Hollywood meets the small-town
South when an action-movie star comes to a quirky
Georgia community to film the true-life (and death)
story of a heroic local lawman.
Grace Vance's troubled but beloved police detective
husband died a hero's death, and Grace is determined to
protect his very personal history from exploitation. But
good taste and sensitivity have never stopped Hollywood
he-man superstar, Stone Senterra before, and it sure won't
now. Stone's making a hokey, action-packed film about her
husband's life whether Grace likes it or not. Stone's big
mistake is underestimating this former beauty queen and
southern belle steel magnolia's determination to throw every
monkey wrench she owns into his plans.
But Grace doesn't realize that Stone has a secret weapon
of his own: His loyal bodyguard, Boone Nolene. Armed with
a deep, Cajun accent and plenty of likable bad-boy appeal,
Boone is everything Grace never expected from a Hollywood
star's entourage: he's kind, funny, and authentically
charming.
Set in the real-life small Georgia town of Dahlonega,
Charming Grace take readers on a funny, whimsical, poignant
joyride from the small time South to the big time movie
world, linked by a heartfelt family secret neither Boone nor
Grace could ever have imagined.
Okay, I admit it. I love cheesy
action-adventure films. I've seen all of Bruce Willis's "Die
Hard" films, every movie Arnold Swarzenegger has made, and
plenty of more recent shoot-em-ups, the "Bourne" films,
James Bond, and newcomer beefcake bumpers starring he-men
such as Vin Diesel and The Rock.
So I loved creating a pompous, lovably
annoying, completely vain action star named Stone Senterra.
He's not the hero of Charming Grace, but he nearly
stole the show. And it was even more fun to place Stone
Senterra in the middle of my own real-life hometown,
Dahlonega, Georgia. I'd never used Dahlonega as a setting
before. Even though I've lived there for almost twenty years
I had to "research" the setting. So here I was, driving
around my own town, making notes about the scenery.
The story stars a handsome Cajun name
Boone Noleene. I *should* have set the story in his neck of
the woods, southern Louisiana, so my research could have
included all that mouthwatering Cajun food.
1. Boone and Grace are unlikely lovers. Do you think
two people from wildly different backgrounds can really be
happy together?
2. Stone Senterra is a Hollywood superstar who's
both pompous but good-hearted. Does he remind you of any
true-life action-adventure stars?
3. Human tragedies are now fair game for every
person with a camera in their cell phone. Do you think this
is good for society?
4. Do you believe adult children can re-unite
happily with long-lost parents?
5. Boone and his brother did their time in prison
and paid their debt to society. Neither wants to lead a life
of crime again. Do you think most youthful criminals can
turn their lives around for the better?
Do Tell! The Latest Hot Dish from Show Buzz Daily!
Beauty, Bodyguard Crack the Stone Man
Stone Senterra has fallen from grace—Grace Vance, that
is—and the bodyguard he trusted to protect him helped it
happen!
Hulky he-man action-film super-star "Stone Man" Senterra,
along with his wife and kiddies, was spotted lunching
morosely at Spago's this week only days after fleeing
the Georgia mountain locale of his film Hero for the
safety of sunny L.A. Rumors are flying that final filming on
Stone's Oscar-hopeful directing debut ended in a brand of
woman-trouble even the stalwart Stone Man couldn't control.
The source of the bodacious babe brouhaha? None other
than Grace Vance, Southern-belle widow of Hero's
true-life-inspiration, Harper Vance. Insiders on the Hero
set say 'Her Grace' threw plenty of monkey wrenches into
the Stone Man's debut directing flick—not that people blame
her for wanting to protect her noble-lawman hubbie's image
from a big-screen dumb-down by a no-necker like Stone
'Action Figure' Senterra.
(Dear Grace Vance: Dahling , don't you understand
that' dumb-flick deluxe' describes almost all Hollywood
block-bustas, so what did you expect from the Stone Man?
Chekov on steroids?)
One casualty in the Widow Vance's battle to control the
flick about her brave, dead hubbie was the Stone Man's
ex-con bodyguard Boone Noleene, fired by Stone
unceremoniously at film's end. Sources say the world's
biggest action star accused his once-trusted sidekick of,
shall we say, aiding and ‘a-bedding' the Widow Vance's war
against the Stone Man's film . . .
