Time-travelling myster y Hollywood Secrets Our entertaining new serial

PART 1: Lottie must keep her mousy disguise in place until she has completed her mission, however hard that may be…

Los Angeles, 1922

“Pepper, Pepper, Pepper,” the slender 24-year-old muttered as she sat at her dressing table in a lace-trimmed ivory slip.

Four floors below her tenement apartment, the street was growing noisy as Hudsons, Studebakers and Model T Fords hurried past. For a girl who grew up in

New York, it was a comforting sound.

Turning back to her reflection, she pulled back her wavy chestnut hair so severely it was barely noticeable.

Make-up? Barely any, she decided. She stepped into a calf-length grey check wool skirt and teamed it with a cream blouse tied with a demure Edwardian bow of a kind she would never normally wear, and a specially purchased long purple cardigan.

A purple hat with small brim completed the outfit and she donned owlish glasses that hid so much of her face her mother would have to look twice to recognise her.

Raising an eyebrow at the mirror, she said, “Well, hello, Lottie Pepper.”

Later that morning at Rex Copperman Studios, Hollywood...

Lottie stopped as a pair of workmen in leather aprons crossed her path, one pushing, the other pulling an upright piano on a trolley to a barn-like door in a featureless brick building.

“Excuse me,” she called. “Do you know where I can find Brandon Ford?”

“Try the back lot, ma’am.” The trailing man’s smoky pipe seesawed as he drawled the words. He nodded his baggy cap to the left and vanished through the door.

Lottie peered in at what looked like part of a Wild West saloon bar surrounded by lights and movie cameras.

Putting her curiosity aside, she gripped her small but heavy purse and headed left.

On the corner, two bare-chested men made up as Indian braves were puffing on cigarettes and chatting.

“Excuse me,” said Lottie. “Could you point me to the back lot?”

“Straight down this alley,” one said.

The shadowy gap between two warehouses was like a wind tunnel. Lottie pulled her cardigan around herself. She’d expected California to be hot, but she guessed they were close to the sea. The weather reminded her of childhood trips to the amusement park on Coney Island.

In bright sunlight beyond the alley, two figures were having an animated argument. One was a rugged middle-aged man dressed as a cowboy in a white Stetson, waistcoat and dusty chaps. The other was a very tall, slim, brown-haired woman of similar vintage. She wore a gold satin dressing gown trimmed with fur and had a Jack Russell tucked under her arm. The woman started to stalk away. “Excuse me,” Lottie accosted her.

“I’m looking for Brandon Ford…”

The towering woman looked down her nose with furious contempt.

“Do you know who I am?” she demanded in a mid-Atlantic accent so clipped that it almost sounded British.

“No, lady, I don’t,” the New Yorker in Lottie snapped before she could think.

“Well until you do, don’t speak to me unless you’re spoken to first!” The woman strutted off, patting her dog. “Come along, Pom Pom, we’ve been insulted enough!” “The heck?” Lottie stared after her.

The greying cowboy let out a chuckle. “That was Savannah Snow. She thinks she’s the star of this picture. Now let me ask you: do you know who I am?”

Remembering that she was supposed to be keeping a low profile, Lottie stopped herself from saying anything smart.

“I’m sorry,” she admitted lamely, “I don’t go to the movies too often.”

“Gene Luck.” He laughed.

“And I am the star of this picture.”

Lottie cringed and wished she’d done more research. “Do you know where I can find Brandon Ford?” she asked weakly.

Gene pointed, good-naturedly. “The guy in the waistcoat and straw boater.”

Shielding her eyes against the intense sun and a howling wind full of grit, Lottie saw a row of rickety wooden buildings, like an old-time frontier town, standing in a sandy, open area. In the foreground, a tall young man in a white straw hat with a blue silk band was waving his arms amid a loose knot of people and cameras on tripods. Lottie put him in his late twenties.

“Mr Ford?” She plucked at his stripy white-and-blue shirt sleeve.

He turned with a gleaming white grin and brilliant blue eyes.

“Call me Brandon. And you are?” He was the director, but with a face so handsome, he should have been on the other side of the camera, Lottie thought.

“I’m…” For a second she couldn’t remember who she was supposed to be. “Pepper. Lottie Pepper,” she blurted. “Mr Copperman sent me to, um, assist you.” “Assist me with what?”

“I can get coffee.” Her throat was suddenly dry. “Or take notes. Or fetch things. Whatever you need.”

Brandon’s face changed to a scowl.

“He sent you to spy on me, more like.” “Spy?” Lottie cursed the guilty blush setting her face on fire. “No, of course he –”

“Well, right now you can assist me by keeping out of shot and staying quiet.”

Turning away, he barked, “Cameras rolling. Scene six.”

He raised the long white cone of a loud hailer to his lips and shouted, “Action!”

