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sweet woman of sixty who walked with a limp, and he didn’t want her put out of commission. Besides, slipping her a Canadian five for a tug at the bedsheets and a mint on his pillow made him feel good. He opened the door.
    “Hello, Mr. Cooper!” she chirped. “Turn down the bed, aye?”
    “Yes, thanks a lot,” he said, stepping aside.
    “I know you go to sleep late, aye, so I saved you for last,” she said. With her basket of mints in tow, the uniformed woman hobbled into the bedroom. Then she let out a frail cry that escalated to a scream. It sounded as if she were having a seizure. Avery raced into the room. She was staggering away from his bed, her hand over her mouth. The basket of mints had spilled onto the floor.
    “Are you okay?” Avery asked. Then he saw what the old woman had found beneath the quilted bedcover.
    On his pillow, someone had left four dead mice, two of them cut in half. And there was a note—on hotel memo paper: You played a monster who kills little babies that aren’t even this big. He deserved to die, and so do you .
     
    The old woman was still a bit shaken when someone from hotel security led her out of Avery’s suite. The manager on duty kept apologizing to Avery. He didn’t understand how this could have happened—what with the high security and the professional staff. Could they move him to another suite?
    Avery told them that would be nice. “And could you please make sure that lady gets a ride home tonight?”
    Later he left a message at the house for Joanne, telling her that he’d switched hotel rooms. He didn’t explain why. He said that if she woke up in the middle of the night, she could call him here. It didn’t matter what time. He probably wouldn’t sleep very well tonight anyway.
    During a break in filming the next day, Avery retreated to his trailer, sat on the sofa, and telephoned Joanne. “Has anything kind of weird happened to you lately? Have you received any hate mail or strange phone calls?”
    “Why do you ask, Avery? Did something kind of weird happen there?”
    “Yeah, just a creepy note in my hotel room,” Avery said. “It’s these nuts who didn’t like the TV movie. I’m concerned about you, that’s all.”
    “Avery, I can take care of myself,” Joanne calmly pointed out. “That said, okay, yes, something happened last week after the show. I came back to my dressing room, and on the vanity, someone had left a—well, it was a small Gerber’s baby food jar, only they’d stuffed a dead mouse in it.”
    “Jesus,” Avery murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
    “Because you would have freaked out,” Joanne said. “I know what a worrywart you are. Nothing has happened since. They’ve kept a lookout for me backstage, and I’ve been careful. So don’t sweat about it. Okay?”
    Avery got to his feet and started pacing around the trailer, the phone to his ear. “Listen, I’m hiring you a bodyguard. Let’s not take any chances—”
    “Sweetie, I reiterate, nothing has happened since . Someone didn’t like your movie, and I had a little scare. End of story. I don’t want a bodyguard.”
    “Joanne, we aren’t seeing each other for another six days. Until then, I need to make sure you’re safe.”
    So when Joanne Lane Cooper arrived at the theater that night, a bodyguard her husband hired introduced himself and showed his credentials. The man, whom Joanne would describe as “a pain in the ass,” guaranteed her safety for the next six days.

Three
    A number of bomb threats didn’t keep fourteen thousand people from filling Portland’s Colosseum for the benefit concert. Dayle Sutton read letters of remembrance from several of Tony Katz’s friends and costars. Many of the letters were from AIDS patients he’d visited regularly, a few of them children.
    Another actress might have manufactured some high emotion for the presentation, adding her own pregnant pauses and dramatic sighs, or allowing her voice to quiver. But