Now the notorious Noleene has disappeared in the company
of some less-than-savory pals from his past, and stubborn
Grace is holed up in her Georgia mountain mansion. Meantime,
the Stone Man's movie is on the rocks. Can more trouble be
far behind in this twisted garden of magnolia-scented soap
suds and Hollywood glam-glitter? More news as we get it,
dahlings . . .
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
Show Buzz Dateline: Dahlonega, Georgia.
Say it "Little Dah, big LON, little ega."
The Cherokee Indian word for gold .
Mountain home of the first U.S. gold rush, 1838.
Been pretty quiet since then, and people like it that
way.
Population 3,527
Plus now, one movie star
1
"Grace Bagshaw Vance will end up in jail, in the gutter,
or drunk on martinis in some fancy nut hatch for ex-beauty
queens," people whispered about me. "Bless Her Heart."
It was true. By the day Stone Senterra came to my Georgia
home town to make a movie about my husband, Harp Vance, I
was ready to kill him and accept the consequences. I'd
become a deadly, determined, Bless Her Heart kind of
Southern belle. A cracked belle, you could say. Grieving can
take over a person's life like a sinister charm, inspiring
good causes and noble dedication at the expense of true
healing. It's possible to both pity and fear a mourner who's
gone just a little bit funny and more than a little bit
dangerous. I qualified on both counts. In the South, the
dreaded BHH is attached to your name with admiring sympathy
but also a dollop of fear. You are no longer a dependably
entertaining person, and may even stoop to becoming an
embarrassment.
Be afraid , Dahlonegans whispered. Be very
afraid. Bless her heart .
Two years ago, Harp, an agent for the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation, tracked down a killer the media had dubbed
the Turn-Key Bomber. After months of cat-and-mouse games
through the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, and the
Carolinas, Harp and the serial-killing psychopath faced off
on the roof of one of the largest hospitals in Atlanta. And
there, on a hot summer morning when the sun rose over the
city like an orange eye, my husband stopped the crazy
bastard from exploding a bomb that would have killed a lot
of people. Harp took six bullets to the chest before he sank
a hunting knife into the Turn-Key's throat. His police
methods had never followed the rules. Neither did his death.
The only rules he ever believed in were the ones I imposed
on him out of love.
Helicopter cameramen from CNN's Atlanta headquarters and
the local TV stations broadcast the death-fight with the
bomber as it happened, and so the whole world watched Harp
sacrifice his own life to save the hospital. I watched, too,
in horror, from my hostess chair on the set of a silly
morning talk show called Atlanta A.M. My husband had
been a loner and a damaged soul and an idealist and a cynic
and a lover and my best friend since we were kids. I got to
the emergency room only in time to cry my heart out and
whisper, "It's all right. Don't be afraid of the dark. I'll
always be there with you," before he took his last breath.
I had been there, in that darkness, fighting to keep a
light burning for him, ever since.
So, on a cool May morning while Stone Senterra cruised up
the mountain interstate in his limousine, I planned my
ambush. Senterra and his people were scheduled to start
on-location filming from an old campground Senterra Films
had leased as a base of operations. I intended to block
Stone's way with the one material he respected. Stone.
"Stand back. I'm dropping the whole load on the count of
five," I called out the dump truck's window. My Grandmother
Helen—known to her three children and ten grandchildren not
as Grandmother, Grandma, or Granny, but as the elegant and
indomitable G. Helen, tucked her pearls inside her
cashmere-trimmed denim jacket, fluffed graying auburn hair,
then motioned to Harp's teenage niece, Mika DuLane. "Five
means ‘four and a promise' to your impatient Aunt Grace," G.
Helen warned the sixteen-year-old.
Mika nodded. "Let's boogie."
My tall, elegant, Irish-pale grandmother sashayed briskly
alongside the short, cute, mocha-skinned Mika, whose idea of
fashion was an army jacket covered in computer game logos.
When she and G. Helen reached the side of the steep road
Mika called back, "Aunt Grace, maybe you should wait while I
do some calculations to estimate the area of spillage based
on the tonnage and the maximum angle of the dump truck's
bed." She reached inside the army jacket for her Palm Pilot.
"Aim for the center line and let ‘er rip," G. Helen
called. Then to Mika, "Sweetie pie, sometimes we just have
to dump our load and get the hell out of the way."