Lottie followed his gaze into the salty sea wind. Through a haze of sand, she saw a stagecoach and a team of horses parked by some grassy dunes in the distance.

“And action!” Brandon bellowed again. “What‘s wrong with those guys?”

“The wind’s blowing your voice back,” Lottie pointed out. “Try waving.”

The director gave her an appraising look. Then he leapt agilely onto the arms of his folding director’s chair and began beckoning with his boater.

Lottie couldn’t help thinking how heroic his tall, athletic frame looked against the cloudless sky, and how attractively the sun gleamed off his oiled light brown hair.

She suddenly regretted dressing so

Through a haze of sand, she saw a stagecoach and horses parked in the distance

dowdily. What chance was there that a man so handsome would notice her when she was dressed as Little Miss Mouse? But then she wasn’t meant to be noticed. She had a mission. She mustn’t get distracted.

In the distance, the stagecoach began to move, then pick up speed, until it was thundering towards them.

“Track it!” Brandon yelled.

But then disaster struck!

As the coach raced past the first building, its rear wheel sheared off and bowled away. The coach lurched as its axle ploughed the ground, throwing up a tornado of dust. Pulled off course, the horses headed straight for the film crew.

Rooted to the spot, Lottie watched cameras and chairs toppling, people running left and right until the only thing in front of the pounding hooves was her. “Lottie!”

She found herself jerked sideways. The azure sky spun as she flew through the air. She landed on her back with a thud that knocked the breath from her.

As her senses returned, she realised Brandon was lying on top of her, pinning her to the sand. She gazed into his sky-blue eyes, inches from hers.

“Are you OK?” he breathed, his soft, full lips close to hers.

“You saved my life,” she whispered. “And you appear to be lying on top of me.”

“You appear to be right,” Brandon breathed, transfixed.

Realising that the fall had knocked her glasses onto the top of her head, Lottie pulled them back onto her nose like a visor and Brandon snapped out of his trance.

“Sorry!” The director leaped to his feet and reached for her hand to pull her up.

Dusting off her skirt, Lottie saw that the stagecoach had come to a halt. The horses snorted restively as the crew gathered around to survey the damage.

“The camera’s wrecked,” someone drawled in a resigned tone.

“More sabotage?” Gene Luck trotted up. “What do you think?” Brandon replied, bitterly. “This time it’s lucky no one died.”

“Sabotage?” Lottie acted as if it was news to her.

Brandon took Lottie to his office. “Things have been going wrong for the past two months,” he said as he led Lottie into a first floor office with Venetian blinds half-closed against the California sun.

The walls were lined with framed movie posters – vibrantly painted images of rugged cowboys, and sophisticated urban couples locked in passionate clinches.

A desk with a typewriter was stacked with paper, some tied between green cardboard covers. Scripts, Lottie guessed.

“Nothing as bad as today,” Brandon continued, “but enough to spook the cast, disrupt filming and cost money. Coffee?” “That’s my job!”

There was a small sink with a copper electric kettle, a glass jug and a silver percolator. Lottie dashed across.

“Coffee and boiled eggs are the only things I can cook,” she admitted.

“A late-night coffee and an egg for breakfast is all I ask from a date,” Brandon smirked suggestively. “Sorry, just kidding!”

Lottie hoped he’d put her blush down to primness. In truth, it was the very appealing thought of making breakfast for Brandon that made her hot all over.

“But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” Brandon’s tone changed abruptly. “If Rex sent you to spy on me, you already know about the problems we’re having.”

“He didn’t send me to spy on you,” Lottie reiterated. “And this is my first day at the studio. I thought I’d be in the typing pool but Mr Copperman assigned me to you. Perhaps with all the setbacks, he thought you needed some support?”

Brandon snorted. “The day Rex Copperman acts out of kindness is the day I marry Savannah Snow.”

Lottie spooned delicious-smelling coffee from a large tin of Bokar.

“Say, is that a New York accent?” Brandon queried.

“You have a good ear,” she said,

surprised. She’d been trying to disguise her east coast tones.

“I’m from Kansas but New York’s where I started making pictures, before the industry moved west. That why you came here? Hoping to be the next Lillian Gish?” “I’m not actually a big movie fan…” “You’re kidding?” Brandon spluttered. “Every secretary and receptionist here is an actress waiting to be discovered.

“And if you’ll pardon me saying so, not one of them has the kind of looks that you’re hiding behind those glasses.”

Lottie’s mind flashed back to that moment in the sand.

“Oh, I could never act.” She laughed nervously. “My family moved here because of my dad’s work, that’s all.”

To deflect further questions, she asked, “Did you always want to make movies?”

“From the moment a travelling bioscope show came through Kansas.”

