Page 166 of No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding

My brain starts to whir. Allison’s right. That’s the scene weshot. Cecilia and Connor clinking Champagne glasses, being all loved up at Shutters.

Am I losing my mind?

No.

I mean, yes, obviously, but not about this.

“Okay,” I say, “but if that’s true, how come you were there on Thursday? You were on the call sheet.”

“That’s for the alternative ending,” David says.

“Thewhat?”

“You know, sometimes they shoot two endings to a movie and see which one tests better.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Allison asks.

“Something, I think,” Oliver says in a measured tone, but his voice is harder than it usually is, and this gets Allison’s attention in a way my spinning theories hasn’t.

“You think this is about the movie?”

“Not the way you mean, but...David, you wrote the script a long time ago, yes?”

David nods slowly. “Tyler hired me to write it when it was first optioned.”

“And you’d worked with him before?”

“That’s right. One credited script and a bunch of backroom rewrites.”

“And then what happened?”

David gnaws at his bottom lip. “Hollywood.”

“Fred?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell us.”

“It’s an old story, isn’t it? Write a script, everyone gets excited, an actor comes in and tells you how much he loves it and howmuch he’s going to make it happen, and then...poof, the project is dead.”

“Was that Fred’s fault?” I say.

David takes a beat. “He took another film. In fact, I believe he used the interest in him for this movie to parlay a better deal for himself on that film.”

“Doesn’t that sort of thing happen all the time?” Oliver says.

“Not tofriends.”

I try to keep my face impassive. I doubt very highly that Fred was a friend. He’s not the type to have friends in the lower classes of Hollywood.

“You got paid, though, didn’t you?” I ask.

“Um, no.” David laughs bitterly. “Have you never heard of development?”

“I know it can take a long time.”

“Right, and if it’s the beginning of your career or even the middle, it’s often free.”

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