I pulled a lever. The truck's bed upended and gray dust
gushed out as tons of silver-gray gravel spilled onto the
asphalt. When I finished, a small mountain of rocks blocked
both lanes of the only paved road that led to Stone
Senterra's mountain production headquarters. The road's
grassy shoulders dropped immediately into deep gulches
filled with boulders and laurel. Stone Senterra wouldn't be
able to reach his luxury house trailer or his Quonset-hut
film editing lab or his picnic-pavilion-turned-personal-gym.
He'd have to deal with me .
Face-to-Stone Face.
I climbed atop my barricade of metaphorically crushed
Stone Senterra, pulled Harp's favorite leather-brimmed hat
low over my forehead, laid G. Helen's antique shotgun across
my updrawn knees, and set a magnificent wild orchid beside
me in her moss-stained clay pot. A pink, pouch-shaped bloom,
as delicate as a ballet slipper, hung from the orchid's
slender stem. She had bloomed that morning as if she knew
Harp and I needed her support. There was no way past me, the
shotgun, and the native ladyslipper orchid Harp had named
Dancer .
The morning grew quiet as the deep shush of
settling rock faded away. Ridges of pines and greening
hardwoods marched toward a horizon of rounded, fog-gray
mountains and deep, mystic hollows. Deer and bear sniffed
the air as if sensing the impending aroma of city slickers.
"I'm set," I called to G. Helen and Mika. "Go home and
call that list of media contacts I gave you, all right?
Dancer and I'll take care of the situation here. Don't worry
about me. A grand jury of Lumpkin County folk will vote a
no-bill on the attempted homicide charge so fast they'll be
home in time for the lunchtime reruns of Matlock on
A&E."
"If you do shoot," G. Helen said, "At least don't aim for
Senterra's head."
I nodded. "It wouldn't do any good. He has no brain."
G. Helen rolled her eyes. Mika stared at me, her eyes
dark with amazement. She came from the very rich, very
elegant DuLanes of Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, tasteful
people didn't shoot at movie stars. They also didn't name
their orchids and talk to them. "I'll visit you in prison,"
she called.
G. Helen and Mika left in G. Helen's dark-blue Lincoln.
My hands sweated on the stock of shotgun, where a silver
plate was engraved with words that summed up everything G.
Helen had taught me about life.
Always fight back. And aim higher than you need to
.
I bent my head and prayed. Harp, I'll never stop
defending you. Please let me know that I'm doing it the
right way. Please let me know that Dancer bloomed this
morning as a sign to keep fighting.
Silence. Harp was whispering to me less and less, lately.
Plus he'd never had a way with words and never believed in
telling other people, or wild orchids, how to live their
lives, as long as they hurt no one but themselves. Waiting
for Harp to come back to life was no use. Of course I knew
that. But I had no idea he was about to send me a stranger
named Boone Noleene with his answer. Or that maybe Boone
was the answer.
Poor, brave man.
Bless his heart .
*
Ask Grace 'Who's Boone Noleene and what job does he do
for Stone Senterra?' and she'd have given you one of her
solemn, beauty-queen-being-polite-in-the-interview looks
while she thought it over.
What would I do to achieve world peace? I'd spread
more love, everywhere !
Who is Boone Noleene and what job does he do for Stone
Senterra ?
"I believe I read in People Magazine that he walks
Stone's pig," she'd have said.
And she'd have been right.
His name—the pig's—was Shrek . He'd been named by
Stone's little girls, who doted on the sway-backed,
Vietnamese, pork-bellied snot-snout.
"What's Shrek's Cajun name, Boonie?" the girls asked me
all the time, just to hear my answer in French. Sweet little
darlin's, just six and eight. They called me Boonie, Boo,
the Boo-man . They didn't understand the fading tattoos,
the busted nose, the bullet and blade scars from New Orleans
street fights. I was just Boonie, the tall man Papa trusted
to guard them. Stone knew I'd take a fist in the gut for
their sakes. For his sake, too. For his nice-kid teenage
son, Leo. For his smart-tough-classy wife, Kanda.