His eyes gleamed. “Moving pictures! What possibilities! We haven’t even scratched the surface. Do you know they’ve developed a process to put sound on film? It just needs the studios to invest in the technology… and for 20,000 theatres to buy new equipment.” He smiled wryly. “I guess a guy on an organ is cheaper.”

He sighed and gazed at one of the posters on his wall – a movie called Birth OfAmerica, Lottie noted.

The passion with which he spoke about cinema thrilled her. She longed to share with him the passion that had shaped her.

As a lonely child of wealthy parents, she’d lost herself in the stories of Sherlock Holmes, fascinated by the detective’s world of mysteries and disguises. She’d been enthralled by the character of daring Irene Adler – who outwitted even Holmes.

She couldn’t tell Brandon. It would take her too close to revealing that her family were still in New York and that she’d crossed America alone to pursue a life of adventure her parents would never allow.

Brandon would be impressed. But if she were to complete her mission, she had to maintain her cover as dowdy Lottie

Pepper – a girl there only to make coffee.

The doorknob creaked and Lottie’s head spun alertly. Amid a puff of cigar smoke, a belly hove into view like the prow of a ship, clad in a pink shirt, a scarlet polka dot tie draped over it. Two sides of a white linen jacket that would never be fastened followed, then the florid face and white coiffure of film magnate Rex Copperman.

“A word, Mr Ford,” Copperman foghorned. “In private.”

The belly reversed into the corridor and Brandon followed it with a sigh.

Her ear to the closed door, Lottie heard Copperman say, “You’re over budget as it is. We can’t let this vandalism delay us.”

“Over budget?” Brandon protested. “I don’t even have a budget!”

“We’re not making art, Mr Ford,” Copperman boomed. “I hired you to make cheap pictures, quickly. After you nearly sank Pacific Artists with BirthOfAmerica you’re lucky to have anyone hire you.”

“I’m grateful, Rex. But if only you’d let me cast someone other than Savannah…” “Savannah Snow is a household name!” “You mean she used to be.”

“She’s our biggest draw,” Copperman insisted. “It’s her name that will sell this picture, not fancy camera angles.”

“She doesn’t understand movie acting,” Brandon groaned. “And she’s so moody.”

“Enough,” Copperman bellowed.

“I’ve given you an assistant, haven’t I?”

“Very useful,” Brandon snapped.

“I was struggling to make my own coffee!”

The sarcasm stung Lottie like a slap. She’d thought Brandon was starting to like her. She’d have to work harder.

The door handle began to turn and Lottie sprang away, to pretend she hadn’t been eavesdropping. She handed Brandon a mug of coffee and said sweetly, “You’ll get a richer taste when I switch you to Mayflower Pure Kona.”

The next day, filming continued on Sound Stage 2

“Over acting?” Savannah shrieked. Her bosom wobbled like an indignant volcano above her aggressively corseted Victorian saloon bar owner’s dress. “When I was on Broadway audiences lined up around the block!”

“This isn’t Broadway,” Brandon reminded her, “and you’re not playing to people thirty rows back.” He drew a frame in the air around his face. “In this close-up your face will be ten feet tall!”

“Ten feet tall?” Savannah echoed, apprehensively. She put a lace-gloved hand to her heavily pancaked cheek. “Do you think I’m wearing enough make-up?”

“Act with your eyes.” Brandon pointed to Gene, propping up the saloon bar in his cowboy outfit. “Scorn him. Humiliate him. Give him one of your withering looks.

They come easily to you,” Brandon muttered, as he turned away.

“Well, really!” Savannah protested.

“I’ll be talking to Rex about the way you speak to me.”

Lottie watched from the side of the set, Pom Pom the Jack Russell in her arms. The dog was shoved there with an imperious “Make yourself useful, girl” as his owner strode in front of the cameras.

Much as Lottie detested Savannah, she would have stood there holding a chimp if it meant she could watch Brandon at work. He directed with such verve and charisma that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Now, a tracking shot on Gene,” Brandon was saying, “as he stumbles to his table and drinks himself into oblivion.”

The veteran actor was convincing, Lottie thought, as he downed shot after shot before collapsing across the table. “A slow pan out, and – cut!”

As the scene broke, with extras and technicians swarming everywhere, Lottie noticed that Gene hadn’t moved.

“Come on, Gene.” Brandon tugged the actor’s shoulder. “Scene’s over…”

Lottie gasped as Gene rolled from the table and fell heavily to the floor.

Brandon dropped to his side.

“He’s dead!” the director exclaimed. Lottie put Pom Pom on the floor and ran to Gene’s table. She sniffed the shot glass without touching it.

“Cyanide,” she declared, straightening up. “This is murder!”

BY JUDY PUNCH

NEXT WEEK: Brandon and

Lottie team up to investigate Gene’s murder on the movie set...

Lottie gasped as Gene rolled from the table and fell heavily to the floor