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Book: The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) by Melissa F. Olson
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Authors: Melissa F. Olson
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Chrisana Lyn’s, respectively. Taking a cue from my morning conversations with the New York agents, I called all three agencies posing as a producer who’d gotten hold of an old script and was trying to track down the screenwriter. Everyone was suddenly eager to help me, but no one had a client named Jason Anderson, J.P. Hashly or James Jacob Tyler. Venture had a Thomas Anderson, and Chrisana Lyn’s had several J.P.’s but that was about it.
I leaned back, spinning slowly in the chair, thinking about Jason Anderson. All kinds of different people go missing, for all kinds of different reasons. But every missing persons case starts with the same two steps: do research on the computer, and talk to friends and family. I would guess 90 % of my missing persons are found, dead or alive, in those first two steps. But I hadn’t found anything online, and there were no family or friends to speak of. It seemed like things were pointing toward LA, but I had no hard evidence that he’d really moved there. Jason was a ghost, a shadow connected to his son’s world only by the thinnest of threads—his deceased mother, a fictionalized account of Jason’s life. And to make matters worse, the guy seemed to try on and discard identities like new clothes. One minute he’s a husband and father in suburban Chicago, then he’s a tortured novelist, and then, if Tom Christianti was right, a Hollywood screenwriter. Why did he keep changing his name, his identity? What was he looking for?
I didn’t have an answer to that, but I did have a new idea on the alias front. I called all the agencies again, and his paydirt with Venture: the office manager found a script listing for a Caleb Hashly. Eureka.
“Did he have an agent there?” I asked the receptionist.
“No,” she responded, suddenly bored. “We keep a record of all the submissions that come through the office, so we can keep them from submitting over and over. That’s where your guy is.”
“Do you have any contact information for him? Phone number, email, address?”
“Let’s see.” I heard a keyboard clicking. “We just have a phone number. You want it?”
“Absolutely.”
I called the number, but it was predictably disconnected. I could have gone online and done reverse directory, but I had something even better: a guy on the inside. Or, as it were, a woman. I pulled out my cell and found Cristina’s number.
I had met Cristina Gutierrez eight years earlier in San Diego at a convention for law enforcement officers. It’s not easy being a woman in the LAPD, period, but Cristina had managed to make detective at 32, the youngest Hispanic woman to ever do so. We’d both sat in on a panel called “Women in Vice”—me as a 23-year-old rookie, and her as a 36-year-old old vet. The panel was worthless—a lot of talk about not complaining about your period—but I found Cristina to be hilarious, snorting and checking her watch pointedly until the female speaker grew so nervous she ended the whole thing early. Kind of a rude thing to do, but that was Cristina – running a mile a minute on all cylinders, efficient and determined with no tolerance for wasted time. We’d gotten coffee after the panel, and she’d taken me under her wing a bit. We still emailed once or twice a month, and at 44 she was as ruthless and energetic as ever. If my father had taught me that girls had every right to compete with the boys, it was Cristina who’d taught me to play in their world.
True to form, she answered on the first ring. “Lena! Where have you been, what have you been doing?” Her voice was smooth velvet with just a hint of an accent, a souvenir from her native Puerto Rico. In the eight years I’d known Cristina, I’d never found her to be any less hyper than a five-year-old on crack. She made me feel perpetually lazy.
“I’m good. How are you? Are you still with the younger man, what was it, Esteban?”
She laughed, a full-throated cackle. “A younger man,
I leaned back, spinning slowly in the chair, thinking about Jason Anderson. All kinds of different people go missing, for all kinds of different reasons. But every missing persons case starts with the same two steps: do research on the computer, and talk to friends and family. I would guess 90 % of my missing persons are found, dead or alive, in those first two steps. But I hadn’t found anything online, and there were no family or friends to speak of. It seemed like things were pointing toward LA, but I had no hard evidence that he’d really moved there. Jason was a ghost, a shadow connected to his son’s world only by the thinnest of threads—his deceased mother, a fictionalized account of Jason’s life. And to make matters worse, the guy seemed to try on and discard identities like new clothes. One minute he’s a husband and father in suburban Chicago, then he’s a tortured novelist, and then, if Tom Christianti was right, a Hollywood screenwriter. Why did he keep changing his name, his identity? What was he looking for?
I didn’t have an answer to that, but I did have a new idea on the alias front. I called all the agencies again, and his paydirt with Venture: the office manager found a script listing for a Caleb Hashly. Eureka.
“Did he have an agent there?” I asked the receptionist.
“No,” she responded, suddenly bored. “We keep a record of all the submissions that come through the office, so we can keep them from submitting over and over. That’s where your guy is.”
“Do you have any contact information for him? Phone number, email, address?”
“Let’s see.” I heard a keyboard clicking. “We just have a phone number. You want it?”
“Absolutely.”
I called the number, but it was predictably disconnected. I could have gone online and done reverse directory, but I had something even better: a guy on the inside. Or, as it were, a woman. I pulled out my cell and found Cristina’s number.
I had met Cristina Gutierrez eight years earlier in San Diego at a convention for law enforcement officers. It’s not easy being a woman in the LAPD, period, but Cristina had managed to make detective at 32, the youngest Hispanic woman to ever do so. We’d both sat in on a panel called “Women in Vice”—me as a 23-year-old rookie, and her as a 36-year-old old vet. The panel was worthless—a lot of talk about not complaining about your period—but I found Cristina to be hilarious, snorting and checking her watch pointedly until the female speaker grew so nervous she ended the whole thing early. Kind of a rude thing to do, but that was Cristina – running a mile a minute on all cylinders, efficient and determined with no tolerance for wasted time. We’d gotten coffee after the panel, and she’d taken me under her wing a bit. We still emailed once or twice a month, and at 44 she was as ruthless and energetic as ever. If my father had taught me that girls had every right to compete with the boys, it was Cristina who’d taught me to play in their world.
True to form, she answered on the first ring. “Lena! Where have you been, what have you been doing?” Her voice was smooth velvet with just a hint of an accent, a souvenir from her native Puerto Rico. In the eight years I’d known Cristina, I’d never found her to be any less hyper than a five-year-old on crack. She made me feel perpetually lazy.
“I’m good. How are you? Are you still with the younger man, what was it, Esteban?”
She laughed, a full-throated cackle. “A younger man,
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