself upright and flipped her hair out of her face.
“Well, don’t you look pretty,” said her grandfather, gesturing to her Hollywood-level makeup and flirty fun blouse. “I mean, except for the part where you look like you’re going to puke. Did you eat some bad tuna?”
Tish shook her head.
“Took too many trips around in the spin-y recliner?”
Tish glared at him.
“Well, I don’t know. You did that once when you were five. What’s got you looking so peaked?”
Tish opened her mouth to confess, but all that came out was a squeak.
“You’re speechless?” Tobias rocked back, his eyebrows going up in shock. “Well, damn. I’ll call the lawyers. How long do you think we got until the cops get here?”
“The cops?” Tish was outraged. “What exactly do you think I did?”
“Well, Tishkins, I’ve watched you face down murderers, lawyers, and that one very intimidating lady at the DMV and still have something to say. I figured you must have decided to go on a feminist rampage in one of those pink kitty hats and started mowing down skinheads with your Toyota or something.”
“That is...”
Kind of flattering, actually.
“Not what I did.”
“Well, what did you do?”
A very, very stupid thing.
When Tish had been fired, robbed, and evicted all in the same day, she’d landed on her grandfather’s doorstep on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, intending to only stay long enough to get a new job. But instead, she’d found a dead body and a new career. Or rather, two new careers. The first was running a brand new, premier event and wedding venue, and the second was solving mysteries with her grandfather, Tobias Yearly. Tobias was a former test pilot and CIA agent, current troublemaker, and now a licensed private investigator. The oldest in the state, as he would proudly tell anyone who cared to listen.
“I,” began Tish, and swallowed hard, “lied to Nash.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
Tobias frowned.
“About what?” he asked, looking severe.
“I told him that I was spending the afternoon with you, but instead, I took a Zoom meeting with my old agent, a director, a studio rep, and a casting director about taking the lead actress role in a studio movie.”
Tobias ran his tongue around his gums and sucked at his teeth.
“Soooo... What you’re saying is that you failed to tell Sheriff’s Deputy Emmett Nash, the fella you’ve been making googly eyes at for over a year, the man whose daughter worships the ground you walk on, the man that took a hell of a lot convincing to believe that you weren’t going to run off to Hollywood to be an actress again—that guy—you didn’t tell him about a meeting that could make you a big time actress again?”
“Yes,” said Tish. “That’s what I did. I love Nash, but being an A-list actress was my first dream. It was the only fairy tale I ever really believed in.”
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2019, Quentin Tarantino directing and trying to prove he’s cool by shitting on Bruce Lee.
“It was what I trained for from the time I was twelve. Someone showed up and offered it to me on a silver platter. So yeah, I took the damn meeting.”
“You didn’t have to lie about it,” said Tobias, in the perfectly calm tone that said she’d screwed up more than any amount of yelling.
“You don’t understand Hollywood,” said Tish. “Everyone talks like everything is so awesome. But honestly, half the time nothing ever comes from these meetings. I didn’t want to upset Nash over nothing.”
“Uh-huh. So, the meeting must have gone well because otherwise, you wouldn’t be having a moment over there about lying to Nash. I take it the movie is a real thing?”
Tish nodded.
“They offered you the part?”
Tish nodded again.
“And you said yes?” Tobias looked as sour as his tone.
“I said no,” gasped Tish and clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Uh...”
She peeled her hands away and swallowed hard.
“They just kept talking about shoot schedules and promotion, and all I could think was how inconvenient that was going to be for the business. And then they started talking about what festivals they could submit to. And then I realized how much Nash would hate all the red carpet stuff. And then I realized that he would never do the red carpet stuff—he would probably just break up with me. And I can’t have that. And then...” Tish paused to take in air. “They started talking about sending contracts to my agent, and I opened my mouth and...”
“And what?” demanded Tobias.
“You know how sometimes when you’re questioning a suspect, you realize exactly what you need to say to make them say or do something?”
Tobias scratched his eyebrow. “Yes. But people don’t like it when you say stuff like that out loud. It makes people uncomfortable.”
“No one is as unpredictable as they like to think they are. Part of acting is making a character seem as natural as possible. I can only do that if I can work out what a person should naturally do in a given situation. It’s just a skip from that to figuring out what someone else will do if I supply the right situation.”
“Uh-huh. Again, that makes people uncomfortable when you say it for everyone to hear. We keep that on the inside so we don’t scare our friends.”
“You’re not my friend. You’re Granddad.”
“Fair enough. So what did you predict your Hollywood people would do?”
“Granddad, it was like the words just fell out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop them!”
“Well, what did you say?”
