“Yes,” Bailey said absently. “That’s my mulberry tree.”
“If you want to know about this kid in the picture, why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s dead,” Bailey said before she thought, then looked up at Violet with wide eyes.
“You better be careful there, or you’re gonna start givin’ away information instead of pullin’ it out of ever’-body else.” Violet laughed when Bailey looked away, hiding her face. “What I meant is, why don’t you ask him?” She pointed at the photo.
“Who?”
“Rodney.”
“He’s alive?”
“Honey, ’sixty-eight may seem like a long time ago to you, but it wasn’t. Roddy is still alive, married to a girl less than half his age, and he’s still poppin’ out kids. Janice didn’t tell you that she has half a dozen half brothers and sisters?”
“It seems that people in Calburn tend to leave out the more interesting parts of their history,” Bailey said softly.
“Unlike you, who are so open and honest and tell everyone everything about yourself,” Violet said.
Bailey got up, took the photo from Violet, and started to leave.
“What is it you gals are plannin’ to do
that you’re so all-fired secretive about?”
Bailey drew in her breath. Did everybody in Calburn know everything?
“Don’t look at me like that. I think your secret’s safe around town, it’s just that I hear more than other people do. I have a lot of friends around here.”
For a moment Bailey looked at Violet speculatively. As far as she could piece together from what little she’d been told, in her younger days, Violet had been the local prostitute. And now she was the local drug dealer—or at least marijuana dealer. Bailey had had enough encounters with people of Violet’s generation to know that most old hippies didn’t consider marijuana a drug. “You wouldn’t know anything about making a film, would you?”
Violet gave a little smile. “Before I came here, I lived in L.A., and I was a production secretary for sixteen years.”
“Does that mean you typed, or you were on the set?”
“Let’s just say that a lot of the time the director was too drunk or too busy with his love life to do his job, so I took over. What kind of film you plannin’ to do? Porno?”
“With you as our star,” Bailey shot back at her.
Violet laughed. “In my younger days . . . Okay, I’ll stop the smart cracks. What do you need?”
“A TV commercial. Something simple. We have an idea about what we want to sell, but we don’t know how to sell it.”
“So tell me what’s in your head. I’ve done enough script rewriting that I think I could do a one-minute script on my own.”
“Think you can get along with Janice and Patsy and not start a war?”
“Maybe. How badly do you need a script written?”
Bailey wasn’t going to say that they were desperate to find people who knew something about anything. She shrugged as though she could take Violet’s help or leave it. “Do you know how to draw a map?”
Violet took her time in answering. “A map that shows you how to get to Roddy’s house up in the mountains?”
“Yes,” Bailey said.
“You won’t like it up there. And you’ve got ‘money’ written all over you. He’ll try to get it. And you’re too pretty to be around him.”
“I’ll take my chances. So how much do you charge for your help?”