Free Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs

movie."
    "What exactly does 'developing' mean?"
    "It means working on a project—the script, the financing, trying to get a good director or a star involved. But Sy never moved on a project until he was satisfied with the script. And mine—it's called A Sea Change —wasn't quite in shape to be sent out. But he had a lot of great suggestions. I was rewriting based on his suggestions."
    "And then he'd produce it?"
    "Yup."
    "Was he paying you a lot?"
    "Well ... he wasn't actually paying me yet. But if I'd asked, he would have given me option money."
    "Why didn't you ask?"
    "I guess the same reason I didn't want alimony. I didn't want to seem greedy. I know, that sounds stupid. No, it is stupid. But Sy always worried that people—women—were out for what they could get from him. I didn't want him to think that of me, either time. Anyway, I knew he'd be fair once we got rolling."
    "How do you support yourself? Family money?"
    She laughed and looked around the kitchen. "Does this look like family money?"
    "You live in Bridgehampton all year round?" I was really surprised.
    "Sure. Oh, I see; you thought this was my sincere little summer cottage where I go to get away from my forty-room Sutton Place triplex. No, this is it. I support myself by writing. I do the 'Happy News' column for the South Fork Sun . I'm sure it's the high point of your week: weddings, babies, anniversaries. 'Penny and Randy Rollins of Amagansett's famed Wee Tippee Inne celebrated their nineteenth anniversary with a gala extravaganza—featuring Penny's world-famous fish chowder!' And I write copy for mail-order catalogs. Stuff like 'White swirls of rayon chiffon set aglow by luminescent faux-pearl buttons.' "
    "You didn't resent Sy, that you had to give up screenwriting, give up all that high living for something ... less exciting?"
    "Resent? A woman tends to resent a man who says, 'I don't desire you anymore.' " She looked away, embarrassed. Then she went on: "But that's on a personal level. Professionally, how could I resent him just because other people weren't hiring me as a screenwriter? That wasn't Sy's fault. Eight studios and fifty thousand independent producers rejected my scripts. They said they were sweet. Sweet is movie speak for insignificant. But in all those years I never doubted that Sy wished me well."
    "Did you ever talk about anything beyond this new project?"
    "Sure. Look, I know his friends, his family."
    "Any brothers or sisters?"
    "No. Just Sy. Both his parents died since the divorce. But he had aunts, uncles, lots of cousins. I knew them all; we went way back. When I met him, he was still publishing his poetry magazine and trying to get his first movie produced, and his office was still in the Spiegel Crown Kosher Provisions building."
    "Spiegel?"
    "Spiegel was his name originally: Seymour Spiegel." She shook her head. "He changed it the summer before he went to Dartmouth. I never understood why. I mean, what did he think he would say at graduation? "These are my parents, Helen and Morton Spiegel. Their name used to be Spencer, but they Judaicized it.' Or if he was going to change his name, why not go the whole route and call himself Bucky? I mean, Sy is not a quantum leap from Seymour."
    Just then, Bonnie got stopped by some memory of Sy. Her eyes opened too wide, the expression people use when they're trying not to cry. She stood up and got busy sponging off what looked like a clean stove.
    And then it happened again: the imposition of self-control, followed by the conscious shifting of the gears of her personality. When she turned around, she was composed—but with just the appropriate degree of concern. "Do you have any ideas about who killed him?" she asked. Sincere. Saddened. Full of sympathy. Full of crap.
    "Do you?"
    "No," she said. For a woman her age, she looked like she had a great body. I tried to figure out where I'd seen her before. Maybe running. She had the slim, muscular legs of a runner.
    "Think back over the last