Deep Freeze (West Coast 1)

“All fixed. Harrison Brennan and a friend of his, Seth Whitaker, came by yesterday.”

Wes pretended to be crestfallen. “You could have called me.”

“Next time,” she promised and took a sip from her mocha.

Footsteps sounded in the staging area. “That’s probably Blanche. She wanted to go over some changes in the sheet music,” Rinda said, just as the woman in question poked her head into the room.

“Am I interrupting?” Blanche asked, eyebrows lifting above narrow, black-rimmed glasses. Though, according to Rinda, Blanche was over sixty, she appeared much younger. Short, spiky hair that was more orange than red framed her roun

d face. When she smiled, the thin lines beside her eyes and lips became more pronounced. Single now, there were rumors that she’d been married several times and possibly had children, but Jenna wasn’t certain as the older woman rarely spoke of her personal life. In the theater, Blanche was already shaking off the cold and unwinding a fuzzy scarf from around her neck.

“Not at all. Come on in and join the party. I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

“About time,” Wes said as he pushed away from the desk. “While it’s heating, I’ll look at the furnace.”

“About time,” Rinda threw back at him, then turned her attention to Blanche and the changes she wanted to make in the sheet music. Twenty minutes later, the coffee had brewed and Blanche had downed a cup before checking her watch, gasping, and muttering that she was late for an appointment as she flew out the door. Wes was still banging on the furnace before Rinda and Jenna were alone in the office again.

“I want to show you something,” Jenna said as she reached into her purse.

“What?”

“Something I got in the mail yesterday.”

“A fan letter?”

“You might call it that…if fan means fanatic.” She handed Rinda a Ziploc bag with the note and envelope inside. “Don’t open it. You can read it through the plastic.”

“Okay.” Rinda peered at the envelope and as she did, the color drained from her face. “Jesus, Jenna, what the hell is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are every woman? You are my woman?” she whispered, her eyes rounding. “Who sent this to you?”

“Anonymous.”

“Whoever did it took the time to print it on a picture of you.”

“It’s a copy of a promo photo from Resurrection.”

“This is sick, Jenna! Demented! Psychotic! You take this letter and picture to Shane Carter pronto!” Rinda ordered, and then read the text out loud. “I will come for you? God, that’s scary as hell.” Rinda dropped the plastic bag as if it had burned her fingers, letting it fall onto a pile of unopened mail upon her desk.

“Beyond scary as hell.”

“So how’d the freak get your address?”

“I don’t know…I suppose it wouldn’t be all that hard, not with computers, the Internet, public information. It seems anyone can find anybody these days. I’m not sure even people in the witness protection program are safe. Identity theft is rampant.”

“This is worse than identity theft.”

“I know,” Jenna agreed before finishing her mocha and crumpling the paper cup. There was a series of loud clicks and banging on metal; presumably Wes was trying to fix the furnace and she was reminded of the other day when he’d overheard part of their conversation. Was he listening now?

“So don’t be an idiot,” Rinda was saying. “Take the letter to the authorities. Start with Carter.”

Jenna groaned inwardly. She didn’t want to face the taciturn sheriff again.

“Your ranch is in his jurisdiction. Either he’ll help you or point you in the right direction.” Rinda bit the edge of her lip and deep furrows lined her brow. Jenna could almost see the wheels turning in her friend’s mind. “Don’t you think it’s more than a little coincidental that some of the things you donated were stolen from here? I mean everything that was taken from this place…” she jabbed a finger at the worn floorboards of the theater “—was yours. From one of your movies. Nothing is missing from the things that anyone else gave to us. We’ve received tons of stuff…tons…all donated in the last couple of years, and the only things missing were originally yours. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t, either,” Jenna agreed, her anxiety level spiking again, though she attempted to stay calm and not let the paranoia that had followed her around since discovering the note get a stranglehold on her. Everything Rinda had said, she’d already thought. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like a lot of things lately.”