Free Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews

Deborah assured her.
    “Hey,” Scott said. “Why don’t we go catch some dinner and talk it over? If we leave now, I know we can get a table at LaGrotto. I’ll call Gino and tell him it’ll be the three of us.”
    “LaGrotto! Yum!” Deborah said. “Are we celebrating already?”
    “I don’t see why not,” Scott said. “I snuck over to the Vittles set and watched Tate Moody for a little while this afternoon. I thought Adelman looked bored out of his gourd. I don’t think Moody is gonna be towing that double-wide of his to Manhattan any time soon. How ’bout it, Geen?”
    “No, thanks,” Gina said quietly. “Remember? You told D’John I need to be blonder if I’m going for national exposure? He’s going to put the color on tonight.”
    Deborah looked from Gina to Scott, trying to assess the situation.
    “Oh?” she said.
    “But don’t let that stop you two,” Gina said. She wondered what was up with Scott and Deborah Chen. Was he sleeping with every woman in Atlanta? And how had she not noticed before how chummy the two of them had gotten?
    “Another time, then,” Deborah said.
    “Maybe,” Gina said. She was getting good at feigning indifference, she thought.
    Walking out through the studio’s now deserted reception area, Gina realized, when she caught sight of the deepening sky, that she hadn’t seen daylight since leaving the town house early this morning.
    Morningstar Studios was more glamorous sounding than it was in reality. Located in what had once been a gritty warehouse districtoff Monroe Drive, in the shadow of the Interstate 85 overpass, the studio, formerly a commercial printing plant, was nothing more than a shoebox-shaped cinder-block affair. The studios took up half the building, and the other tenants consisted of three or four photographers, a caterer, and a wholesale florist.
    It was early July, but a faint chill hung in the early evening air. From the clump of pine trees at the far edge of the parking lot, Gina could hear the hum of cicadas, and when she inhaled, she smelled the honeysuckle that grew on the parking lot fence. She was glad of the light cotton sweater she’d thrown on over her sleeveless tank.
    The parking lot was mostly empty, with the exception of a dozen cars parked near the far end of the studio, where she saw the glint of sunlight on an odd-looking vehicle.
    She walked on past her own car, and toward the vehicle. She passed a crudely lettered sign that read Vittles with an arrow pointing toward a pair of doors to the studio. As she got closer, she saw that the vehicle was a vintage travel trailer, with quilted aluminum siding and a shape reminiscent of a canned ham. Was this the double-wide that Scott had been referring to? Did Tate Moody really live here?
    As she got closer, she could hear…something. A high, plaintive keening.
    Quickening her step, she bypassed the double doors that led back toward the Vittles set and followed the sound.
    Now the trailer was directly in front of her. It was hooked up to a gleaming red pickup truck—an old Ford—the kind with the humpback wheel wells and varnished wood truck bed. The gleaming red paint of the pickup truck drew her like a beacon, and in the slanted rays of the late afternoon sun, the highly polished aluminum trailer reminded her of some kind of magic bullet.
    But what was that sound?
    A blue awning extended over the door to the trailer, leaving it in deep shadows, but as she got closer, she could see that the trailer’s aluminum outer door was propped open, leaving a screen door exposed.
    Now the keening subsided, and she saw a shape, a medium-size dog—white, with big caramel-colored patches over each eye, andfloppy, feathery ears, standing on his hind legs, pawing frantically at the screened door.
    “Hey there,” she cried, rushing over. “Hey there, sweetheart.”
    In answer, the dog threw itself against the door, fell over backward, then scrambled back to his former position, tail wagging a mile a