Carmen said, "I got it." She Googled something on her phone and after a moment she said, "Sundown, March 8, 2009, 6:55 p.m."
"Okay," Shane said. "So let's say I talked to Molly around 5 and got home about 6."
"Then what happened?" Lauren asked.
"I immediately started searching the house. I went to her closet, started looking in boxes and stuff. And after, I don't know, fifteen minutes, I thought about the attic and pulled the stairs down. I went up, and found my jacket, and the letter. I sat on the top step and read the letter. I -- it took a while. Finally, I stood up to leave, and I was partly sitting on this sheet that was covering some boxes, and when I stood up it pulled away, and then I saw the canisters under it. I picked one up. I thought, holy shit, Jenny, you bitch, you fucking cunt. I'm sorry, but that's what I thought. And I went next door to go get Tina. It was getting dark outside, so maybe a little after 7? Something like that. I went into Bette and Tina's house, and everybody was already there, I think, but in different places, upstairs, downstairs. I didn't see Jenny right then, which was a good thing. Tina was in the kitchen. I asked her to come next door. She asked why. I said, just trust me. So we went to our house and into the bedroom and up into the attic. Seven fifteen? Seven thirty? Is any of this important?"
"We generally don't ask if something is important," Lauren said, "until after we've got all the information. Then we can go back and decide what's important and what's not." She had called up the timeline on her laptop and made entries.
3/08/09 1700 Shane talks to Molly about letter/jacket
3/08/09 1830 Shane discovers jacket, negatives
3/08/09 1830-1900 Times wits/suspect arrived at party
3/08/09 1910 Shane notifies Tina, Tina sees negatives
"Great," Lauren said. "What's in your calendar?"
"Uh," Shane mumbled, working. "Okay, Subaru Pink Ride, September 22 and 23."
09/22-3/08 Subaru Pink Ride bike marathon, Jenny/Niki make sex tape
Lauren let Shane work.
"The baby shower for Max was February 14," Shane said. "Started at 6 p.m."
"Yeah, that's what I have, too," Carmen said, working on her cellphone. Shane looked at her. "What?" Carmen asked. "I sent them a present for the baby."
2/22/09 1800 Baby shower; Jenny tells Dylan about Niki plot, angering Helena
"They started shooting the movie on Tuesday, September 2," Carmen said. "I know because it was the day after the three-day Labor Day weekend. Jenny came up to San Francisco for a visit, and she was really wired about the movie starting up."
"No, that can't be right," Shane said. "I don't remember what date it was, but she flew home to visit her folks in Skokie that weekend. I drove her to the airport that Friday afternoon."
Carmen kept her eyes on her cellphone. "I know you did. She lied to you. You dropped her at the terminal, but she got on a different plane than you thought, that's all. She told me when she got to San Francisco."
"Fuck!" Shane said. "She lied? What did you say?"
"I didn't say anything," Carmen said. "What, did you think I was going to call you up and say, 'By the way, Jenny's here with me, she's not in Illinois. She's a big fibber.' Why would I do that? It's not like Jenny hasn't lied to somebody a couple hundred times. At least this one was pretty harmless and nobody got hurt. She knew you'd get all bent out of shape if she told you she was coming to visit me for a few days. She did you a favor, if you ask me."
Shane was, as often before, rendered speechless. Had Carmen and Jenny rekindled their old relationship? Or bluntly put, did they re-fuck? People slept with their exes all the time, even lesbians. Maybe even especially lesbians, judging by her own small circle of friends ... and herself, witness Cherie Peroni. Although an early adopter where sex was concerned, Shane was a latecomer to the concept of "relationships." Love-and-marriage were widely known to be linked together, but very often so were sex-and-exes. Shane was very good at one and very bad at the other. It was like loving to eat food but being terrible at digesting it. If only there was some gluten-free, low-calorie way to eat pussy, without orgasm proteins building all those post-coital bonds and links and feelings and relationships. Maybe Shane had emotional celiac disease.
09/02/08 Production on Lez Girls begins
"Do you have the wrap party?" Lauren asked.
Shane looked at Lauren blankly, then snapped out of it. She looked at her cell phone. "The wrap party was Saturday night, January 24," Shane said, "but the actual wrap was on Wednesday. They needed a few days to arrange the party on short notice."
"What time?"
"Six. It was supposed to start at six. And the sun was still up when I got there."
1/24/09 1800 Lez Girls wrap party, Jenny discovers Shane/Niki sex. Shane evicted.
"Got more?"
"Niki told me the next night Jenny invited her over and they fucked all night long, then in the morning Jenny kicked her out."
