“You don’t have to lie,” Roz told him.
“You’re right. I’ll just tell him I need to ask him a few questions, OK?”
“OK.” She smiled, lifted her face, and accepted his quick kiss. Before he could get any ideas, she continued, “I also want to get a look at that agreement between Wayne Vandershell and Sebastian Esquivel that Sebastian seemed so vague about. He said he didn’t know what the terms were if one of them died. I want to know.”
“Excellent idea. You’ll have to ask him. Do you think he’ll let you see it?”
“I suppose it depends on if he’s hiding something,” she said. “If he says no, that’s one way we’ll know that he is. I mean, I’d expect most people to be circumspect about their business dealings, but he already told us a lot, and he didn’t seem like a detail guy when it came to the legal stuff. I’m betting he’ll let me see the contract.”
Alden put down his wine and kissed her again, more slowly this time. He fingered the lapel of her robe as her eyes grew dreamy. “He’ll say yes to you.”
And then she yawned.
And he yawned. “Argh. Does this mean we should sleep?”
“We should,” she said impishly. “But we don’t have to.”
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow hopefully and pitched his voice low. “What would you like to do?”
“I think we should comb the Internet and streaming services and find those movies Wayne made. They might tell us more about him.”
Alden groaned. As she giggled, he pushed her gently off him and stood. “I’ll get my laptop.”
Alden had told Roz he’d looked for Wayne Vandershell’s movies online, and she believed him. But she also believed that working together, they could find those titles.
She was wrong.
They searched all the streaming services they could think of, including obscure artsy ones. No movies.
They searched the Web for him again. Besides the school-days tidbits they’d unearthed earlier, they found a six-year-old speeding ticket in California and no outstanding charges. There were a couple of old addresses—apartments, it looked like.
The more recent stuff was scant but all film-related. They had his profile on the most popular movie database site and a few similar profiles elsewhere. There was a press release focused on Wayne that had gone around for one of his movies, noting it had been selected for three major film festivals—but didn’t mention which ones.
“So it’s a press release. Anyone can write a press release,” Roz said, enjoying her cozy spot next to Alden on the couch as he drove the laptop. “Who sent it out?”
Alden looked for the fine print on a few of the places where it appeared until he found the common thread. “It’s one of those online-only publicity outfits.”
“Is it a scam?”
“I’ve seen it before. It’s not a scam in the sense that they do the work they’re hired to do. But I don’t think they verify what they send out. You hire them, and they send the release everywhere. And some ‘news’ sites just publish whatever releases come down the pipe for clicks and SEO, sometimes automatically. It’s rinse and repeat, and if you’re lucky, somebody quotes it and the news spreads further.”
“And whoever picks it up gives it legitimacy whether it’s valid or not,” Roz said. “It’s like online rumors that get so much air through repetition that everyone starts to think they’re true. What about the other people listed as filmmakers with him?”
Alden clicked through the slim list of credits on Wayne’s producer projects. Every one of the names was linked to another of Wayne’s movies. The movies they couldn’t find. From name to name, it was like a recursive loop—they all worked on one another’s projects, but quick Web searches didn’t pull up any of the others’ films either.
“Were these guys even real?” Alden navigated back to Wayne’s profile. “I’m going to try to contact one of them. This Reynold Casper guy. See what I can get.” He searched around until he found an email address, then hammered out a message. “Sent.”
“Good luck,” Roz said fondly. She enjoyed it when Alden got going.
A few minutes later, his laptop dinged. “Reynold Casper wrote me back.”
“Already? What does he say?”
“He says that the short films aren’t available right now due to sensitive negotiations, but he’s available for production work anytime.”
“What negotiations?” Roz didn’t like how vague that sounded.
“I’ll ask him, and I’ll also see if one of these other guys responds.” He sent more emails to Reynold Casper and two of his friends. A few minutes passed as they watched Humphrey Bogart handle the Fat Man and the femme fatale. Alden also googled Reynold Casper, who, if his social media reflected reality, worked as a guide on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise.