Stone, who liked to brag that he'd played more lawmen
than John Wayne and Clint Eastwood combined, had picked me
out of Louisiana's Angola Federal Prison three years ago to
be his little rehabilitate-a-paroled-con project. It looked
good for his image, he said. Stone never liked to come
across as sentimental. But let me tell you what he did for
me, and why I respected him.
I walked out of Angola without a penny to my name and
nothing but denim blues on my back. There he was, Mr.
Superstar, waiting for me in a limo. Him and Kanda. I guess
he didn't want me to think he was hittin' on me. Anyway, a
limo . And his wife . A man doesn't just
present any old so-and-so to his wife . Stone
introduced me like I was a regular somebody, and then Kanda,
who's a combination of Jewish Wisconsin farm-girl, Hollywood
businesswoman, and soccer mom, hugged me. Hugged me—a
paroled con she'd just met.
"First we're going to fly to L.A.," he said, "and then
when we get there, the first thing, we're going shopping
. You need some threads, mister. Then, once we get you
spiffed up, you and me are going to a private mass in honor
of your new life."
"And then I'm taking you to meet my rabbi," Kanda added.
"If you don't mind."
I was dazed, drunk on fresh air and freedom, stunned by
the turn my life had taken. All I remember saying to Kanda
was, "I got nothing against going to mass or visitin'
rabbis. But I'd appreciate it y'all would have your priest
and your rabbi call my brother, Armand, and give him a good
word or two, I'd appreciate it, merci bien . I kind
of hate leaving him here in prison, alone."
She looked at my kindly. "Of course."
Stone planted a big, movie-star hand on my shoulder.
"Don't worry about Armand. The day he walks out of here,
I'll be waiting for him, too."
Imagine that.
I kept trying to say thank-you-why-are-you-doing-this?
But he brushed me off. He launched into a long, rambling
story about how his old man deserted their family when he
was a kid, just like mine and Armand's had, but how he
couldn't complain because at least his mother hadn't
died when he was a kid like ours had, no, she'd remarried
and kept a roof over the family's head, although the man she
married was a big, mean dockworking bastard, so Stone had
had a hard time living with him, the step-papa, growing up,
and grown up fighting for everything plus defending a baby
half-sister, Diamond, from the old man.
"See?" Stone finished. "You and me, Noleene, we're both
survivors. We're tough guys. We're simpatico ." He
paused. "By the way, if you screw up this chance I'm giving
you? I'll kill you."
"I won't screw up," I said.
Even now, three years later, I still didn't know why
Stone Senterra, a wealthy, famous stranger, felt the need to
treat me like his new best friend and tell me his personal
story, other than the fact we'd both been deserted by our
papas as kids, and we both came from good Catholic mamas.
Once we got past those basics, he was a movie star born in
New Jersey, and I was an ex-criminal born in New Orleans.
Not much else in common.
But I knew this much: He'd given me a future. More than
that, he'd given me a family—and by association, my bro,
Armand, too. Armand would be out of Angola by fall, paroled
a year early thanks to Stone's attorneys. A family .
One worth honoring, serving, and protecting.
What's Shrek's Cajun name, Boonie ?
"Le Snout Du Oink, ma petite cheres."
They laughed every time.
But if you asked Stone , the pig's name changed
depending on who the Stone Man's box-office competition was
that season. Lately the pig had been Bruce Willis, Jackie
Chan, Chris Tucker, Vin Diesel, and The Rock, but most of
all, more than anyone else, forever-and-ever-Amen, the pig
was Mel Gibson.
"Mel Gibson took a dump on the Turkish rug again, today."
Stone liked to say. Or, "The maid caught Mel Gibson eating
out of the kitchen garbage again this morning."
Stone envied Gibson the way cheese envies cream. It was a
mark of distinction to be Stone's pig. It meant you were a
threat. Mel was the ultimate pig threat; the others were
only satellites in Mel's pig-threat orbit. Arnold
Schwarzenegger called once and asked when the hell he was
going to be the pig, again.
Stone told him to get in line.
*
"I feel like a fool, Noleene. This ambush of Grace Vance
had better work."
Beside me, squatting in the Dahlonega woods on the heels
of Burmese snake-skin cowboy boots, Stone was muttering.
He'd been muttering for an hour. Let's just describe the
Stone Man this way: Picture John Wayne playing Vito Corleone
on a hike wearing an Armani suit.
