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all the more
appealing to Savannah.
    “Yes, this is who I was
expecting when I arrived for my appointment this afternoon,” Savannah said,
keeping her voice low as the crew moved in a swirl of activity around them.
“I’ve been a fan of Lady Elean.... well, this person’s for a long time.”
    Kaitlin’s freckled face
beamed with something that looked like satisfaction. She took the pencil she
had been scribbling with on a clipboard and stuck it in her short, tight red
curls above her ear. ‘That’s the idea,” she said. “To create a character that
the world embraces.”
    “A character? To create?”
    Kaitlin gave her a long,
measured look, as though deciding how open to be with this newcomer to the set.
‘Yes,” she finally said, “creating characters. Conjuring the magic inside the
viewers’ minds and imaginations. That’s showbiz.”
    “Even in a cooking show,
huh?” Savannah watched as a young man patted the shine off the Queen of
Chocolate’s nose between takes.
    “Lights, camera, action....
and it’s all make-believe.... done with smoke and mirrors. Even for a cooking
show.” Kaitlin sighed. Savannah noticed how dark the circles were under her
eyes. She was too young to look so tired.
    “I was surprised that you
started taping this late,” Savannah said, glancing down at her watch. It was
almost eleven and they had only gotten down to business about half an hour
before. “Don’t most TV shows tape in the afternoon or early evening? I mean....
I heard that the Tonight Show is done in the afternoon and....”
    “We tape when Eleanor is
ready to tape,” Kaitlin said, her eyes trained on the star of the show, who had
dropped her genteel facade the moment the cameras stopped rolling and was
dishing out verbal abuse to a long-suffering hairstylist who was trying to set
her wig right for the next take.
    “She’s a bit of a night
owl, huh?” Savannah said, noting the look of pure, bitter hatred that
fleetingly passed over Kaitlin’s pretty Irish face. It was gone when she turned
back to Savannah and said in a sweet, even tone, “Oh, yes. Eleanor prefers the
darkness to the light.”
    “And why do you suppose
that is?”
    Kaitlin shrugged. “So many,
many things become clear by day.”
    “Things she’d prefer not to
see?”
    Kaitlin’s eyes cut back to
Eleanor, who was shoving a crew member out of her way as she stomped off the
set, shouting, “Damned stupid idiots.... I oughta fire all of you! I’m gonna go
back to the house to take a break. And don’t call me until you get your shit
together!”
    “A break.” Kaitlin shook
her head wearily. “She’ll be drunk as a skunk by the time she gets done with
her ‘break.’” She left Savannah’s side and strolled to the center of the set,
where nobody seemed particularly surprised. “That’s it for tonight, ladies and
gentlemen. We’ll try again on Wednesday. Thanks.”
    In less than ten minutes,
Kaitlin and her crew had cleared out of the barn-converted studio, and Savannah
was left alone to wander down the cobblestone driveway back to the main house.
    Perhaps under different
circumstances she might have considered the moonlit walk romantic: the silver
light spilling over the lawns, the smell of the sea mingling with that of
nearby eucalyptus trees, the house’s stained-glass windows glowing in the jewel
colors of ruby, sapphire, and topaz, and the hypnotic, rhythmic sounds of the
waves washing onto the beach below.
    But there was another,
unsettling sound. The soft snuffling of someone crying. A child.
    Savannah saw her sitting in
the gazebo, a young girl of about six, with long, straight dark hair that covered
her downturned face like a privacy curtain. She had her knees drawn up under
her chin, her arms wrapped around her bare shins. She wore a bright pink
T-shirt and matching shorts, and in the moonlight Savannah could see sparkles,
like glitter, on her sneakers.
    Savannah walked across the
lawn to the gazebo and stepped into