“I just kept talking until I had them convinced that Orcas was the place to shoot the movie. And then, I sent them pictures from my phone to pitch them locations. And I told them I could smooth the way with permitting and I could help secure funding. Granddad, I just kept going, and now...”
“Now what?” he asked with an expression that looked torn between horror and fascination.
“Now... I’m a producer.”
“Huh,” said Tobias. “I was going to go with now you have to tell Nash the truth. But I guess producer is a thing, too.”
“Why do you think I was thinking about puking? What am I going to do?” moaned Tish.
“Just tell him the truth,” said Tobias with a shrug. “It’s not like anyone is going to die.”
“Don’t jinx us,” said Tish.
With my luck, someone is definitely going to die.
Chapter 1
How to Ruin Everything
Tish looked at the Key Grip and thought about throat-punching him as he stepped on a patch of snapdragons. She walked over, grabbed him by the shoulders, and physically moved him out of the flower bed. He looked down in surprise.
If I kill him, I won’t make it over to Nash’s for dinner. And I want my damn date night.
“I have a wedding here on Sunday,” said Tish. “Unless you want to pay for flower replacements, stay out of the flower beds.”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry!”
He genuinely meant it. Everyone was genuinely attempting to not treat Tish’s property as a Hollywood backlot. It was just that they weren’t trying that hard. She had agreed to almost entirely close her property, a risk for her second year in business as a wedding venue, in return for a flat fee up front and a percentage on the backend. Theoretically, if the movie did well, everything would pan out. Right now, that was feeling very theoretical. There were at least six other producers on this film, but since this was her property, they were all literally phoning it in. They said there were scheduling conflicts and other films, but it felt like they had collectively decided that Tish could babysit everyone for the first two weeks of shooting.
And I’m not sure I can. It was months of prep work, and I can already feel this thing slipping out of control.
“All right, people!” yelled the director, coming out onto the porch of the bungalow, his head buried in script pages. “We’re burning daylight here!”
And it’s his fault.
Tish glared at the director. Skip Renfeld was a douchebag. Tish was trying to put a positive spin on it, but after several weeks of working with the director, she was having difficulty coming up with anything kinder to say. He was consistently late and dismissive of anyone else’s schedule, and he had caused her to be late for every single one of her dates with Nash during the last two weeks. Nash had taken the movie planning process in stride. He’d been interested in the lo
Skip looked up from the pages and around at the waiting crew.
“Where’s Taylor? I’ve got the rewrites!” He waved a manila folder with Taylor’s name on it.
Skip had blazingly white veneers, dead blue eyes, and a carefully crafted aura of whimsical fun. He was the male equivalent of a manic pixie dream girl – someone who brought an element of instability to every enterprise and whose entertainment value had definitely worn off after extended exposure.
Skip looked around and realized that Taylor wasn’t present, and his face immediately tightened into an expression of anger.
“What rewrites?” demanded Luke, looking up from where he was working on a laptop. Since Luke Green was the movie’s scriptwriter, that was not a question that promised good things.
The script had been approved by the studio, and her primary studio contact had stressed that she should try to get Skip to stick to it while at the same time underlining the fact that she didn’t have the authority to make him do it.
“Nothing major,” said Skip. “I did them myself. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for credit.” Skip pantomimed the broadest wink possible. Skip winked a lot. It was as if he’d decided that winking was his thing. Tish didn’t like it. She didn’t think it went with his cargo shorts. He wore cargo shorts like he thought they were still in style. But she supposed if he wore pants, no one would see the tacky yin-yang tattoo on the back of his calf.
Luke was about Tish’s age—late twenties—and looked like he was auditioning for the role of writer dressed in outfits cribbed out of GQ’s style section mashed up with old Hemingway photos. He also had no power to keep Skip from changing the script. The other producers were supposed to be on hand to keep things in hand, but Tish got the feeling that none of them wanted to spend that much time with Skip.
And now I know why. He’s a douchebag.
“Hey, Skip,” said Frank Brooking. The fifty-something Director of Photography had long, gray hair and an unflappable demeanor. “We’re set up at the gazebo.”
That is code for we’re burning daylight and waiting on you.
“Emma’s been nice enough to do some run-throughs with one of the grips, so we’re blocked and ready to roll.”
That is code for we’ve been waiting on you for a while now, and the leading lady is tired of standing around.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, gazebo, great,” said Skip, clearly not listening and reading over his new pages again.
“All right, everyone,” said Tish, raising her voice. “We’re moving to the gazebo. Shooting starts in five.”
The crew—including Skip—through the magic of a firm voice, began to drift toward the gazebo.