When ten of your films have made 300 million
dollars—that's each, not total—you tend to start thinking
you deserve anything you want, including the right to film
the life story of a dead GBI agent you admire, even if the
agent's widow keeps threatening to kill you. So the Stone
Man was not happy to be hiding in the bushes like a wuss,
waiting for an introduction.
"The hell with this. I'm just going up there and talk to
her. She wants to like me. She wants to be
happy that I'm here to make a movie about her husband. I
know she does. What's not to like?"
I shook my head. "Boss, you agreed to let me handle the
introductions. You promised Kanda, too. For her and the
kids. Besides, if you go up there and Grace Vance shoots
you, it'll make me look bad. I might have to give up my
parking spot at the bodyguard union hall."
Stone glared at me the way gorillas do when they're about
to rip a banana off a tree, but he knew I was right. I'd
done a good job taking care of his and his family's safety
at home, on movie sets in jungles and on mountaintops, and
even at the Oscars (he was afraid of Joan Rivers, so I had
to body-block her while he walked up the red carpet.)
Finally, he sighed and nodded. "All right, but this better
work. I'm getting an itch in my hair plugs. You get up there
and sweet-talk Grace Vance. Get the gun away from her, then
I'll pop out of the woods and make nice. Go."
I got up and began climbing through the laurel. Inside
orthopedic Hush Puppies, my left foot ached like a hangover.
A beady-eyed parish cop had shot me in the foot when I was
twelve. The bullet broke the joint of my big toe and it
never healed right. Armand had cried over it. Ah, the
glamour of the criminal life. Twenty-five years later, my
foot throbbed its Hail Mary's .
When I reached the edge of the road I stopped in awe.
Grace Vance. My first unhindered look at her. Mon Dieu
, she was incredible—a long-legged redhead in hip-hugger
jeans and a heavy blue sweater that held on like a glove,
with a face like a good-looking stripper, a houseful of body
with plenty of back porch and attic, and the smart green
eyes of a bayou wildcat. She'd been crowned Miss Georgia
in the late 1980's. If she hadn't ducked out on the
pageant biz to marry Harp Vance, she's have probably won
Miss America , too. I didn't doubt it. Grace Vance was
every fine woman I'd ever regretted losing. Every classy
meal I'd ever stolen from a New Orleans dumpster as a kid.
Every ideal I'd hung onto in prison. Every dream of the good
life I still dreamed.
La femme, la joi, la vie . Woman, joy, life.
But armed. Sad-looking. Dangerous. Beautiful. Maybe
crazy. Sitting on a queenly mountain of pulverized stone.
Next to a wild pink orchid. In a pot.
I took one life-changing breath in rhythm with her, then
stepped into the open road and headed for her gravel pile.
If she shot me, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad way to
die.
*
We turn our best face to the world every morning. We look
toward what we expect is coming our way, and we put on a
stoic smile, and we hope no one guesses how scared we are.
Every day since Harp died, I'd been afraid to look at the
future. So I focused on the road below my gravel pile,
waiting for the Senterra limo caravan I expected.
"Mrs. Vance. Your husband only killed to save other
people, and so I'm bettin' you won't shoot me in his name. I
hope ."
I jabbed the stock of G. Helen's shotgun into my shoulder
and swung toward the voice. Its owner stood at the base of
my gravel mountain, his long legs ending in the
gravel-dusted weeds. He'd walked out of the forest like a
hunter, without rustling a leaf, big and lean and
dark-haired, dangerous-looking. His face was both rough and
handsome; everything about him was a little tailored but
rumpled, from his wrinkled brown leather jacket to his dark
trousers, ending in suede lace-ups that would have looked
tame and academic on a man who didn't have an alligator
tattooed on the back of his right hand.
A man.
You have to understand—there was no such thing as a
man in my world anymore, only people of the opposite sex
who weren't Harp.
The stranger seemed just as transfixed by me as I was by
him. He frowned up at me sadly, more troubled looking than
aggressive, as if someone had forced him to wash his dirty
laundry in front of me. "If you shoot," he drawled, "make it
a clean kill. I'm a fan of old-fashioned open-casket
funerals. I want to lay there lookin' pretty while a street
band plays Dixieland jazz and my friends get drunk on
bourbon. If you shoot me in the head, it'll put a damper on
the festivities."