1/26/09 Morning -- Jenny has all-night sex w/ Niki, rejects her in the morning
Lauren looked over the timeline. "We're making progress. Do you remember when Adele took over the movie from Jenny?"
"It was between Christmas and New Year's. The first Monday after Christmas." Everyone looked at their cellphones.
"December 29, 2008," Lauren said. "It happened in the morning?"
"It was getting close to lunch," Shane said.
12/29/08 circa 1100 Adele coup against Jenny on film set
Lauren tapped her pencil on the desk. "Carmen, here's a question in your wheelhouse. They wrap filming on a Wednesday. I'm guessing the film from the last day's shooting goes to be developed, right? And then they get it back. And then the film editors start working on it, is that right? So how long does all this take?"
"They can get the developed negs back pretty quick, in a day or two, because everyone wants to make sure the film's okay, before they send everybody home forever and tear down the sets. In case they need to re-shoot anything. So yeah, if they wrap on a Wednesday they'd have the film back -- or at least they'd get an okay on it, a telephone call, you're good to go -- sometime Friday, maybe late in the day. And that would help with the wrap party, too, because if something needed re-shooting, they'd have had to tell the relevant people."
"Would they have cancelled the party?"
"Oh, no, almost certainly not. The wrap party is just kind of ceremonial, because the production really isn't done, by a long shot. Just the principal photography and the actors and what-not. But the editing and all the post-production work, and distribution stuff, the promotion. A ton of post-production stuff, that all starts first thing Monday morning. Tearing down the sets. Cleaning up the actors' trailers and returning them to the rental people. Costumes, cleaning them, returning them. You know, all the bookkeeping and accounting stuff, it still continues because it ain't over until the fat lady sings. And anyway, a lot of the editing has been going on while they've been shooting, but how much they've got done by wrap varies all over the lot. Depends on how involved the director wants to be. If he or she wants to be there for editing, they basically can't start until photography is finished and the director's freed up. Then there's what they call 'second unit' stuff, like sunsets, rain, birds, aerials, skylines, whatever they need for establishing shots. That could be shot at any time, before, during, after."
"Do you know anything about the editing for
Lez Girls
?"
"No, nothing. But I don't think it matters."
"Why not?"
"Because the film canisters could have been stolen at any time during the editing process. It could have already been half-cut, half-finished for all I know. Two-thirds cut, if they were really efficient and working without director input. Or they hadn't even started. I can't say which. Somebody would have to ask the editors how far they'd gotten, or checked their logbooks and reports, etc. Was the movie actually finished? Only just started editing? Halfway? I don't think anybody knows."
"So where would the canisters have been kept? Where were they stolen from?"
"Again, I don't know. But if I was guessing, I'd say they were most likely in some editing room somewhere. We'd need to talk to the actual editors, the cutters. What kind of work hours they kept. But for the most part, except for the Type-A editors and directors, it's pretty much a Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five job. They probably returned the canisters to some vault or storage thing over the weekend, unless somebody was going to work on them."
"Okay, they finish filming on the 21st, the wrap party is Saturday the 24th. They get the film back on Monday the 26th and start or continue editing and cutting, right."
"Sounds okay," Carmen said.
"And Jenny fucks Niki all Sunday night and kicks her out Monday morning, and as the film gets back from the developing people and editing begins or continues. They work all day. So can we assume the window for the theft of the canisters opens some time after work on Monday the 26th?"
"Again, sounds reasonable."
"Could they have been stolen during the day?"
"With all those people around? No."
"Don't they break for lunch?"
"Sure. And they take smoke breaks if they smoke, and go get a soda, and pick up their dry-cleaning, whatever. But I don't think anyone could slip in during the day and collect all the canisters, There would be pieces of film everywhere, in the splicer, being viewed. Maybe Adele and a couple people doing it, not just one. And anyway, half the editors I've met eat at their consoles, or run to the cafeteria if there's no craft services table. It's not like they all break at noon and go away for an hour."
"Okay, you sold me," Lauren said.
1/26/09 After 6 p.m.? Window opens for negatives to be stolen. Niki jilted that morning
"Why don't we just ask Niki when and how she stole them?" Shane asked.
"We're going to. But we like to know the answers to questions before we ask them. Pretty standard cop and courtroom rule."
Shane put her head down on the table. "My head hurts. Can I go home?"
"Your head hurt yesterday," Lauren said.
"I know. It hurts today, too."
"It's a toomah," Carmen said, using the Arnold Schwarzenegger pronunciation of "tumor."