Frank smiled and gave her a wink. The other item that she’d slipped into the contract was the right to use any footage of her property produced in the course of making the film. Frank had already done some gratuitous background footage and a long drone shot that was going to look dreamy on her website. Frank was fully aware that she was using him to film a Hollywood-level commercial of her venue, and he had zero qualms about it. Not that she expected him to speak up if he did. Frank didn’t seem to take a stand on much, but on the other hand, his go-with-the-flow attitude meant he didn’t throw any tantrums either.
“Skip,” said Luke, snatching at the pages that Skip was holding out as he walked, “we didn’t talk about new pages.”
“Yeah, but we’re a little flat in the second act,” said Skip.
“Because you killed the scene with the talking rabbit.”
“No one likes rabbits,” said Skip. “They poop.”
“Everything poops!” yelled Luke, flapping his arms. Everyone turned to look at him. Yelling about poop was an excellent way to look insane. It was part of Skip’s magic that he made everyone else look like the crazy ones.
The gazebo on the far side of the lawn had seen an entire summer of weddings, and Tish was proud of her refurbishments. She’d added new cedar shingles to the pointed roof and extra-fancy wood bits to the eaves. It looked one dandelion wish away from having sprites whisk out of it.
“Oh, are we actually shooting?” asked Emma Olivier as the crowd approached. “That will be nice for a change.”
Emma was a blonde model-slash-actress who was inhabiting the role that Tish had been offered. Tish had felt insulted that they’d hired a model to replace her and had to admit to more than a bit of jealousy for the first week of shooting.
“Don’t tell me how to run my set, baby,” said Skip. “Let the professionals do their jobs.”
Considering that Emma was the only one who showed up on time and knew her lines back to front, Tish felt her teeth grit at the insult.
Skip finally lifted his head out of the script and looked around. “Where’s Taylor?”
Tish checked her phone.
Come on, Kyle, don’t let me down.
She let out a sigh of relief as a text popped through. Kyle Heron was a drug dealer. Well, mostly a drug dealer. The legalization of weed was forcing the entrepreneurial, if philosophically lost, twenty-one-year-old to explore new dimensions. Something his girlfriend Amber, a waitress at a local restaurant, was ecstatic about. Tish was ambivalent about the drug dealing. She appreciated Kyle’s connections, ability to drive fast, and willingness to try new things. She knew Tobias disapproved of him, but Tish found him useful. And besides, how was he supposed to get out of the drug business without non-druggy friends? Today, he was driving Taylor Blake from the ferry dock.
ETA: Two minutes.
“He’ll be here in two minutes,” said Tish. “We should get set up.”
“These pages don’t make any sense,” said Luke. “Like literally none.”
“We might need to do some rearranging in post,” said Skip. “But I mean, the point of this thing is surrealism. It’ll be fine. People love the David Lynch schtick.”
“No, people like things to make sense,” said Luke.
“Then you shouldn’t have written in talking bunnies or whatever,” said Skip.
“They’re symbolic and give voice to characters’ inner thoughts. This is just Emma and a bunch of half-naked women running around!”
“Yeah, people love that,” said Skip.
“Nudity is not in my contract,” said Emma with a frosty tone.
“It’s not nudity,” said Skip. “It’s topless. Besides, I saw most of your tits in that Versace print spread. You can’t exactly complain now.”
“That is an inappropriate comment,” said Tish, surprising even herself. “You’re out of line.”
And this is how I end up getting fired from things. I can’t keep my mouth shut, can I?
Skip blinked at her in shock. “I’m just saying—”
“No,” said Tish. “You were commenting about her body and her choices. That’s unacceptable. Nudity is not in her contract, and you will not push her or anyone into something she does not want to do.”
I will tank this movie before I let another actress feel bullied into nudity.
The crew had fallen silent. Skip was staring at her as if he’d never had anyone call him on his bullshit before.
“This is my set,” he began, taking an angry step forward. He had turned to fully face her, squaring his shoulders to take the maximum amount of space.
You are trying to intimidate me, and I will not take that.
“No, it is my set,” said Tish, putting her hands on her hips in her best Wonder Woman pose and projecting her voice so that as many people as possible could hear. “It is quite literally my property, and I am the producer. If you cannot play by the rules, then you can go play in someone else’s sandbox.”
She watched him try to decide what to do next. She wasn’t backing down, and she suspected that Skip didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have any other moves up his sleeve. His face wrinkled up and went red like a giant baby.
“Fine!” he yelled, throwing down the pages.
He stormed off toward the house. On the porch, Tish could see Brianna Meadows watching the temper tantrum. Kyle pulled up in his green Jeep Wrangler and Taylor Blake, AKA the star of the movie, jumped out of the passenger side of the Jeep.