The voice was deeply Southern but not mountain-grown;
dialects and accents in the South are as varied as
chocolate, and this one came from some lowland coast where
English duked it out for dominance. It made an exotic melody
on a cold Thursday morning atop plain gravel.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"My name's Noleene. Boone Noleene. I work for Mr.
Senterra." He slid a wallet from the pocket of his jacket.
"I have I.D." His hand stopped in mid-air when I raised the
tip of the shotgun toward his head. He looked from it to me.
"You can take my word for it." He put the wallet away.
"What do you do, besides spy on me from down in laurel
thickets?"
"Some people say I'm in charge of Mr. Senterra's personal
security. I say I'm just a bodyguard. Either way, it's my
job to let you shoot me instead of him ."
Trickles of ice ran down my spine. No limo caravan. A
tattooed thug steps out of the woods. He doesn't look
surprised to see me and my gravel blocking the road. He
works for Stone Senterra. I've been had.
"I'd prefer to shoot Mr. Senterra. And his spies."
"Yeah, I know. But you won't. You planned this thing here
to get his attention. You've tried everything else. You
never give up. Your history with your husband shows that.
When push comes to shove, you'll risk everything for a
showdown. But you're not a law-breaker, Mrs. Vance. Even if
you were, your husband wouldn't want to see you in jail, and
you'll honor his memory."
"You're wrong. The ends justify the means."
The tall, breathtaking Boone Noleene didn't budge.
"You're not mean," he said. "And this isn't the end."
I tucked the shotgun deeper into the crook of my shoulder
and aimed at his crotch. "It is for you , if you take
one more step."
He slowly eased one soft shoe in the edge of the gravel,
then another. When I didn't fire he began to climb. I
stopped breathing, but refused to lower the shotgun. He
never took his gaze off mine. His eyes were dark and thickly
lashed, almost boyish in a face that had been used to break
some fists. I was thirty-four. He might not be much older,
except for that gladiator face.
He reached the top and stopped no more than an arm's
length away me. "Okay," he said, "If you're not going to
shoot me, let's talk. You're a smart woman. You know how to
work the media. You used to be a TV reporter. You can get
what you want without pulling a trigger."
I kept the gun trained on his crotch. "I was just a
beauty queen running a morning talk show. Not a journalist.
A glorified party hostess. More reckless and less ethical
than you think."
"No. I've seen the tapes of your show. There was a lot
more to you than good looks and a big smile."
"You think better of me than I do."
"Must be mutual. Otherwise, you'd have shot me by now.
Since you haven't, I'm goin' to sit down right there. Nice
and easy. Don't worry; you keep the shotgun, and I'll keep
my distance."
He slowly sat down beside me. Only Dancer, the wild pink
orchid, separated us. I was left pointing the shotgun at
empty air. After an awkward moment, I lowered it to my knees
and frowned at him. He looked at the ladyslipper. "Hello,
Dancer."
He knew the name of my orchid.
The amazing stranger, this Boone Noleene, propped his
long, brawny forearms on his updrawn knees and focused with
what appeared to be polite patience on the gray-green
mountains in front of us. "Believe it or not, Mr. Senterra
wants to honor your husband. He wants do right by
him."
"His idea of right. His idea of making a
serious drama instead of a head-banging cartoon. He thinks
he can direct a movie and start an artsy new phase of his
show biz career. That people will forget he's just turned
forty-five and his hair's falling out."
Noleene coughed or laughed. Hard to say which. "All that
may be true. But he wants to meet you on your own terms, and
then he thinks you'll come around."
"The only way I'll ‘come around' is if he agrees to drop
this project."
"Is it so bad to have a big movie star want to show the
world how great your husband was?"
"Yes. If people don't own their memories, what do they
have left?"
Silence. When he didn't answer, I shot a furtive glance
at him. He frowned and kept his eyes on the mountains, but
idly massaged the crude tattoo on his hand. "Some people
would be happy to unload their memories," he said.
A pang of curiosity made me forget to clutch the shotgun.
I let the barrel droop. A second later, he had my shotgun in
his hands. The grab and snatch was so quick my fingertips
tingled. I leapt to my feet, called him several lovely
names, and ended with "Give it back," which was pathetic.
"You don't know how sorry I am to have to do this." He
deftly snapped the shotgun open and reached for the shells.
