The Homewreckers(118)

“But it’s mahogany. Don’t you think it’s too fancy with this primitive pine piece? What if we wrapped the frame with rope?”

“I like it. No, I love it,” Hattie said.

“What’ll Trae say about us taking over his design decisions?” Cass asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Who cares? Get ’er done. That’s my new mantra.”



* * *



The two women spent the rest of the day measuring, cutting, and gluing nautical charts to the walls, and even the ceiling of the bathroom. They were almost finished when Leetha arrived to check on their progress.

“Ooh, I like it,” the showrunner said. “Thinking outside the box. I just came from the kitchen. Saw Ashtray down on his hands and knees taping those floors.” She held up her cell phone. “Had to take a photo to commemorate the occasion.”

“Did Trae say when he thought he’d be done?” Hattie asked.

“He swears it’ll be done by morning,” Leetha said, looking dubious. “Said he’s going to paint it himself, because he doesn’t trust y’all’s painters not to muck it up.”

“Good,” Cass said. “Our guys already have enough to do fixing his screwups. Let him spend the whole night crawling around on the floor.”





62

Quel Scandal




Mo was sitting at the bar at The Whitaker, nursing a bourbon and water, going over his notes. He’d ordered dinner and was savoring the opportunity to relax and clear his mind after another chaotic day of homewrecking.

Two more days. His stomach growled. He’d had a stale bagel from craft services for breakfast and couldn’t remember having lunch. The Chatham Avenue set was chaos, as Hattie and Cass and even Trae raced the clock to finish work on the house.

He’d been back to this hotel several times since the night he’d dropped off Trae’s iPad. The place had grown on him. He liked the clubby ambience, and the food and excellent selection of bourbons. But mostly he liked that he wasn’t eating his own fairly dismal cooking.

To Mo’s surprise, Savannah had started to grow on him too, despite his best efforts to resist its charms. He didn’t care for the heat or humidity, or the damned no-see-ums, but the city itself, with its wide streets lined with moss-draped oaks, the quiet green squares surrounded by elegant nineteenth-century town houses, the languid pace, and the quirky friendliness of most of the natives? He’d succumbed to all, dammit.

And what about Hattie Kavanaugh? He’d grown more attached to her than he wanted to admit. He found himself watching her before and after the shoot. She was dogged, determined, funny, smart, and yes, sexy. In the evenings, he found himself watching the day’s footage, but mostly watching Hattie. The way she unconsciously twisted her ponytail when she was anxious, how she bit her lower lip when she was concentrating on something. He found everything about her slightly intoxicating. But the show would wrap in just a few days. What then? It could be months before the network decided if it wanted to order another season of Homewreckers, and in the meantime, he needed to begin thinking about another concept for another show.

Mo was torn. He was sick of Homewreckers, the drama and the overwhelming amount of work. But if the network liked what they were seeing? And ordered another season? Maybe he would stay in Savannah and see if something developed with Hattie.

Mo jiggled the ice cubes in his glass and glanced up at the television mounted over the mirrored back bar. It had been turned to the local news when he’d sat down, but now he recognized the opening montage for Headline Hollywood.

The volume was on mute, but the male half of the anchor pair, Antonio Sorrels, a former quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, seemed to be talking about the breakup of an entertainment industry power couple, because the cameras flashed on photos of the couple, with a jagged rip through the photo. Then came a police blotter photo of a former ’90s child star, who’d been arrested for assaulting a bouncer at a trendy Manhattan nightclub.

And then Jada Watkins was on-screen, seated on one of the Hollywood Headline director’s chairs, followed by the grainy photo of Trae Bartholomew and Hattie, caught kissing at dinner only a couple weeks earlier. And another photo, which Mo recognized as one of the publicity stills the network had shot.

HOMEWRECKERS STAR HAS REAL-LIFE DRAMA, read the chyron streaming across the bottom of the screen.

Next came a film clip, footage of the Chatham Avenue house, either taken from a very long lens, or more likely, a drone camera, showing the Chatham County coroner’s van parked beside the gaping septic tank pit, with another streaming chyron line—MURDER MYSTERY DEEPENS AT HPTV SET.

“Hey, miss!” Mo called to the bartender. “Could you turn up the television volume, please?”

The bartender pointed the remote control at the television, clicked it, and moved on down the bar to wait on another customer.

Mo leaned forward to listen.

“The long-unsolved missing person case involving a popular Savannah, Georgia, private school teacher was cracked wide open last week, when the woman’s skeletal remains were discovered at a home undergoing renovation for the upcoming HPTV show The Homewreckers,” Jada Watkins said, in a hushed, serious tone. “The show pairs heartthrob L.A. designer Trae Bartholomew, best known for his hit show Design Minds, with television newcomer Hattie Kavanaugh, a Savannah contractor whose company specializes in historic restorations.”