Only there were no shells. My face began to burn.
"Hmmm," he went. "Huntin' movie stars with nothing but
hot air. Might work. Who knows?"
I spent a moment struggling to look defensive and
appalled, then gave up. "My husband was killed by a man
using a gun. Unless it was a matter of life and death, I
would never point a loaded gun at another human
being." I paused. "Though Stone Senterra doesn't qualify as
human ."
"Matter of opinion. No harm done." Noleene held the gun
out.
I took it, sat back down, and faced forward, embarrassed.
"Where is Sir Dumb-a-lot hiding? Tell him to come out."
Noleene raised a hand and signaled someone in the woods.
The laurel thicket began to shake wildly. A tall, handsome,
thick-necked bruiser plowed out of hiding and climbed up to
the roadside. He had the well-preserved skin of a California
tanning bed, a skull cap of receding brown hair clipped in a
Caesar, and an aging, bodybuilder physique encapsulated in
the kind of pin-striped suit that comes with its own fleet
of Jaguars. The eager, Fred-Flintstone-Wilma-I'm-home
expression on his face almost made me hesitate out of
kindness. Almost .
I stood, jammed the empty shotgun into my shoulder, and
pointed it at Stone Senterra's head. "You're dead," I called
calmly. "You movie-making sonuvabitch."
Senterra threw up both hands and stepped back. An unlucky
placement of one lustrous, reptile-skinned cowboy boot on
some loose gravel sent him sprawling. He flailed his arms in
a desperate effort to right the laws of physics, but it
didn't work.
Stone Senterra went back into the laurel faster than he'd
come out, feet in the air and ass first.
I lowered the shotgun. Limbs rustled high in a fir tree
across the road. A camo-suited man leaned out of the tree
enough to wave at me. "Got it! Beautiful!" He peered at a
nearby cluster of pines. "Ramone, did you get it, too?" The
top branches of the pine rattled. The man named Ramone poked
his head out, grinning. "Si! Perfect!" Both men waved
at me.
I nodded grimly then pivoted to meet the eyes of Stone
Senterra's betrayed bodyguard. Boone Noleene stood up
slowly, staring at the thicket where his employer had
disappeared into the mountain equivalent of quicksand. His
only show of shock was a sardonic lift of dark, winged brows
and an intense expression of disbelief, which he turned on
me in a way that made heat rise in my face.
"Photographers," I explained. "From The National
Enquirer . Mr. Noleene, you have your spies, but I have
mine, too. I wasn't sure what Stone was up to, today, so I
set up a situation that would work to my advantage either
way. If he'd driven up in a limo I'd have pulled the shotgun
salute on him just the same, hoping he'd give the tabloid
guys something to photograph. It worked like a charm. He's
just as stupid as I thought."
The laurel rattled some more. The deep voice of a
laurel-entrapped, enraged movie star roared out, "Noleene,
goddammit. This was your idea."
Noleene studied me with what appeared to be both
admiration and a deep desire to take my empty gun away and
spank me. "Next time, just shoot me." Noleene's backroads-been-there
face shifted into some semblance of a smile, parting his
lips like a slow zipper over a sliver of ferocious white
teeth. "I better go before he gets a twig stuck in a spot
twigs don't belong."
"I'm sorry," I told him quietly. "For your sake."
"I can go a long way on that. Thanks."
"Noleene! If she hasn't clubbed you with a rock
you better be on your way down here!"
"Au revoir, Mrs. Vance." Leaving that hint of
deep-fried French perfume on his resume, he squared his
shoulders, turned away, and went to pry Br'er Rabbit
Senterra out of a mountain briar patch. The tabloid
photographers climbed down from their trees, shrank back at
the menacing look Noleene gave them, then toasted each other
with a high-five. Next week everyone with a buck-fifty to
invest would see photos of the world's biggest macho action
star doing a backward belly-flop in a haze of
shotgun-induced terror, courtesy of yours truly and Boone
Noleene, a brave man caught up in bad circumstances, who
appeared to expect better of me but would tolerate worse.
You did wrong by that bodyguard, Harp whispered to
me. Now, he was talking.
I picked up Dancer and cradled her to my breasts. Without
much victory I whispered, "I know. But all's fair in love
and movies."
